Xelgad wrote: The reason that rangers have not seen tweaks to their class is because according to our investigation and data from other sources (including parses) there are rangers that are able to parse even with assassins. When their abilities are timed correctly, and standing in the correct range, rangers are a mighty force. Obviously gear and buffs play a factor as well. That isn’t to say that there will be no adjustments to rangers or mechanics that work differently for bows in the future.EQ2Wire - Eleven Questions for Xelgad So, in case anyone was wondering, the most efficient betrayal is to Neriak, doing the spider quest repeatedly.
I had one of those 'I'm laughing because if I don't I'm going to cry' reactions to this. I just. I mean. Okay. Well there we have it. Clearly, every top level ranger in the game, especially those who betrayed because they still wanted to be able to get a raid slot, were just doing it wrong. Clearly, folks, were just not standing in the right place. Clearly it's a timing issue. Clearly there's a magical spot to stand when fighting raid mobs that causes the game to ignore basic math. Because, even though melee autoattack does more DPS than ranged, even before things like flurry and AE autoattack, and even though ranger combat art damage is unbelievably pathetic in comparison to assassins, and even though bow damage ratings are stupidly low, and even though our mythical buff is absolutely ridiculously underpowered, somehow, magically, rangers can keep up with other DPS classes in the magical fun land of sugar and happy that is SOE's brain. I get it now! If we just time things right and stand in the right spot, two plus two will equal five and we'll be able to keep up with classes who have the advantage on us in every way, shape and form imaginable. Sorry guys. I'm afraid we're just not elite enough to figure out the mystical formula that will allow us to play our class effectively. We'd best leave that to the privileged few. Of course, I asked for an answer, and I got one. I don't like the answer, but I did get one. Thank you, SOE, for that. It really lets me have a clear view of my choices from here on out.
Well looks like it is time to switch mains. my ranger will still be fun for soloing and possibly the occasional group, but been playing a lot more of my SK recently anyway. Shame he isn't nearly as geared as my ranger but he has been a lot more fun to play recently.
Well, thank you kindly for finally making a statement on the matter, Xelgad. We've been asking for some sort of response, and we got one. At least we are no longer in the dark on it and can know that the class will remain in its current state for the most part. This allows players whose mains are rangers to know what their choices are, and we can now proceed forward with those choices, instead of holding back and waiting for changes that are not coming. We now know we can either continue with the class as is, betray or change mains, or to put our subscription money into another gaming company. So. Thank you.
How can you say this??? Have you even seen some of the assassin parses??? Have you seen some of their asassinate hits (almost 400k)??? I would love to see some of this data personally because I do not believe you. I can post some parses from flames and show you the large gap between the classes. You just basically killed the class with that statement.
All I can say is wow... Where the F#$^ do they get thier numbers from? Clearly when I group with ***** wearing worse gear than me, and doing 10-20K or more DPS then me in groups and raids there's obviously nothing wrong with that at all... I don't claim to be the best at the class, or even have any real decent gear (mostly BG, and T1 SF raid gear) when I get in a decent group I can hit 20-22k regularly (which I think is doing pretty good given the gear) But when an assassin comes in wearing 90% legendary gear, and is regularly hitting 20-25K, and heaven forbid he has the same amount of gear I do then they push like 30-36k regularly... Clearly clearly it's just becasue he knows how to play the toon better then I.... Man I must just suck at the class... Thanks for pointing that out Xelgad Edit: I Figured it out!! He didn't say WHAT gear and AA that his 'rangers vs assassins' compare at, No doubt those Uber fully T4 SF raid geared 250 AA rangers are holding thier own VS those uber SF legenday 180AA Assassins Good for them!
kartikeya wrote: I simply don't know what to say at this point. I'm completely flabbergasted. An entire community apparently has no idea what it is supposed to do or just the right way to do it. Our opinions are apparently meaningless and and we are too stupid to figure out the game. That or we are completely missing all the appropriate gear. The only thing I can think of is that they are basing this opinion of simple group content or easy mode raid content (in terms of raiding) or off previous tiers. That or the amount of effort for an Assassin to reach certain numbers compared to what we have to do is completely irrelevant. Who cares if AA's and CA's are all skewed in their favor, some ranger (or some small group of them) somewhere can parse just as well so we're not going to make any significant changes even if a large number of Rangers can't . Thank you Xelgad. Glad you finally told us, but seriously if you're going to tell us we have no idea what we're talking about, or that our perceptions are completely off base, why could you not at least have come and told us in the official forums and not on some fan site? Obviously we don't agree with your studies, but I'm just as disapointed that after three years of us trying to convince the devs that this how it gets communicated to us...
