More Fuel for the Fire

[Ixtril]

<p>Hate to feed the negativity, but gotta clear my chest. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Nobody has really mentioned how we're losing what little utility we had to offer. Our jousting mastery.</p><p>This is the flipside to the otherwise positive consolidation of ranged and melee stats. Yes it will make gear much easier for us to obtain, and greatly enhance our melee combat arts, something I welcome after the difficulty in finding decent ranger items in TSO. (my alts have tons of great gear handed down from my ranger main, who has found little to better his shard jewelry running group instances).</p><p>The negative is, to paraphrase a Swashie "Now we all range like rangers". The other scouts are getting a huge improvement in their ranged abilities. Sure, their combat arts can't touch ours, but we all know the bulk of the damage is auto-attack.</p><p>Now for a joust fight the other scouts are going to do ALOT better than they used to. As it was, this was seldom a reason to drag along a ranger, now it certainly will not be.</p><p>Otherwise, blast it all, still love my ranger, bugger the rest.</p>

[Carpediem]

<p>We get 20% more auto attack damage from our mythical effect and 24% from AA, so we will still be doing a ton more damage from ranged weapons than any other class. We will still suck the way we are now on a overall dps standpoint, but that's another discussion that has been brought up 1000's of times already.</p>

[Crychtonn]

<p><cite>Ixtril wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hate to feed the negativity, but gotta clear my chest. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Nobody has really mentioned how we're losing what little utility we had to offer. Our jousting mastery.</p><p>This is the flipside to the otherwise positive consolidation of ranged and melee stats. Yes it will make gear much easier for us to obtain, and greatly enhance our melee combat arts, something I welcome after the difficulty in finding decent ranger items in TSO. (my alts have tons of great gear handed down from my ranger main, who has found little to better his shard jewelry running group instances).</p><p>The negative is, to paraphrase a Swashie "Now we all range like rangers". The other scouts are getting a huge improvement in their ranged abilities. <span style="color: #ff0000;">Sure, their combat arts can't touch ours, but we all know the bulk of the damage is auto-attack.</span></p><p>Now for a joust fight the other scouts are going to do ALOT better than they used to. As it was, this was seldom a reason to drag along a ranger, now it certainly will not be.</p><p>Otherwise, blast it all, still love my ranger, bugger the rest.</p></blockquote><p>Obviously you've never looked at the damage assassin ranged attacks do lol.  They may only have 3 bow attacks but 2 do more damage then the similar ranger attacks.  And the 3rd only does less because rangers have AA's to increase the ranger version.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>Good thing we have like 14 ranged CA's on beta. Unless your saying assassins 3 ranged CA's can put out as much DPS as all of our ranged CA's the idea that their "their [ranged] combat arts can't touch ours" is still true. Trying to compare ranger CA's 1 to 1 with assassin CA's is a universally bad way of comparing DPS, people really need to stop doing that. Need to be comparing long term zonewide or zonewide like (several fights merged) Ext DPS numbers, anything else is just stupid unless you are dealing with like a 10 minute single fight.</p><p>If you want to do it like that I can show you parses where dirges are within arms reach and I'm getting 6th on single fights. If you want to do it properly with merged/zone wide parses I can show you parses where I'm demolishing 90% of the raid on the parse and only getting slightly beat/matched by the rest.</p>

[Crychtonn]

<p>Wrong, there's nothing wrong with comparing class CA's one to one.  There are some that match up exactly bewteen both classes and others that have minor variances.  Understand why and you'd know one of the top reasons ranger CA's don't compare to assassin CA's.  (I can tell you why the ranger ones do less damage if you can't figure it out)</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>lol I know EXACTLY what the problems are and if you dont understand why copy/pasting assassin CA's to ranger ones will most definitely not solve our problems, then you shouldn't be talking about how to fix rangers.</p><p>You can compare them 1 to 1 all day but it's probably one of the worst ways to balance classes and rob them of any uniqueness as fast as possible. Best to compare end results and adjust accordingly.</p>

[Crychtonn]

<p>ok then EXACTLY why do most ranger CA's do less damage then assassin CA's??  Having been guilded with the previous class mechanic's dev for almost a year I know the answer to this and I'm curious to see if you do or if your just blowing smoke.</p>

[kartikeya]

<p><cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>lol I know EXACTLY what the problems are and if you dont understand why copy/pasting assassin CA's to ranger ones will most definitely not solve our problems, then you shouldn't be talking about how to fix rangers.</p><p>You can compare them 1 to 1 all day but it's probably one of the worst ways to balance classes and rob them of any uniqueness as fast as possible. Best to compare end results and adjust accordingly.</p></blockquote><p>Welp, the end result is assassin demolishes the ranger on live on both single fights AND zonewide (apart from a few freak fights, where usually the assassin is dead or otherwise unable to DPS half the time), and as the gulf only widens on beta, assassin will continue to demolish ranger, and so will all of T1, T2, and it's looking like maybe even some T3 classes. So looking at that end result, I say we should adjust accordingly. That means CA damage upgrades, among other things.</p>

