All this time and Sniper's Shot still sucks?

Ok, so I have been away from Eq2 for awhile due to having a crap pc, and I'm now back to find that one of the biggest slaps in the face of Ranger's still sucks? I'm fairly certain it has been the community consesus for awhile that the damage to recharge ratio on this skill is entirely too low. So I have to ask, why is the recast still at a staggering 15 minutes? Has the damage been increased to match this recast, or does it still suck? I've always been of the opinion that they keep the damage and decrease the timer to 5 minutes.
How has our dev not changed this yet? Oh right...doesn't he/she play an assassin?

Old news.....but I agree with you.

Honestly, this whole "Aeralik is gimping rangers because he plays an assassin" is such a crock of horse guano. Stop blaming him for any and every percieved deficiency with our class. If he honestly made decisions based on what would benefit his personal toons, he wouldn't be the dev in charge of mechanics anymore. If he wasn't impartial, SOE would have fired him or put him in some low level grunt job years ago.
He is not the source your discontent. You are nothing but jealous that assassins appear better than rangers. Personally, I don't think Sniper Shot isn't our best combat art (though I can usually get 25,000 from it), but when taken as a whole, rangers are in a fine position from a class balance standpoint.

(and I'm sure that paragraph will spawn pages and pages or rehashed class balance arguements>

While Aeralik isn't responsible for everything that happens to rangers, he could easily change sniper shot to align it more with execute and coverage to actually not be terribad and something more useful like Fatal Followup. He chooses not to, thus all the angst he gets.

Rangers are the redheaded stepchild compared to assasins, and the fact that I betrayed from Assasin to ranger @ lvl 45 is something i regret big time. If i hadn't geared up, got myth, mastered up etc i whould betray back.
Rangers are mid range dps'ers on single encounter long fight mobs.
sub par on everything else, such as quick fights, aoe fights etc.

" Rangers are mid range dps'ers on single encounter long fight mobs.
sub par on everything else, such as quick fights, aoe fights etc. " -d3caffed


Stay an Assasin if you really think this is the case.

/agree with gage about Aeralik.

d3caffed wrote:

yea if you think this is true then you should go back to assassin b/c it is obvious you want ezmode DPS.

Webin@Befallen wrote:

The GU52 nerfed really put a dent into my overall dps output. Aeralik's solution (Toxic Expertise) is small if not horrible. So, I'm not a big fan of Aeralik atm, and I questioned who tested these changes out?
With that said, there are a couple CAs that are pretty annoying. I agree with Gage that Sniper should be inline with Assassin's Execute. Coverage is simply a mess, and repeating arrows is worthless.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Yeah Repeating Arrows and Coverage are worthless and need to be changed to something else entirely. Sniper Shot really needs to be fixed.....badly. During a raid fight, I fired off Sniper Shot and hit for over 30k (my biggest hit so far, big whoop) and was still beat for largest hit on that fight by an assassin's FATAL FOLLOWUP, that hit for over 35k. That's just BS.

graewulf wrote:

I havn't noticed a HUGE drop in DPS... there is some but i havn't been able to fully raid since GU52 went live to really check out the difference. Hopefully this week but grouping and soloing i've noticed only minor difference.

As for only hitting 30k, if you're mythed and mastered or adept 3 with Sniper Shot and you use it in combo with Converage and Focus Aim you can easilly hit between 30 - 60k. I agree that coverage is only situational and the recast on Sniper shot is a pain. I pick and choose which mobs i use Sniper Shot on. Most of the time especially in raid zones its up by the time we kill 1 named or down inbetween 1.. depending on the zone. Groups i hardly use it because its too long of a cast time. Mob is half dead before it goes off and you got far better dps from faster casting CAs.

Of all our CA, the three you mentioned are the three I would change if I had any control at all. Sniper's is easy to fix, just lower the recast to five minutes, and bam, it's a viable skill. Maybe even lower the cast a little.
Repeating Arrows is a little bit harder to revamp, but I think I have the best idea for it. Instead of making it a skill that locks the ranger in place, they make it a dumbfire pet. When you cast it, a trap like crossbow pops on the ground and starts firing away at random targets. Obviously, it is better used on single target fights, but could help sustain a ranger's dps on an aoe fight. Also, when it is used, it would take a portion of the ranger's ammo. Makeshift arrows would take priority when the command to take ammo is issued, but it will take any ammo if there are no MSA's. The higher the grade of the spell, the more arrows it takes, and the more shots it gets. Being a crossbow that doesn't require a draw, it can be used at point blank range.
Since I have never used coverage, I have no idea how to fix it...but I heard that simply removing the range requirement would help immensely.
The only other things I would change about our class is that I believe that we should have gotten a ranged root (a chance for root could be added to leg shot) and a ranged dot. Perhaps add to the AA for our double shot skill to make it so that if both shots hit, it causes a small fire dot.
Thoughts?

littleman17 wrote:

First, the recast on Sniper is not the issue. It's the long casting time.
Coverage has a couple issues. The range is annoying (Keep in mind that this CA requires to move out of your sweetspot), but you must use a stealth CA first and then there cannot be mobs withing a certain distance of you. Pretty stupid mechanic if you ask me since we have to meet 3 things in order to use this CA.
Repeating Arrows is simply dumb and worthless. No one in their right mind would use a 20 second (I think it's 20 seconds? I never use the dumb thing) CA that roots you in place over auto attack. Just do the math here since Aeralik cannot.

