I understand you say this in jest, but as a wizard I hate it when I hear things about our spells being "free" The fact is, we use an obscene amount of power, once that power is gone, our DPS is effectivly 0. Melee classes rarely consider that, because its an issue they don't have to worry too much about (yes I am aware melee do go OOP too). All they see is that one big number from our hits. A good wizard, especially those who raid, pay for power potions and totems to keep power up as much as possible. Granted, I don't spend as much on potions as you do on arrows. When we are getting low on power, we can use potions, clickies or power heals. All of which cost us DPS. As a woodworker, I intend to make plenty of arrows under the new system, as there is actually an incentive for me to do so. With the old system I only made arrows to level up and had to sell them at cost to compete with vendor arrows. Not to mention I had to do 4 combines per stack, it took forever. With the new system, I figure a ranger will use what, 1000 arrows on the average raid? Maybe less? At that rate I can quickly and easily make 10 stacks and toss them off to you guys at an affordable rate. If you're on permafrost, look me up.
Aye, doesn't seem like much in the scheme of things... think it is more principle for me that those that don't buy arrows now get any sort of reduction at all for the change. Tood bad we can't respec tradeskill classes... wishing I had gone Woodworker now instead of Carpenter on my Ranger.
Actually, I understand perfectly. I think what you fail to understand is that we will still be paying to use our primary auto-attack, and perhaps more than before, to maintain previous damage levels. No other class in the game has to do that, or ever has. You're assuming the price will be lower than vendor arrows. I hope it is, but until the recipe is updated, until woodworkers are in full swing, and until the market stabilizes, we won't know that. Don't get me wrong. I already stated that the change to arrow consumption for CA's is wonderful, and I will be grateful when it goes live. But reducing the effectiveness of the free arrows for the only class that requires them for primary auto-attack, with an option to pay to keep that effectiveness, is adding a cost component that did not exist previously. That's the only conclusion possible, if you look at it honestly. Sorry. So it's pretty simple. Make this a win for everyone involved, by keeping the cost and effectiveness of existing arrows the same, and making player crafted arrows substantially better than free or vendor arrows, but not nearly as good as legendary or fabled arrows. Give woodworkers quadruple yields on pristine, just like other crafted consumables, to make it worth their time and effort, and to make it economically feasible to improve your DPS if you chose to purchase the arrows to do so. What I am asking for is a very minor tweak on what is already on the table. And thanks again to the devs for working to fix this. I know it must be difficult to balance all of the factors involved, without breaking some other aspect of gameplay, or unfairly penalizing some other class.
I'm not yet playing a ranger, but on the surface this sounds like a great change, both for them and for woodworkers.
this change now makes the 14 plat master spell i got nearly useless. why not just take away the summon line and give us something else? looks like we're still reliant on crafters and buying dps to me. summoned < vendor bought < crafter made is just like the vendor trash armor with all resists on it < cheap common crafted armor < rare imbued armor no one uses the first 2 kinds necro FTW
Rothgar, While I like the idea that our CAs will no longer use a consumable, I am going to have to call you out on your lack of knowledge of the ranger class. A 6% decrease to summoned arrows, no matter how you slice it, is a nerf. Most rangers use store bought ammo to suppliment their arrow usage when the summoning lines dont cut it anymore. And thats still a large out of pocket expense. Now, to say that if we want to maintain, or perhaps slightly improve our DPS we will have to buy player crafted arrows? Im sorry, but thats completely out of wack. The second sentance says is all. Autoattack makes up for 30-40% of ranger DPS. Still think thats not a large part of Ranger DPS? At least 1/3 of our damage will be cut down 6%. I would seriously reconsider the tiering of the arrows. Because right now, you are basicly forcing us to spend money... IE line a woodworkers pockets. And while you might believe this is a solid working fix for the complaints of WWs and Rangers everywhere. It isnt. Forcing 1 class to buy any type of consumable from 1 crafting class is not the right answer for this. At this point, its not real clear if the costs will be higher for rangers, or lower. I will bet theres a fairly good chance that its going to remain the same. If for no other reason, you've just made our summoned arrows into junk, and essentually waste a spot that would otherwise might be a usefull CA, Buff/Debuff. When you can name 1 other class that has to rely on player crafted items for thier 1/3 of thier DPS, then, and only then, will you be able to sell this idea to rangers.
I just can't see any conversation about fixing arrows for rangers that also involves woodworkers. Sorry, those should be two totally and completely different topics. Rangers shouldn't have to pay for a consumable item on their primary form of damage. They also shouldn't have to feel it's OK to have sub-par free summoned ammo. If you want to have woodworkers make a new totem (or any other item) that adds to the core damage of ranged attack such as a proc damage type then have at it. But, it shouldn't be needed as a basic component.
great reading this mean the raiders that worked our asres off for the best gear to include t8 ammo just to get it nerfed.. i know even though the dev said it should be better the the crafted that part about not much better then a certin crafted type rounded worries me alot. I mean even though i know my class in side and out dont go messing with hard earned item due to the fact ppl are whinning about having to actually farm or spend some of there plat for arrows.
