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Rangers: what has to be changed to make it better ?
oocuper
Member Posts: 9 Arc User
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The Hunter path is so weak in term of DPS, even the +30% critical severity feat in the Warden path is enough to beat the Hunter.
I realized there was an attempt to keep the old Trapper playstyle an option for the players to pick, but the required features were weakened & divided into the two paths, rendering the Trapper playstyle almost impossible to achieve.
The features in Warden also favored the melee stance too much. As a result, players now are only concerned about the melee stance and totally ignoring the ranged stance.
And now I think the issue that I'm referring to is clear. There is only one option for rangers: A full melee-stance warden.
A lot of people are fine with that, including me. But where is the diversity of choices the Rangers had in past mods ? The bow on our backs is now nothing but a fancy cosmetic, since all rangers are only using blades now, while our bows were supposed to be our "main hand weapons", and they carry our weapon enchantment.
My suggestion is as following: A slight rework for rangers, or at least for the Hunter is required to bring them to the right path again.
I hope my suggestion is taken into consideration. And if that is the case, I'm happy to help and give my ideas as I'm a devoted player and huge fan of the game.
Currently with 3 mains (Ranger/Barb/Pally)
For those rangers who, like me (maybe only me), stubbornly refuse to abandon the trapper playstyle, the following would be helpful (to a lesser degree for those unicorns that play archer-style hunters):
- Rate of change: diminishing returns means that, to consistently benefit from the 5% buff, you need to *constantly* switch stances. Make it last a set time (5 sec) without the diminishing or keep the diminishing and bump it to 10%.
- Longshot: unless I'm misreading it, adding 50% to ranged (1:1.5) at the cost of reducing melee by 50% (1:0.5) is a bad deal, especially since hindering strike tends to account for the most damage. Either bump the ranged buff to 100% or reduce the melee penalty to 33%
- Thorned roots: the base magnitude (50) is terrible as is the hit control-immune targets take (100); all told they account for very little damage. The base should at least be doubled and the hit against control-immune targets should be comparable to hard-hitting encounters (400ish)
- Critical action: so, wardens get a permanent 30% crit severity buff at the relatively insignificant cost of 3000 crit. Hunters, meanwhile, *could* get up to 24% for 10 sec upon daily use. Methinks a rethinks is in order.
- AP gain: I know, everyone could use more, but the reduction of Biting Snares to 10% from 35% (or whatever it was before) + adding a 20 sec cooldown = pitiful AP gain
- Predator: a tier 3 feat that gives a 5% buff for 10 sec against one target? No thank you. This would need to be in the 15-25% range to make it worth considering.
- Better cooldowns: Commander in chief is useless (2 sec reduction) and Forestbond gives a measly 5% reduction *if* roots are applied. Compare this to Storm's Recovery which reduces encounter cooldowns by 3 sec on encounter *use*. Bumping Forestbond to at least 10% wouldn't bring back the old capacity to spam encounters endlessly, but it would make rotations far smoother and more tolerable. For Commander in chief to be useful, it would need to be at least 5 sec
- Plant Growth/Cordon: the addition of weak roots to PG helps with cooldowns, but other than that, one of the best pre-mod 16 encounters is now decidedly mediocre. To make it useful for more then added cooldown relief for the hunter/trapper, upgrade PG to strong grasping roots (in conjunction with buffing thorned roots) and make cordon hit harder. Also, 24 sec cooldown for PG and 20 sec for CoA? When it was a beast, sure, but now those times are just silly
- Careful attack: put it out of its misery or make it useful already; 10 magnitude per hit (when it isn't bugged, that is)? Seriously, call a priest.
- Casting times: 1.65 sec for aimed shot, especially given that all the other at-wills are awful (and don't benefit from flurry like warden) is ridiculously long. Same with Commanding Shot and, to a lesser degree, GW and aimed strike.
So, I look forward to the above being implemented. I also think its time for the devs to either call uncle insofar as trying to make people enjoy archers, or actually putting some thought into how this might actually work.RD
Main: Nidara Devilspawn- Ranger
Alt: Aradin Coldblood- Fighter
Alt: Lucrezia Vileborn- Warlock
this is so sad..
Now we are 2nd choice pve dps, after cw, which is nice, and pvp... erm don't know really.
