Um, afaik bows have a 40% damage penalty so if they remove that and increase spreads, that'd be pretty huge.
Wow yeah I'd say so lol. So a huge damage increase, along with being able to flurry and auto AE would be huge. I mean if we got flurry and ae now it wouldn't be a big deal, but with that kind of damage increase, geez. Maybe part of their plan to ditch ammo, WoW and Rift are doing it heh. Rift also announced a Marksman soul/class. A purely bow based rogue class.
Id still like to have our ca's fixed, i dont want my auto attack doing 50% of my dmg, i like actually working for my dps!
Rangers have always been "balanced" around the hugh damage bows used to do, its the reason our CAs have always been the suck. IMO unnerfing the bow damage is the fastest and easiest way of puting us back to when we used to compete for dps. Now that said, I would rather have our CAs retuned to make the class more skill orianted than haveing auto attack do 50% of our dps. I personally think they dont want to spend the time in trying to retune our CAs. For one reason there is noone at $oE that has ANY clue on what Rangers were intended to do or how to actually fix our CAs, all the new guys see is the garbage of a class that we are now and a bunch of pissed off Rangers blowing up there boards. At this point I really dont care how they bring me inline with my counterpart like I used to be. And any fix that closes that gap is a bonus. Im pretty sick and tired of the 4yr battle or trying to get them to fix my class.
Well sounds like another step is fixing base mechanics. Getting rid of weird penalties and exemptions, BS like that. If it ends up being OP'd it will be bittersweet, more DPS like we wanted but done in the simplest most mindless way. Its just unfortunate the DPS boost is from auto attack rather than CA's for more skill oriented DPS. But like Venez said, we are well overdue for a boost and I'm not going to say no.
Greetings, Mighty Forces! AE Auto-Attack and Flurry are indeed on the way for bows. We're also removing the 20% damage penalty for bows, and we're increasing the damage rating on all 81-90 bows (along with throwing weapons) by about 10%. The intent is to allow you guys to get full benefit from buffs and gear, not to make the class entirely focused on Auto-Attack. You know how you get more auto-attack damage from your melee weapons in many cases than from your bow? These changes should fix that, unless your melee weapons are simply of much higher quality than your bow. At most, your auto-attack may jump from ~20% of your parse up to ~30% on raids, but I'd be surprised if many people end up with it higher than that. Thanks for all of your feedback.
Sorry, late response. I disagree that the level of difficulty between the two classes (which is nothing to write home about) should interfere with fixing the core mechanics problems. Or that it is a major balance concern when compared to everything else (that is, obviously, we shouldn't just be able to turn on auto attack and leave the keyboard). Assassins have more button mashing and more timing because of stealth chains, but the difference isn't that dramatic, and assassins have an easier time of doing more DPS than rangers, even if it's more difficult for them to do absolute top DPS. As someone said, unless the difference is extremely dramatic, that boils down mostly to ****** waving than anything else. Oooh, you're doing good DPS but only because you're playing ezmode class, hurrhurrhurr, look at my l33t skillz. I don't give a crap about that. Rangers have ALWAYS been screwed with when it comes to core mechanics. In DoF it made us gods, but it wasn't our combat arts or our playstyle that made us so powerful, it was ridiculously broken proc mechanics. Since DoF it has, in various ways, contributed to the class's issues, whether it's bow auto attack damage being so powerful with a good bow that the devs don't dare fix the weak CAs, arrow mechanics, missing mechanics for ranged such as flurry or AE auto attack, the list goes on and on. I would love, love for them to just get right down to it and fix combat arts tomorrow. I am very very tired of being a badly broken class. I also worry that they'll fix whatever mechanics they see as broken then say 'welp, rangers are fixed, see the big numbers with a super high end bow? Our job is done' and then continue to ignore the imbalances in the actual class as opposed to bow mechanics. However, we really need those mechanics fixed. And we need them fixed right, and first. Fun as it was to have ridiculous mechanics on our side in DoF, I have absolutely no desire to see a nerf like we got in KoS over it. And remember, our class was actually boosted a bit for KoS, we were that broken when they fixed procs. The hidden flat 30% nerf to bow damage or whatever Aeralik slapped on is ridiculous and should never, ever have been put in, especially during a mechanics fix that was supposedly meant to get rid of hidden math like that. That needs to be removed first. If for some reason we need a 30% bow damage nerf, then they need to apply that to the bows themselves, or somehow make it visible. We need flurry and AE autoattack of some sort. The only reason we don't have it is because the coding for it was apparently daunting, not any sort of balance reasons. Quite frankly, ammunition and minimum range need to go too, I don't care how ranged they make us, but I doubt that will ever get changed. Frankly, I want us roughly on par with the auto attack DPS percentages of other scouts and our combat arts boosted so that we don't go back to a T7 situation, but base mechanics need to be untangled first, otherwise any balancing done is being done over the top of mechanics that are still completely screwed up, and fixing them after may well send us spiraling down again. And sure, we need a teensy bit of utility like the other T1 classes have, but as much as, again, I'd like that, this needs to be the concern addressed last in the priority list. First lets get us actually able to compete in DPS again.
