Official Feedback Thread: Hunter Ranger changes

genjundead

whitespicyrice said:

Hello, Rookz here ( Also known as my GWF ( Welcome Home) ), PC player of NW and former Hunter Ranger Specialist since Module 3. Ever since HRs came out i have been amazed by them. I played HR until the end of module 8 or until I heard about the insignia bonuses that we have now on the PC version. It completely ruins HRs for many reasons. The insignia bonus that grants hp while being stunned, deflected makes people actually MORE tanky because it procs those bonuses basically 100% of the time on the HR class, and to me that's where the downfall to HR began. Buffing All the HR trees is most definitely a start. I love what you have done so far with the changes. It honestly boggles my mind to see all of these changes within a couple of weeks. i have never in 3 years of playing this game seen this much motivation and commitment towards a class/class balancing.

Anyways, I love the trapper reworking but this swiftness buff is too much. You are pushing more towards the trapper FOTM ( Favor of The Month ) still and it has been for 4 modules straight. It's boring and I would love to see changes to archery the most. Archery pushes more towards a different playstyle meta game and burst damage which is needed on a HR. I would honestly suggest making the capstone NOT halved by pvp players because let's face it...even IF it wasn't halved on pvp players at the moment then it still wouldn't do as much damage on Best In Slot ( BiS ) players ( Especially a GWF or on a GF ( but that doesn't matter because GF has shield up 24/7 ) ). 50% and NOT halved would be a good change, which you already half way there from buffing it by 10%, just need to half damage reduction gone.

I would also consider making archery tree have better cooldowns as ever since HRs came out that's what they have always been about, reducing cooldowns on crits/roots/encounters/ etc...then I would say change "Bottomless Quiver" feat to 30% cooldown reduction to both ranged and melee encounters. It's useless if it's just ranged stance powers because what makes use of the HR mechanic if you can't even use the other stance as efficient as the other stance and balanced at the same time? Another thought would be changing the other feat "Longshot" and buff that by how thorned roots ( the damage not the duration of the roots ) is, because this tree is about burst damage not so much infinite cooldowns like trapper...so buffing that by atleast 200% would be very nice but if you do that then change, fix on how it works with various encounters that proc crit a lot on their duration...for example thorn ward...each crit tick of thorn ward will proc longshot and i don't think it's suppose to work that way as usual you devs always make things on the 'intial hit'.

There's still a lot of work to do until module 10 comes, I never post on forums...this is my first time posting on the forums for something that actual is worth while and committing to. So i as well will be trying to buff the archery tree as long as the other people that want to change the meta game on HRs. This is just my entry so i hope you enjoy

...its nice to see people amazed in closed beta like i was when we got our first hr day one.
...i don't agree with you on how mount insignias ruin hr's that is your opinion o the matter and it is noted so if others agree with you that would be nice to know if this really happens and though i don't pvp my insignias really help me.
...since hr was the weakest of the classes apparently they started with hr, though a lot of changes has happened every week or couple of days their all minor and we as a community are planning on doing more for hr's so your comments will surely help.

...the only reason why SOTF was being addressed so much is because they fixed it and that ruined the trapper then they had to fix the trapper without giving us back that same bug and now that its been fixed we are trying to focus on fixing hr as a hole again, well hopefully.

...archery doesn't need better cooldowns but better at wills.
...if your talking about archery using bottomless quiver to affect both range and melee then that is straying from archery builds. if archery gets any cooldowd feat or paragon skill it should only affect archery as archery is meant fore pure range not using any melee, it shouldn't benefit at all from using melee but it still can.
...devs rarely make things on the initial hit

...i hope you post more cause i like some of the ideas you had but it seems as though you didn't try helping trappers as their not done being fixed yet and their still sup par to other classes, but at least their in somewhat working order again.

wdj40

amenar said:

zonoske#5272 said:

Nice. But what's the update on Swiftness of the Fox?

Good question! Here is the current patch note for some upcoming changes for it:

• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Swiftness of the Fox: Now triggers from more powers. Ranged Encounter and At-Will powers reduce the cooldown of your Melee Encounter powers, and vice versa. Daily powers reduce the cooldown of all of your Encounter powers.
  

And for clarification, here is the updated tooltip:

Your Melee Encounter & At-Will powers shorten the cooldown of your Ranged Encounter powers by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Your Ranged Encounter & At-Will powers shorten the cooldown of your Melee Encounter powers by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Your Daily powers shorten the cooldown of all your Encounter powers by 3/6/9/12/15%.

What this has done in practice - alongside the other changes to recharge times, Swiftness of the Fox no longer multi-proccing on group fights, etc. - is that every couple of rotations, where I get "messed up" and don't have my CDs lined up properly, is I use a Daily or AW once or twice and all of the appropriate Encounters are off CD. The Daily change, in particular, feels nice because if I swap into melee stance and go "****, they all have 2s left" I can cast a Daily without the need to swap back to ranged stance. It's also nice that I feel like whenever my rotation gets messed up, casting a Daily or AW feels like it is contributing toward my goal of "cast Encounters all day long" instead of just filling time.

