Official Feedback Thread: Hunter Ranger changes

amenar

Sorry for the delay everyone. For more details on the how and why of the changes, please check out the dev blogs.

Feedback Desired
We’d like you all to focus on playing the class in various content and giving us feedback. There are many changes that are meant to work together as a whole, so we'd appreciate feedback after playing with the changes, more than just reactions to the patch notes themselves.
If you find a bug or have feedback, please follow the guidelines below when posting:
• Respond to this forum post.
• Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
• Format: Please use “Bold” face text for the Type & Spec then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use BLUE.
• (Bonus: Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)

Examples:
Bug: Power: Aimed Shot
This power deals zero damage.

Here are the patch notes:

• Aimed Shot: Charge time reduced by 0.25s. Damage is still the same, and AP generation is still roughly the same, resulting in an increase in DPS and APS.
  
• Aimed Shot: Charging this power is no longer interrupted by taking damage.
  
• Aimed Strike: Reapplying the DoT will no longer start the tick timer over. This will prevent clipping the DoT, ensuring the same overall DPS, instead of allowing DPS to be reduced by accidentally clipping the DoT.
  
• Ambush: Now has less of a reduction when applying bonus damage to an AoE power. It now deals half of the normal bonus, instead of a third.
  
• Ambush: Targets damaged by your Ambush now take additional damage from your Encounter powers for 5 seconds.
  
• Ambush: The Ambush effect is no longer cancelled by movement.
  
• Ambush: The bonus damage caused by this power has had its base damage increased by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% damage increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Ambush: The bonus damage caused by this power no longer groups into the same damage floater as the power that triggers it.
  
• Aspect of the Pack: Rank 4 now properly increases the range of the power, instead of decreasing it.
  
• Bear Trap: Activation time reduced to 0.67s, down from 0.75s.
  
• Bear Trap: Now causes the target to bleed for 5 seconds. The total damage of this bleed is equivalent to the initial damage. The Feat, Advanced Stalking, now increases the damage of this bleed.
  
• Bear Trap: Now slows the target for 5 seconds, in addition to the momentary stun. The Feat, Advanced Stalking, no longer provides a slow effect to this power.
  
• Bear Trap: Range reduced to 30', down from 80'.
  
• Binding Arrow: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Binding Arrow: Activation time reduced to 0.7s, down from 1s.
  
• Binding Arrow: Damage dealt to secondary targets now receive full damage bonuses from the caster. This includes critical hit damage, however, the secondary hit will not be considered a separate critical hit.
  
• Binding Arrow: Damage increased ~10%.
  
• Binding Arrow: Recharge time reduced to 18s, down from 22s.
  
• Clear the Ground: Activate time of the third strike reduced from 0.6s to 0.5s. Increased damage of second and third strikes of this combo. These changes have increased the overall DPS of the combo by ~35%.
  
• Clear The Ground: This powers activation is no longer cancelled by all other power activations.
  
• Cold Steel Hurricane: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Cold Steel Hurricane: Overall damage further increased by ~33%.
  
• Cold Steel Hurricane: Now properly reports that it has a 60' range. Previously, the UI reported 40'.
  
• Cold Steel Hurricane: This power will now dissipate if it hits 10 total targets along its path.
  
• Cold Steel Hurricane: Total activation time reduced to 1.5s, down from 2s. This allows you to move much more quickly after the power has fired.
  
• Commanding Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 9% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Commanding Shot: In addition to the base damage increase, damage further increased ~50%.
  
• Commanding Shot: Recharge time reduced to 16s, down from 18s.
  
• Commanding Shot: Reworked the debuff this power applies, and reduced its duration. Reduced the damage debuff component to 10%, down from 15%. Changed the defense component from lowering their defenses by 15% to increasing the damage they take by 10%. This changes where in the formula the damage increase takes place, and this power can cause the target to take increased damage even if you have enough Armor Penetration to completely ignore their Damage Resistance.
  
• Commanding Shot: The rank up effect now only grants the debuff +1s, down from +2s.
  
• Constricting Arrow: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Electric Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Electric Shot: Reduced the activation time of each shot by 0.3s. This has increased the overall DPS of the combo by ~33%.
  
• Feat: Advanced Stalking: No longer causes Bear Trap to slow the target. Instead, it increases the damage of the bleed that Bear Trap now applies.
  
• Feat: Forestbond: When used in conjunction with Thorned Roots, the recharge reduction granted would be doubled. This has been fixed, and Forestbond will now always grant a 5% reduction, regardless of whether you are using Strong Grasping Roots or Thorned Roots.
  
• Feat: Thorned Roots: After upgrading to Thorned Roots, there would be a slight delay before they would apply compared to Strong Grasping Roots. This has been remedied, and Thorned Roots now applies just as quickly as Strong Grasping Roots.
  
• Feat: Thorned Roots: When striking a target that is immune to control, Thorned Roots stated that it would deal a bonus 250% Weapon Damage up front. However, it was actually dealing 2 ticks of damage, one at 175% of Weapon Damage, and one at 50% of Weapon Damage per rank of Thorned Roots, for a maximum total of 425% Weapon Damage at Rank 5. This has been changed to now do 1 tick of damage for 200% + 50% per rank, for a maximum of 450% at Rank 5. The tooltip has been updated with these numbers, and has been clarified to state that this is in addition to the DoT.
  
