Pattywak@Kithicor wrote: We are all glad that they replied, and aknowledged that there is a problem with our class and they have some ideas. They did NOT say they were working on fixing it - they said they will look into it when they have time, there is a major differance. I think they will look into after they get the SF release bugs fixed and content that wont make it in - in. Which will be at least 2 months, after they look into it, they will change some things and then test them for at least 2 months. Which If they do any fixing will be 4-6 months after SF release, and we still have a legitimate complaint after haveing to deal with some of the things for 3yrs.
You have a point that this is a long time coming and that they never said they are GOING to fix it, just that it was being looked into. But I see no talking and reasoning from many rangers, I see complaining and whining. Yes be upset that rangers are right now bottom of the barrel, red headed step children, I'm upset too. I love rangers, in EQ and in other games, I play them whenever I can and they are usually much better than this. But we need to talk, reason and not act like 8 year olds who had their toy taken away. The two responses to my original post show the difference. Azreal whined about problems, showed little evidence and then insulted me while Venez gave solid proof and reason for what he is saying and never said that I was stupid or dumb or that I didn't know what I was talking about. There is a big difference in the way a dev will respond to this. When you tell a dev that they aren't doing their job ad insult them every other post like many people did with a former dev, they tend not to listen. On the beta forums I saw a lot of solid proof and the like to back up problems that ranger have. The "new" devs have taken the first step in responding to this by communicating with us. The first response was someone telling him that it wasn't good enough... How would you respond?
The old dev did nothing for rangers because he raided as an assassin and didn't want the competition. You have to understand that most of the people that seem the most irrational were the ones that tried the hardest to be civil and get things done. After so long trying with nothing happening can you really blame them for it now?
@ Pattywak One of the latest things rangers made very upset was when one dev , timetraveller, createt items and raid adorments with stats (AE AA and flurry) that ranger cant use ,which means another imbalance. He probably wasnt even aware of those things, atleast thats i how interprete his words later on without knowing what and how to change those things !!! We are raidwise the bottom of the barrel in compared to other dps classes.Which means alot of ranger, like me , who have no raidforce will be left out. Now imagine when they are fix us it can take months, meaning ranger who like to raid pay for subs and cant raid. As Venez pointet out there has been since 2-3 years not much love coming in from the devs due to their opinion our AA would be so much harder than melee. On Top of that during this Beta alot of ppl like Neiloch, cchap, Nevao provided data that both AAs are roughly the same but nothing has benn done. Thats why ranger appreciate rothgars words but are very sceptical or lets say distanced is not a surprise.
you know what I really thought about responding to the whole Azrael insulted me comment but I REALLY don't want this thread to get locked for derailment. I expressed valid points in my post and even agreed with an earlier post about the curent state of our class. Please re-read what I stated. Even though it is very argumentative and standoffish on my side it's not entirely wrong. If it was I'd be having people calling me out on it. All rangers with feed back as to the current state of our class are imperative to the continued success of our class. Please feel free to post other things that would be nice to see in the future for our class.
glowsinthedark wrote: Naa alot of the ones being irrational are the ones that were not dealing with Aeralik in the past betas, LUs or in anyway and are the ones that really do not understand the mechanics that are in now or the ones that where changed, starting at the end of EoF..imo I do give kudos to Xelgad that he is aleast acknowledging something is wrong. But on the other side Xelgad has absolutly no clue where we stood in EoF or the way were balanced at that time before Aeralik broke out with the nerf bat and the mechanic changes where all this started (unless he has done alot of homework), he has alot of research to do inable to even sorta understand whats going on with the Ranger class, hopefully he will save the beta posts and take some notes on how and why we are where we are now.
Until I see the day where "so and so Raid Guild" is actively seeking a Ranger to join their ranks, then the Ranger class is broken. I have never seen that call for Rangers ever since I have been playing (2005), or did I miss something? or did a Ranger just happened to be in a guild that decided to raid. This is becoming game breaking for me, I love playing with my friends, and that is why I haven't quit yet! But come on, how hard is this really to fix? Happy Hunting!
