I am surprised that nobody is rioting over the swiftness of the fox nerf yet. It basically ruined the trapper meta/rotation. Its either stack mad amounts of recovery or fill in the voids with at wills..gg.
I think most people are waiting for these changes to appear on the test server to see and test because complaining without testing is kinda pointless at the moment.
In pve I rarely have to repeat a rotation on one group of mobs, but I admit, I'm full R12s and I run at around 46-48k power with Companion's Gift up. This probably will be a problem for lower geared players.
I am surprised that nobody is rioting over the swiftness of the fox nerf yet. It basically ruined the trapper meta/rotation. Its either stack mad amounts of recovery or fill in the voids with at wills..gg.
Yes, it'll be interesting to see how this works in practice. I suspect it will be harmful to the build. We'll have to see how it plays out, but this was really unexpected and seems like a huge backwards step for this discussion.
If trappers are required to stack recovery it will have to be at the cost of other stats, quite possibly power and/or crit strike. For damage output, that will take the build backwards, not forwards, which is not in line with the stated goals of this class pass. Stacking recovery will come an opportunity cost in other areas, which means making a build which the developers have already acknowledged as underperforming pay an additional price just to do what it does now. That is not an improvement at all.
Some of the very same people making 'helpful' suggestions like this also rabidly defend any changes to their own favourite classes in other parts of the forums, labelling suggestions for changes as being attacks on their classes by haters. I hope the developers are able to see what is actually going on here. This discussion is being hijacked by a few people who are clearly concerned about protecting their place in the current pecking order, not actually improving HRs.
The problems with combat and archery underperforming could be fixed with feat changes to those trees, it's only a matter of working out the details. I haven't seen any argument in this thread yet which can explain why trappers have to be made worse to make the other styles better. Just improve the higher tier feats for those other two styles in such a way that players can't build a character which can cherry pick all the best stuff from more than one tree.
A thought I had today while mowing the lawn about one reason archery deals less damage.
The concept of archery is supposedly to be far away from mobs and beat them up from a distance. In group content this is a big problem because most of the buffs are provided in pretty small areas. There are some large ones like empowered Break the Spirit but even Hallowed ground can easily be too small if an archer wants to gain max distance to boost their damage. This has been alleviated a bit with the change to hawkshot but there is still aspect of the falcon and even the Hawk pet that are encouraging the HR to be way far away.
Being out of range of buffs is bad. Buffs are what make classes do tons of damage sure having good base damage and stats are important, but stacking buffs is where things really come together. Archery just doesn't work with receiving buffs if they are way out in the back plinking away. and because archery is supposed to reward staying away from threats and not being in melee range archery will never be a build you can use in pvp with any sort of success since pvp requires you to sit on a node and survive while you either cap it or prevent a cap from happening. Nothing is worse in pvp then the ranged pug player who sits off node doing their encounters, those are the players that will cause you to lose a game.
back when cap was 60 i would que for pvp in my corrupt black ice gear, not pvp gear really; but it has some tenacity. now i don't know about you but when i was full ranger and the enemies couldn't even stand on those nodes cause i would snipe them from afar, and the time it takes for them to get to me or even capture the node is not good enough, i would easily kill people back when cap was 60. took them on average 15 seconds to get to me and i would down their health in 30 seconds while still running away with marauders escape and forest ghost if they managed to get close. sure cap is now 70 and pvp might be harder but if you paly for class the way you want and learn how to maximize you classes potential, you cna do good. i was wearing corrupt black ice gear and using my pve build cause i use my pve build for all my playing pve pvp or dungeoning.
as for what you noted about buffs and now its true being out of them is pretty bad for a range hr, it is not really important. now i am still speaking from cap was 60 but when i was out of the buffs range, i still made 2nd place on damage sure i could have probably made 1'st place if the buffer was closer to me, but that would pull mobs closer to me too and fighting from max range is best, even if you lose a few buffs. for range, buffs are not important unless they keep you alive and with all the buffs you can give yourself and any teammates close bye the hr should be plenty of buffs just from himself.
The thing is, pvp is completely different now than back in whatever time your archer was good. in order to cap you don't need to clear the node (just outnumber), and to contest the node you have to have equal numbers of people on the node as your opponent. Simply put, if you are not on the node you are not helping. Now, if archery gets some huge buffs and starts being able to one shot from way back... yeah no, i still don't think that will work. You are 1v1 for a node, if you are way back shooting at the opponent who is on the node you are not contesting, so you bleed points for as long as it takes to clear the node then you still need to travel to the node and start capping before an opponent returns. And when you are far away you have no positioning power at all. That isn't even getting to the point of how much healing everyone has now. in full premade vs premade fights people rarely die, even with TRs and GFs and their one shot capabilities, those fights are all about node control and as i explained above, an archer doesn't seem to be able to do that anymore
Guild - The Imaginary Friends We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
They could bring back the trapper rotation ( or closing the gap) by adding more cooldown reduction to swiftness of fox..i dunno.. from 15 to 30 maybe? Need to test before one can tell.
Now that trapper is brought down a notch..HR overall damage need to reevaluate once again and further boost them accordingly back to competitive level.
This is pvp-wise and directed to those who suggest the cooldown reduction nerf (someone also nerf and fix) -especially without proposing a super dps boost or new control mechanics- so that one can slot recovery to keep up with the CDs.
In the actual pvp meta (I'm talking of BiS pvpers) the thing is, yeah we do not need to stack recovery, we can focus on power arp and still we have no to laughable damage. One could argue, CWs have no damage, too. Well CWs have a 4 seconds repel which sends you on vacation while they are "getting the job done" on the node, a skill far more useful than all of our pvp skills imo.
Another argument could be, TRs stack recovery as well. But again, they only have to stack recovery and power, because they have SE that is crit granted due to stealth and does not need arp to let you meet with the Almighty while also making a coffee for themselves. Meanwhile they can decide you are a bit of a nuisance and simply slow you to dead while debuff you with one or two or even three (yeah three, tested it) CBs in a row (way the most powerful control skill ever, that can last up to 18 seconds and ignores CR).
Then again one could say GF and GWF do not have such a feat nor stack recovery and still pvp. To answer this would be easy, GFs do not need to spam skills since they can play behind their fortress and show up when tired of your miserable life to one rotate you, even after the new module will be out, and GWF they are almost more deadly when spamming their at wills lol (now less so thx to broken insignia bonus).
To those complaining of permadaze, which again is nowhere to be seen in top gs pvp -CR, tenacity, EB...-, (I guess also at lower level if those involved know how to pvp with proper gs and so on) let me add this: GWF everytime hr's rotation is spammed will go unstoppable...end of control, no damage taken; TR after ending his full rot, most of the times with a smoke, has a 3 second gap before casting ITC again (of course you have to try and catch em before they stealth) and ITC breaks controls. Cws play with high CR and elven battle, self heal like they were DCs and again can repel you to the other side of the map so that when you get back at them they are full health again. GFs have passive and daily that reduce or immunize to control, are at least a 5 minute one v one to grind them to death and cannot be faced aggressively because they just need to hit you once and gameover, most of the times due to the fact that you have done so many rootation that even trappers cooldown cannot recharge properly and they kill you or you will have to walk away a and when you get back they are full health again. And please take into account that we control on the spot, which is of no use in a pvp based on node fights where we cannot kill the controlled foe.