• Feat: Thorned Roots: When used in conjunction with the Class Feature Crushing Roots, Thorned Roots would apply the Daze twice. In most cases, this would manifest as just causing the Daze to last about 0.1s longer. This has been fixed.
  
• Feat: Unflinching Aim: In addition to its current functionality of increasing your Ranged Damage, this Feat now causes your hits from Aimed Shot to reduce the recharge time of your currently recharging Ranged Powers.
  
• Forest Ghost: Can now strike the same target once per second, instead of only once per activation.
  
• Forest Meditation: Base recharge time reduced to 40s, down from 45s. This means at Rank 4, the Recharge time is 30s, down from 35s.
  
• Forest Meditation: This power can now be deactivated by pressing the button again. Has a slight delay at activation to prevent accidentally deactivating it via button mashing.
  
• Fox Shift: The speed debuffs and buffs caused by this power no longer have a slight variance to their duration.
  
• Gushing Wound: Fixed an issue where, if the target was able to quickly move away or get out of line of sight immediately after taking the initial hit, the bleed would not apply. The bleed should now be applied if the target takes the intital hit.
  
• Gushing Wound: Initial hit damage increased ~200%. Bleed damage increased ~10%.
  
• Gushing Wound: Now requires a target to activate, which should prevent activating it near a target, but not actually hitting anyone.
  
• Gushing Wound: Ranged decreased to 15', down from 16'.
  
  

amenar

Continued patch notes:

• Hawk Eye: No longer grants 15% bonus damage on the next shot. Instead, it grants 15% bonus damage to all Encounter powers for 5s. Allies still receive this new buff at 50% effectiveness.
  
• Hawk Eye: Now causes the name of the power to show up in combat floaters when it is granted, so that allies may react accordingly.
  
• Hawk Eye: Recharge time reduced to 18s, down from 20s. This means at Rank 4, the Recharge time is now 15s.
  
• Hawk Shot: Activation time reduced to 1.7s, down from 2s.
  
• Hawk Shot: Changed the way this power clamps damage based on range. Previously, in order to deal maximum damage, you actually had to be at 80' (or further, with Aspect of the Falcon), and the damage kept getting smaller until you were almost touching the target. Now, the minimum damage is dealt to anyone within 20', and the maximum damage is dealt to anyone 60' away or further. The minimum damage has been increased greatly.
  
• Hawk Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Hawk Shot: Recharge time reduced to 15s, down from 20s.
  
• Hawk Shot: This power is now an AoE power, and deals damage to up to 5 targets in a small cylinder along the whole range.
  
• Hindering Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Hindering Strike: Now allows other powers to queue like normal after activation.
  
• Hunter's Teamwork: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Longstrider's Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Marauder's Escape: Now fires off 3 quick shots straight ahead as you are jumping back.
  
• Marauder's Escape: Ranking up this power no longer increases the AP it generates. Instead, it increases the damage this power deals. Base AP generation of the power has been increased by 50%.
  
• Marauder's Escape: Recharge time reduced to 15s, down from 16s.
  
• Marauder's Rush: Can no longer activate some powers while still lunging to the target. Activation time reduced from 0.85s to 0.7s.
  
• Marauder's Rush: Range reduced to 63', down from 83'.
  
• Marauder's Rush: Recharge time reduced to 14s, down from 16s.
  
• Oak Skin: This power was only healing teammates for 40% of the intended value. This has been fixed, and the power now heals teammates for the stated 50% effectiveness of the self-heal.
  
• Oak Skin: Activation time reduced to 0.6s, down from 0.75s.
  
• Oak Skin: Added clarification to the tooltip that states that even the base cast is half as effective on teammates, not just the additional rank ups.
  
• Oak Skin: Damage resistance increased to 15%, up from 10%. Amount is still halved on secondary teammates, meaning they now receive 7.5% DR, up from 5%.
  
• Oak Skin: Healing increased ~40%.
  
• Plant Growth: Now properly has a target cap of 5.
  
• Rain of Arrows: Decreased Recharge time to 16, down from 17.
  
• Rain of Arrows: Increased radius to 10 feet, up from 6 feet.
  
• Rain of Arrows: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Rain of Swords: Damage increased ~25%.
  
• Rain of Swords: No longer causes a hit react on every tick of Bleed damage. Now uses standard Bleed FX isntead.
  
• Rain of Swords: Now properly has a target cap of 5.
  
• Rain of Swords: Recharge time reduced to 14s, down from 15s.
  
• Rapid Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Rapid Strike: Fixed an error in the AP formula, so this combo now generates ~75% more AP.
  
• Seismic Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Shift: Increased the distance of each shift ~30%.
  
• Split Shot: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Split Strike: Activating this power no longer causes the camera FOV to change.
  
• Split Strike: Increased activate time from 0.6s to 0.75s. Also increased damage by ~50%. These changes have resulted in an increase in DPS of ~12%. AP gain has been increased ~10%.
  
• Split the Sky: In addition to the existing damage-triggered effect, this power will now randomly target enemies in the area, causing them to suffer the same damage and snare as if they had attacked.
  
