Official Feedback Thread: Hunter Ranger changes

dheffernan

Arguments regarding PvP balance should go straight to /dev/null.

No game of this type has ever produced balanced PvP. Neverwinter will not be the first. Someone is going to end up on the bottom of the PvP totem pole and it may as well be us.

I haven't PvPed since the NCL preview (still wearing the Elemental Burning armor I got from that) but I didn't feel particularly weak or put upon. Success in PvP is a product of tactics, particularly working with your group. You don't have to be a rock star, you just have to do your part.

ralexinor

dheffernan said:

Arguments regarding PvP balance should go straight to /dev/null.

No game of this type has ever produced balanced PvP. Neverwinter will not be the first. Someone is going to end up on the bottom of the PvP totem pole and it may as well be us.

I haven't PvPed since the NCL preview (still wearing the Elemental Burning armor I got from that) but I didn't feel particularly weak or put upon. Success in PvP is a product of tactics, particularly working with your group. You don't have to be a rock star, you just have to do your part.

Arguments regarding PvE balance should go straight to /dev/null too, then. Why don't we just sit back and let the devs do all the work instead?

NCL was ages ago, the meta was different, HR was still viable, there wasn't as much healing or need for burst. Success in PvP also relies on having a good class composition, unfortunately. There are instances where it's impossible to win against certain compositions if you lack certain classes regardless of skill or communication. This has always been the case, however.

You can honestly say the same thing about PvE balance, there's always a class that's weaker than others and it may as well be us, right? My comments are directed at both PvE and PvP. I suggest tone down your PvE supremacy and look at things objectively, like I have been trying to do. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean other people don't.

Also gabriel, I'm sorry but I'm going to say your comment about fun is selfish. I don't mean any offense, and I do agree that Trapper is fun, but there's more than one way to have fun. Again, I did suggest an alternative to nerfing trapper (buffing the other feat trees by absurd amounts), and if that's what the devs want to do, then be my guest.

Additionally the number crunching I did was to prove a point, because there's a lot of you that don't seem to understand why Swiftness/Thorned are the crux of the problem in terms of balance with the other paths.

gabrieldourden

I guess we are on completely different sides of the board. To me you simply want to kill the feeling for the sake of balance...

By the way roots are never ever 50% of damage. Even running with two roots powers they are always around 30-35% pretty close to Plant Growth. If you run with two roots powers and Fox it may be but then you're crippling your overall DPS in PVE and obviously roots shine more.

And if you run Longstrider, Constrictive and Cordon which is the best group overall DPS strategy roots are even less.

vinceent1

can we finally make an agreement?

we dont want permaroot in the game. we want better dps at pvp - work towards that devs

p.s. if you are too scared that trapper should be overpowered with better damage, then give better damage only to archery and combat feats .....

it is that hard to figure out?.....


aka -

players that defend their permarooting pvp gameplay need to step down

players that defend their pve trapper to stay as it is in everything need also step down

gabrieldourden

@metalldjt: we never had a big hitter and that's the main issue in pvp. Or actually we did have it in the beginning when Fox Shift was multi-hitting like a truck, then it was nerfed. Then the only other time when ranger was viable in PVP was due to its ability to heal while using dots to kill enemies, but now everybody can heal so that tactic is pointless.

bittynation

Trapper build is fine, even with swiftness/Thorned. The other two trees need a dps damage boost in the feet tree t4/t5. Combat needs capstone reworked. Then we need a daily that has burst damage. HR can't be fixed with just adding a little damage to unused powers.

gabrieldourden

bittynation said:

Trapper build is fine, even with swiftness/Thorned. The other two trees need a dps damage boost in the feet tree t4/t5. Combat needs capstone reworked. Then we need a daily that has burst damage. HR can't be fixed with just adding a little damage to unused powers.

+1. This is pretty much what we need. Plus a slow on Marauder's Escape and a return to the previous versions of Plant Growth and Steel Breeze.
Shift change is welcome as well as some other stuff (Ambush for example, but please do something for Bear Trap...)

ghoulz66

I can't even get the combat capstone to work in any effective way other than the bloody rain of swords trick which is such a god awful encounter.