Azrael_888 wrote: I do not disagree with the rest of your post, but to be accurate the myth has been changed in SF to give the +20% 5 meter or less damage regardless of the range now. We do however still need to joust to trigger our melee ca's, a significant portion of our DPS though lower than our counterparts. Pattywak@Kithicor wrote: What you do not understand or are not seeing is all the posting, facts and suggestions provided by many of the peeps in this thread. It is tough to try and get your mind around the myriad suggestions comments and data that has been provided over the years. Many of us do not feel we should have to repost all that for this one thread. All the data is available to the developers elsewhere. The tone was set in official comments for the direction they would take for balance in SF. The only thing we officially saw was that they would look into Stream of Arrows and the the RDbl coefficient would be maintained. They were going to concentrate on Brawlers adn Summoners which indeed needed help. Going in they did not recognize the imbalance with rangers inspite of years and thousands of postings and data provided. Nearly 1000 posts were made in beta detailing the problems and challeges for rangers. Towards the end of beta it looked like at most the status quo would be maintained, we would get some of our most irritating CA's addressed, no adjustments to get us back to compelling T1 DPS, but at least we would not fall further behind. Quite a let down since we all hoped to be able to make up some ground and become viable again. And then we saw the new procs that were being made available to EVERY melee class but us. So instead of making up ground or having seriously outdated nerfs removed we lost ground in the final push to get SF out. Can you realistically thinkk the response is unreasonable or ungrateful? Most of those posting are actually trying to limit the vitriol we would like to lay out. To sum it up most value result over intent. We don't care what is intended, intent has never solved anything.
A DPS increase still isn't going to help us. We bring absolutly no utility to a raid. Assassins are virtually the same and wizards are and warlocks.. Chanters / Bards are still a primary focus for raids and with chanters bringing a heck of a lot more utility as well as some pretty good DPS theres little need for pure DPS class's with the current state of most encounter. So reguardless of increasing our dps we're still not going to gain a raid slot without having some other use. Our guild raids without an assassin and rarely with a ranger. Theres no point when class's with more utility are able to punch out slightly lower DPS. Crit changes are going to amplify this even more i believe.
Ive go to thank Rothgar for a reply,since he didnt have to. That said, I also thanked every other Dev who has replied, and this seems to be one in a long line of responces saying ...We understand Rangers have problems..the fixes are hard...we will look into it when we have time. Ive been following these boards for the last 2 years . There have been small tweaks, but so far there has not been time to really address the base problems. I dont see there being any more time in the future for unique problems for one of 24 classes. If I were a programmer and had extra time,Id make a change that affects 23/24 classes first. Buaf Befallen
I don't disagree with anything that's been posted here or on the beta forums... I, in fact, agree that all these changes need to be addressed and that not enough was done for ranger to be competitive as T1 DPS. What I am saying is that if we want the issues to be addressed, people (not all, but a very large percentage) need to stop whining about it and telling the devs they aren't doing things good enough. The new devs got thrown into this position just before the beta was released and immediately tried to keep communication with the ranger community. They have not done as much as we've all hope, but they have done more in the past few months to at least keep us in the loop about things than I ever saw out of the old dev in the year+ that I have been playing the game. I have not been here long, but I have followed all the threads I could, past and present, in an attempt to understand what I need to do to be a decent ranger and know the issues facing the class. I agree that the facts and evidence that we have out there already are sufficient to make our point, but when you come to a new thread to post about issues at least bring some sort of "hey this is where my facts are from" attitude not the "do I really have to say this all over again" one that some have brought here. The new issues coming from new scout gear are very concerning. Having one class left out of gear attributes in the new expansion is as bad as what summoners faced with gear not applying to their pet's damage etc. Rangers either need to be included in these new attributes or need something that can be comparable that applies only to rangers and not the other scouts. The later seems very improbable but at least the devs recognize that this needs to be addressed asap.
Pattywak@Kithicor wrote: Very well put i agree, and hopfully the devs can see the issues rangers are facing and fix them like we have been waiting for.
