State of the Ranger as of 6/05/10 - Section 2 Proposed Solutions - Section 3 Wish List

****Section 1 Contains General Complaints and Issues and can be found in the other thread****
Section 2: Suggested Solutions to Correct Issues
The following suggestions regarding corrections to our class are designed based upon an overall increase in dps for multiple functions of a ranger. Certain suggestions can be dropped in favor of larger increases in other sections than what I have suggested below. The majority of all suggestions below is based upon current in-game mechanics and should require little coding changes to resolve in my opinion.
1. Inferior Raid DPS Capability. All ranger combat arts should receive a 15% increase in damage across the board. There is currently a 25% to 35% dps gap between rangers and other T1 dps classes.

2. Lack of Raid/Group Utility. The Focused Attacks AA under the ranger Shadows tree should be converted to have a component that turns Focus Aim into a raid wide buff. The Focus Aim base spell should also have a bonus to dps casting classes added such as +Disruption, etc., so that we can be of some buffing benefit when grouping/raiding with mages. There are already abilities that allow conversions to raid wide buffs such as Chime of Blades for reference.

3. Discriminatory Combat Mechanics. There is no reason rangers shouldn’t be able to Flurry. Period. The code for double attack is already there. Just add flurry. As far as AE Auto attack is concerned, since AE attacks are initiated from the player, having them proc from a ranger who is possibly 40+ meters away would not work. I propose that our Shadows end line ability Explosive Arrow be converted into a buff that mimics Quick Shot on our offensive stance. The ability would proc the Explosive Arrow attack which would land and initiate the AE based off the mobs position. I would suggest an initial 25% proc rate to test with.

4. Excessive Reuse Timers on Ranged Combat Arts. I suggest that all ranged combat arts with a reuse greater than 45 seconds have their base reuse time reduced by 25%. Sniper Shot should be excluded from this.

5. Dual Wielding Out Parses Ranged. T9 raid bows need to have their damage increased by a minimum of 16%. There is no valid argument against this.

6. AA Discrimination. I would prefer that Opening Volley be renamed to Finishing Volley and have the same stats as Killing Fury. If this isn’t allowed, then extend Opening Volley by 10% at the beginning and raise the damage amount on it to 20% to offset the fact that the mob isn’t de-buffed fully at start. Also, since initial aggro is a factor, add a de-aggro proc to the ability to counter the crit bonus listed on Killing Fury.

7. Inferior Combat Arts and Excessive Cast Times. Sniper Shot needs to have additional 15% increases in both its base minimum and maximum on top of the increase proposed in Suggestion 1. This combat art is actually that far below Assassinate. All ranged combat arts with cast times greater than 1 second need to have their cast times reduced by 25% while all combat arts with cast times greater than 2 seconds need to have their cast times reduced by 40%.

8. Mythical Nerf by removing 0 Range. We have been told there is absolutely no chance of 0 meter bows being added back into the game. If this is going to be the hard line stance, then why not allow us to convert one of our AA abilities into a buff that reduces our required bow range to 0 meters. This would give the ranger class a completely unique ability. My personal suggestion is to add the additional component to Extension on the ranger AA tree and rename the ability to Superior Archery. If the developers intention is to completely remove any ability to use bows at point blank range, then reverse the process and add a buff to Extension that increases our melee combat art range by 25 meters. The Collected Memories of a Champion charm off of Miragul already does something similar to this but only effects auto-attacks. If you ask the majority of rangers, I am sure you will find out that we do NOT want to have stay at 4 meters but you don’t give us a choice because of our dependence on melee combat arts to sustain our dps while ranged combat arts recycle.

9. Extra Costs Only Incurred by Rangers. There is a lot of contention that if rangers are no longer required to buy arrows, then the woodworker class will be devastated. Our question is why should a tradeskill profession have to depend on a single class in game to support it? Many of us rangers have already leveled woodworkers or have access to guild members who make our arrows for free. Unless we are lazy or pressed for time, we completely bypass the broker and market for our supply. I propose that you change the current arrow recipes to mimic the Spirit Blessed Arrows so that 500 arrows are produced on a single combine instead of 100. Raise the fuel costs to three ethereal sandpapers for the titanium versions. Woodworkers can still make some money off of the arrows; however neither they nor we are required to spend ridiculous amounts of time grinding out single stacks of arrows to support a single class.

10. Hawk Attack is Useless. Change the Hawk Attack buff to a group buff that lowers non-fighters in group by 1 hate position every tick. Something along the lines of…Your Hawk screams at mob distracting it from attacking your group. This gives the mage group that we are in a chance to dps more and also gives us a way to save our group in mem-wipe and over-aggro situations. AE immunity or more hit points on the bird would be nice if possible.

