18 replies to this topic

[Scion87]

EDIT: For clarity purposes this thread is for theorycrafting on what type of weapons would be ideal for rangers. This includes discusion of types (like 1h mace, 2h sword, etc) and also weapon stats (slow vs fast speed, dmg range, etc).

Start of orgininal post:
Greetings all,

I was able to play ranger a little (to lvl 10) in beta, and I am now lvling one in live (12 atm). I did not see a discussion here yet about weapon choices and what is good for a ranger, so I thought I would add one.

I am only lvl 12, but so far it seems like slower weapons will be better for a ranger. Power shot does ranged weapon dmg, and is an instant attack, with a set CD. Without number crunching it looks like a slower weapon will provide more dps through power shot.

For melee (even though with leg shot I dont melee as much anymore) Slow/Slow seems to be better as well. Mash does 100% (higher with higher lvls) of weapon dmg as an instant attack, with a cd. Again with out number crunching it would seem that slow/slow would be the best choice since with slow weapons the dmg per hit is higher.

Summary:

It would appear to maximize dps from ranger skills, slow ranged and melee weapons will be best.

I plan on looking at the higher lvl ranger skills and looking more in depth at talents as well to revise this, but if anyone else (especially higher lvl rangers) have any thoughts/observations/etc it would be great

-Evylnn, human ranger - ardios server

[Lewick]

Greetings all,

I was able to play ranger a little (to lvl 10) in beta, and I am now lvling one in live (12 atm). I did not see a discussion here yet about weapon choices and what is good for a ranger, so I thought I would add one.

I am only lvl 12, but so far it seems like slower weapons will be better for a ranger. Power shot does ranged weapon dmg, and is an instant attack, with a set CD. Without number crunching it looks like a slower weapon will provide more dps through power shot.

For melee (even though with leg shot I dont melee as much anymore) Slow/Slow seems to be better as well. Mash does 100% (higher with higher lvls) of weapon dmg as an instant attack, with a cd. Again with out number crunching it would seem that slow/slow would be the best choice since with slow weapons the dmg per hit is higher.

Summary:

It would appear to maximize dps from ranger skills, slow ranged and melee weapons will be best.

I plan on looking at the higher lvl ranger skills and looking more in depth at talents as well to revise this, but if anyone else (especially higher lvl rangers) have any thoughts/observations/etc it would be great

-Evylnn, human ranger - ardios server

I played in beta to level 32 (not playing live yet) and had similar results, although at higher levels you definitely will end up having to do more white damage than at lower levels. Focus regeneration slows down quite a bit as you approach level 30.

I tested both predation and guardian lines and I actually preferred the guardian line after about level 25. With predation, I felt focus starved the majority of the time. In the guardian line, once you get Tear, things really change in the class. Tear does an enormous amount of damage (at 32, it was ticking every 3 seconds for about 215 damage) so the whole focus usage became something like:

- Mark
- Heart Toxin
- Auto ranged attack (2x usually)
- Tear
- Arrow stab (if I felt like it)
- Mash (if I felt like it)

For the most part, though, it was generally just 3 skills and the mob died in 3 to 6 seconds after getting to me, leaving me with 60% of my focus left (if I didn't bother with mash and arrow stab.) I did far more damage in the guardian line than I did in the predation line and it cost a lot less focus.

So just keep in mind that at lower levels your focus regen is so high you can basically just keep using skills all the time, which means the scaling from the weapon damage will always be present. At higher levels, since your focus regen won't regen nearly as fast, you'll actually spend time meleeing, so the slower weapons may not be as effective, particularly if they miss - and they DO miss.

[Scion87]

Did you take the power shot talent in teir 1 predation to reduce power shot focus cost? I know in beta I thought power shot just always cost 36 focues, but not its actually 22% of base focus, which means that talent should help quite a bit at higher levels.

[Mhantra]

I played in beta to level 32 (not playing live yet) and had similar results, although at higher levels you definitely will end up having to do more white damage than at lower levels. Focus regeneration slows down quite a bit as you approach level 30.

I tested both predation and guardian lines and I actually preferred the guardian line after about level 25. With predation, I felt focus starved the majority of the time. In the guardian line, once you get Tear, things really change in the class. Tear does an enormous amount of damage (at 32, it was ticking every 3 seconds for about 215 damage) so the whole focus usage became something like:

- Mark
- Heart Toxin
- Auto ranged attack (2x usually)
- Tear
- Arrow stab (if I felt like it)
- Mash (if I felt like it)

For the most part, though, it was generally just 3 skills and the mob died in 3 to 6 seconds after getting to me, leaving me with 60% of my focus left (if I didn't bother with mash and arrow stab.) I did far more damage in the guardian line than I did in the predation line and it cost a lot less focus.

