Ranger Archive

If you had to, which full line of Ranger would you give up? Why?

Looking ahead, which skill line do you think will be most valuable to a Ranger?

This is not a test, you wont be scored on this. All opinions are valid and appreciated.

I had 4-4-4-4 and gave up Trapping temproarily soI could keep medical skills. I dont miss trapping at all. I am now 4-4-4-0.

Additionaly the only line that is actualy useful right now is Hunting for bigger harvest and I do use tracking alot.

Once the fixes go through and additional traps are implamented I will go ahead and Master Ranger.I do love the class and I am looking forward to all the improvements.

Definitely trapping. With only 2 new traps in the entire line, and not very useful ones at that, the scout trapping line is much more useful. Additionally it is also one of the easier to max out quickly so you can take it back up fairly fast if you decide that you want to keep it after all. The line with tracking is by far the most useful with the additional harvesting and tracking. Of course now I'm just reading the lost person's post and he said exactly the same thing... Oh well.

I have to disagree. I actually use traps quite a lot. If I was going to drop a line, as things currently stand now I'd drop Wayfaring. The only thing in that line right now is /conceal and we all know how well that works currently. And to be honest I'm not even sure I'll use it all that much once they fix it if it's going to drop off anyone who enters combat. Do you realize how many kits we will have to make to keep a group concealed while traveling?

If I had to drop a skill line (which I won't so this is completely in theory since I use all of the skill lines), I would probably drop the top box of Frontiering (you can use the HTFB even though you can't make one), the top box of Trapping (you get the sonic pulse at Trapping III), and the top two boxes of Wayfaring because I currently do not use camo kits. This would definitely change in the future, since camo kits are getting cheaper to make and will work better than currently.

It's really tough. If I had to remove something entirely, it would be the Wayfaring line since I don't crawl a lot.

I'm not planning to put any points into wayfaring at all - and will likely only put a up a couple of boxes of Concealment. I'm going for Trapping on spec that the much talked about lures and beartraps make an appearance pretty soon and Hunting/ tracking is the best.

I'd drop advanced trapping as ranger trapsdon't work. The next is frontiering but to correct what someone else said, you need frontiering 3 to use the HTFB. Unless they changed the rules on that recently.

If I wasn't going Master Ranger, now that I've had time to play around a bit, I'd drop Wayfaring in a heart-beat. The only visible benefit is that I do run up steep hills significantly faster than Exploration IV types. Just not really worth the little bits of time you save, especially since I'm also doing Squad Leader and eventually getting movement bonuses there too. Plus camouflage is seriously a joke.

You can either click on a single key to mask scent, or spend points on artisan, get/make yourself a flora surveying device, spend hours finding the very specific components (only to find that everyflower on the planet is unattainable because it just recently spawned so there's no way to get it without an extractor or waiting a full day for it to allow you to sample?!), then with 100 hard-won resources, you make a 2-5 use camouflage item, apply it to yourself, then walk by 3 creatures before it's broken. Even if it doesn't get broken, it wears off in a matter of minutes. Let's not even get into the funky faction stuff with NPCs.

Gee, lemme think. Nah, I'll just push that other button and walk around the aggressive NPCs.

What gets me more than anything I think is that Rangers, with all their experience in the wilderness, able to scrounge the strangest foods and grubs out of anyground on the planet no matter how bare it appears,can't pick flowers? Oh no, you have to be an Artisan to pick flowers.

Riiiight.

If they're gonna make it that hard to get the components, especially relying on other class abilitiesto gather them, there needs to be a much more significant payoff. Camo should stay on MUCH longer, possibly even after it "breaks" for one creature, and it shouldn'tbe seen throughanywhere near as much as it does. We can be seen for free.

I love the camps. They may not be terribly useful, but they're impressive, you heal faster in the best ones, and crafters don't have to make trips to town to make weapons, droids, food, chemicals, or general items.

Tracking is invaluable. Plus that line increases your resource gathering, which represents fairly significant extra income for me at this point.

Trapping is fun and very useful, especially combined with other abilities like suppressive fire and warning shot, it's a lucky creature that ever gets near enough to do anything to you.If the new traps are enigmatic (I don't really understand what affect those status effects have on a difficulty 50 creature, does it really matter?), the increased chance to land all the old traps is worth it.

So yeah, if you're gonna drop something, drop Wayfaring. Pretty lame skill tree at the moment. Hopefully it won't be that lame for long.

It's so hard to choose! They're all so disposable!

Wayfaring can go completely. I don't crawl much and I still cant imagine needing camo kits very much. And the new camo fix hasn't even arrived and we're already gettingreports that there are still bugs that prevent them from working against certain humanoids.

Frontiering, likewise. Somebody else can be the 'Oooh!' camp guy. Scout camps work just as well for allowing medics to heal and doing pet management.And very few people usethe crafting stations.

Trapping can go, too. The only time I use Ranger traps is to break up the monotony of using the much more useful Scout traps.

Tracking, I'll keep 2, maybe 3, of the bricks since that's moderately useful for hunting. If my PA thinks the Tracking 4 is worth it for tracking individual players, I may keep the entire line. But I'm torn --since 95% of my income comes from my mineral harvesters, I really don't hunt specific critters all that much. I could drop the entire tree and not really have it affect me much, financially.

I would have to agree on the trapping line, and disagree to the wayfaring line. I find conceal kits very useful. I find they do break less often than maskscent at exploration 2. Further I have several people in my guild who do not have maskscent. Also the xp you get for a group running past agrroes in very nice. I got about 3k last night on corilia. All those little 30s and 40s add up quick when there are multiple people running through agros.

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Doremar wrote:

You can either click on a single key to mask scent, or spend points on artisan, get/make yourself a flora surveying device, spend hours finding the very specific components (only to find that everyflower on the planet is unattainable because it just recently spawned so there's no way to get it without an extractor or waiting a full day for it to allow you to sample?!), then with 100 hard-won resources, you make a 2-5 use camouflage item, apply it to yourself, then walk by 3 creatures before it's broken. Even if it doesn't get broken, it wears off in a matter of minutes. Let's not even get into the funky faction stuff with NPCs.

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Supposedly the next big patch removes the flora components and increases the effects of conceal substantially. Read the update notes!

If they screw the update yet again then I'm with you 100%.

Trapping = useless

just waiting on the revamp.

Ranger traps suck. Scout traps good.

Area track very very good to me.

Now to sentences with actual words in them... Ranger trapping could fall off the face of the earth and I could use the skill points in something else. As long as I got pdarts and glow-wire, I am happy.

Area track saves me time and I can make more money. Instead of wandering looking for animals, I know where they are, more or less, and can go take out the ones with good harvest/good xp.

My humble opinions...

JB

Oh yeah, until they fix the HTFB, I seldom even use it... FB usually.