Most of the problem is Scarlet Cheetah Fang hits the caster with a 100% increase to mana costing abilities. Now correct me if I am wrong but most of the ranger bread and butter spells were from The Darkened Sea (exceptions of Dichotomic Fusillade & Alliance) - OR - 4 expansions ago. Fast forward to Ring of Scale and now with the level increase everyone also got new spells which means everyones mana costs for those spells just went up accordingly If we look at the Data for those spells here as seen on raidloot.com (and feel free to check the math): With those numbers it is clear to see that the mana costs on most of the bread and butter spells went up anywhere between 20.10% - 20.25% (which also means under the effects of Scarlet Cheetah's Fang you are using approx 40.20% - 40.50% more mana than you are used to) Granted everyone's Mana / Endurance costs went up, I only mention this because while under the effects of Scarlet Cheetah Fang that Ranger's Mana cost for spells is doubled; therefore, that ranger is going through about 40% more mana per cast. (and not all of these spells will twincast, but we are still charged double the mana cost for them anyways -- That is another argument in itself though. And majority of the problem i have is the group situation - I rarely have mana problems RAIDING unless I am in a caster group or every raid leader's favorite reject DPS group (that group of the 4-6 mis-matched players you're just not sure where to place). However, take it to regular group play and within 5-10 minutes I'm out of mana, but my group play is burning just like i am in a raid, i can take Scarlet Cheetah fang off sure, play with using Gift of Mana procs, but still when the other members of my guilds groups are going through crap I am still always the first person to call i need a med / smoke break. It is very silly, but basically you need a bard, a beastlord, a cleric, and a mage rod and you need to be able to time not only your abilties, but 4 other classes abilities well just to get through SCF with some mana left over - and this is just for MANA (let alone timing your burns to the main groups burns, abilities, etc) For the raid scene however lets compare our two closet class comparisons the DPS hybrids. Bards, these guys can boost spells damage, proc damage, their auras give over haste, regular haste, flurry chance, triple attack chance, attack rating, epic 2.0 / Fierce eye, accuracy, more procs! run speed, the list goes on they are practically ADPS champions and they can keep most of those ADPS abilities up anywhere from 50% -100% of the time (minus a few items, IE chest click, funeral dirge, etc). The closest thing that a ranger can give a melee group there is Attack buffs (not required to be in the group), Enrichment [12% skill damage bonus] (again not required to be in the group), and overhaste w/ a small damage mod, once every 10 minutes for 2 minutes and change... or in other words 20-25% ish up-time. The only thing that we trump them on is 25 melee twincasts for the group once every 20 minutes [or once per fight basically] (2 min duration / 25 counters whichever comes first, we shall say it last full 2 min duration for simplicity sake) and that has a whopping 10% or less up-time, and Auspice of the Hunter - ~33% critical chance boost for everything (can be MGB / TB, therefore not needed for the ranger to be grouped) Beastlords, these guys have Ruaabri's Fury / Dichotomic Fury which is basically duplicate copies of each other (Ruaabri's has better flurry mod on it than Dicho, but Dicho is also a 1 minute cooldown vs 20 minute cooldown). the HHE is what makes this spells valuable for them to be in a melee group it is basically overhaste that stacks with overhaste (lowers weapon damage delay by ~ 39%), they too offer a group damage mod on a roughly the same time as the ranger one that is better than ours, and again we blow them out of the water with crit chance and twincasts (although crit chance buff we do not need to be in the group again). So the short version is of the hybrids we offer the best critical chance modifier in game, that can be MGB'd or cast outside a group, meaning the ranger doesn't need to be placed primarily in a melee group so that group can now perform at its peak, the only other thing we offer is a lot of twincasts every 20 minutes, which is nice for burns but doesn't help out for sustained vs a Beaslord that sure may not help as much on a burn, but weapon delay and flurry chance are VERY nice to have while burning as well. So the short version is in terms of ADPS, we are the least desired hybrid for a melee based group (with most of the ADPS we can provide, either another class can provide better effects, better up-time, or just plain blows ours out of the water) the only thing we excel at is A) Critical Chance, which doesn't require us to be in the group, therefore not securing us a spot as an ADPS in a melee group, and B) twincast, which is very powerful; however, it isn't powerful enough with the other stackable and more sustainable options to always secure us a position in a melee group as support. This is why most rangers do not see themselves Primarily as ADPS (mostly cause somebody can do it better than us, or we are not required in the group which means meh ok putting them in tank group, and be quiet and be happy your allowed to raid at all) If the Developers do not want rangers to be a heavy top end "DPS class" like a zerker, monk, rogue, wizard, necro, etc, then