Ranger Archive

I noticed a few people mentioning we get one of these up. It has been a while since we had anything like this, and some new information and game changes have come out since, that do effect Ranger. I hope that this at least holds for the majority of the community. If there are things I left out, good or bad, please let me know. I have this in a saved document so I can update it. Maybe Calc can sticky it, if the community aproves of it.

Here it goes.

Ranger State of the Profession

Per our dev that created Ranger, Greenmarine, we were not finished before launch. Before SOE started doing official "revamps" we got a little attention. In that time we got /conceal and /areatrack, out of the several things Holocron told us we would get. We never heard back from the devs, Holocron moved on, and we didn’t hear a word back from any dev or SOE member. Since then only minor hotfixes for things that were not working properly, either from the start or by some other patch. Example, throwing traps from main inventory.

The Ranger Profession has a lot of potential. When we got the /conceal command, we were told it work against agro NPC, and it says as much in the ingame description. After a month or two of using it, Rangers started to notice it not working against NPC consistently. Some thought it had to do with faction, and if you have enough negative faction, the /conceal didn’t work. This was sent in to the devs, and we got an unfavorable response. The new /conceal command was not meant to work on NPC at all, and thus the devs weren’t going to look into it further and “fix” it. They told the ranger that devs saw rangers to be Master of the Wild and Masters of the Hunt. Creature and outdoors oriented, not humanoid/NPC, PC oriented. The ranger community took this with a grain of salt, and started coming up with ideas to improve and add to the profession with that vision in mind. The Outdoorsman Proposal was the end result of weeks of discussion. The ranger sat and waited for further feedback or comments on the ideas and path of ranger. Nothing.

Now on to how our profession stands currently.

Wayfaring:

/conceal (and camouflage skill mod)is almost worthless for how much better it works then Mask scent. The reported effectiveness difference from mask scent to /conceal is 95% to 98% respectively. Most Rangers, even masters, rarely bother to use /conceal. The reward for cost of gathering resources and crafting is not worth the small amount of improvement over mask scent. It can be applied to others, which is somewhat useful for group hunting. Many people have Explore 4 in scout, and thus using their own mask scent is often used over the ranger continually applying /conceal to party members. To wrap up, /conceal is not frequently used and not viewed a large benefit over mask scent.

Terrain Negotiation in ranger is applied to prone speed, or crawling. At master scout TN maxes out at +50, and this all is applied to standing or running speed. Crawling in SWG is rarely used and seen useful even at a “faster” speed. The mask scent and /conceal abilities are more effective when prone, but the perceived benefit of bring prone over standing is not enough to make people crawl when hunting. Rifleman is truly the only profession that the TN mod to crawl speed benefits. Very few, if any, rangers take advantage of crawling speed improvement, and when hunting in a group, crawling in prone position is not feasible. So to wrap up, the TN bonus gained in Ranger is all but useless and not used by the majority of rangers. It would be more of benefit, and seen as worth the ranger profession of scout, if the TN bonus continued to improve the standing/running speed. Even if it capped for running speed up to +70 or +80, and the rest of the points helped with crawling speed.

Frontiering:

In this skill line we gain camping skill mod, foraging skill mod and new larger camps. The camping skill is what is used to determine what level of camp you are allowed to craft and setup. Camping for both scouts and rangers is all but useless at this point. Several game changes have been made to remove the “need” for camps. Camps were needed to heal wounds outside of the city medical centers. This use has been removed with addition of medical bots, making even novice medics able to heal wounds in the field. The other use for camps was to pull out a pet or speeder. This need has been removed by the ability to pull out pets and speeders anywhere. Although there is a 15 second timer, this is not enough to warrant the need to craft and put down a camp. Providing you are able to put a camp down in your location, due to “camp zones”. The repel ability of camps is buggy and is thought to not even work. Especially in the higher level camps, it has been reported that many times, agro creatures wander through high level camps. The healing modifier on camps is not even perceivable, especially with the addition of medical bots. Effectively, camps in the game are useless at the moment for other then esthetic and meet up locations.

/forage has never been a particularly fun or effective skill. It starts in scout, and continues to get bonuses in ranger. The foraged items even at master ranger, are not worth the time to forage or the inventory space. They do not stack either. It is not even considered a “fun” thing to do by the general scout and ranger communities. No one uses it anymore for the most part, it is not useful or fun. On top of that, the devs, Greenmarine, has stated that the full coding for /forage never made it into the game. There were to be larger tables of items to forage, that were only found on certain planets. There were to be unique items, other players might find interesting, that could only be obtained by /forage. This is not in the game currently.