Having said that, if Devs are to deal with swiftness, fine. But just dealing with such a class mechanic 3 weeks before module 10 goes live I reckon could lead to another period of frustration and "parking lot" for most of pvp HRs, and possible pve as well. Such modifications are way too complex to be dealt with in this little time to me. I'd rather them having the changes ongoing in the owlbear server test for another month after module 10 is out than playing something "maybe" worse of what I'm playing now for 3 to 6 more months.
As regards feedbacks, as many have already pointed out, archery and melee capstone are usless for pvp (melee for pve as well). The halved damage on pvp players is no more needed thanks to insignias and 140 to 200+ k HP; as for the melee capstone, it could be even 2 times 300% more damage and would still be no damage since HR at wills deal less damage than a gobling that sneezes at you.
Moreover, almost all of their starting feats have no utility or ridicolously low benefits compared with the starting feats of most of other classes.
As someone already said, would be interesting to see some feats moved to the beggining of the paths to have nice new combinations that could bring hetherogeneity in the HR field.
Another nice addition would be a push effect similar to those already possesed by DC CW GF, maybe added to skills like boar charge. We have no dps to take advantage of its prone effect (anyway it's animation its almost longer than the prone so even if we had the dps we'd still get nothing out of it) and would add some more help to hold/conquer a node.
Speaking of bugs, please look into the interactions between split the sky/ thorn ward and stealthed foes (still speaking of pvp) -these bugs have being reported many times, but have always remained out of the various patches. They are AOE skills and should hit anything that comes into their damage range (or hits you for STS). If one is to play archery in a future pvp those skills could be very well performing on a pvp that develops mostly in node fight and such issues cannot be left unfixed.
Thanks for the attention and for the efforts you are making to try and improve the class giving importance to our feedbacks @amenar
1. Battlehoned - 100% COMPLETELY USELESS since regen has no effect in combat. Rework it please.
2. Predator - remove half effectiveness on players, and boost it to at least 50% to match piercing blade. It's single target only so it's already not very good in PvE.
3. Marauder Escape - should provide CC immunity and make it a CC break.
4. Boar Charge - reduce its CD and maybe make its range longer like GF's bullcharge?
5. Forest Ghost - last time I tested it Elven enchant would still reduce the movement speed buff duration.
Well they could argue that they are just fixing the feat. You could make the argument that it is broken on live and will now work according to how the tool tip states. I kind of saw it coming though. They typically nerf one tree to make the others look better.
You're right, but the way this feat works now is what makes the trapper viable. Not that I need to tell anyone who actually plays an HR trapper that. Being able to cycle encounter powers quickly is what makes up for weak at-wills and very ordinary dailies. As well as reducing damage output, it will also reduce survivability by slowing how often defensive encounters can be used.
Messing with this basic build mechanic will reduce effectiveness and require large boosts in other areas (much larger than what is currently on the table) even just to stay where we are now. And the stated goal of this exercise is not to go backwards or tread water, it's to improve.
This is why I don't think the swiftness change is a good idea; it opens a can of worms that will require a lot more work in other areas to fix. I'm probably not the only one who is concerned that if this is broken, it may take months or years to fix it given how much work there is to do just on class balancing, let alone working on other parts of the game. We need to get it right now.
I'd also like to add my support to the comment others have made that reducing the ability to cycle encounter powers will have a disproportionately severe effect on newer/more poorly geared players. The recharge percentages for swiftness will be need to be raised if what counts as a target is reduced.
Trapper could use some small improvements, but this class pass will be a sad failure if the end result is that we get worse. Like others have said in this thread, combat and archery could be brought up to par by making changes to core powers for those paths, as well as to higher tier feats for those trees. Focus on those areas, please; they need it most of all and it means the trapper path which is enjoyed by many and not overpowered does not get broken inadvertently.
On the topic of AOTS, I'm not completely convinced what is being proposed is an improvement. If certain encounter powers do not change the stack count, then it seems like people using those powers will be made more reliant on using weak at wills to get the most from this class power, which reduces DPS. Bringing careful attack into line with gushing wound so only the initial attack affects the stack count is a net improvement (though it does reduce damage output in situations where you are going all ranged), but I'm not on board with how non damaging powers will no longer affect stack count.
A thought I had today while mowing the lawn about one reason archery deals less damage.
The concept of archery is supposedly to be far away from mobs and beat them up from a distance. In group content this is a big problem because most of the buffs are provided in pretty small areas. There are some large ones like empowered Break the Spirit but even Hallowed ground can easily be too small if an archer wants to gain max distance to boost their damage. This has been alleviated a bit with the change to hawkshot but there is still aspect of the falcon and even the Hawk pet that are encouraging the HR to be way far away.
Being out of range of buffs is bad. Buffs are what make classes do tons of damage sure having good base damage and stats are important, but stacking buffs is where things really come together. Archery just doesn't work with receiving buffs if they are way out in the back plinking away. and because archery is supposed to reward staying away from threats and not being in melee range archery will never be a build you can use in pvp with any sort of success since pvp requires you to sit on a node and survive while you either cap it or prevent a cap from happening. Nothing is worse in pvp then the ranged pug player who sits off node doing their encounters, those are the players that will cause you to lose a game.
back when cap was 60 i would que for pvp in my corrupt black ice gear, not pvp gear really; but it has some tenacity. now i don't know about you but when i was full ranger and the enemies couldn't even stand on those nodes cause i would snipe them from afar, and the time it takes for them to get to me or even capture the node is not good enough, i would easily kill people back when cap was 60. took them on average 15 seconds to get to me and i would down their health in 30 seconds while still running away with marauders escape and forest ghost if they managed to get close. sure cap is now 70 and pvp might be harder but if you paly for class the way you want and learn how to maximize you classes potential, you cna do good. i was wearing corrupt black ice gear and using my pve build cause i use my pve build for all my playing pve pvp or dungeoning.
as for what you noted about buffs and now its true being out of them is pretty bad for a range hr, it is not really important. now i am still speaking from cap was 60 but when i was out of the buffs range, i still made 2nd place on damage sure i could have probably made 1'st place if the buffer was closer to me, but that would pull mobs closer to me too and fighting from max range is best, even if you lose a few buffs. for range, buffs are not important unless they keep you alive and with all the buffs you can give yourself and any teammates close bye the hr should be plenty of buffs just from himself.