• Split the Sky: Increased the base damage of this power by ~250%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% damage increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Stag Heart: No longer locks the caster in place while activating.
  
• Steel Breeze: Damage increased ~75%, but radius reduced to 15', down from 20'.
  
• Steel Breeze: This power now has 3 charges. Recharge time between using charges is 3 seconds, and a new charge is gained every 15 seconds.
  
• Thorn Strike: Damage increased ~50%. However, damage is now reduced when hitting more than 1 target. Damage when hitting 5 targets is still considerably more than it used to be.
  
• Thorn Strike: Increased target cap to 5, up from 3.
  
• Thorn Strike: No longer causes a cast bar to show up for a short time when activating the power.
  
• Thorn Strike: Range increased to 15', up from 12'.
  
• Thorn Strike: Tooltip now reports the base damage it deals, instead of the damage it would deal when the target is at minimum health.
  
• Thorn Strike: Total activation time reduced to 0.8s, down from 1s.
  
• Thorn Ward: Increased the base damage of this power by ~67%. This means players with low-quality gear will see as much as a 10% DPS increase, while players with high-quality gear will see a much smaller increase.
  
• Thorn Ward: Increased the base duration of this power to 10s, up from 4s. However, each rank now grants 2s, down from 4s. The net result is that Rank 4 still lasts the same amount of time (16s), but lower ranks last longer. Note that the description in the powers window previously stated that each rank increased the duration by 6 seconds, but this was incorrect - it was really only increasing by 4 seconds.
  

beckylunatic

(Nevermind about the first thing I wrote.)

There is nothing in these notes about the rooting mechanic being removed from Binding Arrow. Is this a bug, a tooltip error, or an oversight in the notes?

amenar

beckylunatic said:

There is nothing in these notes about the rooting mechanic being removed from Binding Arrow. Is this a bug, a tooltip error, or an oversight in the notes?

Sounds like a bug? Testing internally, all of its root mechanics are still working for me. Can you be more specific about what you're seeing?

thefabricant

"Hawk Eye: No longer grants 15% bonus damage on the next shot. Instead, it grants 15% bonus damage to all Encounter powers for 5s. Allies still receive this new buff at 50% effectiveness. "

@amenar can you please look into how hawk eye behaves with buffs and debuffs, it is currently hitting for far more than its intended value.

Here is a link to what we tested on preview;

http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1218386/sw-and-hr-interactions

beckylunatic

amenar said:

beckylunatic said:

There is nothing in these notes about the rooting mechanic being removed from Binding Arrow. Is this a bug, a tooltip error, or an oversight in the notes?

Sounds like a bug? Testing internally, all of its root mechanics are still working for me. Can you be more specific about what you're seeing?

The new tooltip makes no reference to Binding Arrow's Strong Grasping Roots, which made us panic (since only 3 powers even have Grasping Roots as an effect).

rayrdan

@amenar for what i can see this is a nerf to trappers for how steel breeze now works: 3 charges means encounter with charges not affected by cooldown reduction. And no one is going to unslot hindering shot... another encounter with charges hence hard fixed cooldown. Nothing its done to increase archery and in particular combat viability...am i wrong? what are combat hr getting from all of this?
90% of buffs are on powers with a sooo long casting time i would never use them a priori.
commanding shot? aimed shot? split the sky? hawk shot?????? no one is going to waste 2 seconds for each of those encounters standing still. That 0.2 seconds cooldown reduction on archery tree for aimed shot is hilarious indeed..it still hits for less than an instant cast sure strike.

and where are the survivability QoL? each class has some sort of defensive tool: shield, stealth, unstoppable, cw shield, astral shield etc... what exactly hr have to save their back?

binding arrow is not applying thorned roots anymore
healing from oak skin is not increased a bit...

i would rather keep my mod 9 hr if its not a problem.
can we?

btw i already tested everything before this post.

durugudesu

Feedback: I really have to ask, of these changes that you posted, did you think this was a buff or a nerf? Because for me, it all seems like a nerf for current trapper, but then again if that was what you intended then you did really well. I just got confused by the earlier post saying that HRs are currently underperforming, and clearly you will never nerf an underperforming class. I really would just like an honest opinion. Thanks.

ghoulz66

Clear the Ground: Activate time of the third strike reduced from 0.6s to 0.5s. Increased damage of second and third strikes of this combo. These changes have increased the overall DPS of the combo by ~35%.
• Clear The Ground: This powers activation is no longer cancelled by all other power activations.

I'm sorry, but a supposed 35% buff? That doesn't even come close to making this viable again. Even the GF's at-wills deal 3-4 times more damage than this. I'm honestly not even sure a 100% buff would be enough.

There's also no other QoL improvements for combat HRs.

beckylunatic

I also wanted to share these test results that indicate many powers that are noted as having been given a damage increase are showing decreases instead.

http://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/post/quote/1218295/Comment_12847217

scathias

@Amenar your description of Commanding Shot is troubling.

Commanding Shot: Reworked the debuff this power applies, and reduced its duration. Reduced the damage debuff component to 10%, down from 15%. Changed the defense component from lowering their defenses by 15% to increasing the damage they take by 10%. This changes where in the formula the damage increase takes place, and this power can cause the target to take increased damage even if you have enough Armor Penetration to completely ignore their Damage Resistance.

