Reposted from another site but felt it needed to be here as well so the right people could see it. Well the beginning of the solution is approximately as follows: -Remove the hidden penalty to auto bow damage that Aeralik implemented when he "fixed" arrow mechanics back in RoK. -Remove the inherent penalty to proc rates off bow shots. -Do away with the ancient rule that melee weapons can't proc off bow and vice versa. The distinction between a weapon proc as an enchantment on the weapon (but only in the case of fighters and scouts) and an armor/shield/jewelry proc or mage/priest weapon proc as an enchantment on the character was always arbitrary and contradictory. Furthermore, the obvious purpose of the rule at the time it was implemented was to reign in ranger dps and limit the number of procs scouts (especially rangers) could get at a time when ranger dps was high and procs limited in their availability. Now, however, one can get a proc in every item slot. The old rule thus only serves to penalize rangers relative to other scouts, who have a wider selection of weapon procs to choose from, and scouts in general relative to mages, who can get procs in all three slots that trigger off their spells. A proc on a primary hand weapon or bow should trigger both off primary hand swings and bow shots. A proc on an off-hand item should trigger either off off-hand swings and bow shots or off primary hand swings and bow shots (despite the fact that the proc is on the off-hand weapon), and obviously only the former of those two rules can be used in the case of a non-weapon off-hand. To be clear, each proc, regardless of what item it's on, should trigger off one melee weapon and off bow, but never off both melee weapons, as this would double the number of procs dual wielders would get; dual wielders would essentially have two chances to trigger procs for each cycle of their auto attack timer if we allowed procs to trigger off both melee weapons. -Make flurry and hurricane buffs work off bow. Obviously these mechanics as they apply to bows would need to be balanced to account for the fact that a bow is greater than a primary hand weapon (as flurry and hurricane don't work on off hand). There is no cognizable legitimate reason that rangers should be the one scout class completely excluded from these bonuses when clearly they can be properly tuned for bow use. -Bring TSO and SF ranger AA's in line with assassin AA's from those expansions. -Ranger CA's are still inherently vastly inferior to assassin CA's. -The ranger epic should remove the minimum range from bow CA's, as it originally did. This change will make it easier for rangers to dps mobs with large hit boxes. -Spells and CA's for a long time have only checked for the caster being within the spell's max range at the start of the cast. We need to apply the same mechanic to stealth, position, and minimum range checks, as having CA's disrupted by checks at the end of the cast is extremely frustrating. -The devs have gradually eroded the number of bow CA's that can be cast on the run, and at this point almost none fit this category. There need to be more bow CA's that are castable while moving. In particular, any bow shot that requires stealth should be castable while moving, as getting knocked while casting a stealth bow shot and then immediately popping out of stealth (by virtue of either damage from the AE or auto bow firing) is extremely frustrating. -From the revamp of Stream of Arrows and the introduction of the new ranger SF end ability, it appears that the devs may want to make rangers the "AE predator." If that's the direction they want to go, I'm fine with it, but they need to do a hell of a lot more if anyone is to expect rangers to compete with warlocks on AE content (the comparison to warlocks being the obviously relevant one if we go that route). Rangers would need access to high values of hurricane (that works off bow), more AE damage procs, and harder hitting AE's with shorter recasts. Taking this direction of course would not obviate the need to bring ranger single target dps way up out of the abyss, as warlocks currently do extremely well on single target, as well. -Scouts in general can't stay to dps raid mobs without great risk (or certainty) of dying to AE's. Either scouts need some kind of inherent AE damage reduction or avoidance (not through new AA's or gear and not some temporary buff that only covers one round of AE's every 3 minutes or whatever) or we need to completely do away with range-based AE's and make them solely position-based (in front of vs. behind the mob). -Somehow, the devs need to address the issue of potency affecting only a fraction of scout dps, but nearly all of mage dps. Scouts have been capped on all auto attack mods except flurry and hurricane for a long time, and those mods are exceedingly rare. As such, the emergence of potency as a common buff on items has vastly favored mages over scouts, with scouts getting really nothing to counter this advantage. -Brawler mobs that severely penalize melee hit rates are a problem. I haven't seen any so far in SF, but I'm by no means convinced I won't see them again. The devs either need to eliminate brawler mobs or implement other mobs that similarly severely penalize mage dps. Obviously I have listed a lot of changes here and some people may immediately have the emotional, knee-jerk reaction of something like "omg, doing all that would be ridiculous and would make rangers overpowered," thus prompting such people to make posts. The essential problem with that argument, even if framed properly, is that it has no basis in observable reality. The reality right now is that rangers simply do not show up on the map in discussions of top-end dps (http://www.eq2flames.com/combat-dis....ve-t1-dps.html). There isn't even a close question. Rangers are a joke. As such, timid half-measures would be woefully insufficient to address the problem. The devs need to comprehensively address all of the problems that make rangers just terrible right now, whether those problems have arisen from pure prejudice against the class, fear of it being overpowered, or mere negligence. The devs' historical habit of just doing "little tweaks" frankly won't cut it.