It's pointless anyway seeing how pathetically weak the melee at-wills are.

Seriously DEVs, I thought this was the whole point of taking a close look at the HR to improve it?

alexprice552

The root of the problem is not trapper roots or overperforming trapper, or underperforming archer, or whatever similar to it.
The root of the problem is the unprofessionalism of designers:
1. they gather data and summarize it in a wrong way, because they do not know the game
2. they gather opinion of the wrong testers, which seem to be way less competent than players according to the set of changes, which makes those testers happy.
3. they do not listen to community, and when community starts to rage, they ban people.

What should be done first is:
1. gathering representatives of HR community that can provide nessesary data. Those representatives shan't be some random HRs who started to play HR 2 weeks before changes are announced.
2. gathering feedback from those representatives (on current problems) and making a public post of proposed changes after the discussion.
3. making changes (coding) and posting them on preview shard
4. balancing changes on preview shard based on the feedback of representatives from HR and other classes.
That was told and repeated millions of times, but so far the same mistakes are repeated again and again.
If you don't know the game, you should listen to people who know it.
But I guess it's already late to discuss it (as always).

The crutch that fixes damage in PVP without impacting PVE is piercing damage.
If you make thorned roots to deal piercing damage and balance its damage you can at least provide playable HR in PVP for a period of time until you redesign HR in a proper way.
For all people who think that roots top the dps chart in PVE, it's totally wrong:
roots deal a huge chunk of damage on trapper, ofc, but plant growth always tops the table in PVE in 5 men runs, if HR is doing everything properly. In tiamat the best damage is provided by careful attack/blade storm. I do not have the data about Cold Steel Hurricane, but I guess it can top the charts in mass fights (heralds/tiamat) also.

jaegernl

defiantone99 said:

Trapper HRs actually have no cooldowns at all. 6 spammable encounters. This needs to be fixed.

Thanks for your tremendously helpful feedback. It shows great understanding of the issues the HR is dealing with. Especially the part where you explained why exactly this is a problem is insightful.

dmcewen

Again with the nerf hammers. We get it, pvp need burst and archer needs a high base damage. Combat needs alls kinds of love. Everyone just needs to stop trying to mangling the class to fix problems the devs could easily fix if they wanted it. The could add a better daily or rework archer or combat feats but the choose not to do it. You destroy one path just to fix the other will cause everyone to switch trees, clearly not the answer.

jaegernl

defiantone99 said:

jaegernl said:

defiantone99 said:

Trapper HRs actually have no cooldowns at all. 6 spammable encounters. This needs to be fixed.

Thanks for your tremendously helpful feedback. It shows great understanding of the issues the HR is dealing with. Especially the part where you explained why exactly this is a problem is insightful.

Because it is definitely a result of bugs. From an above post-3. Oak skin procs instant ranged and longstrider procs instant melee cooldowns Also you mentioned Gushing Wound bugging cooldowns. It does seem to.

But you don't rely on those interactions to spam your six encounters. You can use three skills that don't show that behaviour at all and still keep going. This is basic knowledge. Stay away if you don't know. All you're doing is showing tremendous ignorance.

jaegernl

defiantone99 said:

The bugs need to be fixed, bottom line.

Then speak about the bugs.

You see, blanket statements are the darnest things. You only have to mention one instance on where they're false, and they become worthless.

gabrieldourden

defiantone99 said:

jaegernl said:

defiantone99 said:

jaegernl said:

defiantone99 said:

Trapper HRs actually have no cooldowns at all. 6 spammable encounters. This needs to be fixed.

Thanks for your tremendously helpful feedback. It shows great understanding of the issues the HR is dealing with. Especially the part where you explained why exactly this is a problem is insightful.

Because it is definitely a result of bugs. From an above post-3. Oak skin procs instant ranged and longstrider procs instant melee cooldowns Also you mentioned Gushing Wound bugging cooldowns. It does seem to.

But you don't rely on those interactions to spam your six encounters. You can use three skills that don't show that behaviour at all and still keep going. This is basic knowledge. Stay away if you don't know. All you're doing is showing tremendous ignorance.

