Hey I'm still leveling up on Hibernia, but a few times now when I've seen calls for more for a raid people say "raid classes" and none have answered when I ask what that means.

I'm guessing some classes aren't as effective for raid bosses compared to others? So I'm wondering which are the favorites and which are the bad ones.

Thanks for any info!

Non Raid classes:

Ranger, NS, Eld, Enchanter

Bard, Druid, Blademaster, Hero, maybe a Warden due to their PBT and secondary healer abilities, like cure poison and cure disease
Some consider an animist a viable choice to kill small adds and reduce BOSSMobs level by a little, but not actually that important for raids, since they only shorten the killtime by a little, usually not worth taking in group, because 1 more to /roll with.

Celteen wrote:Non Raid classes:

Ranger...

Unfortunately that is a belief coming from the ignorance of many players.

Lots of people simply can't realize the big variance of behavior that is present in the ranger's wolrd.
My almost melee ranger often gets and keeps aggro during legion/dragon raids on par with blademasters.
I also played, succesfully, the main tank role in many dropping occasions, from tajendy 1/2 to CF or Sheeroe small man expeditions.
Of course, to be more effective, it's better if i have guard on me, but that is the only requisite to build a very strong group with a melee ranger, to have at least one shield tank inside (requisite suggested anyway).
I do admit that sniper rangers or bad built ones are more a burden than a help on some occasions, but intelligent people know how stupid it is to generalize
Thank God most people that organize raids know my ranger and welcome him in their raids without problems

WOW, a ranger getting aggro? Youre one fo that little group of ignorant wannabe's that spam taunts during a raid only to say: HEY! Im better than you! Which actually makes no sense because the aggro needs to be manged correctly, having a special toon, a hero(or druid in most cases) do the tankjob because, besides the lacking scale armor for the ranger, one of that kind simply cannot have around 2k hps as a pool for slower reacting supporters or delicate situations, like in taj2 for example.

I wouldnt mind you saying that you deal more damage than many others, which is true, due to 2 weapons swinging and you not having specced det5, but maybe aug str5 instead, for example which might be the case, but tanking even with physical defense is a different story.

In raids, its actually common for nonmain tanks to use detaunts once in a while not to get aggro shortly before a pbaoe on the dragons, for example.

Typical raid classes (imo): hero bm druid ward bard mana ment animist. . .

Thats not to say other classes dont work:
shield champ, for obvious reasons
nightshade with viper 2-3 can add good damage with dot, but can take ggro
ranger with rr5 rocks for dragon and a bow spec with ward aotg hits hard
Vws im MEH about. I have a vw i like, but i miss alot. and the only styles we
Have is detaunt-conflag. Eveything else is a stun you should neveruse.
But ive successfully tanked princes/beli with ease on vw.
Bout the only class i can 100% leave out is chanter/eld. The trick is to convince raid leaders to drop the negative thoughts about non-typical raid classes. If you can show you know how to utilize yer class for the raid and stick to the role/rules raids are cake. Ive been on many raids with every hib class.

Satz wrote:WOW, a ranger getting aggro? Youre one fo that little group of ignorant wannabe's that spam taunts during a raid only to say: HEY! Im better than you! Which actually makes no sense because the aggro needs to be manged correctly, having a special toon, a hero(or druid in most cases) do the tankjob because, besides the lacking scale armor for the ranger, one of that kind simply cannot have around 2k hps as a pool for slower reacting supporters or delicate situations, like in taj2 for example.

I wouldnt mind you saying that you deal more damage than many others, which is true, due to 2 weapons swinging and you not having specced det5, but maybe aug str5 instead, for example which might be the case, but tanking even with physical defense is a different story.

In raids, its actually common for nonmain tanks to use detaunts once in a while not to get aggro shortly before a pbaoe on the dragons, for example.

Well, my dear ignorant and narrow minded friend (talking about rangers of course ), i'm absolutely not the Superman of rangers but one of the many and i have, full buffed, +1950 hit points. On top of that, i have PD III, something that BMs usually don't take and that make reinforced armour strong nearly as plate.
The point never was who actually delivers or withstands more damage. The point was, since this is a game, if rangers (or some of them) can actually take part to raids, which are a part of the fun. The fun is what we are all here for, unless you are here to break some record like defeating the dragon in 5 people.
I never claimed that rangers are exactly good as heroes or shield champions for tanking, i just said, and that's true, that for the majority of the cases, a ranger like mine (which is nothing special) can take part to the fun.
So, when i ask to strangers if i can join their event, i will understand aswers like "we already have enough rangers/light tanks" or "dps already ok", but i will never understand answers like "no, because you are a ranger". People who gives this kind of answers from the start are the ignorant and selfish part of the community.
That's all.

