Hello All...

I've been playing Wiz8 for a few weeks now, and out of all my characters the Ranger seems to be the weakest. I chose a Hobbit and am currently level 9.

Here are the stats:

Str 53
Int50
Pie 30
Vit 52
Dex 83
Speed 61
Senses 94

Skills (the ones I consider important)

Bow 59
Ranged Weapon 77 (with bonus)
Scout 43

Now, I have read about critical strike with bows, but I have done this a total of ZERO times with the Ranger using a bow. She seems to do the least amount of damage of my character (well, except for the monk, they're about even, but at least he insta-kills every once in a while). My question is, should I adjust any skills or areas to increase a chance for a critical strike?

Another side question: What influences the Bard's drop in stamina from using weapons? Is it vitality only? Or is it related to music skill. The dude sure seems to get tired quickly from playing a friggin' lute!

side question first: the fact is, your bard's normal fighting takes stamina as others in your party and it has nothing to do with music skill. Your bard gets tired quickly just because he uses instruments. Instruments, like gadgets, use stamina instead of SP to cast spell.
main question: for rangers, you can wait for a longer time. I am not sure about what to train, but mine work just fine. With just a greenword bow, she crits the baddies quiet often. Also her alto-search is really useful.
Anyway just go on with what you wish to do. Every class has its own pros and cons.

No worry, you're doing fine.

Keep boosting Senses and Dex (then Speed when Senses is maxed)

Skillwise boost Bow / Ranged / Eagle Eye. (Alchemy if you don't have Eagle Eye yet or if one of the others is maxed out)

Most people only start seeing regular instakills with thier rangers from level 15.

Vitality, Strength and Piety all affect stamina. The stamina drop while fighting is higher when you use a heavy weapon (Great sword or Siege arbalests)

[ 01-29-2002: Message edited by: Warhammer ]</p>

I can relate to your unhappyness with your Ranger. It will seem that he isn't pulling his weight. While my Fighter with long bow gets 15 damage, my Ranger with double shot cross bow gets 8-10 8-10.. i gave the Fighter the double shot cross bow and now the fighter gets 15-20 15-20 and my Ranger with the long bow gets 6...

Hang in there Dex and Sens is what you want. After that I use 3 points to Strenght.. soon enough he will be doing more damage.

The thing was that Ranger Dex 100 Sense 100 Strength 50 isn't as good as Fighter Strenght 100 Dex 100.. there both going to get hits but the Fighter is able to do more damage. but 100 Sense will unlock Eagle Eye [img]smile.gif[/img] making him even better. so strength is lacking.. it will catch up.

If your ranger is in the back row, dont add into dex, add into str.

Dex is really only helpful for rangers if they need reflection. As str is a controlling attribute to bow also and int is also a controlling att to ranged.

this means that dex is really only usefull for the ranger if they want reflection. They will get just as much + to hit by upping str, they will also get more stamina, and more carry wieght(you can carry more arrows, which is handy late in the game).

so what i would do is str/sen then spd/int(or dex or pie, depending on what kind of ranger you want to make)

Thanks for all the help!!

Goumindong:

I disagree:

DEX, affects:
Ranged to hit and attack rating
Melee to hit and attack rating
Adds extra Ranged and Melee attacks

STR, affects:
Melee to hit and attack rating but *not* Ranged to hit and attack rating.
Damage both ranged and melee.
Carry weight and stamina

If the Ranger is going for Instakills obviously DEX is better than STR, since it gives a bonus to attack rating and adds attacks/round (=More opportunities to make instakills!)

I would definitly push dex and senses. You may want to push str a little just becaue arrows can get heavy when added in with better armor.

Dear Sparkitus & all;

Your ranger sounds a lot like mine at that level, although mine is a dracon. I put him in my front line along with my fighter and monk. I was consistantly under-impressed by his fighting skills, even going into level 20. True, he did get an instant kill from time to time, and those were very nice, but in general his damage was around 7-14 per arrow, when he hit at all, while my lizardman fighter who had a crossbow and a lower bow stat seemed to hit as often or perhaps a bit more, and for 25 damage at least, consistantly. And while one expects more damage from a quarrel than an arrow, the Ranger was using the Eagle Eye Bow (+40% to damage, supposedly, but it didn't seem to add up). As for the Alchemy, his skill in that was growing, but at present still wasn't terribly useful, and I really needed another front line fighter that could take and give hits more than a caster.

I had pretty much resolved myself to having my Ranger be the least-useful member of the team, when suddenly things changed. I bought the Ivory Sword (a made item) and saw it was very good, but I didn't want to replace my fighter's Excalabur. Seeing that the Ranger had maxed out his bow skill anyway, I put the sword and a shield in his hands. Amazingly, he started hitting pretty well for someone with 0 sword skill (about one every 3 tries), and from the start he did more damage than his arrows did, although no critical hits. His sword skill is now in the 50's and he hits very consistantly, usually for about 20-30 damage per hit. I am much more pleased with him now.

I know that most people advise to not give a Ranger a melee weapon; for me, however, it turned out to be a very good deal. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Sparkitus:

I felt the same way about the ranger and even now I'm still not totally convinced but once you get him maxed in DEX and SEN and very high ranged you'll start getting instant kills with him, which are kind of nice.

My reservations though are based on the fact that at level 18 mine still only gets them relatively infrequently and when he's not getting them then 10 HPs off a Rapax who has 400+ isn't exactly up to even my rogue with Fang and something else capable of doing 100+ damage with multiple backstabs and 10% kill possibility.

OTOH, don't forget your Ranger is also providing scouting to help potion and power finding as well as early warning about enemies so early to mid-game at least he's useful for other things than just inflicting damage.