Ideas to Improve the Rangers

Discussion in 'Ranger' started by ARCHIVED-Edian, Nov 18, 2004.

  1. ARCHIVED-Edian Guest

    Anyways i was visting a few boards and I've noticed that the ranger class seems to be the only one with negitive feed back. I am curently a lvl 15 pred. and i plan on becoming a ranger at lvl 20 no matter what any one says. I played a ranger on EQ for about 2-3 years and i loved it! However i am noticing that the rangers from EQ to EQ2 are compleatly diffrent (not necesarrily all bad either). However I personaly feel like something is still lacking. I know we're ment to do high damage in a single hit, however thats really about all we can do. If we pull agro we're pretty much screwed becuase we can only take a few hits and we do very little damage tanking. I personaly would love to see some of the crowd control spells similar to EQ (ie. root) so that we're more usefull in a group since right now all we can really do is dish out a major dmg hit once every minute or so. If you have any ideas on how to make this class less looked down upon by others (most of which have never played a ranger) please post them here. Im hopping the SOE will look at this and take some of what we, the rangers of norath, have to say about our class. thanks!
  2. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    I'm not sure how far along you got in EQ, I'm sure you were respectably high, but I've got to tell you, if anyone considered root a method of CC, that was a the sign that I needed to find a new group.

    I can completely get with what you're saying, but I think if anything rangers should be tweaked up in damage and hate avoidance, not modified to do _more_, just to do the same even better. As far as being looked down upon, I don't think thats the case at all, I see plenty of shouts looking for "one more group member, predator or other DPS". I think we're all still getting into our roles, and still understanding them, so it's going to take time to get to the place of being able to even know what we should ask the devs for.

    The last thing we want to do is go off half cocked and start making demands of the dev team, only to get them and realize that they just made our class even more vanilla.

    That said, I'd enjoy wolf form ;)
    I'm not asking for it.
    I'm not saying we deserve it.
    I'm not saying it should be added RIGHT NOW!
    Or Ever.
    But it'd be fun. ;)
  3. ARCHIVED-Zenmuse Guest

    Well, i'm another side-line ranger. I haven't quite gotten there yet, but am extremely excited about it. I've read ever major source and article i could find, gone over the skill set's, and troll'd scout/ranger forums for about three weeks now. It seems to me that one of the major issues that a lot of ranger or pre-ranger players are bringing up are the lack of "utility" skills that a ranger can bring to the group. I've noticed we get an evac, and a few minor damage/debuff's, and the funky sounding agro buff for the next person to hit the mob... but that looks to be about it.

    I'd like to see more ranged stun/interupts put in for us, maybe at 23 and 37... Maybe have a attack called Pin Down, that has a 1.0s cast time with a one minute recast time, and a .05s recover time. Give it a low damage output, compareable to Trick Shot, and maybe a 4-7s stun duration?

    At 37, give us a similar skill, with maybe a slightly lower recast, and similar if not slightly higer duration, but let them be on independent recast timers?

    This could give us a slightly more versatile role in a group, allowing us to do emergency CC if need be.


    The major vice to this though, would be that when soloing "solo" tagged mobs, this might become overpowering. However, in my eyes, no more than a Mage's root. I think this skill would allow us to retain our (possibly self appointed) "ranged melee" title, and not have to rely on actual melee that much solo. I think it would make using only the bow as a weapon very viable. And with a high recast time, should not make solo bow kiting trivial (Considering, in my experiences (pre level 20), most fights, even solo, last no more than 45 secconds, and even that's a stretch).

    Anyways, that's my idea. Feel free to critique, burn, and alter in any way.




    Oh, and on a side note: Where's the ever classic ranger "Hail of Arrow's" AE damage skill? Or even a barrage shot, cone style of AE damage? If SoE refuses to give ranger's group friendly utility skills like the other scout subs, atleast give us some more variation of damage spells that other scout sub's don't have.





    One more side note: Not to de-rail the thread, but, done by the right class's ie. a Shaman (in my experience), root was a very effective form of CC until lvl 65 in EQ1. Shaman's we're by far the best ghetto mez'ers in game.

    Message Edited by Zenmuse on 11-18-2004 02:51 PM
  4. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    50Storm of ArrowsAn area of effect ranged attack. it deals great damage.