Currently on live the DR debuff of Commanding works just like the DR debuff from plague fire (i just had this tested). This means that when a player has enough arp to ignore the DR of the target Commanding works as a 15% damage boost anyways. So based on this understanding of Commanding, what you implemented was an overall nerf to the damage boost by 5%. Now, for very low geared people who do not have enough armor pen to ignore all the DR a target has the change you made is better, but as soon as a toon has 60% RI (max needed for pve content at this time) your change to commanding shot is worse overall. HR s also get a lot of arp on their gear so they are the mostly likely to be hurt by this change in the low ilv range. In addition you reduced the duration.

So was your intention to nerf Commanding Shot? because that is what has happened here

Copy and paste from my comment in the HR blog post thread

s1lv3rdrgnforum

rayrdan said:

@amenar for what i can see this is a nerf to trappers for how steel breeze now works: 3 charges means encounter with charges not affected by cooldown reduction. And no one is going to unslot hindering shot... another encounter with charges hence hard fixed cooldown. Nothing its done to increase archery and in particular combat viability...am i wrong? what are combat hr getting from all of this?
90% of buffs are on powers with a sooo long casting time i would never use them a priori.
commanding shot? aimed shot? split the sky? hawk shot?????? no one is going to waste 2 seconds for each of those encounters standing still. That 0.2 seconds cooldown reduction on archery tree for aimed shot is hilarious indeed..it still hits for less than an instant cast sure strike.

and where are the survivability QoL? each class has some sort of defensive tool: shield, stealth, unstoppable, cw shield, astral shield etc... what exactly hr have to save their back?

binding arrow is not applying thorned roots anymore
healing from oak skin is not increased a bit...

i would rather keep my mod 9 hr if its not a problem.
can we?

btw i already tested everything before this post.

I tried respeccing to combat tree last night - but I ended up with 15 points that I had absolutely nowhere I wanted to put them into.

1. The early tiers of both archery and trapper include things the combat HR cant/doesnt want to take advantage of. All 4 1st tier skills require that I switch stances away from the stance that's giving me all the benefits of the tree.

2. Piercing blade, Scything blade and Blade Hurricane are the only real "foundation" skills in the entire tree.

3. If you are a player who neither stacks deflect nor lifesteal (both of which require serious investment at the cost of a massive amount of DPS for a comparitive trapper build; HR gear provides neither in abundance) you have very few options.

4. Despite the "buff" to ambush - it's still a very niche skill and very few players will use it. One fairly easy solution is to take the buff to Slashers mark from Trapper tree and swap. This at least gives combat HR something he probably would be interested in as Slashers makes for a great gap closer + stamina regen for all that shifting we're supposed to be doing ...

5. The combat tree doesnt even remotely come in to the realm of synergy that the trapper tree does. The trapper tree is all about roots - what is the combat tree about? The only thing that comes to my mind is spamming split strike... a LOT.

6. You designed HR so that it refills AP fairly quickly - this makes feats that give AP gain little value. This means for combat HR, you are forced to put points into 3 things that are subjective; deflect, lifesteal and AP gain. This severely pigeon holes available options for builds. Personally, I dont feel feat(ures) should be stat dependant.

ghoulz66

krazydog#1509 said:

I still think the trapper is the way to go. Doesn't seem like Archery is still going to do enough dps

Split the Sky buff was the only thing good they done for Archery. But that's not saying much. It's a terrible skill to use when you're alone with things trying to murder you.

feanor70118

1) Aimed Shot – thanks for getting rid of the interrupt
2) Ambush/Bear Trap – it is obnoxious to make us devote 5 feat points to testing this out on powers that absolutely no one currently uses. Feats should never be devoted to specific abilities. The buffs look interesting but get rid of Advanced Stalking or just incorporate its buffs into the ability ranks..
3) Aspect of the Pack – Don't care about changes, it's a useless ability.
4) Clear the Ground/CSH – makes Stormwarden look viable again, maybe.
5) Oak Skin – needs more like a 1000% buff instead of a 40% buff to be relevant at level 70
6) Commanding Shot – interesting, but reduce the animation time. Long animations are one of HR's biggest problems. Our hugely long animations still do less damage than instantaneous abilities of GF or CW among others.
7) Thorned Roots – meh. Tiny tweaks don't excite me.
8) Gushing Wound – needs its animation length decreased by at least half to be relevant in pvp.
9) Various base damage increases – probably meaningless. Meh.
10) Marauder's Escape – the problem with this ability was not its lack of damage. The problem is that opponents can target through it. I'd also suggest that it should be an HR's control break since we have none.
11) Plant Growth – remove the target cap. You're just nerfing us, which we don't need. It's an AOE power, it should act like one.
12) Rain of Arrows/Swords: nice, but again the target cap of 5 is an obnoxious and unnecessary nerf.
13) Split shot/strike: split shot needs a buff too. Damage from HR at-wills is currently laughable to nonexistent.
14) Shift – Thank you. It's about time.
15) Steel Breeze – NO NO NO NO NO NO NO on the charges. It's an obnoxious idea and there's no reason for it.
16) Thorn Ward/Strike – meh. Why bother tweaking it if you're not doing anything meaningful?
17) Binding Arrow – Removing the root proc is counterintuitive and only serves to nerf the class further. No.