The thing is, pvp is completely different now than back in whatever time your archer was good. in order to cap you don't need to clear the node (just outnumber), and to contest the node you have to have equal numbers of people on the node as your opponent. Simply put, if you are not on the node you are not helping. Now, if archery gets some huge buffs and starts being able to one shot from way back... yeah no, i still don't think that will work. You are 1v1 for a node, if you are way back shooting at the opponent who is on the node you are not contesting, so you bleed points for as long as it takes to clear the node then you still need to travel to the node and start capping before an opponent returns. And when you are far away you have no positioning power at all. That isn't even getting to the point of how much healing everyone has now. in full premade vs premade fights people rarely die, even with TRs and GFs and their one shot capabilities, those fights are all about node control and as i explained above, an archer doesn't seem to be able to do that anymore
that is why i stated at lvl cap 60, so that anyone who read my comment would understand the difference in time. though i do pvp every few weeks to a month, and i do the same thing and most of the time the opponents are not trying to cap the node but kill m and waste time in doing so, sure i will get one shot but i will keep players off the node for a good 10-15 seconds and during that time my teammates will come over and kill any chasing me down or the people who have killed me after they cap the node i protected while not being on it. though i will agree with you its not easy doing pvp. i will also say my strategy doesn't work all the time and i have to put on my dps pve gear, instead of wearing my tanky control pve gear.
1. Battlehoned - 100% COMPLETELY USELESS since regen has no effect in combat. Rework it please.
2. Predator - remove half effectiveness on players, and boost it to at least 50% to match piercing blade. It's single target only so it's already not very good in PvE.
3. Marauder Escape - should provide CC immunity and make it a CC break.
4. Boar Charge - reduce its CD and maybe make its range longer like GF's bullcharge?
5. Forest Ghost - last time I tested it Elven enchant would still reduce the movement speed buff duration.
i still think the marauders escape should do a movement impairing effect, that does no damage; as marauders escape is for survival and not for damage. we don't need damage on a move meant to keep us alive, just focus on defense for this move.
cc immune is a good though and cc break too these are jsut my thoughts/opinions should not work during freeze, daze, stun should work during knockback, knockdown, slow, immobile, or any other movement impairing effect i cant name right now
I am surprised that nobody is rioting over the swiftness of the fox nerf yet. It basically ruined the trapper meta/rotation. Its either stack mad amounts of recovery or fill in the voids with at wills..gg.
Yes, it'll be interesting to see how this works in practice. I suspect it will be harmful to the build. We'll have to see how it plays out, but this was really unexpected and seems like a huge backwards step for this discussion.
If trappers are required to stack recovery it will have to be at the cost of other stats, quite possibly power and/or crit strike. For damage output, that will take the build backwards, not forwards, which is not in line with the stated goals of this class pass. Stacking recovery will come an opportunity cost in other areas, which means making a build which the developers have already acknowledged as underperforming pay an additional price just to do what it does now. That is not an improvement at all.
Some of the very same people making 'helpful' suggestions like this also rabidly defend any changes to their own favourite classes in other parts of the forums, labelling suggestions for changes as being attacks on their classes by haters. I hope the developers are able to see what is actually going on here. This discussion is being hijacked by a few people who are clearly concerned about protecting their place in the current pecking order, not actually improving HRs.
The problems with combat and archery underperforming could be fixed with feat changes to those trees, it's only a matter of working out the details. I haven't seen any argument in this thread yet which can explain why trappers have to be made worse to make the other styles better. Just improve the higher tier feats for those other two styles in such a way that players can't build a character which can cherry pick all the best stuff from more than one tree.
Thanks.
THIS! ^^^^^^^ Very true, and now I'm noticing that its exactly what Cryptic is doing. Don't shoot Trappers in the foot to make the other two relevant. Just work on their feats! Simple.
the change to swiftness of the fox was really uncalled for, at least for the time being. i recognize there are some general damage boost but
1) aoe are now capped to 5 enemies 2) cooldowns are almost doubled (just tested on a single dummy which is the same)
in the end this whole class balance thing which aimed to bring HR more in line with other dps performance is going to fail since points 1) and 2) just mentioned are the main source of dps.
i lost definitely hopes on combat so nevermind xD
i guess this is the last patch we are going to see before the mod 10. I suggest you to keep track of HR statistics in the next months to evaluate the changes: damage will be slightly lower, no one will play a combat HR, archery is killed by animations and weak concept of "stay at distance", moreover its capstone is single target.
PVP perfomances almost unchanged, probably a perceptible survivability nerf since cooldowns are going to affect fox's cunning hard.
i just keep hoping for a couple of changes to battlehoned and cruel recovery.. i know its probably late to insist on those...but when something is so much underperforming something has to be done... if not now when?
One of the goals of this class review was to increase the number of viable builds and options for a class. The goal was *not* however, to necessarily conserve the existing meta by boosting a class overall and then leaving the stuff that's been useless still useless by comparison. It was to make Combat and Archery be viable alternatives to Trapper.
As long as trappers could get their cooldowns down to 0, it would be impossible to make the other paths viable by comparison, because they would always get greater benefit out of (most) changes to encounter powers than the other paths. So this is a step in the right direction, and the process isn't finished yet; by putting the three feat paths on a more even footing to begin with, it's obviously easier to make class-wide changes. The important thing now is to go test the changes, and compare performance.
Swiftness of the Fox was obviously bugged -- just reading the tooltip and then looking at how other cooldown-reducing feats work should make that abundantly clear. No class should be relying on exploiting a bug or clearly unintended interactions in order to stay viable.
And yes, stacking Recovery in order to decrease cooldowns is obviously another step in the right direction. One feat making an entire stat useless for a class? That's broken. Maybe next they'll address how certain TR builds can skip two entire offensive stats and just focus on Power and Recovery.
Then go back and read the posts of the best HR to post in this thread, ralexinor.
First off, I think you and ralexinor have made good contributions to this discussion. You clearly know the class well. Even if we don't agree with what the best approach to making class changes is, I'm not going run down your point of view and in return I'd appreciate the same.
The first bit of my post you've quoted somehow left out the part where I say to focus on improving combat and archery. I've also said that in earlier posts too. By now there should really be no misunderstanding about where I'm coming from; I want to see those paths boosted, and I think they need a lot more help than trapper does.
So if that was just a misunderstanding, it should be cleared up now. But if you're trying to mischaracterise my position by selectively quoting my posts while ignoring other parts, just stop it - that would be dishonest and a waste of everyone's time. You don't need to lecture me about the need to make other paths viable after I've already argued in favour of that outcome.
Whether or not you consider how swiftness works to be a bug isn't all that significant in my view. The way it works created a build which was effective without being overpowered and is also enjoyable to play. That is my view and it shared by others. The outcome I don't want to see is that trappers lose the ability to cycle encounter powers without large improvements in at wills and dailies to make up for that, and unfortunately that is where I think we are headed now. In fact, it seems like we are only a short distance now from making trapper much less effective while hardly improving combat and archery at all, and that would be a huge loss for the class overall.
I don't think there's any good reason why combat and archery paths could not receive cooldown reductions too so they can also cycle encounters which are suited to their builds. That could be a core mechanic for the whole class, rather than for just one path within it. When my HR was an archer I would have been very happy for that to happen, and although I've never run a combat build it seems like that approach would do a lot to make it more effective and enjoyable to play.
But whether you think the class should be relying almost exclusively on encounter powers alone, or more emphasis should be given to at wills and dailies with longer cooldowns for encounter powers is nothing more than a matter of preference. Arguing about which is the better approach is about as sensible as arguing about chocolate or vanilla ice cream being the best. As I said before, no-one has been able to say why the approach you and ralexinor seem to favour is better, just that it's what you prefer. If you think you can make the argument that is is objectively better then do so, because I've read this thread in detail and I haven't seen it yet. And for the nth time, trapper doesn't need to be made worse for combat and archery to be made better.
