I don't know how many times I have to beat the dead horse.... I've already said it enough times.
@ghoulz66 Balancing in any game is a matter of fine-tuning based on previous experiences. Obviously in this case, the HRs balancing happens in much bigger steps, because the class has 2 specs that are heavily outdated and not on the level of not only the other classes, but even its 3rd feat tree. I know that you've pretty much said everything there is to say. But you have to understand what is happening right now. Amenar presents a bunch of changes and then waits for feedback. Based on the feedback, he comes up with a new set of changes and listens to feedback again. Obviously a developer that hasn't spent a complete year putting the classes under the loupe, won't have as much experience and knowledge of the class than you, the player, who has done exactly that, would. Now is your chance to work with him and finally elevate your class to the level it deserves. Don't throw this chance away. Be as patient as Amenar is, despite all the emotional and often negative feedback. Work with him, because he is certainly willing to work with you.
We won't be getting a chance to even test the changes for the next patch. If the next patch afterwards is nearing the deadline, it might be too late to even have feedback processed. It's going to be pretty frustrating if combat is left on the shelf again for another mod.
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romotheoneMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 729Arc User
We won't be getting a chance to even test the changes for the next patch. If the next patch afterwards is nearing the deadline, it might be too late to even have feedback processed. It's going to be pretty frustrating if combat is left on the shelf again for another mod.
@ghoulz66 I kinda have the feeling that Amenar is a diligent one. You should try your luck. Summarize and submit your thoughts again.
All I can say is Amenar is a Dev who is listening and thanks for that and since he is lets keep the off topic stuff out and give him real feed back then who knows what we might get accomplished.
reduce the skirmishers gambit crit loss by 1/2 so Combat can use this feature again
All I can say is Amenar is a Dev who is listening and thanks for that and since he is lets keep the off topic stuff out and give him real feed back then who knows what we might get accomplished.
reduce the skirmishers gambit crit loss by 1/2 so Combat can use this feature again
All I can say is Amenar is a Dev who is listening and thanks for that and since he is lets keep the off topic stuff out and give him real feed back then who knows what we might get accomplished.
reduce the skirmishers gambit crit loss by 1/2 so Combat can use this feature again
better make it a t4 feat then or every single trapper will use it making the distance even further imho....
Now that we have amenar around, you guys (experienced Archery/Combat HR players) could actually come up with a specific concepts instead of just saying "this doesn't work". Give them something to start with, come up with viable combos/rotations, give them food for thought so they can decide if that's something they could see work in the game.
I'd hate to put it like this, cause it sounds mean, but its not our jobs as players to come up w/ the ideas and put them into practice. Pointing out when things aren't working after devs have tried to implement something or clarified their intent is what we can/should do as players and testers.
As far as Combat, saying it 'doesn't work' is just a simplified truth. The whole system is just setup to fail, imo, and I don't see how that system could be upheld and made competitive w/o over-buffing the other paths. I can't really find a clear solution, and that's why I'm not a dev
The capstone's Flurry buff is based on something that is supposed to trigger from encounters, yet dailies and many encounters (buffs) can't trigger it by design, and the proc dmg is based on attacks that are (by far) Combat's weakest link: At-wills. Aside from doing HAMSTER-all dmg themselves (see next reply), none of our At-wills lead to a strong Blade Hurricane proc - even w/ Aimed Strike, since the proc dmg is based only on one tick's worth of dmg. Also keep in mind that Blade Hurricane only determines its dmg from the base hit of the At-will, and it doesn't factor in the 40% extra from Piercing Blade, since that's added on separately. Throw in a paragon encounter and daily that can't trigger Flurry (Throw Caution and CSH), and the other paragon leaving you w/ one slow AoE at-will option w/ poor coverage (split strike), and you've got a tree that doesn't have good enough synergy nor a strong base for competitive dps.
It does make for a pretty damn good off-tank w/ AotLW slotted, but that's about all the good I can give Combat atm. And yes, I would def drop some of that tankiness for better offense. HRs are not meant to be tanks, after all, and higher dmg means we get stronger lifesteal procs anyways.
ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Testing with a P vorpal and the 50% crit severity feat from combat on current preview changes.
Crits with clear the ground are roughly 3500 damage plus another 1400 from piercing blades. Crits with rapid strike are roughly 4600 plus another 1700 from piercing blades.