Would there be the possibility to let us treat quivers like bags and equip them in a bag slot.. so for example I could swap out ammo types with a simple swap of the quiver instead of moving multiple stacks?
That just furthers the agruement of "they dont know what they are doing". You cant tell me that T8 legendary ammo and player crafted Rounded arrows might be on par with one another. Its 2 different tiers of arrow AND two different quality types of Arrows. The difference should be noticable and in favor of the higher quality, higher tiered legendary summoned. Last time I checked. T7 gear was better then T6 gear... Last time I checked, handcrafted gear was no where near on par with Legendary gear. So... to recap T8 Legendary Ammo should be better then any T7 handcrafted. Theres really nothing more that needs to be said.
I know that one of the Dev's raids with a Ranger. How can they not know that well geared and buffed raid rangers garner 40% upwards of their DPS from autoattack? I am lucky enough to have a summoning bow, but if I didn't, this change would scare the pants off me and have me looking to my finances. It's been said before: Why should Rangers have to buy DPS from other players that have no cap on how much they can charge for our consumables? Why do we remain one of the few classes in the game that pay for every single autoattack we make ? EVERY SINGLE ONE. I thought the recent drive in this game was towards fun and removing 'bad' mechanics'. As far as many Rangers are concerned, spending time summoning arrows or farming to pay for them is not fun. Let me reiterate; ) Knowing that every autoattack you make makes someone else richer and you poorer when your groupmates/guildmates are swinging/casting for free is frustrating and annoying. ) Having to make arrangements with and being reliant on the timetables of tradeskillers is not fun. ) Some players can burn 4k+ arrows PER SESSION. This will obviously drop with the changes but will still be in the thousands with commensureate costs. ) People that can't afford whatever woodworkers want to charge will face a DPS cut. How is that fun or fair? When/if the next level raise comes, I'll be off to another class I think. I can't remember off the top of my head but wouldn't a level cap put our harvested arrows a tier behind? That will leave us completely at the mercy of tradeskillers if we want to compete with the other DPS classes. Awful change that favours a tradeskill class over an adventuring class. Yes we know you don't know what to do with woodworkers. Forcing many Rangers to become their customers and pay for evey bow shot we make is a very poor solution to that problem. We have players economies wheer low level adepts can bring 10's of gold. This scares me. The only good news is that finally, after 2 years, our CA's don't consume arrows. Mirdo.
I completely agree with everything you said. And for the record, Yes, our summoned arrows will be 1 teir behind if/when they raise the level cap. Anyone with a T8 summoning bow could easily find their legendary ammo (which for the record, should still put out more damage) possibly falling behind handcrafted player made arrows. So come next level increase, rangers that wish to maximize their damage will all be at the hands of crafters. Its a good change, if your a woodworker... Its even a good change for a ranger thats a woodworker... but if you happen to have picked another TS, its going to be very very expensive once they find out we "NEED" those arrows.
Hmmmm... You guys are totaly right on the principle here and I've been a little guilty of looking at this from a woodworkers point of view, but lets get some stuff straight here, it's not making us reliant on tradeskills for 1/3 of our DPS, it's 6% of a third which is a far smaller number, 2% in fact. Now I'm not going to argue the point as I do very much agree that summoned arrows should not be seeing this reduction, it's wrong, period. A 2% increase that you can pay for would be a far better end. As I see it the only way of ever balancing the mechanic of arrows from the Ranger point of view is to remove the cost factor totally.
Lets be honest here, a 6% nerf to free autoattack is not a great deal. Like someone said above, if you're doing a full 50% autoattack damage, then its a 3% nerf. If you're doing closer to 33% autoattack, then its a 2% nerf... Not too bad in my opinion, in fact I doubt you would even notice it on a zone-wide. Now the thing that I see with this is that whatever they do to our free arrows is largely irrelevant anyway! Even if our free arrows were increased by 10%, the very fact that player crafted arrows are better than summoned is forcing the raiders to pay for them. DPS is everything to a raiding ranger remember. I do like that our CAs won't consume arrows though, and we should easily be able to have a surplus of arrows if we continue to use sommoned.
Why do we have to put up with a DPS nerf to correct the inability of the DEV's to get tradeskilling right? You are saying that a nerf to damage is actually reasonable? Based on what? Rangers that don't have summoning bows are certainly not over the top in DPS compared to other classes. Even those with summoned ammo won't be topping every parse. Why accept a nerf, or pay more to keep our DPS where it is? Come the next cap increase, I would have to place orders for tens of thousands of arrows (5 nights raiding per week plus instances and questing) just to maintain the DPS status Quo. That will not be happening. It's a chore, it requires me to farm even more to raise the cash for whatever bloodsucking woodworker I'l be beholden to and it's NOT FUN. This is a game, not an archery / feudal system simulation. Mirdo.