I look forward to getting this into the hands of our dedicated HRs and seeing how this works out for you guys.

@amenar thank you for this latest update on Swiftness. It sounds like you guys have taken on board what some of us want to preserve, which is a unique, fast and furious play style. I am looking forward to seeing/testing these new changes in action now. I wish I had a PC so I could offer better feedback from the Preview Server.

I am already figuring out in my head which rotations are going to work and which are not

treesclimber

raisinghelll said:

On paper this SoTF "fix" sounds fantastic, but while you're busy shooting At-wills to remedy your 5s cooldowns that remain after all encounters have been used for a mere 8k (If you're lucky lol), GWFs are using their At-wills hitting 3x as hard, just as fast.

I don't think it will play out as well as it sounds, but I'm leaving the rest up to the real HR's who aren't screaming "NERF THIS" left-right and center to convey how this change affects the trapper path.

Edit: Careful attack: every 1.5 seconds a 15% cooldown reduction will be applied, no? This will make the StormWardens useless as everyone is going to jump on that train.

Stop comparing HR's to GWF, start comparing HR to SW's, GWF had almost nothing rework yet.

danielpreece90

Maybe we playing archery and combat wrong D:

To me i feel archery needs dex/int more then wisdom due to u can get insane crit values from talents alone

Also iv noticed.....how come constricting arrows and binding arrows does the same thing? But the onky difference is the upgrades... Constricting arrow gives more damage per rank..... And binding arrows gives improve range to bind.... But other then this these 2 skills are identical!

I think im going to redo my wood elf and just try the dex/int route and stack recovery, armor pen, power and see what happens

I think the problem is we all trying to obtain the 100% crit rate i mean with 60% crit rate as archery i feel like i crit enough times as it is but maybe im the minority

But we will see what happens :D

I really think that with enough cooldown reduction we could chain up these skills

Cordon of arrows
Rain of arrows
Binding/constricting arrow
Disruptive shot
Stormstep action

To me i feel like these skills are the key to play archery with enough cooldown reduction we be able to chain these skills indefinately together but it requires testing now only if we had a paragon that effects grasping roots in the archery tree...

Problem i see that split shot is too good to pass up.... And my god its annoying to use cause it hard locks onto 1 target which is frustrating at times

Aimed shot needs to go through targets but reduce damage for each target it hits after the first target

Electro shot should be shot on the floor and last 6-8 seconds any targets in the area will take lightning damage for the duration

Rain of arrows... Need bigger range.... Its hard to see where ur placing it when everyone is in a pack... I have often missed landing this encounter multiple of times ... Change it so it barrage enemies near ur current or make it the same range of thorn ward

Aspect of the falcon... Hmm we dont need more range swap this out with aspect of the lone wolf and change aspect of the lone wolf to give deflection chance and give life steal per rank.... This will help low level HR to have some decent defense whilst leveling

Storm step action.... Whilst the CD reduction is ok with distruptive arrow i feel like this should change to allow electro shot and split the sky to daze/stun targets who are hit by lightning bolts or cause them to take additional damage from any source of damage lets say 10% increase damage taken?

Just need to look at the skills and passives seperate and see how they benefit each spec and rework it that way instead

We all know that most of our skills and passives benefits trapper the most... However i feel that the encounters and passive fall flat when picking either archery or combat u are very very very limited with options to choose from

wdj40

danielpreece90 said:

Maybe we playing archery and combat wrong



To me i feel archery needs dex/int more then wisdom due to u can get insane crit values from talents alone



Also iv noticed.....how come constricting arrows and binding arrows does the same thing? But the onky difference is the upgrades... Constricting arrow gives more damage per rank..... And binding arrows gives improve range to bind.... But other then this these 2 skills are identical!



I think im going to redo my wood elf and just try the dex/int route and stack recovery, armor pen, power and see what happens



I think the problem is we all trying to obtain the 100% crit rate i mean with 60% crit rate as archery i feel like i crit enough times as it is but maybe im the minority



But we will see what happens

They are not the same at all. Constricting Arrow hits and then does a small AoE which applies Thorned Roots (if taken) to up to 5 enemies. Also the root can Crit even if the Arrow does not or vice versa.

Binding Arrow hits 1 enemy and a 2nd enemy if it is in line of sight, behind the 1st enemy you hit. It will Crit if the initial hit Crits. But this power can only ever hit 2 enemies. Binding Arrow is also supposed to apply Thorned Roots (if taken), people mentioned this was broken but is being fixed.

So in places where there are groups of enemies Constricting Arrow works out better. But against single enemies I found Binding Arrow hits harder but not by much.

wdj40

wdj40 said:

amenar said:

zonoske#5272 said:

Nice. But what's the update on Swiftness of the Fox?

