Devs, a lil help or input plz *Rangers*

Discussion in 'Hybrid' started by Avory, Jan 26, 2018.

  1. Sancus Augur

    We have Rangers breaking into the top 10, and I promise all of our top 20 in any RoS event are above your 190k number. All of our top 10 are at or well above the number you quoted for your top DPS.

    We probably do raids way faster than you so DPS isn't directly comparable, but 120k to 190k seems very low to me for any duration. Rangers definitely could use help with mana IMO, but their overall DPS doesn't seem as woefully inadequate as you'd like to suggest.

    In general I'd be much more on board with this thread if there were fewer personal attacks and hubris and more data. Edit: I am looking forward to see upcoming parses posted (assuming they are posted) since that's a lot more helpful for comparison purposes.
    Kuvani likes this.
  2. Schadenfreude Augur

    I'm not going to post actual numbers because I'm almost certainly not allowed to and I'd have to get into redacting classes as well as names to even consider it but your number 1 Ranger wouldn't have been in the top 20 for us last time we killed Cactus.

    That said his numbers are quite decent taking into consideration the amount of time you appear to take on the event, did things go south or is this normal?
  3. Derka Power Ranger

    Belkar beat me to the post about other classes' recovery abilities. Our killshot proc(Hunter's Fury) is a joke, it has a 86% chance to return 1200 mana (0.8% of my group geared mana). Revitalizing Torpor from an old expansion's BP returns 7500 over 30 seconds (5% of my total) every 10 minutes at the trade off of using our TBM+ DPS bp clicky since they share the same timer. I can't even remember the last time I used breather/hiatus because our endurance consumption is so minimal even though that's the recovery ability we've been given to use like other DPS classes.
    Avory likes this.
  4. Randragon Augur

    So in essence our top things we need help on are:
    1: Mana Retention/Recovery: Either lower the cost of some of our class defining spells/abilities or allow us to recover mana faster.
    2: Give Ranger's back some of their DPS: As suggested either allow us to recover our mana faster or separate the Pureshot and Wildstalker's ability to be on their own timers
    3: Don't break either of any of the above to make it happen. I know some have suggested taking some of our endurance to get mana back but we all know in their infinite wisdom if they do that it will go to far as it has in the past.

    We constantly give feedback during Beta's past and we get ignored it seems. Then there is no response either public or private to back up their actions to the contrary of what we want.

    Most likely we are spinning our wheels here fellow Ranger's. I would love for the Dev's to prove me wrong and finally come out of pocket and help us out.
    Avory likes this.
  5. Avory Augur


    I agree about the attacks, I didn't start them and sadly to even have a discussion about almost any class in EQ players will be met with a group of individuals that don't even play the class being discussed. Trolling as hard as they possibly can, for some, in their eyes they are being "productive." No matter how wrong they might be they came with zero intention of allowing those that actually play the class to have a voice, it's been the EQ community way for as long as I can remember.

    While it does not truly matter I have to ask, are you an roi Ranger? Either way, roi or not, could you give us/me an ida of where abouts you/your Rangers are parsing DPS wise?

    Someone asked why I didn't simply send devs a PM, and to answer that is fairly simple. I opted on an open thread in the forums because while I knew it would get trashed by Trolls, and it did, I also suspected there would be a lot of real concerns by the actual Ranger community, raiding Rangers in particular. There is simply no weight to me sending a Dev my personal experiences with the Raiding and grouping Ranger class. To be fair I was not even sure others had these issues as I belonge to no ranger club, just the Rangers in Trioton and we are the only *real* rading guild on Povar at this time.

    I'd be interested to hear how you or your Rangers are doing so much better than our "very low" DPS Rangers. That is not an attack, I honestly struggle to see how you could be doing so much better that us and am in no way against learning to better play my class. Now, unless the other DPS is burning the event to the ground thus making me wonder if your Rangers DPS seems higher due to a shorter fight, but without context of how much higher all other classes are on your raids I can't say.

    Now we have made top 10 an actual and only few times, where our DPS was around 220k DPS, I don't know why of course. In the end as you said, the fight could be shorter thus you/your Rangers parse better, but if you guys are killing faster than Triton chances are you are the top 1% in almost all your players... In the end if your fights are much shorter then devs still need to be looking at the other 99% of raiding Rangers and finding out why sustained DPS kills the class. My point being, would you/your guilds Ranger DPS shrink if your fights were not so fast... Are fight fast not because Rangers DPS is higher, but rather because all the other DPS is higher. These would be my questions.
  6. Avory Augur



    Great point, and this is a lot of what I talk about in regards to the dilution of our class. Rangers in order to get mana have very few tools but in almost all cases we give up DPS. Giving up our DPS for a very minimal amount of mana only extends our fight ever so slightly before a needed med is rquired. As you mentioned we get endurance regens over mana regen, as if our class is not a pure melee class.