Crit blade hurricane with rapid strike is roughly 6500. About 5500 with clear the ground. You might think it seems... ok, but you have to crit with your flurry buffed at-will in the first place so the chances are even lower. Slap in 3 encounter and you only get 6 at-will strikes to make the most of this.
Blade flurry procs without crits which are the norm were all below 3000.
My GWF on preview crits with WMS for 35000-40000, repeated, non stop. My GWF is using a trans fey, but vorpal is slightly superior for high crit. So even with an extra 100% crit severity, a crit from an AoE at-will from a combat HR can't even deal 25% the DPS of a GWF. All 6 of the flurry procs combined will barely come close to the damage of a single crit from a GWF.
Even my righteous DC is hitting for harder with lance of faith. I can burn down an elite considerably faster with a single target at-wills vs the my ranger crit with 100% severity on rapid strike. I mean, the combat HR can't even compete with a righteous DC.
Even if you're a high geared high crit god you'll still be hitting like a wet noodle. I'm not saying combat should be as powerful as a GWF, but the output is so slow. The majority of my DPS is coming from rain of arrows/plant growth/gushing wound only. I unslot them for a HE in IWD, It carries on for way longer than it ever should. My CW can cast one spell and down thayan servitors instantly while each blade flurry proc from my HR chip away 1/8th the HP off the guys.
Unbuffed damage for clear the ground was 1200, 1300 for rapid strike. It's pretty much half for almost everything else from my other characters. My righteous DC deals double this with lance of faith without buffs yet, roughly double for some SW at-wills, double for CW at-wills, like 1/3th of my GF's AoE at-wills, 1/5th of crushing surge.
No way am I saying double their damage, but could at least test them under a 50% buff. Even a damnation SW is laughing.
Ambush should really get fixed. If a source of damage is on going you are unstealthed in a blink of eyes.
Combat capstone definitely can use some changes to bring it in line with other capstone of other classes. The performance of combat will always be crippled by at wills damage by the way
1. Marauder's Escape doesn't need to do some laughable damage, it needs to provide CC immunity.
Buffing skills like Bear Trap, Commanding Shot etc. is good but I could tell that they will remain borderline useless after the changes. You guys should focus on reworking the 3 paths because now Trapper >> Combat and Archery in terms of DPS, control and CD reduction. It makes trapper the only viable option for both PvE and PvP.
2. As pointed by many above, the feat Swiftness of the Fox needs to be toned down massively. It should only proc once regardless of the number of targets hit. It's enabling people to spam encounters with 0 CD, if this isn't considered broken I don't know what is.
3. Permadaze still exists in PvP; again attributable to Swiftness of the Fox.
4. The damage of HR, regardless of build, is pathetic in PvP. If it isn't for the daze and root, HR is arguably the most underperforming class atm. The proposed changes on useless skills won't help, please buff all powers' base damage for at least 50%.
Having played a Combat HR for a period of time, these are my thoughts:
IMHO the melee versions of the other at-wills should be upped to at least have comparable damage to Aimed Strike ticks, or the damage profiles reversed (ranged does less damage but attacks more quickly, melee attacks are slower but does more damage) given that Blade Hurricane's schtick doesn't work well with "fast but weak attacks" that most HR melee at-wills seem to be delegated to. Having Blade Hurricane proc twice instead of once would be interesting to test out to see what it does for DPS, though.
From my experience with the Combat tree, the damage seems to rely on a great deal of setting up. Unfortunately, I don't get comparable damage to justify all the set-up; in the time that I set up enough to chump a mob with at least three health bars, any other DPS build would have either done way more damage, or have already chumped it and enjoyed the take-out pizza they phoned in while waiting for the HR to finish.
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.
Totally agree. This nerf is in place to make Archery and Combat look useful rather than offering a buff to the paths themselves and it's ridiculous. #15, #11, #17 all points to be noted.
The issue and number one complaint in PVP is from the "crushing roots" Class feat, not our ability to have seemingly endless rotations, so why they're shooting PVEers in the leg, I don't know.
Try PVPing without that Class feat, you get walked on...