As to the recovery stacking argument, I think it's kind of pointless to increase cooldowns, require recovery stacking and argue for compensating damage increases to scores of class powers to make up for it. All you're doing is making a lot of changes, pointless busy work for the devs, never mind gear changes for players who are affected by it, just so we can get back more to less to where we are. That seems like a big waste of time to me, when trapper could be left alone and combat and archery could be improved by a series of feat and power changes made specifically to help those two underperforming paths; far less work, and less impact on the people who are currently running and enjoying trapper builds.
Thanks.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
One of the goals of this class review was to increase the number of viable builds and options for a class. The goal was *not* however, to necessarily conserve the existing meta by boosting a class overall and then leaving the stuff that's been useless still useless by comparison. It was to make Combat and Archery be viable alternatives to Trapper.
As long as trappers could get their cooldowns down to 0, it would be impossible to make the other paths viable by comparison, because they would always get greater benefit out of (most) changes to encounter powers than the other paths. So this is a step in the right direction, and the process isn't finished yet; by putting the three feat paths on a more even footing to begin with, it's obviously easier to make class-wide changes. The important thing now is to go test the changes, and compare performance.
Swiftness of the Fox was obviously bugged -- just reading the tooltip and then looking at how other cooldown-reducing feats work should make that abundantly clear. No class should be relying on exploiting a bug or clearly unintended interactions in order to stay viable.
And yes, stacking Recovery in order to decrease cooldowns is obviously another step in the right direction. One feat making an entire stat useless for a class? That's broken. Maybe next they'll address how certain TR builds can skip two entire offensive stats and just focus on Power and Recovery.
Then go back and read the posts of the best HR to post in this thread, ralexinor.
First off, I think you and ralexinor have made good contributions to this discussion. You clearly know the class well. Even if we don't agree with what the best approach to making class changes is, I'm not going run down your point of view and in return I'd appreciate the same.
The first bit of my post you've quoted somehow left out the part where I say to focus on improving combat and archery. I've also said that in earlier posts too. By now there should really be no misunderstanding about where I'm coming from; I want to see those paths boosted, and I think they need a lot more help than trapper does.
So if that was just a misunderstanding, it should be cleared up now. But if you're trying to mischaracterise my position by selectively quoting my posts while ignoring other parts, just stop it - that would be dishonest and a waste of everyone's time. You don't need to lecture me about the need to make other paths viable after I've already argued in favour of that outcome.
Whether or not you consider how swiftness works to be a bug isn't all that significant in my view. The way it works created a build which was effective without being overpowered and is also enjoyable to play. That is my view and it shared by others. The outcome I don't want to see is that trappers lose the ability to cycle encounter powers without large improvements in at wills and dailies to make up for that, and unfortunately that is where I think we are headed now. In fact, it seems like we are only a short distance now from making trapper much less effective while hardly improving combat and archery at all, and that would be a huge loss for the class overall.
I don't think there's any good reason why combat and archery paths could not receive cooldown reductions too so they can also cycle encounters which are suited to their builds. That could be a core mechanic for the whole class, rather than for just one path within it. When my HR was an archer I would have been very happy for that to happen, and although I've never run a combat build it seems like that approach would do a lot to make it more effective and enjoyable to play.
But whether you think the class should be relying almost exclusively on encounter powers alone, or more emphasis should be given to at wills and dailies with longer cooldowns for encounter powers is nothing more than a matter of preference. Arguing about which is the better approach is about as sensible as arguing about chocolate or vanilla ice cream being the best. As I said before, no-one has been able to say why the approach you and ralexinor seem to favour is better, just that it's what you prefer. If you think you can make the argument that is is objectively better then do so, because I've read this thread in detail and I haven't seen it yet. And for the nth time, trapper doesn't need to be made worse for combat and archery to be made better.
As to the recovery stacking argument, I think it's kind of pointless to increase cooldowns, require recovery stacking and argue for compensating damage increases to scores of class powers to make up for it. All you're doing is making a lot of changes, pointless busy work for the devs, never mind gear changes for players who are affected by it, just so we can get back more to less to where we are. That seems like a big waste of time to me, when trapper could be left alone and combat and archery could be improved by a series of feat and power changes made specifically to help those two underperforming paths; far less work, and less impact on the people who are currently running and enjoying trapper builds.
Thanks.
This is pretty much my position as well. Trapper was enjoyable and not overpowered, actually it was still underpowered according to what was said in the beginning. Now we have an overall nerf to the trapper (just finished testing on the single dummy at the Trade of Blades and with 5k recovery it's a nightmare and even trying with 10k recovery (losing 5k of crit switching the azures to silvers on my companion) we are not where we were... If I look at my character I lost recovery, so my rotation is not fluid anymore and I have to use at wills that deal horrible damage, lost 5k of crit (over 10% crit chance) and 1 potential target on the hardest hitting power for a few small buffs to powers I would anyway not use because they don't make sense. With a fluid rotation Ambush and the new Bear trap with no charges could make some more sense but like this they are useless. And even with these losses, Archer and Combat still look far away from being viable alternatives... if I go combat I lose Master Trapper (30% damage bonus on everything) for 50% on melee (piercing or not piercing doesn't really matter in PVE as getting the needed arpen is a breeze), I lose Thorned roots which is 30% of my damage, lose recovery and get very little especially single target. As of today I can stay pretty close to a CW on single target but TRs beat me and GWFs blow me out of the water. If I go combat even CWs will be far away and I even lose control as I lose Ancient Roots. What I get is more lifesteal, but with the crazy Stronghold lifesteal boon honestly stacking more lifesteal is overkill. Archer is even worse probably....
These are pretty much the reasons why I opposed Ralexinor's comments.... now the only decent build is worse than before. Forums700 is perfectly right. Giving a small buff to the existing trapper, working on the high end feats of combat and archer and making one of the dailies a heavy hitter would have been much more efficient than targeting a complete overhaul not likely going to happen in the limited time frame the devs have.... to do that this should have started months ago.
I'm really really sad... with an HR as main and a temptation SW as second pg I guess I'll get some few hard months...
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
The first bit of my post you've quoted somehow left out the part where I say to focus on improving combat and archery. I've also said that in earlier posts too. By now there should really be no misunderstanding about where I'm coming from; I want to see those paths boosted, and I think they need a lot more help than trapper does.
I quoted that bit, because of your statement about the goals of the class review, which, as I said, aren't necessarily about improving the performance of a particular build, but about widening the viable options within the classes, and making sure each class as a whole is in a good place. That's different from conserving the trapper. It's not about your personal position per se, but about what they've stated their goals to be, and how those are presented.
Whether or not you consider how swiftness works to be a bug isn't all that significant in my view. The way it works created a build which was effective without being overpowered and is also enjoyable to play. That is my view and it shared by others.