The bugs need to be fixed, bottom line.

Honestly speaking there are far more important things than fixing this kind bugs. Nobody uses Oak Skin in reality and even if Longstrider procs melee cooldowns (by the way, it procs them only if you it more than 9m from your target as far as I can see on live, otherwise it doesn't proc Swiftness which is definitely a bug too) you still use your full rotation.
In PVE Longstrider usually comes with Constrictive and Cordon (Sume uses that rotation and I use it too in party and very often alone), Constrictive is needed to proc Master Trapper and Cordon is an heavy hitter, so you always run your full rotation on the Ranged side.
To be honest I would even accept losing Thorned roots and getting back the damage via an overall increase of the baseline. This will open the space to different rotations, but Archery and Combat would still need a lot of love (especially combat). At-wills are simply underwhelming...

durugudesu

Let's get back to the topic at hand.

for HR feedback, mind opening a different thread and let those who wants their voices heard "register" and have a group discussion(set a time) with them, maybe? I for one will make time for this if you can do it.

This would be very useful and a good filter for now, seeing that clearly there are people here with their own agenda(nerf permadaze i cant win against them blah blah, etc etc) that would not be healthy to the proper class balance that you want to implement.

Hopefully this way before you apply changes you can really get some useful feedback, @amenar

If it's a stupid idea feel free to delete this comment or tell me and i'll delete it myself XD

jhpnw

as Durugudesu said this is a feed back thread not a wish list for Nerfing. please give feed back and keep it to topic @ hand there is a HR forum you can go to complain. We want our class to be competitive in PVP and PVE and with tons of nerf this or nerf that the Devs are going to quit reading our post! do to it has turned into a troll fest. Our Dev was listening and replying till all the people with agendas started. and a lot of them I don't recognize as HRsm, put do play against them as other classes in PVP

Ara

Note Ralexinor was the Highest IL HR I have ever met and a BIS in PVP but he has been away from the game a long time and things have changed But HR is weak in the foundation of our build is the issue he is correct how to fix it i dont agree with him on. Some of the trapper setup makes up for a good % of that but the other 2 trees don't have those features to help so they need more than the trapper we just need some kind of 1 shot burst in a daily or buff in a daily that gives us a big burst to our damage for pvp

tomiotar

After making 2 copies of my HR (first I keep it as trapper and the other I respec to archer) I can say that if the objectives was buffing the other 2 paths to catch up with trapper it just fail. I didn't even tried the combat because just reading the changes you can be sure that is going to fail as a DPS, controller or anything. Is very good idea to give a cooldown reduction method for archers, but there is one basic problem Aim shot take too long to try to use it when your other encounters are on cooldown and your enemys are getting close to you. You basically gave method to reduced sligthly the cooldowns but if anyone try to use they get killed or controlled. At the end the best path is still Trapper for a extremly high margin, because it get the benefits of the increased damage on the skills and it can continue using his skills. About Steel Breeze having 3 charges I have mixed feelings, on one hand you know you can use it 3 times but at same time it make slower using your ranged skills. If you are going with Cordon+Hindering+Constricting then you have 2 skills that don't get benefit from Swiftness so I believe its beneficial and thats what the devs probably noticing it, but if you use don't use cordon or hindering having 3 charges on Steel Breeze end up as a nerf to the class.

As other people said before if the devs want to actually lower the gap between Trapper and the other 2 paths is kinda obvious that the only way is giving real buffs on the T4, T5 or capstones. What they did with aimed shot lowering the CDs is nice but it need a second buff that make the Aimed shot to shoot twice faster just for archers, so you can actually use it on the middle of a figth without getting killed while charging an at-will. Another option is giving stun to aimed shot so it worth the risk of trying to use it. Its something basic on every RPG, if the archer want to succed their arrow have to hurt or disable, you don't shoot a lot of arrow at second, you shoot strong single attacks. I've picked archers on every game I've played and on Neverwinter you get forced to pick trapper even if you like to be an archer because as a pure archer you are a just a bag of blood waiting to get dropped. The start of the new campaign is quite clear about that, first thing they ask you is to kill several waves of mobs that come one after the other and the results is that you loose all your range advantage and you also get controlled by the wolfs much before you can launch your aimed shot.

ghoulz66

Only improvement I've seen for combat with longshot feat is the increased radius for rain of arrows, a ranged power lol.

