Favored Enemy questions

[chrichton]

I am new here - just completed free 10-day trial and decided, what the heck, so I bought the game. I have rolled a Ranger mixture and I am wondering about favored enemies.

Does this Ranger ability make much of a difference? How much of your gaming deals with foes other than what are on your FE list? I was not planning on taking any enemy-related enhancements. Is this an obvious bad decision?

I had asked before what enemies are common and good for this, and have read these are the "best" to consider:
undead, giant, evil outsider, construct, aberration
Any comments on this? What levels are these usually good for?

(Yeah - I know - I probably should have searched the forums, as I am sure these topics have been discussed, but I wanted to get current feedback.)

TIA

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Favored Enemies, along with Tempest, are what allow rangers with moderate to high strength to be competitive DPS machines versus barbarians. Even with a low strength you can still keep up with fighter DPS on the majority of difficult enemies. The enhancement lines for favored attack, defense, and resistance can afford to be skimped on depending on your build and play style, but favored damage is a powerful enhancement that shouldn't be disregarded IMO.

You'll find it easiest if you take undead as your first favored enemy, and giant next. Those two will be useful throughout the low to mid levels. Once you reach level 10+, evil outsider will become increasingly useful. At the current endgame you don't end up fighting much in the way of undead or giants, so those can be swapped to more useful things eventually - construct and aberration are the best options for the 3 most recent raids, along with evil outsider.

[Laith]

also, it's important to note that you can respec favored enemies like feats. this allows you to generally be benefiting from favored enemies.

[QuantumFX]

At High levels Maxing out your FE Damage Enhancements is just smart play. At level 15 you're talking +12 pre crit damage (Which means it's multilied by a crit.) to 4 groups of foes. Which in DDO can be a large portion of what you fight. The tough part, for some people, is figuring out which mobs to target.

My personal favorites are Reptile (to be respecced at level 4 for undead), Undead, Giant, Evil Outsider and Elemental. (Though Abberation does compete heavily with Elemental.)

[Blazer]

Favored enemies are key to a ranger's success. Your selections, and the accompanied enhancements, are what help rangers become the feared killers they are in certain quests/content. Your selections for favored enemy are based largely on your level and what types of creatures you currently face or will be facing soon, since you only get to choose a FE every 5 levels (note: you can change your FE selection via a feat exchange; since you are new, not sure if you know how this works).

Assuming your ranger is still low level (say, no higher than 6 or so), undead and giants are great choices since the majority of content around that level surrounds these two types of mobs, with hobgoblins coming in a close 3rd.

Very simply - take the FE enhancements, they are what make a ranger who he is. Barbarians improve their damage output via their ability to rage and get absurdly high STR scores; fighters improve their damage outputs via the feats that are exclusive to them; paladins improve their damage outputs via spells and smite evil; rangers do it via favored enemies and the associated enhancements.

[Jopin]

I tend to start new experimental rangers as solo projects at first, so I start with favored enemy reptilian (kobolds and trogs) to get through the low-level quests more easily by myself. As soon as I'm done with those I use the free feat respec from the Lockania "quest" to change that out to undead.

[cdemeritt]

It is also important to note that FE "giant" includes Ogres and Trolls, two very common monsters to encounter throughout the the game.

[Desteria]

FE are a HUGE part of what makes rangers some of the bEST damage dealers in the game atm.

AS your levelign up i highly recomend Reptile (swap to giant at level 5 iah), Giant, undead, Eveil outsider

AT end game level 15+ I personaly use this set now this is geared specificaly towards what I do when capped wich is raid.

Eveil outsider - this is close to 75% of every thign you fight now and is the raid bosses for the 3 main high level raids.

Elemental - for the named bosse sin shroud and a few other places Also ensures you bypas sthere DR when woundign them.

Construct - Because any thign that makes shroud part 1 faster ROCKS.

Aberation - Beholders and mindflayers suck when you roll a 1 so kill them faster, great fro runnign to the hound and for the Hound raid.

[Aesop]

Just to note the theory is that over the next mod or 2 we will be having a return to Guianthold that involves Undead Dragons... so that Favored Enemy Undead... well it may be useful soon.

Aesop