Yes, it's fun to play. However, the fact remains that it was obviously not intended to work that way -- getting to 0 cooldowns without stacking Recovery simply doesn't mesh with the rest of the game, and doesn't lend itself to internal balancing between different HR feat paths. And it really does have an impact whether something is a bug or a feature -- if you build a class around a bug, the entire thing may collapse if the devs some day discover it and decide to fix it. So it's better to do that as part of a full rework.
I don't think there's any good reason why combat and archery paths could not receive cooldown reductions too so they can also cycle encounters which are suited to their builds. That could be a core mechanic for the whole class, rather than for just one path within it. When my HR was an archer I would have been very happy for that to happen, and although I've never run a combat build it seems like that approach would do a lot to make it more effective and enjoyable to play.
That's not really an effective way to boost the class, because damage would still be too low. And the core design of HRs is supposed to be about cycling an array of powers -- three ranged encounters, three melee encounters, two cheap dailies, and some at-wills to fill in the gaps. That was broken a bit in some cases by the change in design for the Archery and Combat paths to emphasize more strongly their particular niches, because people wanted to play more specialized HRs. (In one way, that actually implies that giving Trappers the best cooldown reductions was completely misguided to begin with, because it would work better on the other paths to have them fulfill their specialized niche roles.)
But whether you think the class should be relying almost exclusively on encounter powers alone, or more emphasis should be given to at wills and dailies with longer cooldowns for encounter powers is nothing more than a matter of preference. Arguing about which is the better approach is about as sensible as arguing about chocolate or vanilla ice cream being the best. As I said before, no-one has been able to say why the approach you and ralexinor seem to favour is better, just that it's what you prefer. If you think you can make the argument that is is objectively better then do so, because I've read this thread in detail and I haven't seen it yet. And for the nth time, trapper doesn't need to be made worse for combat and archery to be made better.
No, that's not a matter of preference, that's just looking at the basics of the class design. Why do you think HRs dailies have lower AP costs than other classes? Because they were intended to be used more frequently, but at lower effectiveness. That's not a matter of preference, that's a clear design choice in the basics of the class. Today, that's a problem because other classes don't have cooldowns on their dailies, and AP gain have gotten to the point that those classes can spam dailies.
As to the recovery stacking argument, I think it's kind of pointless to increase cooldowns, require recovery stacking and argue for compensating damage increases to scores of class powers to make up for it. All you're doing is making a lot of changes, pointless busy work for the devs, never mind gear changes for players who are affected by it, just so we can get back more to less to where we are. That seems like a big waste of time to me, when trapper could be left alone and combat and archery could be improved by a series of feat and power changes made specifically to help those two underperforming paths; far less work, and less impact on the people who are currently running and enjoying trapper builds.
It's not a pointless exercise, because it gets the feat paths closer to similar levels of performance without involving giving out ridiculously large bonuses to Archery and Combat (see ralexinor's post on page 5 to understand just how large those bonuses would have to be), and paves the way for future class-wide improvements that won't maintain the essential status quo of every HR with a clue that wants to perform well being Trapper. That's a much easier balancing act than trying to sort out bonuses that are an order of magnitude larger than nearly anything currently existing in the game, and that would very possibly lead to unforeseen consequences (tm).
As for stacking Recovery, there's quite a lot of HR gear with that on it. The artifact weapon sets all have it. Trading a few enchantments for Silveries isn't a big deal.
Sorry but this is nonsense. To just get back to where we were we need probably 8-10k recovery more (I tested on single dummy with 5k more, for a total of 10k and was still not there). This means 8-10k less crit or power or a combination and we get nothing in return basically. If we had 6 months of testing in front of us I would probably agree. Now we'll have 6 months of nightmare on live if it sails like this.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
@macjae the point was to buff HR performances, do you think the goal is accomplished? it seems archery got like a 7-10% damage boost, trapper lost a 25% or more between caps and cooldowns nerf. combat? whats a combat hr? yes HR trees are more on the same level now but we took the wrong elevator, the one going downstairs.
EDIT: the error is in considering those data acquired by the devs about encounters usage and damage/survivability performance equally acquired from Trapper HRs, combat HRs, archery HRs when we all know 99% of total HRs are trappers hence those performances are trapper performances which again as we all know and as the same developers have stated are underwhelming.
you say this is the first step for something better, im almost sure that while your concept is right (thats how things should be done) there is no more time to do it. And then wait for the next balance cycle, maybe in a year and half, maybe again with no time, maybe again saying what should be and what will be. These kinds of things cant be done in 2 patches, it all ends up to chatter and little substance.
So what are they doing with swiftness of the Fox..?? I missed it. I do hope they are not thinking about changing it..
they did. It procs once per encounter instead of once per enemy hit by it.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
edited July 2016
Hello Jokeey. Basically as of today Swiftness of the Fox reduces your cooldowns by 15% for each target you hit. So if for example you use Steel Breeze and hit two targets it reduces your Ranged cooldowns by 30%. With the stated changes it would just reduce your Ranged cooldowns by 15%. So using your full melee rotation will reduce your ranged cooldowns by 45%. This means you'll have to mix and match with at-wills unless you stack recovery (my estimation is you'll need at least 10k recovery to get where we are today). I'll try to get a better feeling as soon as the new patch kicks in and verify if all typical powers actually follow the new rule.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
And given that amenar so far seems very responsive to constructive feedback, I think there's reason for optimism on that front.
oh at least i can agree on this. He is definitely reading everything and even if im not happy for how things are going i cant say he is not doing his job well.
As for stacking Recovery, there's quite a lot of HR gear with that on it. The artifact weapon sets all have it. Trading a few enchantments for Silveries isn't a big deal.
Yes, giving combat and archery builds similar opportunities to reduce their cooldowns could be part of an effective strategy for balancing the different paths. Once that's done, all that remains is see if anything else should be done to other feats and certain relevant encounter powers and leave time for thorough testing by devs and players. This is not the only solution, but it's certainly one of them and one of its main strengths is not wrecking a popular existing build.
But it kind of seems to me like you're contradicting yourself by arguing against cooldown reductions for the other paths. On the one hand, you're claiming that the disparity between the builds is mainly due to combat and archery being so far behind there, but on the other hand you don't think that giving the same thing to the other paths will make things more equal? Do I have that right?
Again, my problem with your view of this situation is refusing to reconsider your starting premises. You have certain views about how it is desirable, or how it was the case at one point in the game's history and therefore that it should always be that way, that a certain playstyle is best for the class. I don't share those views, which is why I see this as a matter of personal preference.
I think it's perfectly acceptable for a set of circumstances that may not have been intentional to result in a fun and effective (but not overpowered) build that is worth preserving and extending to other paths as well. I also think it's not the end of the world if there are differences in certain class mechanics meaning minimal investment in a single stat is required for some of them. It only starts to become a problem if some classes can focus on improving far fewer stats than others without any corresponding drawbacks.
I quoted just one part of your post because I didn't want this to get stupidly long, and because in many ways it's the crux issue. Just how much recovery do you think we're talking here to offset the loss caused by the feat change? Only a few silveries? Perhaps for BiS people running r12s in every slot. But can you put a number on it?
