All this time and Sniper's Shot still sucks?

Webin@Befallen wrote:

I think you are missing my point. This is not about getting an edge "dps" wise over the assassin class. It's about mechanics and bringing some of our CAs inline with our counterparts. For example: There is no signiicant edge if you just increase the casting timer on Sniper and just leave the recast timer the same.
I'm not a top-end raider. My guild has killed mobs like Mynzak, Xebnok, and Kultak. So, I have some decent raiding gear, but not the best. As of right now, my overall dps is not as good before the GU 52. Currently, our assassin will beat me on trash fights, but I will win the longer single named fights. (And yes, our gear is pretty close)
I'm sure Gage or someone can remark about the "end" game dps. I think once you hit your 5/6 TSO set and obtain some end boss gear that the dps become more even.

Lohkei wrote:

This conversation is not about parsing - it is about wasted CAs. I am tops in ZW as well most of the time in my guild when we raid, but who cares I still want some pathetic ill - thought out CAs changed. Stream does not bother me at all since it is a t6 CA. Coverage and hawk really get me though.
A DPS class gets for their 65 skill a frickin hate transfer. That is Aerlick at his best saying " FU rangers"

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Reducing the cast time on sniper shot would let us get in an additional auto-attack, increasing our DPS. It's not a huge difference, but it's measurable. There are DPS consequences to virtually any change they might make to our class.
A race car with 7 cylinders that can drive as fast (or faster) than it's competition would dominate if it were to run on all 8 cylinders. I agree that the CA issues we're talking about here are irritating, but they have the net affect of keeping us roughly balanced with Assassins, then we shouldn't bother complaining.

I think we're going to be stuck with them until the next expansion at least at this point in time. Then they'll either upgrade them and we'll just be more ticked off then we already are about them or they won't continue those lines. (Which would be the best thing) or just add in an AA line which will lower the cast time or make it more effective instead of fixing them. Guess they need ideas for AA's and theres nothing better then fixing a problem when just adding in an end AA rather then reworking them from the ground up.

Even with broken CA's rangers still find thier way to the top half of the parse and i think the majority of that is purly from auto attack dmg. It's pretty evident if you do mobs like Dig or Levi or some in VP where you jsut can't get the range for your ranged CA's and you still do fairly compairable DPS. (No not fully on par but you can put out some good numbers still).

It ends up with parsing.. But is it truely about CA's.. Stream of arrows, hawk attack and coverage. At best sniper shot is a 4 second cast with a 10 minute reuse.
Look at the Sta line. Surrounding Attacks first one reads.. a 3.5% chance to hit targets that you are facing that are within meele range. If you stand in the "sweet spot", ya know the spot where you can use meele and ranged ca's and still use your bow's attack attack. Guess what. You are not in meele range and your meele weapons will never go off on the mob unless you macro your ranged attack or step forward for your meele weapons will hit the mob. Not the greatest line but not much there for rangers.
Wisdom line, Obfuscation can increase dmg of the next CA by 8%, I forget what the speed up time is max for steath and stalk. Trying to use this and get any kinda dmg increase is just as fun as trying to pronounce it.

Ah well. No worries the station cash market place is working fine.

How's this for a ground up rework of Repeating Arrows? Instead of a trap (though, it'd be equally awesome), they simply make it a buff? Once cast, it applies arrow flow to each of your attacks. Each time you auto attack, x number of extra arrows are also fired. The number would go up with the level of the spell, as well as the quality of the spell. Perhaps at master of the highest level version, each AA is follow by...6 extra shots? Each consecutive shot does less damage than a normal AA, cannot crit and consumes an arrow. Lasts... 10 seconds? O rmaybe put it on a charge limit. Three shots?
If it were three shots, we'd essentially be able to hit an enemy 21 times with only three AA. Though, as I said, the power of each extra attack is a deal lower than our normal AA. Say... 75% for the first, 50% for the second, 25% for the third, and 10% for all other shots afterward.