should cite your source for that a bit more clearly conisdering they're not your words, otherwise good post
Unfortunately 'List O'Problems' don't help the devs much. If it has to be list it should be prioritized. Secondly they may have intentions they won't/don't want to spell out so its usually best to request what you want as a end result instead of trying to play arm-chair developer. Believe that one thing rangers want would be: More DPS please. At the very least where summoners and rogues can't beat us/get extremely close on the ZW or more vaguely can't beat us 'regularly'. And I emphasize AT THE VERY LEAST. Ideally, a top performing ranger ultimately matching a top performing assassin. I'm not getting decimated on the parse just yet, but its been clear for years frankly when it comes to raids at least we 'take' more than we 'bring'. And it should be balanced when looking at raids, seeing that we can 'hold our own' in groups or soloing and thinking that's good enough is BS.
Very nice sum-up. And I'm not sure prioritizing is really important with that. Firstly, as you said, we're not 'armchair developers'. It's not our job to prioritize what the devs need to do first, and if I were a dev I'd find that rather annoying anyway. Besides, that entire post can basically be summed up as 'DPS please'. In my current raids (when I'm able to go, sadly I'm pretty much first class dropped when it's necessary to pad out the raid with more healers, etc), warlock reigns king on DPS fights (as he should), and the swashy just devastates everyone. Most of the time not even the assassin can touch him, which is just bizarrely out of whack, even if the swashy has had more SF gear upgrades. In zonewides I'm pretty firmly third or fourth spot. If I've got a good group, I can sometimes beat out the assassin. The trouble is, even if I'm in second, I'm still 5-6k or more behind the swashy. When it comes down to the line, being able to do 'decent' DPS is not enough for rangers, because loads of classes can do 'decent' DPS, and then they can do other great things that help the raid. Result: ranger is first dropped when you're going up against a harder encounter, and there's often not room for a ranger in the first place, because you need to pad the raid with bards, enchanters, and healers, and rangers absolutely do not pull their own weight, even on a good night. DPS slots are pretty premium as it is, what with how many utility classes you need to bring, so bringing a substandard DPS in that slot? It's a good way not to win your fight. Mind, this is before flurry and AE auto attack mods start coming heavily into play. It's only going to get worse without adjustments.
Accuracy is extremely useful on certain fights. Most evident in PerahCelsis Abominable Laboratory. I guess these are the 'brawler' mobs that are mentioned? Using Focus Aim up front for opening volley and just in general using it as much as possible on these mobs gave me a huge boost in DPS. It didn't even out the DPS and mages still had the upper hand but it helped a lot, and right now I have zero points in upping the accuracy on Natures Focus. Could make Nature's Focus raid wide with one of those red adornments, but that does seem kind of OP'd just because we are supposed to be high end DPS and wouldn't be the norm to have a raid wide buff like that. But then again I see hate transfers that help the tank keep aggro and thus the rest of the raid alive as a kind of 'raid wide' buff. Helps the whole raid immensely by buffing a single person. Maybe make the 'raid wide' portion some what reduced compared to the group version, only 50% or something. Not opposed to becoming Ae preds, but I have grown some what attatched to having such consistent DPS as well. Just needs to be upped. To sum up, we need more DPS, and I would like to see any desirability problems also fixed by giving us more DPS output.
Heyas folks! I have still not played since SF release, are any of you changing your techiques? I assume trying to trigger ranged autoattack in between CA's is out of favor? I would assume that since the 20% is no longer distance sensitive and melee autoattack out dps's ranged autotattack that you: Start by getting on top of the mob and debuff/melee ca and melee aa. (Melee Autoattack triggered by melee ca's) Trigger FA and cancel (still get to keep the NB accuracy buff and shorten the recast) while moving to ranged CA and Autoattack (Ranged autoattack triggered by ranged ca). Use Rear Shot last while getting back on top of the mob to rinse and repeat? Still not seeing any postings that show a ranger on top DPS wise, top parses I am seeing posted are still the same three plus now swashies. Are we now actually #4 or less in potential DPS? I think if I were playing I would use helpful winds as it makes sense to cancel FA and lose the 8.3 percent accuracy in favor of a quicker recast to get NB back up.
