Hi, I'm newer to the server and I know of the Ranger spec on live servers, but was unsure of a good hybrid spec on Uth...

any help is appreciated. thanks!

If you have played ranger before, I would suggest to use the catacombs charbuilder, which is on Uthgard patchlevel:

http://daoc2.catacombs.com/cbuilder2.cfm?Ranger

My suggestion is you choose abilities that are important for you, and try to fit the spec points to those skills.

I would do it like this, for example:

- after-evade stun (25 in pierce)
- sidestun (18 celtic dual)
- rapid fire (35 bow)
- capped stealth at RR5 (35 stealth)
- good dex/qui selfbuff (40 path)

Now if you take those you see that you have 408 skillpoints left (485 if you do full auto-training).
This is obviously not enough to get good style-damage from both pierce and CD line, so you might decide to dump the rest of the points to pierce, resulting in 39 pierce and you have a solid hybrid spec (39 pierce 18 CD 35 bow 35 stealth 40 path).
If you prefer to improve your defense a bit you might go 42 path for the last spec AF selfbuff, and you end up with 37 pierce, also a solid hybrid spec.
If you do not do auto-training (I highly recommend doing AT!!) then you would end up at 40 path, 37 pierce for example.

If you have other priorities, your spec will change. E.g. if you dont need rapid fire you can drop bow a bit. If you do rely on charges heavily you can drop path. If you don't mind to have a little less stealth you can drop it by a point or two. If you dont need sidestun, you might drop CD a bit and up pierce for higher pierce style damage.

Just a few uthgard specific sidenotes:
- weaponskill is not all that important here for defense penetration (not implemented yet), so you might even try the "high CD" route and leave pierce at 25. I personally do not know how that would work out in the end, but if you dare to, you can try it, and post your experiences here. You can always respec if you don't like it.

- Bow dmg shows only slight increases over 50 combined, so you can go sniper-spec for example, but your bow damage from 35+15 will already be pretty high.

You can do:
35 Pierce
36 Stealth
40 PF
35 Bow
21 CD

I would say Shade/Ivia's post really sum's it up the best. I played hybred on live for 2.5 years and played hybred on here as my main for going on 1.5 years. He reallys hits all the most important points. Bow should either be 12/35/45 anything but those 3 is just not worth it. 12 (autro-trained) for mele ranger, 35 for true hybrids so they still have points for mele and get rapid fire and 1st lvl of volley, and 45 for sniper spec so you can get rapid fire 2 and the higher end volley. As Ivia pointed out, I do as much damage with my 35+17 bow as a sniper spec scout with 50+15 bow. The sniper spec may do a tad more dmg (like 10-30 more per arrow) but not enough to count for how much it costs. Same goes for mele, going above 51 composite in weapon is only useful to gain better styles. You will see no more dmg and no more def penetration. The only thing I would add to Ivia's important things is at lvl 29 in celtic duel you get the nice followup to the side stun. It does great dmg, uses very little endo, and has a nice bleed on it. If you ever have any questions feel free to contact me in game on any of my toons listed below.

RonELuvv wrote:cut cut

Your experience is definetly worth noting, but, here the environment is slight different.
Here no buff buts exist and therefore, Path Finding has a greater importance.
Wouldn't be a bad idea to reach 48 as a pierce ranger and 50 as a blade one.
I have 43 and can only say that last AF buff plus PD III are a really nice combo

I do agree about 29 CD, it has a very nice side combo that delivers huge damages. On exp, with that styles, i end up aggroing even if there are pure tanks fighting with me

The initial poster asked for a hybrid spec. It's almost impossible to get a solid hybrid spec with 48+ path and deal some damage.
You would either need to drop bow to 30 (thus losing rapidfire) and pierce to 34 (thus losing some amount of style bonus) or drop CD entirely, which is not a good choice either.

For pure sniper spec, 48 path might be an option. Hybrid spec is all about balancing spec lines. I'm not saying it's not doable, but I doubt it is the most effective/versatile choice.

Dear Shade, rapid fire is only a must for those narrow minded, trend followers, that copycat others when in need of solutions for themselves
I have 30 archery, do really nice bow damage and, using a 4.5 speed bow, don't miss Rapid Fire that much. (I'm not saying it's useless, don't follow the temptation to understand me wrong ).

I pointed out the importance of PF, not to suggest 48 as the best hybrid choice, but to remind that here it has much more importance than it had on buffbots days.

Btw, Hhybrid spec means compromise on all, not "i get the best on all" and that's why 48 probably is too much for a pure hybrid, but you have to admit that raising it, brings advantages in both ranged and melee fight.

Badtzmaru wrote:but you have to admit that raising it, brings advantages in both ranged and melee fight.

That's why my ranger has 48 path. I don't deny it's usefulness. On sniperspec, red d/q and red dmgadd boost bowdmg more than going 45 to 50 in bowspec, for example. Plus, with only 25 in pierce, it also boosts my (low enough) melee dmg a bit.