Good question! Here is the current patch note for some upcoming changes for it:

• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Swiftness of the Fox: Now triggers from more powers. Ranged Encounter and At-Will powers reduce the cooldown of your Melee Encounter powers, and vice versa. Daily powers reduce the cooldown of all of your Encounter powers.
  

And for clarification, here is the updated tooltip:

Your Melee Encounter & At-Will powers shorten the cooldown of your Ranged Encounter powers by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Your Ranged Encounter & At-Will powers shorten the cooldown of your Melee Encounter powers by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Your Daily powers shorten the cooldown of all your Encounter powers by 3/6/9/12/15%.

What this has done in practice - alongside the other changes to recharge times, Swiftness of the Fox no longer multi-proccing on group fights, etc. - is that every couple of rotations, where I get "messed up" and don't have my CDs lined up properly, is I use a Daily or AW once or twice and all of the appropriate Encounters are off CD. The Daily change, in particular, feels nice because if I swap into melee stance and go "****, they all have 2s left" I can cast a Daily without the need to swap back to ranged stance. It's also nice that I feel like whenever my rotation gets messed up, casting a Daily or AW feels like it is contributing toward my goal of "cast Encounters all day long" instead of just filling time.

I look forward to getting this into the hands of our dedicated HRs and seeing how this works out for you guys.

@amenar thank you for this latest update on Swiftness. It sounds like you guys have taken on board what some of us want to preserve, which is a unique, fast and furious play style. I am looking forward to seeing/testing these new changes in action now. I wish I had a PC so I could offer better feedback from the Preview Server.

I am already figuring out in my head which rotations are going to work and which are not

@amenar Now we have Swiftness back on track and it sounds like it is going to be usable again (for its playstyle) I think there needs to be amendments the Archery and Combat Capstones.

I suggest put something in them that puts them on par with the Trapper Capstone. With the 2 Capstones massively improved we could then see what would need buffing etc with regards to Archery and Combat Trees. Big boosts to damage and survivability would help with their respective Encounters etc.

For instance Ranged gets a 300% boost to all Ranged Powers for 10 seconds, increased Crit chance & Severity, 20% reduction on Ranged cool downs per Ranged Encounter used, bonus Piercing damage, Stealth when hit for 2 seconds (once per activation) and AP regen. This could activate when you apply a Prey or something. Maybe a cool down of 20 seconds or something (so 10 seconds on 10 seconds off). Tactical application of this to improve DPS.

Combat capstone gets 500% damage increase to Melee At-Wills for 10 seconds (would say Encounters but Plant Growth is way too powerful), increased Life Steal & Severity, 20% reduction on Melee cool downs per Melee Encounter used, 20% increased Deflect & Deflect Severity and redirect a % of the damage back at the attacker whilst healing for 2% of it. This could activate like I mentioned above for Ranged.

Anyhoo as I don't have access to ACT or Preview or anything like that I am just spouting random numbers and ideas rather than thinking about pure hard maths... I leave that to the experts. What I am trying to get at is if the Capstones were improved massively for their respective trees we could see where they stand.

The Feat Battlehoned should also be changed to be a Passive that would appeal to Archery and Combat only. Trapper already has a number of Passives which are really good. No-one uses this Passive so might as well use one of the ideas on this thread to change it... But to appeal more to Archery and Combat some how.

deathdealersera

@amenar Thank you for the great work you have done on HR.

Here are a few suggestions.

Giving Archery spec Burst damage boost would be a viable option. Survival boost towards Combat would be a viable option with melee damage boost (not very high burst, but piercing damage like it was or close to in module 3 when Combat spec actually meant something).

One of the main reasons why everyone loves trapper besides the DoT damage from Thorned Roots, is the Cooldown reduction seen from 2 particular feats. I am not here to get them reworked or removed or nerfed. I enjoyed the Trapper spec and probably will ALWAYS enjoy it, but this is what trapper should be. A fun spec, not the Flavor of the Month Spec to be used. Atleast a hybrid class like HR must have all specs viable and suitable for both PvP and PvE.

Plus a rework of Thorned Roots must be done to prioritize damage on Archery (for ranged) and Combat (for Melee).