    The dilution in this case falls back on "We gave you x-y-z" so you shouldn't get "more stuff." In reality we needed a-b-c, so xyz is near irreverent... that takes place all over in our class. Need more DPS? Here's a huge mana sink dot that does as much over all damage as casting other spells in it's place, and you keep fighting longer due to having mana. Cheetah has become a liability, it was once great... now I use it on myself for extremely specific moments where I only cast 1 spell repeatedly for a situational reason
    or I cast it and pretty much take it right off. Honestly even using Imbued ferocity feels like a waste to shift from archery to melee for more procs due to time lost and the fact that Archery is still better DPS.
  7. Avory Augur


    I always felt our archery spells should be taken out of Endurance, but you are right.... We'll save mana but be OOE way too fast lolz. If it were done correctly I think we would see something like all archery spells use endurance to save us mana. Dicho would be split between endurance and mana because it casts fire/ice.

    The dots need to be removed from the game, I honestly can't be nice about them. Whatever team/dev came up with giant mana sink dots for Rangers, that are simply not powerful enough for Raids should really back away from further development of our class. I don't think any Ranger would have ever thought to not only keep the single dot line a line alive, but also make it under powered and crazy high mana... but then to add a second, more meaningless dot and then attach an INCREDIBLY USELESS AND DUMB reverse DS on it blows my mind.

    Dots are more dilution. Rangers started out as a PURE melee, archery was absolutely useless even on Disc. Most were not doing any kind of parse back then so it was assumed TS was good, but it wasn't. Our spells were so limited, and only 5 or so % of our total DPS. Rangers DPS today is approx 55%- 60% of our DPS and on 1 named I can go OOM while most don't even get under 80%.

    Today Rangers suffer from being the Jack of all trades but not really good at anything... Our personal utility is massively oversold by those downplaying all other classes utility. From gate to invzo, from run speeds to potion heals and millions of useful clicks most classes have the "important" utility either in AA/clicks/potions or was outright given them... like fades or proc slows.
  8. Avory Augur



    It's also possible, not saying it's fact.. but possible that you guys don't kill any faster than us. There is also the possibility that who ever does the parse simply gets a more accurate reading of everyone on that raid. I know we have 3 people that will post parse and while we usually just use 1, every now and then others will be posted due to fluctuations in the parses. Then people post individual parse and it's always higher than the "big raid parse" had them. So yes, Triton Rangers personal parse might show us as 20-40k higher than the full raid parse, but that's the same with every class from what I have seen making it a wash.

    It's also possible that if your Rangers are making parse that your other DPS is actually not performing as well as they could be.

    Or it's possible your Rangers are simply better than our Rangers... /shrug. I'd only know if I raided with you or your Rangers raided with us to be blunt. I personally feel like something is off due to the fact that we have classes over doubling our over all damage output. Maybe our Rangers simply have not figured out how to best play the RoS Ranger. Thats why I made the thread to be honest.

    Thanks for your input. =)
    Belexes likes this.
  9. Cicelee Augur

    It is hard comparing parses between guilds because each guild is different. Not only in talent and skill, but in class composition and strategies as well. While you can gain some information from them, generally there has to be a lot of perspective and "grains of salt" before making blanket assumptions of the class.

    I have friends in various raid guilds across servers, competitive guilds if you will. One guild has their rogues and monks towards the middle to bottom of parses, another has their rogues consistently top five and monks just outside the top ten. Guild A can say that rogues and monks need help, while guild B claim their wizards and magicians are lacking and need class boosts. A Triton parse, a ROI parse, a CT parse, a ROV parse... what exactly is it going to show? Unless each guild provides the same strategy, the same ADPS, the same skill amongst class members... only way it kind of works is if everyone among all the guilds of a particular class is at the same spot in a parse. And even then, maybe it just isn't this expansion for class ABC to be the top ten on a parse...
    Belexes likes this.
  10. Avory Augur



    I fully agree, and is one of the reasons I have not been gun ho to post a parse. As I mentioned from Sancus's post, that there can be reasosns why our rangers numbers seem low, it's in fact possible (not likely) that RoI's DPS could actually be less than Triton's as a whole but the parse simply catches people as being 15% less as a whole on average... or as I mentioned before that posting a parse can give hints as to strats.