Section 3: Personal Requests and Wish Lists

1. Remove the stealth requirement from Natural Selection.
2. Add a newer tier of Stupefying poisons.
3. Remove the crushing/piercing/slashing designations on arrows and just list them as ranged. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion for new rangers on which category of arrows are best to use. They do not understand that all arrows use the ranged skill and the only important stats are the Hit Bonus and Damage rating number.

To all those that are saying you don't want utility, just up the DPS: There's absolutely no reason why we can't have our cake and eat it too. In the case of Rangers, we unfairly bring absolutely nothing to the table - compared directly to other high DPS classes, high DPS and utility are completely divorced from eachother and seem to have no bearing on anything.
As far as utility actually goes, though, we don't need anything big. In fact, we just need something that might cause a raid leader to say, "Hm. 'x' ability would make it a good idea to put the Ranger in the MT group, too!" Or anything that would cause us to be in the same group as a dirge and a coercer, really. As it stands, we don't do anything substantial to benefit the raid, leading to many rangers being shunted into weird and less than ideal raid positions, further gimping their DPS.
We need, at the very least, a reason to be placed in the groups that would provide us the best buffs.

My Wish List (outside of the above):

• Change the Extension AA to give us a +5 meters to our non-ranged combat arts instead of the increase to our ranged arts (which really isn't needed). That way we have a larger window (2 to 10/15) to move in and out of for positioning. (upon reading back through your post I think we're on the same page, it's just a matter of how much is added).
• Revist our AA trees. Things like 8% double attack are just not as useuful as they once were. We need a general review of the AA and tweak to make them more meaniful in the current scheme/balance of gear.

I'm sure I'll think of more later but I'm about to fall over tired...

I don't think a flat percentage increase across the board is going to do that much. I really think that each combat art needs to be looked at and increased depending on the present damage.
We have to many combat arts that are like 2-4k and an increase of 15% would be next to nothing.

I would like to see:
1. Access to Ae Auto and flurry
2. Reduced reuse on ranged AE CA's. Instead of having to blow them all at once on one AE fight to hope to keep up, then have to wait 40 seconds and more to reuse any of them. Need the reuse reduced so we can use them repeatedly in shorter fights. Their current state makes it impossible for rangers to keep even what would be high DPS for rangers on back to back AE fights. This is part of number 3.
3. Ability to be 'pure ranged' doing top end DPS. CA damage shifted away from our melee CA's OR Increased range on them OR even a way to convert them to 'ranged' CA that takes advantage of things like ranged mastery in the TSO tree. Their current state prevents any hope of rangers being able to function fully at pure range due to their high percentage of our DPS and short range. Ranged CA's would also need a general reduction in reuse time and possibly a increase in damage if reduction in reuse didn't give us enough of a DPS boost.
4. Utility/Natures Focus. Utility can be tricky. We can't have too much since we aren't a utility class and want to be a top end DPS class, but we also want it to be on par with our other DPS classes. I think Natures Focus should have some effects added to help out casters. Ideally I would like to see made more of a passive buff as well, made its own ability or attached to Hunters Instinct. Here make it a group buff that has a chance to proc Natures Focus for a short time. AA's that increase its duration can be shifted to increase the time it stays up once proc'd and possibly increase proc chance.
5. Utility/Hawk Attack. With hawk attack I would like to see a percentage of the hate it siphons actually sent to fighters in the group. And when/if killed rather than positional deaggro just the ranger 3 spots, maybe do other non fighters down one spot and fighter up one spot. If not this just something In general something to make the aggro management of Hawk Attack more proactive and aggressive.
When it comes to utility, being useful is just part of it. It needs to be useful AS WELL AS recognized by other classes other than the ranger themselves. Being we aren't a utility class it would have to be something almost purely wanted and not needed. It needs to be easily recognizable and possibly even trackable on something like ACT. The perception of gaining an advantage through a buff can be as important if not more important than an actual advantage when it comes down to desirability for utility.
So even if your unwilling to change what utility we have it would at the very least need to changed so its more obvious people are getting these effects from our utility. Rule I would go by is if its done In combat that it shows up on ACT or had an obvious post effect like some buffs having an immunity or game generated message. Both show that people have been giving an advantage. If its active out of combat it needs to be a sustained buff, have an obvious icon and give an obvious increase in stats where shown. Only way people can clearly tell rangers are giving utility right now is if we macro'd yelling about it in group chat.
Utility TL;DR. Make what ever utility we end up with more obvious that we are buffing people to their advantage, its not noticable enough right now.

I knew I was forgetting something last night:

• Unless all our CA's get moved to ranged then we need some method to prevent Auto Attack switching back to Melee if we use a melee art. Either some form of "Default" auto attack setting or an option that would prevent auto-attack from switching types unless the other form of auto attack was manually initiated.

A solution to my post in the other thread (melee and bow procs) is to give rangers an AA that will allow melee weapons to proc on our bow attack at a lesser damage or rate (or both if needed). This will encourage rangers to stay with ranged auto attacks and not make ranged auto attack the better choice for other scouts or any fighter. This could replace something like the hawk attack AA or one of our Shadow tree AAs.

Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:

I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't mind a new buff like: Lowers effective worn mitigation of armor, turns melee CAs into ranged CAs with higher damage, and decreases the base reuse of other ranged CAs.
It might at least "encourage" rangers to stay ranged like casters as the devs have stated they want, while shutting up all those people who inevitably come along and say that chain armor + ranged is a justifiable reason for having crappy damage.

Well considering most raids and groups (any good one) are setup so mages can live too, us wearing chain has little to no advantage in a group or raid other than making the healer work slightly less. Really only comes into play with soloing, PvP and unorthodox group setups.

I would be more than willing to have some mitigation decrease if we could stay pure ranged and do top DPS. Of course we already take a defense hit in offensive stance 'Archer's Fury' Keyword: Archer's, not "Melee and Ranged Hybrid's Fury"

End result I want, is to be able to do comparable top DPS of other top DPS classes, do it purely with ranged CA's/our bow, and have utility people can notice and want as much as the other top DPS classes. If you don't like any ideas to do this we have suggested, fine. Just make sure what ever you do equals out to this.

Along with everything else I really think more of our CAs should be castable on the move. If we are scouts, then lets us act like scouts, if we are supposed to be mages and have to stand still to do all our stuff, then it all needs to be able to be done at 0 range.

Yep, ranged CA's are pretty much the worst attacks in the game right now. We can't move while using them, we can't be close while using them (unique to ranged CA's), and we can't even use them on their own due to reuse and damage problems so we have to mix in melee CA's to make up for it. So they can shoot really far, arguably useful in PvP and soloing, utterly useless in group and raid play.

I've been a ranger since 11/14/04. Been through a lot of nerf bats, but like the archetype.
Finally gave up raiding with ranger's after claymore because, inarguably, rangers are worthless raiding, and are the VERY last class to be invited to instance PUG's due to their worthlessness in groups.
18 months ago rolled a ranger on Nagafen- If ya wanna have some fun Rangering, go hunt solo. We are hard to beat if we get the jump on ya.
And we rule x2 BG's

Simple quick changes. I detailed in your other post. But:

• Have hawk transfer hate from non fighters in the group to the fighters and make it AoE exempt.
• Since zero range seems to be out of the question add a 5 meter melee extension to Eagle's Talon buff
• Change Focus aim and split it up, make Nature's Bonus a permanent part of Hunter's Instinct with the same duration, until cancelled. And change the duration Focus Aim to be 30seconds with the same recast.
• Reintroduce procs to ranged melee

No new mechanic, no waiting for them to go through all the ca's. All of these exist in the game now either through items or or our own buffs. It is really nothing new or IMO, difficult.

Personally I would like to see them allow us to throw the bulk of our ca's on the move. With the changes that have happened in SF and BG this should not be a big deal anymore.

1.) Utility : As Neiloch pointed out utility needs to be needed and recognised in raids and such.
Im not an advocate of telling devs to nerf other classes so dont get it wrong what i say next. Devs gave a big utility chance away when they gave summoner accuracy/striketrough group buffs.
Lore-wise it makes no sense to give mages who uses pets to do their biddings to give accurancy, rnager are known to be the most accurate class in everquest 2.
But that tells alot of how much thoughts devs actually put into the ranger class.
The only usefull utility, which i pointed out in beta, would be if rangers could debuff dmg shilds. But rogues would run crazy and devs would never gave us such utility.

This whole focus aim thing becomes anyway useless when i see the loot in the hole which has accuracy + dirges summoner buffs.
Hawk should be a pet flyign over the group, not attacking, and having a 30% chance by hit to lower then hate position by1 .

2.) DPS : Everything thats mentioned here has been said atleast since ROK beta when Top ranger like safana pointed out the discrepancy in the cas between preds and the their resulting dps gap.
This is just running in circles.. Im pretty sure soon we will have " We are looking into it" Devs statement like all the other years.

At this point, I'm tempted to go to Fanfaire just to be that annoying guy who only asks class balance questions.

I just want the ability to chose to be a top melee/ranged dps or a top ranged dps class. Not be forced to do both melee and ranged dps.

If I wanted to melee, I would have chosen any of the other melee classes.

I'd just like the ability to top parses consistantly, as things are now, that doesnt happen too often anymore. I really don't care where I'm standing when I do it.

And if you wanted to range, perhaps you should look into the finger wagglers. Wizards can stand so far back a healer has trouble healing them and a melee person at the same time. Not sure how ranger could be anything other than a combo melee/range class.

Fyreflyte wrote:

Fyreflyte wrote:

It seems the team disagrees, Hoss. Reasons why rangers won't be getting anymore 0 range bows, from the 0m Range thread. There are many other posts stating the same thing, but I didn't feel like quoting them all.