There is a lot of good information in that post, but that's to be expected coming from Azeyla (of Strike). I personally disagree with a few points but it's mostly with the assertion we need "all of these to be competitive". But that's to be expected, I doubt any of us agree 100% on the issues/needed fixes. That said, this is what we "know" from the last few months of dev posts (all items paraphrased by me): During TSF Beta: Domino posted during the concerns over master crafted arrows and that gear/items should not be used to address class balance problems. Consequently she changed the "master crafted off rare wood arrows" to "master crafted off raid drops arrows". The intent being to make it clear these were sometimes/special arrows and were not intended to bridge the gab tween Ranger and Assassin DPS. Rothgar had part of his first pass at the "default auto attack" method in place in Beta but pulled since he did not like the interface and said that while he still wanted to do it was going to be a while before he could get to it. During the uproar over Flurry and AE Auto Attack adornments, Rothgar stated that he talked to Xelgad about the need for finding a Ranger solution for these "stats'. No time frame was given, but Xelgad supposedly had some ideas. Post TSF Beta: During the "discussions" over 0 range not being included in the Mythical buff given from the Epic Repercussions quest Fyreflyte stated that 0 range was basically a work around to a problem at the time (ridiculous hit boxes on raid mobs) and that he would rather address the problem rather than perptuate a work around. He was very clear that there would be no NEW 0 range bows. In the same post Fyreflyte stated that Rangers should be ranged and they had plans to make changes to the class to encourage rangers to be "ranged". He did clarify that this was not to be accomplished by decreasing our melee abilities. These changes were stated to be on hold while the developers get a better feel for class balance post expansion. So at this point we know the devs are trying to make sure that effects are more universally, they don't want to fix balance problems with gear (which I think is a good thing) and want to stop situations where that was previously done (though are not going to change Eagle's Talon, and that they are forming a view of what our "DPS Rationale" should be along with the changes needed to get us there. As usual we don't know the timeframe or exact changes but I think that's to be expected as they are still dealing with a lot of expansion fallout. Even if they have the plans ready they may not want to try to share them if they are busy dealing with fires. So all of that said, my assumption is that we're going to be the "ranged scout class" and will do more damage further out than in. In other words for us to do max dps we're going to need to be x meters out. Hopefully this would translate to only having to run in for our really big melee hits (Bloody Reminder and Ranger's Blade) but if that's going to be the case we're going to need either more ranged arts or adjustments made to our recasts so we don't run out of arts while standing back. I suppose there's another option but that would involve extending the ranges of all our melee CAs by 5+ meters, but at that point are they really melee anymore? As for target type damage, we don't really know for sure if they want us to be ST or AE, but I wouldn't be surprised if they left us primarily ST with a set of long reuse burst AE. I'm not really trying to advocate one way or the other with this post. I think we're at a point where we need to see the plans before we can add much more to the discussion (we're just rehashing what we think now). But I thought we needed not only a recap our concerns but a recap of what we've been told to keep things in context.
Nevao wrote: If this is the direction they wanna go in, Im ok with that, but for this to be a viable solution they'd need to come up with a permanent solution to the hit box size issue. They have made progress since RoK with this, and I personally believe that it's not nearly as bad as some would have you believe, but if the class is going to move in a direction where fights with botched hit boxes are going to drag your dps down even more, they'd better have a situation locked down beforehand.
It's not just the hitboxes of mobs that worry me when that 'make rangers more ranged' comment comes up, it's also certain fight mechanics. Remember, Trakanon's hitbox was giganormous, but that wasn't actually the issue: the issue was his fight mechanics necessitated standing inside of his hitbox, or die. I am not confident that the devs that design encounters would remember to keep one single class in mind when trying to come up with new ways to make raid encounters challenging, especially when the itemization dev seems to think minimum range is only a minor inconvenience. Striikor, I'm not sure what you're asking, exactly. Are you asking whether or not we're trying to go full melee auto attack and only bounce out for our ranged CAs? I don't know if any other ranger has tried this; I do know I'm not going to. If I end up having to do that simply to try and keep up with other DPS classes, something which negates all the bonuses of our mythical buff AND our newly changed makeshift arrows buff, then I'm going to betray to assassin, because at that point I would be doing the same general thing in a far, far, far, far less irritating, less expensive fashion, and I'd be doing more DPS with it too. As to the question of whether we're really about fourth on the parse...yes, pretty much. We can drop lower if we have a bad group or there are more sorcerers in the raid. Right now when I'm able to get a slot, the parse reads like this: Warlock, swashy, assassin, me. If we have a wizard along, he and the warlock may get close, and sometimes the swashy trades off with the warlock, and sometimes the assassin with the swashy (though poor assassins, not often). Once in a blue moon I will catch or sometimes overtake the assassin, but this is rare. I don't generally come anywhere near the swashy or the sorcerers. We're talking 5k difference or more. I'm doing better than I was in TSO, but by 'better' I mean that I'm pulling the kinds of parses that the swashy and assassin were pulling in TSO. I'm effectively one tier behind, DPS-wise. Sometimes my parses surprise me in a good way, but it's not enough to justify giving me a slot on difficult encounters if there is someone with more DPS or more utility around to bring instead.
