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This was my 3rd ranger to level 80, so my experience / ease of levelling may vary from your own experiences. My /played when I hit 80 was 2 days and 10 hours, this could be dramatically sped up if mounts were working in zones other then Kheshatta, and if i did not spend a few hours helping guildies run through quests or pvp.
Level 1-20: (roughly 7 hours)
I found this tortage round to be much easier then it was in previous builds, largely in part to the "Mezz Shot". It was extremely overpowered at this level in the sense that I was able to mezz a mob and kill it before the mezz broke, therefore allowing me to single pull mobs out of a 3-4 pack. This basically made solo'ing all of tortage very simple and nonchallenging. The increased bow fire rate also allowed for greater dps.
As far as PVP, rangers completely dominate this level bracket, much as it was before the patch, even more so now with mezz shot, as it has the same effect in pvp at this level. Players are killed before mezz shot breaks off. The simple hide, mezz shot, salvo I, follow up attack, worked on everything and everyone. Pin down is practically rendered useless in this level bracket due to the strength of mezz shot.
Level 20-40: (roughly 13 hours)
During the first half of this bracket, I noticed very little difference from the 1-20 bracket. PvE and PvP worked in exactly the same fashion. However at 30-40 things changed a bit. Mobs started resisting Mezz Shot more often, and I could no longer kill most mobs before Mezz Shot broke (in essence pulling all the ADDs that would come with it). I found myself using the new Pin Down much more at this point, where it is definately a HUGE improvement over the old pin down. All solo quests throughout this level bracket are easily completed.
PvP throughout this level bracket is still completely in the ranger's favor, as their DPS is still outstanding, along with pin down and mezz shot.
Level 40-60: (roughly 16 hours)
This is the first bracket where I started to notice the Ranger not scaling as well as before (becoming weaker). Mezz shot at this level seems substantially weaker, as it is either resisted, breaks really early (1-4 seconds), and it breaks after 1 normal arrow shot (combo opener). Here is where I think mezz shot actually performs the way I believe dev's intended it to, as a mezz, not a stun. I would use mezz shot as a CC ability to mezz one mob, then turn my focus on one of the ADDs. With the new Pin Down this proved to be a good method, and levelling through this bracket was still easier then it used to be. The Ranger overall dps still seems to be decent in PvE at this level, well enough to complete most quests without too much difficulty.
I did note that the increased bow fire rate does NOT effect Q and E attacks, this drastically slows down combos that use Q or E attacks, in turn making older combos that do not have Q and E far superior in many aspects.
Unfortunately there was no one else anywhere close to my level at this point for me to test PvP with, therefore I have no update to how well or bad a ranger does in PvP at this level range.
Level 60-80: (roughly 20 hours)
This level bracket is where almost all of the recent ranger changes were nil. Mezz shot proved to be useless at most times, same reasons as before (breaks in 1 second, resisted, breaks after 1 arrow shot) to the point where I wouldn't even use it anymore, as either i was combat bugged and could not hide, or waiting for the hide cooldown just slowed down my overall xp rate.
The increase bow fire rate still increases overall dps, though very marginally, as the extra combos attacks added to Salvo IV and V, and other high level combos are still there, and the fact that Q and E are still slow attacks, the time to activate these combos are still too long.
The new Pin Down seemed to be the only change that made a noticable difference at this level. Great change imo!
Overall dps seemed to be lacking a bit as killing mobs in Aztel's and Kheshatta (especially pack mobs) proved to be more of a challenge. Potion usage increased dramatically towards the latter of this bracket.
PvP at this level still seems to be the same as it was prior to the patch, rather poor. While the new pin down and knockback are far more useful now (both are 1 button hit skills) our dps is still greatly lacking. The new Heartseeker combo is also now a 2 button hit combo, though it's damage is still lower then it should be in my opinion.
In my fights with a level 80 demo, my normal arrow shots were only hitting for 150-250 per hit, combos doing 500-800 damage. This mediocre dps was easily countered with the use of 1 level 70 pot, and I assume will still stand true against a healer as their HoT was always more then enough to fully counter a ranger's dps. I did however win all the fights I had with demo's due to "lucky" crits on my combos, critted combos did roughly 1200-1500 damage, which was usually more then enough to kill a Demo (who has very low HP total, and these fights all lasted 3-5 minutes). I do not however think this will be the case when fighting any non mage class. From what I have seen both soldiers and healer classes will be completely unkillable as a ranger.
My overall suggestions thus far:
-Fix Q and E attacks so that they benefit from increase bow fire rates.
-Change Mezz Shot so that ADD mobs from a pack instantly aggro once one of the mobs is affected by Mezz Shot (this will counter it's overpoweredness at low levels, without greatly changing it's limited feasibility it at higher levels)
-Shorten the amount of keys used for highest level combos from 5 keys to 4 keys, keeping a 5 string combos going while spinning around to keep target on a player running circles around you is not the easiest thing to do.
-Speed up the rate at which a character can turn (even when using right click mouse to turn, it seems limited by how fast the character can turn as combos still cancel out if my character is not actually facing them).
-Increase ranger's dps at level 80, seeing as we don't have the superior CC abilities of Barbs or Demos, or the AE dps of Demos and Necros, I believe our single target dps should be greatly increased (and at least greater then that of a demos). Rangers at 80 in PvP greatly need this increase in dps, as it stands they cannot really kill most classes, even with getting the jump on their target.