General Solution:
One way to tackle the problem of making Archery or Combat spec viable is to provide a similar form of recovery. As we all know that Archery spec has a Cooldown reduction mechanic for Ranged encounters which is dependent on Recovery. This feat can be completely removed and be replaced with more damage. Please let it be more damage rather than any other form of Percentage Damage which could be piercing (this is a replacement for Bottomless Quiver). Something similar to Trapper's Thorned Roots would make it Viable. The capstone could be reworked as "For next 10 seconds 50% of all Ranged damage taken by your opponent will be Piercing damage". The possibilities are endless. For combat, removing Healing depression on Wild's Medicine would help bring back combat but its not enough. Combat lacks damage too. What's the point of having At-will Piercing damage, which would benefit only Pathfinder because of the Bugged Careful Attack as it has been reported multiple times of having cooldown dependent on attackers and etc etc etc. So, if Careful attack was fixed, then this would make the Combat spec lackluster, to tackle this, the easiest way would be to do something similar as proposed for Archery, including Stamina regeneration which could be taken from Archery spec to allow Shift Cooldown and replacing At-will piercing damage with all melee skill's being taken into consideration for Piercing damage with the capstone acting as "For next 5 Seconds 50% all melee damage is Piercing damage, this effect lasts 10 seconds" (this is a minimum threshold and can be increased depending on how dangerous this can be).

But the question is, how do we tackle the problem of longer cooldowns, right? Aren't the folks playing trapper for it. Well the answer was posted here before. Move the Swiftness of the Fox feat to Tier 2 to allow flexibility. This would help combat too.

But what if this shifting of SotF from T4 to T2 is literally not possible in every sense of the word, what if the Developers here have a different approach, then there is a way. But a rework of Stormstep Action is needed. This Class Feature would then need a rework to be allowed flexibility with HR cooldown Reduction builds. Yes this would bring back Stormwarden, and with the rework proposed for the damage bonuses for Combat and Archery, could make Stormwarden Archery and Combat specs viable.

So the next question, what should Stormstep Action do?

Well the 10 second Limit must be definitely reduced to 5 seconds to allow flexibility in using this Class Feature. The offhand bonus should be able to reduce this limit by 1 more second. on Each rank up a Cooldown Reduction of 0.75s or 1s must be done rather than 0.5s, which is too less.

But the outcome can be magnificent if these ideas or suggestions can be implemented.

Please note, make only one the necessary changes regarding cooldown reduction, i.e. either move Swiftness of the Fox to T2 instead of leaving it at T4
OR
Rework Stormstep Action.

The damage boosts (or changes) suggested must be enforced regardless of whether Cooldown Reduction changes.

Please note, these are rough ideas and I haven't worked them out systematically on Paper. But on a general scale, these values would never make a Trapper overpowered, and could bring Archery and Combat as more of Burst damage variations focusing on 1 stance more than the other. This would help in making use of skills like "Hawk Shot, Split the Sky, Commanding Shot, etc" viable again. With utility buffs being good replacements for use in melee stance for Archery spec and making "Fox Cunning, Boar, Marauder's, etc" viable against for Combat spec.

whitespicyrice

@genjundead I don't know how you can't see insignias ruined HRs...but this thread isn't about PvP and insignias, it's about Buffing this class. I only put it out there to just say that it what made our class very weak in the new meta game.

Also, before archery affected both ranged and melee stances in module 2-3. It was reducing all the encounters by i think 0.5% every time you crit or something like that i don't remember. I'm not pushing for it to be melee but HRs are about both stances to be used and to go with archery tree you need some survivability with the melee stance powers for example Marauders Rush, Oakskin ( for the heals - which is still completely useless ), Steel breeze's stamina regain, and even if you wanna run Cordon in the archery rotation Plant Growth root is a very good power to hold someone in place when you are being chased down by other melee classes.

I thought about Bottomless Quiver cooldown increased to 50% instead of 30% as well.
And Unflinching Aim increased to 50% from 20%

You don't want to buff the tree to the point where it's broken. Adding piercing damage to the tree is a no-no. This is HR we are talking about, pushing it towards a TR - Shocking Execution build would just be absurd.

I think it would be well balanced by increasing the damage on Unflinching Aim to 50% and on top of the capstone 50% ~ which leads to 100% damage bonus on one target and 50% passively, because if you look at how tanky classes are these days which high deflect, high tenacity, high damage resistance then keeping the way as it is would still make it a useless tree. With that damage buff you can atleast get some good burst damage on the target regardless the class we fight.

I'm not saying to make it completely broken with the buffs, but, 100% damage bonus, in my opinion, would be balanced and still with the deflect people have these days wouldn't make something one shot but still very consistent damage and still be able to kill somebody while they are still able to kill you.

gdubjoker

I haven't seen any notes in this thread regarding this so does anyone know if Fox Shift will still consume two melee stacks of AotS and leave one ranged stack?

Also the most recent suggested changes to cooldowns to provide a fix for the swiftness fix sounds like you are investing some real time to get the class right. Thanks to the dev's devotion to our class.

landelmer

ralexinor said:

@amenar



I think you need to disable at wills and dailies reducing cooldowns for pvp at least, and also by doing this you're putting combat and archery ages away from trapper again.



By doing this you're introducing the permadaze meta back into pvp again especially with the fixes to dazes and roots.