Continued below...........

Teranus Blan'Fyl
OldSchool Ranger
Short-Timer

Field Bioscience/Tracking:

This line gives us the /areatrack command. This is one of the moderately useful skills in ranger, and has some limited benefits. At first you can track animals, and in what direction. Then NPC, and lastly players, with direction and distance. The range on /areatrack is 500m radius, so 1000m circle around the ranger. It picks up any “currently spawned” creatures in that area. This is of course limited because of the games spawning system. There are also reports that it is in accurate along the Z axis in the game. At times a ranger can use /areatrack, find nothing, and wack 60m to find something. The skill is good and useful, for both PvE and some PvP situations. But using this to find creatures to hunt instead of missions is no where near as productive. It is a fun and useful skill, and some rangers are sought out for it. With the BH and Jedi missions, some rangers, or the BH themselves, are using track to help find the jedi bounty. The limited range on it, is less effective with the addition of speeders, and people being able to physical search around for spawns much faster while on speeder, or mount. Lots of potential still for this ability, and the rangers like and would like to see it improved/tweeked some.

Creature harvesting bonus is in the line. This is a bonus to how much resources an individual can harvest from one creature. This starts in scout and continues to receive bonuses in ranger. There is a noticeable difference of the amount harvested from master scout to master ranger. The rangers like the harvesting ability, and it is a substantial portion of their income and role in the economy. The rangers hunt down and harvest desired resource for the crafters and sell it. Most of the time, the rangers acquire missions for the needed animal for the resource and get the kills this way. The dilemma the rangers face is that someone with only master scout, and using the rest of the skill points on combat professions, can harvest more in time then a master ranger. For the 140 skill points for master ranger, the current game doesn’t allow enough combat abilities for a master ranger to compete as a huntsman.

Creature knowledge is also continued as a bonus in ranger, from scout. This is the skill that allows a player to see detailed information on the examine windows of a creature. Things like the resists, the vulnerabilities, armor ratings, special attacks, damage rating, and /con level of the creature. This is a useful skill and allows the ranger to determine the animals weaknesses and strengths. At master scout a player is able to see a lot of the examine information, and it appears there is not a lot extra information for the bonus received in ranger. The creature level used to show the exact level of the creature, which was very useful in determining if you had a chance, and much more detailed the performing a /con or looking at the color of the /con icon for the creature. A game change went in recently that changed this information in the examine window to only give the text of performing /con. This is much less useful now, for anything about 8 levels above a character gives the same message, “instant death”. A skilled ranger, using tactics and even the limited abilities with in ranger, and the unbalanced combat system, allow rangers to handle creatures much higher then 8 levels above. Knowing the exact level of the creature is much more useful. Not to mention, just seeing the same text that you would receive by performing /con is nothing any other character can’t do.

Creature to Hit Bonus is also in this line. There is an additional +15 in ranger over the +10 in scout. So a ranger with Field Bioscience 4 has the total Creature to hit bonus of +25. The ingame description is worded with “ranged attacks” and the rangers are still wondering if this ability is working for the melee rangers. On top of that, even if it is working as it should, a +25 bonus to essentially accuracy on animals, for an elite professions costing 140 SP is very underrated. It is not a perceivable benefit to any ranger for hunting and killing creatures, and with an elite combat profession on top of that, it’s dwarfed by the bonuses in the combat profession. The concept of a creature only combat benefit is much liked and desired by the rangers, and we would like to see this expanded and made actually beneficial. But basically, this mod has no real benefit to a ranger at all.

Advanced Trapping:

