New player and Ranger

Heard a lot of negative about ranger in pve but as player who loves ranged classes that are not caster would love to give it a try.
Was wondering if someone can help newbie with good solo ranger pve spec for leveling and for lvl 80.
Most negatives I heard is that class is boring but I am willing to try it out first before going barbarian.
So far want to make AoC my main MMO as I love lore.
Any info would be much appreciated.

Just my side on the whole Ranger thing:
Yes, imo the idea behind Ranger is awesome, however how it plays in this game is just so boring. Arrow up, Arrow down, combo 1, Arrow up, Arrow down, combo 2 and repeat. Replace combo 2 for combo 3 there on some few occassions if youā€™re doing 6man content as well. And oh well, choosing different sides on arrow up/down depending where the shields are on the boss.

One good micromanagement the class got is keeping track of the weapon dmg buff from the three traps you rotate every 15 seconds. The fact that you have marked target (raid wide weapon dmg buff) is pretty sweet though.

Now looking away from the boring linear playstyle, itā€™s probably ranked at 9th or 10th place on dps out of the 12 classes.

So what can Ranger bring that for example an Assassin/Barb/Demo/Necro cannot? The only thing I can think of is actually good range. However, because you need Master Trapper you still want to stay close at all time, and not many bosses requires you to stand far far far away either really. Some bosses requires people at range, but not the opposite side of the room. Rangers have okay debuffing for 6man content, but it doesnā€™t really beat a conq, barb, sin with burden to bear.

Also considering how unique the combat system is in this game, melees are just way more fun (subjective). My favorite class is Conqueror followed by Assassin, and Iā€™ve played all 12 a lot and I know how they play, and Ranger is at the bottom of my list by far. I have found some fun challenges for myself on that class though. I do find it fun to see how far I can push it (as I do on all classes), and there are actually some minor details I see few people do on Ranger which makes it perform higher than what people think it can.

Oh and Ranger is absolutely GARBAGE in the new Onslaught mode that just released.

None the less, with all this being said, if you think you will enjoy Ranger you should go for it. I didnā€™t really help you out in actually sticking with the ranger pick here, but if you think you will enjoy it, go for it.

3 Likes

Thanks a lot on all this info. Got disappointed a lot so far with ranger as every attack just feels the same and I also find class a bit boring. It just feels unfinished. Like they wanted it to be some kind of hybrid melee and ranged but did not manage to pull it well. Will put him aside for who knows how long.

Other classes I am interested are conqueror, barbarian, bear shaman and assassin. What I gathered so far is that conqueror is very durable with decent dmg but at end game you are primary tank and as I always played tanks in MMOs want to change things a bit.

Barbarian sounds interesting for solo with 2 hander build and all of life regeneration he has and at end game I can just switch build to dual wield for max dmg.

Bear Shaman is something you donā€™t see often in MMOs. Curious about him as it is melee healer so my guess it will have great sustain and good damage.

Assassin I have no idea how it plays or how good it is at soloing or anything about him.
So decided to play a bit with this 4 classes and see which one I like the most to make it my main.

Assassin: pretty squishy when solo leveling, as you cannot use the Stealth Aspect in PVE (most mobs will spot you instantly when hiding), the strong defense against magical attacks that a Sin has, doesnt help against 99% of the Pve mobs; so a Sin has to rely on carefull pulls and burst damage. Applying this bursty damage is not trivial, if noone explains the Miasma/Toxin interaction to you -> basically you have 2 Combos (Slow Death Strikes and Grim Corruption) that are OKish but not spectacular (they apply the ā€˜Toxinsā€™) and you have up to 3 Miasmas (Face Stab, Lotus-Coated Dart and Soul Strike), that have pretty minor effects on itself but lead to much more powerful effects when combined with the Toxins. I did my (successful) unconquered playthru with Sin, but it was in a Tag Team with a Dark Templar, and this is where Sins belong imo: Team Play. Then they are great fun, but as a solo player they might get frustrating really quickly.