I notice no real improvement for archery, aside from the hawk eye change, and that again.

ghoulz66

Archery is lacking some very serious single target burst that has no frustrating range/time limit like aimed shot or hawk shot. When the fight comes close you just unload the rain or cordon on elites anyway, if they weren't on CD.

Then I'm puking vine growths on em out of desperation just to make them dead. The at-wills aren't helping.

alliera7311

If you want us to stop using Pathfinder. Make Blade Storm work correctly. Currently Plant Growth, and any daily used in melee except Forest Ghost will not proc with Blade Storm. Leave Plant Growth targeting alone we need to be able to cc that many adds. CW and SW all have capless AoE abilities. Don't put charges on Steel Breeze either that wont interact with our CD feats.

feanor70118

jaegernl said:

defiantone99 said:

The bugs need to be fixed, bottom line.

Then speak about the bugs.

You see, blanket statements are the darnest things. You only have to mention one instance on where they're false, and they become worthless.

Not all blanket statements become worthless because of a single contradiction. This one <----, for instance.

feanor70118

I'll add my voice to the few who've said that tinkering with small buffs to base damage and tweaking formerly useless abilities like ambush/bear trap is fundamentally the wrong way to go about fixing the HR class. It will not make the class relevant in pvp again even if it does bring us up to par with other classes in pve. I can live without the trapper playstyle (I played SW archery well into mod 5) as long as I get a class that is enjoyable and that rewards playing it with skill. The changes so far come from a perspective that - plainly - does not understand the real problems with the class.

feanor70118

dheffernan said:

Arguments regarding PvP balance should go straight to /dev/null.

No game of this type has ever produced balanced PvP. Neverwinter will not be the first. Someone is going to end up on the bottom of the PvP totem pole and it may as well be us.

I haven't PvPed since the NCL preview (still wearing the Elemental Burning armor I got from that) but I didn't feel particularly weak or put upon. Success in PvP is a product of tactics, particularly working with your group. You don't have to be a rock star, you just have to do your part.

Thank you for telling us why your opinion is completely uninformed before injecting your insubstantial bromide.

landelmer

ralexinor said:

FFF you guys need to take a step back and look at what you're asking for.

Burst damage + survivability + permadaze? Are you nuts?

Asking for an un-nerf to Steel Breeze is asking for permadaze back again. No. Don't revert the steel breeze change, you don't even use steel breeze primarily for stamina generation, it's to keep up your cooldowns as well. Who cares about its damage, it's a utility skill, not a damage skill. You guys are going about this wrong. You don't ask for buffs to a skill that gives stamina back, you ask for the base class stamina regeneration to be increased so that you're not shoehorned into using the skill.

Survivability? Who even cares when HRs die to nothing atm because of insignias, except for broken classes like GF and TR (fyi: asking to be just as broken or more so isn't the way to go about it either). Get the dodge to work, increase base stamina regen, there you go.

Burst damage? How the **** are you going to have burst damage when you want to keep your broken cooldown reduction feats, huh? It's like you want the best of both worlds, NO. Trapper CDRs = DPS, not burst, get that through your head. Until they nerf Trapper feats the class won't get the buffs it needs. It's not so much Archery and Combat feats being weak, it's Trapper being broken as **** and therefore the base class is too weak, which in turn also makes Archery and Combat weak. I'm not saying HR is OP or anything, I'm saying the class is so broken to the point where its only saving grace atm is Thorned Roots and Swiftness of the Fox, because those are far too strong. NERF THOSE and THEN buff based on what the class is after that. Stop trying to buff around broken mechanics because that won't get you anywhere. Realise that cooldown reductions/low cooldowns is the premise for DOT/DPS, NOT BURST. Burst is higher CDs + less attacking. HR is honestly not a burst class, but if you nerf the cooldown reductions then you can at least take the first step towards that.

