Hello, I wanted to make a post to try and appeal to the developers and to get some attention brought to the issue with Signature weapons for the Ranger class. When DoF was released we got the first signature weapon line with an option specific for the Ranger, in my mind and I hope in the Dev’s as well, in the Longbow of Second Life. As a Ranger I was very excited to find an option specifically aimed towards my class. I took the bow as my reward, got a discovery for it as well, and set about using it. Then shortly there after mid content for DoF released. When I checked the rewards for this round of hunter I found the crossbow to be a cut above the God King bow. I was highly disappointed. I petitioned and got the bow replaced with the Sword (thank you sooo much CS Team!) and took the crossbow as my first Hunter reward. Now with the release of KoS I was annoyed to find that, after a bit of searching, once again the mid content hunter crossbow I already have from DoF is still better than the Claymore option, and the mid content for KoS kicks this up another notch. I am on the final few steps of the Claymore Timeline and I am questioning why I spent so much time on it and getting all the access required to complete the line. While this can be said for nearly every reward from these signature quests, I think the Ranger is in a very specific spot and gets left out even more than any other class. Namely that we alone cannot use our signature weapon and still benefit from the single best ranged item in the game at any tier. The hunter cross bow is hands down the best in slot ranged item for nearly, if not literally every, class in the game on the TLE. So as A Ranger, who’s entire class identity is focused around doing massive damage with a bow, I am forced to forgo using what should be the best in slot signature ranged weapon for my class and instead use the generic Hunter crossbow or else I will greatly underperform every other class who can greatly benefit from using their class’s preferred best in slot signature weapon while still benefitting from the Hunter Crossbow. I want to be clear here, this post is NOT about Ranger DPS vs other classes. This is not the topic I wish to bring to light, the issue at hand here is the complete lack of a viable option for one class out of every other in the game to actually use their class defining signature weapon of choice. Starting with DoF we see a major lack in RATING on the God King bow vs the Hunter Crossbow. The difference is enormous. Ignoring the other stats entirely, as this isn’t really the point of the post, but the rating on the God King bow is far too low. This great deficiency forces any Ranger to choose the Crossbow over the God King bow. I hear you say, “Just take the sword then, it’s a great weapon and BiS for main hand”. You are correct, the sword is BiS for main hand for scouts who melee. Which is exactly the point. The Ranger does not melee using autos. We use Ranged attacks, which is part of the class design, and we are FORCED to choose a non-ranged option for our Signature weapon because the undeniable BiS ranged weapon is the Hunter Crossbow. The Ranged God King bow should be BiS for Ranger autos/CA, not a generic Hunter weapon. Our Signature weapon is FAR inferior to the crossbow. This continues in KoS as shown below. Once again, the signature weapon for the Ranger class is FAR inferior. The Claymore option is far inferior to the DoF crossbow even. This just hurts my heart as a Ranger. I could almost be ok with the dropped weapons being less good vs the Hunter Crossbow for this expansion, but our Signature weapon from a quest line that requires weeks of work and multiple 24 man raids to complete? After all this work my only real option is to overlook the Longbow entirely and choose a melee weapon so that I can instead take the Crossbow once again. This is after the bump in stats given in the latest patch as well. This trend doesn’t end here. It gets worse in EoF/RoK. As shown below with the Ranger EPIC weapon, a weapon we have ZERO other options on, is again outshined by the mid content option in RoK. This doesn’t even take into account the Heroic version of this weapon. While the epics proc will probably still make it better to a degree the rating being lower than the hunter crossbow, a generic ranged option for EVERY class in the game, is just painful. Considering as well that the hunter option is FAR easier to obtain. There is almost no reason to even attempt the Epic except for the most raid focused of us, and even then by the time many of us get to the raid version of the epic, we will already have the mid content crossbow. Later quests in other expansions grant access to the procs for any Ranged item as well, so the proc isn’t even that huge of an issue to miss out on for half an expansion vs the time required to obtain the mythical epic. My ask of the Devs is simple. Please give me a reason to choose my Signature Longbow from these quest lines. Please fix the rating on these bow options to match at a minimum the rating on the Hunter crossbow. Let us choose the “correct” signature weapon for our class and actually enjoy the reward we WANT to use after spending so much time and effort completing these quest lines. Give us the same opportunity every other class in the game already enjoys. I want to show off the Signature Longbow and all the effort I put into this wonderful game. Being forced to use a weapon reward that, frankly, is meant for another class is very disheartening to myself and every other Ranger out there. Do the Ranger community on this TLE right and please, respectfully, give us the option to really play the Ranger class as I believe it was meant to be played.
I have been bringing this up for weeks, the only response was Mint saying "We are not able to rework the Hunter's Union quest rewards at this time. We can look at power, but making them equivalent to expansion gear would be antithetical to their design and I do not believe we would do that." I completely agree with you, the damage rating on all hunter weapons is ridiculously over powered and needs brought inline with weapons from the following expansion, or preferably removed completely.