In general this is good news, but I have mixed feelings on the details of this: 1. Summoned arrows being the worst ? I can sort of see this from a RP point of view, but this pretty much makes gathered arrows pointless. Those people who spent large amount of plat on the Master spell are going to be a bit annoyed I guess. Prepare for some genuine complaints/whining (delete as appropriate). 2. Any Ranger worth his salt is now going to be forced to use vendor or player made arrows rather than summoned. How will this save us money ? 3. I think a much better idea would be to make the quality go: vendor < summoned < player made. This would stop Rangers being too annoyed, they wouldn't find their gather spells totally useless now, and Woodworkers would still be happy. This would also allow the difference between vendor and player made to be bigger, which would hopefully increase demand for player made arrows from non-Ranger classes, which in turn should reduce prices all round. 4. T8 summoned ammo being better than T7 ammo makes sense to me. It would be nice though if the very best player made T7 ammo did the same damage as the summoned T8, so those Rangers who didn't have the bow but still wanted to try to keep up with the DPS can spend money to do so. As their bow isn't as good they are always going to lag behind, so the T8 guys will still parse above them (unless they are slacking !!!) ;-) 5. When level cap is increased to 80 (??), that T8 summoned ammo is not going to be the one to use, so this should make things interesting for those bow users... 6. How do we pick different damage types with our ranged attacks now ? Is the concept of slashing/crushing ranged attacks going away ? How does this affect mobs that are immune or have high resists to a damage type ? 7. As a Woodworker I welcome the changes to the stack sizes. Making 100 arrows per pristine combine might just be enough to take away the pain of crafting them. 8. Reducing fuel costs would be a good idea, or at least making it so that my costs to make are a lot less than what vendor made arrows sell for. Otherwise everyone will just buy vendor made arrows. I'm not spending 2 hours crafting arrows, just to find I can make 20gp profit on them. If there is no profit, then there will be no supply and Rangers will be forced to use summoned/vendor and then you'll be seeing "you've nerfed our DPS" complaints. 9. Please try to find some way of making it obvious that certain arrows are "better" in their description. I can see Woodworkers spending hours responding to tells about "which is better" etc. Something clear like Damage Rating and/or Accuracy Rating that even a mage could understand. 10. How does the "range" bonus on arrows work ? If my bow has a range of 35 meters, if I have these arrows in my quiver do I get a bonus to increase it by % ? What happens if I have a mixed quiver of arrows ? What happens if I'm using them and run out and switch to my accuracy arrows, do I find myself suddenly out of range ? 11. I'd like to see Arrow types something like +damage, +chance to hit, and +chance to crit. Maybe even combine all 3 on each arrow. So rounded arrows are +damage, -chance to hit, and no change to crit for example. Message Edited by EQ2Magroo on 02-01-2007 04:17 AM
Here's another one: If you buy from a non-guild crafter, have fun with the logistics of manually transferring your order around on a regular basis (and then storing). 10k arrows for what, 2 weeks? That's 100 stacks for a single high playtime player. What fun for the Ranger and crafter. Has anybody considered just how many arrows, even with the changes to CA's that crafters will have to make and then transfer? Any of these arrangements going on now will be between one or at most two players I would guess. Let's hope there are enough woodworkers in the game with the patience and time to grind out thousands upon thousands of arrows per week to keep 10 or so Rangers supplied. Woo Hoo. Great times ahead. I can hardly wait. Mirdo.
Really just want to know how this sounds. I'm keeping in mind rangers aren't the only arrow users. Keep ranger summoned arrows equal to crafted standard arrows.This still leaves the specialty arrows as a viable tradeskill product for rangers but, as specialty are situational, it shouldn't be too onerous. Adjust the recast of summons or the yield to match player crafted per unit of time. As a woodworker, I can do on the low-end 1 craft a minute, assuming the current recast of 10 mins, that's 1000 arrows. This should help reduce the problem of paying for DPS to almost negligible. Change the summons skills to always summon tier appropriate arrows. If there is an insistance on keeping the +14 upgrades, have those upgrades only increase the damage done or arrow yeild.
I still think the best solution would be to eliminate the whole consumable arrow idea altogether. Instead, each tier the WoodWorker gets recipes for "Bundles of Arrows" a non-consumable item that is placed in the quiver. There should be 6 different recipes, both a Hand Crafted and a Master Crafted version of crushing, piercing, slashing bundles. Rangers don't have to continue to buy a ton of arrows and Woodworkers get something to sell (and 6 recipes as opposed to the current 3).