Barb: Awesome Solo Class. Iā€™d suggest playing a barb with weapon Switches to make use of the dual wielded Jagged Cut (Dot-Effect) to start a fight with and then switch to 2H weapons for greater range attacks and lots of CC. Focus on Berserker tree and Blood Rage stance though.

Conq: Another awesome class for Solo play. You have great debuffing capabilities and deal good Aoe and retaliatory damage. So while a conq might kill mobs slower than a barb, it can pull more of them and bring them down evenly. Start a fight with Guard of Dancing Steel, switch weapons to use Blood Bath 1 (!!) and go on debuffing with Feint Attack, Breach and place your Fire Banner once your Furious inspiration stack has increased to 5x+

Note: most classes in this game have capabilities of dealing Damage, no matter what their primary role is. So unless you come to High End Runes your damage conq or your Bear Shaman can reach like 90% damage of a demo or barb, if you know what youā€™re doing - and in case of DW(dps) conq its not even hard to do it right. Especially Conqs - while being perfectly viable tanks for most bosses - somehow have the ā€˜stenchā€™ of beeing THE Offtank, that is there to rezz people mid fight and take aggro for a few seconds when Maintank is going down. So even if you donā€™t want to tank primarily (which you should try out nontheless, since tanking in AoC is great) you can build a Conq and Dps most of the time, while bringing lots of utility and OT potential.
On the other hand: a Barb or other Dps will always be locked to that role in most of the group content.

Bear Shaman: my personal favorite class. requires a lot of micro management if played optimally but is just a power house. can debuff, heal, somewhat off tank or kite, is really durable when playing solo etc.
while leveling you can have problems with enemyā€™s shielding, as most combos have a heavy focus on top or right shields - but thats about it. Aoe potential is more limited than the Conqā€™s or a ToSā€™s and the first levels might be a bit tough until you get the rhythm of the buffs and combos. but overalā€¦ well iā€™m biased ^^

1 Like

I think couple of days ago, we were chatting about rangers in global. As I have mentioned before, ranger is a half class till lvl 40. Without down arrow their range attacks are not even worth bothering, so till then you sit bored and use mostly quick shot and then spam daft stabs.
If you want to continue, I would recommend speccing melee till 40 and then resetting talents and going normal range build.
Till 40 I was using something like that:
https://joharaoc.eu/feat?link=v8_12729814298782a0462a9a52a94229fe42a2a02a368

But keep in mind that it is garbage build (although manageable and allows you to solo things) in late game, so donā€™t stick to it. In case of group of mobs, try to hide+mezz shot(10 sec stun that breaks on dmg), arrow+quick shot/bleeding puncture and then finish them with arrow+daft stabs. Also use traps as often as you can.

After 40 you want to switch to something more range oriented - build like this one will give you good cc to deal with mobs:
https://joharaoc.eu/feat?link=v8_127298142987529c602aa0a2993e2a0aa2a942299a129a042aa6d29dee29a6a2a87c29b9829bf829fe42a2a02a36829d282aad22a10c2a4902a3c92a4f62a7b2

When you reach 40 you are playing completely different class. Something that I (and I guess other rangers) enjoy. You finally use penetrating shot! The class has nice flow to it and is fun to play(but first 40 lvl are price to pay). It reminds me of rangers from d&d, especially when you have to switch between range and melee during lvling.

It is very stark contrast between 20 lvl ranger and 40. At 22 I still could not beat bat demon solo, and after 40 you can kite nearly all mobs and abuse your range and traps.

I understand if you donā€™t plan to play this class anymore because of its lvling, but it is not all that grim. Thereā€™s light at the end of this tunnel - magical lvl 40.

1 Like

@Quark Thanks mate. Will start with Bear Shaman for now. It really sounds like versatile class. Only shame that I am locked in to 2 hander blunt weapons and I never liked maces but that is minor thing anyway :slight_smile: After him will go with Barbarian. For some reason something is off-putting me from Conqueror. I do like heavy armor on them and how it looks.

