Rangers have been meleeing for damage since GoD. Swiftwind had use during luclin / PoP as an attack stick. Most ranger bowing was for headshot / volley killing later :3 Though this has been severely nerfed since DBG took control.
Still a fun looking lightning swords but they definitely saw far less use than something like a cleric epic. and dcos was useful until the cheap alacrity potions (GoD) where it just wasn't needed to keep clicking the bastard, though still an option.
Headshot, SK swarming, Decapitate, Bard Swarming and others were all neutered back in 2014, well before Daybreak bought SoEs shit. About the same time they started auto-granting AAs.
Ranger had a spell which would send a ton of arrows, the hail of arrows line, so this allowed multiple head shots in one sitting, just gather them up, vineleash cascade, hail of arrows, then just rinse and repeat for mad AA lesson burns or PL noobs for cash. But that got nerfed even before the great gutting of skills in 2014. It only procced off of one arrow per cast after the initial nerfage.
I remember that time well, because I was playing EQ back them. I was pretty much 24/7 camped in PoF C2 with my 82 ranger and doing just that for AAs. I remember quitting in disgust when the head shot nerf was announced. I would literally pull 1/2 to 3/4 of that whole fucking camp and headshot all of them in less than 5 min. Didn't even need heals as I never got hit after I got good at it.
I saw some SKs in that camp too, they would do even better than I would with their riposte, lifedrain/mortal coil shit they were pulling off. I think it had something to do with their epic clickey too. I think their epic would add like 30-40% more healing per lifedrain proc. It was funny as hell seeing one dude pull like 100 mobs and then beat them all down using riposte. Monks were also doing it before they got nerfed too. I saw dudes pull entire zones, it lagged so fucking bad it was crazy. But this dude used to PL people on our servers when his lesson was up. He would randomly broadcast in general that he had spots open, do it for 30 min every night. I got into his group one day.But I dont know how monks did it, not familiar with that class. I guess some avoidance AA or some shit?
Also, angers pretty much always melee for damage. I think there was a short time after luclin or pop?? when rangers used bows once the trueshot discipline was introduced along with fully maxxed out AAs in archery, the double damage on a non rooted mob, plus the quiver thing along with some others. But this was only for short bursts, as trueshot was a discipline on a timer.
It would of been cool if EQ took rangers down the path of being true archers, but they always ended up being melee, always lookng out not to hit that aggro and be whacked and dead.
Thinking back all that shit was silly as hell. It lagged the game hardcore with so many people doing this shit all over the place. But at the time it was like the only viable way to gain AAs in a timely fashion. There were literally like 10-20K AAs to grind out at that time. I remember doing like 100-200 per hour using headshot plus a lesson burn or exp pots.
