The Clan Lord Sentinel

I have been seeing the need for a rangers class. Or possibly classes. Time and date to be announced, suddenly and abruptly due to my schedule. Visionstones will be made for people to download and watch on their own time. The Arindal folk have the most need for this service, as many of them are close to rangerhood.

This would be helpful even for those who have an interest in being better informed...

If you weren't already planning on it, could you discuss the types of morphs? How they benefit rangers, what the basic abilities of the different morph families are?

For example...

General Orga overview:
Benefits of Orga specialization:
Draw backs of Undine Specialization:
and some specific Orga morphs of note:

General Undine Overview:
Cat
drakes
bears
etc.

(there is most likely a better way to organize something like this, but a ranger would know. Not I.)

I'd like to know what criteria people use for deciding a morph is worthwhile. Also, how do you know if you're qualified to start a morph, and whether you will get full benefit of the creature's stats?

I'd also like to know how best to train to prepare for being a Ranger, so as to avoid wasting ranks while you're still young.

I would definitely attend this class if you gave it.

If you record it I'll host it then link it off the clump2. If you are preparing lecture material before hand, I could add it to the CLUMP2 (or give you an account to add it) or link it if you are going to host it online.

Feel free to send me private messages if you have questions. I'm not the most knowledgeable Ranger in all the lands (I don't even have a morph yet!), but I've picked some knowledgeable Ranger brains, so I know a fair bit at this point.

I guess i hook in here because i think a class wouldn't be that suitable for those questions.
And as the answer to Eirians question leads in I try to cover that one first.

Eirian wrote:I'd like to know what criteria people use for deciding a morph is worthwhile. Also, how do you know if you're qualified to start a morph, and whether you will get full benefit of the creature's stats?

For the first part you should decide which stat you want to boost with your morph.
Is it for tags then you have another decission loop between luck tagers (leech, gcp, vile cricket etc) and a "real" atkus morph - but while you will easily qualify for the tag-morphs you might get into issues when deciding for a real atkus morph. Also the time for achieving the morph could be a factor to take into consideration.
If you have only few time a small luckhit-morph is really quickly done while you might need help or patience for other nice morphs like cove cobra, black mamba or sazaja - not to mention their qualification needs.
In the best case you can combine two or more nice stats here - thats the reason why "young" rangers often go for haremau kitten or recluse Arachne as a starting morph. The Troilus part is also something you won't grow out - except for the maximum histia.
You should also think about the movement speed of your chosen morph. You will have a hard time chasing feraling fast movers with a gitoise/baltoise morph...

Regarding the qualification it is said that usually you will qualify at about the stage when you start to "kill" some of the creature - but this will and can change with the training style and also with higher amounts of total ranks.
As there are also initial spirit costs for befriend and morph that most likely depend on the strength of the creature you might take those as a vague number. Just ask someone who has the morph already
But since I don't have the best knowledge about how it works yet I can't promise this to be "accurate"

I can't really tell you how to find out when you maxed the stats of a creature - at least there seems no accurate way and even taking a look to the beastiary won't always help. My example is the chosen host which has a huge amount of histia there what i really doubt. For me it has decent troilus which makes the histia appear to be more...
But I think the best way is to observe and compare a lot...
Which of my hunting partners can brick the creature? how many hits does it need to get one of those down?
Of course the ranger studies and also the ites makes it hard to guess there - but you will probably see over the time...

The Wanderer wrote:If you weren't already planning on it, could you discuss the types of morphs? How they benefit rangers, what the basic abilities of the different morph families are?

I see those different categories for morph - not directly families but you might see what my intention is a little later:

• Tag-Morph - most likely with very low histia. small spirit costs to morph, easy to achieve - also good for portals, jumps or other things when you know you will get damage and don't want to lose it (danger of hotfixing it is given ^^)
• atkus morph - to aid you with the upcoming studies/lasties due to their atkus and hopefully also with some regia
• defense morph 1 - This one has good bricking abilities. The amount of histia is not really important as you maybe can morph into it again once you are killed
• defense morph 2 - This one is more a tank and has nice histia and maybe also troilus. Of course it can have a good defense too but it's not very likely that a histia-tank has the best defense...
• running morph - this one is most likely combined with another morph type
• troilus morph - as mentioned before

The Wanderer wrote: For example...

General Orga overview:
Benefits of Orga specialization:
Draw backs of Undine Specialization:
and some specific Orga morphs of note:
General Undine Overview:
Cat
drakes
bears
etc.
(there is most likely a better way to organize something like this, but a ranger would know. Not I.)