    There's the hale of arrows. "Cone Style" was a SWG convention, it always struck me as a poor idea, and wasn't in the original game at all -- don't expect it, even if verant DIDN'T have anything to do with EQ2.

    44Sharp ShotRequires a ranged weapon. Launches two shots at once that deals fire damage, ignoring some enemy armour with a small chance to snare.
    There's a two-fer with fire damage, and there's another two-arrow-special that ignores armor at level 16.
    I agree that a stun would be cool. It shouldn't make us too powerful if it worked like all stuns -- next hit unstuns. However, the last thing we should be saying is "we don't have enough utility" until half of us are over level 40.

    This is NOT the time to start begging the devs to do things. We don't understand the game well enough. We have no IDEA what endgame looks like.
  5. ARCHIVED-Zenmuse Guest

    Nice to see Hail's in. I generally went off of http://eq2.ogaming.com/db/list/skills_ranger.php for a ranger skills list. Too bad it's level 50 though, would be cool to get a version in the early 30's.

    And i don't think this is a plead or cry to the dev's, mainly just tossing around idea's as i understood it. The way i see it, anyone can look at the skill list and see that ranger's are semi-one dimensional. They deal ranged damage. Personally, i don't need to play a ranger till 40+ to figure that out. But that's fine with me, i always liked the dps class's in EQ1.
  6. ARCHIVED-Zenmuse Guest

    2x post ><
    Message Edited by Zenmuse on 11-18-2004 03:10 PM
  7. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    *nod* I'm with you, I played a Monk and a Ranger in EQ, and I'm always just pleased as punch with straight DPS. ;)
  8. ARCHIVED-Kilendric Guest

    I know it would be compleatly useless but I still think that it would be cool if scouts got some form of sign language. you you dont want to be relaying your stratigies to your pray as your stalking up on them. just my $0.02
  9. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    that's a really cool idea. Scouts having a language they could use to communicate to each other but not others. awesome.
  10. ARCHIVED-NightFalcon Guest

    Levle 16 predator atm, but soon to be a ranger. I have always been a ranger and hope to see what they do with it. I too would love a root. It allows a scout to solo
    Message Edited by NightFalcon on 11-19-2004 10:31 AM
  11. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    being a scout allows a scout to solo, root just makes you sloppy.
  12. ARCHIVED-Branix Guest

    I totally disagree with asking for or demanding changes to a class that has just started. How in the world can we tell if the class is broken if several people have not advanced to the endgame? I strongly disagree with the response, "It's easy to tell if something is broken." How do you know it's broken if you have no idea what the future holds in store for you?

    Now, let a dozen people get the highest possible rank and then I'll listen. Until then you are just posting what you want... not what is best.
  13. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    AMEN to that broth-a Branix! Halllelujah!
  14. ARCHIVED-Edian Guest

    i just wanted to say that i wasnt demanding anything from the devs, i understand compleatly that we need to advance further. I was simply pointing out that we are the only class with negative commments on our board, ie "Word is rangers suck". I would never say that about the class, i love it so far and really like all the skills iv goten as well. All i am saying is compared to most the other classes we dont get as neat of things. The hawk is cool but its just fluff. Paly's on the other hand get a horse and one of the subclasses of Druids (if not both) get wolf form. As iv been playing iv notticed that i really miss being able to tuant. I know we arnt ment to be tanks, but when its you one tank and a bunch of casters, being able to taunt somthing off a caster could save the rest of the groups life if not urs (which would still lead to less debt) Root would also come into play here as well. We're dps but also a support. We're rangers, we're spose to know what is happing at all times in the group and act acordingly and right now all i really can do to "react' is hit somthing really hard. Im not complaining, and im not beggining. i just wanted this to be a forum where ppl who had ideas that they thought would be cool to add could post them. And mayb the devs would look at it and somthing would be incorperated into the game (like the sign language thing, that was a neat idea and wouldnt affect gameplay at all)
    My only idea so far was leeched off other ppl about the hawk pet, it needs to do somthing. I like the idea of using it like a bind sight spell from EQ where it could fly up and show you whats over the next hill or around the turn, once again wouldnt change much as far as game play since we could just sneak to see, but im lazy plus this way you wouldnt have to worry about drawing agro from un-dead and anything else that can break sneak either that or make it be able to draw agro for like 3 seconds wouldnt do or be able to take much dmg but would be pretty hard to hit for a non caster, that way we can get a few of our skills that require being behind the target off. I like the first idea better though cuz it would be less unbalancing (though i wouldnt complain if they added either one) Besides that the only thing i really miss is SoW, Root, and Tuant. I always did try to do a bit of everything though..... could use a heal or two as well now that i think of it :)

    p.s. for those of you who are gona burn me for the last comment (and i wouldnt even bother wrighting this but some ppl dont understand sarcasm) it was a joke. I know that would prbly make us compleatly uber and unstopable.

