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Proposed easy HR changes to Make the class End Game competitive.
nowhere64
Member, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 37
Devs: please see the never-ending thread below re. HR end-game issues. A short summary: nobody really needs HRs in a VT or MC group; CWs and GWFs generally bring both more dps and more utility and DCs have a key role too. Inviting an HR is an act of kindness; adding another CW or GW [or DC] is generally better. HRs are competitive up to about a 12k gs, but then fall off dramatically. On top of that, many HRs have trouble controlling add aggro, and often frustrate their groups by de-bunching multiples and frequently dying.
So, how to fix? Here are five simple options:
1. Make thorn ward (ranged) affect multiple mobs (up to 5?) simultaneously. The increase in dps and added debuffs on multiple targets could make HRs more attractive in groups.
2. Allow split sky to crit, and improve the "slow" effects. Again, this would bring dps and other benefits to the group.
3. Slightly enlarge the rain of arrows target circle, and/or make rain of swords damage equivalent to rain of arrows. ROA is HR's primary hope to try to stay competetive with equivalent gs CWs and GWFs, but its value is lost when it misses multiple mobs.
4. Make the melee stance maurauder's ability hit multiple mobs. Improve the de-agro affects of marauder's escape (ranged).
5. Fix the hurricane daily so it does something helpful. If it could do some genuine 100% daily level damage, and be used right after a CW daily to hold the bunched mobs in place for an additional period, that would be helpful.
So, how to fix? Here are five simple options:
1. Make thorn ward (ranged) affect multiple mobs (up to 5?) simultaneously. The increase in dps and added debuffs on multiple targets could make HRs more attractive in groups.
2. Allow split sky to crit, and improve the "slow" effects. Again, this would bring dps and other benefits to the group.
3. Slightly enlarge the rain of arrows target circle, and/or make rain of swords damage equivalent to rain of arrows. ROA is HR's primary hope to try to stay competetive with equivalent gs CWs and GWFs, but its value is lost when it misses multiple mobs.
4. Make the melee stance maurauder's ability hit multiple mobs. Improve the de-agro affects of marauder's escape (ranged).
5. Fix the hurricane daily so it does something helpful. If it could do some genuine 100% daily level damage, and be used right after a CW daily to hold the bunched mobs in place for an additional period, that would be helpful.
Post edited by nowhere64 on
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1. i agree that TW needs to hit more than 1 target at a time, but 5 seems too high to me. 3 feels about right
2. it is pants-on-head stupid that StS doesnt crit. needs to be fixed, absolutely. an increase in either effectiveness or duration of the slow would be icing on the cake.
3. RoA is already BRUTALLY effective if you know how to use it (hint: try dropping on top of a Singularity sometime). no need for buffs here. RoS however, NEEDS to have its aoe increased, right now its the size of a pinhead.
4. no to muti-hit Rush. Escape having a partial Aggro dump might make it situationally useful (currently the only time i use MR or ME is in VT endfight, aggro shedding MIGHT get me to use it in other Boss figths as well)
5. CSH is a garbage power as of now. ANYTHING they do to improve it would be welcome
I've seen this often repeated and never supported. What suddenly makes HR unable to scale well past a 13k GS? People said the exact same thing about GWF at one point, and you see how that turned out yes?
So you want thorn ward to be useful outside of boss debuffs, doubt it will happen. Thorn ward is overall bad for DPS, which explains why you're doing bad damage in dungeons. I see a lot, and I mean a lot, of HR make this same mistake. Thorn Ward = Bad unless you're on a boss. Changing it to hit 5 targets would be insane damage, and such a huge buff as to place HR solidly at the top. I.E. Not going to happen.
Extending the slow on Split the Sky I can agree with. I doubt it will happen. Split the Sky's damage reflection is OP if a GF is taking alpha, and weak if a CW is taking alpha. That's just the way it is at the moment, and I don't see that changing. Crit, or no crit, if there are no incoming attacks it doesn't do anything at all. That's probably why Split the Sky gives AP even if it hits nothing. It's because the Dev's are fully aware that it could be wasted time to even shoot this encounter depending on team makeup.
The damage boost, however, is always useful.
