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#1
02-23-2012, 12:19 PM
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Why rangers don't suck
Rangers are the redheaded step child of p99, as they were in live during Kunark. But they really get a bad and undeserved rap.
Perhaps some of it has to do with rangers always gearing for str and neglecting AC/hp, but a ranger tank will shine in many groups. In any group where cleric mana isn't an issue, a ranger tank is probably the single best choice, aggro is never an issue, and dps is superior to a paladin or sk. Woodsman Staff is cheap as shit, allows a ranger to do top notch dps, and still retain aggro much better than a warrior who's often forced to use lower dps weapons and rely on procs. If outdoors wolf form also provides a substantial atk boost, while harmony is amazing for breaking camps. Ranger is also a top notch CC class if playing a support role, 2-3 mob pulls without an enc aren't an issue if a ranger just root parks, and they can take some hits to boot. Spread among a group of 6, the rangers xp penalty is like 8% more xp than a war. Considering that a cleric who just casts CHs every now and then isn't going to run oom healing a 3k+ hp ranger very often, they can easily make up for the xp difference vs a war by allowing dps to constantly go full bore. Thoughts? I'm expecting a lot of ranger hate regardless. | ||
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#3
02-23-2012, 12:55 PM
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They're still rangers.
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#4
02-23-2012, 01:01 PM
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At level 60 w/ top end gear I find warriors actually tend to slightly out-dps me. Pre-kunark was a lot different, I used to show up just slightly under the rogues, and on par or above monks (mainly due to 5/14 hate whip as a mainhand weapon giving a big comparative advantage). Now rogues double or triple what I put out, monks usually at least 1.5-2x my output.
I can tank ok, about the hardest thing I can get away tanking is probably Drusella in HS. We're not really that great on agro, ensnare is ok but fire dot isn't nearly as much agro as it apparently was on live. Good warriors with high end weapons are far superior. Almost anybody can cast root so that's not really a huge deal. Not sure about low levels, but I found woodsman staff to be garbage. The Real Advantages: - Tracking (the big one by far) - Sow yourself! - Clicky 50% haste cloak for solo or small groups - Conflagration (450dmg, 2.5s cast nuke with a cooldown) will up DPS by about 5-10 if you have some mana regen going but it won't land on most raid mobs. - Lots of minimally useful but fun utility stuff (bind sight, dispels, Sneak/Hide, 350 range bow shots, the extremely rare 400+ bow crit, clicky port to gfay, etc.) - 270 pt heal is kinda laughable but in a pinch it can make a difference, and I can usually keep 2 or 3 necros topped off when they're lich'ing out doing mana dumps at a raid. | ||
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#5
02-23-2012, 01:26 PM
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Quote:
In the early levels, you can see a big power difference between rangers and a warrior, especially in a solo circumstance. I've tested it myself. Being able to root/snare and kill from a distance, they're able to take down targets that a warrior could never do alone (without twinking). While a warrior does have more hp and gains access to some skills earlier and has a slightly higher skill cap in some of them and can wear plate AND has a higher ac softcap, rangers have more utility and if played right they can have a higher dps. Additionally, a warrior doesn't gain access to plate until they can afford it. And the skill caps happen later. I personally would rather have a ranger with me in the earlier levels, especially if the group is small and needs the flexibility. What about the experience penalty? When comparing a warrior to a ranger, if you got a good group, then it's hard to justify the -40% penalty. In a good group, the utility of a ranger is wasted. Furthermore, rogues/wizards are better dps. However, if you anticipate trials and difficulties then it's nice to have an all-around group member (if played well). But if you're solo, a ranger is going to greatly outpace a warrior in his/her ability to survive. This could easily justify the -40% experience penalty. Maybe they anticipated people soloing a lot when they made the initial choice to implement the experience penalty for hybrids. Or perhaps they felt that the extra utility when compared to the actual differences between a ranger and a knight or pure melee were overpowering. In any case, I do not think the -40% experience penalty was baseless. This couldn't have been more clear when I compared a warrior to a ranger of equal level and similar gear on the same target. But how can you have a class that's