Now that we have amenar around, you guys (experienced Archery/Combat HR players) could actually come up with a specific concepts instead of just saying "this doesn't work". Give them something to start with, come up with viable combos/rotations, give them food for thought so they can decide if that's something they could see work in the game.
@amenar I also feel like archery is too static for what it's supposed to do. Most of the cast times are super long, which feels really awkward for a spec that relies so heavily on keeping distance.
Archery suggestions - Since cooldowns as an Archery spec are super long (and as I heard, the Combat spec suffers from the same), you could add something to make at-wills deal more damage. Archery tree 3rd column, "Longshot" is a terrible feat for a 3rd column one. It is heavily favoring the underperforming Archery tree and even there, it barely does 1% of your total damage. Imo, procs just don't fit the Archery and the Combat playstyle. 3rd column feats are responsible for build variety for many of the classes, they provide that extra diversity and are supposed to make you think about where you put your points into. This could be the key feat that could make both Archery and Combat a lot more viable. Turn it into an at-will boosting feat for both ranged and melee.
Leave 'Longshot' alone. Split Shot hits multiple targets. Rapid shot fires real fast. And now they've increased the radius of Rain of Arrows.
Keen Eye, Stormcaller's Arrow and Hasty Retreat are the atrocious ones that need to go.
Keen Eye - 5% AP gain is a thing for Archers? Give Marauder's Escape an AOE slow and make this feat +2s slow on highest clip. Stormcaller's Arrow - You can can always cast another Split the Sky, so a 5 second extension is moot. Hasty Retreat - Archer is ranged based, so allowing mobs to hit so you can walk 25% faster is silly, because the mobs will always follow you close behind. Marauder's escape and dodge is fine. Hasty Retreat is waste. Archers would benefit more from a flat, 10% in-combat speed bonus.
What Archers need are targeted, feat-base, ranged-dependent buffs (the farther we are to the target, the more benefits we get). Something that Trappers would have no access to.
On Tier 5, Stillness of the Forest add a 3rd effect: an encounter cast time reduction (-0.5s/1s/1.5s/2.0s). They can always adjust the values on the Tier 4 and Tier 5 feats, so long as Trappers has no access to it.
And they can always stick the mobility buffs at lower tiers. The last thing we want is something the trappers can also tap into. Archers cannot close the gap until the two trees are separated and differentiated enough. That means we get much of our buffs from Ranged(distance)-based/dependent/augmented skills. That means no thoughtless, indiscriminate, wholesale buffing to general powers either that every tree has access to. They have to be tree specific and tied to feats.
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lirithielMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,482Arc User
One more set of changes, that will NOT be in the upcoming preview push, but in the NEXT next preview push (builds are fun!).
Hunter Ranger: Feats: Blade Hurricane: Now affects the next 2 melee At-Will attacks, instead of just 1.
Hunter Ranger: Feats: Fluid Hunter: Now also increases your Crit Chance by the same amount as it increases your Deflect Chance.
Hunter Ranger: Feats: Piercing Blades: Now deals 10/20/30/40/50% bonus damage as Piercing Damage, up from 8/16/24/32/40%.
Hunter Ranger: Feats: Scything Blade: Now causes you to deal an additional 1/2/3/4/5% more melee damage at all times, in addition to the existing bonus damage based on nearby foes.
Hunter Ranger: Plant Growth: The first hit of damage this power deals is now considered melee damage, instead of a DoT. This means it can now proc Blade Storm, and is affected by various Feats that only affect melee damage.
Hunter Ranger: Rain of Swords: No longer procs Blade Hurricane/Flurry on every tick of damage, just the initial hit.
Hunter Ranger: Thorned Roots: Updated the tooltip to make it clear that it deals damage based on your Main Hand weapon.
Bug : Piercing blade The feat deals a % of the damage displayed on the power Tooltip instead of the actual damage dealt, for exemple if a the tooltip displays that a power will deal 1000 damage, and due to buffs/debuffs the power deals 2000 damage then the piercing blade will deal 400 instead of 800 damage
Bug : Wild Medecine The healing amount is lower than what it should be
Feedback : Seeker's vengeance This power is nice but kinda suboptimal as hr doesn't have the means to easily reaches a targets back (unlike TR or GWF with WMS ). It would be nice to make it work with what features that HR has, it would be great if you can change the behind part to controled targets or bleeding targets (affected by dots) then it will fit with the rest. Feedback : Battlehoned This feat holds on the old stat cruves ratio prior to lvl 60 update, it would be great to rework it into something usefull.