Also Thorned Roots gets weaker the stronger the base class is, so it's less of an issue than Swiftness, but Swiftness gets much much stronger the stronger the base class is. Archery and Combat need the base class buffed unless you want to give them 100-200% damage boosts which is plain stupid (and amenar already said he didn't want to give massive buffs at this point).

You can't have a cake and also eat it, so stop asking for everything at once. The class is weak, yes, but you need to realise where the problems are coming from and FIX THAT FIRST. Until then you'll just have a broken class that barely lives due to one or two things, and having everything else about it completely useless.

@amenar, please listen to the words of a veteran player. Nerfing the class at this stage might seem harsh, but if you don't, you won't fix the real problems with the class and just compound the problems until you need to do a complete rework from the ground up again.

Also, HR is fine in pve and is nowhere near the bottom of the DPS charts. Using people who don't know how to play the class (the people who end up at the bottom of DPS charts in pve) as a premise for buffing is just asking for trouble.

If he does what you want he will lose possibly hundreds of players and paying customers. I personally love the way the trapper plays and would be fine without any buffs to the tree. Take that away with the Steel Breeze charges and I will be one of the hundreds that leave Neverwinter for good. I might even look into what it would take to obtain a refund from Microsoft for the hundreds of dollars I spent for keys and other in game items over the last year. Neverwinter is the only game I play now and this firm receives all of my funds budgeted for gaming

ghoulz66

landelmer said:

ralexinor said:

FFF you guys need to take a step back and look at what you're asking for.

Burst damage + survivability + permadaze? Are you nuts?

Asking for an un-nerf to Steel Breeze is asking for permadaze back again. No. Don't revert the steel breeze change, you don't even use steel breeze primarily for stamina generation, it's to keep up your cooldowns as well. Who cares about its damage, it's a utility skill, not a damage skill. You guys are going about this wrong. You don't ask for buffs to a skill that gives stamina back, you ask for the base class stamina regeneration to be increased so that you're not shoehorned into using the skill.

Survivability? Who even cares when HRs die to nothing atm because of insignias, except for broken classes like GF and TR (fyi: asking to be just as broken or more so isn't the way to go about it either). Get the dodge to work, increase base stamina regen, there you go.

Burst damage? How the **** are you going to have burst damage when you want to keep your broken cooldown reduction feats, huh? It's like you want the best of both worlds, NO. Trapper CDRs = DPS, not burst, get that through your head. Until they nerf Trapper feats the class won't get the buffs it needs. It's not so much Archery and Combat feats being weak, it's Trapper being broken as **** and therefore the base class is too weak, which in turn also makes Archery and Combat weak. I'm not saying HR is OP or anything, I'm saying the class is so broken to the point where its only saving grace atm is Thorned Roots and Swiftness of the Fox, because those are far too strong. NERF THOSE and THEN buff based on what the class is after that. Stop trying to buff around broken mechanics because that won't get you anywhere. Realise that cooldown reductions/low cooldowns is the premise for DOT/DPS, NOT BURST. Burst is higher CDs + less attacking. HR is honestly not a burst class, but if you nerf the cooldown reductions then you can at least take the first step towards that.

Also Thorned Roots gets weaker the stronger the base class is, so it's less of an issue than Swiftness, but Swiftness gets much much stronger the stronger the base class is. Archery and Combat need the base class buffed unless you want to give them 100-200% damage boosts which is plain stupid (and amenar already said he didn't want to give massive buffs at this point).

You can't have a cake and also eat it, so stop asking for everything at once. The class is weak, yes, but you need to realise where the problems are coming from and FIX THAT FIRST. Until then you'll just have a broken class that barely lives due to one or two things, and having everything else about it completely useless.

@amenar, please listen to the words of a veteran player. Nerfing the class at this stage might seem harsh, but if you don't, you won't fix the real problems with the class and just compound the problems until you need to do a complete rework from the ground up again.

Also, HR is fine in pve and is nowhere near the bottom of the DPS charts. Using people who don't know how to play the class (the people who end up at the bottom of DPS charts in pve) as a premise for buffing is just asking for trouble.