I will be naive for a second, so basically on raids where the slots are what 24 people? i know we bring very little utility to the events, but if we are there we extend the fight another what 15 to 30 seconds? I really do not understand this stuff, I play the game to enjoy it and I have been in raiding guilds till eq 2 and will be looking to get raiding done in EQ2 once my wifes Templar and I get to 90. There are many questions I have but to me a Ranger never really meant "Ranged Combat" we should be able to choose if we do Ranged or Melee, or my personal preference is Blended (like my Vanguard Ranger). Give a descent Hurt from afar then finish it off up close and right now it is like that, and i am enjoying it ... Forgive my confusion on things, but I really do not comprehend all the math and issues. Best regards,
kartikeya wrote: Thanks for the reply. On release day I tried to justify buying SF and continuing to play. I worked the dummy for a couple of hours and different strats and got the best result continuously jousting. Of course I have very good fabled dual wield weapons. I then tried actual mobs for 5 or 6 hours soloing and still got the best result starting right on the mob ending with lunging and backing out to fire off ranged AA's. I stopped specifying ranged entirely just let the CA determine the autoattack method (with melee ca's I made sure I was right on top of them mob). It seems to me that this would be even more exaggerated in a group or raid with a tank holding aggro. As a result my melee AA outparsed my Ranged AA. I show 500 to 750 increase in ExtDPS by jousting and getting rid of my /autoattack 2 macro's. The trick for me was getting right on top of the mob so my melee autoattack was always in range on the melee joust, I tend to automatically stop at the sweet spot and was not getting in melee autoattack range. The difference would surely be greater with some flurry and adorns on melee weapons. I agree with you it is like playing a crippled assassin, which is why I am not currently playing
Artorus@Everfrost wrote: No problem at all, I'll explain. Basically on a raid you've got four main factors you need to build your raidforce for: First, you need a tank. Usually you need more than one, with current raid mechanics, so let's say at least one more tank, preferably three total for some fights, and some are best with four. Second you need healers. You need LOTS of healers. If you're trying out new, hard stuff, two per group is pretty ideal, so get those in. Third, you need utility classes. These guys make everyone else perform better. Most classes have some form of utility, but when I say utility classes here, I'm pretty much referring to bards and enchanters. You want lots of these. One in each group, maybe one of each in each group if you can somehow find that many. Fourth, you want DPS. This is where an awful lot of trouble comes in, because loads and loads of classes get relegated to mostly DPS roles, and by this point you are seriously running out of available slots. Rangers are DPS, and the problem here is that rangers are incapable of keeping up with the DPS of other classes who are also DPS, and additionally, tend to bring at least a little more utility to the raid as well. Rangers, having nothing but DPS to offer, and not being able to even keep up with classes in the DPS department who also bring more utility, get left in the cold an awful lot if there's another DPS class available to bring. There just isn't enough room to justify bringing rangers in many, many, many cases, because we're substandard at our one single role. Now, from a small group and solo standpoint, that probably sounds like an awful lot of min/maxing. However, when it comes to raids, you MUST min/max in order to win current tier encounters. Older encounters, like a lot of the TSO stuff now, are now lower level and so you can afford to be more flexible in who you bring along. In a raid, a few extra seconds can actually mean the difference between winning and losing the fight, especially if the fight has a DPS check (which means do this amount of damage this quickly or fail/stand a very large chance of failing). This is why rangers are so up in arms right now. For soloing we're pretty good. Not the best, but certainly up there when it comes to pure solo content. In small groups or groups not attempting extremely difficult content, we're also just fine because things die so fast anyway that it really doesn't matter if it took one or two seconds longer with a ranger than with an assassin, unless you're being particularly obssessive. In raids, however, it makes all the difference. It's extremely frustrating to want to go on a raid, to have your raid want you to go on the raid, and yet to not be able to go because the reality is that there's just no justifying a slot for a ranger when you can bring someone more effective along. Hope I was able to make some sense out of all this stuff for you.
Thank you, it makes sense. I am surprised there is that much AoE flying around to almost require 2 healers per group. The combat system is still awkward for me though. I am learning.
Striikor@Nektulos wrote: I think you nailed it Striik, which is to be expected. I've been working on a jousting routine myself since launch, and have been implementing it in raid/group with decent success. It has stopped working so well on the dummy as these days it usually dies long before I can complete the entire "envisioned" routine, so something's right. I've actually managed to boggle a few folks lately with my DPS, topping parses and such. What? A ranger? yah, but I think it has more to do with me being quick on the ball to adjust for max DPS compared to the other T1 classes , who are still coasting from TSO success. They'll put me back in my spot soon enough. I don't really mind the jousting in and out, makes it fun and engaging. I think that's why I never managed to bring up my wizzy. Gets boring just standing in one spot and clicking nukes, but thats me.