Well, that's fine and all. If they do not want to rework hunter items I have no issue at all with that. But they could easily make a few minor tweaks to the Signature Longbow, as the focus of this post. I am not even calling for a nerf or rework to Hunter items. Leave them as they are, but making a small tweak to the Rating on these items that were meant to be the end all be all for that tier of content wouldn't be too much to ask I think. The Ranger items are even more glaring of an issue as we are just completely left out in the cold when it comes to our Signature Weapons from these lines. We just cannot make use of them at all. Even the epic, which is REALLY close is a tad behind the Hunter option. Other classes can still make use of their Signature items and Epics without giving up a BiS item. In this respect the Rangers out there are hit doubly hard on this topic.
I would think at the very least the Ranger Epic (mythical version) needs to be on par with the RoK hunters crossbow for the level of effort required and the fact that it is their EPIC. Honestly, it would be nice if the mythical version of the epic was better than the crossbow. By just a little bit.
I completely agree Rangers are getting screwed. other classes as well but not as big as Rangers, which I pointed out in a different thread. This is all caused by Hunter Weapons. Yes one option is to buff sig weapons damage ratings up (all of them) to match hunters but then you still have every other weapon in the game as useless (which maybe they want) I would be happy if they upped the damage rating on the Signature Weapons. The way hunter's are in comparison to any other weapon right now is bad design and invalidates every other weapon from any expansion. The best option would be to remove hunter weapons or as other have suggested, make hunter's into adornments.
I don't know if I would say "bad design". It gives people something to chase to keep people in game and playing. Which, yes, helps drive subs and such of course. It also gives those of us who want to continue playing through the content, regardless, people to group with for something. So I would not go as far as to say it's bad design. I will say that the signature weapon for the Ranger being so far below the hunter items might be an over sight though. Other classes can still use their signature weapons to full effect and still chase the hunter weapons for maximum performance. While the Ranger is, for all intents and purposes, hosed to a fair degree. I hope that the devs will review and agree. They are trying to make this TLE enjoyable for us. We may not agree with everything they do with the game, but I refuse to give them grief because I honestly believe they are trying to keep things fun and make choices that make sense for their intended design. So in short, I don't really like the Hunter weapons myself, but they are here and will stay as far as we can tell. Rather than keep coming at the devs with the same message and getting the same answers i'd rather find another avenue to solve this issue.
It is not just Rangers, but rangers are hit the hardest by it. There are classes that need to use melee to proc various abilities, Rogues being one of them. The way the math works for damage ratings anyone that has to dual wield in Melee also suffers. DoF Hunter’s + Claymore Weapon (81.07 + 70.93) x 0.6667=101.34 DoF X-Bow Rating = 106.67 KoS Hunter’s + Claymore Weapon (97.89 + 70.93) x 0.6667 = 112.55 KoS X-Bow Rating = 128.8 This gets worse as the expansions go on. I really would hate to Look at TSO hunters compared to your ranger Mythical as it would be laughable in comparison Also, not suggesting Hunter Quests are bad, just the weapon rewards are bad design.
The crossbow is one of the worst design decisions to make its way into this game in a long time. And that's really saying something. The rest of the hunter's items are nearly as bad. I'd personally prefer the whole hunter's quest mechanic was removed entirely, but I also get why they want it in. The adornment idea isn't perfect, but would be miles better than the current situation anyway.
REALLY? Why not? lol The "pure dps" classes (ranger/assassin, wizard/warlock) realllly, desperately need to be buffed. They're being out-parsed by summoners (and sometimes even enchanters) on long-duration, single-target fights. It's silly. I was not expecting class balance to be this neglected when I came back to the game for Varsoon. (Varsoon of all places, where it's supposed to be "back of the basics".) But even the basics are so out of whack. How did it get like this? lol
It's good that you came around to the time + availability vs. reward to the EPIC 1.0 for Rangers, but yeah.. This crowd never stops complaining about how stats aren't high enough, good enough, not worth it to get that item, this item; hence they created items specifically tailored to that crowd, that forces them to play for at least this many weeks, if they want to be "the best". One day you all may or may not come around to the fact that these TLE servers exist to scratch your nostalgia itch and to put as much on your credit cards as possible while you're scratching that itch. I would give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that Mythical tagged items did not get hit on the itemizer, and that just maybe the devs might actually itemize a whopping 24 items individually, but now I'm really talking crazy. If they intend on leaving Mythical weapons with 3 blue stats while the Hunter's have 5... yikes.
While this may be the case, this was not the focus of my post. I want to keep things targeted solely on the singular topic of the Signature weapon for Rangers being an issue. I also want to give them the benefit of the doubt that the epics, and other items, will be itemized and have their stats "corrected". We have seen this happen already as items have been changed, though not as some people may have wanted. Though as we have seen only the blue stats seems to be getting a once over, and the rating on weapons look to be left as is. I am not going to talk about global itemization here as the focus is solely on the Ranger's Signature weapon in this post. My goal here is to get ahead of the coming expansions and point a light on this issue and hopefully the devs will look at the rating along with the blue stats on this, and maybe other, signature weapons. If we can have a good constructive respectful discussion on this topic and something comes of it, then I will call that a small win.