For the Archery tree I would work further in the feats to fix the gap with Trapper, here are my proposal
Unflinching Aim: Your Ranged powers deal 5/10/20/25% more damage. Increase the range of your ranged powers by 2/4/6/8/10ft.
Bottomless Quiver: Your Ranged Powers have 8/16/24/32/40% shorter cooldowns.
And then an we could need of an encounter power to support our Archery tree For example replace Bear Trap encounter that is useless to a power having this effect:
Push your target away from you, and apply a slow to the target. (Lets say this skill has an initial range of 15ft, at each rank (1-4) can add an extra 2.5ft to it)
Post edited by krondhor on
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lirithielMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,482Arc User
edited July 2016
I've been playing a Combat HR since Mod 2 and I've stuck with it despite the low damage output. I've tried various set-ups to make it work, including dipping into the Trapper tree. In the end I went back to pure Combat and found nothing better than Rain of Swords, Fox Shift and Plant Growth as my encounters. With these three I am am to cycle through all six encounters and get proper use out of all of them. With the most recent announced changes, I'm not sure if Rain of Swords will be viable anymore even if Rain of Arrows will be more helpful in clearing packs now with its larger radius. There just aren't many options available. Gushing Wound will probably be a must now but there aren't many occasions where I'll be using Longstrider's Shot as soon as it's off CD.
While I welcome the boost to Piercing Blade and Scything Blades I fear it may not be enough. Combat has never been big on Crit because we lack big-hitting powers, which is why to this day I still find it odd that Skirmisher's Gambit was given to the Combat tree. Same with Lucky Blades - HRs don't need extra AP Gain boosts from feats as we build up AP just fine without them. I also feel that upping Serpent Weave to 1 second at 5 points will also be very helpful to the tree. Might I also request that the Deflect rating is also increased to match the 5% Crit rating we will receive from Fluid Hunter pls @amenar? Even stacking Deflect I struggle to reach decent levels without Aspect of the Lone Wolf, which I just don't have place for.
Edit: I realise the intended change to Fluid Hunter will only give 2.5% crit at 5/5 - that will barely make any difference whatsoever. Please consider doubling the numbers.
Post edited by lirithiel on
Our pain is self chosen.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
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lirithielMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,482Arc User
Leave 'Longshot' alone. Split Shot hits multiple targets. Rapid shot fires real fast. And now they've increased the radius of Rain of Arrows.
Keen Eye, Stormcaller's Arrow and Hasty Retreat are the atrocious ones that need to go.
Keen Eye - 5% AP gain is a thing for Archers? Give Marauder's Escape an AOE slow and make this feat +2s slow on highest clip. Stormcaller's Arrow - You can can always cast another Split the Sky, so a 5 second extension is moot. Hasty Retreat - Archer is ranged based, so allowing mobs to hit so you can walk 25% faster is silly, because the mobs will always follow you close behind. Marauder's escape and dodge is fine. Hasty Retreat is waste. Archers would benefit more from a flat, 10% in-combat speed bonus.
While a flat 10% speed increase would obviously be better, I am fine with Hasty Retreat in its current incarnation. You don't need to be in melee range for the feat to trigger as plenty of mobs have ranged attacks that set it off. However, I do agree that Keen Eye is a waste and should be changed to something more beneficial to Archers. I an not a fan of Stillness of the Forest even if I have 5 points in the feat. Playing at maximum range just does not work in NW and the damage increase we get from doing so pales in comparison to the buffs we miss out on as well as Combat Advantage potentially. Archers should still be as deadly at medium range (30') as they are at maximum distance.
Our pain is self chosen.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
edited July 2016
For combat my suggestion would be:
Blade Hurricane: using a melee encounter grants Flurry. Flurry lasts 10 seconds and causes any of you melee At-Will powers strike for 5 more times for 100% damage. While Flurry is active Cold Steel Hurricane suppresses the target ability to heal for 3 seconds and Slasher's Mark damage is increased by 300% (tweaking numbers as needed).
