Ranger spec question

[Wolf]

The way I'm currently speccing my ranger, I plan on keeping up some melee skills for rvr'ing. If I continue the path I'm on now I can end up with one of several templates at 50:

This is the one I plan on doing:

Recurve Bow 50
Stealth 41
Blades 21
Celtic Dual 21
Pathfinding 27

If I choose to cut the melee skills, I can boost pathfinding slightly:

Recurve Bow 50
Stealth 41
Blades 18 (mid-range general use style)
Celtic Dual 8 (where it is now)
Pathfinding 36

Or I could forget CD entirely and use only blade for melee:

Recurve Bow 50
Stealth 41
Blades 28
Celtic Dual 10
Pathfinding 27

I could just forget melee weapons, but I kinda like being able to f0ight. :D I know that CD requires one of the weapon skills in addition to CD to be most effective, but the question is, is it enough? I don't plan on going head to head with full-healthed tanks, but I do plan on meleeing Scouts (shield gets a penalty against dual wield), and take advantage of Blades, which tends to do double damage to assassins.

Pugs, if you're reading this....how much more dmg will the level 36 damage add do than the 27 one? Also, I can get more points by leaving recurve bow at 45 or 48, how badly will this hurt my shooting? I'd just like to know from someone with experience before I start loading in those points.

[Morety]

You can always find items that will be + recurve. Anything over 50 will be useless. If you take recurve to 50, it's because of the level 50 style you get. If the style's not worth it, cut back and put points into weapons.

[spyder913]

hehe level 50 "style" in recurve.. you mean volley? oh wait

[Wolf]

Oh yeah that's right....the styles they promised for level 50 archers for fucking FREE now have to be paid for in realm skill points......and only fucking Albs get volley.

Looks like I'll leave off bow at 44 or 45.

[Pugslinator]

higher the bow skill, higher the damage, always max it.. mine is

50 bow, 41 stealth, 31 path, rest in pierce, no cd
works for me..

any of those other templates sound good too

[Boom]

All archers are gonna get volley now with realm bonus points.

They need it too, so underpowered.

During the relic zerg Mazumi hit Boomy for 895. Before I could even say "Omg, thats retarded" and hit my insta, she hit me again for almost 500, which killed me. Boomy is a huge firblog wearing all 98af scale, and was fully buffed. I can understand an arrow or two taking down a little cloth wearing mage, that makes sense to me. But a half man, half giant, wearing top grade scale, and having magic buffs that make him even stronger and make his armor even better and make him have more health should be able to keep fighting with 7 or 8 arrows sticking in him. I don't care if that first arrow is a "critical shot" that hits me directly in my eyeball or my bunghole, a 10 foot tall half giant is not going down from 2 arrows. And on the archer forums they still complain about the "nerf" which doesn't allow them to do this to purple cons any more. Even if I hadn't panicked, and hit my insta and face and sent my pet and started running, I wouldn't have been able to get her. She could have pumped another 3 or 4 arrows into me before my pet got to her which would have used up both instas and killed me (which makes my pet go away) before I got a swing on her.

I'm not saying yall need to be nerfed, but please don't complain that you have to spend some realm skill points to get volley which will let you do this stuff to 5 people at once (yeah, volley probably won't crit, but still). Expecially since in one night you can get the same amount of realm points that it would take anyone else a month to get. My, once every half hour, group purge isn't going to do jack against 2 or 3 archers shooting volleys at my group. And have you seen Boomie's (enchanter) special unique realm ability? Increased resistance to magic for a short period of time. Whoopie! Everyone can get increased resistance to magic, but enchanters can get a little extra on top of that for a short period of time. Too bad enchanters die 99% of the time from non magic stuff like poison knives piercing their bladeturn, and of course from arrows hitting for 895. (er if it hits 895 through scale with 26% absorb, what would it hit a cloth wearer for?) Ooo, here comes Mazumi! Let me hit my special ability and increase my resistance to magic. Ouch she hit me for 1300 and my max hitpoints is 320.

I love ya Wolfy, this rant ain't directed to you. :hump: I just hate Mythic cuz their game totally sucks.

Ok, imma go play daoc now. :p

[Wolf]

LOL Boomy. Tell ya what, I'll give you my account login and you can PL me, then waste Maz first chance you get... :D

Rangers are the bastard children of the archer types, it seems. I'm tempted to leave stealth at 35 and rely on item bonuses. Leaving bow at 44 or 45 would also give me extra room to take CD as high as 39. That'd enable me to perform Hurricane-->Solar Flare. Since I try to get fast weapons, I've met with some successes in using offensive styles in rvr.

I'm also tempted to spend realm ability points on stuff like the in-combat heal. A nasty little surprise for assassins, a quick heal combined with high melee skills on weapons with great bonus against leather. That with the use of purge might make the fight against a cleric last a little longer too. =\