This isn't the case though Webin. We aren't in line. An assassin with lesser gear can beat a ranger if both played equally well. And this is a DIRECT problem of CA's being out of balance. I don't think that is the problem though, in terms of things GETTING balanced anyway. I think the problem is there aren't as many skilled rangers out there as skilled Assassins. This can be due to being more assassins which can be attributed to assassins being supposedly easier to play and get more DPS out of with less effort. Its frustrating as all hell but until more people are playing rangers well, or least just more people playing rangers they can only really try and balance things 'on paper', they very well can't balance a small selection of players of one class against several times more of another. Predators in general aren't being played much either since most high end raiding guilds fill up spots sorcerers and predators would fill up with enchanters and bards. They only get brigands and swashies to a lesser extent for debuffs, not DPS.

Webin@Befallen wrote:

And you are assuming our auto attack hits for 100%???? Think again. Since you do not raid, then you have no idea how many times our auto attack will and can miss. I suggest you grab ACT and try it on a long named fight and see how many misses you will get from auto attack. Missing just one is huge for us. And you think increasing Sniper casting time is earthshattering??? /sigh
Our auto attack, at best, is 4 seconds if you are haste maxed. Taking Simper from 3+ seconds to 1 second is not game changing.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

OK, simmer down Zizzu. All I was saying was that Sniper's cast time is such that it pretty much requires us to miss an auto attack (whether it hits or not is irrelevant to the discussion), and that missed AA is part of the factored into our "overall DPS" when looking at class balance. Right now, in my estimation, SOE (and not just Aeralik) considers rangers and assassins to be relatively balanced, so you shouldn't really hope they'll tinker with our mechanics.

And please, there's no need to insult me. It's impolite, and factually incorrect. I've been a ranger, and only a ranger, for more than four years now. It's my ONLY level 80 toon, and I have a fairly deep understanding of how the class works. I've done plenty of raiding in the past (end of EoF/early Kunark was my raiding peak), but focus on other things these days. I have an idea how many AA's miss, how ACT can be the mother of my unborn children, and the importance of hitting each and every AA. In fact, in terms of knowledge/skill, I am probably one of the best Ranger's on my server (behind the raiders who really focus in on it). I rarely meet a ranger on my server who can beat me on the parse without raid-level gear. Egotistical? Don't need to be, I'm just good. I know what I'm doing when I nock and arrow.

I've given my opinion about sniper shot. I doubt it will get fixed. I doubt you'll change your mind. I think we're done here.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Actually it would increae the DPS of the skill. DPS = damage/time. So yes by reducing the cast time of Sniper you are increase the DPS efficiency of that skill. For example (and I am using simple numbers)
400/4 sec = 100 DPS
400/1sec = 400 DPS.
So yes, lowering the cast timer of sniper shot would increase its DPS.

Webin@Befallen wrote:

For one thing, I never gave hope that this would be fixed. Second, your arguement was flawed. I will debate anyone who thinks Sniper, Coverage, and Repeating Arrows is just fine and balanced. You, Aeralik, or SoE cannot justify that these CAs are in working condititon.
I never "intended" to jump your case, however, I wanted to point out that your reasoning was incorrect.

Ranja wrote:

And this math is under the assumption that Auto attack hits for 100% every time? It does not.
If SoE gave us 100% hit rate on auto attack, then I could care less about Sniper at all.

First let me say this is coming from a raiders viewpoint and I agree sniper shot does not QUITE compare to excecute (WTB shorter cast time). But none the less, you all make it out to be worthless..
To the person who said it causes you to miss an auto attack..you NEVER miss an auto attack because you are casting, you simply delay it untill your done casting.
As for the damage, with all the base damage/crit bonus now 70k+ sniper shots are not out of the question. You can look up my gear, I have no super avatar or anashti gear yet and I consistantly see 60k+ sniper shots in raid AND group settings. Although I don't do many instances at all. My high hit so far is 72.6k on Xebnok. With a jcap the recast is down to around 8min i believe. That sort of damage makes it worth the 3.5sec cast i say, even though I would love to take another .5-1second off
Coverage..It goes agianst our myth...BRILLANT!!!!
Having played an 80 assassin with myth and endlines, the DPS definitly comes easier/faster, but you can't put a price on ranged dps on certian mobs and thats where the balance comes into place.