good at both solo AND grouping without overpowering them when compared to something like a warrior? How can a ranger be a better soloer AND be an equal group member? If he/she is, then he/she is overpowered. It's basic algebra applied to gameplay logic. Here: Ranger = +40% solo/+0% grouping = Warrior = +0% solo/+0% grouping In this logic, both of them are equal at grouping but the ranger is better at soloing. If everything is accounted for then the ranger is overpowered. Do you see the logic here? The ranger wants to be just as good of a grouper as the warrior. But why doesn't the warrior want to solo just as good as the ranger? Having a jack-of-all-trades capability in games goes back to the beginning of D&D. It's an idea that's as old as time itself. If you're good at a lot of things then you won't be expert at anything. You'll be good by yourself but when you're put into a grouping environment you will not be able to fill any expert roles and thus will be consigned to the back of the list since social environments want specialization. Furthermore, you simply can't do what groups can do when alone. You feel limited by not having specialized. But some players like it this way. What they specialized in was being able to go out on-their-own and handle things with some skill. They're ok with being put at the back of the list in grouping environments. But the thing is, the vast majority of players are -not- ok with this. And this is what broke the camels back and led this to be discouraged. Something happened somewhere in the design process in the Verant/SOE offices. I'm not even pulling a leg. Something happened. What I'm talking about here is all basic logic that we learn in grade school. My guess is they slowly picked away at ranger abilities and then they removed the experience penalty altogether. Why? Because they were bothered by this jack-of-all-trades thing. Players don't like it when they're good at solo but bad at grouping. And sony didn't want to overpower anyone. What this is really saying, when you look behind the curtain to see the wizard fumbling with the levers and ropes, is that players don't like to make hard choices. You can see this all throughout the development evolution of EQ from its beginning to its present day. Newer games are finding different ways of coping with this. Perhaps what's needed is a way to temporarily make hard choices and then be able to revoke them and return to your previous state. Or maybe it's something deeper than just hard choices. Perhaps people who play jack-of-all-trades just like having lots of things to do??? When you specialize, you're doing one thing, right? Of course, nothing says that doing one thing has to be simple or boring, but that's most often what happens. Assuming that this is true then maybe we just need more detailed classes for these types of people so that they don't need to put themselves in compromised positions in order to feel occupied by their character. Then they don't have to be on the back of the list. Disregarding everyting else, I think playing a ranger is funner than playing a warrior. The reason is you got more tools. This makes the game less boring. Warriors are too simple and it becomes a grind too fast. When a ranger is soloing, they get the chance to use their tools more often. In a group you're more about dps so it's actually more boring. However, groups offer a social aspect that you cannot get alone. And even a soloing ranger with all of his/her tools can get bored when grinding the same place repeatedly. This is because even with all of their tools, if you stay in the same place then you will eventually settle on the same kinds of tools being used. I really think when they designed warriors they made them too simple. Even a rogue or a monk. A ranger can do close combat just like any of them. But a ranger can also root and snare and shoot and blast/dot and joust from a distance. A ranger can track. A ranger can invis. A ranger can sow (eventually). A ranger can bind wound and heal. A ranger gets bored slower than these purer classes, especially by themselves (ignoring social aspect). I sometimes wonder what it would be like to play ALL classes in one. Now, there's something that would be slow to get boring! You'd have a lot of tools. You'd have a trick for every treat. Lots of things to learn. I played a ragner for several years on live. Played a couple of em.
__________________
Full-Time noob. Wipes your windows, joins your groups.
Raiding: http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...&postcount=109 P1999 Class Popularity Chart: http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...7&postcount=48 P1999 PvP Statistics: http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=59 "Global chat is to conversation what pok books are to travel, but without sufficient population it doesn't matter." | |||
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Last edited by stormlord; 02-23-2012 at 02:32 PM..