This will put Blade Hurricane in line with Master Trapper. The combat ranger can then have burst damage by using all encounters followed by spamming at-wills for a few seconds or sustained by alternating encounter with sequences of at-wills. It will be easy to tweak the duration/times/extra damage to get what you want from a dev's point of view. All in all it should work out close to what a GWF Destroyer can do. Both paths should be damage dealers. GWF has an upfront mitigation in terms of temp HP while HR has lifesteal (which applies after damage and only if you're still alive), but HR has immunity during shifts that is better than GWF's run so things will even out.
On the PvP side you'll offer a change to either have a finisher with no cooldown, just AP needed (Slasher's), or an interesting combo with any control power (say Boar's Charge, Cold Steel Hurricane, Binding, at-will slashing) or duo fighting with a controller (CW or TR). Probably some change to Boar's Charge would be needed to make the combo fluid but at least it would add some synergy to the Combat powers. Actually Ambush/Bear trap would start to be interesting too (at least if that nightmare called Elven Battle will be brought down to reasonable levels....).
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
edited July 2016
Double post
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
I've been playing a Combat HR since Mod 2 and I've stuck with it despite the low damage output. I've tried various set-ups to make it work, including dipping into the Trapper tree. In the end I went back to pure Combat and found nothing better than Rain of Swords, Fox Shift and Plant Growth as my encounters. With these three I am am to cycle through all six encounters and get proper use out of all of them. With the most recent announced changes, I'm not sure if Rain of Swords will be viable anymore even if Rain of Arrows will be more helpful in clearing packs now with its larger radius. There just aren't many options available. Gushing Wound will probably be a must now but there aren't many occasions where I'll be using Longstrider's Shot as soon as it's off CD.
While I welcome the boost to Piercing Blade and Scything Blades I fear it may not be enough. Combat has never been big on Crit because we lack big-hitting powers, which is why to this day I still find it odd that Skirmisher's Gambit was given to the Combat tree. Same with Lucky Blades - HRs don't need extra AP Gain boosts from feats as we build up AP just fine without them. I also feel that upping Serpent Weave to 1 second at 5 points will also be very helpful to the tree. Might I also request that the Deflect rating is also increased to match the 5% Crit rating we will receive from Fluid Hunter pls @amenar? Even stacking Deflect I struggle to reach decent levels without Aspect of the Lone Wolf, which I just don't have place for.
Last time I messed with combat was during mod 8. Went hybrid archery for longshot. Just used rain of arrows and plant growth. I ended up spamming electric arrow on mobs. It sounds utterly stupid you may think. Why not just roll pure archery. I kept asking that myself. Pure lightning enchant was giving out more damage than the actual damage from spamming clear the ground back then.
My suggestions to bring the Combat tree in a better state is working again on the feats:
Fluid Hunter: While in Melee you gain 1/2/3/4/5% more Deflect Chance.
Blade Hurricane: Using a Melee Encounter Power grants Flurry. Flurry causes your next Daily to strike as Piercing damage for 55% additional damage. Flurry can only be triggered once every 8 seconds.
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
My suggestions to bring the Combat tree in a better state is working again on the feats:
Fluid Hunter: While in Melee you gain 1/2/3/4/5% more Deflect Chance.
Scything Blades: The Ranger deals 3/6/9/12/15% more Melee Damage for each foe within 20 feet.
Blade Hurricane: Using a Melee Encounter Power grants Flurry. Flurry causes your next Daily to strike as Piercing damage for 55% additional damage. Flurry can only be triggered once every 8 seconds.
Wut..? Buff useless dailies? WHY!?
Scything Blades suggestion is going over board. Plant Growth doesn't need any more buffs to it. Powers that are underperforming need buffed instead.
My suggestions to bring the Combat tree in a better state is working again on the feats:
Fluid Hunter: While in Melee you gain 1/2/3/4/5% more Deflect Chance.
Scything Blades: The Ranger deals 3/6/9/12/15% more Melee Damage for each foe within 20 feet.
Blade Hurricane: Using a Melee Encounter Power grants Flurry. Flurry causes your next Daily to strike as Piercing damage for 55% additional damage. Flurry can only be triggered once every 8 seconds.
Wut..? Buff useless dailies? WHY!?
Scything Blades suggestion is going over board. Plant Growth doesn't need any more buffs to it. Powers that are underperforming need buffed instead.
