Ranger Merits: A report.

[Marajade]

The Short Answer: Nothing special.
Longer Answer: Only Recycle is worth getting.

Stelth Shot is mostly worthless. Its not a drastic enmity reduction, and the recast is too big to be worth it, even at 5 minutes.

Flashy Shot Blows. 20 minute recast which you can drop to 10 minutes at the cost of every other meritable thing on that menu, and it'll kill you if you use it with Slugwinder. You can do about 20% more damage to Kirin, but you get 50% more enmity than normal, so he's likely to turn around and swat you like a small swatable bug.

Snapshot is ok, but since half the time you need to pace your shots to avoid death, or are unable to fire at max speed due to conditions, it wont do much. And its probably like Haste gear, in that it will lower your TP return.

Recycle is the only one worth spending all those limit points on. At level 6 its 30%, and with AF hat that goes up to 60%. Great for Dynamis and Sky farming, or anything but hard fights and exp. Downside is that it only affects you, but the money saved on things like Kabura Arrows goes a long way.

 

[decidence]

You don't need to pace your shots to avoid death... the one thing hurting RNG is their DPS because they don't get TP fast enough to WS once per fight like they used to be able too.

Any decent tank can hold hate off any RNG until they use Sidewinder usually and by then it should be dead... so shoot as fast as you want, that's what SE is trying to fix for RNG's, their TP build.

 

[Legomyeggo]

They need to fix accuracy. Someone at KI was saying how Flashy Shot was wearing off after WS, and showed no sign of increasing WS damage. I'm still not interested in ranger, and I've come to admit that after one year of the original nerf, all they're doing is slapping me in the face with a used condom.

 

[Marajade]

You don't need to pace your shots to avoid death... the one thing hurting RNG is their DPS because they don't get TP fast enough to WS once per fight like they used to be able too.

Any decent tank can hold hate off any RNG until they use Sidewinder usually and by then it should be dead... so shoot as fast as you want, that's what SE is trying to fix for RNG's, their TP build.

On flying type mobs i do. At 333 a hit with berserk and food, i pull hate off a ninja in 2 shots. 3 if they did a Jin.

 

[Stouter]

Does snapshot lower TP?

It sounds about the same as nin in the end. After playing with elemental sans and reading about Sange, I want my 6 merits back to put into Ninja Tool Expertise.

 

[Marajade]

Does snapshot lower TP?

I havent done it myself, but since everything else that lowers delay also lowers TP, i assume it works for Snapshot also.

 

[Tagrineth]

I havent done it myself, but since everything else that lowers delay also lowers TP, i assume it works for Snapshot also.

Er... Haste gear doesn't lower TP.

Dual Wield does, but Haste gear does NOT.

 

[Orestes]

Flashy Shot Blows. 20 minute recast which you can drop to 10 minutes at the cost of every other meritable thing on that menu, and it'll kill you if you use it with Slugwinder. You can do about 20% more damage to Kirin, but you get 50% more enmity than normal, so he's likely to turn around and swat you like a small swatable bug.

You can lower this down to 7.5min recast, not 10. And yeah, it will cost you the use of every other ability, but the others suck really bad.

Flashy Shots effectiveness is completely relative to the mob you're fighting. One Rng has already reported a +33% damage increase on Fafnir, which is already a really hard mob for Rng to do good dmg on. Also, keep in mind Flashy Shot makes it almost guaranteed your Slugwinder will hit since it's essentially like firing your WS at a mob that cons Even Match. So, eating Meat, /war sub, x2 minuets, and +55 STR unleashing a PPA Sidewinder at Kirin will probably net around 2k dmg. It's already possible to hit him for 1k without this ability, so I can see it being possible.

Not sure if it's proven or not, but everyone is saying it's only +10 Enmity when you shoot it, which you can negate with -enmity merits + AF2. If I wear full AF2 (-12) and have maxed -enmity merits I'm still going to be in the negative as far as enmity is concerned, so death shouldn't be an issue.

In all honesty the worst by far is recycle. Who is concerned with saving money? That is the very least of my concerns.

 

[Acutie]

Flashyshot isn't that Flashy.

 

[Anaeran]

Not impressed. Seems like most of the new skills were just thrown in and dangled in front of us to lure us away from the piss-ass rage many people were in over the recent bans.

GG SE, we're a buncha puppets playing your game.

edit: they could have been far more creative, C- for effort :\

 

[Legomyeggo]

Like I told my buddy, Synical, they should've just let us merit Scavenge more, this way I'd be laughing instead of being teased by some crap abilities.

 

[Orestes]

Flashyshot isn't that Flashy.

I can't complain.

I have had some time to test things out a bit, and Snapshot is also a worthwhile JT to upgrade. You can significantly lower the delay of your weapon, and not sacrafice any TP.

Also, Barrage is now treated as a single attack instead of multiple. It works the same in every way as before except it now generates hardly any enmity at all, and the chat log message for it is different.

 

[Tagrineth]

Orestes, you're already a beast of a ranger, lol. Snapshot doesn't lower TP return, though? Lol, marajade...

 

[Firestreak]

Just a humorous thought.

If it takes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8 merits to cap recycle(don't know, just pulling guess outa my ass)

Then you're spending 330k xp's worth of tools on leveling. Which would mean it'd require like 1.1mill worth of xp to actually get your tools back.

 

[neophytal]

Just a humorous thought.

If it takes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8 merits to cap recycle(don't know, just pulling guess outa my ass)

Then you're spending 330k xp's worth of tools on leveling. Which would mean it'd require like 1.1mill worth of xp to actually get your tools back.

only if you merit ON rng

 

[Tagrineth]

Those costs would be correct, Firestreak, if the new merits could get to level 6, which they can't. Max is 3.

 

[Blackchaoshero]

hmmm... ya, nothing that great in there.

 

[Marajade]

Orestes, you're already a beast of a ranger, lol. Snapshot doesn't lower TP return, though? Lol, marajade...

if it doesnt lower TP return, then its good. But since most traits that lower attack speed also lowers TP, i assumed Snapshot would do the same.

 

[InfidelC]

It seems to me that my barrage accuracy is lol at best, at least before this update I could actually hit a full barrage. It seems like they broke it even more now. Even on TW I msis barrage shots.

 

[reddogneo]

/kirin will be alittle different now. I would perosnaly use flashyshot slug then shadowbind run away and temp log. now I can go as /war with atk food and prob get really good dmg.
As far as the merits go I think flashy shot and snapshot are the most worth it recycle is shit so is stealthy shot. Im sure stealthy shot and flashy cant be stacked anyway