Wed Jun 23 09:40:52 2010

At 9 o'clock PM, Day of Deception, 23rd of the Month of the Shadows
on the Theran calendar Mrowsch perished, never to return.

Race:	felar
Class:	ranger
Level:	40
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	None, None
Age:	23
Hours:	47

Probably my fastest ranking to date. Made rank 40 without ever looking for any preps, and zero PK kills. I thik I made somewhere between 35 and 40 with only one mob death, then hit a spot where I died like 8 times in two days, 6 of them PK deaths. I think I learned a lot about rangers on this build. I like the class a lot, but just about every time I stepped out of the wilderness, I got owned, and a few times in the wilds, cause I suck at PK. Beastmaster is cool, mountaineer is cool, felar + beastmaster + mountaineer has uber potential with someone who actually can pk, not me. Couldn't get a kill to save my life when I'd find someone in the wilds, I'd start in, and they would run. So it became a no fun char, sitting waiting for something to happen close enough to the woods where I could do something and not have anything happen. maybe if there were more players, or I ranked to Hero, it would have been different, but Meh.

Didn't interract with a whole bunch of you too much cause I only had 47 hours into the char. Drop a line and I'll reply.

When I played a felar ranger, I found there were three main tactics:

1. One-shot a wounded guy with ambush. Or ambush + one round if he's spamming.

2. Set a snare. Wait for someone to get snared. Wield appropriate weapon, haste self, enlarge self, waylay, spam bearcharge.

3. Set a snare. Waylay one room away. Hope guy flees into your snare, then do #2 above.

I'm surprised you couldn't get a kill just hanging around in the battlefields waiting for some evil group to come rank there.

I guess it's a patience thing. My times were just not real conducive to getting those kills. I was not much to hang out in one place, the character really felt like a hunter to me, and that meant running all over heck and gone to find someone. I tried a couple of those tactics, but it was just a problem getting them to come out into the woods for the most part. I think this could be a much more deadly build as an evil outlander. It feels like there are a lot more places that Goodies rank in the Wilderness.

I'll try again some other time I think. I really think having a ranger out of outlander, kind of nerfs cabal fights, but that's my opinion. Maybe a trip down evil land is finally in the cards for me. Who knows.... Might be interesting seeing how the reavers do.

Well, yeah, there are definitely things that make it easier for an evil outlander. And I'm certainly not advocating you just camp in the battlefields and wait for people. But there are a fair number of places in the 20-40 range that seem like they might work.

Off the top of my head: Ruins of Delar-Tol, Eregion, Emerald Forest, Moudrilar's Monestary, Chess Tower, Darsylon, Crystal Island, Jade Mountains, Dranettie Wood, Azuremain, Battlefield, Kiadana.

With some of those the area itself isn't wilderness but you know the people ranking there are going to rest in wilderness. Or, in the case of the Chess Tower, you know they're going to have to walk through a bunch of wilderness.

You can't rank on guardians and in the Emerald Forest.

A lot of good aligned things in the wilds are "At home" there.

To many kills on that type and you are an Out-Outlander.

But here is a super secret secret thing that confuses people because math is hard.

You can rank on evil creatures if needed because "Something > Nothing".

And on that note, It doesn't matter if a Mob pays out 2k in experience if it took you an hour to kill. It's better to rank on 200 popers that you can kill in 30 seconds.

Ramble on.

Felar with a Growl/Meow/purring name #1,232 then sure.

What's up with that?

Mre.

You counted all of those? That's a real high number pro, you sure about that?

I just think those are uber gay names.

So you're into Gay Porn? i never would have thought. Seriously, with my Character Tourets, do you realize how hard it is for me to come up with 50 good names in a week? Come on, cut me a little bit of slack. At least they aren't all Fort apps now.

Just that they were a gay.

Your build was fine but there are a couple of things one needs to do
well if he wants to PK with felar ranger.

Be evil. Play evil. Possibly uncaballed for maximum flexibility. You lose outlander preps but you get perma-haste, pills and healers. More stealthy too as you only have to do your own thing (which should be killing everyone)

Start PKing from low levels then take the time at medium levels
before you get snare. You should levelsit at 35 and abuse wildfam like theres no tomorrow. With the right tactics, you're a wrecking crew at this stage and should win pretty much every fight you start.

