Melee attacks....?

[Stooky]

well Im leveling rng, only level 7 but love it so far. Im wondering if even now that we do not melee much/at all if we should keep our melee skill up to date? Or do you not use melee at all anymore? I would like to know if I should even bother skilling up my axe and dagger skill. Also Im having trouble keeping archery and marksman up, does that speed up later?
Thanks,
Stooky

[VZX]

Im wondering if even now that we do not melee much/at all if we should keep our melee skill up to date?

it can be useful in endgame merit PT, sometimes in exp too

Im having trouble keeping archery and marksman up, does that speed up later?
yes

[Stooky]

Thank you thats all I wanted to know.

[Omni]

dont worry about your ranged skill points. in the beginning levels, youll lvl faster than you can possibly skill up. once you get to qufim you should be able to cap your skill before you level each time.

as with melee skill up. its really up to you, you wont ever use your melee ws in an xp pt but it always becomes handy if you need those skill points for another job. totally up to you on this one.

[Antivomit]

I was planning on starting a ranger and was wondering about that too. I do have another question though... how fast do ranged attacks build up TP? If I melee during battle do i get TP faster?

[Omni]

TP is based on delay.

The longer the delay of your weapon, the greater the tp returned. For Xbow, its around 14-15 TP per shot. Bows usually return ~16, Guns ~17. Again, all depends on the delay of the weapon.

You can melee and shoot at the same time, however (though a lot better now) your acc and dmg will suffer a bit when being that close.

Personally, I stand away from the mob and just shoot. TP gain is fine for rng. Your accuracy on ranged attacks is really high since a rng as access to so much rng acc gear.

Good luck.

[Vertabreaker]

Melee and rng attack in XP party is completely do-able pre and post-patch. I've been doing forever and don't plan to stop. All you have to do is back up a bit for maximum damage out of your slug/side, then head back into melee range. You'll get TP from both Ratks and Melee atks. No reason to not get in there and mix things up.

[Caspian]

Pre slugwinder I don't really see it being all that useful. The reason its so nice 55+ is because you can build TP faster and get off more ws's for mucho extra damage w/o much of a detriment to ranged attacks inside melee range. Pre-55 you're really only getting a few extra ws's that hardly do any extra damage at all compared to a full regular shot, so you're really not getting much of anything out of it.
Also, be sure to keep your melee weapons capped. No use compromising ranged damage just to see yourself miss melees completely.

[Saerik]

With a gun its doable, or a heavy mind build/int build and Machine Crossbow+ Holy bolts or Loxley Bow and Elemental Arrows.

Gun and dual axes is effective, and damage can be very good (especially if you have gear thats effective for both melee and ranged attacks). Gun however doesn't really become effective til 50, and it is probably the most expensive of the 3 weapon types.

But yeh, it is one potential style of playing RNG ^^, if you plan to carry on you'll find you will pick a preference naturally anyway.

[pearlsea]

For ranger axe would be a useful skill to keep leveled, especially if you want to farm something but don't want to pay for ammo, and with their b- rating in the weapon if they had enough melee attack and accuracy gear i think they would do beastmaster like damage in a normal party, but without the pet >.>; and gear options.