Xelgad wrote: <3 <3 <3 Please see my above concerns RE: the balance of auto attack versus combat arts. The reason this was a problem and I worry about it being a problem again is because it led to rangers either being comparable T1 DPS or bottoming out and losing raid slots solely due to their bow, and it also resulted in the devs being afraid to adjust anything about rangers lest the top parsing rangers go flying off into the DPSing stratosphere at the slightest adjustment. (The general terribleness of bow itemization at the time meant you would do fine at entry tier raid zones, start bottoming out near the end of that, become terrible at mid-tier raids, and couldn't get a bow that would allow you to compete until your raid was doing top tier content, at which point everyone else had passed you by so far that you were likely sitting during these encounters unless you were the raid leader or your raid was very very understanding.) That's a concern that comes after this though. I just hope you guys keep it in mind, but I am very very thankful to hear what you've got planned! (please let the changes come soon).
Thank you, Xelgad. It's fantastic to see you post this. Looking forward to trying the new changes when they come. And I'll no longer have to cry when a dirge actually offers me spiffy buffs because I'll no longer have to say "Well, those don't actually do anything for me." Cheers! <3
Xelgad wrote: Thanks! Bow itemization was rough until mythicals came around. Sentinels Fate let us use other bows and it was...better than bow itemization before it. The raid seal bow closed a gap but I still think it was a bit too close in damage ot the Toxx bow but /shrug. If we are leaning on bows more, 'ranger' bows need to be more common drops through progression than it has in the past. Might see it as a overkill since only one class uses them as a main weapon, but with bow procs going off combat hits and stats being more universal, other classes would use them. Same as rangers picking up certain melee weapons for stats. If we see some new bows with flurry and auto AE on them in the future I'm SURE they would be wanting to snag them up heh.
Xelgad wrote: I have to say Xelgad, classy sense of self deprecating humor there You posting in this thread is MUCH appreciated. What you are setting about to do will certainly help, so thank you. We still have to deal with the grouping logic that leaves us without buffs to compete, hopefully you are looking into that. Not to mean that I/we are looking for utility per se. But we are viewed as group 4 candidates along wiht several other classes. In my case usually a Brig and a Monk, we offer very little to each other in the way of buffs.
Gaige wrote: I would have to disagree somewhat. Achieving the sweet spot, AA timing and our longer casts are constantly interrupted so they can be as big a challenge as the concealment chain. I have both and find them close to equal, though challenges are different. My ranger has a ~200K Sniper that seems to get interrupted just after I trigger coverage. While the concealment chain is more vulnerable it produces twice the damage. I do prefer the Ranger soooo ..... maybe it is easier. But certainly between the two the Ranger has a larger fun factor.
First, thank you very much Xelgad!!!! I'm guessing these are the first of what might become a few changes (unfortunately if a dev says that he will get hounded forever) since they have plans of making us more of a ranged class than having to sit so close. This is a very good start though. Fixing the broken mechanics gives them a base line where we stand before they need to do anything else with CA's. I honestly think the best way to make us a more ranged class is to shorten the reuse on our ranged CA's that have the same damage as the melee ones so they're up fast enough that we don't have to stand close to use the melee CA's when our ranged ones are down. So, lower-medium damage CA's with long reuse timers like miracle shot and triple shot could be brought down to maybe 15 second recasts, make bloody reminder a ranged CA and maybe turn arrow rip into a ranged CA. This would leave the important melee CA's that low level rangers need to level, like immobilzing lunge and our quick attack intact and we wouldn't need to rely on them at higher levels when we want to be fully ranged because we won't run out of ranged CA's.
if I had to choose one thing with CA's it would be lower the reuse on ranged CA's. This would enact increasing ranged CA DPS simply because we can use them more often in a set amount of time, and let us be at least more ranged by not forcing us to close in to keep using attacks. The problem that could still come up here though is if even if we can stay ranged, closing in to do our better melee CA's could still result in better DPS. This is the real problem. Ranged CA's DPS have to be increased to the point where they will either match or beat a CA rotation that includes melee CA's for rangers to ever truly be 'pure ranged' in the eye's of min/max'ers. Right now with the Miragul charm I can use such highly effective attacks such as Bloody Reminder, Sneak Attack, Ranger's Blade, Immobilizing Lunge, Noxious Enfeeblement at 20 meters, which is enough for the typical jousting range (15 meters). Now if I could use those along with Emberstrike and Lightning Strike at 20 meters WITHOUT needing to have Collected Memories of the Betrayer (miragul charm) equipped, I would be willing to call that a 'purely ranged' ranger. But like I said, even if you make it where we have ranged CA's up all the time, doesn't mean it will be good enough if going into melee (5-10 meters) still gets us a higher parse. I would call a purely ranged ranger one that can do their maximum possible parse at the distance of at least 20 meters if not more.
For being "more ranged": I'd say just up the max range of our melee CAs. Then they work the same for close range for low levels, and allow a ranger to still do their max damage RANGED.