Overall – I see nothing here that will address the fact that HR is currently at the bottom of the pecking order in pvp. We do no appreciable burst damage to highly geared opponents and basically no damage at all to GWF, TR, DC, GF and Paladin. Forest Ghost is buggy. It doesn't work in combat and its animation consumes far too much of its duration. It should work like a TR's tab key, with no animation at all. At-wills other than Aimed Shot and Careful Attack do no appreciable damage. Root/daze duration is so short against players wearing pvp sets (even without Elven Battle) that they just hop around as if they aren't being rooted at all. Meanwhile GF and GWF have long, killer prones. The slow duration from Courage Breaker lasts all day and night and does not seem to be subject to mitigation. In other words, we do neither much damage nor much control in pvp, and these changes do not address the problem. Things we need: 1) reduce the charge refill time on our abilities or have swiftness of the fox apply to the times. 2) Control abilities that have a more than momentary effect in pvp; 3) Real burst damage; 4) Shorter animations comparable to other classes; 5) a control break (preferably from either Forest Ghost, Marauder's Escape or both); 6) Dodges should dodge control effects or they aren't dodges at all.

beckylunatic

feanor70118 said:

2) Ambush/Bear Trap – it is obnoxious to make us devote 5 feat points to testing this out on powers that absolutely no one currently uses. Feats should never be devoted to specific abilities. The buffs look interesting but get rid of Advanced Stalking or just incorporate its buffs into the ability ranks..

Respectfully, every paragon feat path of every class uses the feats at this location to interact in some ways with paragon powers.

Sometimes they're worth taking, but often not. But any discussion of it affects every class.

In general, feats that are not tied to specific powers are much preferable, which is a good thing that the DC and TR reworks of long-ago accomplished, largely freeing both classes from being tied to specific powers to activate their feats, with the exception of the paragon-specific interactions.

whitestarua

@amenar
Now HR can finally die in PvP thx you!


Can you tell me how to kill some one in pvp with hr?

And now, when you "fixed" CC and CD he became worse...

(you can't do anithing vs 4k+ guys with elven battle and stronghold boons)
So where is "balance"?

And -> what about pve? in blog you told that HR is worst DD in game? and where is his damage up?)
I just see a lot of nerfs or up of useless skills.

whitestarua

durugudesu said:

Feedback: I really have to ask, of these changes that you posted, did you think this was a buff or a nerf? Because for me, it all seems like a nerf for current trapper, but then again if that was what you intended then you did really well. I just got confused by the earlier post saying that HRs are currently underperforming, and clearly you will never nerf an underperforming class. I really would just like an honest opinion. Thanks.

Agree with this!
@amenar

amenar

Hey all -

Thanks for the feedback. I can't reply to each question in depth, but we are looking into things. Few quick points:

Re: Binding Arrow tooltip: We can't replicate this at all, even on the preview server. Is this still happening for you? Can I get a screenshot?

Hawk Eye - We saw the thread, we're looking into it. Thanks for the detailed info.

Regarding overall Combat and Archery performance - they still have a ways to go, most likely. This review will not be all that the Hunter Ranger gets. Our internal testing shows them as being much improved, but we don't have enough data yet to feel like "We're done here, everything's fixed!" Though... technically, we're never done, what with it being an MMO with things constantly being added.

About the intent for Trapper - the intent was for it to end up in a better position than it is on live, though not massively. Internal testing shows this to be the case, but please give us any data you have.

HR Survivability - This is a tricky one. A lot of our really good HR's are incredibly survivable, but we also know this isn't the case for everyone. We have to be careful when trying to provide the HR with survivability options, as we don't want to create more problems than we solve. I think the HR probably still needs more help here, but we didn't want to hold up the changes we have, just because we don't have all the changes we ever want to make. As for what we did this module - we made Shift better, and we made Oak Skin better. They're not huge shifts in survivability, but that's not what we're trying for.

Commanding Shot - Definitely not intended as a nerf, as the power is virtually unused in its current state on live. The way it was setup, it should not have provided any damage boost when a target had no defense/armor left. It's possible (because our system is... complex) that in certain cases, it might behave similarly to doing so, though. Our testing so far has shown that this power has been improved quite a bit, but we'll keep looking at it. It's worth pointing out that you didn't comment on several of the other changes to the power - it got a huge damage increase (almost 60%), and its cooldown was reduced. The cooldown reduction is part of why the debuff duration was reduced, because the uptime on the debuff is still about the same.

Steel Breeze - Certainly open to rethinking the charges, but I'd hope that you at least give it a shot for a bit before deciding it's no good. Our internal HR's have been very happy with the change. Based on what we've seen so far, going back to the old way would make it weaker.

feanor70118

macjae said:

The fix to Steel Breeze was one of the best changes in this entire list. Presently on Live, HRs are still capable of permadaze rotations against targets not wearing Elven Battle in PvP, and this looks like an adequate fix to that, without destroying Crushing Roots entirely with an ICD or something. Permadaze was one of the most toxic things ever introduced to PvP, and it's good if it gets buried with this change.