Additionally, if you're going ahead with this, please consider toning down the damage of Thorned Roots or you'll have too much imbalance between paths again. Buff the base damage of the hr class so the trapper tree doesn't see any net changes, but swiftness of the fox and thorned roots will set the path well and above archery and combat unless you give them a 100-200% damage bonus.

For a person that no longer plays the game several of your suggestions were instituted.
Let's let the PC guys and gals test out the changes before you want to NERF the trapper in PvP. The Dev restored my faith in his work and now I am confident he will do this correctly.

So please relax and make more suggestions on how to improve the other trees, thanks!

whitespicyrice

@amenar Also, my apologies for not acknowledging your work. You have greatly inspired me to actually post on the forums about this class for out the 3 years I have played this game. These changes you are making are absolutely incredible, keep up the good work and i'd be glad to hear from what you have to say

Okay, as I said before the buff to Unflinching Aim is a must and the capstone change is also a must as well. Through out the years of experience i have played in this game and knowing mainly all the mechanics towards every class and their feats and builds I can say that the base damage buffs you increase are stuff not enough. However, the commanding shot buff is very nice and needs to be done towards mostly every other encounter power we have.

HRs have one of the worst base damage for at-wills ( Not Aim Shot ), encounters and dailies in the game. I wouldn't consider increasing the damage by encounters like you did with Commanding Shot, because 300% buff to all the other encounters like Constricting Arrow, Binding Arrow, Hindering Strike/Shot would make Trapper absolutely ridiculous.

I would suggest buffing them by maybe at least 50 - 100%.

I'm also in love with the Aim Shot buffing as well, but changing the Unflinching Aim to reduce cooldowns by 0.5s ( In the addition to the feat buff it still gives ) is still basically useless. If you still want to look into that then make it like 2 seconds or about 3 seconds, then that would be good and i'm sure a lot of people would agree too. Aim Shot is a very hard hitting At-will, so pushing more to that would make it decently viable.

Another big change would be the first T1 top feat in the Archery Tree ( which i am sure you are aware of ) currently recovers 25% faster stamina while in ranged stance is not working. I have tested this feat every module since the changes to the shift bar we got in module 4 or 5 I believe it was. That needs to get fixed or atleast look into it and rework it.

Another important Archery feat that I forgot to mention is the Stillness Of The Forest feat.
Rework or reverse it completely.
For example - Make it 10% critical chance with no foes within 25 feet of you and 25% damage buff the further you are to the target. Still, in my opinion, wouldn't be enough. I would buff the damage by 10-15% and so the final feat would say this...

Stillness Of The Forest: Increases damage further away from your target by 35%. Additionally, increases critical chance when there are no foes within 25 feet of you by 10%.

One more feat I have to mention is Rising Focus. Currently increases power and critical severity by 5% by each time you do a critical hit with a ranged power and lasts 6 seconds and stacks up to 3 times. The only problem to this feat is that it lasts 6 seconds...it's too short in PvP.
I would consider increasing it's duration by an additional 4 seconds making it 10 seconds. An increase to the stacks would be good as well, making it stack up to 5 times instead of 3.

ghoulz66

patcherrkm said:

ghoulz66 said:

patcherrkm said:

ghoulz66 said:

patcherrkm said:

ghoulz66 said:

patcherrkm said:

These changes should pretty much square up the trappers. Good work. Maybe a little tweaking, but damage should be decent and the playstyle preserved. A little tweaking maybe necessary but it looks great on paper. Bugs fixed, seems balanced as far as I can tell.

Let's get to the crux of the issue here though.

Combat needs love - better capstone, more useful feats. My suggestions is move the piercing damage to the capstone and make it 100% piercing for all melee attacks. Make a feat increase melee encounter damage by damage by 2-300%. This should give combat HR's some big burst damage.

Archery - needs love too. change the capstone - 100% piercing damage for all ranged attacks. ranged at wills can be fired on the run. make a feat increase ranged encounter damage by 2-300%.

This will help those trees compete with the very desirable quick rotations, aspect of serpent, throrned roots, HAMSTER capstone of the trapper.

Sleek Pepper
Midnight Express

A 100% piercing 300% buffed tactical plant growth nuke in PVE and PVE is making the top scientists quake in their boots.

This just isn't going to work. Plant growth does NOT need any further buffs to it. It's damage more than performs well. Gushing wound with the same treatment is just begging for trouble to happen. They do not need any buffs. It's the at-wills that are underperforming at an extreme.

The increase could only apply to the initial hit. We just need some burst potential. Let trappers do consistent damage. Let combat and archery have damage come out a little more bursty. Even with my proposed change we wouldnt have the burst of a GF, nor the tankiness of one. Just might be more fun and diverse to play. And that's the goal. Competitive options.

Uhhh, 100% piercing buffed powers..... I'm sure the GWF would enjoy being annihilated by that.

I'm not really worried about BiS GWF's. They currently melt an HR in seconds. Why are you on this thread worried about GWF's. Go troll elsewhere.