So just keep in mind that at lower levels your focus regen is so high you can basically just keep using skills all the time, which means the scaling from the weapon damage will always be present. At higher levels, since your focus regen won't regen nearly as fast, you'll actually spend time meleeing, so the slower weapons may not be as effective, particularly if they miss - and they DO miss.

FYI, here is from the release patch:

•Tear has been removed from the game.
•New Guardianship action: Duck. Increases your dodge chance by 18% for 10 seconds. If you dodge during this time you will gain a Tactical Advantage which increases the critical strike chance of your next Mash, Arrow Stab or Rampage attack by 30%.

While there were some disappointed individuals (understandably so), Tear was described by Minuvo as too much damage for a tree that was supposed to be a tank-like tree. I actually agreed with the move. I only got to mid-20s with my ranger, but I found Guardian stance far better at DPS than predation, which didn't make sense for what the tree was supposed to be.

Still, a bonus to critical striking a rampage is no small cookies in its own right. It is just not a tear.

As for slow versus fast, it took me a while to realize OP was referring to Dual Wield in both situations (slow and fast). Is that correct?

I actually never tested that, but slower in the early game, faster later game makes sense to me by theory. I know there was some discussion about the 2-h weapon, too, but overall, most Rangers don't use it much (that I knew of), if nothing else, I don't think any Abilities were specifically meant for it.

[Scion87]

I was refering to a slow ranged and slow/slow for melee (dual weild). Based on the ability wording, t1 in gaurdship increases dmg while dual weilding by 5%. I want to try and test to see if that would be all dmg, or just melee dmg. It seems like it would be all dmg, so that would mean that dual weilding would be the way to go (at least later levels).

As far as focus regen, ATM i have selected power shot in t1 for less focus cost on power shot, as well as the 1 point ability that increase power shot dmg and returns some of its focus cost. It would seem like that would make focus cost of power shot around 80-85% of original value (from numbers i remeber as I leveled.

I was able to get ahold of 2 blue swords made by a BS, 9.something dps per, +2 crit. which seems to make mash hit like a truck, so I have been thinking going back to gaurdship and try that out again. (5% dmg while dw and 10% more ap seems sexy).

Great stuff so far btw, the math nerd in me is squealing lol

[Mhantra]

Sweet look forward to more results!

[Scion87]

Here are some numbers on power shot focus I got.

Base focus: 420
Character naked except bow and arrow, only added stats are +1 agi from bow and +3 ap from combat studies. No other buffs.

Power shot cost no talents:
93 focus (420 focus - 327 focus)
This equals 22.1429% of my base focus

Power shot cost with power drawing 5/5 (-5% focus cost according to tooltip):
84 focus (420 focus -336 focus)
This equals 20% of my base focus

Power drawing reduced the focus cost of power shot 9.6774% (from 93-84 focus) and changed it from 22% of base focus to 20% base focus.

Reload (increases power shot dmg by 8% and restores 8% focus on use)
8% of my base focus would be 33.6 focus.

With Power drawing and Reload:
Power shot would cost 84 focus, and a min of 33.6 focus would be returned.
New cost of power shot (assume base focus): 50.4 focus

With power drawing and reload, focus cost has gone from 93 focus to 50.4 focus, a 45.8065% decrease in focus cost, and going from 22% base focus to 12% base focus.

Note: This reduction in focus cost is assuming base focus. With intelect on gear this reduction will be even greater.

Errors:
Only error I noticed while testing was due to how fast focus regen was, it was hard to see if I actually got back that 8% of focus after using power shot.

Other considerations:
Deeper in the predation tree are 2 talents, Master predator and High power shot. With master predator, a slower weapon would mean a bigger reduction in fire speed while buff was active. With High power shot a slow weapon will give a bigger increase in raw dmg when power shot is used.

Unknowns:
Percentage of dps is from yellow dmg for rangers at high lvls.
Itemization of gear at high levels (how much +focus do rangers get at lvl 50).

Conclusions so far: In terms of increasing power shot dps, it would appear that a slow ranged weapon is prefered.

[Scion87]

Here is some data on mash I just collected. I was naked and no buffs except for weapons. I used the weapons from the merchant in Greenvale, w/o item lvls I can assume their iLVL's are the same.

My stats are as follows:
Str-31
Agi-39
End-29
Int-34
Soul-14
AP-65

Weapon stats as follows:

Copper dagger= 2-5 dmg, 1.5 spd
Copper Mace(1h)= 5-8 dmg, 2.3 spd
Large Axe(2h)= 5-10 dmg, 3.3 spd

I did 5 tests of 10 entries each: 1 dagger, 2 daggers, 1 mace, 2 maces, 1 large axe. Before collecting mash data I first would record the avg damage for normal hits. I was lvl 13, the mobs were all lvl 5 fernhounds. Misses and crits are exluded. Mash rank 2 was used.