If he does what you want he will lose possibly hundreds of players and paying customers. I personally love the way the trapper plays and would be fine without any buffs to the tree. Take that away with the Steel Breeze charges and I will be one of the hundreds that leave Neverwinter for good. I might even look into what it would take to obtain a refund from Microsoft for the hundreds of dollars I spent for keys and other in game items over the last year. Neverwinter is the only game I play now and this firm receives all of my funds budgeted for gaming

So you're saying you'll rage quit if the CD feats are adjusted to allow room for more power buffs to the class to make Archery and Combat more in line?

landelmer

gabrieldourden said:

@ Ralexinor: if you remove the fun is there any reason to play it anymore? We should keep fun in the game. The trapper is different, plays different. What you recommend is getting another cookie cutter class, No and no. Seriously. Balance be damned, I'd rather deal less damage (like atm) but keep the fun. If Combat and Archer need buffs give them buffs in terms of feats, capstones and at-wills, but don't ruin the feeling of the trapper.

+1000

landelmer

vinceent1 said:

can we finally make an agreement?

we dont want permaroot in the game. we want better dps at pvp - work towards that devs

p.s. if you are too scared that trapper should be overpowered with better damage, then give better damage only to archery and combat feats .....

it is that hard to figure out?.....


aka -

players that defend their permarooting pvp gameplay need to step down

players that defend their pve trapper to stay as it is in everything need also step down

I guess since I do not agree with you I should just quit the game, right? You win, nothing to see here you can all go home now...

Appeasement did not work for Chamberlain and it won't work here either. For the game to continue to be free the firm needs customers. How many Trappers do you think will leave once the Devs kill the feel of the Trapper? What do you think the loss of revenue will be? Do you really think @amenar wants to be the Dev that causes a massive loss of revenue? So the PVPers can push another nerf through?

ralexinor

@landelmer stop being a spoilt kid and read posts properly. And stop with the exaggeration. There's not even hundreds of HR players in the game, tbh, and even if there were, I highly doubt they'd leave over this.

As @kangkeok said in the HR forums, the nerfs I'm proposing aren't to entirely remove the "feel" of Trapper as you call it, but to tone it down so that it's inline with the other paths, and then buff the entire base class so that all 3 paths have enough damage and viability.

Since apparently people can't read:

- Trapper: Swiftness of the Fox: reduce to 10% instead of 15%
- Trapper: Swiftness of the Fox: make it proc on skill use rather than targets hit (Swiftness of the Fox currently activates based on targets hit, which is quite possibly a BUG)
- Trapper: Thorned Roots: reduce to 50% or 70% of current damage at minimum.
- Class base damage: increase overall damage of skills by 30-50%~ (open to adjustment, some will need far more than others)
- QoL changes to some feats (i.e. Archery Stillness of the Forest should not rely on such a distance)

You still have your Trapper playstyle, and now stacking Recovery is actually effective. Overall, you should see substantial increases in damage and viability for all 3 paths, and Archery and Combat won't be aeons behind Trapper. Archery and Combat will still need some adjustments, but overall it'd be far easier to see where they stand in terms of balance. Additionally, the class could quite possibly do with an overall cooldown reduction of about 10-20%, but that's not absolutely necessary.

landelmer

ghoulz66 said:

landelmer said:

ralexinor said:

FFF you guys need to take a step back and look at what you're asking for.

Burst damage + survivability + permadaze? Are you nuts?

Asking for an un-nerf to Steel Breeze is asking for permadaze back again. No. Don't revert the steel breeze change, you don't even use steel breeze primarily for stamina generation, it's to keep up your cooldowns as well. Who cares about its damage, it's a utility skill, not a damage skill. You guys are going about this wrong. You don't ask for buffs to a skill that gives stamina back, you ask for the base class stamina regeneration to be increased so that you're not shoehorned into using the skill.

Survivability? Who even cares when HRs die to nothing atm because of insignias, except for broken classes like GF and TR (fyi: asking to be just as broken or more so isn't the way to go about it either). Get the dodge to work, increase base stamina regen, there you go.