they need to look into providing rangers with either a new spell or combat ability or AA that will put us on the ADPS level of at least a Beastlord or give us something that will make melee DPS classes go man only room for 2 ADPS, which one of the three benefits from either a ranger / beastlord / bard do we want to have and which can we live without. IF they do not want to do that then they need to view options to either make us deal more damage to make raid leaders go man i have 4 top end DPS and only 3 spots in the last group who is unfortunately going to have to sit in a non-desired group w/o it almost always being the ranger that is selected. in regards to mana issues several others and myself have come up with numerous ways to solve mana issues, I personally would love something along the lines of this from another game I recently played Now obviously this would be VERY overpowered in a game Like EQ, but it isn't impossible to incorporate. They have something like this that they gave to Monks with Swift Tails' Chant this expansion, usable every 10 minutes Another Idea is they simply add a new arrow proc to the game for rangers, this proc could basically act like a constant mana tap similar to a necromancer lich type spell / enchanter drain spell that stacks with all current mana regen, consumes a ranger endurance (so sustainable, it taps a resource we hardly use, beastlords even use a good amount of endurance for their discs, rangers hardly consume 10% of their pool), and provides a 100% damage boost to the next Combat ability attack for melee or 35% damage boost to the next spell cast for casters therefore giving us a way to provide ADPS to a group This class has been pulled in so many different design directions that i feel the developers treat this class like a game of hot potato where it lands on one developers desk to the next to the next w/o any clear design choice. All it honestly needs is one developer to sit down and say in next 2 years or so i want this class to excel at providing X where X can either be DPS / TANKING / ADPS / HEALING (at this point i no longer care) if it is ADPS it needs to provide either clear benefits that rival HHE / Overhaste / Flurry chance / I mean i could even see it providing some form of ADPs that basically has a chance to let other proc miniature headshots / assassinates / decapitation like damage strikes -- OR -- it needs to be equal HHE as well and either we can fill in for a beastlord OR we can make it so that a melee group with a shaman, beastlord, ranger and bard almost have 100% uptime HHE / extra Flurry modifers etc etc etc. If it is going to be DPS then it needs to be redesigned so that we can deal top end DPS that rivals Zerkers / Monks / Rogs / Wizards / Necros EVERY expansion with viable self recovery options to get back into a fight / recovering from odd design choices (looking at you Scarlet Cheetah Fang mana debuff) w/o relying on very specific classes / available quantity of classes (I.E. multiple beastlords in raid for multiple paragons to just get back) If it is going to be TANKING then hell give us Dual Wield, 2 hand, and defensive proficiency's and maybe some more AC on class gear, some more snappy threat stuff w/ a low ish mana/edurance cost (I.E. Terror procs like an SK / insult like a warrior) and well we are practically there. Or HEALING couple more fast spammy heals ,a nice HoT group / direct group heal, maybe some fancy nature boy splash w/ some leafy blue spell symbols and well we can tell druids to DoT their hearts away as full on DPS.
Or just remove this stupid ability from the game and give me a another damn arrow nuke i would be happy with that to lol
or replace the twincasts with a self only ~90% HHE that affects ranged weapons and watch all your rangers under pureshot go rambo all over any NPC Obviously taking away the mana debuff
Genius... No joke it was like reading my brain. Wait, did i call myself a genius??? No no, you are genius because of your ability to write it all down, that is something I tried to do but knew I was not going to do as well as others, but no one else made the post so I took the chance. I talked about the 4 roles and where we sit, you simply did it better, thank you! I don't personally like the idea of getting mana how you suggested but I understand that was an example and even you had criticisms of it. I do like the ida of attaching it to a mana regen based on ALL of our disc kicks like Oreo suggested, gives more meaning to standing in range for kicks but also not to close to lose Archery hits. I posted a mini write up in this thread about making the ranger class a utility class and I find that role very interesting, but also incredibly OP to raids if too much stacks with bards and BL, that would take some real testing. I suggested that almost all our abilities become groupable, IF, Outriders attack, evasion, PoW, Brownies and so on... covering not only tanking, melee and casters but also covering TIME as you clearly spelled out. Most other utility is pretty much permanent, ours is very short lived with rather huge reuse times when compared. Anyways, thank you for the post!
Sorry, what is HHE? Sometimes some people acronyms are different for how other describe that same ability.
Hundred Hands Effect. And to the post about taking away mana cost on twincast, that takes away the whole risk vs reward aspect. It would also be extremely unfair to every other class that can activate twincast.