Why don't you give some reasonable suggestions then while you're trolling here yourself?

Seriously, go play your GWF. Get out of this thread. What fun is it to keep HR's weak? You think HR's doing laughable damage is good for this game?

I have been here since the start trying to help the HR. I'm here for suggestions, not outrageous buff 300% on everything kind of nonsense that would make the rebalancing pointless in the end.

hastur905

I have tested archery path using atwill for pathfinder (name escapes me atm), I have 2 points in the feat for this and am running a critical sev build with a greater vorpal totaling 168% severity. With that the atwill climbs in damage to a high of 6k damage non critical and just over 12k critical, solo I am testing this in WoD. My hope is this illustrates the problem with archery atm.

amenar

Hey all, another small list of upcoming changes:

• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Battle Crazed: Now grants bonus melee damage with every stack as well. Duration increased to 6s, up from 3s.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Hasty Retreat: Now also increases your movement speed by a small amount at all times, in addition to the existing proc effect.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Unflinching Aim: Aimed Shot now reduces the CD of your currently recharging Encounter powers (no longer just Ranged powers) by 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1.0s (up from 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5s).
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Longshot: Damage dealt by this feat increased to 20/40/60/80/100% of Weapon Damage, up from 10/20/30/40/50%. In addition, this is now actually Piercing damage, instead of having an undocumented feature of behaving somewhat like Piercing damage.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Scoundrel Training: No longer affects the damage displayed on the tooltips of your At-Will powers.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: When Lucky Blades is triggered, it now also increases your Encounter power damage by 3/6/9/12/15%.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: Tooltip properly reports a 6s duration, instead of listing 4s.
  

ghoulz66

amenar said:

Hey all, another small list of upcoming changes:

• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Battle Crazed: Now grants bonus melee damage with every stack as well. Duration increased to 6s, up from 3s.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Hasty Retreat: Now also increases your movement speed by a small amount at all times, in addition to the existing proc effect.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Unflinching Aim: Aimed Shot now reduces the CD of your currently recharging Encounter powers (no longer just Ranged powers) by 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1.0s (up from 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5s).
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Longshot: Damage dealt by this feat increased to 20/40/60/80/100% of Weapon Damage, up from 10/20/30/40/50%. In addition, this is now actually Piercing damage, instead of having an undocumented feature of behaving somewhat like Piercing damage.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Scoundrel Training: No longer affects the damage displayed on the tooltips of your At-Will powers.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: When Lucky Blades is triggered, it now also increases your Encounter power damage by 3/6/9/12/15%.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: Tooltip properly reports a 6s duration, instead of listing 4s.
  

That's nice, but when are the at-wills truly going to receive attention? The changes really aren't doing anything different to help combat. Just further buffs for plant growth and gushing wound, their only viable DPS sources. The at-wills are still performing poorly and this just leaves the tree in the same ditch it's already in.


Slapping more flat buffs on the tree is not getting to the real issues of combat. Combat has at-wills that are over 1/3 the damage output of a GWF and even GF. They are simply not viable where they're at now. Gushing wound and plant growth just throw us into a CD of laughable DPS output while other classes blow combat HRs away while they can do just about nothing while waiting.

hastur905

Thanks @amenar these additional changes look very interesting, can't wait to test these.

I think I mentioned scoundrel feat earlier, could we change it to be when noticed your at wills will do more damage instead of when you remain unnoticed. More damage output when fighting for your life is better than when some one else holding agro imho.

ghoulz66

Plant growth for combat is already receiving the the buff of the T4 feat. It also grants the 40-50% piercing damage on each tick of plant growth's DoT. If you test it on live, it already performs more than adequately.

We don't need flat buffs on the combat tree, especially for encounters only. We need underperforming powers buffed only, not everything. Some powers like the at-wills likely need a double buff to become viable for a combat build in PVE. Then we have lackluster powers like thorn strike and a couple single target encounters. They're not going to be viable for PVE, and they need a flat buff to them anyway for PVP, similar too all these damage buffs to Commanding Shot or Longstriders. Buffs to the powers themselves, not tiny little buffs to the tree that do NOT benefit all the vastly underperforming powers and further boosting the already fine preforming powers.

beckylunatic

hastur905 said:

Thanks @amenar these additional changes look very interesting, can't wait to test these.



I think I mentioned scoundrel feat earlier, could we change it to be when noticed your at wills will do more damage instead of when you remain unnoticed. More damage output when fighting for your life is better than when some one else holding agro imho.

It's a shared feat with Trickster Rogues, and a way of implementing something like "Sneak Attack", pretty much straight out of the D&D handbook.

zonoske

I'm pretty sure battled crazed buffs melee At-wills. It stacks up to 5 times @ 3% each.

ghoulz66

zonoske#5272 said:

I'm pretty sure battled crazed buffs melee At-wills. It stacks up to 5 times @ 3% each.