Well first you should have a look about the family itself when it comes to specialising.
I think that there are reasons why we have only a few specialists but for morphing it is really a good idea to search your preferred morphs within the same family as it will save you some duvin.
But when talking about specialization we don't necessarily need to hold our eyes on morphing.
There are two mighty and sometimes underestimated possibilities you can do as well: Tracking and Befriending.
While tracking can help to avoid some hard situations as well as helping with lasties the befriend helps you in many ways. To get rid of a mob chasing you for example (I love my gcp befriend for that) or also to weaken your opponents when they occur in large numbers.
You can also do the befriend-lure in some areas that usually are either hard or impossible to lure (I got a flotsam meshra to tc that way and other people do that with spiders/noids or other funny things )
You also have to think of removing speciality abilities there. When befriending an Orga Dred for example their lightning spell will stop and the hunting party is much more secure...
But again: If you specialise you might select the family well. The Orgas have a big family but many of them are pretty easy to tag (well at least from my point of view). Also the strongest ones hide in hard and packed areas where many people won't be willing to wait for lasties...
A big family is often also a problem with the amount of lasties you will get during a hunt. Much variety means that there will spawn a lot of "things you don't need" making your befriend/morph time pretty long and hard...

To shorten it a bit - some words to the families you wanted to know:

Orga - nice family - maybe a little easy to hit. Befriends can be very valueable but only in areas that are not hunted too often (well there will be a sheduled Orga Outback hunt soon iirc)
Undine - they split up in 3 sub-categories making them unattractive in my eyes even if they are common in many areas - but only a few of them are really strong...
Cat - nice family (there is a reason why many people do feline morphs). It has a high variety of cats in different strengths and people like to hunt cats because of their coins.
drakes - i haven't seen many drakes in CL yet - but maybe i hunt the wrong places... Probably not very valueable and also a small family...
bears - all bears are weak! Not really more to say... They should be much stronger and much more common in my eyes... For time being a really bad family - unless for costumes...

I hope i didn't forget too many things and you find my résumé useful...

Talas wrote:II see those different categories for morph - not directly families but you might see what my intention is a little later:

• Tag-Morph - most likely with very low histia. small spirit costs to morph, easy to achieve - also good for portals, jumps or other things when you know you will get damage and don't want to lose it (danger of hotfixing it is given ^^)
• atkus morph - to aid you with the upcoming studies/lasties due to their atkus and hopefully also with some regia
• defense morph 1 - This one has good bricking abilities. The amount of histia is not really important as you maybe can morph into it again once you are killed
• defense morph 2 - This one is more a tank and has nice histia and maybe also troilus. Of course it can have a good defense too but it's not very likely that a histia-tank has the best defense...
• running morph - this one is most likely combined with another morph type
• troilus morph - as mentioned before

Another type is costume (which you mention later on).

My list would be, based on characteristics (meaning that a good morph probably taps into several of those):
• Low Histia: escaping damage (and in the past stopping health poison, removing balance poison)
• Troilus: The more histia the better. You will likely never reach the troilus to max out the best troilus morph, but at least get as much histia in those as possible
• Luck morph: Pure tagging, though some critters now have both luckus and darkus (and then may be used for lastying)
• Atkus morph: Tagging and eventually lastying if coupled with decent darkus. Or pure tagging if very low darkus to be more friendly in group hunts
• Low Darkus: Group hunting friendly If you have the atkus to hit the stuff.
• High Darkus: When stuff must be dealt with quickly.
• Speed: Just fast critters to escape, chain run, whatever. I wouldn't go for such a morph if it was not also coupled to some additional characteristic of interest
• High histia: For tanking. Same than for speed, I wouldn't get one specifically for that.
• Defensive morph: Very few of those (if any really). Most critters have defense balthus based, so they may be considered if you're looking at improving substancially your balthus (for example to swing much higher level of goss bonus)
• Costume: That's a pure matter of taste, rp, whatever.
So basically nearly all kind of morph can be considered and use for something. Really the only I can think of that would be pretty useless would be: Slow, low Atkus, no luckus, Intermediate Histia, no crazy defense, neither nice or bad looking (you can rp ugly morph I'm sure). And in most cases, if you select a morph for some abilities, it may end up obsolete. Very few characteristics can't be obsoleted (low histia, costume, speed, I guess).

BUT
• 8 legged: That's obviously the only morphs one should consider

On Befriend: I like befriends. I really do. Know however that befriending require much much more spirit than morphing. It can help in various situations which I'm not gonna list here. My favorites are buying time so that people can be healed and tag, and using them as decoy. Fun use is of course to cause some panic in town and stealing lasties

All that say, I disagree with Talas stating that this kind of info is not suitable for a classroom. In fact, I believe it is much more suitable to a class as every rangers have different opinions and one can make his mind listening to the debate.