I suppose the most telling this mod is my loadouts. Premod16 I had 3, pvp archer, daily combat, dungeon buffer. Now I have one. Combat.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
It was hard, buffer was even harder, just people needed a buffer so if there isnt a buffer Hr was good.
Ranger
- Binding Arrow now uses weak grasping roots, and now has a slightly higher magnitude.
- Fox's Cunning: This power no longer guarantees one dodged attack, and instead increases damage reduction.
- Stagheart now properly gives blue temporary health and has a duration of 15 seconds.
- Stagheart no longer incorrectly heals enemy players in PvP.
- Stagheart's temporary health has been increased to 15%, up from 5%.
Although I'm sure there was an extensive convo on the NW subreddit about how the biggest issue with Stag was the melee heal...RD
MOD 15> MOD 16 + 17
They change a skilled class to braindead class....
But nice Cryptic
Currently with 3 mains (Ranger/Barb/Pally)
Currently with 3 mains (Ranger/Barb/Pally)
RD
Everytime you mention HR dps pre mod 16 you bring up this BiS GWF hurr durr more damage than HR bullcrap. Just stop with that already. In a BiS group it didnt make sense to just go buff the gwf , it made sense to buff the better dps no matter which class it was. I have seen SWs and even CWs absolutely wreck these so called 'BiS GWFs' so your argument is quite invalid. If anyone just said 'but gwf is more damage anyways' without comparing player skill then they are probably ignorant and you should probably look for other groups.
Pre Mod 16 HR was so damn busted in the right hands especially in BiS groups. A well played HR could out dps or even stay toe to toe with an equally well played gwf. We may not have been the goto one phase class but goddamn did we destroy paingiver charts. We had consistency in our dmg and it felt soooo damn good playing that class.
When it comes down to damage numbers in mod 16- 17 , sure HR may be top tier but it is nowhere near its prior glory and awesomeness. I stopped playing the game mainly because they HAMSTER up the class soo bad.
Koca I respect you and your pvp archer playstyle but just stop undermining pre Mod 16 HR as 'buffer or nothing' . When you are undergeared and is pretty new to the class then sure, I can understand that statement to an extent. But if you are telling me a well geared HR is forced to play buffer and only buffer then its probably just you.
I played Dps HR 95% of the time for over 3 years and the remaining 5% I played as buffer because I wanted to slack off and put next to no effort in those dungeon runs orr just play hybrid dps/buff when there were too many dps players . I had issues initially when I wasn't geared all that well and lacked mastery of the class but once I got the hang of it I was invited into runs solely as Dps ; there were also multiple cases when I was requested to buff but ended up as main dps simply because the other dps wasn't skilled enough.
Pre - Module 16 Hunter Ranger is King. Fite me!
I miss Trapper. I did good dmg on trapper before, I never really needed to run "buff HR" or whatever you would call LSSing ppl off cliffs. I don't think we are in a better spot now, just because GWFs are the salty ones now.
But it's a lost cause, rather they keep it as it is now instead of fixing it into SW-direction.
What I wonder about tho is, why having a completely useless paragon seems to be instyle now? Not just HR, seems to be a pure dps paragon issue imo. Whats with that? Too much dps with two dps paths?
Hunter paragon:
Increase recharge time reduction of forestbond and commander in chief to 10% and 4 seconds respectively
Increase magnitude of Thorned Roots to 100 for DOT and 250 for instant (and/or make Crushing Roots “twice as effective” instead of “last twice as long or both)
Reduce cast time of Commanding Shot by .4 secs
Reduce cast time of Aimed Shot by .25 secs to make it more viable
Warden Paragon:
Fix penetrating arrows so it’s not effected by differences in terrain height
Reduce cast time of Split the Sky by .5 secs
Make Split the Sky Multi target instead of single target
Increase magnitude of Binding Arrow to 600
Reduce action point cost of Call of The Storm to 250 instead of 500
Make Enchanced Conductivity applicable to ranged or light based attacks only (remove light from clear the ground)
Couple of suggestions...
Some of these powers should be able to be chosen from either path. Binding arrow definitely should be able to be used in Hunter path. It's a strong arrow and roots for crying outloud. Forestbond feat...
Prey damage needs a boost.
