Ranger Archive

1) Traps:

Good - Traps are good to initiate a stat affect such as stun or blind.

Bad - Traps have limited small to minute affect on creatues of any type. Dizzy is pointless to have since creatures cant be dizzied when posture changed or KDed. Traps that do some damage are VERY pointless since only do about 10 - 20 points.

2) Tents:

Good - Nice regens and good temporary healing. With new tent types, looks better and better.

Bad - Tents are pretty much useless now since people can pull out medic droids and heal on the spot. Same with pets and speeders, 15 sec is prefered over a tent by anyone. Even if someone has some mind wounds, tents aren't needed since mind buffs are so high.

3) Tracking:

Good - Nice to have something to track players who are lost or even those who are on the opposing faction.

***BAD*** - Range is only limited to 500 meters, takes as much time to make a sweep on a speeder bike to cover that small range. Tracking isn't as constant and need to go 1 direction for a short distance and track again to find your target. This is SOEs biggest flaw. Should've taking the same concept from EQ and have a constant tracking so cant lose your target once target is aquired.

4) Harvesting:

Good - Nice to have some extra harvesting if hired by a crafter to hunt for a particular harvest.

Bad - What is the point of having master ranger when doids with the harvesting module can pull up about just as much as a Master Ranger? With the harvesting droids, dont need to waste the extra skill points for just a few more hides when you can do mission after mission for them

5) Conceal: (Haven't done much with this skill so I can't say much about it.)

In my observation and trying this profession for 3 weeks, I would have to say the Ranger is a near pointless profession since either the skills are useless and unwanted by other players or they are not nearly effective enough to warrant attention.

Bechock - Ex Master Ranger / TKM (BRIA)

Bechock - Guild Leader of the infamous The Resistance Way

Constructor of Cartelis

Traps: best ones aren't those that apply state effects. Best are those that root/slow the creature and those that reduce the creatures defenses. State effects are useless for the most part

Tents: good for player interaction, healing of wounds in the wilderness (especially mind wounds) and for resting up after a good battle

Tracking: great for finding natural spawns of creatures that you need for filling an order, great for finding bounties, NPC's etc. Great for defending a base to see how many are coming and from where. Great for attacking a base to see how many are defending. Great for finding a specific player in a city. Though I admit the range should be bigger.

Harvesting: great for filling large orders and getting repeat customers who know that you are dedicated to hunting. plus, your point about droids is moot since droid bonuses are a percentage of the players' harvest mods...thus a Master Ranger with a droid gets more than a scout with a droid. Though again, we should get more

Basically, from what I can see, the only points I can agree with you on is that tracking should have a wider range and rangers need to be able to harvest more. other than that, I don't think you've been using your skills the most effective way. I think you'd need to spend more than three weeks playing as a Ranger to determine whether or not it's "useless". If you misuse the skills and don't take the time to understand the more subtle nuances of the proffession than it's you that's useless. I hate to be so cruel, but we get about 5 "rangers are useless" threads a week, and frankly, I'm tired of people coming in and trying our proffession short-term then whining that it sucks and leaving because it's "pointless". Rangers will eventually be modified to be more usefull, but right now, using the skills we have we can be quite effective in a group. If you're hunting with a group of Ranged weapon masters, you can use traps to root a creature...meaning it won't be able to do anyone any damage. You can lower it's defenses so everyone hits more effecively. These are the most potent traps when properly used. Rangers are great for base raids, since they can determine the size of the enemy force, ensuring that proper preperations are made. They can fill orders faster than most since a smart ranger knows the best creatures to hunt for a specific resource and they know where to find the best spawns.

Basically, Ranger isn't pointless...unless you do it for three weeks and don't learn how to use the skills we have.

[ /StartRant ]

That coupled with the fact that there is just something to be said about being a Ranger. It was the second profession that I mastered (obviously can't be the first) and I have since mastered many professions. Some where hard to type "yes" and drop. But I have NEVER even considered dropping my Master Ranger. It just fits.

I like being able to answer the question. Do you know where (_fill_in_the_blank_) is. I like the..... "wow, i could see this from 500m away" comments. (HTFB)

I like the fact that when I walk into a cantina people can't believe that I am a Ranger. Like we are some kind of myth.

There are just so many things I just can't list them all. There are so many that don't REALLY have anything to do with the skill tree, but have more to do with the community. That the only way you will ever get me out of my Master Ranger position is to get SOE to remove the profession from the game.

[ /EndRant ]

Now that I have said what I have to say, I will go in peace.

---

Tibli Srictahio, Master Ranger
Imperial Sector Rangers

Hey Bechock, can I have your Ranger stuff... rats, wrong server.

Traps - guess you never used Pdarts or adhesive mesh. They stop creatures cold.

Tents - and where do I get this droid? Camps are free, droids cost money. I can pop camp, go get a cold drink, and come back and find myself well on the way to being healed.

Tracking - 500 meters in one direction is a 1000 m diameter circle. If you think about, thats farther than you can generally see, to include real life. It's call terrain.

Harvesting - yeah, we don't get that much more than scouts. But beats what an artisan can get now, don't it? And with no artisan skill I can still have harvestors.

Conceal - I like maskscent myself. But as Kairene said, she camo'd and gave a red aggro pirate a smoochie and he never say her coming.

Sometimes you gotta be smarter than the stuff you are working with to make it work right. Have fun, try BH, lots of shiny stuff to play with.

JB

I think we need to have JBMat go over to SOE headquaters and record a few rants/ huffs/ guffs. That way a Ranger can activate "grumpy mode" in-game. This will scare off any aggros (and BH's). Then we could have Calc record the "Long-Winded Ranger" whose diatrabs will put all NPC's in a 100m circle into a deep slumber.

Don't forget single target traps are wonderful for melee professions to single pull agressive creatures