Results:

1 Dagger - avg norm dmg= 6.0, avg mash dmg= 9.8
2 Daggers - avg norm dmg= 8.5, avg mash dmg=14.7
1 Mace - avg norm dmg=10.5, avg mash dmg=12.6
2 Maces - avg norm dmg=15.5, avg mash dmg=18.0
1 Large Axe - avg norm dmg=13.5, avg mash dmg=17.4

Conclusions: Obviously, 2x1h is more dmg than 1x1h. 2 slow weapons resulted in 22% more mash dmg than 2 fast weapons. Two hander was 18% more mash dmg then 2 fast. 2 slow weapons was slightly heigher (3%) mash dmg than a two hander.

Errors: Only two possible erros present would be small data set (only 10 entries per) and not enough dmg difference between weapons. Gathering more points and using higher item lvl weapons would correct for these.

[Mhantra]

This will be incredibly handy when building my Ranger for my duo, thanks for that hard work!

Great stuff!

[Kelody]

While slower weapons do more mash damage, I have at times used faster weapons (as fast as 1.1) with a much greater DPS than slower weapons that were available. Unusually, the 1.1 weapons were swords, rather than daggers. Another thing to remember, especially in the beginning, is that slow weapons take forever to get skills in. Using weapons your proficient in will yield less misses and more dps.

[Scion87]

While slower weapons do more mash damage, I have at times used faster weapons (as fast as 1.1) with a much greater DPS than slower weapons that were available. Unusually, the 1.1 weapons were swords, rather than daggers. Another thing to remember, especially in the beginning, is that slow weapons take forever to get skills in. Using weapons your proficient in will yield less misses and more dps.

Those are very valid points. What I will need to do is once i get into higher lvls, like 40+ is look at how much of my dps is white dmg and how much is yellow. Without this data, it is hard to say slow is better than fast. I have tried to word my conclusions to avoid that sort of confusion.

So far, for just power shot dps and mash dps, slow is better. As I lvl and test more I will try to add more data to get allow a bigger and better overall picture of what would be good weapon choices and maybe even talent choices would be.

I was able to get to lvl 14 tonight after testing mash. So far I am straight predation with power drawing, reload, heart toxin dmg ability (forgot name) and am currenty trying out the ability that gives heart toxin upfront dmg. So far I my rotation has been heart toxin, leg shot, power shot, auto attack. by the time the mobs get to me power shot is about of CD and they are already or close to dead. A single arrow stab or mash would then kill them usually. Once I got my crit higher (its at 8% atm) I think I might replace the upfront heart toxin dmg for the crit bonus, and see how my dps changes. I am thinking on doing some arrow stab and heart toxin tests this weekend, do a smaller sample size again like with mash to just get some numbers out there as people are lvling.

[Minuvo]

This is all great information! However, I wanted to correct one of your postulates.

The Predation ability Reload works off your totalfocus, not your base. It scales with your intellect. Although it's doubtful that you can ever get enough intellect (nor would you want to sacrifice other stats for it) you can improve your returns with intellect.

[Scion87]

The biggest thing to remeber while lvling is as always, its more about what weapon does more straight out dps. Rarely do you have a choice between 2 equal dps weapon and have to decide from there.

[Scion87]

This is all great information! However, I wanted to correct one of your postulates.

The Predation ability Reload works off your totalfocus, not your base. It scales with your intellect. Although it's doubtful that you can ever get enough intellect (nor would you want to sacrifice other stats for it) you can improve your returns with intellect.

Actually to clarify, that was not a postulate I assumed. My thinking was as follows: since it works of max focus (which I assume you mean when you say total focus), the benifit of reload will have a minimuim value. This is the amount you get at base focus cost. Depending on how higher end dps medium armor is itemized, hunters may have more focus, which would increase this benifit. I will try and edit the post to clarify that.

[Kelody]

My pull strategy is ranged attack, leg shot, powershot, heart toxin. At this point I have fired about 4 normal arrows and the mob is closing fast. If I really want or need to, I can back up and get about 6 normal shots total before the mob reaches me. I then do rampage (arrow stab if you don't have it) and then mash should be just about ready. I do powershot first so mash recycles faster. Heart toxin will tick almost it's full duration even when fired last. On high HP mobs Heart toxin can be re-applied.

[xxxDeathStaRxxx]

I appreciate this post and it seems that the observations I have had about how weapons and DPS work in this game are valid.