Sydares wrote: Maybe Xelgad would be willing to demonstrate these dps techniques for all of us scrubs who obviously can't play our class. Really, I must insist. What timings? What ranges? If there's some secret way to play Rangers that give them Assassin dps, please let us know! How?! How?! Hey, I know! SOE could offer Ranger lessons through the Station Store! YES! Win / Win all around! Sony makes more money off of us and we become the uber Rangers of Assassin Power! Sigh...
The problem is Xelgad does not understand how rangers are played and used in a raid setting (where our dps sucks). 1) Rangers do not have a self DPS buff like assassins. So, we are dependant on certain classes to max out our auto attack like Coercers, dirges, and Inq. 2) Rangers are never thrown into the MT (main tank group) because we do not have a hate transfer utility like assassins. Therefore, rangers will not get that huge HP boost that assassins will get in a MT group. So, when rangers are within the "sweet" spot, they are usually dead due to AoEs or in this case...lack of HP. With that said, are rangers expected to sacrifice dps AAs in order to get HP AAs? Kinda stupid? 3) Ranger do not have a chain CA ability that allows them to chain cast (fast) CAs in order to build up for their big attack: Fatal Followup. 4) Assassinate is doing almost 400k in damage in comparison to Sniper Shot which is doing @255k. That is not right. 5) Assassins have much faster casting CAs and better refreshers than rangers.
Xelgad wrote: The reason that rangers have not seen tweaks to their class is because according to our investigation and data from other sources (including parses) We've been investagting for years. How long have you, your person, been doing it? Tell me how long you have been raiding 12 hours a week disecting every hour of it.there are rangers that are able to parse even with assassins. Crap assassins. Another flaw in your research. Yes if you take the worst assassins and put them against the best rangers, the rangers will win. You put them up against the best assassins I seriously doubt they will come close to even.When their abilities are timed correctly, and standing in the correct range, rangers are a mighty force. So you mean when we attack around auto attack, have a good rotation and stand at 4-5 meters so we can do all our CA's without moving? Yeah every decent ranger i know does this already. Try again.Obviously gear and buffs play a factor as well. That isn’t to say that there will be no adjustments to rangers or mechanics that work differently for bows in the future.True. Though the only way I can put out what I would call proper numbers is in a severely stacked group. Even then you give a ranger, assassin and wizard their ideal setups, rangers will come in third every time.EQ2Wire - Eleven Questions for Xelgad lol. What ever data you are basing this on, is not available to concerned rangers, or we have never ever looked in the right place for it. Or your basing it on bad/incorrect data in the sense of scenarios. Look at high end raids. And don't average it out with low end raids, PvP, BG's or groups. JUST high end raids. And don't look at your calculators, equations and spreadsheets either, those things have been spouting out bad numbers and items for years. And I don't want to hear WORD ONE about PvP or soloing, I MIGHT entertain numbers from groups. Honestly the only way I can see this being true is rangers that are 'playing correctly' and performing well either never ever visit this forum or the 'other' forum, or don't know they are performing well for some reason. This is why I hate it when people use averages. If you were able to sample from several 10's of thousands of rangers and the same amount of assassins you might have some decent numbers to go on, otherwise averages aren't going to be good enough. I submit this be put in the general forum as well. Because not only is he calling the ranger community wrong, he is calling the bulk of the EQ2 community wrong. You think guilds don't take rangers because of personal reasons? they know they can do just as well as assassins, they just don't like stick throwers taking up all their harvest depot stuff and void warped wood. Some unexplainable vibe they give off people just don't like that's out of the dev teams control? Only way what he said can be true without him just being flat out wrong is if his standards are much much lower than playing, raiding rangers. He sees rangers beat assassins a few select times, and otherwise not getting completely blown out of the water by other DPS classes and thinks its good enough.
Yes. Well. Maybe I should just stand at max range and wildly spam moar buttons in any random order. 'Cause this whole stand in the sweet spot, timing CAs between auto-attacks, and using a good rotation thing isn't working out so well. And about the buffs. Sure, our dps goes up with the right buffs. I won't even get into whether or not it goes up enough, since it's pretty much a he said/she said deal when we don't know Xelgad's uber ranger numbers. But we rarely ever get those buffs because we're not put in the right groups, because no one gives a crap about our utility, Focus Aim and the hawk-that-dies-when-mobs-sneeze. No one notices. No one cares. No one ever says, "It'd be nice if we had a ranger for that" the way they say "It'd be nice if we had an assassin or swashy for hate transfer." No one ever says, "Yays, the ranger cast focus aim!" the way they say, "Yays, the assassin gave me poison!" It's utility that's invisible or not desired by players. I can stop casting Focus Aim and the hawk at various points, and the only thing anyone notices is that my own dps goes down without Focus Aim. They don't notice the lack of it and the hawk for their own performance at all. And when we are put in the right groups, preferred buffs go to assassins, rogues, dirges, or fighters, because either everyone believes it will give a greater benefit to most any class but the ranger or it actually does give a greater benefit (flurry, aoe auto-attack) so rangers STILL don't get the same buffage as many other classes. Technically, a ranger can't get the same about of buffage as other scouts because there's no equivalent to make up for the buffs that simply don't work on us due to mechanics.