This is an expansion of the trapping line scout. It is called “Advanced” trapping though. The trapping skill mod continues to gain bonuses in ranger, from scout. Supposedly this skill is what determines whether a trap actually “lands” on a creature, compared to the creatures level. This skill mod, based on what it’s “supposed” to do, does not seem to help for the level of creatures rangers go against. The higher level creatures a master ranger will hunt for, either solo or grouped, tend to resist a ranger throwing traps at least 50% or more. Some high level “boss” types like Krayts, are practically impossible to land a trap on. I have never heard of anyone landing a trap on a krayt. In addition to this, the trapping line has only 2 traps in ranger. They are both AOE which is a nice benefit, but also has it’s drawbacks if you are trying to pull only a single creature. In the trapping line of scout there are 9 traps total. Ranger has 2. In addition, most rangers use scout traps most of the time. Mainly the Phecnacine dart, also the Adhesive mesh, and the glow wire. All scout traps. One of the ranger traps has the effect of putting the state of dizzy on a creature. It has been stated by the devs that even though an animal will show the dizzy “icon” animals are not effected by dizzy at all, ever. So one of the two, or half, of the ranger traps are ineffective to begin with. The concept and use of traps for rangers is one of the big differences between a ranger an a plain combat profession with no ranger. The traps can make the ranger much more effective, useful, and efficient in hunting both solo and groups. With the proper use of good traps, a ranger can be a formidable hunter, and a great asset to a group. The rangers like the trapping line and would greatly appreciate a lot of expansion and addition here. Not to mention a better chance of landing traps on the high end creatures like kraits, Kimos, Peko Peko Albetross etc.

/rescue is also in this line. It allows a ranger to attempt to “pull” a creature off of another player, and have the creature attack the ranger instead. This idea and concept are good, and I believe the rangers like it as an idea. But the ability is lacking greatly. When it works the ranger get agroed and attacked. Considering a ranger only has SP left for a single elite profession, this tends to not be enough defense/offense to protect the ranger from what is usually instant death. The melee rangers have a greater advantage here, with better defenses against the melee attacks and damage that creatures do. But the melee professions also have the /taunt ability which is easier to use and usually more effective. I don’t think a lot of rangers use this ability for its clumsy method of use, and extreme danger to the ranger when it works. A good idea for an ability of the ranger, but to much risk for the limited benefit. Higher defenses, and or the ability to “calm” the creature attacking the ranger so it goes into peaceful mode, would make this skill very useable, fun, effective, and sought after.

Master:

This box contains a minor additional bonus to each of the skill mods mentioned above except the Creature to Hit Bonus. It also contains +10 to both Ranged and Melee defense. And finally it contains the Dathomire Camouflage kit.

The ranger profession has a lot of potential, and lot of the hard core ranger are sticking with it, hoping and pleading for improvements. Many of the rangers have coined the phrase “Ranger, it’s a lifestyle, not a profession.” This shows their love and dedication to the profession, but also that they feel it’s not worth the SP for what you get, by pure game mechanics.

Some of the “quick fix” things rangers would like to see until they can get the full revamp they need are below. Not in any particular order. As can be seen above, the profession has many gaps to fill, and areas that could use some improvement and/or additions. There are many good ideas submitted by the ranger community on a daily basis. We greatly look forward an opportunity to work with a dev on a full revamp. We know currently we are on schedule for some time on “correspondent issues” and we hope for some improvements to tide of over, from that.

1. A large harvesting bonus, with a good amount of it given in the master box. This will allow the master ranger to actually compete in the resource gathering of the game, and potentially be the masters of the hunt as they should be. They will be more sought after as resourceharvesters then players with only scout skills.


2. damage bonus/multiplier for any combat style strictly against creatures only.


3. defenses/resists or toughness against creatures only, as well as resists to diseases and poisons.


4. the addition of the /track command. There are few posts about how we might like it work. Owen-Lars has the most recent one, with a very detailed well laid out plan for /track and how it will be used.

Teranus Blan'Fyl
OldSchool Ranger
Short-Timer

Wow im sure glad i didnt read this post before doing Ranger. Would you like us to pick it apart now? Lets start first with mask scent and conceal. Niether of which is broken or worthless. In fact i use conceal as a master ranger quite a bit. And i know im not alone. Besides its abilities to be done to someone else, think warpaint, its also superior to mask scent. Am i happy that mask scent seems to lose its effectiness as a ranger? Of course im not. But i learned to deal with it. When out hunting my guilds BE i use conceal on myself for the bigger DNA targets. Simply because it works. And i use conceal against the NPCs to. Because squid it works. There are NPCs and creatures that are breaking mask scent more then they should. And Calc opened up a thread for us to give him a list on where it died. And guess what? The thread because people like me couldnt nail it down that it would fail on more then "It fails on Yavin more then anywhere else". He needs more then that.

Camps heal wounds for those who dont have medic to. Since i have so many points in MCH and MR i dont want to drop the 15 for novice medic. When i get stuck in the woods. I put up my best camp, the HTFB, go off for 15-20 minutes from my PC and come back with most of my wounds healed. Funny how that works doesnt it? Use of a medical droid requires medical skills. Use of a camp does not. Its slow but it works.