    p.s.s. i miss dueling as well..... cant beat down cocky mouthed people who think they know it all. ;-) would of come in handy the other day....... *sigh* o-well
    Message Edited by Edian on 11-20-2004 08:21 AM
  15. ARCHIVED-jcrazy Guest

    Most players have yet to become a ranger, so lets wait until we the mid game and end game before we start assuming what we didn't get or what we think we should get. Classes will begin to shape themselves increasingly as we begin to gain levels under our belts. I am quite pleased being the Iksar Predator that I am, on the Permafrost server, I never have problems finding a group due to our DPS and versatility.

    If we want the "dev's" to take us seriously, we need to play the class deeper in the game and give them objective feedback about the class.
  16. ARCHIVED-Mercuryswift Guest

    I am a ranger and my only complaint comes from the very nature of what a ranger "is." A ranger (irl) is much more group oriented than the one i play IG... I wish that as they add more and more lvls/expansions that we can become more group oriented. Such as group sneak as well as high lvl speed run buffs or perhaps a spell to improve the melee hit dmg for the group.
  17. ARCHIVED-WiNgMaN Guest

    I made it to a ranger yesterday...And from level 10-20 I could take hits almost as good as a brawler and some warriors. I wasnt AS good, but I could always match , or go alittle under. I havent bought any extra armour either, in fact im still wearing the island pants. I dont have a problem with tanking and never have =P Its easy to get aggro off as well. I noticed if you use Evade...it usually fails, but then if you use cheapshot, it sometimes works and gets aggro off of you if you cheapshot (stop attacking at the same moment) and back up. And if those fail use ensare!! That usually always works. If ensare fails, just use the enhanced defence thing, that helps as well until evade/snare comes back =)


    So far
  18. ARCHIVED-WiNgMaN Guest

    I made it to a ranger yesterday...And from level 10-20 I could take hits almost as good as a brawler and some warriors. I wasnt AS good, but I could always match , or go alittle under. I havent bought any extra armour either, in fact im still wearing the island pants. I dont have a problem with tanking and never have =P Its easy to get aggro off as well. I noticed if you use Evade...it usually fails, but then if you use cheapshot, it sometimes works and gets aggro off of you if you cheapshot (stop attacking at the same moment) and back up. And if those fail use ensare!! That usually always works. If ensare fails, just use the enhanced defence thing, that helps as well until evade/snare comes back =)


    So far rangers
  19. ARCHIVED-WiNgMaN Guest

    I made it to a ranger yesterday...And from level 10-20 I could take hits almost as good as a brawler and some warriors. I wasnt AS good, but I could always match , or go alittle under. I havent bought any extra armour either, in fact im still wearing the island pants. I dont have a problem with tanking and never have =P Its easy to get aggro off as well. I noticed if you use Evade...it usually fails, but then if you use cheapshot, it sometimes works and gets aggro off of you if you cheapshot (stop attacking at the same moment) and back up. And if those fail use ensare!! That usually always works. If ensare fails, just use the enhanced defence thing, that helps as well until evade/snare comes back =)


    So far rangers rock, the only t hing im complaining about is the fact that the hawks dont do anything...but their looks are almost worth it.
  20. ARCHIVED-blitz Guest

    Their looks ARE worth it, rangers aren't supposed to have a utility pet, so there's no "IT" to be worth EXCEPT the looks.

    ;)

    Also, I've played all through my teens with a Monk, and grouped with several fighters, and I've consistently outdamaged every fighter class I've worked with, to the point that I often steal aggro.

    Bear in mind that their highest specials do around 40 damage, and our highest do pretty much 100 damage, with our lowest doing around 40