However, this definitely leaves HRs short on damage in PvP, but this is also a generalized problem with excessive healing and tankiness in PvP which needs to be addressed on its own. Still, HRs could definitely need some more damage boosts, particularly for archer and combat HRs.

There is no permadaze at high gear levels. HR control is all but nonexistent against anyone wearing burning or lionsmane sets. Anyone suffering from permadaze just isn't wearing what they should be.

feanor70118

amenar said:

Hey all -

Thanks for the feedback. I can't reply to each question in depth, but we are looking into things. Few quick points:

I really appreciate you taking the time to interact with the community on this.

amenar said:

Steel Breeze - Certainly open to rethinking the charges, but I'd hope that you at least give it a shot for a bit before deciding it's no good. Our internal HR's have been very happy with the change. Based on what we've seen so far, going back to the old way would make it weaker.

Well, doing it the old way or the way it's described is a false choice. Steel Breeze isn't really used for damage, it's used for restoring stamina for a class that needs to dodge constantly. A larger dodge will mitigate the problem but there is NO reason to add charges to it. The extra damage is nice, and thanks for it, but it doesn't need a charge refill added - especially not with a monstrous 15 second refill time. In PVP fights we stay on nodes for minutes at a time. Now you'll have us running out of stamina after 15 seconds and unable to refill, meaning we have to run away - except we can't, because we're out of dodges and out of stamina (and Forest Ghost is buggy and not useful as an escape). Adding charges is just a terrible idea.

kangkeok

binding shot does apply root but there is no damage tick from thorn root feat..what i have tested 12 hour ago

Nice list and a well done job on the changes. Although..archery still got 1 big problem..we missed alot of party buff like into the fray & paladin buff if standing beyond 50' from the front just to benefit from our feat stillness of forest or hawkshot..

ralexinor

@amenar

The philosophy you're basing your buffs off - nerf permadaze and buff unused skills - is flawed in a very major way.

You are not fixing the problem with the hr class, you are only extending and building upon it, because you have missed the core issue of the problem.

The trapper tree is severely overperforming compared to the other paths and unless you nerf its issues, then it will always overperform and any buffs you try make to compensate the other trees will end up making trapper much better or overpowered.

You need to nerf Swiftness of the Fox before you can make the appropriate balance changes. This affects both pve and pvp. As much as I love the trapper playstyle, no class should have zero cooldowns on their skills - this is absolutely gamebreaking. You can say all you like about it being an intended mechanic, but you can either give a dumbed down version to every path, or nerf it so that it's in line with the archery feat bottomless quiver (or whatever the cooldown feat was called).

The basis of the problem lies in how many times you can proc swiftness of the fox with one skill. In pve, using an aoe will proc swiftness for as many targets you hit; for example, if I hit 5 targets with Steel Breeze, then swiftness will proc for each target hit, resulting in a total cooldown reduction of ranged skills by 0.85^5 (since swiftness is a multiplicative reduction). In pvp, this rule applies as well, but is less glaring because you don't aoe nearly as much, however, Fox Shift does proc swiftness for every hit (read: twice at minimum) regardless of targets. Gushing wound also procs Swiftness on every tick (can't remember if this was fixed, but I don't believe it was).

Additionally, thorned roots is a massive damage buff at present, in both pve and pvp being at least 40-60% of a HR's damage. By the looks of it, thorned roots will still be at least 30-40% of a hr's damage at minimum, which, is massive even if it's a t5 feat, because that's a relative damage boost of 50-60%. Obviously in pvp it's skewered towards being dump damage because of elven battle (please kindly fix elven to not reduce the duration of thorned roots' damage portion, thanks), but that's more of the enchant being broken than thorned not doing damage.

If you nerf Swiftness so that it only procs upon activation of a skill rather than targets hit, and possibly reduce it to 10% rather than 15% to bring it in line with the Archery feat (honestly could be less if you want that) or change it so that it's not a % cooldown reduction but a recovery/recharge speed increase like the archery feat, then you can see just what the position of hrs are, and what sort of buffs it needs.

Forgive me for the bad pun, but you won't fix the issues present unless you fix the root of the problem.

ralexinor

metalldjt said:

Feedback: while as a GWF im fightin BiS HR 1v1 , and i can tell you that their DAMAGE it's not significant, nowadays everyone uses

ralexinor said:

@amenar



The philosophy you're basing your buffs off - nerf permadaze and buff unused skills - is flawed in a very major way.



You are not fixing the problem with the hr class, you are only extending and building upon it, because you have missed the core issue of the problem.



The trapper tree is severely overperforming compared to the other paths and unless you nerf its issues, then it will always overperform and any buffs you try make to compensate the other trees will end up making trapper much better or overpowered.



You need to nerf Swiftness of the Fox before you can make the appropriate balance changes. This affects both pve and pvp. As much as I love the trapper playstyle, no class should have zero cooldowns on their skills - this is absolutely gamebreaking. You can say all you like about it being an intended mechanic, but you can either give a dumbed down version to every path, or nerf it so that it's in line with the archery feat bottomless quiver (or whatever the cooldown feat was called).