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#6
02-23-2012, 02:00 PM
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My main is a sk, and I get group invites all the time to tank. In many cases a ranger would do nearly as good a job as I would (and equal job if it's just the cleric CHing once per 3 minutes), while doing more dps. I think the biggest case for a ranger is that case.
Alternately as pure dps... an iksar monk has a 44% xp penalty vs 40% for a ranger. Yes a monk will do more dps, but not so much so that rangers should be shunned, especially during the leveling phase. | ||
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#7
02-23-2012, 02:08 PM
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As for your points on grouping. I doubt they considered it that much when designing classes. Some ended up being much better than others, but the insanely slow natural hp regeneration makes soloing incredibly tedious for melees.
Even tho a ranger is a decent soloer, they are exponentially worse than any caster. | ||
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#8
02-23-2012, 02:16 PM
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What you are saying is the exact definition of a Ranger, being said Jack-of-all-trades.
All the utility a Ranger can do, other classes can do better. All of the dps a Ranger can do, other classes can do better. All the tanking a Ranger can do, other classes can do better. We far from 'suck', but you can't deny we are a hybrid, and being as such, have an exp penalty. For the exact reasons you stated, that may be why exp penalties were eventually removed on Live (that and it just got stupid to have them after a while), but this server isn't implementing changes based on reasoning, it's emulating classic EQ. I wouldn't say we're shunned really; 90% of the bad things said about our class are in jest, and like the server, are mere emulations of the past where Rangers were the whipping boy class and the butt of every joke. Do what you do; haters gonna hate. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] | ||
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#9
02-23-2012, 02:46 PM
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Quote:
I'm not saying they're not hybrids. I know they're not as good dps as a rogue or wizard or monk or whatever. I know they're not as good a caster as a druid. I know all of that and admit it so you can put it to rest. It's like good and evil. There's a range of good and evil in each person. To say someone is evil means they're mostly evil, but there's still some good in them. It's worthwhile to be accurate about this. Most importantly, an exp penalty doesn't make sense if being a hybrid is the reason. When I play any game out there and distribute my points evenly, that's within the rules and no exp penalty is needed. Now if you mean hybrid as being "in addition to" then you're right that a exp penalty is necessary. However, that would mean they're overpowered and thus you'd be openly admitting to agreeing with me. Rangers did not like being shunned in groups. And this probably happened during beta too (hint). I would not be surprised if Verant gave them a few extra bonuses in groups just to keep them quiet. Like dps or higher defensives. But this made Verant feel that rangers were overpowered. How can they be more sought after in groups and yet still be good at soloing while there're all these other classes that're not as good at soloing but sought after in groups? They did not like being put into this position where they felt they had to fudge numbers. Eventually they tried to create an environment where everybody can solo and group on a roughly equal level, while attempting to maintain the feel of each class. But if everybody can solo and group on a roughly equal level then there's no true jack-of-all-trades going on. It was just the way they dealt with this old horse. I can't blame them because they didn't want customer complaints like they got in the past (think: $$$$$). Jack-of-all-trades is a choice. It's about using limited points and distributing them roughly equally. It's about accepting the consequences of your choices. Consequences are sometimes mean: "Where's my group?" What I'm telling you is that rangers would have been even worse in groups or soloing if Verant hadn't fudged the numbers. It was this fudging that caused them to change hte course of things to prevent further fudging. Fudging is just another word for throwing out the rulebook. It means faking something to placate.
__________________
Full-Time noob. Wipes your windows, joins your groups.
Raiding: http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...&postcount=109 P1999 Class Popularity Chart: http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...7&postcount=48 P1999 PvP Statistics: http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=59 "Global chat is to conversation what pok books are to travel, but without sufficient population it doesn't matter." | |||
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Last edited by stormlord; 02-23-2012 at 03:19 PM..
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