Ranger Class Issues

Discussion in 'Ranger' started by ARCHIVED-speedycerv, Jul 2, 2008.

  1. ARCHIVED-speedycerv Guest

    I haven't been a Ranger as my main as long as a few of you have I'm sure but after playing it since July 2008. I think this list should suffice as everything that needs to be done to this class in order to make us on par with most other dps classes.
    Issues fixed so far:
    1. Current bug(updated 5/24/09):
    With the Shadow AA Ranged Mastery, the AoE component to the Explosive arrow doesn't increase 10% base damage, or any damage at all. The aoe portion of explosive arrow is spell damage, so only spell crit would increase this part of the damage. The aoe portion should be ranged also and take advantage of the ranged crit and accuracy we have instead of just resisting because our disruption is nonexistent.
    Update: The aoe portion as of GU52 will be melee damage according to a post by Aeralik. This should be ranged damage (as it is a portion of a ranged combat art. (and it should be effected by the Ranged Mastery aswell.
    Update (8/9/09): Since GU52 Explosive arrow's aoe portion is based off of ranged crit. Well done! I need to verify that the aoe portion increases with the ranged mastery AA, so I will be checking this soon (TM).
    2. Itemisation problems(rangers getting the short end of the stick)
    When it comes to loot there is no question that there is more melee speced gear that rangers find useless. And there is some gear visa versa. In t7 it was a lot worse for rangers, there was no ranged double attack, on basicly anything, and there was a bit more da (for melees). With RoK we see a lot more RDA but only on select pieces of gear. With the change to disarming band, there was one gap filled but on the whole there really isn't many options for gear as a raiding ranger. Only the dead-eye shoulders and the 5 crit ones from pr area widely used(the class ones from vp are never used). I'm currently likeing Azleya's view on the situation where he suggested that fyreflyte should be putting more equal statting on items, for example, make things that have 4 crit (melee or ranged) have it's counter part on there aswell. Same for double attack (though they always put less rda vs da on items cuz our auto attack does big dmg).
    Itemisation that makes one or the other class off dibs of the item seems kind of a waste. Heartbreaker wrist from tangrin is only useful for a ranger, add some melee crit or melee da on it, and then u have something desireable for both. same with many other items with only ranged or melee speced effects on it. Make it more equal!

    Update: Number 6 seems to have been taken care of with TSO, there is many pieces of gear that have melee and ranged crit on them, and don't discriminate as much. Good Job Fyreflyte!
    Current Issues:

    1. Hawk Attack useful, but dies easily. Attack hawk is sort of useful, it transfers 10 or 15% (i forget which) of the groups hate to it, but it dies very quickly and has no use on most epic named because it dies to any aoe. It would be useful if it was immune to aoes, just like the shaman pet wolf can be if speced correctly. This would give the ranger much more utility in a group. This ability was created in KOS, when epics did do aoes, but not nearly as many as current TSO raid targets. Make it immune to aoes, or even just immune if it isn't in front of the mob.
    2. Nature's focus, Does it do that much? (Holding this issue until I get more data)
    It increases melee's chance to hit by 25%, and lasts for 15 seconds (assuming AAs in it). This group buff seems not as useful as the wizard's frigid gift. The new TSO AA's give a bonus to the amount of accuracy the group portion provides, but Aeralik thinks that this increase is huge, but I'm not so sure.
    Update (8/9/09): Currently I have 4 points in the accuracy bonus that is given to the group. I did a palace trash raid run without casting focus aim at all to see how much it would effect accuracy vs when I was starting focus aim and clicking it off instantly to start the recast more quickly, and still getting the accuracy bonus which lasts 15 seconds. The difference the buff made for me personally was 2.25% hit rate for my bow. I didn't check the other group members yet but I will in future tests. It doesn't seem like much of an increase to me, but perhaps the overall amount it helps the group is worth it how it currently is. I understand that too much accuracy can be game breaking, so I'll gather more data before I think this needs to be changed.
    3. Sniper shot cast time & damage vs assassin's assasinate:
    Assassin's big hit is assasinate. They have near instant cast for it, and hit upwards of 100k. Sniper shot's cast time is 5 seconds, and highest hits are 76k. Ranger's can do it without being close, so i could understand the cast time, somewhat, but 5 seconds makes casting it very difficult on most raid encounters because you can be knocked out of stealth by any number of aoes. Anashti Sul comes to mind. The damage should be dead even though, and it wouldn't make rangers overpowered by increasing a 15 min reuse ca by that amount.