If they change absolutely anything at all about Split the Sky, the animation needs to be significantly shorted to enable an HR to actually fire the stupid thing while on the run. It's the only thing that lets an HR kite effectively. Make it not root you to death while using it. It's counter productive in every way.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from using Rain of Arrows followed immediately by a Rain of Swords. Welcome to playing a ranger, which you have 8 encounters on your bar. Use them. I would love it if RoA had a larger AoE, but it's already an overwhelmingly strong AoE ability. What ruins it is your team, not the ability. Also, RoA's strike zone seems slightly larger than it's circle. It's just a pain to use it at long range, which it's the most potent for Archery spec.
If anything, I would prefer this to be an encounter that simply fires at a given enemy and lays down an AoE rather than a ground targeted ability. With such a small AoE, it is virtually impossible with the given camera angle to hit the broad side of a barn with it unless you have a significant height advantage. (Or are using it point blank, thus losing a 20% damage boost)
Oh, and the size of the AoE on RoS is huge. Unlike a lot of abilities, it fires in the direction your character is facing instead of where your cursor is aiming.
Why? It's a gap closer to get into melee range from far away. Conversely, Marauder's Escape is to deaggro and get out of melee into ranged. The deaggro effect works fine, if anything at all hits them or is closer than you when the effect finishes it's deaggroed.
Try not shooting immediately after using it. Watch in amazement as the deaggro effect works.
This ability lets you at least try to keep your 20% damage boost. Without it, it is much harder to do so.
The damage on Hurricane is underwelming. The slow is not. You can time it with singularity to provide a slow after Singularity wears off. Timing. Timing. Timing. Let me say it again so you understand the concept of HR. Timing.
Sorry for the extra long post, I'm sure it's TL;DR. I'm just honestly curious why other people are having problems with the class. I'm guessing the playstyle itself of most top end groups is what causes problems. People just stop caring when they hit 15k GS and stop playing like a team. You end up with 4 or 5 guys throwing things everywhere and generally misbehaving just because they can. In such an overgeared situation, I can easily see where HR falls apart.
The sad thing is that groups complain about HR pulling so much aggro, yet STILL REFUSE TO BRING A GF ALONG. This is the behavior one would expect from a crazy person or a child.
agree
Teahup00, HR PVE
CWs (and to a much lesser extent, GWFs) deal burst damage, while the HR deals steady, sustained damage. You have strong AOE at wills and weak encounters while CW dmg is all encounter based with weak at wills (mostly single target, and only used while waiting on encounters to come off cooldown). The GWF is a mixture of both, decent aoe at wills with decent burst encounters.
In low gear groups HRs are competitive, actually all classes are competitive when team dps is low, and paingiver is more a measurement of aggressiveness of play style. first one in generally tops paingiver, but really no one deals enough damage to instagib mobs so burst vs sustained is relatively balanced. You have time to split shot away on minions and normals, tr's have time to focus down elites, etc.
This is fine at 9-12k gs. After this point once everyone is geared, then burst vs sustained starts to fall apart. After 12k, the CW burst dmg (particularly in groups with 2 or more CWs, which is standard) kills everything in a single rotation. The higher the gs the party the faster this occurs. dungeons stop being about sustained battles vs an enemy encounter and become "run, run, run, gather up enough mobs. ok DPS for 4 seconds. ok everything is dead, run run run repeat until boss"
So while it's possible that your damage scales linearly just as much as any other class, it no longer matters once burst > mob hp. Lets say theoretically a low gs cw deals over 5 seconds 46k, 1k, 1k, 1k, 1k, for a total of 50k over 5 seconds, while a similiar gs HR deals 10k, 10k, 10k, 10k, 10k for a total of 50k over 5 seconds. They have the same DPS. Now at 15k their DPS is doubled, the CW deals 92k, 2k, 2k, 2k, 2k while the HR deals 20k, 20k, 20k, 20k, 20k. both deal 100k dmg. Except the 92k initial burst killed everything, so the CW dealt 92k dmg while the HR dealt 20k, and you move on to the next group of mobs.
Sustained damage over time classes like TR and HR cannot compete when dungeons become 15 seconds of running for every 5 seconds of actual combat.