Burst damage? How the **** are you going to have burst damage when you want to keep your broken cooldown reduction feats, huh? It's like you want the best of both worlds, NO. Trapper CDRs = DPS, not burst, get that through your head. Until they nerf Trapper feats the class won't get the buffs it needs. It's not so much Archery and Combat feats being weak, it's Trapper being broken as **** and therefore the base class is too weak, which in turn also makes Archery and Combat weak. I'm not saying HR is OP or anything, I'm saying the class is so broken to the point where its only saving grace atm is Thorned Roots and Swiftness of the Fox, because those are far too strong. NERF THOSE and THEN buff based on what the class is after that. Stop trying to buff around broken mechanics because that won't get you anywhere. Realise that cooldown reductions/low cooldowns is the premise for DOT/DPS, NOT BURST. Burst is higher CDs + less attacking. HR is honestly not a burst class, but if you nerf the cooldown reductions then you can at least take the first step towards that.

Also Thorned Roots gets weaker the stronger the base class is, so it's less of an issue than Swiftness, but Swiftness gets much much stronger the stronger the base class is. Archery and Combat need the base class buffed unless you want to give them 100-200% damage boosts which is plain stupid (and amenar already said he didn't want to give massive buffs at this point).

You can't have a cake and also eat it, so stop asking for everything at once. The class is weak, yes, but you need to realise where the problems are coming from and FIX THAT FIRST. Until then you'll just have a broken class that barely lives due to one or two things, and having everything else about it completely useless.

@amenar, please listen to the words of a veteran player. Nerfing the class at this stage might seem harsh, but if you don't, you won't fix the real problems with the class and just compound the problems until you need to do a complete rework from the ground up again.

Also, HR is fine in pve and is nowhere near the bottom of the DPS charts. Using people who don't know how to play the class (the people who end up at the bottom of DPS charts in pve) as a premise for buffing is just asking for trouble.

If he does what you want he will lose possibly hundreds of players and paying customers. I personally love the way the trapper plays and would be fine without any buffs to the tree. Take that away with the Steel Breeze charges and I will be one of the hundreds that leave Neverwinter for good. I might even look into what it would take to obtain a refund from Microsoft for the hundreds of dollars I spent for keys and other in game items over the last year. Neverwinter is the only game I play now and this firm receives all of my funds budgeted for gaming

So you're saying you'll rage quit if the CD feats are adjusted to allow room for more power buffs to the class to make Archery and Combat more in line?

Here we go with the logical fallacies. . . No I will quit because the game will no longer be fun for me. I tried other characters and they stink. I will just take my time and money and find something else to do that I enjoy.

dheffernan

Arguments regarding PvE balance should go straight to /dev/null too, then. Why don't we just sit back and let the devs do all the work instead?

PvE is the meat of the game. Additionally, a balanced PvE game is by no means out of reach. A balanced PvP game is utterly impossible. Blizzard can't do it, Cryptic can't even try.

NCL was ages ago, the meta was different, HR was still viable, there wasn't as much healing or need for burst. Success in PvP also relies on having a good class composition, unfortunately. There are instances where it's impossible to win against certain compositions if you lack certain classes regardless of skill or communication. This has always been the case, however.

You are summing up some of the reasons why attempting to balance the PvP game is chasing the rabbit.

You can honestly say the same thing about PvE balance, there's always a class that's weaker than others and it may as well be us, right?

You are correct, actually. PvE balance does not mean that every class should be equally powerful; that's impossible. It means that each class is able to function effectively against the environment and ideally that all classes are within some acceptable delta of one another. As long as my class can function (I play them all but consider HR to be my main) I'm not going to point fingers at the other kids and complain they have more.

My comments are directed at both PvE and PvP. I suggest tone down your PvE supremacy and look at things objectively, like I have been trying to do. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean other people don't.

I dislike PvP so much I went out and got a suit of what was at the time BiS PvP armor. I only stopped because the next step up requires access to a guild shop I don't expect to ever have access to.

Additionally the number crunching I did was to prove a point, because there's a lot of you that don't seem to understand why Swiftness/Thorned are the crux of the problem in terms of balance with the other paths.

The other paths are dysfunctional and will never work. They need to be reconcieved into forms that leverage stance switching. Demands for pure archer or melee HRs are just plain wrong.