Monk or Ranger for soloing melee?

[VincentVolaju]

Which melee class do you think is the better solo leveling on Green and Teal?

[Swish]

Without gear? Go with a monk I think. Rangers aren't bad with a decent weapon at the very least but there's not much around at the moment unless you've already acquired a nice amount of plat ^^

[Ivory]

Ranger....100x ranger. Bows is the greatest power in all of Norrath. You can outsolo a monk EASILY till at least mid 30's. And even after that (since you can root rot most things).

[AgentEpilot]

Yea I know a heroic gnome who can take down giants with a bow...at level 7.

[VincentVolaju]

Yeah originally my first thought was "Def. a Monk". But then when I considered there is no Iksar regen, no Fungi, bandages only heal up to 50% until Kunark. There isn't very much gear in general for a Monk at this stage of the game. It started to seem like Monk soloing is probably pretty dang rough.

Not that Ranger is all that much better, but there is at least some basic gear that can make it much easier on you, even just Banded and Short Sword of Mornin for example, those alone would probably be a pretty big boost to both AC and DPS. Then take into consideration being able to Snare/Root + Bow down mobs, and it's starting to sound a bit better. Of course bowing down things will take arrows, and take longer to kill a mob, but the plus side is there is pretty much no downtime, yea?

I don't know, I've never played a Ranger passed like lvl 10 before, and the only Monk I've played was a twinked out Iksar on Blue with Fungi and all. So I just wanted to hear some opinions from some of you guys who probably have much more experience than I do at these classes, in all stages of the game.

But now I'm beginning to lean towards Ranger tbh.

[Kanuvan]

with trash gear - monk

with moderate twink - ranger

with epic twinks - tie

[Rooj]

At high levels I soloed soooo many things on my RNG on Blue, Root + Magic DoT + Fire DoT + Bow spam. You can sit in between ranged attacks so you kinda have infinite mana. Although with Green's meditate mechanics that'll be hard to do until 35+, plus Immolate is level 49 and the first magic DoT is 30. Do your best to cap STR and DEX, Wolf Form if outdoors. This is of course for farming and not for EXPing.

[Wallicker]

Ranger at 50: Monk at 50:
Def. 200. Def. 230
Dodge. 137. Dodge 200
Parry 185. Block. 200
Riposte 150. Riposte. 200
Offense. 210. Offense. 230
Dual Wld 210. Dual Wld. 252
Dbl atk. 200. Dbl atk 210
1HS. 200. H2H. 225


Spells + bowkiting. Mend + FD + combat BW + Flying kick
BiS weapons yaks. BiS weapons fists
8/24 ratio is .333. 14/30 ratio is .466

In classic it’s quite obvious the monk is a stronger soloer, sure a ranger can bow kite something to death outdoors but this can take a realllly long time if it’s not a blue which the monk could kill easier. I’d say outdoors tie indoors monk wins by a bit. This is all assuming OP is asking about leveling a monk or ranger on teal/green right now in similar gear. Really two yaks for the ranger is pushing it right now. Not to mention hybrid penalty for ranger.

[Aaramis]

^^ The Monk definately has more dps, and on paper, sure they're better.

The Ranger's benefits are in that little word you mentioned - "spells".
Outdoors they can harmony and single pull; they can snare (the death of many a soloer is a running mob); they can root; they can bow kite if need be; they can DoT, including lowering an enemy's AC; they can self-buff their AC and HP; they can self-DS (thorns); they can self-SoW; they can self-heal, and eventually self-regen; they can dispel enemy DSs (cancel magic); they can track; the list goes on.

All of those add up to make the gap VERY narrow indeed, if not tilted in the Ranger's favour.

The Monk is a dps machine. The Ranger is a swiss army knife, similar to the Bard (but with less utility, but more dps).

[Wallicker]

The monk has much better offensive and defensive skills, both can get mobs solo mobs outdoors it’s not hard... if you took the same lvl monk and ranger to a camp indoors the monk would be able to solo more. A bard can solo infinitely better than both that comparison is silly