It all comes down to the key features that you set for your toon (see my initial post). If you remove some of the points, you can boost others. My personal key features for a "hybrid" ranger would not allow me to go 48 path, that's all I'm saying

Aye, 48 path will not be doable for a "hybrid" ranger. Its great sniper, and higher path comes in handy for mele as well, but a true "hybrid" ranger has to try and get as close to decent on all things that he can. Yes, I know several people that play variations of the hybrid ranger without 35 bow, but I prefer 35 bow. Rapid fire is HUGE when used properly. Any class you fight that has range ability is now pwn'd if you use rapid fire. Even with quickcast they will only be able to get off 1 or 2 casts to my 5-10 arrows shooting them at cap spd of 1.5 sec. At low RR's it is very hard to have a great hybrid spec because points are needed everywhere. 40 path is nice, but 36 will work if you run with good charges/barrels. 18 CD is a MUST for the sidestun, and 29 is preferable with the followup. Pierce, really u just need it as close to compostie 50 as you can get it to make your spec work. The only style I use in that whole line is the evade stun. Stealth can be a tad lower then 50 composite once you get MoS 4. Based on all that you can come up with whatever hybrid spec you want. I will say on a side note, that with stealth, if you are not composoite 50 spec you will have a small chance of becoming unstealthed on normal and rapid fire shots, which can be a pain in the butt if you are like me and ALWAYS open with bow if you can.

Also, I would agree with you on your comments on Path more Toten once the limit on buff barrels and charges goes into effect. As it stands now you can run pocket buff bots by using buff barrels and high end charges to make up for what you lose on lower pathfinding. You cant do this for any of the other skills.

Awesome thank you all for the information.

So I took that

40 Path
35 stealth
35 bow
34 pierce
18 CD was the spec to go?

Looks like a fairly solid spec to me. As you gain in RR's and increase your +'s to pierce and stealth you can then lower them to increase cd, but you should be able to go a bit higher then what you are showing. Here is the spec's that I came up with. One with Auto train and one without.

Auto Train Bow

Path- 40
Stealth- 35
Bow- 35
Pierce- 35
CD- 26

No Auto Train

Path- 40
Stealth- 35
Bow- 35
Pierce- 35
CD- 22

That would be my skill set from 1L1-5L9 then at 6L0 I would drop stealth down 1 and pierce down 2 and raise CD up to 29, if you auto trained. If you didnt auto train then just drop stealth and pierce down 1 each and raise cd as much as you can.

Albsforlunch wrote:Awesome thank you all for the information.

So I took that

40 Path
35 stealth
35 bow
34 pierce
18 CD was the spec to go?

Yes, that's the Hybrid spec most folks use. The CD goes higher than 18 (assuming you autotrain bow), but the 18 style is the most important. You could drop stealth to 34 for a slightly higher CD.

Before you ask, you do retain all your auto-trained points should you choose to respec later. I would recommend you essentially skip the lower battlegrounds so you don't have to put points in stealth (for faster leveling) and fully auto-train bow, then in the last battle ground go in with your full spec once your done autotraining and get RR1-RR4 there (not that hard).

Edit: Your most important RA will be MOS. As a hybrid, you'll need at least MOS4.

Just a question since i'm building 2 rangers myself.
Whats the use of ur offhand and CD if u only spec in to 18 i guess CD styles except the sidestyle(stun) are never used in fight then ?
What does ur offhand give if ur not using it with Pierce styles anyway?
Aint it better to forget CD take more path and count on ur bow and the pierce after evade stunn then ?

Whitelights wrote:Just a question since i'm building 2 rangers myself.
Whats the use of ur offhand and CD if u only spec in to 18 i guess CD styles except the sidestyle(stun) are never used in fight then ?
What does ur offhand give if ur not using it with Pierce styles anyway?
Aint it better to forget CD take more path and count on ur bow and the pierce after evade stunn then ?

The reason to increase CD is that every point in CD increases your chance to attack with your offhand weapon even if you are using pierce/blade styles. If I remember from a discussion long ago on live, the chance was 0.5% per level in CD and 0.5% per character level. So, if you were level 50 and had 50 in CD your chance to attack with offhand was 50%. At 28 CD your chance is 39%. At CD 18 your chance is 34%, or 5% less chance. Assuming you attack in melee 6 times in a typical fight after using your bow, that 5% chance difference equates to a 27% chance you'll get an additional off-hand strike and a 73% chance you wont.

You could lower your CD to 18 and then boost pierce to 39 (instead of 34), so you gain cobra bite style, a follow up to copperhead (side style open). So on side of target you would do Ice Storm (18 CD style), then Copperhead (lvl 21 pierce), then cobra bite (lvl 39). Here the difference seems that you gain a follow-up side style that you can use maybe 1 time a fight plus slightly better damage in pierce, versus having a 5% greater chance to hit with off hand each swing or 27% chance per typical fight. 1 additional hit with offhand probably offsets the slight additional damage you do with pierce in a typical melee fight. If anything, I'd rather lower stealth to 33 from 35 and boost CD to 29 for Tempest, the side-style stun follow up that does a huge bleed over time damage (15+14+13+12+11+10...) and is good to prevent people from running and re-stealthing (unless they use vanish RA). That's a far better choice than pushing pierce to 39 and dropping CD to 18. You may want to wait to do this when your RR is high enough so that your stealth is still very good.

You could lower CD to 21 and raise bow to 40. That seems like a modest trade-off. You gain Penetrating Arrow 2, some better bow damage but offset with slightly lower melee damage from the lower CD. However, it has been documented by others far more knowledgable than me that 2-handed weapon damage on Uthgard is bugged, so the damage gains in bow might not be enough to justify the shift. This is a tempting alternative, but I find myself in melee too often. Your mileage may vary.

You could lower CD to 23 and raise pathfinding to 43 (lowering CD to 18 just gets pathfinding to 45, but no buff spell gained by that additional 2 points in pathfinding). All you gain is better shield and speed. Both are okay I guess, but not really helping you in the damage department, but you only lose a little in CD % chance to hit. I suspect this is probably the least favorable trade-off.

Hope that helps frame the trade-offs you can do as a ranger.

Realy nice reply , now i have a good vieuw on this THX m8