Thorned Roots feat needs more magnitude. How can Hawk Shot have a 1.5 second cast time but only be at 170 magnitude!?
CoA and plant growth are way too weak.
Commander and chief only reduces by 2 seconds?
Overall our magnitudes are just way too low. That's the main reason we aren't doing damage. You guys need to rethink this path is pretty bad right now.
1) Obviously, we need a viable DPS path other than full combat. I signed up for this class to play a class with both ranged and melee abilities and I'm tired of playing combat. Sick to death of it. It's been years and they haven't come around to making ranged abilities viable in this game. Is it really so hard to just bring back the mod 2 hybrid or the trapper? Those were actually fun. Combat is borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. Warden is borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.
2) I've made innumerable posts on this subject over the years, so the same old, disregarded list of obvious suggestions follows:
a) Give us functional, useful stealth and healing abilities, not stealth abilities that don't seem to keep us from being targeted in pvp and healing/tanking abilities that do nothing significant.
b) Give us a functional dodge instead of one that is too small to evade most melee/AoE abilities and DOES NOT DODGE CONTROL EFFECTS. How many years does it take for a dodge to actually dodge things?
c) Give us useful amounts of stamina regeneration without having to use Steel Breeze.
d) Give us an actual control block or escape like basically every other class has.
e) Reduce cast and animation times for most abilities. I haven't used any variety of them in ages due to being stuck in this godawful boring boring combat meta, but Commanding Shot, Aimed Shot, Hawk Shot, etc.
f) Get rid of and replace abilities that no one ever uses, like Bear Trap.
g) Get rid of the freeze at the end of Boar Charge.
h) Get rid of the animation for Forest Ghost, which seems to keep the ability from functioning when in combat, especially in pvp (not that I've pvped in ages due to devs having allowed pvp to die by ignoring player concerns for years)
i) Make Disruptive Shot available in the Warden path. Gear and feats that are meant to synchronize with dailies have been made useless by the choice to restrict it to the (unnecessarily) weak hunter path.
j) Give us the ability to choose our own melee and ranged side loadouts rather than deal with the often useless, vestigial and otherwise weak counterparts assigned by the game.
k) The restriction of powers between hunter and warden paths was really, really badly done and needs to be completely rethought. But most importantly, make Disruptive Shot available to both.
l) Make it so that if the player is in stealth, using abilities with visible animations does not break stealth, i.e. those animations are not visible to other players.
m) Speaking of stealth, back when pvp was a thing, it never seemed to stop other players from targeting rangers for up to a full second after supposedly entering stealth. Fix that.
n) Keep the player from being targeted through Marauder's Escape's animation. After all these years.
o) Fix the targeting of Penetrating Arrows.
p) Make stealth from Ambush make sense: the player should have a period of, say, five seconds to use stealth to escape to a new position. During those five seconds, any ACTIVE attack made by the player would break stealth. If the player doesn't use an attack, he should remain in stealth afterwards until moving (maybe require a second press or add an animation component to indicate when the player is in this stationary stealth mode) or AT THE END OF the next attack's animation.
q) SPEED. GIVE US SPEED. It has always been ridiculous and insane that a GWF/Barbie or GF/Fighter can outrun a lightly armored ranger.
> Haven't bothered with forums in a while due to general disenchantment with the game, but I'll commit some necromancy on this thread:
>
> 1) Obviously, we need a viable DPS path other than full combat. I signed up for this class to play a class with both ranged and melee abilities and I'm tired of playing combat. Sick to death of it. It's been years and they haven't come around to making ranged abilities viable in this game. Is it really so hard to just bring back the mod 2 hybrid or the trapper? Those were actually fun. Combat is borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. Warden is borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.
> 2) I've made innumerable posts on this subject over the years, so the same old, disregarded list of obvious suggestions follows:
> a) Give us functional, useful stealth and healing abilities, not stealth abilities that don't seem to keep us from being targeted in pvp and healing/tanking abilities that do nothing significant.
> b) Give us a functional dodge instead of one that is too small to evade most melee/AoE abilities and DOES NOT DODGE CONTROL EFFECTS. How many years does it take for a dodge to actually dodge things?
> c) Give us useful amounts of stamina regeneration without having to use Steel Breeze.
> d) Give us an actual control block or escape like basically every other class has.