Daenee@Antonia Bayle wrote: I can tell you from a great deal of experience that it doesn't. Rangers don't get nearly the gain from those kinds of buffs that any other DPS class does, that's half the reason rangers rarely get put into the groups where they will get those buffs. Our DPS does go up a fair amount, and it's a beautiful thing, but not nearly as much as an assassin or swashy or sorcerer with the right buffs will see. In fact, I have been on raids where I had the most ideal buffs, and the assassin had crap buffs in a crap group. This is the only time I managed to give him any competition, and the swashy and warlock continued to soar far far above us both. This is not rocket science, which is why it's so infuriating. All anyone has to do to see the problem is 1) do their own tests to realize that ranged autoattack does less DPS than melee autoattack, even if you ignore flurry and AE autoattack, and with crap legendary melee weapons versus the mythical, 2) Get a 90 ranger, look at their combat art numbers, look at their mythical buff, look at their AA choices, 3) get a 90 assassin, look at their combat art numbers, look at their mythical buff, look at their AA choices. As a bonus, you can also compare damage ratings between raid bows and raid 2handers, then look at dual wield options. If you can look at that and not see the problem, you failed basic grade school math where you learned certain numbers were greater than other numbers. There is no magical formula that will suddenly net you the necessary DPS. Sure, there are things you can do to perform better, and I'm willing to bet any raiding ranger here already knows them by heart, because we are so desperate to try and keep up and justify a raid slot. I really can't stand this idea that doing decent DPS is a mystical secret that only a precious few can obtain. I hate it when other players spout it, I really don't like it when a dev does. But, well, I'm not sure what else can be done. We've said all that can be said a thousand times over, just since January.
Odysia@Antonia Bayle wrote: No, I have no doubt that mechanic fixes are coming for Ranged Flurry and/or Ranged AE Auto Attack. We were told those by Rothgar whom I've never known to give bad information. It might take forever (or in this case 6 months) but it typically happens or he posts and says what changed/why it can't happen. But in the end all Ranged Flurry and Ranged AE Auto Attack are going to do is give us access to tools that every other scout and fighter has, closing that particular avenue of complaint. The core of the Ranger issues is actually much deeper (and deal a good bit with scaling issues and lagging CA's/excessive cast/reuse) and won't be fixed with these. But hey!, we're a pretty mighty force! Just not as mighty as Assassins, Warlocks and Wizards with less utility. Edit: random spelling (though I bet I still missed some)
His answers is a full nonsense. I'm once again convinced that "this developers" nothing understand in this game.
Nevao wrote: You forgot, Coercers, Necros, Conjys, Swashes, Brigs, SKs, Zerkers (those 2 in AOE fights.).. ahh well lets just say 75% of the classes. WITH less utility.. But hey it's just because we're not standing in the right place.
Sydares wrote: Seriously, why do you/we/any of us think they care? Yeah we don't like it, but how many people have really quit the game, vs. how many of us are just playing alts? They are still getting our money even if they don't fix it.
I give xelgad the benefit of a doubt as i find a very strange not making a statement on the official forum and using the "our data" argument. I have a feeling that devs dont want to waste much time and resources on class balance and rather put the resources in the upcoming Velious Expansion. I would even go sofar that his statement is reaction on that " Radio Silence on class balances" thread. It was said that class balances only happene in GUs and hes only saying therers is not much coming in GU57 like the last 10 GUs......... Another thought is when they ever balanced classes in the past , SK's and Conjys comes to mind, they have overdone it and somehow they fear opd ranger. The question is if he uses the PVP/BG/Solo Argument, because than although im not an advocate of nerfing other classes, nerf 5-10 classes (inlc. SK's and such) and judge all the same. Thats the benefit of a doubt. If hes for real, than hes one of the most ignorant persons i ever encountered, hiding behing his data while the player base can prove otherwise. With a statement like this he single handly destroyed a class RAIDWISE !!!!!! No one in their right mind is leveling a ranger for high end purposes.... I would preferably have an explantion by smokejumper as to why ONE class gets blatlanty disadvantaged over the last years and the devs are ignorant to it.
