booo hisss!
Actually, the idea of doing more DPS is quite appealing, as I get my *** kicked soloing on a frequent basis now (this may have something to do with the fact that I have mostly crappy armor--at lvl 35 I'm still wearing mostly carbonite chain, as I haven't been able to farm enough materials to replace it with T4 stuff, and I refuse to spend my entire small fortune paying broker prices) but I just can't bring myself to play an evil-aligned character. I'm too inclined toward chaotic-good for that.
I just started grouping regularly this week, first with DSD and Co. in Nek Castle (WONDERFUL experience, can't wait to do it again--I'd offer to organize another go, but past experience has taught any endeavor to pull something together on my part is doomed to failure and most likely tears and recriminations...it's just better that I don't) and then doing a number of runs with a couple members from my guild to Runnyeye, which again has been great fun and was incredible xp until my vitality ran out :(
Anyway, the point of this rambling is this...should I be doing archery rather than meleeing? Admittedly, EQ2 is kinder to rangers as archers than EQ1, but I don't trust SOE devs on the subject of ranged combat--they seemed quite adamantly against it being a ranger's primary form of damage at the endgame in EQ1. Not having a DPS meter, I can't tell where I'm being the most effective.
Also, does the type of arrow you use affect your DPS? I don't see any numbers on them aside from the required level, does that mean they don't have any impact on your DPS (assuming, of course, that you are not using tin arrows at a level where feyiron would be more appropriate.) If both carbonite arrows and feyiron arrows are still white at my level, will they both do the same DPS? Or will feyiron do more? The reason I ask was because I had a number of levels where I could summon 30 carbonite arrows at a shot, but only 1 feyiron arrow at a time (and I had to be meleeing to do that) so it was more economical to rely on the carbonite.
I'm just not sure I understand how archery is supposed to work for us in this game.