I removed my post about Scything Blades as I remembered that it's already altered for the next patch, which I forgot.
Dailies are far less useless than our At-Wills that does no damage at all, stated that both at-wills and our dailies need a damage boost.
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lirithielMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,482Arc User
You ask for more powerful dailies but how many of the nuking ones that TR or CW use does AoE damage which both Seismic Shot and Cold Steel Hurricane are? Granted they suck for single target (unless its a dragon and you line up CSH correctly) but I would rather see our at-wills buffed.
Our pain is self chosen.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
Very disappointing. A tiny baby buff for archery and zero, nothing, nada for combat yet again.
Agreed. Combat tree already has lowest damage partly because the OH deals less damage. Won't you pls consider raising the OH damage to match the MH at least @amenar? It won't make it better than Archery but would help some. I see no reason why the OH should be dealing less damage than MH in the first place.
Thanks for responding to our queries though, it is appreciated.
I think they should at least change the Capstone of the Combat Tree. Maybe if putting a point in the Capstone adds the Weapon Damages together for Melee Powers or something.
Main - Rydia (HR70) - Xbox One Player only Alts : Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Infact with differents words, we are all saying that both our At-wills and Dailies need a buff, as they all are underpowered.
I think they should remain mostly utility. We don't need trappers with nuke dailies next.
Don't worry there is nothing we can nuke with any of our dailies, we already use the most as for the utility aspect they return, anyway I was talking about the Combat tree an not the Trapper one, as the point in the end is that the Capstone power, Blade Hurricane need a major rework, cause at current state it's terrible.
steel breeze with 3 charges? That's another move I'll be waiting for in longer battles. It's a nerf the point of a trapper is to constantly switch stances and use encounters, I struggle already as it is with having hindering shot and cordon of arrows after I used up all three charges. My suggestion would be to leave the charges but less cooldown time. Or it looks like I'll be using a different move to proc roots
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
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reduce the skirmishers gambit crit loss by 1/2 so Combat can use this feature again
As far as Combat, saying it 'doesn't work' is just a simplified truth. The whole system is just setup to fail, imo, and I don't see how that system could be upheld and made competitive w/o over-buffing the other paths. I can't really find a clear solution, and that's why I'm not a dev
The capstone's Flurry buff is based on something that is supposed to trigger from encounters, yet dailies and many encounters (buffs) can't trigger it by design, and the proc dmg is based on attacks that are (by far) Combat's weakest link: At-wills. Aside from doing HAMSTER-all dmg themselves (see next reply), none of our At-wills lead to a strong Blade Hurricane proc - even w/ Aimed Strike, since the proc dmg is based only on one tick's worth of dmg. Also keep in mind that Blade Hurricane only determines its dmg from the base hit of the At-will, and it doesn't factor in the 40% extra from Piercing Blade, since that's added on separately. Throw in a paragon encounter and daily that can't trigger Flurry (Throw Caution and CSH), and the other paragon leaving you w/ one slow AoE at-will option w/ poor coverage (split strike), and you've got a tree that doesn't have good enough synergy nor a strong base for competitive dps.
It does make for a pretty damn good off-tank w/ AotLW slotted, but that's about all the good I can give Combat atm. And yes, I would def drop some of that tankiness for better offense. HRs are not meant to be tanks, after all, and higher dmg means we get stronger lifesteal procs anyways.
<CO docs> .: Petco :. // Base DPS Sheet (needs revision) // PSA on Power Activation Delay
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Crits with clear the ground are roughly 3500 damage plus another 1400 from piercing blades.
Crits with rapid strike are roughly 4600 plus another 1700 from piercing blades.
Crit blade hurricane with rapid strike is roughly 6500. About 5500 with clear the ground. You might think it seems... ok, but you have to crit with your flurry buffed at-will in the first place so the chances are even lower. Slap in 3 encounter and you only get 6 at-will strikes to make the most of this.
Blade flurry procs without crits which are the norm were all below 3000.
My GWF on preview crits with WMS for 35000-40000, repeated, non stop. My GWF is using a trans fey, but vorpal is slightly superior for high crit. So even with an extra 100% crit severity, a crit from an AoE at-will from a combat HR can't even deal 25% the DPS of a GWF. All 6 of the flurry procs combined will barely come close to the damage of a single crit from a GWF.
