End game for rangers

[learst]

I agree about Suulomades. I can pull his aggro even with my archery gimped Tempest Dwarf. (DEX of 16 and no ranged feats apart from the standard stuff from being Ranger 18 / Fighter 2 )

But back to the original question, the aggro from Manyshot can save raids. I saw someone else pull rednamed orthons off an otherwise doomed PUG in VoD, and I used manyshot yesterday (on my archery gimped Tempest) to pull trash out of the center of a HoX raid gone horribly wrong. I don't know how fast the other guy was running, but I found 30% striders + Longstrider sufficient to safely kite trash in HoX but not fast enough to run backwards shooting arrows at my followers.

Both of those examples are of Manyshot pulling trash mobs -- if there's a good reason to pull boss aggro off the tank, I haven't seen it.

I once pulled aggro on Suulomades on my bard using a +2 Holy Burst bow of Precision (+3 silver arrows). No bow enhancements at all. Some other player was laughing at me as the cleric removed my "cursed wound" (or something, forgot the exact name).

[Emili]

My two tempests have bows and my archer has swords, why? because they can use them.

When you're tempest and I ask you to take out the crystal in part 2 of the shroud ... pull out your bloody bow and do so... If Harry is going to take two rounds part 4 pull out your bow and shoot while running back past the blades. When in ToD and there some trash Orthons on the clerics across the room while the bulk are beating on Sulu ... grab your bow and pull them to the pack of melee... Epics DQ? Grab your bow, Epic Wizking melee or bow when applicable...

If your AA if all you're going to do is sit there and plink away a shot at a time at 43 rof between manyshot cooldown - you're wasting your other feats compared to smacking down melee at times...

It comes down to this ... you're feated to do both. Use both. i.e. Einin (an old strength tempest) carries 26 khopeshes and 16 bows ... among them two GS min II khopeshes, two min lightning II khopeshs and a GS lightning II long bow along with everything else she'll need, improved shattermantle bow for DQ etc... Likewise Ambyre (an archer) while having 24 bows still has 20 melee weapons... go figure.

[Emili]

Actually, it seems ranged damage generates much more threat than melee damage: With a level 10 wizard I can pull aggro off a meele using only a +4 bow.

No bowstrength. No special arrows. No damage enhancements. I don't even have rapid shot yet.

This is the problem with being an AA. Usually you're doing more damage than the tanks so the enemies decide that you need to die. It's the same with spell casters, only they have enhancements to lower agro.
The solution to this is do less damage.

Tempest is more universally acceptable.
THe big problemw ith AA is the aggro they can create in some quests causes the boss to go nuts.

ANy quest where you are trying to keep a boss somewhat stationary while you beat him down can get out of hand quickly when a AA is present.

THis includes, Shroud, Vod, and ToD in particular. Shroud and Vod are not so bad to recover from. ToD however, can get compeltely out of control if a AA picks up aggro from Horoth.

I once pulled aggro on Suulomades on my bard using a +2 Holy Burst bow of Precision (+3 silver arrows). No bow enhancements at all. Some other player was laughing at me as the cleric removed my "cursed wound" (or something, forgot the exact name).

Harry, Sulu and Horoth (in some cases) ... and many of the winged mob and "Teleport capable" i.e. Orthons, bearded devils etc... have specialized Agro mechanic where the queue is flushed on tele or flight. This may occur to anyone any time i.e. is not uncommon to see Sulu take off after a caster who laid down a web or cloud in VoD, etc...

Even when using intimidate there is always a split second between them, with hate tanking the agro sumetimes flushed and whoever holds the moments build-up again takes the heat. Sulu and even Horoth have turned on my bard (who uses dex for melee) with a berzerker wailing a min II on him. It is nothing more then chance of being the one they pick out of a crowd some to speak.

[learst]

My two tempests have bows and my archer has swords, why? because they can use them.

When you're tempest and I ask you to take out the crystal in part 2 of the shroud ... pull out your bloody bow and do so... If Harry is going to take two rounds part 4 pull out your bow and shoot while running back past the blades. When in ToD and there some trash Orthons on the clerics across the room while the bulk are beating on Sulu ... grab your bow and pull them to the pack of melee... Epics DQ? Grab your bow, Epic Wizking melee or bow when applicable...

If your AA if all you're going to do is sit there and plink away a shot at a time at 43 rof between manyshot cooldown - you're wasting your other feats compared to smacking down melee at times...

It comes down to this ... you're feated to do both. Use both. i.e. Einin (an old strength tempest) carries 26 khopeshes and 16 bows ... among them two GS min II khopeshes, two min lightning II khopeshs and a GS lightning II long bow along with everything else she'll need, improved shattermantle bow for DQ etc... Likewise Ambyre (an archer) while having 24 bows still has 20 melee weapons... go figure.

+1 Well said. I have a lvl 10 ranger on Tempest path, and he's also stocking up on bows. The other day when i told a party I had to run back to get more arrows (haven't reached rank 2 for House D and access to sturdy arrows). Someone in the party asked:

"why? you're not arcane archer?"
"No."
"Huh."

I guess he/she was really puzzled that I'm a Tempest using a bow. Cos in the party I was ranging most of the time since there were already 2 melees and I thought I'd range to get at the spellcasters and protect (by melee) the healer/arcane at the back just in case.

[RTN]

+1 Well said. I have a lvl 10 ranger on Tempest path, and he's also stocking up on bows. The other day when i told a party I had to run back to get more arrows (haven't reached rank 2 for House D and access to sturdy arrows). Someone in the party asked:

"why? you're not arcane archer?"
"No."
"Huh."

I guess he/she was really puzzled that I'm a Tempest using a bow. Cos in the party I was ranging most of the time since there were already 2 melees and I thought I'd range to get at the spellcasters and protect (by melee) the healer/arcane at the back just in case.

If you're a tempest, in general, you should only range when you have manyshot up or when you can't otherwise reach a mob. For the enemy casters, it would have been faster just jumping over or going around the melee mobs and meleeing the casters.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

If you're a tempest, in general, you should only range when you have manyshot up or when you can't otherwise reach a mob. For the enemy casters, it would have been faster just jumping over or going around the melee mobs and meleeing the casters.

Blanket statements like that are seldom true.

The situations vary a lot.

DPS is not the reason to use a bow. Other than Manyshot.


From a pure DPS perspective, what you say is true. But that hardly covers the wide variety of situations where bows are a good choice.

whenever distance to/from the target is either advantageous or needing to be overcome, is when using a bow makes sense.
(not that is is that simple either...but you get the idea.)

[RTN]

Blanket statements like that are seldom true.

The situations vary a lot.

And that's why I qualified my statement.

Reread the original statement. He said he was mostly using a bow because there were already 2 other melee, so he used his bow to attack mob casters (with a bonus of watching his own casters, just in case). Given the ranges that most quest encounters take place at, he'd almost assuredly been better running up to the casters and meleeing them as a tempest.