    4. Repeating Arrows current status:Useless, Take Daze Off
    Repeating Arrows, is a combat art that lasts 30 sec, can be reduced duration with aa's as well as the cast time of each stream arrow which does 1k.
    The issue is this: auto attack is the biggest part of a ranger's dps. Combat arts are secondary to ranged auto attack. REPEATING ARROWS is a combat art, that lasts 30 seconds. So you know what happens when a combat art is being cast? That's right, no auto attacks can happen. So while this combat art is up, you are losing dps.
    In summary this skill has no use to a ranger at all. I'm sure many have taken it off their hotbar by this point. My suggestion would be to rework the skill completely. Take stifle off, or the daze or the root, or any combination. I know this was responded to at fan faire and we were told that daze wouldn't be removed because the auto attack damage is too high, but I disagree. In order to be able to say that taking daze off would be overpowered, you would have to know what you are comparing the amount of dps expected from the combat art to be. I havn't heard anything about what damage is to be expected from Stream as far as Devs posting.

    5. Change Ranged CAs min range to 0
    Most important change of all would be this. Ranger's "sweet spot" is between 2m and 5m away from the mob. Reasoning for this: ranged ca's have a min range of 2m, melee combat arts (most of them) have a max range of 5m.
    Now staying in this 2-5m range can be easy, depending on the encounter. Ones that move around a lot such as the tank being feared or knocked back means constant readjusting. Melee people have to readjust as well, but they don't have to worry about the 2m min range like we do. EXAMPLE: Protector's realm: where every mob knocks back, has problems for rangers because we have to move back and forth every time it moves to get back into the sweet spot.
    If <2m: we can only use melee cas and ranged auto. EXAMPLE: in RE2, the sand goblin fight, where the idea is to bring everyone under a tent and kill the mob in the tent, rangers dps is limited; Same for trakanon.

    6. Used arrows (aka self summoned arrows)
    These arrows are useless to a ranger, unless you are poor or forgot to buy arrows. Hand crafted arrows are always better than Used Arrows. Here are two solutions to this:
    a) Changed into a skill where it gives you an IMBUED stack of arrows. These arrows should be special for the ranger class, and give a nice ability on them.
    b) Make Used Arrows the new tenderwood arrows, which have a 30-40 damage proc on them (this would scale with level of arrows)
    Now I'm not a cheap guy, I buy arrows like everyone else and it doesn't break my bank, but RANGERS should be given an ability so that they dont have to rely on BUYING arrows. Rangers should have the ability to make the best arrows in the game as they are nessisary to our damage and thus we should get the privilged arrows just like we have the best bow in the game.
    7. Change coverage:
    A) Too near to mobs = coverage rendered useless. With all the new ae encounter mobs in TSO, this makes coverage very useless. If there are multiple mobs around the ranger, they are not able to use coverage, which means in most named fights you cannot use it, because of addsin every encounter.
    B) The 20m range that you need to be at to cast Coverage with even one mob involved is more annoying that nessisary. Having to back up, hit coverage and then run back in to attack is a bit annoying. I can understand if you want to put some restrictions, as long as you reduce the cast time of sniper arrow (see item 3).
    C) The cast time of coverage is not instant, as the spell says it is, it has a delay before and after going into it.
    These are the major changes that should be made in order to make us equal to other classes. Feel free to offer more problems to this list, but this list currently has a bunch of people agreeing with me in the world wide channel. These are confirmed issues that people have with this class.
  2. ARCHIVED-Kitsune286 Guest

    I hate to be Mr Negative, but we've seen our fix. =)

    I will put more meaningful info here once I have had something to eat.
  3. ARCHIVED-Ranja Guest

    Uryuu@Befallen wrote:
    Nothing new mentioned here that all of us rangers have been saying for years. As Kit said, we have seen our fix. We will not be touched again probably for the rest of ther EQ2 life cycle.