I believe that he means our DoTs take 2x mana for 1x damage. So 1 11k mana spell costs us like 2k mana but does normal damage. I'm not sure if Dich still does that, I just have not looked, but it used to.
That is incorrect. As I posted earlier, a twincasted bonecrawler hits for high 300ks and yes it does cost almost 22k mana but if you have an audio trigger for GoM it is basically free.
That a stupid reason not to post a parse. Nobody gives a about what the top end is doing parse wise for strats. What most of us want to see is where we sit since we are obviously being tuned around what the top folks can do.
It is stupid. Please don't kid yourself. You made a post about among other things dps, yet you don't want to post the hard data to back up your point. It sort of boggles the mind really.
It's NOT stupid. Posting parses with everything visible has often had extremely unwanted consequences over the years as bad actors will often use them as ammunition to lobby for 'fixes'.
Rangers are fine. Being half warrior (best tank) Half druid (best dps) I would think i could get a final stand ability at some point. If bow damage gets an increase everyone will be happy
Cast SCF, cast Bonecrawler, click off SCF, resume nuke spam...accept that SCF is largely an Adps tool now, and move on with life. I have yet to find content that requires me to do more dps than I am capable of, including every raid event from the last 3 expansions. Adapt, improvise, overcome.
And we can see how keeping parses secret is helping everyone out. Being worried about forum trolls is like being worried about the weather on Saturn. The bottom line is that complaints without data are meaningless. Why the Devs should take people's word for anything when it is obvious a significant portion of the population actively works to keep data secret is beyond me. A parse, group and raid makeup (or just group), and number of spells casted over the duration would go a long way towards making the point about our mana usage.
Servers are silos. When the only data you are looking at is your own, how do you know your data is representative of the issue? You could be the greatest ranger of all time or at the lower end of the scale when data from rangers from other servers is brought into the discussion. What you thought was an issue may not be for others. Yes, I reacted like a meanie because others were getting opinions dismissed because they don't raid their rangers etc. I surely didn't start anything. When you live in a silo, you really don't know anything other than what is happening in your silo. A group ranger could come onto your server and parse higher in your raid than your rangers. No one knows for sure. I think you are starting to realize this now. If you want changes to the class, you all are gonna have to unite and compare data to see what really is an issue and what isn't. The only consensus I see now is the mana issue. I agree that needs to be addressed. DPS?? We have already seen that might not be as bad as the OP stated. Once you go over all data, not just data from one silo, then you can present a united front to the dev team with data to support it. If you don't have accurate data to support your case, it is just hyperbole to the dev team. They are not going to act on your feelings and hunches. They are going to need data.
Actually you're also in correct it will cost you 22k with a Gift of Mana Proc. Without a GoM proc however it will cost you roughly ~44,000 mana
Level 85+ Mage, Druid, Wizard Twincast Rk. III Improved Twincast AA for several classes So there are several variations of twincast that work and do not double the caster's mana spent, so no actually why does there need to be a risk vs reward system? Why is the risk vs reward system based on the ONLY hybrid class that doesn't have some form of on demand self mana boost / regen ability. I mean looking at what is currently available in the game why did they make something like this and give it to the only class that can't boost their own mana - it makes no sense. I would have rather seen this ability gone to a Wizards, a Mage, a shaman i mean a class that can "go oh crap my mana is low here no problem here is 20% back no sweat" Now obviously yes, if they took away the mana penalty the amount of counters rangers are granted would have to be reduced accordingly. I can see how on paper this look like a good idea, but if the developer in charge of designing it took the time to look at the variations of twincast already available in game, then suddenly this idea suddenly makes no damn sense. Taking it one step further and giving it to the only hybrid class that can't on-demand boost his own mana and suddenly you have gone the extra step in wow on paper looks good but i know without a doubt this Developer no longer plays the game / at least does not play the ranger class / and did not properly test it in all situations. Add on to the fact that 2/4 spells most raiding ranger cast do not actually benefit from this because of twincast blocker limitations and suddenly it only get worse, but you still get charged the double mana for casting the spell regardless. In short, I question the reason that this mana penalty was added at all. I would rather see another arrow spell added to my rotation, or i would rather have some form of HHE or something else than what this ability provides and debuffs me with. And part of the problem with it is it is part of our ADPS offering to a group. In other words, simply not casting it is not an option and your group expects it as part of the burn rotation. If a ranger blocks the greater version of the spell on himself, he also blocks his group from receiving the lesser version but the 20 min timer still gets applied. Also you can cast it and immediately take it off, but that makes 0 sense, again i start to question "why did we even receive this AA in the first place, if we are damned if we do and damned if we don't." IT MAKES 0 SENSE