@CaoCao I see. So Ranger is one of those late bloomer classes. Will try Bear Shaman and Barbarian for now and than probably push Ranger past 40 to get better feel of a class.

Ok did something I never considered doing. Tried Necromancer just for fun because of all the pets this class has and cant stop playing it. I never play casters or classes with staffs but something about this minion master feels so good. It is rare and welcome change when in MMO I find so many classes that I want to play.
So in the end decided to push with Necro and see how it goes.

Just one thing what custom UI do people use now? Basic Ui just looks and feels bad.

I think StrangeUI is the most used UI, personally i use BelaUI.

StrangeUI is probably the most common one now a days, yeah. Personally I like StoneRuneUI a lot myself, but it might be since itā€™s very natural and simple looking, and Iā€™ve been using it since forever.

1 Like

@CaoCao scraped Necro. Tried some other classes but returned to ranger and I am now lvl 46 and still unconquered! Liking it a lot. Only thing is even with medium armor I feel squishy and is not fun when you have more than two mobs on you unlike conqueror where you just throw banner and hit multiple targets.

So in the end leveling ranger and will stick with it to 80 and most likely main it. If gods of lag and disconnects will favor me maybe I will even have lvl 80 unconquered ranger!

My brother will join me in AoC and will roll ranger as-well for some reason. I just used bow from start and yea was a bit slow. You still recommend he goes dual wield until 40? Also do you even switch to melee weapons as ranger at high lvl and lvl 80 and if so for what reason? Should I just carry sword and shield in off space for defensive?

@dirle and @Fireblow Thanks a lot on UIs. Just cant decide what UI to pick out of this 3. What is one most up to date or all 3 work fine?

After 40, youā€™d better use melee for ccā€™s only, unless the target is very low on health, and regain distance.

Yes, keep a shield. Not only it gives more armor, but also because Shield Bash is one of the best ccā€™s you have (kb + snare if fully buffed). Just 1 point in it is enough.

I think dual wielding is completely useless for Rangers nowadays because with the ā€œreworkā€ they did several years ago (I think it was 2010?) they removed all offhand hit chance from that class. So you basically just get a very little bonus to overall damage with a dagger in your offhand (due to stats it provides) but you are unable to get any additional hits with your offhand. A shield will always give you more armor (basically working like you equipped an additional armor item) while often providing just as much combat rating for additional damage.

Keep in mind though, offhand weapons in AoC do not work ā€œlike they look likeā€, just because you hit with both weapons at the same time for example you still only hit with your ā€œmain handā€ while offhand hits have a reduced chance to happen (there isnā€™t even a damage number popping up on your screen, you can only see it in the combat chat log). Barb, Sin and Conq have something like 35% base offhand chance and they can increase it with feats and weapon stats while Ranger is at 0% and can most likely only get around 3% at max.

So yeah, go with a shield. That way you can even use the shield bash combo if you spent point in it.

yes ranger offhand chance is pretty useless since its chance is close to 0% - some more like few % max cos offhand daggers tend to always have some +offhand stat in their item stats budget
but
meele - blade&shield is super valid on ranger, one - you have super combos on it: cripple (up to 8sec root), shield bash (kb and snare) and even immolation (u to 6sec fear) and all aoe - as long as you land it aoe,
and two what is even more important is that deft stabs - i would call it pretty much one of them best dps combos in game (it shares animation with guards 1h vengence and few other low lvl combos) - deals huge damage without big dps spike requirement (like it beeign stacked in raid scenerio or simillar) and what is most important it hits left enemys shield side - means its great tool to dps well in lets say solo play example where you spamm quick shoots or land in pen shoot and all shields go up, and other ranger ranged combos arent that great but they have its ulitlity and hit right side - even linebreaker - the rangers end feat combo hit upper shields - so using deft stabs and other meele cc combos its super valid on ranger

As long as long as ā€œthe company that wonā€™t let me write itā€™s name on itā€™s own forumsā€ doesnā€™t introduce completely new UI functions all 3 UIā€™s will work fine as long as .xml files are updated. I use aoc ui installer to keep my UI up to snuff in that regard.