So basically no cloth or leather classes unless they have huge utility since they die fast? Sounds about right. Thanks!

You can go as ns or vw, just don't do anything to take aggro away from whoever is main tank. Use positional styles and throw a detaunt every now and then. And avoid eld\enchanter.

I started on Uth with a mana ment and farmed everything with her, including taj2, frontier bosses, df princes, duoe'd glimmer prince, etc. That would still be my first choice if i had to start over again. Other than ment, u can go bard/drood as well (droods are more common than raiding bards, in my experience), but think about an animist as well: u'll level fast, you can farm money and u'll be invited in grps. In a 6 man setup for taj2 or princes (beli not anymore, unfortunately) i'd take 2 tanks (hero/bm or 2 bms), ani, drood, bard, mana ment. U don't need anything else, really, and animist will speed up things a lot.

It all depends on what you're raiding and on the size of the group/bg. Rangers can be extremely useful on Dragon raids(rr5) and unless you raid with a very small amount of people, having at least one is great. Nightshades with viper3 are awesome on a Legion raid with 2fg or more imho. Dots do huge damage against Legion,Dragon, Worm, Alb Prince, Hib Prince; in comparism to melee damage. Lifebane stacks with the Mana Menta dots. Refusing to take a shade on those kinds of raids(if the numbers of players work out) I will never understand.
Bombs(Mana Ench/Eld) are very nice to have when raiding the new old frontier dungeons due to the high amount of mob aggro. Valewalkers can be useful for clearing adds or for dps on certain mobs.

However,

Typical raid classes (imo): hero bm druid ward bard mana ment animist. . .

Is correct. Many leaders only consider these classes to be "raid classes" since they'll be useful in practically any raid.

Celteen wrote:Non Raid classes:

NS

After severals test, if you run this setup

Druid / bard / warden / menta / hero / bm / animiste / NS

You'll make really fast raid.

Animist gives low resist rate.
Menta can stack 2 dot.
NS can put vip3 dot which gives really heavy dmg while hitting as hard as bm.

most of people never group Vip bot for raid, but really give a try you'll like it ^^

Having raid almost everything with my Champ and Ranger few thoughts.

Ranger is ok, if grp is big like legion raid or dragon raid.
In small 6 man you need enough tanks to put protect on bard & druid. That's already 4/6 out of classes. Rest are menta/Ani by default.

I have done TAJ 2 with Ranger, but only when we wanted to reset the instance with the same close team of friends. Yes worked well, but doesn't work on all mobs and people you don't know.

As for rangers, it isn't the problem of the aggro, as the defence. PD doesn't cut it. You need, shield/parry/evade.

I'm one of the only raid leaders that go out of thier way to invite archers. Rangers have some extremly good mechanics for high end raiding.

1) archery acuracy results in a 0% miss rate. this means taht on a high level mob where most tanks are missing 50%-70 of the time, the archer will always hit and do dmg. I dont think this is a bug, as it has never been reported even by QQers who want rangers nerfed. if anything i see people whining that the acuracy bonus in archery is too low.

2) stealth clears aggro. unlike a caster (assuming the caster could somehow never be resisted) or tank, a stealther can clear themselves entierly form the aggro list by restealthing. this lets you keep aggro off your main dps toon easily.

3) dmg add works with archery. so its like melee. nice on high end mobs. compared to casters.

4) RANGE. go explore taj 2. you will see that having ranged dps helps a ton for many of the encounters.

Personally, I would not do a smallman taj raid in alb without a scout. and whenever I lead a GK/evern raid i try to bring an archer instead of a dw tank. they reduce raid times more than any othe dps tank can.

as for protect. one protect tank is all that is needed so long as your mani tank has a decent template and spec. On alb we run 1 pally as the only tank and most of the time I end up switchign protect to the scout and leaving the main healer with no protect. the aggro transfered from the archer to the main tank is more than sufficient to help keep aggro on the tank.

But basically, to say taht rangers are not a raid class is just plain ignorant of game mechanics.

Netchel wrote:But basically, to say taht rangers are not a raid class is just plain ignorant of game mechanics.

Why don't you come to Hibernia and organize some raid?
The guy organizing Legion raids on Hib in this period is one of those ignorants

I miss Raids organized by Lazaren and Tonytony