    Yes, we have many useless CAs. Repeating being just one of them.
    Yes sniper sucks ***
    Yes our utitlity sucks
    Yes we pay for our DPS

    Since you said you were new to playing your ranger, I will give you a pass on these this time:).

    You say:
    If we complain enough the Dev's WILL respond

    They already did in GU-44.
  4. ARCHIVED-Starwindz Guest

    You missed the boat as everyone is saying.
    More raid bow graphics anyone? )
  5. ARCHIVED-BigDaddy28 Guest

    Ranger's seem like a class that is played by alot of people...who like to solo. We basically have no chance in hell of getting into a VP raid guild, let alone one that is clearing VP. I forsee the end of my EQ2 days soon as my favorite class is just ****. We offer nothing to raids, nothing to groups, we are at our best solo'ing. More than likely I will be playing FF11 online again, at least Rangers on that game are awesome DPS...as they should be. Too bad EQ2 is so damn addictive >.<
  6. ARCHIVED-Guard_Rail Guest

    I quit playing this game for all the above reasons a few months ago. In fact, the only reason i came to the forums was in hope that something may have changed even just a little since then. Prior to my departure my once family raiding guild realized that raiding is the only thing left to do after all the quests are done etc.... They also realized that Rangers are not necessary and are considered a filler class only.
  7. ARCHIVED-Kage848 Guest

    These ranger boards have been dead lalty and this is why.
    Most have canceled, some have betrayed and the rest just dont care and continue to play there rangers. I am the 3rd but as soon as another good MMO comes out, and no AoC sux, im gone. And so are my caster friends, my ranger friends, my zerker friends, my sk friends, ect.
    The only people that are ganna be left in this game are swashies, assassins, guardians, brigands, monks, bards and the healers.
    I am in a raid guild and i have been tops of the dps in my guild. I was talking to the tank the other day and he was telling me that one of our guildies, assassin, isent even at there keyboard alot of the time. They only show up on some named fights and when they do they do like 6k, compared to my 4k. Here i was thinking im some kind of good player and all. Im very proud of my dps and was happy i was overcoming my class. Well guess what, im not. We suck and im getting sick of it.
    PLEASE let Warhammer be good....PLEASE!

    PS: I hate it when people hold the devs hostage useing other games. But im at my wits end i dont know what else to do. I guess im not meaning to use WH as a threat or anything, just venting.
  8. ARCHIVED-dbmoreland Guest

    Uryuu@Befallen wrote:
    We are already "on a par" with MOST other DPS classes. By and large it is the player's ability that will determine who is doing more DPS. Just look at the range of DPS you see right here posted on the forums. You have some level 80 rangers that are doing 1500DPS, you have some that are doing 8K. Same with assassins. What does this say? The player behind the keyboard is what matters, NOT the class itself.
    1. Rangers have two other "untility" CAs that no one ever seems to mention (unless no one thinks that debuffs matter). Doesn't anyone use the trap and ensnare line CAs? But rangers are NOT a utility class. If I want to play a utility DPS class go play a swishie or dirge.
    2. The cast time of sniper arrow is a non issue. It is short enough that we can cast it between our auto attacks so it never reduces our overall DPS. And I am sure that your other CAs do not ALL do 10K dps each so this is not our worst CA in terms of damage divided by cast time.
    3. Ageed, repeating arrows is worthless, but it has been since the day we got it 3 years ago so get used to having one totaly worthless CA.
    4. Sorry, you want easy mode, go play WoW. You want to have to consider position in a fight, play a ranger in EQ2. You want max DPS, learn how to find the "sweet spot". This is one of the nice little challenges of playing a ranger in eq2.
    5. You can do fine DPS with used arrows. Just like you can do fine dps without food, wetstones, potions, and mastercrafted poisons. Only when you want to do top DPS do you need to use wetstones, potions, mastercrafted poisons and yes player made fieldpoint arrows. By the way have you actually compared what an assassin spends on poisons to what we spend on poisons with conservation and our arrows? You might be suprised.
    If you really hate the ranger class then there are 23 others that may appeal to you. Or just wait a few months, I am sure that they will change the way rangers play again with the next expansion if not sooner. Sony keeps changing it's mind about how to play us (and every other class) every few months. They have made two major changes to rangers in the last 9 months, first with RoK, then with GU44. That is the nature of EQ2.
    As for the one that said that most have canceled, I hate to tell you this but you are wrong. Rangers are still the most numerous scout class. There are still more rangers than assissins, swashies, brigands, dirges or troubs. And I love how, of all of the classes that you mentioned that were "ganna be left in this game", you FAILED to mention the single MOST numerous class. Just shows you how much you really know about what classes people are really playing.
    Are there some changes that could be made to improve EVERY class in EQ2, sure. And you can bet that they WILL be made. They do so every month. And they will continue to do so as long as enough people keep paying their subscription.
  9. ARCHIVED-Nuladen Guest