The basis of the problem lies in how many times you can proc swiftness of the fox with one skill. In pve, using an aoe will proc swiftness for as many targets you hit; for example, if I hit 5 targets with Steel Breeze, then swiftness will proc for each target hit, resulting in a total cooldown reduction of ranged skills by 0.85^5 (since swiftness is a multiplicative reduction). In pvp, this rule applies as well, but is less glaring because you don't aoe nearly as much, however, Fox Shift does proc swiftness for every hit (read: twice at minimum) regardless of targets. Gushing wound also procs Swiftness on every tick (can't remember if this was fixed, but I don't believe it was).



Additionally, thorned roots is a massive damage buff at present, in both pve and pvp being at least 40-60% of a HR's damage. By the looks of it, thorned roots will still be at least 30-40% of a hr's damage at minimum, which, is massive even if it's a t5 feat, because that's a relative damage boost of 50-60%. Obviously in pvp it's skewered towards being dump damage because of elven battle (please kindly fix elven to not reduce the duration of thorned roots' damage portion, thanks), but that's more of the enchant being broken than thorned not doing damage.



If you nerf Swiftness so that it only procs upon activation of a skill rather than targets hit, and possibly reduce it to 10% rather than 15% to bring it in line with the Archery feat (honestly could be less if you want that) or change it so that it's not a % cooldown reduction but a recovery/recharge speed increase like the archery feat, then you can see just what the position of hrs are, and what sort of buffs it needs.



Forgive me for the bad pun, but you won't fix the issues present unless you fix the root of the problem.

sure...
But what can be done for HR to deal damage towards my GWF?
all my fights against HRs so far have been one sided, besides the perma-root,daze,disrupt the HR doesn't have enough damage to even bring the Great Weapon Fighter down to 75% of its HP.

so anything that a HR could do to perform better in this case?

higher base damage?
higher armor pen on their powers
better damage buffs...
some of his powers should have Burst Damage?

The reason for a nerf to Swiftness/Thorned Roots is so that you can actually SEE how weak the class is without those feats, because those feats are the entire reason why HRs are overperforming in some aspects (CC, though not anymore), and underperforming severely in most others. Archery and Combat are so weak because buffs revolving around balancing around Swiftness/Thorned do not cater to anyone not using those feats, since they're so grossly overpowered as feats themselves. Imagine if IBS reset its own cooldown whenever you used it in PvE? That's what Swiftness is.

Obviously the class is going to need extreme buffs after that, but that's what the class needs.

Burst damage is meta atm because of all the HAMSTER insignias and healing atm, which, in theory, should actually make Archery the fotm if buffs were actually done correctly (archery's kinda high-damage single target sort of thing, if anything, going by the capstone (read: that's what it should be, not what it is atm)).

Stat buffs from feats are kinda meh, tbh. HR needs better base damage straight up, which is part of what they've done but a 10% damage increase across the board is far from being enough. Existing skills need a buff too, not just useless things.

EDIT: also it makes far more sense to nerf trapper, buff the base class (powers, dailies, class features, at-wills), than to try and buff the Archery/Combat feats to insane levels. As it stands, Thorned Roots in its current state is really a 100%+ damage boost on live, in a lot of cases more. Do you really think it makes sense to give Archery and Combat a 100% damage buff feat to compensate and put them in line with Trapper? Moreover, there's still the issue of Swiftness. Swiftness is kinda the thing that prevents a big buff on the base class because then you have the effectiveness of every skill skewered because Swiftness enables you to spam them, while Archery/Combat cannot do the same. Cooldown reductions are damage increases too.

scathias

amenar said:

Commanding Shot - Definitely not intended as a nerf, as the power is virtually unused in its current state on live. The way it was setup, it should not have provided any damage boost when a target had no defense/armor left. It's possible (because our system is... complex) that in certain cases, it might behave similarly to doing so, though. Our testing so far has shown that this power has been improved quite a bit, but we'll keep looking at it. It's worth pointing out that you didn't comment on several of the other changes to the power - it got a huge damage increase (almost 60%), and its cooldown was reduced. The cooldown reduction is part of why the debuff duration was reduced, because the uptime on the debuff is still about the same.

I do not main a HR, but I try to be familiar with the buffs and debuffs available from each class. As far as i know (and i could well be wrong) Commanding has always worked like I described, and most other powers in the game that say they reduce DR also work in this way. I will go test some more on live though to try and get a better handle on it.

I didn't comment on the base damage buff mostly because my HR sucks (because I am not good at the class), and so when i play my HR i prefer to act as a support class and pump out all the buffs that I can. As such the damage boost is not very relevant in my case (which perhaps is an edge case).
One reason I tend to avoid using Commanding Shot even when i play as a buffing HR is because the Cast time of Commanding is very long, and many the powers that you showed as having very low usage also have long cast animations. All to often i would die while using it because i was locked in place when a AoE came, or i would dodge the AoE but have to start the whole animation over again. Yes I could move 30 feet out to use my ranged powers but then my melee abilities are not viable (Careful attack, gushing wound, thorn strike) without spending time to rush in and keep up all the buffs in a timely manner. In addition, the melee version of Commanding is not at all useful in my experience, granting very little temp HP (16% total at r4, perhaps allow this to be effected by buffs up to a maximum of 32% of HP like for GWF?) (the change to stag heart so i can activate while moving is appreciated though).