Canon Fodder - The former Ranger/CH now unplayed Smuggler
Down to one account and thats only because its a station pass
Currently a Droid Commander in City of Villians (really)

You have an awful lot of anger for a ranger. Lets go ahead and pick this apart more. That is after all why this is posted.

Covering the harvesting bonus and creature to hit bonuses. There are several posts from calc that this is the thing is asking the devs for most. So why drag this in the mud again? You dont want our harvesting bonus to be to obscenely high because we would flood the market with organics. Which effects an awful lot of things in game from doctor buffs, to food buffs, to be additives which enhance the food buffs. This isnt simple a give us +25 to harvest at Master. This effects an awful lot of things on the crafter side of the game. Is it worth the points to go master ranger over master scout for harvesting? No. Do tracking IV and stop there. Why go into further.

Trapping - You think your traps should work against krayts and the really high boss creatures? Thats just plain nuts. Its not going to happen and it shouldnt. Nothing that takes the minimal resources of a trap should take a CL300 creature and stop it in its tracks. Theres a reason those beasts dont trap because their supposed to be incredibly hard to kill. And as of right now they are nearly a joke. Like all ranger skills there are limits to everything. And traps stop working around CL45-50 from my expierence. I dont see a reason for it to go higher then that. I have seen an increase in my trapping since using my trapping droid with +56 bonus and that my odds of landing it on a CL45-50 are much higher. But 15 units of polymer arent going to cause a krayt to stop. And 10 units of hide and meat arent going to cause a mutant rancor to slow down. These go beyond our skill set. These are mythical beasts.

Tracking - Another thing we have beaten into the ground. It has two huge drawbacks. First it doesnt what hasnt spawned. And it doesnt work on an anything then other then within a few meters of your altitude. I dont know if the programming for this can be fixed or the work involved. For now its still an incredibly useful skill that even the BH's when they were forced to go master scout woudl go for with their few points left. So it cant be that useless right squid? And for those who say 500m isnt far enough. Please think about that distance. Its far further then you think.

Canon Fodder - The former Ranger/CH now unplayed Smuggler
Down to one account and thats only because its a station pass
Currently a Droid Commander in City of Villians (really)

Ok lets next go into /rescue. Another skill i use more then i ever thought i would. When your a CH and your pets on guard as soon as the creature aggros on you. The pets go after it instead of you. For those times when someone very important, like your doctor, are going down. This skill is invaluable.

Lets work threw your quick fixes

Canon Fodder - The former Ranger/CH now unplayed Smuggler
Down to one account and thats only because its a station pass
Currently a Droid Commander in City of Villians (really)

Fodder, thank you for your comments and additions. To start with this was a state of the "entire" profession, not just one little aspect of skill of it, as all other posts are. That is one reason why I did it. Another reason is, that if you go read the thread from Calculus about "No more posting do the devs read this.." or something. In the last page there are several people saying that maybe we should put up a state of the profession, to get ALL of the concerns in one place. So I did.

Admitadly I do have some frustration and annoyance right now. I tried to make this as unbiased as I can. Let me ask you this. How long have you been a ranger, are you master and have you held that, and how long have you been playing the game? I have been playing since day one, with the desire to be ranger. I worked at it since day one with novice scout. I got master ranger after about 5-6 months. No grinding, just playing, using my abilities and gaining the xp as I went. I have held master ranger ever since, so thats a year now of being using the scout/ranger abilties. I also have master pistoleer, which has it's downfalls. As many of the hardcore rangers, I love it, or I would have dropped it long ago. I have been playing a long time, with many different profession combinations of friends, and seen many different strenths and weaknesses. I have seen many changes in the game, good bad, causing nerfs, causing bugs, bugs fixed, new things added, etc.

You asked why I brought up some of the issues I brought up. Maybe you missed the title. State of the "profession", means all of it. In case is slipped by, I covered every single skill line and every single skill mod and ability that is in each of them. And talked about its strengths and weaknesses. I think one of the reasons some professions make these kinds of posts "state of the profession" is to put it all in one place. So I tried.

