I am not one of the many who favor number 1. In real life? LOL! If you were in battle and tried to fight someone with a bow at point blank range, you're dead. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Range DPS is just that, range. It isn't right to be able to range a mob at point blank range and hit the same dps numbers you would at some distance back. Next, you would have SKs and Warriors or any class that can use a bow ask for the same dps abilities they have at point blank range???? We are one of the few classes that have a decent burn with melee and range. Don't be so greedy. You can't range dps? Light up a mini melee burn until you can. Rangers have options.
1 - Agreed. There are a number of events requiring packing in too close to be in archery range. Spells are also ranged DPS and have no minimum distance requirement. Rangers fit a unique space in the game; we are neither melee DPS nor caster, and at the same time, both. 2 - Agreed. It's target groupable, but leaving it out of Mass Group Buff / Tranquil Blessings seems arbitrary. 3 - Disagree on Shadowspike specifically, agree on an arrow update. It takes a few dedicated hours to make a Shadowspike, speaking from experience and accounting for tradeskill grinding. At the level it first becomes available, it would be absurdly powerful. Not great for TLP. 4 - Shared cooldown, but reduce the shared timer 15 minutes like most other class "long refresh" burns. While we're at it, cut Cheetah down to 15 as well. Lots of raiders are tired of waiting on rangers and berserkers for their half hour burns to refresh. 5 - Agreed on Cadira's point about mana recoup. On a burn, rangers are empty in 75 seconds or less, and are pretty well tapped the rest of an event. Exploding candy is great, but 35k mana from a mod rod is gone in 10 casts or less of our spam spell, and is available to everyone that also has another mana recoup.
1- Yes absolutely, tight quaters leaves no room for range 2- Yes it's a group stat buff that needlessly needs to be recast mutiple times 3- No but a new arrow is long over due 4- Yes they should be seperate 5- Arrow spells should use endurance, we have endurance regen out the ying yang for what? kicking? To the best of my knowledge the act of holding a bow, pulling the string and aiming it all take endurance not magic. If anything some sort of mana regen to recoup mana, like an aa to convert endurance to mana every such XX min.
I've been playing a ranger as main since 2000, have done end-game raiding, group content, and nearly every quest for 23 years. Here are my opinions; feel free to disagree. Currently level 120 with all AA done. If played correctly (my opinion), rangers can fulfill almost any role in a group, or fill in any role if needed. The class is not a stationary glass cannon as I see it played as an alt by so many players. "If I can't tank it, I don't try to headshot it." 1. Archery is ranged damage, not point-blank. Keep the distance requirement and the "sweet-spot" we all use to do archery, spells, and disc kicks. Positioning is part of this game. However, along those lines, fix mob melee range being greater than player melee range. When a mob runs up to you and starts meleeing, you are just out of range to return damage (ripostes don't work). 2. Completely agree, group buffs should all be usable with MGB abilities. 3. Disagree, but new arrows are something we all want as long as they are usable with EQuiver. Personally, I don't want root-breaking procs on my bow or arrows, but making options available for those who do is acceptable. New arrows could be tied into different power sources to generate different procs (see older weapon procs based on power sources). 4. While having the same refresh timers on archery and melee discs makes you think about which is more beneficial for the current event, having the on separate timers is not a bad idea. As mentioned, alternatively, keeping the shared timer but more AA to reduce the delay is acceptable. 5. I am completely in favor of a "canni" for converting endurance to mana. Endurance regen is far lower than mana regen (200 vs 1000 for example, respectively), so I see no issue with converting endurance to mana. This can be done two ways: 1) a self-only spell or AA with a 5 min reuse that converts x at a 10x cost, and 2) a group summon item spell (think mod rod) that does the same, you can call it a magic leaf or something else forest-themed. I know some will think this is just giving us a second mana bar but isn't that was endurance is now anyway; it's no longer just used to jump or swing weapons like in 1999.
Apples to Oranges. The arrow damage and the damage on the bow are NOT the same thing - bow ratio should never, ever reflect arrow damage in the bow ratio equation. The only reason new arrows are the last thing we ever see is because able to be parsed damage difference on an arrow has to have such a large number it would look ridiculous on the item card. What's the last arrow that made any difference over a previous one? You have to go back to when people did hundreds of dps not the dps calculated in Dragons per Second like it is today. Last we were told 3 or 4 betas ago was the devs were playing with the idea of adding procs to arrows as a way to increase the damage in a way that would make upgrades worth the dev time to create the item. They likely ran into the issue they have had adding procs to damage augs that fit in Range slot. It's just broken and the Devs haven't figured out how to fix it or how to re-create the achievement aug they created in ToV.
Actually, weapon damage is weapon damage is weapon damage. All other things being equal, listed bow damage (which includes augs on the bow) plus listed arrow damage is the weapon damage as far as the damage calculation is concerned. A 200 damage bow with a 1 damage arrow has the exact same hits as a 178 damage bow with a 23 damage arrow. Again, that’s assuming that all other factors (attack, dex, heroic.dex, etc -everything) are equal. The claim that we would see a reduced bow ratio increase in order to get an arrow damage increase is not without merit. They look at the total ratio as part of their power increase for the class each expansion, for melee weapons and for ranged. They make the same considerations for melee damage augs as well. Spells, everything. The claim that arrow damage does not contribute much to archery damage comes from a dev parse the timing of which, despite claims to the contrary, must have been hitting a damage cap. That cap was raised a couple months later but that parse was not, to the best of my knowledge, repeated. The false claim had been made and some accepted it. If you disbelieve me in this… get some old gear. Find a bow+arrow combination with a weak arrow that has a damage equal to that of an old school Bow of the Destroyer with a high damage arrow. Obviously DPS will be different - delay is a thing - if you are looking to compare the hit damages not the DPS.