By my estimate, and according to at least one other poster who's actually done some testing, it's going to be a lot more than a bit, and it's going to hit less well-geared players particularly hard. And if they dive into stacking recovery in attempt to get back what they're losing from the feat change, there will be serious consequences for their damage output.
For someone who is interested in concrete examples, I think this blanket assurance that 'a few silveries' will cover the difference is by far the weakest part of your post. But I'd be happy to be proved wrong about that, so if you can please do so.
Thanks.
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romotheoneMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 729Arc User
Since you reported it as a bug, could you please also come up with a solution to compensate for the lost mechanic, which was essential for the trapper?
@amenar I couldn't help, but notice that HR doesn't have a class feats, which support the Archery tree damage-wise.
Aspect of the Falcon: This sounds good on paper. Gives you additional range, which allows you to get a few hits in before the target can approach you. Unfortunately, this only supports solo leveling play and loses it's effectiveness once you get into end-game or fight in tight places. While it supports Stillness of the Forest, it also excludes you from many of the group buffs, which require you to be within range of your team. Please consider reworking this class feat. Too much range is a faulty mechanic that works against the HR. Stillness of the Forest, Longstrider Shot's buff and Hawk Shot suffer from the exact same thing. My suggestion: If I look at the class feats icon and name I see a falcon, looking at its prey, knowing exactly where and when to strike. Critical chance/critical severity comes to mind. Maybe a "for ranged at-wills/encounters/dailies" condition added to it. I feel like Archery (and as players who play the 2 other trees have reported) and the other trees suffer from not being able to deal high spikes of damage. Laying the fundations for crit builds could be a solution to this.
Aspect of the Pack: The great dilemma of the Archery HR. This forces the HR to move within a very small radius around the action. Not too close, so you don't mess with your range-based bonuses but not too far so teammates are still affected by it. Do you use a summoned companion and stay away from your own group (due to range issues with the skills mentioned above), or do you move closer to your group and cripple yourself? Combat advantage is something that gets applied by many other classes on a regular basis. I feel like this feat is counter-productive in a group situation for the HR and if I had to describe the issue with a single phrase, I'd say this skill's name should rather be "Aspect of the Lone Wolf" when it comes to Archery. Could be useful in some rare situations for a melee focused HR, but there are far better class feats for that playstyle and this basically should never be picked outside of leveling. This empty "Class Feat" slot could be used for so much more that would open up possibilities for any HR. My suggestion: Looking at the class feats icon and name it suggests group play. For the reasons stated a few lines above, radius based skills are heavily restricting Archery's effectiveness and it's hard to find a fitting effect that represents the Icon and the skill's name without leaning towards a straight up(mechanically barely interesting) damage boost and a radius effect. I am hesitant to suggest something ground-breaking, because I am not sure how much time and effort it would take you to code. I am going to brainstorm on this one, without really thinking about the impact, but I'll try to stay within reasonable boundaries. - You and your allies in a radius around you gain 10/15/20/25% movement speed while unmounted and out of combat. - You as the pack leader, mark the first target you deal damage to in combat. You and your allies deal 3/5/7/9% more damage to that target. Lasts until target dies or you get out of combat. - Killing a foe enrages you and your allies in a radius around you, increasing movement speed(5%) and damage dealt(5%) for 4/6/8/10 seconds. //// could also simply set a really short duration and make the bonuses scale to resemble a sudden enraging effect. Movement 4/8/12/16%, damage 4/8/12/16% for 2 seconds after a foe dies.
What do you guys think about these?
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Aspect of the pack is pretty good choice for combat and trapper when you face groups of enemies. On a single target positioning will do the trick but if you have multitargets it will not so Aspect of the Pack gives a pretty good boost in most real cases. The boost is 15% plus all combat advantage bonuses you can get (some additive some multiplicative) like combat advantage bonus from equipment, companions, boons, charisma (for an HR) so it can add up quickly. It's very difficult to give an estimation of the actual impact in reality and balance it with something else as it really depends on a large number of variables like positioning and other means of getting combat advantage.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
So basically they have just ruined trapper now. So we are going to need recovery a lot of it by the sounds of it, so the rotation is fudged. Might aswell make a cw then, that was the main skill that kept us alive and doing damage so we will be doing less now tbh?? Kinda wishing i didn't put a load of money in it now waste of time o well
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Since you reported it as a bug, could you please also come up with a solution to compensate for the lost mechanic, which was essential for the trapper?
@amenar I couldn't help, but notice that HR doesn't have a class feats, which support the Archery tree damage-wise.
Aspect of the Falcon: This sounds good on paper. Gives you additional range, which allows you to get a few hits in before the target can approach you. Unfortunately, this only supports solo leveling play and loses it's effectiveness once you get into end-game or fight in tight places. While it supports Stillness of the Forest, it also excludes you from many of the group buffs, which require you to be within range of your team. Please consider reworking this class feat. Too much range is a faulty mechanic that works against the HR. Stillness of the Forest, Longstrider Shot's buff and Hawk Shot suffer from the exact same thing. My suggestion: If I look at the class feats icon and name I see a falcon, looking at its prey, knowing exactly where and when to strike. Critical chance/critical severity comes to mind. Maybe a "for ranged at-wills/encounters/dailies" condition added to it. I feel like Archery (and as players who play the 2 other trees have reported) and the other trees suffer from not being able to deal high spikes of damage. Laying the fundations for crit builds could be a solution to this.
Aspect of the Pack: The great dilemma of the Archery HR. This forces the HR to move within a very small radius around the action. Not too close, so you don't mess with your range-based bonuses but not too far so teammates are still affected by it. Do you use a summoned companion and stay away from your own group (due to range issues with the skills mentioned above), or do you move closer to your group and cripple yourself? Combat advantage is something that gets applied by many other classes on a regular basis. I feel like this feat is counter-productive in a group situation for the HR and if I had to describe the issue with a single phrase, I'd say this skill's name should rather be "Aspect of the Lone Wolf" when it comes to Archery. Could be useful in some rare situations for a melee focused HR, but there are far better class feats for that playstyle and this basically should never be picked outside of leveling. This empty "Class Feat" slot could be used for so much more that would open up possibilities for any HR. My suggestion: Looking at the class feats icon and name it suggests group play. For the reasons stated a few lines above, radius based skills are heavily restricting Archery's effectiveness and it's hard to find a fitting effect that represents the Icon and the skill's name without leaning towards a straight up(mechanically barely interesting) damage boost and a radius effect. I am hesitant to suggest something ground-breaking, because I am not sure how much time and effort it would take you to code. I am going to brainstorm on this one, without really thinking about the impact, but I'll try to stay within reasonable boundaries. - You and your allies in a radius around you gain 10/15/20/25% movement speed while unmounted and out of combat. - You as the pack leader, mark the first target you deal damage to in combat. You and your allies deal 3/5/7/9% more damage to that target. Lasts until target dies or you get out of combat. - Killing a foe enrages you and your allies in a radius around you, increasing movement speed(5%) and damage dealt(5%) for 4/6/8/10 seconds. //// could also simply set a really short duration and make the bonuses scale to resemble a sudden enraging effect. Movement 4/8/12/16%, damage 4/8/12/16% for 2 seconds after a foe dies.
