Newbie on rangers

This is my first time starting out as a ranger so i need tips. What armor is best for energy? I plan on going to go after the survivor title. Any other tips would be appreciated.

Druids/Radiant,

+health armor, obviously.

you live longer so you can sac with OOB a lot more until you die.

+energy armor sucks, you use it once and run out of energy. really, use +health and OOB til you die!

for survivor, best i can think of is not to die. hmmyeah.

getting either extra health or energy only really matters on how you plan on playing the ranger. ranger is a nice player to play because there is such versatileness(is this a word) to them. my suggestion to survivalbility is to remain back from the main aggro source mainly the tank stick to edges of the groups where spellcasters are and know when to move outta there in case of party failure. maybe even keep a running skill in your toolbar seeing rangers have a lot of them at all times. as for play style i'd take degen skill along with a couple of interupt skills and a self heal of some sort. as for secondary ranger is one of those chars that a secondary doesnt always state how you play but enhances how you want to play your ranger. on the armor thing deside on what skills you wanna use they will determine what armor to get as referring to extra health or energy. i hope this helps it really doesnt seem to say much. one quick note most people think you should be an interuptor or barrager but their is many ways to play a ranger(example trapper)

druids because most of the time u will be fighting in the back and wont take damge and with extra energy, u can attack more. even with the extra energy, energy will be tight so u will need to pull so points in expertise to keep the energy cost low. so points in winderness survival and max out ur marksmanship if u want unless u want to be a beast master.

Considering that a vital and quintessential part of playing a ranger is a reduction of energy costs... I don't think using druids is taking the fullest potential out of your armor. Obviously, the SUPREME setup would be having a different armor set for every situation, but in all reality, that's not really a cost/space effective solution. Really, there's two criteria to meet when I decide on an armor choice. The effect has to be active, not passive. This means that the armor doesn't rely on a specific situation to be useful. (ie... using a stance/enchant/preparations) While all of these armor types can be situationally useful and effective, for wide scale use, they fall short and you end up not using the effect for most of the time. Additionally, the effect has to be something I will use, Period. Extra energy is great when you have a situation where everything is riding on using one skill, and you are done to your last amount of energy. It doesn't regenerate any faster, it doesn't make skills cost less. It just gives you one or two more skills extra. Really if you are burning through your entire energy bar, then you need to examine your play style, not your equipment. So, really, that just leaves the +health armor. Its an active bonus (always have the additional health) and its always useful.

But truthfully, if you plan on playing any particular character a great deal, it would be wise to have a number of armor sets (or at least socketed armor.)

The ranger is built to be versatile, yet multiple armors will prove to be the way to go. Expertise makes the energy pool to stretch further, yet druid/radiant armor will add to that pool. Health armor isn't bad, but in the end, will it be as useful? That depends on the situation.

My ranger has a full backpack of armor and masks. Druid,Stalwart,Frostbound,Pyrebound, and Stormbound. A mask for each attribute,and weapons for various builds. The ranger's versatility is an expensive, yet worthwhile expansion of the ranger's usefulness.

So,yes, the use of the ranger will decide what you use, but being versatile enough to play multiple builds will make you a desired and respected ally to those you run across.

Playing one build well is nice, but playing multiple builds well makes you NICE!

Thank you all for the info, i'll have to buy me some different sets of armor for different play styles. Money doesnt seem to be a problem for me at all.

I have a question if people dont mind answering me. Whats the difference between shortbow and longbow? Longbow shoots farther distance but slower and shortbow hits faster and short distance? Which type does most rangers use?

Thanks in advance
-PW

ive always used a longbow for pulling and recurve bowbut your bow you use is more dependent on how your playing and which you prefer

I love my flatbow. Sometimes the arch of the arrows are good because it can help you shoot over obsticals you normally wouldn't be able to shoot around. It's an extreme rarity if I use my longbow. But recurves are ftw

Recurve Bow is generaly used. I like Shortbows too because as a ranger I don't find myself targeted to much so range doesnt matter. Then, with a Shortbow, I get more arrows off faster.

i would use a flatbow wen barrage with favorable wind, recurve for general use like inturrept, longbow for pulling

i never use hornbows or shortbows

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I disagree slightly w/ snipious here.

I recommend the recurve as the all around general purpose bow. But I've also said in the past, the shortbow is the red haired stepchild of the bunch and I give it close second place. One item to keep in mind is that all bows have shorter flight times the closer you are to your target... so a point blank flatbow doesn't have it's flighttime problems, it's just as the range opens up that it's flight time problems become evident.


As for armor, in the past rangers really only had one option... druid's... all the rest gave a bonus which really didn't help much... +15 against one element or another when you already had +30 against all the elements just wasn't worth it over a 30% increase in your starting energy pool.

W/ the expansions the life suits are almost never a bad option though now, while druids is still a solid armor pick. The reason for this is that rangers only have a 25 energy starting pool, and +7 energy again is a substantial 30% increase in your starting pool. (+12 w/ a +5 energy bow is a healthy 50% increase). For most casters though, +7 energy is statistically insignificant to someone who already has 45-50'ish, and can knock themselves up to +30 more w/ -2/+30 item sets.

The plus armor in stance, and plus armor while under preperation are both good sets, but specialized sets and best used as PvP armors. I generally don't bother w/ them except as PvP equipment and disregard them in PvE as not worth the time/expense/inventory space.

The last bit is important as well though, remember when you gain DP, both your energy and your health are reduced. +health comes after this reduction but so does +energy. To a ranger, having +7 energy when you're at 30% DP can be quite important to being able to function. As a ranger it's very easy to find yourself 'undercapitalized' w/o enough energy to be fully effective. Try this out on something like a cripshot and you'll quickly see what I'm referring to as you'll find yourself running off regen almost instantly after putting down apply poison and the first cripshot w/ no 'reserve' for your critical skills like interupts.

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