For you raiding ranger's out there in TSO, how are you stacking up DPS-wise versus similarly equipped and skilled assassins? I only have group experience in this expansion, but have no trouble being at or near the top of the parses.
My conjecture is that, while these three combat arts aren't as good as they coupld be, when you look at our DPS capabilities as a whole, we are still fairly balanced with our evil counterparts. If they were to reduce the cast time or reuse on Sniper, fix the annoying requirements for Coverage, and make Repeating Arrows... uh.. let's say do more damange, then we would become more powerful, and unbalanced compared to the assassins. Yes, it'd be great fun and I've love to kick more butt, but in reality, we can't afford to fix these CA's or we risk bigger nerfs.

Webin@Befallen wrote:

I'm assuming post GU52???
Changing sniper would not effect the balance. Reducing the casting time would , in effect, put us in line with their heavy CA. The recast timer would stay the same and thus not give us an advantage. Losing the distanced requirement on Coverage would not be that dramatic since you have to use a stealth Ca first (And we only have a couple CAs that do that). With that said, the recast on Coverage is pretty long (3 minutes I think? Anyone know?). Most trash fights don't even last that long. Repeating Arrows is just plain stupid even if you up the overall damage. Repeating Arrows will not be better than our auto attack.
So, fixing these CAs is not much to ask for. Rangers will still never spike as high as Assassins, or any of the AoE classes.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I am still pissed that we got a stupid attack hawk and assassins get apply poison. We get coverage and they get fatal follow-up. No one in their right mind would call this balanced.

I gave up posting about this in test, here.. etc.. Just keep it up and in 3 years or so like the SK they may redo ca timers and change stream of arrows blah blah and make us over powered too.. After 4 years it just gets old.
However I still play my ranger and its the only lvl 80 toon I have and in raids I am in the top 4 DPS'ers along with the assassin, swashy and wizard. Often fighting for first and depending on buffs I maybe top zone wide or fourth. I can tell you I don't get that position on act from using the hawk, coverage or stream. Also my sniper shot never shows up because the max hit is always mana burn, life burn or some warlock or assassin ca.
Before GU52 poison was 4% of my dps and after GU52 its still only 4% so nothing broke nothing fixed good job Aeralik!!
Not sure about class rebalancing, however stuff I have around my house thats worthless or doesn't get used gets tossed out or donated.. Wish I could do that with a few CA's..lol

Oh and by the way no one panic, The Station Cash Market Place is working fine.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I'm not looking at matching CA for CA.... in an arbitrary raid, can you expect an assassin to be higher, lower, or about even with a ranger on the zonewide DPS parse? (I ask this because I honestly don't know). I'm assuming similarly equipped toons, that both know how to play their class well, to make it a fair competition.
If it's about the same, then nothing should be done to improve our CAs. If we are significantly lower than assassin DPS, then we can look for things to fix and ways to improve our power as a class.

Webin@Befallen wrote:

Eh, to each their own. But did you read my suggestion on Repeating Arrows? The entire CA is trash and needs to be revamp from the ground up. That is why I suggested that if our dev was to ever get a lick of sense in his (or her) head, they'd make it a CA that we have nothing to do with. We're already the only cass (that I know of) that can use a trap, plus we can tie a rope to an arrow and shoot and enemy in the foot with it, so what would be so hard about us carrying a small collapsable crossbow around. When we use this Ca, we "throw" it out on the ground, it pops open, and starts to blast every enemy near it.
Also, since I am terrible at in game math, what are the dps numbers on Sniper's Shot? A five second cast (which I'm pretty sure means that we lose at LEAST one AA), with mediocre damage and a 15 minute recast? I just did a little bit of quick math in my head (aka, I used a calculator), and my guess would be it pumps out a staggering 500 dps? Or would that be 6000 (using 30k a base mark for the damage) dps and 500 dpsc? (damage per second per cast...or some such. The damage divided by the cast, divided by the recast)

Ranja wrote:

I agree.

There is countless data on these serious issues, these are easy fixes, why don't the developers just get these redundant CA's fixed?