What do you guys think about these?
she did mention that the base damage should be increased , and further more on the other 2 paragons combat and archery , because thorned roots from trapper is another source of damage.
Swiftness of the fox gave trapper recharge speed = 0 CDs which meant that you guys dealt more damage in such a close time, fixing swiftness of the fox indeed it will decrease the overall damage, but now it's room for improvement in the base damage, and if you want to play the old 0 CDs build, you stack recovery, basically its a WIN : WIN at te end of the day, makin the other 2 paragons close to be viable.
It's a win win only if we get the damage boosts and they have to be massive (I guess something like 30-40% across the board for trappers and more for the others, especially on at-wills) if the overall goal is to improve trapper and greatly improve the other two.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Comments
If trappers are required to stack recovery it will have to be at the cost of other stats, quite possibly power and/or crit strike. For damage output, that will take the build backwards, not forwards, which is not in line with the stated goals of this class pass. Stacking recovery will come an opportunity cost in other areas, which means making a build which the developers have already acknowledged as underperforming pay an additional price just to do what it does now. That is not an improvement at all.
Some of the very same people making 'helpful' suggestions like this also rabidly defend any changes to their own favourite classes in other parts of the forums, labelling suggestions for changes as being attacks on their classes by haters. I hope the developers are able to see what is actually going on here. This discussion is being hijacked by a few people who are clearly concerned about protecting their place in the current pecking order, not actually improving HRs.
The problems with combat and archery underperforming could be fixed with feat changes to those trees, it's only a matter of working out the details. I haven't seen any argument in this thread yet which can explain why trappers have to be made worse to make the other styles better. Just improve the higher tier feats for those other two styles in such a way that players can't build a character which can cherry pick all the best stuff from more than one tree.
Thanks.
We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
Now that trapper is brought down a notch..HR overall damage need to reevaluate once again and further boost them accordingly back to competitive level.
Guild:
Dragon Server-Essence of Aggression
Drider Server- TheWolves
youtube channel
2. Predator - remove half effectiveness on players, and boost it to at least 50% to match piercing blade. It's single target only so it's already not very good in PvE.
3. Marauder Escape - should provide CC immunity and make it a CC break.
4. Boar Charge - reduce its CD and maybe make its range longer like GF's bullcharge?
5. Forest Ghost - last time I tested it Elven enchant would still reduce the movement speed buff duration.
Mod 12.5 PvP Power/Crit/Arp Optimization
Youtube channel (PvE/PvP)
Messing with this basic build mechanic will reduce effectiveness and require large boosts in other areas (much larger than what is currently on the table) even just to stay where we are now. And the stated goal of this exercise is not to go backwards or tread water, it's to improve.
This is why I don't think the swiftness change is a good idea; it opens a can of worms that will require a lot more work in other areas to fix. I'm probably not the only one who is concerned that if this is broken, it may take months or years to fix it given how much work there is to do just on class balancing, let alone working on other parts of the game. We need to get it right now.
I'd also like to add my support to the comment others have made that reducing the ability to cycle encounter powers will have a disproportionately severe effect on newer/more poorly geared players. The recharge percentages for swiftness will be need to be raised if what counts as a target is reduced.
Trapper could use some small improvements, but this class pass will be a sad failure if the end result is that we get worse. Like others have said in this thread, combat and archery could be brought up to par by making changes to core powers for those paths, as well as to higher tier feats for those trees. Focus on those areas, please; they need it most of all and it means the trapper path which is enjoyed by many and not overpowered does not get broken inadvertently.
On the topic of AOTS, I'm not completely convinced what is being proposed is an improvement. If certain encounter powers do not change the stack count, then it seems like people using those powers will be made more reliant on using weak at wills to get the most from this class power, which reduces DPS. Bringing careful attack into line with gushing wound so only the initial attack affects the stack count is a net improvement (though it does reduce damage output in situations where you are going all ranged), but I'm not on board with how non damaging powers will no longer affect stack count.
Thanks.
i will also say my strategy doesn't work all the time and i have to put on my dps pve gear, instead of wearing my tanky control pve gear.
cc immune is a good though and cc break too
these are jsut my thoughts/opinions
should not work during
freeze, daze, stun
should work during
knockback, knockdown, slow, immobile, or any other movement impairing effect i cant name right now
the change to swiftness of the fox was really uncalled for, at least for the time being.
i recognize there are some general damage boost but
1) aoe are now capped to 5 enemies
2) cooldowns are almost doubled (just tested on a single dummy which is the same)
in the end this whole class balance thing which aimed to bring HR more in line with other dps performance is going to fail since points 1) and 2) just mentioned are the main source of dps.
i lost definitely hopes on combat so nevermind xD
i guess this is the last patch we are going to see before the mod 10. I suggest you to keep track of HR statistics in the next months to evaluate the changes: damage will be slightly lower, no one will play a combat HR, archery is killed by animations and weak concept of "stay at distance", moreover its capstone is single target.
PVP perfomances almost unchanged, probably a perceptible survivability nerf since cooldowns are going to affect fox's cunning hard.
i just keep hoping for a couple of changes to battlehoned and cruel recovery.. i know its probably late to insist on those...but when something is so much underperforming something has to be done... if not now when?
thanks for your time tho
have good holidays
The first bit of my post you've quoted somehow left out the part where I say to focus on improving combat and archery. I've also said that in earlier posts too. By now there should really be no misunderstanding about where I'm coming from; I want to see those paths boosted, and I think they need a lot more help than trapper does.
So if that was just a misunderstanding, it should be cleared up now. But if you're trying to mischaracterise my position by selectively quoting my posts while ignoring other parts, just stop it - that would be dishonest and a waste of everyone's time. You don't need to lecture me about the need to make other paths viable after I've already argued in favour of that outcome.
Whether or not you consider how swiftness works to be a bug isn't all that significant in my view. The way it works created a build which was effective without being overpowered and is also enjoyable to play. That is my view and it shared by others. The outcome I don't want to see is that trappers lose the ability to cycle encounter powers without large improvements in at wills and dailies to make up for that, and unfortunately that is where I think we are headed now. In fact, it seems like we are only a short distance now from making trapper much less effective while hardly improving combat and archery at all, and that would be a huge loss for the class overall.
I don't think there's any good reason why combat and archery paths could not receive cooldown reductions too so they can also cycle encounters which are suited to their builds. That could be a core mechanic for the whole class, rather than for just one path within it. When my HR was an archer I would have been very happy for that to happen, and although I've never run a combat build it seems like that approach would do a lot to make it more effective and enjoyable to play.
But whether you think the class should be relying almost exclusively on encounter powers alone, or more emphasis should be given to at wills and dailies with longer cooldowns for encounter powers is nothing more than a matter of preference. Arguing about which is the better approach is about as sensible as arguing about chocolate or vanilla ice cream being the best. As I said before, no-one has been able to say why the approach you and ralexinor seem to favour is better, just that it's what you prefer. If you think you can make the argument that is is objectively better then do so, because I've read this thread in detail and I haven't seen it yet. And for the nth time, trapper doesn't need to be made worse for combat and archery to be made better.