The problem with limiting the discussion strictly to Ranger Signature weapon options, if something does get adjusted that leaves any other class who is effected by hunter's weapons out in the cold. Hunter weapons cause an issue for Global itemization and even effect class balance.
There is 0 chance the Ranger Mythical is adjusted and the other weapons are untouched. They will do all of them or none of them. Most likely they will change all of them, but the problem won't be fixed.
You both misunderstand, I am not saying that only the Ranger items should or need to be adjusted. I am saying this post specifically is a discussion on the Ranger items. Specifically that the Crossbow is invalidating our signature weapon were as other classes do not have this issue at all and this is unfair to the class. It is not a discussion on how Hunter items perform vs other weapons in a general sense. All other classes' signature weapons are BiS but the Ranger's signature weapon is not and will never be if this trend continues. If the rating on the crossbow was lowered, that would solve the issue. If the rating on the Signature bow option was raised that would solve the issue. This post is NOT about the dps of these hunter weapons, about the dps of other weapons in relation to the hunter weapons directly, it is not about our views on the hunter quest items in general. It is ONLY about how the Ranger class signature weapon will never ever be BiS vs the crossbow for the entire life of the TLE. This is unfair for the class. If the devs review all the weapons and hunter items and make changes across the board, that is fine. I have no issues with that at all. If they only modify the rating on the crossbow down, I am fine with that, if they only modify the rating on the signature bow options up I am fine with that. As long as the solution make the signature weapons BiS for the Ranger class I believe they were intended, then this is a win. This post was meant to be hyper focused on this one issue. If it was just to discuss the Hunter weapons in general I would have just posted on the several other posts on that topic.
I'm not really seeing how the xbow beats out the ranger myth. You can still wear two other hunters items like the shoulders/neck/offhand. Plus you get the black adorn (see below). Also mobs get all tuned up to +8 levels and stuff like ranged on focus aim actually helps your hit rates significantly. There is also no difference between the myth's auto attack for the primary versions and a hunters weapon. I tested for a couple weeks in shard of hate comparing my mythical on a berserker to the hunter's hammer and it was exactly the same. And exactly the same as lifespike, despite having a different rating. So I threw the hammer in the trash and went neck/xbow. If you don't believe me feel free to log onto a toon on kaladim with a 80 fabled weapon, myth and a hunters and do a /weaponstats. I know this isn't a direct test of xbow vs ranger myth but here is a test of hunters vs another weapon for "rating" comparison. Hammer vs Lifespike: Negligible difference and really RNG depending on how spreads go and if you get lucky with flurries (see special attacks report). Math wise 124 is 6% higher than 117. Subtracting the extra flurries the primary got would mean the hammer did 5,528 which is 1% higher than the lifespike. As far as every other tier, the pris 2 bow and the claymore bow were added on fallen gate by fyreflyte as a little bonus reward since we didn't have hunters then, and it was nice to be able to wear better melee weapons than the claymores and still get the debuff attached. This is also the first TLE that the Aim skill was actually rolled into "combat skills" before you just had melee skills and magical skills on gear, and no field point crafted bolts. Our crossbow hit rates were maybe 30%.
That's all well and good but if you didn't run numbers on the xbow then I don't care. The point I want to make here is that I WANT TO USE MY SIGNATURE WEAPON, NOT A CROSSBOW. I DO NOT want to take a melee signature weapon. I am a Ranger. I WANT to use my signature weapon. I am not able to do so because the crossbow is always better. The stats on the off hand hunter aren't as good as other weapons I can use as stat sticks. The only reason I would take the off hand is if I were not using the Crossbow. The charm has far better stats. I want to have the same choice as any other class, to use my signature weapon in my primary weapon slot without having to significantly impact my DPS. Every other class enjoys this except the Ranger.
I ran the numbers on the xbow because you asked. This is the TSO xbow, and as you can see; it doesn't outparse melee auto attack. So in short, rangers will still use the mythical in ROK. I personally would also wear the necklace/offhand in KOS, and wear my qeynos bow until the mayong crit bow. The charm has never outweighed the power of the reuse on the offhand. Ever. /Thread.
So, where's the rest of the parses? What is this parse shown of exactly? What weapons and stats, what gear do you have, and this is from Live? How many runs did you do? I would assume you made at least a few dozen parses from each weapon set and aevraged them. Were all stats equal in both tests, or as near as possible? A single parse on live from several expansions in the future does not tell the story of current TLE. When I parsed the Godking bow against the SL Crossbow it was completely destroyed by it in the 2 dozen parses on each weapon set I did. I went back and did the parses again after getting the DoF crossbow/offhand set. I parsed against the charm as well, though in DoF there wasn't any good off hands with decent stats so it didn't parse well. In KoS there are some weapon choices so the charm is better than the off hand from DoF. Come back with some data from the TLE with current weapon sets and gear and post all stats and run 2 dozen parses on each weapon set and then we can discuss. As soon as I get the Claymore update for the final quest I'll be happy to come back and post all my parses.
