Originally Posted by Darkpower Alchemist

But back to the point of my thread. It's the barrage happy new rangers that don't use any other skill that I want to inform. Their are more skills that are useful than barrage.

Originally Posted by speshul k 1207

I have actually not gotten Barrage for my ranger yet, and it has gotten me kicked from numerous groups. I have become an excellent interrupter, which is an invaluable skill, but because I don't have Barrage I'm supposedly a useless noob? Imho, the real noobs are the ones that have fallen victim to the Barrage-a-mania that has swept over GW of late.

Originally Posted by Sir Mad

Believe it or not but in many places interrupters are not needed. I mean: an interrupt is always a bonus nomatter where and I always pack one when I play my ranger. But having a pure interrupter, ie: having a prty member who won't do anything else is most of the time a waste. And if you're not a pure interrupter but carry one or 2 interrupts with other offensive skills when, again, interrupting is a bonus but is not needed, then sorry but you have to suffer the comparison with what other classes can do. A warrior will often outdamage you for example, AND will tank, AND has a better armor (I hate warriors, but this is a fact). Why would they pick a ranger then? With barrage, rangers have the opportunity to do something a warrior can't (to that extent): physical, spammable AoE. In many places (I'm not saying everywhere, probably even not the majority), barrage is the best attack. Asking a ranger to bring barrage to kill Shiro or Abaddon is stupid. But refusing to use it because it's a "noob" skill where it's efficient is as well.

Another reason why PuGs often prefer barragers to another type of ranger is because they know barrage builds are efficient, easy to use. Sorry to say that but half of the rangers who weren't using barrage I partied with had awfull builds. Inseatd of someone spamming Power Shot every 6 secs, I'd rather have someone spamming barrage every 2 secs. When you make a PuG, you don't know who you're going to play with. You don't know if your teammates have a decent build or not. If you know the dude uses barrage, you know he won't be completely inefficient (except, again, in some missions / places where it's completely useless).

Originally Posted by Sir Mad

Believe it or not but in many places interrupters are not needed. I mean: an interrupt is always a bonus nomatter where and I always pack one when I play my ranger. But having a pure interrupter, ie: having a prty member who won't do anything else is most of the time a waste. And if you're not a pure interrupter but carry one or 2 interrupts with other offensive skills when, again, interrupting is a bonus but is not needed, then sorry but you have to suffer the comparison with what other classes can do. A warrior will often outdamage you for example, AND will tank, AND has a better armor (I hate warriors, but this is a fact). Why would they pick a ranger then? With barrage, rangers have the opportunity to do something a warrior can't (to that extent): physical, spammable AoE. In many places (I'm not saying everywhere, probably even not the majority), barrage is the best attack. Asking a ranger to bring barrage to kill Shiro or Abaddon is stupid. But refusing to use it because it's a "noob" skill where it's efficient is as well.

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

Interrupters are not a waste at all. Interrupted means less dmg taken by your party. Less dmg taken means more energy for your monks. I have a hero interrupter with magebane shot, d shot, and savage. I have noticed when I do not bring him my party takes more dmg overall.

Btw, wars do not have the best armor in the game. Wars have the best armor vs physical dmg. Majority of dmg in the game is elemental or armor ignoring. Rangers really have the best armor. Any of the +10 def inscriptions will = 80 armor vs physical which is the same amount of armor a war has vs elemental.

The only reason people accept barrage is because it does not trigger the monsters to run like aoe spells do. Barrage and SS filled the void of the aoe ele.

Its much better to kill 1 target quickly repeatedly than to kill the entire group at the same time. If you kill a target he is no longer dealing dmg or healing. Killing with aoe takes more time which means you take more dmg.

Originally Posted by Sir Mad

I never said interrupts are useless. I said 1/ in most of the areas a pure interrupter (a player with only interrupt skills, PS/CG for exmple) is a waste of a slot in the team, and 2/ (since most of the rangers have at least one interrupt in their build) an occasional interrupt is a nice addition, but most of the time it's not needed, as in "it makes it a bit easier but it wouldn't have been a pain without".

Concretely, as we're talking about PvE, what do you interrupt when you go with the sole Savage Shot? Monks spells, ele spells, eventually, troll (when the ranger don't use WD or LR) and heal sig, or you just spam it for a mini-spike. When you use it on a monk, you're likely to catch something despite the short casting time of most of the spells because they spam it. It also means non-instant interrupts of other professions are almost as likely to catch something (I'm refering to knockdowns, or attacks like disrupting chop or dirupting dagger). In the case of ele spells, most of the time they'll use either spammable spells like Stone Daggers (in this case, some comments than for monks spells) or a combinaison of fast casted spells and some devastating spells, that takes ages to cast, and therefore can also be interrupted by a melee class. Yes, rangers are better at that. But no, most of the time, they're not needed - notice the [i] tag - I just mean the mission/quest/whatever won't be harder without them. Again, interrupts are a nice addition to a team, but other classes have other skills that would also benefit the team.

These 2 paragraphs just mean if you go as a PURE interrupter then you gotta show how the team will be better with you than, for example, with an additional damage dealer (after all, often, offense is the best defense), an additional prot or a warder or a rit, etc, who can protect your team against all the attacks of the foes when an interrupter generally shuts down only one foe at a time. I'd bring a CG ranger over all those in Gates of Pain for example, or a BHA ranger to kill the Drought. I wouldn't in most of the other missions.

It also means that if you go as a damage dealer with one interrupt, the interrupt you carry being NOT necessary for your team, you gotta show what you can do better than another class for the team. And you generally can with Barrage. Take off the AoE from Barrage builds, and comapre the DPS of a warrior on a single target and the ranger's. Often the warrior will outdamge him. Or will do as well, with a better armor (and on a side note warriors in PvE rarely bring a hammer so they don't have 80 AL vs elemental attacks but at least 96). And again, I think I'm everything but biaised as I truely hate warriors - that's not my thing. I went through all NF with my ranger with at most one warrior, and most of the time 3 rangers (me + 2 heroes), but that was not a PuG made of random people with random builds - there was a team build.

EDIT - Don't think I'm bashing rangers - I play a ranger since the beta, I have 3 of them at the moment, and this is my favourite class. But you gotta know what rangers can do, and what they can't. And I actually find really sad people throw away a skill that often give a nice advantage in PvE compared to other classes because it's a popular skill, and because some players can't use any other build. I mean... MM is a popular build for necromancers. But does the fact every PuG expect the necro to be a MM make the build inefficient? No. It's sad you can hardly PuG with another build as a necro but still the build is effective.