Thanks for your thoughts SJ. I will respond with a few short points: 1. I don't use thorn ward now b/c it's not good enough; 2. I frequently end up in groups with 2-3 CWs and/or a GWF, and usually I'm added just to fill in the last slot -- not b/c HRs bring anything valuable to the group; 3. I also play a CW, and I can tell you from experience, it's a much much easier role to play from every perspective: easy to get a group; easy to stay alive even with aggro; easy to top dps; extremely helpful to group generally.
btw, I often try to hit with both ROS and ROA on the same bunch. ROS is easy to hit with, but isn't nearly the damage as ROA. ROA is fine when you are using it with multiple grouped CWs applying chained arcane singularities. But this shouldn't have to be the case for an HR to be competitive.
Here's one example. This morning I ran VT 1 quickly with a group of 3 CWs and one GWF. Used ROA each time an AS was applied. I was third in the parse at about 5 mil. The top parser was around 8 mil -- at least 30% higher than an almost ideal HR damage run.
All the HR contributes is dps. It's hard to justify keeping an HR (rather than another CW) if the HR provides only mid-range dps in a best case scenario.
The fact you consider an HR 'sustained' DPS and not burst DPS shows me how completely you misread the class.
Throw Caution + Rain of Arrows + Split Shot @ max range will melt anything you put it on unless someone decides that all those stacked mobs need a good scattering to make the dungeon 10x harder for everyone.
People who use knockback in PvE need to have their head's examined unless the add goes off a cliff.
The real reason people bring multiple CW is because it's a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> shoot if even one of them is decent. The odd's are against you, sadly, that any of them know the first thing about anything. There is no CW DPS option that requires knocking them all over the place, but somehow people manage to do just that even though it's the opposite of what good play looks like.
Kind of like how you only need one CW who is decent in ToS, but people try to bring 3 because none of them know what CC is and still can't clear the instance.
My HR I feel at the mercy of who we bring, what skill level they are, how well they listen to advice or work together. My CW feels like a real leader, able to take charge, bringing so much to the table where I do not, at least yet, have that feeling on my HR. Again I'll state I have about the same experience on both classes though, which is limited, and near equal gear sets. @Shurgs@ proof of nothing of course but I'm reasonable certain I'll NEVER match my skilled friends on their high GS CW/GWF's in raw power. But of course I will in utility, yes?
1. I am against making it ranged, i perfer it AoE. I am in favor of makign it hit more than 1 target, but feel the damage should be scaled back some, maybe 20% or so with a max target of 5 like other AoEs.
2. I rarely use it but hwne i do, i can build up high damage numbers. I say keep split the sky as it is, and have the devs fix Colds Steel Hurricane.
3. While at first I felt as many HRs did with RoA's small circumference. Then I saw the damage I do with how it is now. I am happy with the area of effect circumference. That being said, if the circumference is increased, then the damage should be scaled but some and a max target of 5.
4. Never used this encounter, so i have no opinion regarding it.
5. Would love to see this fixed.
Again this is clear that you are still in the 9-12k gs range where any of that is relevant (knocking off cliffs? lol i remember when this was faster than just nuking things, back in the day) and scattering mobs does indeed slow down the group. In that scenario I understand why you misunderstand the HR as a burst class rather than a sustained one. After that point, especially once you start reaching 14-15k+ (less with multiple CW which is quite the norm) scattering the mobs doesn't matter, the attacks that cause the push backs (Shard of the Endless Avalanche and Opressive force being the main culprits) one shot all of the mobs anyway, and nobody cares where the corpses land.
That being said i'm more of a team player than max dps racer so I generally use Sing when grouped with a gwf or HR, ya know, to give them a chance to deal some damage, even though it lowers my damage/survivability by a noticable margin. Now if it happens to be 2 or more decent dps cw's then i'm not going to bother because in that scenario singu drastically lowers team damage, efficiency, and clear time and its not worth it just to bump up #4 paingiver a few hundred k.
The first hit of Rain of Arrows is burst, followed by a smaller DoT. I define 'burst' as a high initial hit. Split Shot is burst all the way, with the DoT just adding a small bit on top to carry it over until the next burst hit. If fired from maximum range, it's quite definately burst.
You're right. In such a situation, one Split Shot kills trash outright and puts everything else at half health.
Heh, so you're kind enough to let other classes get some hits in. How generous of you. I must admit that made me lol. Especially the part about singularity lowering team damage. Good stuff there.