I am a level 10 ranger and I also played on on the Test Server during beta. I had beta buffed 30, 40, and 50 rangers. I was given some nice equipment for all of them and the conclusion that I came to is that with all skills being equally maxed, 2 handed weapons seemed to do more raw DPS than dual wielding for me at least; especially with Mash and the AoE "rampage". Granted, I am not a number cruncher by any stretch, I am just going by how fast the mobs died and the numbers I saw floating above their heads.

I am not sure if this was intended but back in the days when I played EverQuest, if you were a Shadow-Knight, you wanted a weapon with a "higher delay" because if you were to cast a spell, you would miss out on swings with would theoretically lower your damage output. I am not sure how it worked but if you were doing DPS, you never uses a low delay weapon. The higher delay would allow you to come out of casting a spell swinging.

This is the dumbed down version of how I understood this but I am thinking that it may have some validity here. Even at level 10 with Mace, Swords, and 2hd Sword maxed, I feel that I get more bang for the buck using my 2hd weapon. The crits are higher obviously which at low levels kills most mobs I would have to kill, and I seem to miss less although I am not sure if that that I can prove this. It would help to know how the game calculates swings when spell casting especially if you get bumped in the middle of casting and also how attack haste affects the numbers.

It also seems that when I am fighting mobs that are 2 or 3 levels above me, The 2hd does more damage against despite their mitigation.

Thanks for starting this thread. I really like my ranger and want to play this class well.

[Kelody]

I am a fan of dual wielding and prefer fairly fast weapons as they just feel better. I can see the possibilities while using a 2h weapon or a really slow 1h. Alganon doesn't punish fast weapons though by resetting the melee timer when you use a skill. Mash, Arrow stab, and rampage are all instant cast so you melee virtually right through them.

[Lewick]

FYI, here is from the release patch:

•Tear has been removed from the game.
•New Guardianship action: Duck. Increases your dodge chance by 18% for 10 seconds. If you dodge during this time you will gain a Tactical Advantage which increases the critical strike chance of your next Mash, Arrow Stab or Rampage attack by 30%.

While there were some disappointed individuals (understandably so), Tear was described by Minuvo as too much damage for a tree that was supposed to be a tank-like tree. I actually agreed with the move. I only got to mid-20s with my ranger, but I found Guardian stance far better at DPS than predation, which didn't make sense for what the tree was supposed to be.

Still, a bonus to critical striking a rampage is no small cookies in its own right. It is just not a tear.

As for slow versus fast, it took me a while to realize OP was referring to Dual Wield in both situations (slow and fast). Is that correct?

I actually never tested that, but slower in the early game, faster later game makes sense to me by theory. I know there was some discussion about the 2-h weapon, too, but overall, most Rangers don't use it much (that I knew of), if nothing else, I don't think any Abilities were specifically meant for it.

Interesting changes from the last beta, but I can see why they did it. Hopefully they did *something* (other than the reduced focus cost on power shot) to relieve at least some of the other focus issues when you start gaining ranks in things. I reported that mark (whatever it's called) as it gained ranks was getting really expensive to cast. And noted that predation, from a pure DPS perspective, was getting incredibly expensive at higher levels. One fight against one mob at level 32 and I was pretty much out of focus by using the skills that kept me alive (mark, heart toxin, leg shot, power shot and then mash and arrow stab when the mob got to me.)

I can certainly see why they got rid of tear though. The guardian line's name implies that you're playing a guardian of something. The bond implies tanking as well. Unfortunately there really weren't any mobs in the game to test any of the tanking abilities in beta. The presence also is a damage reduction skill for the guardian line, and the top of the tree in the guardian line is a damage avoidance skill (through parry.) So it was pretty obvious it was supposed to be the "tanking" line (I put that in quotes because it really seems like it's an avoidance tank rather than a mitigation tank, which can often lead to inconsistent results in most games that use such a mechanism.)

Thanks for the info.

[Scion87]

Alright, so finals are done so I now have time for more testing. ATM my ranger is lvl 32(and still loving it).

I am mainly interested in predation tree, but also want to try out gaurdianship more. Here are some things I wanted to test:

1) Talants and their usefulness, eg: dps increase for each talent, proc rate on stuff

2) Action coefficents for AP and arrows

3) Stat breakdown - what each stat gives and relative usefulness

4) Arrow dmg type - this seems obvious but I want to find out concrete types


I have about 2.5-3 weeks off for the holidays. What I would like from the all you rangers out there is any other suggestions of stuff you would like see tested. My overall plan is to consolidate all this information eventually into a ranger guide. Also if you have data you have collected that would like to share that would be helpful as well, I will make sure credit is given when I make my ranger guide.

Evalynn, asharr ranger on ardios