You don't get it. A 15% buff isn't going to make something like rapid strike viable which is dealing almost half the damage of at-wills of other classes. The tree isn't underperforming because it lacks proper buffs, it's underperforming because the vast majority of powers are.

whitespicyrice

amenar said:

Hey all, another small list of upcoming changes:

• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Battle Crazed: Now grants bonus melee damage with every stack as well. Duration increased to 6s, up from 3s.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Hasty Retreat: Now also increases your movement speed by a small amount at all times, in addition to the existing proc effect.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Unflinching Aim: Aimed Shot now reduces the CD of your currently recharging Encounter powers (no longer just Ranged powers) by 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1.0s (up from 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5s).
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Longshot: Damage dealt by this feat increased to 20/40/60/80/100% of Weapon Damage, up from 10/20/30/40/50%. In addition, this is now actually Piercing damage, instead of having an undocumented feature of behaving somewhat like Piercing damage.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Scoundrel Training: No longer affects the damage displayed on the tooltips of your At-Will powers.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: When Lucky Blades is triggered, it now also increases your Encounter power damage by 3/6/9/12/15%.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: Tooltip properly reports a 6s duration, instead of listing 4s.
  

It has always been piercing damage, ever since it came out, nobody else realized that. I have tested it a lot and it was always that way. This 50% buff on it is very nice, great job on that, and the aim shot reducing all cool downs. You acknowledged that super fast when i suggested it, i'm seriously impressed.

Hasty Retreat feat change is most definitely a must, that needed the correct change exactly and i didn't even think about that.^

That Combat feat change is also good, but still not enough. Increase it by another 10%.

I really don't want to buff them that much because still currently HRs can kill low geared players without insignias.
So, I would think 10% additional buff to that feat would be good balancing and not over powering it.

krondhor

amenar said:

Hey all, another small list of upcoming changes:

• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Battle Crazed: Now grants bonus melee damage with every stack as well. Duration increased to 6s, up from 3s.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Hasty Retreat: Now also increases your movement speed by a small amount at all times, in addition to the existing proc effect.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Unflinching Aim: Aimed Shot now reduces the CD of your currently recharging Encounter powers (no longer just Ranged powers) by 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1.0s (up from 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5s).
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Longshot: Damage dealt by this feat increased to 20/40/60/80/100% of Weapon Damage, up from 10/20/30/40/50%. In addition, this is now actually Piercing damage, instead of having an undocumented feature of behaving somewhat like Piercing damage.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Scoundrel Training: No longer affects the damage displayed on the tooltips of your At-Will powers.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: When Lucky Blades is triggered, it now also increases your Encounter power damage by 3/6/9/12/15%.
  
• Hunter Ranger: Feat: Lucky Blades: Tooltip properly reports a 6s duration, instead of listing 4s.
  

Some nice changes here, the capstone feats (Combat/Archery) still need a rework/boost and we should be slowly there.

By the way can you please tell us in details, concerning Battle Crazed, how much is the melee damage bonus it grants with every stack?

lirithiel

landelmer said:

ralexinor said:

@amenar



I think you need to disable at wills and dailies reducing cooldowns for pvp at least, and also by doing this you're putting combat and archery ages away from trapper again.



By doing this you're introducing the permadaze meta back into pvp again especially with the fixes to dazes and roots.



Additionally, if you're going ahead with this, please consider toning down the damage of Thorned Roots or you'll have too much imbalance between paths again. Buff the base damage of the hr class so the trapper tree doesn't see any net changes, but swiftness of the fox and thorned roots will set the path well and above archery and combat unless you give them a 100-200% damage bonus.

For a person that no longer plays the game several of your suggestions were instituted.
Let's let the PS guys and gals test out the changes before you want to NERF the trapper in PvP. The Dev restored my faith in his work and now I am confident he will do this correctly.

So please relax and make more suggestions on how to improve the other trees, thanks!

@landelmer shut your face. You can't see past your own nose. I'll say it once again. Regardless of whether or not @ralexinor still plays she knows more on about this game and HRs than you know about yourself. She is by far and away the most knowledgeable person here so she has every right to speak up. You on the other hand...

I'm sorry for ranting but I can only take so much from one imbecile.

ghoulz66

whitespicyrice said:

That Combat feat change is also good, but still not enough. Increase it by another 10%.

No, just no.

Please, enough of these pointless buffs! We need underperforming powers have their base damage buffed! Slapping a 15% and another 15% isn't going to help them.

All we're going to see is the majority of DPS come from plant growth and gushing wound on bosses. Just like it CURRENTLY is!

whitespicyrice

ghoulz66 said:

whitespicyrice said:

That Combat feat change is also good, but still not enough. Increase it by another 10%.

No, just no.

Please, enough of these pointless buffs! We need underperforming powers have their base damage buffed! Slapping a 15% and another 15% isn't going to help them.

