Ranger Skins

[Marg]

Many may not agree but rangers have only one great skill (other than pet spamming) and that is making skins. With a full set of dam skins, a ranger is truely dangerous and you can understand why they need 80 million XP to remort. However, uptimes on the Mud suck and you end up having your skins for less time than it took to make them. I think that some changes should be made to skins:

1. Rangers should be able to purchase storage lockers for their skins so that they are not stolen or junked.

2. Skins should decay over time (say they last 2 weeks) instead of dying every day with the mud reboot.

3. The skin should have a min level that is equal to the maker of the skin. This would solve the problem of rangers remorting and using skins to hit harder than any other class would be able to. This is not really an issue right now but it would be if skins made it through a crash.

I know that many will say that it is not very hard to make dam skins but those comments can only come from people who haven't tried lateley. Dam skins are the only thing that can be used to justify why rangers need 80 mil in XP when most clerics can kick their ass.

[Jun]

I agree with Marg on this one.
Rangers are a very elite class in that with skins they can deal out the most serious non-spell damge. So why do we not see more Furballs running the mud? Beacause skins are extremely hard to come by. With uptimes like they are I do not see me spending 4-8 hours skinning and running with them for 2-4 hours and the mud go down. Now I have heard some people say that they can skin a full set in one hour. That would be worth it. I would like to see a ranger, by itself, make a full set of damage skins in an hour. NO Way! With extreme luck, maybe in two hours, but never in an hour. I don't really have any suggestions as to how to make rangers back into a non-spamming class, but making skins harder to keep or create is causeing most rangers to commit to being pet spamming equipment runners. Maybe limit pets but please do something so rangers can fight again.

Maybe I rambled a bit too much. But my point is...If Rangers are a remort-only class at least make them worth it. I know to me Bards seem to have the upper hand in the remort class and Rangers fall short.

[Marg]

The best that I have done is to make 6 dam skins in 2 hours and that required the help of a cleric. Without a cleric rejuving your movement and quaking your own AC1 it would take forever to make more than 1 or 2 dam skins.

[Jun]

And another gripe on skins...

If my mage botches a spell...looses concentration, forgets spell, what have you...it takes mana away but not all the mana it would have taken if the spell was successful. Now when a ranger botches a skin...it takes the same amount of moves away as if you had been successful. Maybe I am wrong and spells and skins are not the same. But I think rangers need help.

[Marg]

The reason that there are very few rangers is because they blow. Why would anyone want to become a ranger? You have to start out with crappy stats, you need 80 mil XP to remort, no one want to group with you unless you have fumble, and they get hit way harder than some other classes. Rangers are a remort class and should be given advantages over basic classes. Yes a 3 dam 48 AC jacket is great but no one is going to make them if it is gone an hour later.

Also on the Bard/Ranger arguement, unless all bard gear is becoming ml 29 then you are dreaming because that is when rangers can really start making skins. Before that they are stuck with equipment that is fairly weak considering the supposed greatness of the class.

And if the lockers are too much work, make skins rentable!

[Marg]

Like I said, I don't think that this skinning process should be made any easier. Dam skins should not be easy to come by for any ranger (no matter how many remorts or thier age) but considering the difficulty in making them the current uptimes are a killer. If we were getting a week or two of uptimes then I would not have said anything but these 24 hour uptimes are a killer on skins. With uptimes like these, most rangers will not bother using there only great skill other than pet spamming. Since so many in the mud despise pet spamming, I am trying to come up with a way to minimize it. Have a nive day.

[Pink]

Sooooooooo many points to complain about, so little time. I have a 7 remort ranger.. 5 of them were as ranger itself.. it was a labor of love, and anyone who ran with me knew I really liked rangers... and the fact that I would spend hours with my not perfect ranger making skins for that soontobe perfect ranger, with and without a bot. Why did I do it? Cuz the damage kicked major butt! It was worth it, even if I could only get a few hours out of the skins...

Now, I have a "perfect" R29 (I haven't gotten around to that last level after rushing all her remorts to be done before she turned 35) that can skin a full set of 13 in under 2 hours with a bot.. without a bot it takes hellalonger since I'm not the most patient person. And you won't see any of my rangers wearing their pet skins since there's easier ways to find corpses that are less mindnumbing.

Sick of people stealing your skins? Hide them better! Know of other people making skins? Why not offer to share them?

I'd run a ranger anyday over running a cleric or any other cheese class... And I never had a problem getting a group (albeit the lack of clerics lately is kinda alarming and might even send my ranger into a panic) with my ranger... now only if she could dodge better

Oh yeah, my perfect ranger is very young... and her regen isn't so hot when she's wearing as much +stat eq as she can to skin with!

[Marg]

Pink,

Thanks for the input. I don't have any problem with the time that it takes to make skins or the cost if you fail I just wish that we had a way to make them last longer than a few hours. I would much rather be using the skins then making them. I actually have a couple other rangers that I share skins but the frustration is still there when you log on after taking a half hour break and your skins are gone.
By the way, thanks for mentioning dodge. I forgot about the rangers best combat skill. I have many battles against aggros theat using anticipate and dodge that I never get hit.

[ching]

"cost" of ranger skins. WOW. When I was leveling Sashimi out I used to spend fortunes on Identify scrolls. Now you guys get auto-identify (most of the time.) Talk about making things easy.

When my 11 yr old son is running with my cleric, I just have him skin something from time to time. Usually to replace the sapphire shield, etc. A few 'improvements' on a rangers equipment make them quite nice. Like one skin every 15min, it adds up after a while.

[Griffon]

Has anyone even thought about the fact of *gasp* getting eq to use on a ranger? Then...

a) With the right eq, you can still hit pretty damn hard
b) Don't have to worry about it getting stolen or
c) crash lost.
d) It's rentable.

And if you act now, you can even get your very own personal hotel room, complete with a nice receptionist that will let you stay as long as you'd like!

Still interested?

-Nic