    I know in the past Rangers could CC with snare kits on events and thus our DPS would look horrible. People that have Bane DPS due to fire/ice/blunts/pierce can look abnormally high on a parse. AE events to being able to dot multiple things can skew a parse. But in all we feel, in Triton that our DPS and mana retention is very underwhelming.

    It's not about where Rangers or anyone places on a parse, I even mentioned that in the OP. It's how well we do compared to others. If your guilds parse shows the top 5 pushing 350k DPS and the lower top 10-6 pushing 300k while Rangers do 280k that's much different than all the numbers being the same but Rangers being at 190k. I could be fine with 280k on average compared to the rest of the guilds DPS and still be in 15th place on parse.

    I know our Rangers are competitive, not in the ego way as some here have suggested, but rather in the "we share all of our info way" to make all of us better, because it helps everyone.

    I do find it odd that Mages/Wizzy/Necros/Zerker/Druids/Rogue/BL/Monks/Shaman/Enchanters and even bards are considered to be, by the community of trollers in this thread, as legitimately better dps than Rangers... That's almost all classes in EQ now more DPS on raids than rangers and not by a little. Rangers beat Clerics, warriors, Pallies and SK's... wonder what their DPS would be like in a DPS group rather than tanking/healing haha.
  11. Sancus Augur

    The multiple posts of walls of text make it a little difficult to respond to every point/question you raised, so I'm not going to try.

    To clarify one thing, though, yes I am in RoI. I'm not a Ranger, but I actually do believe Rangers could use help, especially with mana. I think it's important to draw that conclusion from accurate data, though. That includes data from people who you wouldn't consider "end game" or who are doing well because they aren't in a guild with "competitive DPS" (despite being in a top 10 guild, I might add). It's always important to give context with data, but explaining away every dissenting opinion/parse gets a little old.

    Regardless, I'd like to ask a different question: what duration of events are Rangers struggling on particularly? This thread has already covered that Rangers do well for super short burns, and I'd imagine for the duration of Pureshot they're probably not hurting terribly. Especially with the emphasis on mana issues and the "190k" number - how long are you thinking on sustained?

    If it's easier, maybe choose an event instead that you think illustrates your point or would be a good comparison.
    Belexes likes this.
  12. Fintank Augur

    To be clear the parse you're mentioning was SEVERAL MONTHS AFTER the cheetah nerf, and if memory serves it was roughly 1 week before the Spell Casting Reinforcement change. I don't hold onto parses, holding onto parses means you think you've peaked and I don't have that mindset. I believe I actually went and performed that parse just for the forums during the very heated trolling posts!Not to mention for whatever reason my guild doesn't register as competitive to you? Just because we aren't neck and neck doesn't mean we aren't competitive. Don't even get me started on DPS standards based on numbers you have brought up yourself. I quite honestly don't like to get personal but I had said nothing in this thread at the time of your post and yet here you are besmirching my guild and my data for no clear reason. Anyhow, time to move on!

    I feel as though posting my opinions and actual data through play on these topics just devolves the threads as a whole. Because person A isn't doing what person B is which obviously means person B is fabricating or bolstering through unconventional means. Every time I post legitimate data backed up by everything imaginable there's always 12 other things people want, and when delivered somehow a 13th is then required to accept.

    Having a set style of play be the best consistently would be nice instead of parsing every time new content comes out to check what's optimal. I think some of the ADPS ideas were cool as well and would help people want rangers in their group more often. Ranger mana recovery being the worst is absolutely true! (There were all things I liked and agreed with that caught my attention, now let's get to the coveted hate on Fintank part.)

    Even with all these cool and great ideas the thread goes straight downward by bringing up DPS being poor. The fact of the matter is our DPS itself is fine, great even STILL. The only thing that needs to be addressed is mana. Now I posted on the VP quest items post in regards to adding Rangers to the caster 2hb with a mod rod click. I even posted math of other hybrid mana back abilities and what a 20 minute event would look like with a ranger using it on CD. Rangers still came out at the bottom, which to me isn't that great but at least it's something. This however did not spark any dev feedback or changes that I am aware of, lame but oh well.

