RNG meritsFollow

haven't seen this topic in the first 4 pages.

Any recommendations for cat1 and cat2 merits for RNG?
Just dinged 75 last weekend. Marksmanship is 8/8 from COR.

I assume snapshot is a must but what about flashy and stealth shot? That useful? Or should I just be a cheap RNG and merit recycle fully?

Cat 1 seem pretty crappy overall. Scavenge recast? Really SE!?

I assume you meant 5 Rapid shot for Cat1

That's sort of what I was planning but wasn't sure if people were finding stealth shot that useful. Flashy I assume works with a WS or is just a normal shot?

yea rng merits are fairly straight forward.
{cat 1}

rapid shot 5/5: anything that helps us put out more arrows faster is good.

unlimited shot 5/5: PPA on more sidewinders FTW.

sharp shot: why? you cant merit barrage. ;;

scavenge\camo recast: trash

{cat 2}

flashy shot 1/5 : is a must if you do any endgame bosses (hnm, znm, nyzul boss,ect, ect. if you fully merit it you can get it down to 10 min from 20 min. but imo 10min may as well be 20 min. being that most fights take no more then 10 min at the most with a few exception's. plus this pulls alot of hate so the more you use it the more you die.

snapshot 5/5: fully upgraded thats 10% ranged haste! better d.o.t. ftw!

stealth shot ?/5 -10 enmity upgrade on your next attack. with a 5 min recast this may be useful after a flashy side/slug but to be honest i dont see the point. in a meritpo after you ws YOU HAVE HATE. (if for whatever reason you didnt kill it.) so the negative whatever enmity from Stealth shot on your next attack is a waste, the dmg is done. the mob has ran over to you before your SS&attck even go off. and after it gos off. all the melee will be even more pissed when the mob leaves you to run back at the rdm who cure bomb'd you cuz you ate a pecking flurry. killing your chain.(i know im being a little melodramatic but you get the idea.) In any other endgame event you and your tank's should know how to control your hate. so all in all i say it may have its uses but imo they are outweighed by the usefulness of other merits.

recycle 4/5: @4/5 its a 20% chance you will not lose your arrow. you get another 25-30% from scout's hat and if/when you get paddocks that another 5% or so. all in all 55% chance of not spending ammo! you could shoot kabara's full time if you wanted. more recycle w/o sacrificing gear=less time farming/crafting = more time raining pointed death.=)


i go 5/5 unlimited, 5/5 rapid, 5/5 snap 4/5 recycle, 1/5 in flashy.

{note to OP} but before any of these cap archery or marksmanship. or both! happy hunting and /welcome to the 75 rng world.

Flashy main point is on zerg situation. 5 minutes recast of it is not really worth the extra 14 merit points.

Thanks for all the advice. Marksmanship is capped from Cor and Cor will be used for getting most merits. Still have few more to get on Cor but I'D like to get at least Flashy unlocked.

i have 5 75's drk,blu,drg,rng and rdm. 3 of which were 75 before rng. it isnt cost effective to use a non recycle merited rng in a meritpo true. but i play for fun. to get merits with a job i dont like for a job i do seem's silly to me. id rather spend the gill on ammo and merit with/for my rng then play on my no merits at all drk or rdm that to this day i dont know why i lvled a job a hate to play so much. i do sometimes merit on drg and i wish blu got meritpo invites.
yes it may cost more but if you find it more fun on rng then the other jobs you have dont let ammo cost hold you back. after all you did buy/make a ass load of ammo to get 75.if i could id fulltime rng (for events and blah blah blah i go as whatever im needed as, for the greater good but if i have a choice ill go rng.

and unlimited shot stack's with ws so ppa up you slugwinder's (was the lst on my list of what to merit on rng though.)

Edited, May 29th 2009 5:58pm by xvincentx

Squenix should change Camouflage to make the next ranged attack have 100% accuracy.

That would solve many problems for RNG, not the least of which is missing EES. And it'd also provide us with a second worthwhile merit category (well, really a first one).

Edited, May 29th 2009 3:43pm by redvenomweb

There's nothing I haven't missed with RNG. Esp when sharpshot is up. ACC bonus traits my ass. I' truly convinced that sharpshot is a placebo effect.

Mages have elemental acc traits to merit. RNG should have ranged acc merits as well since the current system is still broken IMO.

I capped archery and throwing on my RDM, and there was nothing placebo about Sharpshot when I was doing that >_> On some things it felt like Sharpshot was the only thing letting me occasionally hit more than once/twice in a row.

I never had any problems on my RNG, but I only took that to 37.

No only people who are too poor to afford ammo merit recycle. Gimpness has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of well geared experienced players that don't have a lot of money (not that I'd consider myself one of them). Which if you want to shoot off Kabura arrows constantly, equals a good many rangers in my experience.

Look at it this way, if saving money on ammo gets me to saving 6 million gil for EBow and K Osode quicker, that will do far more for my damage than an extra boost to flashy shot timer.

Personally, I saw meriting recycle as meriting "all cat2s but Snapshot suck".

Believe it or not, many people do cite cost as a reason they do not use things like kabura arrows all of the time, so... technically if Recycle does anything to alleviate that mindset and gets you to use more expensive ammo for something where you otherwise wouldn't have, it is improving your damage. Also, having to stop to use a quiver and reequip the slot does temporarily stop my attacks and lessen my overall damage, so having Recycle would mean I'd have to do that less often.