All we're going to see is the majority of DPS come from plant growth and gushing wound on bosses. Just like it CURRENTLY is!

I did say buff the current encounter powers by 50% - 100%. Like he did with commanding shot by 300% but 300% is too much because Trappers would benefit too much from that.

I only said to buff it by 10% because of the combat tree, in addition to the other buffs i have suggested.

Go back to what I have said before and you will see.

ghoulz66

whitespicyrice said:

ghoulz66 said:

whitespicyrice said:

That Combat feat change is also good, but still not enough. Increase it by another 10%.

No, just no.

Please, enough of these pointless buffs! We need underperforming powers have their base damage buffed! Slapping a 15% and another 15% isn't going to help them.

All we're going to see is the majority of DPS come from plant growth and gushing wound on bosses. Just like it CURRENTLY is!

I did say buff the current encounter powers by 50% - 100%. Like he did with commanding shot by 300% byt 300% is too much because Trappers would benefit too much from that.

Go back to what I have said before and you will see.

The tree does not need further damage buffs to it. You haven't ever used a longstrider's buffed plant growth have you? It is MORE than enough. We don't need to be tossing more unnecessary buffs for powers that are already in line.

flowcyto

Not a big fan of Archery becoming more anchored to Aimed Shot, but eh. I don't think the goal of the non-Trapper trees should be to reduce encounter cds by that much, as one can always play as a Trapper for that sort of playstyle.

And yeah I generally agree that the issue w/ Combat isn't w/ lacking in general dmg boosts as much as too many attacks in its base repertoire being weak. Plant Growth already hits hard; we don't need it to hit harder since the tree is already reliant upon it and Gushing Wound for any amount of competitive dmg (unless ya like switching to Ranged frequently and using CoA, Rain of Arrows, and/or Thorn Ward, and that point ya mine as well play the other trees- Trapper if ur stance-dancing so often, Archery if ur relying on 3 decent-dps ranged attack powers to stay afloat).

genjundead

ghoulz66 said:

whitespicyrice said:

ghoulz66 said:

whitespicyrice said:

That Combat feat change is also good, but still not enough. Increase it by another 10%.

No, just no.

Please, enough of these pointless buffs! We need underperforming powers have their base damage buffed! Slapping a 15% and another 15% isn't going to help them.

All we're going to see is the majority of DPS come from plant growth and gushing wound on bosses. Just like it CURRENTLY is!

I did say buff the current encounter powers by 50% - 100%. Like he did with commanding shot by 300% byt 300% is too much because Trappers would benefit too much from that.

Go back to what I have said before and you will see.

The tree does not need further damage buffs to it. You haven't ever used a longstrider's buffed plant growth have you? It is MORE than enough. We don't need to be tossing more unnecessary buffs for powers that are already in line.

ghoulz66 is just thinking about hr as a whole how to make the hr better and he is right about what he said. and lot have said the same thing.

trapper is sup par to other classes and the archery and combat tree is sup par to the trapper tree. the best way to fix this is focus on at wills as that is the main source of damage archery and combat have were as trappers don't benefit from using.

EDIT:
trappers can still use at wills but gets nothing from using it
archers can still use melee skills but also gets nothing from it
combat can use range skills but still get nothing from it
buffing at wills will help archery and combat but not trapper and hopefully bring all the 3 trees on par with each other, then we just have to make the hr on par with other classes.

ghoulz66

All these changes in their current form will only drive combat builds towards combat archery hybrids for the longshot buff because let's face it, we need more damage from somewhere and rain of arrows certainly can fit the bill because everything else you can find in the melee arsenal won't be helping you.

That's exactly what I would be doing. I'd ignore battlecrazed and lucky blades still in favor of ranged powers and longshot. That's how poorly weak the underperforming melee powers are.

whitespicyrice

ghoulz66 said:

whitespicyrice said:

ghoulz66 said:

whitespicyrice said:

That Combat feat change is also good, but still not enough. Increase it by another 10%.

No, just no.

Please, enough of these pointless buffs! We need underperforming powers have their base damage buffed! Slapping a 15% and another 15% isn't going to help them.

All we're going to see is the majority of DPS come from plant growth and gushing wound on bosses. Just like it CURRENTLY is!

I did say buff the current encounter powers by 50% - 100%. Like he did with commanding shot by 300% byt 300% is too much because Trappers would benefit too much from that.

Go back to what I have said before and you will see.

The tree does not need further damage buffs to it. You haven't ever used a longstrider's buffed plant growth have you? It is MORE than enough. We don't need to be tossing more unnecessary buffs for powers that are already in line.

I am talking PvP sense. HRs seem fine to me for PvE, you get buffs from companions, GFs, DCs, etc. And yet you guys still enough damage. I am no longer replying to your post because you're just gonna talk about the PvE aspect of the changes, which is not that needed.

PvP HRs need a flat damage buff on mostly everything, encounters, feats, etc.