    I do think a lot of you are not using everything at your disposal when it comes to regaining mana in a raid. I am roughly 40% TBM geared still with the rest being EOK gear, so I have a ballpark of 10k or so less mana than most of you. Yet I am still able to scrape by and throw down nasty parses. Perhaps you lack "aggression" when it comes to focusing in on DPS. I coordinate group mana-back abilities and out of group single target ones for myself. 95% mana? Bam tell for Focused Paragon. 90% mana? Bam mod rod. 70%? QM tells till I get one. Scarlet running and 70 or below? Bam tell bard to hit reflexive (Reflexive twincasts while bards are under Scarlet, so you get double mana back, aka 30k). The faster you get the mana-back abilities on timers and faster in an event you are to burn the better you'll do. The only time I have REAL mana issues is during Scarlet, after I make it through I'm set for the rest of the event. Burning faster will also mean you can hit those shorter CD abilities when they repop because you've already done the "big sync".


    Bye friends!
    Turoq and Belexes like this.
  13. Avory Augur



    I have no interest in fighting, so too much focus on the past gets a little messy. That being said I remember the parse you posted was on Queen, I too have pared several times (in the now distant past) #1 for the whole guild on parse for that event... It was a VERY short event once you got it down and I believe HS adds to the overall DPS. I also didn't call you out in the beta forms for the parse, it was a couple others.

    It's possible you are just better than me, that's fine... I highly doubt you are even over 3-5% better as the vast majority of our DPS and mana regen is literally 100% the same, gear, weapons, AA's, focus and groups.

    I don't have issues with mana on raids anymore because I stopped using dots and cheetah, again, you do the damage now and run oom or later in the event, and run oom. I feel it's saver to not blow all my mana out and not be able to buff anyone that died or heal anyone like my groups shaman if I see evveryone's life hurting in my group.

    There are some misunderstandings and I'll admit I'm getting annoyed because it's pushed in my face that I'm simply not accepting other peoples experiences and only looking at my own. In the end when I say "competitive" it's absolute fact that if you are topping parse as a Ranger right now on Raids when having plenty of other classes to build strong DPS groups, they are failing historically and their DPS role. That or they are dying all over the place.

    Not so long ago, the idea that Ranger would out parse all their zerkers and not acknowledge the possibility that their Zerkers are just not "competitive," when guilds like mine had them near 2x our top parers DPS is just hypocrisy. My goal is not to talk down to a guild by saying "competitive," but rather to point out that if a Ranger to be top tier DPS in MY experiences, would have to make up a 100-150k DPS short coming to be where "top" DPS classes are at currently. Nor is my goal to demand a single nerf for any other class.

    I believe the problem has been hypocrisy. I can't say things that might very well be 100% accurate because people get butt hurt. You're guild is just fine, i have no issues with you or anyone in your guild.... I simply believe that if you raided with Triton, you would do everything you can but find yourself saying "wtf" in the end. That being said it's possible I raid in your guild and find myself at top of parse... or not.

    So, "competitive" does not mean what # place you guild is in server wide, it's rather where the individual players ability to play their class "competitively" against their own class server wide. Somehow I was not clear on this to a group of people in this thread, some seemed to get it and some didn't, and I even tried to spell it out a few times.

    When someone posts a parse and a Ranger is 4th, and the next is 12th and then like 20th.... 1 ranger is playing much better than the others, assuming all metrics are the same. Basically, YOU Fintank as a Ranger are and seem very competitive server wide for the Ranger class, I accept this, I have seen your burn as you posted it and it's VERY close to everything I do. Your numbers prove you not only know the class but you perform at a high level... That being said... Unless you have 4 aces up your sleeve you have not shared, you being very good as a Ranger will still get you about 20th on parse in Triton, at around 100-150k behind our better parsers. In your guild from what you have said, you are #1... So it's not even kinda sorta rude of me to assume there is a lack of "competitive" players playing their classes in your guild. or hey, maybe you guys have 1 bard, 1 shaman and 1 Bl and you get that group every single time, I dono.
  14. Cicelee Augur

    I get the feeling that the only acceptable outcome for you is for the top 4 slots on Triton raid parses to be rangers. And until then you will be posting walls of texts asking for boosts and increases.