> e) Reduce cast and animation times for most abilities. I haven't used any variety of them in ages due to being stuck in this godawful boring boring combat meta, but Commanding Shot, Aimed Shot, Hawk Shot, etc.
> f) Get rid of and replace abilities that no one ever uses, like Bear Trap.
> g) Get rid of the freeze at the end of Boar Charge.
> h) Get rid of the animation for Forest Ghost, which seems to keep the ability from functioning when in combat, especially in pvp (not that I've pvped in ages due to devs having allowed pvp to die by ignoring player concerns for years)
> i) Make Disruptive Shot available in the Warden path. Gear and feats that are meant to synchronize with dailies have been made useless by the choice to restrict it to the (unnecessarily) weak hunter path.
> j) Give us the ability to choose our own melee and ranged side loadouts rather than deal with the often useless, vestigial and otherwise weak counterparts assigned by the game.
> k) The restriction of powers between hunter and warden paths was really, really badly done and needs to be completely rethought. But most importantly, make Disruptive Shot available to both.
> l) Make it so that if the player is in stealth, using abilities with visible animations does not break stealth, i.e. those animations are not visible to other players.
> m) Speaking of stealth, back when pvp was a thing, it never seemed to stop other players from targeting rangers for up to a full second after supposedly entering stealth. Fix that.
> n) Keep the player from being targeted through Marauder's Escape's animation. After all these years.
> o) Fix the targeting of Penetrating Arrows.
> p) Make stealth from Ambush make sense: the player should have a period of, say, five seconds to use stealth to escape to a new position. During those five seconds, any ACTIVE attack made by the player would break stealth. If the player doesn't use an attack, he should remain in stealth afterwards until moving (maybe require a second press or add an animation component to indicate when the player is in this stationary stealth mode) or AT THE END OF the next attack's animation.
> q) SPEED. GIVE US SPEED. It has always been ridiculous and insane that a GWF/Barbie or GF/Fighter can outrun a lightly armored ranger.
See my proposals on the State of the Ranger thread
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
The past couple of Months I’ve been tinkering with a Mob Melee build that incorporate stance switching with out worrying about focused(there’s nothing I can do about that and defstrike doesn’t seem to really pay for the 2-4% I get from focused switching stances) Sum of the conclusions I’ve made are as follows
1:someone mentioned movement speed earlier in the discussion. I agree 100%
One of the first things while my build was still full melee I did was equip a 10% movement mount, the boots from under mountain that give 2.5% per enemy, the chult tiger bonus in a offense slot and used the guild food for movement speed.
That alone was amazing ,while I lost dmg % the movement speed allowed me in a way to make up for the dmg loss by easily being able to move out of the red, reposition my self much faster and technically scooping the dmg up before other players can.
*So addressing 2 things in this Area would be wipe def strike from the warden choices and have in its place a feat that gives 10% dmg to all powers and 15% movement speed. Eliminating Some of the stance Switching damage loss
And dmg loss from utilizing movement speed where other things can go.
2 Encounter magnitude ,
From what I’m seeing magnitude is a huge factor affecting my load out , for a more personalized Stance switching warden build having all the other weaker damaging encounters at 400magnitude and damaging encounters with Dot at 300-350 magnitude would make damage output relevant on all choices.
For the most part these are the things that have hindered my dmg and personalization of my Warden stance switching loadout , the other things I though might have really killed my damage or the idea of a fun stance switching warden have not really been a issue.
As a basic rotation description as an example for magnitude I have grappling/breeze cordon/plant growth and hindering shot/strike
When packed together in a stance switching fast root em bomb em melee em Rotation Even with focused I’m only about 5 -10million dmg points behind other full Melee wardens in mob areas of iC at the end of the dungeon .Also on most scaled content I’m only falling behind about 4 mil even using this loadout on bosses. If magnitude was raised and my suggested feat be installed I think the dmg output could be equal to the full melee warden
As for the Hunter path I can only say now the damage out put is really good , however it seems like lack of mobility and cooldowns make it kinda a drag to use. If All encounter magnitudes were higher , the cooldowns lower and you could remain mobile during most attacks its possible in the right hands it would surpass a skilled melee warden.
The optimal Warden ranger should mix melee and ranged as part of the base rotations.