Some comments for younger rangers

[Kulamata]

These comments are not complete, nor as thorough as those that Krald posted elsewhere, and are now presumed lost.

I preferred to take scout first, then druid, so I had better evasion skills and better weapon skills in the early druid levels.

Rangers are among the most versatile classes, and it helps a great deal to take advantage of this. Multi-classing is very important, especially if you solo. A young ranger should take mage through level 9 to be able to cast ice/flame/energy attack I on himself. Changing the arrow's damage from physical to elemental can help a lot with some mobs. (Later, some mobs will be immune to elemental attacks , and you must use physical on them. And vice versa.)Then later, mageto 36 tomaster the level 18 multi-cast ability; you will also haveperfect spell which guarantees a spell hitting.

Cleric/Healer is also important, so you can cast augmentation spells, such as the Gifts,heal using the Revitalize and Instant lines, and be able to resurrect. Healer goes up faster in Augmentation and Life, but has weaker armor.

Kiting is possible, but not really worth the time and effort. What is important are roots and stuns. Roots to keep adds back until you finish the current baddie, and stuns to prevent any action for two or ten seconds. Thunder Cloud, Shocking Blast, Root, Patch of Bramble, Thunder Storm, all have their uses, and experimenting will be fun. Note that you can chain nature spells, so you can use both Lightning StormI and II for example. You may find tho that the weaker version is more frequently evaded by the mob, so the advantage is less great than it may sound.

Obviously you need to keep your armor, jewelry,and bow current and teched.

Strength helps determine damage. A craft that increases strength such as armorer (9/level) and fitter (10/level) are helpful if you keep them near your Ranger level as Ranger only gets 6/level.

I would suggest not eliminating scout. You get Long Shot from Scout, which can be a good pull tactic when in a group.

I puta few training points into Bow, to allow me to use the higher bows asap. (Winding up with 10 points of bow/level instead of 9). I put a little into nature, to use certain teched spells, and quite a bit into evasion and magic evasion.

I enjoy Ranger, it seems to be one of the most complete classes, and allows considerable scope for individual variation. After I reached 100, (with 47? Healer and 36 mage) I started Spiritist, which seems like a reasonably good match. But there is much room for differing choices here. And I expect to increase Healer a bit more.

[aceracer24]

YOu said you put alot of TP into evasion...whats the sole purpose for dex? I was maxing evasion and using the rest in dex for some time but at lvl 81...the extra evasion does not seem to help much and ...dex I still can't figure out what it does lol. I know str helps you hit harder...although considering the amount of str buffs I have to have to REALLY notice a differance seems worthless to me if the TP can be better spent elswhere. I mostly group...occasionally solo...so like i said..I'm looking for a more profitable place to put my TP either by puliling from evade or dex.

[Astor]

Dex seems to generically add to evaision.... but more importantly I beleive it helps with your chance to Hit something..... Boost that probability.

For better or worse.. I have put what's necessary into Bow skill to be always able to use the higher level bow as soon as i reach that level.. not waiting for my skill to come up.

I have Every possible point into Dex, and the rest in Strength to help with mining and damage when swinging a sword and using a sheild.

Most RPG's , D&D, games that use stats do all attacks in basically 2 steps.....

Step 1 : Change to Hit..... this is a formula (Stated simplistically) that should be something like...... ((Weapon Skill (Bow)+ (Dexterity * 0.5)) +/- Random Chance) as compared to Target's ((Evasion * 0.5)+ Armor level) +/- Random Chance...

this gives a simplistic true - False when ratio is compared to 1.... and like I said is simple... there are many other factors that can be added such as Visibility, Terrain, Height Advantage, Range.......


Step 2 : So.. you Shoot 4 arrows in a Multishot ... each one is evaluated as a Hit or a Miss....

Then Damage needs to be calculated something like Base Damage of Arrow + possible adders like (Strength.. which shouldn't be used for a ranged attack in my opinion.. your bow will only shoot a 12 oz arrow at the same velocity on a full pull regardless of how easily you pulled it back) Envenomed, Elemental damage, arrow type.... witha random factor added.. as compard to the targets resistance to that type of attack...

Lets face it...What arrow should be able to go through a golem of Hard Gems.. vs. A big mushy ruxus rearend....

Then specials like headshot add 50 - 300% extra damage for an "Aimed Shot".... you hit em where it hurts!!

This is a generalization.... but I can tell you that it really seemed to help me hit when I added all those TP's to Dex..... I could be wrong, but that's what I did....

[gopher65]

haha. Astor have you ever used a bow? You are correct that on a full pull the bow should always fire at the same velocity. That is why a lvl 1 bow has a max damage stat. It is easy to pull, and therefore achieves a very low max velocity, so the arrow is easily stopped by cheap armor.

The higher bows take more strength to pull back all the way. If I remember correctly, a 200 pound bow is just that. It is the same as lifting a 200 pound weight. I am certain that I couldn't pull a 200 pound bow taunt(sp). And neither could my lvl 10 warrior with 100 strength. The higher teir the bow, the more strength it takes to pull it all the way back.