You don't seem to understand the concept of burst vs sustained. But once again you've made it clear that you aren't understanding me here. So lets use your terms. split shot is burst, fired every second or so. little mini-bursts of dmg. RoA is Burst but deals damage over time, lets call it burst over time so we're on the same page.
So now we come to what your burst does. it kills minions. 5-10k hp trash. congratulations. If you rush ahead you can generally do this with your Split shot At Will if you don't waste time using any encounters because you have the benefit of range. nobody cares about minions though. Especially not a measily 5 of them which is all you're hitting. It's the "everything else" that the CWs and GWFs are instantly disintegrating. All the rest of the minions, the normal, elite, and mini boss mobs with 100k+ hps, up to and including roughly 600k-800k hp mobs (like maws, hulks, etc). That's what i'm talking about, and when those die in a single rotation a "mini-burst-over-time-class-which-i'm-going-to-go-ahead-and-call-sustained-dps" falls apart. Even if you hypothetically deal the same damage over time, burst wins when mob hp < burst dmg potential.
Absolutely it does in the parties i've described. Just like the bugged HR feat that procs a root on mobs, it slows down parties too. don't worry you'll get there eventually.
and query523 i've grouped with all manner of HR up to 17.5k gs some of the more well respected HRs of the community or atleast claimed to be. All of them seem to understand these concepts.
Almost no one in my guild runs an HR except for PVP, they did at first, realized their disadvantages, and either rerolled them for PVP only or just quit them. I'm happy for you that you can out damage bad gwf, don't worry most gwf players are bad so i'll let you hold on to that title if you'd like.
edit: since I originally only posted to explain the reasons why HRs fall out of a desirability at end game level as SJ asked the question, and since he doesn't seem content with the answer I'll bow out of this thread as to avoid further derailment. I for one am in favor of buffs and changes for the class along with slightly more needed TR and GF buffs. Or, if you check my posting history, i'm equally in favor of CW and GWF Nerf, or a change/hard cap in debuff mechanics.
You wanted to know why everyone, especially end game HRs themselves, feel that HR fall out of favor past a certain GS, I explained it in as simple terms as I could. Believe what you will. The sky is blue, i'm not going to derail this thread any further arguing with you why you think it's green.
I'm not at this point yet being a new 60 but I have to agree with your thoughts on this inthefade462. At least from a previous MMO experience/perspective. Once burst reaches or exceeds mob HP ranges then sustained(even somewhat bursty, then systain) takes a back seat, in EVERY mmo I've played over the last 20 years. I can't see it behaving any differently here. I'm actually a bit excited to get to the 14-15K range to test and see this first hand, or not haha.
I like the class regardless, but if that is true in geared AND skilled party play then eventually slight buffs would be in order. I, persoanlly, do not need to be #1 on the chart(but honestly, GWF and CW bring lots of utility on top of the DPS...so they have no more right to it than HR certainly and to a lesser extent TR as they are boss killers, not trash) So even if improvements came through boosted party buffs/utility etc I'd be more than fine with this. As long as it was meaningful at the high ends of skill/gear and not just the low-mid.
^This.... pretty much sums up hr problems in end game, the lack of real burst vs sustained damage is what kills our dps even in our favoured clumped up mob situations.
only people arguing about that is the undergeared/unexpeerienced... yes im thinking about you spacejew as everytime i read a one of ur posts in this thread my eyes bleed.
that is why i also think the suggested changes wont really help much what the hr needs is real burst aoe damage and that only comes from our melee encounters and split shot. Since splitshot is fine as it is and melee is pretty underpowered/played in pve right now i think what would really help out the class is...
a big buff to melee damage, like very big.... around 50-100% buff to its base damage. so if say my unbuffed(debuffed) hindering strike/fox shift hits for some 6-7k it should be dealing something in the lines of 12-15k. still lower than cw encounters but u then have splitshot + dots to make up for the difference.
That would also encourage more the class to be played like it was designed. Also with the addition of tenacity it shouldnt break the class too much for pvp.
^^ THIS
This is what we tried to explain many times in the other threads, until some undergeared 11k GS HR comes and start saying "hey I'm a ****, and I saw like 20% of the actual gameplay, still my HR rocks compared to GWF and CW, so I'm L33TZ and nobody else understood how to play HR except me bcs I'm so rad."