    Danean@Guk wrote:
    So utterly wrong.
  10. ARCHIVED-dbmoreland Guest

    Nuladen@Lucan DLere wrote:
    My most humble appologies, allow me to be more presice.
    We got Stream of Arrows in Sept 05 with DOF (LU13), 34 months ago. At that time it was a great CA.
    In Feb 06, just 5 months later it was nurfed in LU 19. Since that time it has been worthless in that ranged auto attack does more damage per second than stream of arrows (and since ROK it's upgrade repeating arrows). So for 29 of the last 34 months stream/repeating arrows has been worthless. I stand corrected.
  11. ARCHIVED-speedycerv Guest

    Danean@Guk wrote:
  12. ARCHIVED-Nuladen Guest

    Danean@Guk wrote:
    Well if you are going to post information then at least get it correct, otherwise it leaves a big question mark over whether the rest of your information is at all accurate.
  13. ARCHIVED-Starwindz Guest

    Sick of hearing how "we" suck at dps.
    Well, I have news for you. We don't.
    Sick of hearing how "we" need more utility.
    We don't. I rather be master of one thing (DPS) than be a jack of all trades.
    Seriously folks, you need to rethink your class and figured out how to play it. The game offers many tools that will allow you to be in the top 3 parse every time if not top 2. And, you don't have to have the "best" gear in game to do it.
  14. ARCHIVED-readili Guest

    What "tools" do you use?
  15. ARCHIVED-Starwindz Guest

    Zechariah@Mistmoore wrote:
    To start, check Danean's post. He listed a couple ideas.
    Check my bow post I made earlier. It has the best bows in order per autoattack (which should be a hint since autoattack is out biggest asset).
    http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=422083
    I suggest checking these forums and EQ2flames ranger forums. There are a ton of ideas that you can get from that will make you a better dps ranger (since that is what we do anyway). :)
  16. ARCHIVED-gfxdk Guest

    We are a DPS class, we don't have utility. Live with it. Nooo the sniper is fine as it is. Live with it. Repeating arrows, yes. I think they should make it so you can auto attack while using it. Ranged CA's range to 0? You have to run 2-5 meters, don't be lazy. That's stupid. Summoned Arrows, yes. They need a fix. Since they are no-trade, and rangers are the only ones that can get them, they should be better than field points. Ranger's fine the way they are guys, just LIVE WITH IT. We aren't assassins, that's why execute is being cast in .5 secs and sniper in 3.8. We aren't dirges, that's why we have no utility, never have been, never will be. RANGED ca's should only be available if you are at RANGE, see the point ? Ranged - Range ... It's weird isn't it?! ******* hell, just stop already.
  17. ARCHIVED-Lolianna Guest