So, i run a HR who is using skills that don't synergize with my class spec, and I am unskilled with a HR in general. I imagine people who main the class are rolling their eyes at this point so take my experience with a grain of salt

ghoulz66

Feedback:

Binding Arrow: It does nothing now. Shoot an arrow, mostly only hits 1 target for mediocre damage. No secondary effects, no nothing. Would never slot this for actual use. Even if oak skin was viable now, you couldn't really put it in your tray due to this lackluster attack gimping your DPS.

Electric Arrow: Even with the received buff it still feels.... I just feel like I could use something else to take down mobs. Maybe because of the lostmauth set before it was nerfed. Even when the lostmauth set was over-peforming I couldn't make electric arrow work at a viable level.

Clear the Ground: Do not notice any buff. Even with the combat tree and class features buffing it to it's highest potential it can't even take down multiple minion type enemies any faster than simply using a single target at-will on em one at a time. The GF's cleave, weapon master strike, and other AoE at-wills outperform this by miles. It needs a considerable buff to it. Only the combat HR could utilize this power to it's highest without making it OP, but even with combat tree it's not nearly enough. This is about one of the weakest powers you could ever waste your time using. Which is a shame as it's one of the most fun to use.

Split Strike: Unlike Clear the Ground, this one is about at the right spot, but slightly lackluster still.

Rain of Arrows: The increased AoE is greatly appreciated. It has helped this power a lot. Great for both archer and combat builds.

Rain of swords: It's still a gimmick power for combat HRs to proc flurry. It's too slow, bordering on not viable in party dungeon runs due to it's poor activation speed. Damage is non-existent, literally, it often procs no damage at all.

Gushing Wound: It feels really good. Though I would advise keeping close attention to it as it can be prone to over performing in certain situations.

Thorn Strike: The damage is negligible to the point that I kept ignoring it as combat. It probably needs increased radius for at least hit more than one thing. I dunno, it's one of those HR powers you have, only because the other is the only good one.



Overall, I feel some improvement helping the combat tree, but I hardly doubt it can come close to competing with other strikers due to the limited burst encounters and CDs combat HRs are limited to because at-wills are not doing enough to help. If I remove rain of arrows from my bar, my DPS suffers drastically. If plant growth/cordon is removed also it's like a career ending move.

userutf8

@amenar
if you guys REALLY want constructive feedback (which i highely doubt, tbh), I will show you some ACT logs from PTR when fighting a TR, a GWF, a CW, etc...
You do not realize that only ONE (trapper) path on HR is viable in PVP and PVE despite of that "balance" you are trying to bring.
And on that path HR is extremely WEAK in comparison to other classes in PVP. As for PVE: HR is and was fine on trapper path, and it would be fine until you break it completely.

When i fight a GWF i deal like 3-5k damage on him with fox shift, thorned roots, whatever. My at-wills hit him for less then 1k, whereas if i allow him to build his stacks and get all possible self buffs (hidden daggers, mark from daring shout, etc) he can land 2x50k Indomitable Strength, 70-100k IBS on me, and his at-wills (sure strike) will hit me for like 20-30k, if i don't avoid that. TR can land 70k up to 140k Shocking Execution hit to me, or over 200k with ITF buff from GF.
I'm not even talking about GF here.

How am i supposed to kill other classes as striker class with powers that hit for 10-25x less, whereas all this damage on HR is slow ticking DoTs???
Or should i just proc 5-8k aimed shot on people who have HP over 200k, if i'm extremely lucky to proc it without getting interrupted by CC or killed while i'm trying to land it???

FYI, Aimed shot should hit for something like 60-80k on BiS people in PVP to be viable. On my BiS HR I hit BiS GWF with negation with 20% effectiveness. That means that it's damage with something like 20k power and 30 dex with BiS main hand and off-hand should be over 250k!!!

Do you want a detailed explanation how to fix HR? Do you want videos? I will provide you everything, if you really want to bring HR in line, but either way i won't move my finger, because it's kinda useless to waste a time on people who don't really give a HAMSTER about their game.

bittynation

Wow - lot's of power changes, but I don't see anything that really helps the HR. We are going to be in the same spot as where we are in PVP, right at the bottom. This does nothing for survivability or burst damage in PVP. The only promising thing I saw was the longer shift. The only thing this does is give PVE players a few more choices. PVP wise, ouch!

Crit based HRs do great in PVE, but in PVP they suck. They are at the bottom of the trapper HRs, this is because of enchants like the feytouch. Using the feytouch in PVP is king because they can stack power and don't have to worry about crit. HR needs a boost in crit severity!

HRs have horrible dailies that have no burst damage and have hard cooldowns and with all the AP gain in the game we lose out the very most in this area.

HRs have no burst damage, they have to play a more that perfect game to even compete with the tanky classes. The highest damage I have in PVP is from a boon that fires at 20k and mitigates down to 10k-15k.

I'm very disappointed. People can say this is a good step in the right direction, but it's to little to late.

I have hated TRs for a long time, but the way this HR panning out I think it's time to join them.