Personally, I think any decent RNG has an easy enough time doing enough damage to rip hate on most stuff anyways if they really try. That being said, I'm not sure why an attack that gives you increased enmity is really considered essential, but I guess it all depends on what you usually bring your RNG to fight. Another thing to consider is that most NMs nowadays go down quickly enough for you to only be able to use this JA once, whether you have it merited once or 5 times. Like I said, I often don't fight things that are higher level than XP mobs, nor do I fight many things that take longer than 10 minutes to beat, so I don't see Flashy Shot being very useful for someone like me.

I like how you think your way is the only correct way to merit, though. I wouldn't have expected anything less extreme from someone like you.

As others have said, Snapshot is really the only must-pick of the group 2 merits in my perspective, and even then, if you're some hardcore K-club RNG or something that typically only shoots to WS, even this isn't a sure thing.

5/5 Snapshot is really all you need on rng for job specific merits.

Snapshot is the only good RNG merit.

The rest are just things to spend points on when you are bored.

Looks like it'll be 5 Rapid shot, 5 snapsot, 4 Recycle and 1 Flashy shot.

But I still have a few COR merits to finish up (QD acc and one more in Fold) and then I'd like to work on my STR merits and MP. So I won't be in a big rush to finish RNG.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't meriting recycle kind of negate the effect of recycle? If you spend 20 merits on recycle, then you could have just not gotten those merits and saved a lot more ammo overall?


Or if you are primarily meriting on something like DRG, which is good for merits, but bad for endgame overall, then you would save ammo overall when you went to endgame events?

Thanks I was wondering, thinking to myself, why would you spend xxx amount of gil right now, to save yyy amount of gil in the next few years, seems very counterproductive unless you earn the merits on a job other then ranger.

I'm still new to 75 rng..heck..I went on my first Sky gods run today on RNG with my new HF+1...I'm still in the process of meritting..but I have to go with

5 Snap
5 Flashy

5 rapid
5 unlimtied

Saving money isn't an issue. We play a job were we throw money to kill things. As far as I'm concerned if it improves my ability to do damage, its worth while, anything else is trash.

All I know is flashy shot's long timer kept be from using it every fight in Sky on a Gods day. That annoyed me.

In this game, often, the problem is not DD can't deal enough damage.

A good point.

Today was my first run at Sea on RNG. We killed some aeryn thing that kept reraising itself (did it 8 times) and Jailor of Fortitude (can you say high DEF).

The JoF fight was long. Only about 10 of us... kiting. I used vBow over Hellfire cause I stood in one place where I could hit him anywhere in the room. I used Flashy at least twice..if I had merits to 5/5 I could of gone 4 or maybe 5 times.

When that means ability means the difference between a 300-400 Sidewinder and an 800 Sidewinder.. thats alot of damamge in that fight.

It was funny to. One SAM got tired of chasing...he was shooting and swinging as it passed. He would give me TP whenever that ability came up... was fun.

In the end, especially since I see myself being an archery full time once I have more STR gear, I think Flashy will really help in these sea/sky fights with things that have high DEF.

Actually..I did buy a HF+1...I gotta say I'm disappointed in the difference I see between that and my VBow. I expected more I guess. I got only slightly lower number on Byakko with vBow compared to HF+1 with silvers.

Given the Para spam by Byakko and Seiryu..I might just go Bow on those fights as well. My overall damage will be higher cause I won't have to fight para.

Thoughts? My gear is

TP:
Fire staff/axe grip
AF head
Ranger's necklace
Vision earring / Drone earring
AF Body
Seiryu's Kote
Dusk Trousers
AF feet
Behemoth rings x2
Amement mantle +1
RK+2 belt

WS swap in:
Wyvern helm
RSE feet (I'm mithra, so +3 str)
Ragas ring and Ruby ring
I think that is it, maybe one other thing I'm forget.

I know I need alot of +1 stuff and things like triumph, osode, AF2, gorget etc... working on it all. Only been 75 a few weeks and pretty happy with my setp.

I have vbow, HF+1, and oBow for weapons. Mainly use vBow and HF+1. oBow in Nyzul and Campaign.

Edited, Jun 4th 2009 8:57pm by Alvehyanna

Yeah, I think was crazy when I wrote that. I think my best without Flashy was 500-ish. And my best with it was 800-ish. Still thats alot.

I'll screen it next week.

I wonder if there are DRGs that get swapped only briefly into the alliance to do Angon, not unlike a THF that gets swapped in only to Feint and apply TH.

i'm not about gtfo of my sky ls but i feel your pain. i see plenty of action on pop night (if nothing else throwing and shadowbind would make me a mainstay.) but farm nights i get soooooooooooooo tired of being a scan whore. stand @ zip for hours and hours is the the only time i ever ask myself "Now why did i level ranger again?"

RDM mob was chainspelling the overnuking BLM friend. saved him with Flashy's hate.

Oh, I was thinking 8-2 for some reason. That makes sense.

thats asuming you merit on a job that uses ninja tools/ammo.

Gogo Dragoon! :D