At least the new dev responded to the post. This is far more than generally happens, s ty for that. In order to keep them responding, we need to recognize that people don't respond well when attacked. So while continued complaints about the state of rangers is warrented, it's almost surely best to keep those complaints focused on the class issues, and off the develpers. I would personally rather see a fix to the re class, turning rangers into the ranged dps machines they ought to be. Rather see a fully realized, well thought out fix, then a flurry (usage intentional /ugh) of small changes that in the end don't address the end problem. This may be realistic, it may not be, but it's the only way anything will truely be addressed. SO lets keep up the specific, fully documented concerns and complaints, lets not attack players or developers. Let's establilsh ourselves as a vocal, passionate and learned group. Let's keep at it, and maybe we will get the love we deserve.
A belated response, but I would argue we weren't even balanced in EoF. Remember what was required to be able to compete in EoF: a top end raid bow, IE. either one off of Mistmoore or the crafted one from Woushi, OR, at bare minimum, the ridiculously rare sarnak bow from Venekor in Halls of the Seeing, AND one of the two T8 ammo bows from Deathtoll (also ridiculously rare). If you had those, then yes, you could compete. If you weren't lucky enough to get those drops before your raidforce moved on from KoS zones, or if you didn't have a raidforce willing to keep you on when your DPS fell abysmally short as soon as you hit upper KoS zones or EoF zones? Yeeeah, sucks to be you. We've never had any kind of decent bow progression, which makes the middle area of raid progression utterly painful for rangers, because while everyone else is receiving decent upgrades all the way along, rangers won't see any real upgrades until you're already downing the top bosses of the expansion (which I assume is how SF is...or at least I would HOPE that the bows we've already seen aren't the only ones available, because they're a meager upgrade from the mythical at best, and many of them are a step down). Kind've sucks when you'd like to be able to actually help your raidforce conquer this content in the first place. I'd argue rangers have never been balanced. We were ridiculously overpowered thanks to procs in DoF, KoS saw us nerfed into the ground, EoF I've described above, RoK had the arrow mechanics 'fix' which pretty much kept us only just above EoF damage (and invalidated the summoned ammo), TSO introduced flurry and left us falling further and further behind, and now SF has both flurry and AE auto attack in greater numbers and actual equipment stats, so far absolutely abysmal bow itemization, and melee auto attack actually outdamaging ranged auto attack...and while Rothgar and Xelgad have made noises as to fixes (and I hope all these little hints we get of things going on behind the scenes to fix rangers end up resulting in something), most of the official responses to ranger complaints have been 'coding issues, sorry!' and 'we believe rangers should be more ranged, so no we're not doing anything to address the minimum range issues'. Is it any wonder that longtime ranger players are frustrated? I know I've been somewhat less civil than I have in the past lately, because I'm just so extremely tired of saying the same things over and over and over again, having them be ignored, and all the while ingame I fall further and further behind classes that all things being equal should not be able to overtake predator DPS, and yet you have them easily topping the parse (*coughcough* Swashies *cough*), let alone the disparities between us and our sister class.
What's odd is rangers in eq1 are treated the same way. I really don't understand why the dev's have such a bug up their butts about making rangers a desired class. They use the same argument of risk vs reward to push ranged dps down while allowing casters to create mushroom clouds all over the place which has no intellectual consistency. If they truly believed in risk vs reward in regards to proximity, they would change all offensive spells to hit for less and less damage the further away from the mob you get so squishies had to belly cast on mobs to get maximum dps.
It feels as if our class always gets placed on the backburner when it comes to fixes/balances/etc. While I appreciate Rothgar's response and hope he and the other devs will continue to post in the Ranger forum; it remains to be seen if anything will be done from the developer's end. There have been posts stating that all we are doing is whining and complaining, etc and to be patient, remain civil, the good things are coming down the pipe for you guys/gals. Well, after a time it becomes frustrating to deal with the aloofness and blatant oversight from the devs. Are there bigger issues to fix in the game? Maybe-but after 2+ years of being imbalanced from the rest of the classes out there, roll up your sleeves, hunker down and do what is right. Rangers are and can be an outstanding class given the right fixes/repairs to bring us on par with the rest of the scout classes.
