Question about SKs and ranger

[Lartanin63]

I have played all of them. I actually really enjoyed soloing on the paladin but it takes the right tools/items to make it enjoyable. Ranger is my favorite due to the utility of the spells. I face tank,root then step back if the fight goes south. This changes later on when mobs hit harder so that is where you find yourself root rotting/bowing. I actually don't even do that on green anymore. I just snare dot then nuke my mana down to about 1 bub on mana. Melee and finish off. Depending on mobs hp is actually pretty effective. You can throw bow shots into this as well and just med between respawns. Sk has the tools to fight many thing but the downtime feels worse to me without heals and only having taps but you can agro kite it around and tap and med on ticks. Letting your pet beat on it and dots do the work or fear and med. If you don't have twink items ect. I feel ranger is the way to go, twinked pally is awesome.

[edmazur]

I melee-soloed the majority of my way to 50 on my Ranger (IIRC: CB taskmaster -> Oasis crocs -> EK crag spiders -> CT gators -> RM Cynthia -> MM caitiff -> LFay Happ -> LR Kanthurn), so it sounds like this might fit your play-style. Especially with Hide, it fit mine well for intermittent/distracted/multi-tasking/AFK playing. And I still enjoy solo-crawling deep in MM castle at 50 while farming stuff. You can self-gear yourself up fairly well if you can figure out where to go and spend a bit of time farming.

Something else I found that helps a lot with Ranger melee-soloing is having a GCD item (I use Star of Eyes) and chain-nuking between 2H swings. Without FBSS, I found Gigantic Zweihander (39 delay) to be the right amount of time to get a swing in between nukes. With FBSS, I found Lamentation Blade (54) was more suitable. With a big enough HP/mana pool and decent AC, you can crank out significant DPS and bring stuff down pretty quickly while being able to sustain the incoming damage.

[cd288]

Killing something with a bow, especially as you reach higher levels, will take forever and honestly not worth it IMO. As you reach higher levels, you're not gonna be able to face tank solo very efficiently on a Ranger either.

SKs are a bit more viable, but I would not say that you should expect to be able to just easily solo your way through the levels. Even with SK you will end up with a decent amount of downtime. All that said, I would go SK just because you will be better in groups at the high end of the level range.

[Coridan]

Originally Posted by M.J. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

A geared SK can toe-to-toe mobs up until about level 44 when you start soloing 35+ stuff, then the more usual snare+heart-flutter+heat blood+siphonstr+re-snare+fear cycle begins.

At least that is what my current 46 SK does as a Dark Elf, maybe the big guys with slam can toe to toe a few more levels.
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I tried to go toe to toe against Guard Nash (a level 40 warrior mob) on my 50 SK and got him down to 40 before I had to run for Blackburrow, even with Harm Touch. He resisted a ton of fears too, but that was before my Pegasus Hide belt and Blade of Abrogation so I might be able to do it better now.

[Noselacri]

Does noone else solo by jousting? Root or snare the mob (or just have SoW/Jboots and enough space to move) and swing the biggest, slowest two-hander you can get your hands on, then move away. You effectively reduce your own weapon delay to whatever the mob has by being out of its reach while your swing timer counts down. Pre-Kunark there's not a lot of good ranger 2h weapons, but there is the one from Kedge with 25 damage. For the purpose of killing a mob as cheaply as possible in terms of hp lost, it almost doubles your efficiency, and it costs hardly any mana compared to fear-kiting or root-rotting with DoTs.

[Ivory]

Rangers can quad kite... they win. Most amazin in levelin.