Thankfully someone who can properly speak english, was able to explain it mathematically, thanks man, really.
Anyways, I think that more or less the HR is fine as he is, and he does not need a buff. He do really needs to get his skills fixed: I'm talking about useless broken jokes like Hawk Shot, Commanding Shot/Stag Heart, Cold Steel Hurricane, Electric Shot, the absurdly long animation of Aimed Shot and Split the Sky, Forest Meditation, Seismic Shot, Binding Arrow, the non-dodging Fox's Shift, and non-working dodging maneuver, the often-missing Boar Charge... oh sorry that's like 75% of the skill not working as intended.
Also, CW and GWFs need to be nerfed and toned down: there's nothing wrong if the GWF would be the "off-tank" he's supposed to be, or a pure DPS glass cannon (wich he is if you do a Swordmaster, whose damage is actually inferior to the "tanky" Iron Vanguard, because of a quite broken bleeding skill). But he can't be both things at the same time.
Same goes for CW: if they're controllers, they cannot be buffers, debuffers and main DPS too.
Just fix HR bugs, GWF bleeding exploit, and tone down by like 25% a CW overall damage, and you do not need to touch HRs mechanics: suddendly even GFs and DCs will be viable again in the end-game too!!
It's so obvious that the problem lies within these 2 classes, that I can't understand why people still debate how to fix things in any other way.
100% with u.... id actually be as happy if they just toned down the 2 monster classes and fixed our bugs (forgot the buggy shifting too)... but u know it always sounds better to buff than to nerf aka fix
The real reason's why CW don't want any HR in the group are three-fold.
1) They want to kill the trash to power up their own damage.
2) Because some HR decided to select the root feat that makes shard useless.
3) CW can not survive aggro from anything that is not locked down.
This nutcheck to the Thaum build in particular is why the vast majority of 'I'm better than everyone because I have 16k GS' do not want HR in their group. It is going to lower their personal damage, and that can not be allowed to happen even if another class is doing the same or better AoE DPS. I don't know if anyone else notices that Thaum relies on trash killing, but without it their personal DPS is lowered in two of their Paragon feat selections. It also lowers their survival when they routinely over-aggro without a GF/GWF in the group. (Especially when heavy armor classes are not the initiator of battle.)
Also, encounters for HR do not do any appreciable damage outside of Rain of Arrows/Swords and Split The Sky/Throw Caution. They just don't. They're mostly single-target, and don't do any kind of real damage even single target. HR is a class who's damage is driven by spammable, high damage AoE at-wills. So no, I generally don't 'waste time' with encounters unless I see an opportunity to drop Rain of Arrows. I generally open with Split the Sky on larger pulls, but for clearing on the way to the boss generally there are few, if any, opportunities to use encounters outside of Throw Caution, which I keep up 100% of the time.
The most amusing part of all? You keep calling CW 'burst' damage when in reality it is just regular damage being thrown at heavily debuffed add's. Debuffed add's, I might add, increase the damage done by HR's to far above what CW can achieve on it's own.
The very same setups that drive CW damage from 'meh' to 'amazing' also lift up every other class that can deal damage. But go ahead and ignore that and continue examining each class in a vacuum. The fact anyone debates that every class is OP useful in every dungeon at 15k+ GS is hilarious to me. It's even better when I out DPS 15k+ GS characters with my HR. We both know that only happens when the player is so bad it's pathetic, but it happens literally every day in every PUG dungeon I run.
So go ahead, keep kicking HR's because they might have a root and might kill the trash before you can profit from it. I'll just keep saying that minor quality of life tweaks is all the HR really needs outside of a major overhaul to the Nature tree.
EDIT:
Just as an addendum, I think we're talking about two different things. I think that it's become apparent that most CW players are using 3 minute clears of the Dracolich as their starting evaluation point of how useful a given class is. This is pretty ludicrous if you really think about it, and just goes to show how profitable it is to leave other classes out. Every drop that isn't CW is a greed item by default.
I will agree in one point only, and that is that some of the HR skills could use some looking at. Specifically a lot of the misc. buff's need to be upped by at least 10-15% in effectiveness. Most especially the Mitigation Buff/HoT/Temp HP buff. Cold Steel Hurricane needs something to make it better than Seismic Shot in any situation, but making it not disappear on a slight incline would be a big start.
