What kind of ranger is best? i see people that use poison shot/noxious shot for their main attack, and they burn through mana and pots rediculously fast.

Now I use putrid penetration on my left button and noxious on my right... i spam with left mouse button and occasionally use my right, and i use AOEs in between. Now that leaves me pretty good on mana, mainly because putrid penetration has a 10 sec cooldown.

Now my question is... what are you? and which one do you feel is better? conservative ranger or pot chugger?

Whatever floats yer boat. There is no "best", just what is best for you...

Personally, on my ranger, I have Trigger Finger Frenzy on LMB and Noxious Shot on right. I pull with NS, then blast away. I use GB as an AOE, when necessary.

I use nothing. I have packed on as much critical gear as is possible and use Trigger Frenzy. It comes to a point where if I used a skill, it would take longer to cast than me shooting. I can also shoot more arrows or bullets in the time frame of the cast. Finally, the measily couple thousand from whatever skill that is, is less than the regular damage I do, lesser still if the hits do critical damage. ATM, I have 13.05% critical. I shoot at a speed of .31 or .22 depending on the weapon. That's roughly 3 to 5 shots a second.

Of course, YMMV depending on your gear set up. My gear is all crit or attack speed, but I'm finding my crit suit does more damage than my attack speed suit. Simply put, .20 is fastest possible attack speed given gear and attack speed buffs. I rather shoot at .22 and have my critical, than at .20 and have no critical.

So in essence, I use no mana pots...ever.

recently, i have just been running with nothing mapped to left and nox. shot mapped to right. i use that setup when solo and with my mage friend. i dont use gb or rof anymor because i sit as far back as possible sinc ei have like 1600hp heh. i use a popper with hp/mana steal, and switch out for a high dps shotgun with increased attck speed when needed.

when im going for bosses i usually switch out nox. shot for poison shot.
for me, keeping attacks mapped to both keys burns too much mana to be worth it, unless you dont mind burning a lot of pots or you have a high mana pool. i sometimes run with the nox shot/ putrid pen. combo. that one is ok like you said because of the recast times. but still can be a mana burner.

with my weapon choices now, ive just started using one attack mapped to right button and switch out depending on the situation. even spamming nox shot on large groups, i rarely run totally out of mana, and when i do i just keep that button held down anyway so they fire off as my mana regens.

thats just me though, im a bullet spammer. i usually have no mana issues if im using a shotgun.

fizzle
ranger
serv_1or4

It's whatever floats your boat, as stated earlier.
My boat, however, doesn't float with mana.

My ranger build is a 3:2:1 ratio of stats. 3 Agility per 2 Endurance per 1 Intelligence. I go through mana a lot because I only have like 400. My HP is 5k and my DPS is just below 800.
(By the way, you can calculate DPS by averaging your min and max damage and multiplying it by your rate of fire. RoF can be found by dividing 1 by your attack speed. Example; 1 / .50 = 2. 2 x [(100+500)/2]. Avg DPS would be 600.)
I use a lvl 20 purple popper on my 22 ranger. My skill layout is something like this: nothing on LMB, Nox Shot on RMB (the AoE one), a few passives, the BBQ chicken leg, Flame Circle, Stomp, Finger Frenzy, and the defense debuff spell.
My stategy is setting up the BBQ chicken leg as bait and sniping from afar (Shift + LmB). If I get surrounded, i use the debuff and the fire circle (although I may change this to the Nox Blast close-range AoE one) then stomp and run away. I recast BBQ and repeat.
It works pretty well when I solo.
When I'm out of mana I just wait for it to charge back up. No point in buying extra pots when I can just run away for free.
In a group, it's more like I just sit back an snipe at whatever the Warriors agro'd...
That's my "tree-fitty."

tachan i love your idea of nothing, im going to work on that

Edited by Zaith (06/18/07 03:55 AM)

Tachan, what's your spread on stat points if you don't mind me asking? All AGI with END?

Thanks Tachan!

TY =D this helped and I planned on becoming a ranger...I love AoE and for a ranger to have that is awesome...thanks for the help, hope to see you guys in-game, it's downloading now....name will probably be..._Defecated_