Do Rangers Need Marksmanship?

X-Cyrus-X

Pre-Searing Cadet

Join Date: May 2005

I was thinking of making a ranger but I don't really like any of the marksmanship skills. I was thinking of going ran/nec and using wilderness survival, blood magic and curses. Using preperations, life saps, and curses to make up for the damage. However, I noticed some people in forums mentioning that their bows required a certain amount of marksmanship. I was just wondering if I don't use marksmanship, am I not going to be able to use any decent weapons later on?

sanderke

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: May 2005

Most endgame bows (14-24+ damage) require marksmanship around 10 or 11 minimal.

Without marksmanship the best your gonna get is something around 7-10 damage.

infiniti

Pre-Searing Cadet

Join Date: May 2005

South Carolina

Some bows require a certain amount of marksmanship attribute points to use. In your case, as long as you have enough marksmanship attribute points needed to use a certain bow, I believe you can use it, even if you don't really use any marksmanship skills.

Dreamsmith

Dreamsmith

Elite Guru

Join Date: Feb 2005

Minnesota

Beguine Guild [BGN]

You should check out Ensign's excellent treatise on game mechanics.

Now, for those of you whose eyes glazed over about two sentences into it, I'll make a long story short: your score in marksmanship affects how much damage you do with your bow, even if meet the requirements and even if you're not using a skill. You don't need marksmanship to be a ranger, but you do need marksmanship if you want to actually do real damage with your bow.

Without marksmanship, you're pretty much limited to using your bow for things like Pin Down or Distracting Shot while you use traps, pets, or your secondary class to do real damage (assuming you do damage at all -- a lot of good builds in this game focus entirely on disrupting the enemy so others can do damage more easily).

X-Cyrus-X

Pre-Searing Cadet

Join Date: May 2005

ok thanks, I used one of those skill builder things just now and I can still do about 10/10/8/8 even if I go with 4 attributes. Is that maybe cutting it a bit thin or could that work out if I plan my skills right?

Pevil Lihatuh

Pevil Lihatuh

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Apr 2005

Yorkshire, UK

R/Me

yeah lol i went for the wilderness survival/expertise track... then found an 18 - 23 bow that needed 8 in marksmanship... without the marksmanship i found i was useless when waiting for my ws/expertise skills to regen so i bumped the points into marksmanship just enough to get the damage out of my bow.