Thought Iā€™d throw my 2 cents in since my experience seems to be totally different from the others.

I have 2 Rangers; my main which I leveled to 80 and a new one thatā€™s only lvl 35 right now.

Frankly itā€™s my favorite class. Yes the attack procedure is kind of mindless, but so are the oneā€™s for some of the other classes. Yes if you want excitement, go with a melee class. But if you want to reach out and kill something, this is the class for you.

I leveled my 80 under the old system and would use the bow to pull and then shift over to melee to finish off the target and there was a point where I could just use the bow like others have said.

I now just run him around on some of the higher level stuff for fun, but I know when I do do RF I have a tendency to pull aggro from the tanks because my DPS is high and when they post the after battle DPS numbers Iā€™m generally in towards the top of the list, so I disagree they donā€™t have good DPS output.

For my current ranger, the only melee Iā€™ve used was in the solo beginning portion of the game, but once I got access to a bow have used it only and have never done another melee attack. I also didnā€™t have a problem with the Bat Demon in Tortage while there, once you learn how to minimize his knock back, taking him out, while not easy is doable.

You have to know how to use tactics. Try not to pull more than 2 NPCā€™s at a time, use your traps when you get them. Concussion comes fairly early and makes those fights vs multiple targetā€™s so much easier, while the fire trap will help damage them.

Later on you get Leghold. Drop it in front of you and keep falling back so you stay out of their melee range.

Your traps are defensive measures, drop them and fall back, keep your targets at a distance as much as possible.

Also contrary to all the Feat treeā€™s posted, make use of the General section to beef up your armor / protection numbers so make him less squishy.

All classes have their plus and minuses, you just have to know the best way to use them and once you do youā€™ll find just how effective that class can be.

1 Like

This will probably sound very harsh and that is also not my intention, but just because everyone else suck doesnā€™t mean you necessarily are doing well just because youā€™re high up on the parse. If a Ranger beats the other two rogue classes in a ā€œfair fightā€ they are simply just underperforming or the gear difference is way too massive. You might squeeze out the potential of what a Ranger can do which is good so I am not denying your skills on ranger at all, but thereā€™s no way a Ranger is even close to competing with GOOD barbs, sins, necros, demos, hoxes.

Edit: Because the thing is when most people (myself included) say Ranger dps is low we mean it in the way we compare the max potential of the class versus the rest of the classes.

I agree on most of the other stuff in your post though :smiley:

2 Likes

Fair enough and no offense taken and I agree not all play their classes well. Iā€™d even go so far as to say most donā€™t, I know I donā€™t consider myself a really good player.

1 Like

Since your main is Ranger itā€™d be fun to have a discussion about the class though, and how to improve the over all dps on it. The game hasnā€™t changed in a while so itā€™s not like we could discover something really new, but there are some micro management that could probably be improved.

Thanks all on your info about ranger. He is 80 now and I donā€™t know what to say really. I love ranged classes that are not pure casters but being rooted when using your basic attacks makes me feel I am playing caster. Maybe it would be overpowered but I feel like basic up and down attacks should be usable when moving so you can actually feel like you are kiting mobs at least a bit.
It is kinda fun to snipe mobs but gameplay overall feels a bit boring.

Leveling HoX now as I want to play dps class in AoC and it is so fun from very start playing melee class with spells (not typical caster). It is so squishy but gameplay is so much fun.
Only problem I have is cloth armor and I miss medium armor from ranger because you have so much more options to make nice vanity look. I am huge sucker when it comes to how my character looks.

Ranger - many options to build nice vanity look, has bow to pew pew from distance but gameplay gets a bit boring.
HoX - So much fun gameplay that I cant stop playing but hate cloth armor with passion.

Oh well first world problems I guess.

Not a good idea, in my opinion, because itā€™s costing way too many points to go to the general tree, and you end up losing a lot of other good stuff.

This is what I use for questing: Link

1 Like