Even my righteous DC is hitting for harder with lance of faith. I can burn down an elite considerably faster with a single target at-wills vs the my ranger crit with 100% severity on rapid strike. I mean, the combat HR can't even compete with a righteous DC.
Even if you're a high geared high crit god you'll still be hitting like a wet noodle. I'm not saying combat should be as powerful as a GWF, but the output is so slow. The majority of my DPS is coming from rain of arrows/plant growth/gushing wound only. I unslot them for a HE in IWD, It carries on for way longer than it ever should. My CW can cast one spell and down thayan servitors instantly while each blade flurry proc from my HR chip away 1/8th the HP off the guys.
Unbuffed damage for clear the ground was 1200, 1300 for rapid strike. It's pretty much half for almost everything else from my other characters. My righteous DC deals double this with lance of faith without buffs yet, roughly double for some SW at-wills, double for CW at-wills, like 1/3th of my GF's AoE at-wills, 1/5th of crushing surge.
No way am I saying double their damage, but could at least test them under a 50% buff. Even a damnation SW is laughing.
Combat capstone definitely can use some changes to bring it in line with other capstone of other classes. The performance of combat will always be crippled by at wills damage by the way
Buffing skills like Bear Trap, Commanding Shot etc. is good but I could tell that they will remain borderline useless after the changes.
You guys should focus on reworking the 3 paths because now Trapper >> Combat and Archery in terms of DPS, control and CD reduction. It makes trapper the only viable option for both PvE and PvP.
2. As pointed by many above, the feat Swiftness of the Fox needs to be toned down massively. It should only proc once regardless of the number of targets hit. It's enabling people to spam encounters with 0 CD, if this isn't considered broken I don't know what is.
3. Permadaze still exists in PvP; again attributable to Swiftness of the Fox.
4. The damage of HR, regardless of build, is pathetic in PvP. If it isn't for the daze and root, HR is arguably the most underperforming class atm. The proposed changes on useless skills won't help, please buff all powers' base damage for at least 50%.
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IMHO the melee versions of the other at-wills should be upped to at least have comparable damage to Aimed Strike ticks, or the damage profiles reversed (ranged does less damage but attacks more quickly, melee attacks are slower but does more damage) given that Blade Hurricane's schtick doesn't work well with "fast but weak attacks" that most HR melee at-wills seem to be delegated to. Having Blade Hurricane proc twice instead of once would be interesting to test out to see what it does for DPS, though.
From my experience with the Combat tree, the damage seems to rely on a great deal of setting up. Unfortunately, I don't get comparable damage to justify all the set-up; in the time that I set up enough to chump a mob with at least three health bars, any other DPS build would have either done way more damage, or have already chumped it and enjoyed the take-out pizza they phoned in while waiting for the HR to finish.
The issue and number one complaint in PVP is from the "crushing roots" Class feat, not our ability to have seemingly endless rotations, so why they're shooting PVEers in the leg, I don't know.
Try PVPing without that Class feat, you get walked on...
Keen Eye, Stormcaller's Arrow and Hasty Retreat are the atrocious ones that need to go.
Keen Eye - 5% AP gain is a thing for Archers? Give Marauder's Escape an AOE slow and make this feat +2s slow on highest clip.
Stormcaller's Arrow - You can can always cast another Split the Sky, so a 5 second extension is moot.
Hasty Retreat - Archer is ranged based, so allowing mobs to hit so you can walk 25% faster is silly, because the mobs will always follow you close behind. Marauder's escape and dodge is fine. Hasty Retreat is waste. Archers would benefit more from a flat, 10% in-combat speed bonus.
What Archers need are targeted, feat-base, ranged-dependent buffs (the farther we are to the target, the more benefits we get). Something that Trappers would have no access to.
On Tier 5, Stillness of the Forest add a 3rd effect: an encounter cast time reduction (-0.5s/1s/1.5s/2.0s). They can always adjust the values on the Tier 4 and Tier 5 feats, so long as Trappers has no access to it.