As for the HR, nothing wrong with them aside from the bug and maybe CSH needing some help. Differ your play style up and you may see a world of difference. I have no problem beating other classes equally geared on damage dealt except for the broken GWF and thauma mages. Against these it really comes down to who gets interrupted out of their flow more. Think outside the box.
Gloom level 60 Control Wizard
Dusk level 60 Trickster Rogue
Dawn level 60 Devoted Cleric
Eclipse level 60 Hunter Ranger
Wrath level 60 Great Weapon Fighter
Jinx level 60 Scourge Warlock
Shard should do large damage, do not misunderstand me, but it doing excellent CC while providing excessively large damage is the bigger issue. Shard is the only real outlier ability for Thaum Spellstorm IMO, but the Dev's are probably aware that touching the CW even to fix bugs and glitches will result in 95% of the player base rage quitting overnight.
After all, there are a whole lot of people who can't be bothered to figure out dungeon mechanics and rely on brute force, over GS 'tactics' to clear content. Not to say that some of those tactics are invalid or anything, they certainly work, but if your only known method to clear content is to stack CW I submit you don't know much about the game.
At a certain point, if your standard group is far over gear score, any tactic other than faceroll becomes somewhat moot. It is never entirely moot, however, and lots of groups with far, far larger GS than what is actually required still fail at content because of basic misunderstandings about what a given dungeons mechanics are.
It staggers me that someone can have 15k+ GS and have never even run a ToS before. This tells me that glitch farming is just as widespread and prevalent as it always has been. Find a dungeon with an easy glitch with profitable items, rinse wash repeat.
v_v
2. StS must have ~1 sec cast time.
3. Will be cool and overpowered. Or ok 5-10% more range will be ok.
4. MR is ok. ME need fix to be viable escape I do not like to got knockdown in PVP on ME max distance ... About agro drop idk never use it for that.
5. Ammm CSH what ? Delete it ?
At all HR need most of encounters/at-wills to be adjusted/recreated. Aimed Shot need a bit less cast time 0.5-0.8 sec. Because with high DPS party I can try to use AS and if I land it I am happy because in most scenarios the target is death... In PVP if someone sprint from my max range when I start to use AS he will hit me in 100% of situations and ofc in the end of AS. But sadly this is only viable at-will except Split ofc.
Other 2 at-wills are only if I want to make someone in pvp angry, I will root him and hit, and root and hit and root and hit and humm maybe I will die at the end (rofl). Let see the Electric Shot, ahahah tanky Sentinel have better regeneration than this at-will hits, if he just sit on one place and I use Electric Shot on him he will never die (rofl) (there is a rumor that this hit have aoe) lol.
Aspect of the Falcon - fix this to be as before or 3x2 range.
Split Shot - give us way to manage the cone.
Electric Shot - equivalent damage as Split Shot or maybe high dmg on one target and split dmg on 5 targets. Or stun effect for 0.3-0.5 sec. Or anything useful.
Hawkeye - buff for 100% dmg on next hit ? Or buff for few sec ?
Hawk Shot - minimum range limit dmg.
Boar Charge - let's make this viable prone for 2-3 sec as on GWF/GF... in moment is for ~1,5 sec and the Boar Charge animation is for same time, so this encounter is useless. Or just add to Boar Charge short root as effect - will be really cool.
Constricting Arrow - fix ticks to be undodge-able.
Aimed Strike - need 50% fast cast. At moment target will be so far if it run...
Thorn Strike - need 50-100% fast cast.
Forest Ghost - need 100% fast cast.
Forest Meditation - need 200% fast cast and all effect to stack. (someone was wrote that we must chose between 2 or 3 points on this)
Rain of Swords - need 20-30% fast cast.
At the end give us 6 slot for encounters but not 3. In the moment this work against HR in all the ways. Never mind how good are you like player if you need to spam this non-stop all day long is boring (10+hours ??? ). For short period is fun but that's all.
GWF bleed is not exploit but feat that must be moved at the end of Destroyer tree.
CW need to have 5 limits on him damage hits or as you suggest to be lowered as dmg.
HR need to be ... oh maybe recreated again ?