Ranger...

[Orfeo]

Owned.

On a side note, yes they did lower the damage below what normal melees do. I did dynamis tonight and had my party damage filters turned off because I wanted to see the nerf in action.

My axes were doing 100 a swing (/nin, so 200 with no double attacks/criticals) while his arrows were doing about 100~. Slug shots were hitting for 600 at perfect distance, rampage hitting for 800-1k without stepping back.

However-ranger has not been COMPLETELY gimped. They still decimate a melees accuracy, and so they are still good against stuff that has high evasion. In exp.. I don't know to be honest. A good melee will rarely if ever miss even an IT exp mob, and should be comming close to capping his damage at the same time.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO START A DRG FLAME, DON'T READ PAST HERE

It seems tome that a lot of previous updates have been both directly and indirectly improving dragoon+thief.

Think back to assassin, that helped a lot for wyrms/fafnir/exp/whatever. Now lets look at how that helped DRG. In exp, DRG use to be forced to sub WAR to first voke and set up SATA onto the tank. After assassin, it was no longer worth provoking-instead thieves would solo ta and sa. This gave dragoons the ability to play around with subjobs in EXP. They can now sub WHM and be an effective healer, or sub thf for a powerful ws. Ontop of that, they doubled wheeling thrust's damage awhile back.

In a more recent update, an item which when combined with af body will restore a wyverns full HP bar was added. They also added a pair of boots that give wyverns stoneskin. Short reuse time, and rare/ex so you don't have competition to get them.

Now the recent update. Dragoon along with thief can now get a total of +14 skill from gear in their best weapons. That can essentially make them equivalant to a level 80+ player with merits (merit str/dex and polearm/dagger). Other classes get +7 skill. The difference of 7 skill points is actually quite substantial; try making a party vs IT with two of the same melee dd's one being a level higher then the other. You will notice the one a level higher hitting harder and gaining TP faster.

Ontop of that, they gimped ranger. Wheeling thrust is actually more powerful then slug shot on anything you don't want to move. Sure, DRG has to sub /thf but there is a difference between DRG/THF and XXX/THF. DRG/THF can shed 100% hate every 5 mins and 60% hate every 3 mins. No matter how long you are meleeing something, or how much damage your DRG does, he won't turn the mob.

I always complained that SE was completely neglecting THF and DRG, but now that I take a step back and look at it, they have indeed been helping them.

Now, please, don't start a "drg... lol" thread. I posted this because its 3:00am and I'm very bored/tired.

[Atreides]

*starts a drg flame*

[Marcatil]

Atre, stfu and get back to camping the mob >O I'll post since it doesn't mean a damn thing to me, I just want to watch the fight/drama <.<

Oh btw, 'grats at Fafnir today, I heard :D

[Orfeo]

PS: I wrote that stuff to show why I think SE gimped ranger. They want to improve those two jobs, along with other melees...but I chose to base my examples on DRG mainly because they "suck".

[Demosthenes11]

PS: I wrote that stuff to show why I think SE gimped ranger. They want to improve those two jobs, along with other melees...but I chose to base my examples on DRG mainly because they suck.

FIX'D

[Elcura]

Long live the MNKs~

It was quite challenging to outdamage a RNG before (and only by a small ass margin) now it looks like I won't even have to try anymore.

[Sekkite]

Maybe rangers will start subbing warrior now to put up the high numbers.

[Genosync]

I just sold all of my RNG gear.

The changes are nice, but they fucked with the only reason I liked the job. It was ridiculously broken and awesome for XP. I don't even know if I want to level another job anymore--I think I'm going to sell all my BRD/NIN gear too.

[Hirronimus]

[Elcura]

Maybe rangers will start subbing warrior now to put up the high numbers.

And a higher death rate.

[raginbull]

Yeah i was in Dunes camping VE, and a RNG shot a Leech from far away for like 250, then the leech came to him and he shot it with cirtical for 216 and when it was right at him he hit it for 163.... O_o, his sidewinder only did to another leech at him 600 as lvl 65

Did you claim VE anyway? 8)

[Genosync]

I just sold all of my RNG gear.

The changes are nice, but they fucked with the only reason I liked the job. It was ridiculously broken and awesome for XP. I don't even know if I want to level another job anymore*--I think I'm going to sell all my BRD/NIN gear too.

*knowing that now it's going to take almost 2x the time (i.e. around 150 hours of actually XPing, not including making PT and all that shit)

[Daahan]

Has anyone made any ranger parties after the update?

What's the highest chain you were able to get if you did a running pty of rangers?

[Rupertt]

Has anyone made any ranger parties after the update?

What's the highest chain you were able to get if you did a running pty of rangers?

When I got home from work last night I joined a Whm, Rdm, Rng, Rng, Rng, Rng party in Gustav Tunnel. Everybody was level 58 except me (59). With this setup, at least one Rng was always tanking the mob. I happened to be that Rng most of the time because I was using Muskeeters Gun +2 and had the +9 Ranged Attack bonus that comes on the it.

When I would be tanking crabs I was shooting for between 26-70, with criticals of 80-90. My Slugs shots were doing between 120 and 220 and barrages were doing between 76 - 180 when I was tanking. When the mob would go to another ranger I would find that sweet spot everybody talks about and my silver bullets would do b/w 109 and 130 damage, Slug Shots would do 500 - 730 damage on the VT's and 360 - 600 on IT.

The other Rngs were using War Bow +1's and Arbalasts +1's (sp?) and their damage was laughable. Anyways, to make a long story a little longer. This type of party in this particular leveling spot was insane pre-patch... it was horrible afterwards. I have a Warrior and Monk leveled to 75 and I wanted a job that is more appealing to LS's. Guess that is out the window now. I have no clue what the adjustment has done to Ranger in (H)NM fights...

p.s. The highest chain we got was a chain #5, and those were few and far between.