Further, you state that we have already covered the desire to get a harvesting bonus, and that calc has put it to the devs. Again I go back to my statement of this is to cover ALL of the profession. And same with the tracking section you commented on. Do you go into every single post about an individual portion of ranger, and say "hey we already know about this, we have already discussed it, so stop posting your comments and ideas about it"?? Whether or not we have asked for or discussed the harvesting bonus, it's still a portion of the profession, good or bad. It happens to be one that a mojority of the ranger community feel needs a boost. What you call significant doesn't matter, "we" feel it needs a boost. You are correct as master ranger, I can get a lot off of a single creature. But unless I'm TKM or Master Pikeman, I'm going to get out harvested over time by a master scout using vaghash, a droid and more combat skills then I have. I have a friend that has TKM, Master Doc, and like hunting 2. He can go do rancor missions, something like 2 every half hour, and harvest more in an hour solo, then I could, even with the same buffs. Part of that is the unbalanced combat professions between the pistoleer and TK, but with the extra skill points he got master doc and can buff and remove states etc so he can hunt better and faster.

You said that we already have a damage bonus/multiplier for creatures. Really? Where? Creature to hit is just that, To hit, or better worded, Accuracy. It is not a damage bonus at all. And it tops of at +25. With master pistoleer I get +45 to pistol accuracy and +30 to pistol accuracy while moving. So when I'm moving I get a total of +75 accuracy. Master pistoleer costs 92 SP. A lot less then master ranger at 140 SP. Ranger is a support class, but according to the devs we are supposed to be masters of the hunt and wild. Not to mention, if you read the "Offensive Ranger" people said that such a small accuracy bonus doesn't make a difference. Especially if you have a master combat profession you are hitting most of the time against creatures already. A damage bonus, on top of a harvesting bonus(of what ever size) will put us in the position to be the hunt masters.

You say our traps shouldn't work on anything over level 50-60? Why not? That's not a very high level for a group of elite professions with a doc etc all out hunting. A group currently has no real "need" or "desire" to have a ranger along. They don't add anything to the mix. A master carbineer at 92 SP can apply different states to the highend creatures, can occationally land a KD. A TKM can occastionally land a KD on them, and also apply states like intimedate, stun, blind for the master Fencer. Admitadly, not easily and often on the real high creatures. But our traps whould be working with just as much a chance as those combat professions specials do. Don't look at it likea few peaces of bone, metal and polymer. Look at it in terms of the skill points and time spent on master ranger, compared to combat professions requiring less points. How does it make sence that a Fencer can apply an AOE blind to all creatures around them, and not just creatures but anything, and make it land on high end stuff occasionally, but our traps that cause a chemical flash explosion doesn't do the same thing? Sure doesn't make sence to me. A group, with a ranger is going to be going out after the big game. If the ranger can't add anything useful to the group, then what's the point. If we have a group of all ranged attackers, keeping it slowed with a snare trap will allow us to kite it. Will still take forver to kill it. If we have 3 ancient rancor on us, if I can "control" three of them so the party can focus on one at a time, I have agood useful skill to the party, to help us hunt and stay alive.

Yes you are right, the natural defences against animals and resists to poisons and diseases is a no brainer. But we don't have it do we? Again, I posted this to be about the whole profession. At the end I hit on the most talked about favored "quick fix" things by the community. I share these opinions I posted orgianlly, but over the year, I have read, they are shared by many. Not just me.

rescue is good skill and has it's uses as I did say. I also use it for saving the doctor, but thats about it. I have since made a macro for it actually because of its clumsy usage. You have to target the person, but if they don't /peace you are not very likely to save that person. But most people are not aware of /rescue, how it works, and have no idea that you are trying to use it. So I have a /shout "target" to have them peace, then I /assist to target the animal they are on, and then thow an Adhesive mesh so it doesn't just run me over and kill me instantly. Which tends to happen to a lot of rangers, especially ranged combat ones, that use /rescue.

On camps. yes I know I can sit in it and heal my wounds very very slowly. As you said in our highest camp it can take 20-30 minutesto heal all your wounds. But even if you are OK with that, that is not a good enough single benefit of the whole camping line and the camps? I dont think so. The camps were "OK" before the pet/speeder and med bod changes. The repel has never worked right since launch and that's very frustrating. I have had canibal Dew Backs walk through my HTFB. Yea, repel, suuuuure. I do like the concept of the camps, but when rangers are not using them hardly ever, and when they do its to take 20 sitting doing nothing to heal wounds, or for a wedding, there are some needed changes.