No worries, they are gonna come out with a new expansion that will increase the lvl cap to 90 and aa's to whatever. Bet'cha plat that coverage, sniper shot and stream will stay the same..
On the bright side the station cash market place is working just fine.

My auto hit rate is usually never under 90%

The problem, at least I think, is the role they seem to want rangers to play in DPS. Rangers have very good sustainable and consistent DPS. For me an example would be on palace trash I always do 10-12k dps, I never do less and that is every fight, people beat me but the player it is usually changes from fight to fight. This gives us a significant edge on longer fights. Problem is that the goal of every person in the game who kills things is to kill things as fast as possible, giving people who can do quick spike damage at the beginning of a fight an advantage once a group of people are all significantly equipped.

Coverage can be used and still use the myth bonus but i think they thought of it in their head/on paper and really didn't try it much, because it is kind of a pain. What I do is start out the typical 5 meters, cast rear shot while also moving backwards (rear shot can be casted while moving) then after it goes off and I am far enough away i cast coverage, move back into 5 meters while still invis from coverage and cast sniper shot. Usually also have focus aim up this entire time as well.

I've pretty much given up on stream of arrows. Think someone even has it in their sig but only way I could see stream usable if they took off daze and made it possible to auto between shots. and they BETTER NOT DO THAT THROUGH AN AA SKILL. One things to make skills better with AA quite another to take something broken and useless and make players use AA points to fix it.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

No. This math has no hidden assumptions. Look at the math. It does not even factor in Auto-attack. Lowering the casting time on Sniper will increase the DPS. Period.

Ranja wrote:

Your formula is based on per attack. Right? Increasing the cast time on Sniper would not increase it's dps since the recast timer is still the same. With that said, the only extra dps gain from taking the cast time from 4 seconds to 1 is basically what can be done with the 3 extra seconds gain within the recasting time (which is 15 minutes or 10 if you have the AA line).
So, these 3 seconds gain within a 15/10 minute period is still small. A couple quick CAs can be fired off within that time. That's about it. A huge dps difference? I really don't think so.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Sorry man - you just are not getting it. I am talking about DPS efficiency of a spell on the assumption that you want to do the max damage in the shortest amount of time. This does not take into account recast.
To work out the DPS Efficiency value of each of your spells, you need to first work out the average total damage that the CA deals (including any ticks if it has a duration component). Then divide this number by the casting time + recovery time that you have for that CA - the recovery time is 0.5s for each of your spells. You then need to order your CAs by the resulting number, so that when you come to cycling your CAs, you are always casting the highest available spell in the list.
Looking at the above you get: (MinDamage +MaxDamage)/2 = Average hit
DPS Efficiency = AverageHit/Cast Time + Recovery Time (which is .5 secs for all CAs).
Wow, if I lower the Cast Time - look I increase the DPS Efficiency.
If you wanted to take into accounts crits remember When a combat art crits its damage range goes from max+1 to max*(1,3+crit mod).
Look at it this way. If Snipers takes 1 second to cast, I can also cast 2 other CAs before my auto-attack goes off, this also results in a net increase in DPS.
I am not sure how to explain it any more clearer.

Ranja wrote:

Didn't I just stated that?? Please tell me you think the extra 2 CAs within a 15/10 minute period is huge dps bump? And yes, recast time is important here. Is there a small increase in dps? Sure. Is it game changing? No.
You don't have spew formulas to me. The bottom line still comes out the same: 2 extra CAs within a 10 minute recast timer is not that big of a dps. It amounts to one engagement where a ranger will slightly increase his dps out by the measure of 2 CAs.

Zizzu@Antonia Bayle wrote:

What I was trying to prove to you is that if you lower the cast time of sniper, you will raise the DPS of that art. Period. Regardless of any other factors. But you just dont seem to be getting that point.