    Rangers could use some mana recovery tools, or mana cost reductions. Other than that, maybe this expansion rangers will be behind other classes. Maybe when Planes of Power 2.0 comes out in 2021 then rangers will be back on top. Who knows. Who cares? Just have fun and enjoy being the best you can be.
    Dewhead and Belexes like this.
  15. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    One does not have to main a ranger to say “provide some data, yo!”, or critique the BBesque style of endless textwalls that are drowning out whatever point(s) you’re trying to make. I barely commented on your main assertion (paraphrasing in potus voice: “raid rangers are bad at sustained parsing post scrm change. SAD!”), rather how you’re saying it.

    And as a fellow “hybrid” class (sk) I can absolutely sympathize with the whole “my utility is pretty poor in raids” thing. If one looks at it through one brown tinted lens it sucks, but that’s not the whole of the class.

    ^ what this guy said.
  16. Avory Augur



    If I respond to your very first question, it would be answered in the very quote of me you just made.

    Try... plz just try...

    The second parses were posted people immediately challenged the value of posting parses, correctly in fact... When I and many others posted parses in beta, as you quoted me saying, the parses were vomited on by people that DON'T EVEN PLAY RANGERS. So, for those that don't main a Ranger, mainly in raid situations, it is way beyond abundantly clear at this point that no information, no parses, no nothing will ever convince them that actual people that play the actual class on actual raids might possibly know more about that class than they do.

    Are we done, or will you quote this answer to your question and just ask the same questions? All raiding rangers agree with the OP to varying degrees, all non Rangers 100% disagree and only slowly changed to "ok you guys have some mana issues hu hu hu."

    Look at my quote you seem to have read due to you quoting me as to why I didn't just PM a dev... maybe the issue is people are not even reading before posting?
  17. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    That tends to happen with massive strings of heavily annectodal textwalls. And speaking of reading, I actually just said I’m quite sympathetic to “ranger issues” in terms of utility translating to raids. It’s a problem that many classes face in some form or another, including the one I main.

    But yeah, we’re done. Salt on, RangerBB. Salt on.
    Belexes and Sancus like this.
  18. kizant Augur

    I could make a web app where you all can submit parses where it saves and displays averages of everything anonymously. If there were interest a lot of these arguments could go away!
    Belexes and Moldar like this.
  19. Avory Augur

    I re read my OP 2x due to of course non Rangers complaining about a wall of txt.

    Couple points...

    If 3-4 min of reading is "too much" for you, consider you might not actually care about the topic. I didn't write a book, and it was well spaced out... I can send you a link to what a wall of txt looks like if you want


    I have answered your questions several times, and even off and on been very nice to others considering how outright rude many here have been.

    Take for example, most early trolling posters have had an actual no blow back for claiming "nothing is wrong with Rangers" or "how OP do you want Rangers to be!!!!!!!" I'm not frustrated, I expected much of this. I simply get board of re-answering questions repeatedly because to some, a lot of reading is considered a "wall o text."


    So, to answer your question that has already been asked, by you or someone else I don't remember... I posted it on the forums because IF other Rangers had the same or similar issues that i have expressed than it would carry vastly more weight than a PM that I would almost obviously never hear anything back, even that i sent it and they got it... This way I don't sound like an angry Ranger just wanting to be made OP, we would have many who play the class giving their experiences.

    The reason the thread got bogged down (predictably) with haters is because they wanted me to admit I was just a know nothing, narcissistic "nerd" who just wanted more cool stuff for my class crammed in under the gauze of 'help out Rangers mana issue." As the number of complaints from actual Raiding or maing rangers came to light these people never said "sorry" or admitted maybe they were in fact clueless... no, they just stopped posting.

    I'm not here to try and make me look like a hardcore badass Raiding Ranger is some leet competitive guild... I'm simply make what I see as accurate posts about the issues plaguing the Ranger class. Again i knew I'd be burned at the stake by haters, its the MMO community way and has been since everquest first started.

    I hope that answered your question.
  20. Karthos Augur

    I agree that the major problem with the class currently is the ridiculous mana cost of our spells especially under cheetah fang. I really hope something is done sooner rather than later. There have been some good suggestions posted like the endurance for archery spells idea.

    One thing about these parses that I want to point out is that the raw numbers really don't tell the whole story. If you have 2 equally skilled rangers in a raid the one that fulmimates alliances more often will be the one that dominates the parse. Avory I suspect that your guilds rangers do not ensure that alliances are casted and fulmimated as often as they should be, which should be constantly.

    Playing a ranger at a high level is not hard. I believe probably every guild that raids likely has 1 or more rangers that know what they're doing. Comparing parses from different raids without cast counts to back them up is actually kind of silly.
    Avory likes this.