And they can always stick the mobility buffs at lower tiers. The last thing we want is something the trappers can also tap into. Archers cannot close the gap until the two trees are separated and differentiated enough. That means we get much of our buffs from Ranged(distance)-based/dependent/augmented skills. That means no thoughtless, indiscriminate, wholesale buffing to general powers either that every tree has access to. They have to be tree specific and tied to feats.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
The feat deals a % of the damage displayed on the power Tooltip instead of the actual damage dealt, for exemple if a the tooltip displays that a power will deal 1000 damage, and due to buffs/debuffs the power deals 2000 damage then the piercing blade will deal 400 instead of 800 damage
The healing amount is lower than what it should be
Feedback : Seeker's vengeance
This power is nice but kinda suboptimal as hr doesn't have the means to easily reaches a targets back (unlike TR or GWF with WMS ). It would be nice to make it work with what features that HR has, it would be great if you can change the behind part to controled targets or bleeding targets (affected by dots) then it will fit with the rest.
Feedback : Battlehoned
This feat holds on the old stat cruves ratio prior to lvl 60 update, it would be great to rework it into something usefull.
For the Archery tree I would work further in the feats to fix the gap with Trapper, here are my proposal
Unflinching Aim:
Your Ranged powers deal 5/10/20/25% more damage.
Increase the range of your ranged powers by 2/4/6/8/10ft.
Bottomless Quiver:
Your Ranged Powers have 8/16/24/32/40% shorter cooldowns.
And then an we could need of an encounter power to support our Archery tree
For example replace Bear Trap encounter that is useless to a power having this effect:
Push your target away from you, and apply a slow to the target.
(Lets say this skill has an initial range of 15ft, at each rank (1-4) can add an extra 2.5ft to it)
While I welcome the boost to Piercing Blade and Scything Blades I fear it may not be enough. Combat has never been big on Crit because we lack big-hitting powers, which is why to this day I still find it odd that Skirmisher's Gambit was given to the Combat tree. Same with Lucky Blades - HRs don't need extra AP Gain boosts from feats as we build up AP just fine without them. I also feel that upping Serpent Weave to 1 second at 5 points will also be very helpful to the tree. Might I also request that the Deflect rating is also increased to match the 5% Crit rating we will receive from Fluid Hunter pls @amenar? Even stacking Deflect I struggle to reach decent levels without Aspect of the Lone Wolf, which I just don't have place for.
Edit: I realise the intended change to Fluid Hunter will only give 2.5% crit at 5/5 - that will barely make any difference whatsoever. Please consider doubling the numbers.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
Blade Hurricane: using a melee encounter grants Flurry. Flurry lasts 10 seconds and causes any of you melee At-Will powers strike for 5 more times for 100% damage. While Flurry is active Cold Steel Hurricane suppresses the target ability to heal for 3 seconds and Slasher's Mark damage is increased by 300% (tweaking numbers as needed).
This will put Blade Hurricane in line with Master Trapper. The combat ranger can then have burst damage by using all encounters followed by spamming at-wills for a few seconds or sustained by alternating encounter with sequences of at-wills.
It will be easy to tweak the duration/times/extra damage to get what you want from a dev's point of view. All in all it should work out close to what a GWF Destroyer can do. Both paths should be damage dealers. GWF has an upfront mitigation in terms of temp HP while HR has lifesteal (which applies after damage and only if you're still alive), but HR has immunity during shifts that is better than GWF's run so things will even out.
On the PvP side you'll offer a change to either have a finisher with no cooldown, just AP needed (Slasher's), or an interesting combo with any control power (say Boar's Charge, Cold Steel Hurricane, Binding, at-will slashing) or duo fighting with a controller (CW or TR). Probably some change to Boar's Charge would be needed to make the combo fluid but at least it would add some synergy to the Combat powers.
Actually Ambush/Bear trap would start to be interesting too (at least if that nightmare called Elven Battle will be brought down to reasonable levels....).
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Fluid Hunter:
While in Melee you gain 1/2/3/4/5% more Deflect Chance.
Blade Hurricane:
Using a Melee Encounter Power grants Flurry. Flurry causes your next Daily to strike as Piercing damage for 55% additional damage. Flurry can only be triggered once every 8 seconds.
Scything Blades suggestion is going over board. Plant Growth doesn't need any more buffs to it. Powers that are underperforming need buffed instead.
Dailies are far less useless than our At-Wills that does no damage at all, stated that both at-wills and our dailies need a damage boost.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
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