As to the recovery stacking argument, I think it's kind of pointless to increase cooldowns, require recovery stacking and argue for compensating damage increases to scores of class powers to make up for it. All you're doing is making a lot of changes, pointless busy work for the devs, never mind gear changes for players who are affected by it, just so we can get back more to less to where we are. That seems like a big waste of time to me, when trapper could be left alone and combat and archery could be improved by a series of feat and power changes made specifically to help those two underperforming paths; far less work, and less impact on the people who are currently running and enjoying trapper builds.
Thanks.
If I look at my character I lost recovery, so my rotation is not fluid anymore and I have to use at wills that deal horrible damage, lost 5k of crit (over 10% crit chance) and 1 potential target on the hardest hitting power for a few small buffs to powers I would anyway not use because they don't make sense. With a fluid rotation Ambush and the new Bear trap with no charges could make some more sense but like this they are useless.
And even with these losses, Archer and Combat still look far away from being viable alternatives... if I go combat I lose Master Trapper (30% damage bonus on everything) for 50% on melee (piercing or not piercing doesn't really matter in PVE as getting the needed arpen is a breeze), I lose Thorned roots which is 30% of my damage, lose recovery and get very little especially single target. As of today I can stay pretty close to a CW on single target but TRs beat me and GWFs blow me out of the water. If I go combat even CWs will be far away and I even lose control as I lose Ancient Roots. What I get is more lifesteal, but with the crazy Stronghold lifesteal boon honestly stacking more lifesteal is overkill.
Archer is even worse probably....
These are pretty much the reasons why I opposed Ralexinor's comments.... now the only decent build is worse than before. Forums700 is perfectly right. Giving a small buff to the existing trapper, working on the high end feats of combat and archer and making one of the dailies a heavy hitter would have been much more efficient than targeting a complete overhaul not likely going to happen in the limited time frame the devs have.... to do that this should have started months ago.
I'm really really sad... with an HR as main and a temptation SW as second pg I guess I'll get some few hard months...
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
the point was to buff HR performances, do you think the goal is accomplished?
it seems archery got like a 7-10% damage boost, trapper lost a 25% or more between caps and cooldowns nerf. combat? whats a combat hr?
yes HR trees are more on the same level now but we took the wrong elevator, the one going downstairs.
EDIT: the error is in considering those data acquired by the devs about encounters usage and damage/survivability performance equally acquired from Trapper HRs, combat HRs, archery HRs when we all know 99% of total HRs are trappers hence those performances are trapper performances which again as we all know and as the same developers have stated are underwhelming.
you say this is the first step for something better, im almost sure that while your concept is right (thats how things should be done) there is no more time to do it. And then wait for the next balance cycle, maybe in a year and half, maybe again with no time, maybe again saying what should be and what will be. These kinds of things cant be done in 2 patches, it all ends up to chatter and little substance.
This means you'll have to mix and match with at-wills unless you stack recovery (my estimation is you'll need at least 10k recovery to get where we are today). I'll try to get a better feeling as soon as the new patch kicks in and verify if all typical powers actually follow the new rule.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
But it kind of seems to me like you're contradicting yourself by arguing against cooldown reductions for the other paths. On the one hand, you're claiming that the disparity between the builds is mainly due to combat and archery being so far behind there, but on the other hand you don't think that giving the same thing to the other paths will make things more equal? Do I have that right?
Again, my problem with your view of this situation is refusing to reconsider your starting premises. You have certain views about how it is desirable, or how it was the case at one point in the game's history and therefore that it should always be that way, that a certain playstyle is best for the class. I don't share those views, which is why I see this as a matter of personal preference.
I think it's perfectly acceptable for a set of circumstances that may not have been intentional to result in a fun and effective (but not overpowered) build that is worth preserving and extending to other paths as well. I also think it's not the end of the world if there are differences in certain class mechanics meaning minimal investment in a single stat is required for some of them. It only starts to become a problem if some classes can focus on improving far fewer stats than others without any corresponding drawbacks.
I quoted just one part of your post because I didn't want this to get stupidly long, and because in many ways it's the crux issue. Just how much recovery do you think we're talking here to offset the loss caused by the feat change? Only a few silveries? Perhaps for BiS people running r12s in every slot. But can you put a number on it?
By my estimate, and according to at least one other poster who's actually done some testing, it's going to be a lot more than a bit, and it's going to hit less well-geared players particularly hard. And if they dive into stacking recovery in attempt to get back what they're losing from the feat change, there will be serious consequences for their damage output.
For someone who is interested in concrete examples, I think this blanket assurance that 'a few silveries' will cover the difference is by far the weakest part of your post. But I'd be happy to be proved wrong about that, so if you can please do so.
Thanks.
Since you reported it as a bug, could you please also come up with a solution to compensate for the lost mechanic, which was essential for the trapper?
@amenar
I couldn't help, but notice that HR doesn't have a class feats, which support the Archery tree damage-wise.
Aspect of the Falcon: This sounds good on paper. Gives you additional range, which allows you to get a few hits in before the target can approach you. Unfortunately, this only supports solo leveling play and loses it's effectiveness once you get into end-game or fight in tight places. While it supports Stillness of the Forest, it also excludes you from many of the group buffs, which require you to be within range of your team. Please consider reworking this class feat. Too much range is a faulty mechanic that works against the HR. Stillness of the Forest, Longstrider Shot's buff and Hawk Shot suffer from the exact same thing.
My suggestion: If I look at the class feats icon and name
Aspect of the Pack: The great dilemma of the Archery HR. This forces the HR to move within a very small radius around the action. Not too close, so you don't mess with your range-based bonuses but not too far so teammates are still affected by it. Do you use a summoned companion and stay away from your own group (due to range issues with the skills mentioned above), or do you move closer to your group and cripple yourself? Combat advantage is something that gets applied by many other classes on a regular basis. I feel like this feat is counter-productive in a group situation for the HR and if I had to describe the issue with a single phrase, I'd say this skill's name should rather be "Aspect of the Lone Wolf" when it comes to Archery. Could be useful in some rare situations for a melee focused HR, but there are far better class feats for that playstyle and this basically should never be picked outside of leveling. This empty "Class Feat" slot could be used for so much more that would open up possibilities for any HR.
My suggestion: Looking at the class feats icon and name
- You and your allies in a radius around you gain 10/15/20/25% movement speed while unmounted and out of combat.
- You as the pack leader, mark the first target you deal damage to in combat. You and your allies deal 3/5/7/9% more damage to that target. Lasts until target dies or you get out of combat.
- Killing a foe enrages you and your allies in a radius around you, increasing movement speed(5%) and damage dealt(5%) for 4/6/8/10 seconds. //// could also simply set a really short duration and make the bonuses scale to resemble a sudden enraging effect. Movement 4/8/12/16%, damage 4/8/12/16% for 2 seconds after a foe dies.
What do you guys think about these?
It's very difficult to give an estimation of the actual impact in reality and balance it with something else as it really depends on a large number of variables like positioning and other means of getting combat advantage.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80