Ranger DilemmaFollow

So you are a Ranger, a DPS primary class.

By betraying over to Freeport you become an Assassin. As an Assassin you would be guaranteed to do at least 20-30% more DPS than you would as a Ranger.





Edited, Aug 20th 2006 at 5:52pm EDT by Kaolian

Edited, Aug 23rd 2006 at 12:44am EDT by Kaolian

Assassins really do that much more?

Dayum... I was under the impression they had better Burst damage but longer cooldowns and such evened it out.

If it truely is a consistent 20-30% more damage than 100% go for it. I'm just not so positive it's quite that big of a jump.

Actually the reverse is true. Rangers do better burst dps, however in the long run Assassins do more damage by far.

and yes its 20-30% seems to be a good number, there has been significant attention paid to the subject by rangers and assassins on the board via parser and overall this seems to be the medium,

Hmmm I'm curious now. =)

I seriously thought the Assassin was higher burst at Melee than the Ranger is (as bow or in General.) But I guess it would make alot of sense (considering alot of the long bows have insane damage/delays) that a ranger would be pretty hard hitting.

So, why exactly is that? Is it because the Ranger gets alot of offensive techs that work with Bow? or? Seems rather unfair if thats the case. Then you also get into the whole Clustered battlefield situation, but with raids maxing at 24 I don't really see that being a problem either.

Anyways, being an archer is badass and what everyone else is saying is also very true, straight DPS isn't everything... It would be pretty tempting for me, though.

Freeport plain sucks. I hate that place.

Well, my assassin is only lvl 8 so far, but I might take him up to a higher level and see if it is truly such a damage machine. So far it is actually, even at such a low lvl, it's almost scary.

And how can you be lvl 60 already Bodhi? Heck, at that pace you just create a new char and make him assassin, you'll get at the top lvl in mere months

booo hisss!

Actually, the idea of doing more DPS is quite appealing, as I get my *** kicked soloing on a frequent basis now (this may have something to do with the fact that I have mostly crappy armor--at lvl 35 I'm still wearing mostly carbonite chain, as I haven't been able to farm enough materials to replace it with T4 stuff, and I refuse to spend my entire small fortune paying broker prices) but I just can't bring myself to play an evil-aligned character. I'm too inclined toward chaotic-good for that.

I just started grouping regularly this week, first with DSD and Co. in Nek Castle (WONDERFUL experience, can't wait to do it again--I'd offer to organize another go, but past experience has taught any endeavor to pull something together on my part is doomed to failure and most likely tears and recriminations...it's just better that I don't) and then doing a number of runs with a couple members from my guild to Runnyeye, which again has been great fun and was incredible xp until my vitality ran out :(

Anyway, the point of this rambling is this...should I be doing archery rather than meleeing? Admittedly, EQ2 is kinder to rangers as archers than EQ1, but I don't trust SOE devs on the subject of ranged combat--they seemed quite adamantly against it being a ranger's primary form of damage at the endgame in EQ1. Not having a DPS meter, I can't tell where I'm being the most effective.

Also, does the type of arrow you use affect your DPS? I don't see any numbers on them aside from the required level, does that mean they don't have any impact on your DPS (assuming, of course, that you are not using tin arrows at a level where feyiron would be more appropriate.) If both carbonite arrows and feyiron arrows are still white at my level, will they both do the same DPS? Or will feyiron do more? The reason I ask was because I had a number of levels where I could summon 30 carbonite arrows at a shot, but only 1 feyiron arrow at a time (and I had to be meleeing to do that) so it was more economical to rely on the carbonite.

I'm just not sure I understand how archery is supposed to work for us in this game.

I don't know much about rangers so I'll leave that to the more knowledgable people here, but this bit needs comment.

You will see a HUGE difference in your survivability with upgraded gear. You should be wearing AT LEAST feyiron and get all your jewelery, charms, weapons etc. into T4 as well. I'm pretty sure you can get T4 chain that's class specific for scouts and will raise your strength and agility quite a bit. That will make you hit harder and get hit less. Resists also make a big difference - get them up to par and casters won't be able to nuke you nearly as much.

I don't know about your server but common crafted gear on mine is dirt cheap with all the competition among new crafters since LU24. Rares are much cheaper too - sometimes half of what they cost previously. They're cheaper because they're a lot easier to farm now. A few hours farming ore nodes should net you at least a few Feysteel clusters which will improve your defenses even more.

Edit: You should also upgrade your combat arts. God forbid you're using Apprentice I versions.

Edited, Jul 26th 2006 at 1:53pm EDT by Lydiaele