Thanks for your comments, I do appreciate them, although I don't understand all of them. And maybe you don't have a problem with all of what I said, since you haven't touched on every area. Do you feel ranger needs a revamp? Do you feel we need some time with "correspondant issues"?

Teranus Blan'Fyl
OldSchool Ranger
Short-Timer

I was a scout in beta. I was a scout on day 1. I worked on Ranger while my guildlooked at me funny and couldnt fiqure out what i saw with it. I dropped Ranger during the birth of the Jedi because i wasnt happy with it. And wanted to be a BH to make them pay. Seeing "You have lost 350000 scouting xp" forthe first harvest i did was heartbreaking. I have always held onto my scout side. I tried to do the holo thing got 3 boxes from finishing my first holo, master sword, then said i didnt want to join that. And went back to the professions I knew i loved. I went back to Ranger and Creature Handler. I believe i made master ranger the first in August. This was without grinding camps because I wasnt aware of it. My guild did a lot of group hunts and my camps were always useful. The first thing i did as a master ranger pre-mounts pre-vehicles was to walk from my town south of Lake Retreat to Moenia and just learn it all. I love Ranger and Im proud i have 4 in my guild now because of me. Thats who i am. About a month ago i decided I wanted my master ranger title back. Knowing the true state of the profession. This time i worked quick through it. I ground my way through most of frotineering this round. I wish i had taken my time with it to be honest. But i got my title back again.

But the nature of your post didnt feel like a state of the profession. It more felt like a state of what you felt needed fixing. And why we are broken. All things we had gone over and over previously in many many posts. And your take on a lot of is your own personal one. Thats fine so i felt it was my duty to reply to them. I was honest when I said that had i read something like that as a scout I'd never have become a ranger. There are plenty of positives in Ranger still. And most of them revolve around the community more then the profession. And thats something a lot of people cant wrap there head around.

Ok now to the rest. I know how many points we put into traps and im aware a TK can get a KD off on a high level target. But it just doesnt seem right to use our traps on the biggest beasts. How about this as a comprimise.

The higher level the trap - the higher the level of creature it can trap

So a flash bomb is capable of blinding a Peko Albatross at CL139. There are already two levels to some of the traps. Wire Mesh is level 1, Adhesive mesh does the same thing more effective. Add a third level for the Ranger traps and make them effective on much higher levels. But i still think certain beasts should be immune such as krayts. But thats a personal feeling.

As for do i got into each post and say "We have already gone over this...". No i dont but this post is a compliation of all the posts on this type of thing we have had over the last week. Really its not a state of the profession as much as one persons feelings about where we stand.

Canon Fodder - The former Ranger/CH now unplayed Smuggler
Down to one account and thats only because its a station pass
Currently a Droid Commander in City of Villians (really)

Hey cool. Glad you decided to come back to ranger. I'll be honest, if I dropped it, even if planned to be temp, I don't know I would come back until it got some work. I have come close a few times, and the last time I said "OK I'll wait until after CB to see what changes in both Ranger and Pistoleer." The community in ranger is a huge part of it, and even though I don't bring much as far as pure profession skills, other players and guildies think its cool, honorable, and respectful to hold master ranger. Mabye people think that because we do hold it knowing it current state. /shrug.

As for the traps, I do believe the current system already works like how you described. I believe it takes the trappig skill of the character adds the complexity level of the trap and uses that number to roll against the creature. If not, then I agree with you, a novice scout trap thrown by a ranger should not be able to land on a Peko Peko Albetross for example. But the rangers traps, I'm including future ones, should be able to do land on higher level creatures Maybe not Ancient Canyon Krayts, or the Gorax, but on for certain beyond what they do now. Frankly I'm not sure just how effective the actual ranger traps are against higher level stuff. I don't hardly use them. Currently the two ranger traps fall into Adv. Trapping 2 and 3. So we should be getting at least one more in each of those, 2 at novice, 2 in box 1, 2 in box 4(these could be the uber ones working on level 100-130) and maybe even one at master. Don't forget about the possibilty of the modular, or customized traps as described in Outdoorsman. That could lead to, if you use high quality resources etc in a trap, it has a higher effective level.

Anyway, I appreciate your feedback. Maybe I can work it some more and make it less negative, and more truely unbiased. I remember NRaas used to have some great SOTP posts. I'm just an old Irish, Bothan ranger, that's a little disgruntled. Maybe that's why I'm not the Correspondant

Teranus Blan'Fyl
OldSchool Ranger
Short-Timer