    Zechariah, to answer your question, there are many things at our disposal that will indeed help you parse 2-3rd nearly all the time. To start with, make sure your gear is as adorned as possible. Use dps adorns for your neck and bow. Fill in with some strength/ int adorns as they are our main stats. +RC hand adorn is also pretty cool. Some slots basically just don't have a good choice, like helms, so I put a wisdom adorn there for a little push to resists. If you have some plat, there are some +CA adorns available for your waist and wrists, although they are fabled and a little expensive. Maybe your guild can help with those; ours helps guildees obtain the fabled, more expensive, adornments.
    After that, make sure that you are using the best arrows and poisons in the game. Handcrafted arrows, not summoned, are the way to go for your best dps. If your guild provides them, tendered seed poison (or w/e it's full name is) is the best. But, in most cases, expert's caustic, along with our AA, will give you the best results.
    Moving along, there is now an awesome faction drink available called fiery magma. It lasts for 30 minutes and gives you a +50 CA bonus. Again, it gets a little expensive, but if you are asking how to make the top of the parse, these are the way to go on raids.
    While on the subject of new temporary adorns; make sure you carry some Archer of Di'zok flashstone and waterstones. These also last for 30 minutes and give +3% to either RDA or RC, depending on which one you use. I carry both because having an illusionist is not always a given and choosing which one to use will depend on if I have IA or not. Also, invest in some regimental oilstones, they are also temp adorns you can use to adorn your primary weapon with a +DPS boost, which works whether you use melee or not.
    Another temporary, but useful, new item is the regimental combat elixir. It adds another +8% RDA. Using this and the bow temp adorn, you could add +11% RDA with just potions and WS adorns.
    This can all become quite expensive. I recommend you make friends with some tradeskillers :). However, I am in love with a lot of these new faction items. Domino has come up with a lot of nice, new adorns and temporary items that noticeably improve our dps. We just have to make sure we indulge in some of them :p.
    I hope some of this helps, in response to your question about 'tools' of the trade.
  18. ARCHIVED-speedycerv Guest

    Enough with the "how to help my dps" talk. plenty of other threads for that. This is the bug/issue thread for the class, everyone else has one. So this can be ours.
  19. ARCHIVED-LoreLady Guest

    Uryuu quit complaining. You have put nothing forward other than cycle threads that have been going on for years now. 1: Mages get buffs, DEAL with it.. They wear cloth, they cant take physical hits, thats there compansation. You can whine till the moon turns blue and it still wont make a damn bit of difference. 2: Yea stream of arrows sucks, who cares. Swashys get the same ability we do in that respect. If you have a sub par bow you can use the to keep up with people on ranged fights, this ability is for lower geared players. 3: DPS is fine right now between the classes. Ya I hate some classes for getting the "easy button" but it happens. All in all we are where we should be. 4: The only real "bug" there is in my opinion is the issue with coverage. That should be the same min range as our other ranged arts. But all in all, thats our only "real" issue with the class. When you make posts like this, your OP is your first impression on the subject. I highly suggest you change your OP completely on "bugs" or "glitches" that are within the system. Oh yea, for those of you who dont know, it costs 2g50s to buy crafted arrows on this server. So the deal with make shift arrows doesnt even really apply to uryuu lol.
  20. ARCHIVED-Mendle Guest

    I can't remember what post it was that compared Sniper to execute, but I thought it was a really good one. All rangers agree Summoned arrows are for noob players or weak mobs. Yes we are fine as a dps class. The problem I feel is that too many peeps out there don't know how to play the ranger correctly. I am constantly relearning stuff I thought I knew or finding ways to do it more efficiently. If you are concerned about getting into a VP guild, play the right way. There are a lot of guild that are in VP that tend to think a ranger is Vital as it is consistent DPS that can take care of itself if aggro is gained, which spares the healers from throwing wild heals and/or rezes. Also helps the utilities from rezzing too. A tank likes it because a ranger has a very good use of aggro decreasing abilities. which will get the aggro back easier. However that is a rare occurance because if you are in a VP guild you should be able to maximize your DPS without gaining aggro.