In RL strength is in fact the main determinant in how far you can shoot an arrow with a given bow. It also determines whether or not you will hit your target (to some degree) along with hand-eye coordination (essentially dexterity). In HZ strength is actually less important than it is in real life bow shooting.

Crossbows on the other hand (as they exist in HZ) don't entirely make sense. With a good xbow little strength is required.

EDIT: Forgot to say this: You are correct. In HZ dex adds to both evasion and %chance to hit. It actually increases your hit % more than weapon skill does. And strength increases your damage by a larger % than weapon skill does. This is the reason they reworked the skill point system. Now Strength/dex/power/focus, which add a larger % to a larger number of skills, are more difficult to raise.

[CeroBostwick]

For what it's worth, I have my points split evenly, half into Dexterity and half into Evasion. I hit often enough to have no complaints, and there is just nothing like seeing an agent of the Withered Aegis miss every swing on a Multistrike V.[;)]

[Krald]

These comments are not complete, nor as thorough as those that Krald posted elsewhere, and are now presumed lost.

Yay I'm remembered :o

Then later, mageto 36 tomaster the level 18 multi-cast ability; you will also haveperfect spell which guarantees a spell hitting.

Conjurer is also a good option, multicast mastered at 40 conjurer, and at 44 you can get infix fury which was 10 damage extra damage for 35 hits buff, not too bad on a fast-attacking bow. Also taking it up to 100'd give you multicast II, infix fury II, ice attack V, etc... its a good long-term option. I wouldn't bother with raising these until you at least get dark cyclone because multicasting of the other nature spells alone does not seem worth it to me.

Cleric/Healer is also important, so you can cast augmentation spells, such as the Gifts,heal using the Revitalize and Instant lines, and be able to resurrect. Healer goes up faster in Augmentation and Life, but has weaker armor.

Well you can easily live without them for ages due to what you already get from nature and such, so its not that important, but nice to have more buffs when solo. Healer is a better option than cleric in most ways because healers can use crossbows wheras clerics can't and they also get nice abilities like life-giver (increases heals) which can help. Only thing cleric really has over healer is desprit foes (the aoe one) which I believe is still masterable.

As for training points, when I left dexterity was fairly useless because we were at least told that it improved evasion and accuracy at 1/3rd the value that the other skills did in those areas. Plus they would add to bow, crossbow, evasion current skills at certain ratios. For bow I know this to be 1 point fore very 10 dex, for the others it may be similar or different.

So unless they changed or or they misquoted it originally dex is only half-decent if you use a lot of different weapons and even then you might prefer to invest in individual skills.

I tended to play a ranger that used bow for most attacks, switching to crossbow to deliver specials like heartseeker, multishot and headshot so I went with a lot of strength because it applies to all weapons. I also went with a lot of nature for increased chance to hit with my stuns, and the higher spells. I just figured I needed it, missing stuns can really hurt and you definitely need some at least. maybe not great.. but worked.

Judging from comments here though, sounds like maybe they changed dex?

Edit: ooh just read post dates.. see these sections as inactive as tazoon :). I always had to post new topics to get the conjurer and ranger forum going again a bit.. and when I ran out of ideas a lot of stagnation occured :o. I liked tazoon.

[AA0]

My version of ranger is different that the rest I guess.
I made sure my fitter was at level 100 with my ranger, the strength boost is a big factor on a low delay weapon. I figure why hit something for 30, when you can hit it for 120 or more and kill it before it reaches you.

I also multiclassed healer for the increase in focus (10/lvl) which helps our weak nature skill. The increase in heals is very nice, and the buffs are incredible. Our fast attack speed, with alacrity V, energize 2, and rapidfire means almost any mob is 3/4 dead or more before it reaches you.

I am taking spiritists for surivability, but it also increases power, magic evasion. The leachs and heals you can get from it is usable, but it really doesn't have too much to offer otherwise, to me at least. Spirit is a very good alternate attack though.

I will take conjurer for the reasons why Krald mentioned. I have maxed my TPs in bow, and added enough for 810 nature with the rest in health. The health boost is proving a lifesaver against stunning blights. The amount dex and evasion helps seems not worth the trouble of it, I would like 10 dex and 10 evasion per level, but not at a rating hit. I hope to take weaver up for the dex boost, every hit counts as a ranger... the more you hit something, the more its stunned.

[gopher65]

I occasionally multicast lightening storm if DC isn't up, or wouldn't be proper under the circumstances. It works pretty well. AE mentioned a little while ago that they were thinking of changing multicast so that not all spells could be multicast.... my thoughts are that DC and Shining Blades would be the first to go.

Perhaps this is part of the reason they haven't released any epics for high damage classes yet: if they could be multicast (as they can now) that player could kill a boss in one shot. As it is right now a mage can do more damage with there AOE spell than a Druid can with their EPIC:(. AOE=low damage, epic=high damage. So that means (if the druid Lightening Storm to DC comparison carries over) a mage could hit for what.... 3-4 thousand AOE damage at level 100? That's crazy:P.

I rambled a bit offtopic:)

[Krald]

Well they gave shining blades gimped damage because it could be multicast many times without even multiclassing.

So if they do remove ability to multicast dark cyclone and such they should at least up the damage.