It goes without saying that you should have the entire fight planned out before you initiate. You should _never_ waste time during a fight thinking about what you should do, esp at medium levels. Your main advantage is surprise, try to abuse this (by stacking commands so that you don't waste rounds, by anticipating the opponent and having your counters ready etc)

Obviously take the time and perfect weapons/defenses before you hit hero. Ideally you want all of these mastered at 35 and most of your main skills too.

Learn your opponents habits, stay in the wilds, **never** fight outside the wilds unless you're supremely confident, don't reveal yourself - stay camo unless you're fighting. Find shortcuts to move through the world using the wilds. You should take others by surprise, thats how you seal kills. If they never know what hit em they won't have the time to react quickly especially if they're fighting mobs when you ambush them. At these levels it doesn't take
much to kill them, especially if they're unprepared.

If they can see you on who pk every time they do it, you keep reminding them that you exist and they're going to be cautious. Also, use track and learn other people's habits, it's an awesome ability.

With the playerbase low, don't camp a single place and expect to get kills. You should be constantly on the prowl, checking and rechecking every wild spot that you know is a possible hit. Using track wisely can help with this.

Finally for med-high levels, you should have awesome gear by then because if you always fight in the wilds, you should rarely die. With felar, you need to hit like a truck to kill smart opponents and this means you need as much dmgroll as you can get but you also have snare, and a useful bearcharge if you don't go caves. Be smart, be willing to try new tactics out, be patient and try to catch ppl with their pants down.

>Be evil. Play evil. Possibly uncaballed for maximum
>flexibility. You lose outlander preps but you get perma-haste,
>pills and healers.

Evil outie is pretty dang flexible. And I'll take outie preps over the rest. I'm not sure if I ever bartered for pills, but I'm not sure it would get you smacked if you did.

Only downsides for me: 1) more time consuming to keep certain potions and talisman on hand, 2) you have to occasionally defend and retrieve. This sucks when Empire/Scion are strong. On the other hand, as a ranger, you don't lose as much by not having the fetish. You have camo so you don't need chameleon, you have butcher so you don't need harvest, and you have path finding so you only need half of wind walk.

>You should levelsit at 35 and abuse
>wildfam like theres no tomorrow. With the right tactics,
>you're a wrecking crew at this stage and should win pretty
>much every fight you start.

FWIW going outie gives you another level to sit at prior to 35. As for "winning every fight you start" I'd say that you're probably going to make the other guy flee in every fight you start, but you're probably not going to kill him every time unless you only ever hit people who are wounded.

>try to abuse
>this (by stacking commands so that you don't waste rounds, by
>anticipating the opponent and having your counters ready etc)

Did you just advocate stacking commands? That seems like a really bad idea, depending on what you actually meant.

>**never** fight outside the wilds unless you're supremely confident

The corollary to this is: know when you can be confident, then don't bother using certain skills (e.g. bear charge) outside the wilderness.

>Also, use track and learn other people's habits,
>it's an awesome ability.

Track is indeed awesome. I wish certain other class got a non-wilderness version. That would be handy.

> As for "winning every fight you start" I'd say that
>you're probably going to make the other guy flee in every
>fight you start, but you're probably not going to kill him
>every time unless you only ever hit people who are
>wounded.

Notice i said win, not kill ;-) OP mentioned he died lots,
thats a sure indication of you're doing it wrong..

>Did you just advocate stacking commands? That seems like a
>really bad idea, depending on what you actually meant.

I did this lots with Gmrrst, mostly with waylay but other
times too (stacking serpent strikes like crazy). For a lot of
fights, i pretty much had to in order to balance my laggy connection,
plus rangers in the wilds get more leeway in this department.

>The corollary to this is: know when you can be confident,
>then don't bother using certain skills (e.g. bear charge)
>outside the wilderness.

I never liked bearcharge with felars, never played felar mountaineer
and for the foresters i played it was sort of fine but they all did worse in PK
than my caverndwellers. Gmrrst was a sort of experiment
for me,
to see how far i could go in PK without relying on
bearcharge/perma lag and i did very well with him. If i wanted bearcharge build,
i would (and did) play clouds but they play very different to felars.