[Azrael_888]

<p><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>ok then EXACTLY why do most ranger CA's do less damage then assassin CA's??  Having been guilded with the previous class mechanic's dev for almost a year I know the answer to this and I'm curious to see if you do or if your just blowing smoke.</p></blockquote><p>So say it man...</p><p>What are you afraid of?</p><p>Aeralik coming back to ban you from the game?  It erks me to no end that not one single person that knows him in RL or through something like countless gaming sessions (ie guilded with for a year) will come out and say he F'd over rangers.  I mean just FLAT OUT SAY IT.</p><p>Stuff like this make me believe in Aliens and 911 conspiracies.  I mean srsly if a gaming community can "keep a secret" for over two years about a class screw over,  The gov't (which has WAY more resources) can clean up anything and make us believe it.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>ok then EXACTLY why do most ranger CA's do less damage then assassin CA's??  Having been guilded with the previous class mechanic's dev for almost a year I know the answer to this and I'm curious to see if you do or if your just blowing smoke.</p></blockquote><p>Well first you might want to read my post and take what it actually says from it instead of anything else. I said I know what the ranger problems are, not why ranger CA's do less damage but I'll try and answer that one too.</p><p>For quite a while, i'll do the popular thing and call him A for anonymous, repeatedly said ranger auto attack was for lack of a better term unusually high. Also the nature of it allows us to auto attack at range unlike other melee classes. So I wouldn't be surprised if these were at least 1 of the reason why our CA's are lower to compensate by 'A'. If we had better auto attack and equal to better overall CA damage than assassins, well we couldn't have that now could we?</p><p>Unfortunately both of these reasons are BS and for the same reason. Not only is our ranged auto attack not unusually high anymore in a lot of cases it can be outright BEATEN, even by ourselves using melee weapons. So being able to get an auto attack or 2 on a joust is negated as an advantage and moved to getting us on par with other classes other auto attack numbers, if we are lucky. Several classes have caught up to our auto damage while our CA damage only grew as much as everyone else.</p><p>As a matter of fact any reason that has anything to do with 'well you can range attack as a scout/chain' is complete BULL. Any ranger that knows what they are doing is fighting at 2-5 meters as much as possible without dying. This was even before epic weapons provided the 'under 5 meters' boost.</p><p>Its really very simple. Our damage, between auto and CA's need to be upped to be on par with top DPS classes. Then if they don't want to give us more utility to be on par with their utility, they need to give us even MORE DPS. If how much DPS you do is dictated by what other roles you can fill (tanking/healing) or other buffs you give, proper balance would dictate ranger's do the most DPS in the game by a small margin.</p><p>But I suppose I could be talking out of rear, since you were BFF with the great Aeralik and know why he did what he did and didn't feel like telling us in the 2 posts you made insisting that you knew.</p>

[Crychtonn]

<p>Outside of blaming Mr A for the total imbalance between the damage that Fatal Follow up does compared to Coverage (which is a large difference and worthly of yelling about) he doesn't get the credit for the rest.  Lockeye's to blame for the terrible DoF abilities.  The rest have existed since launch.  They just get more evident evertime there's a level cap increase.</p><p>Next time your on examine: Rear Shot, Head Shot and Spine Shot all at the same time.  Use some reasoning skill and determine why Rear Shot does the least amount of damage.  There is a specific reseaon.  For Head Shot part of the reason is of course it's a higher level CA.  But go take a look at the T6 version and note it's three levels lower in that tier and still does more damage.  Also, if you compare earlier versions of each you'll understand why I say it's a problem the grows with each level cap increase.  If you understand these few CA's you can use that to look at both classes CA's overall and know why assassin CA's do more then ranger ones.</p><p>Flurry and AE auto attack are a whole other fight.  One I argued with him about the entire time we were guilded.  So if anyone assumed we were BFF's you were totally off base.  Having tried and tried to convince him and other dev's at FF this is a battle that has little to no chance of being won.  Which sucks since they keep adding these to other classes buffs and now even adornments.  The least they could do is if someone has either of these it also gives a weapon damage rating to ranged weapons.  Sure rangers couldn't flurry or ae auto but at least the overall auto attack damage for the ranger would increase on each shot and make it worth buffing the ranger and not leaving them out in the cold.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>lol so he was completely incapable of balancing these out when the new versions came out with new tiers that HE worked on from the ground up? Yeah I don't buy that for a single second. If there were imbalances when an expansion came out when he worked on it, its his fault, no other way around it. Same goes for these devs and whatever devs come after them. Not like once they put in a skill its 'locked in' for all eternity and we just have to live with it. the changes to some of our abilities this expansion are evidence of significant change being possible among countless of other fundamental changes done to other classes skills over the years. They are in a position of power to fix these things just like how they fix and change other class abilities, and the changes we actually see in this expansion should have been stuff done 1 or 2 years ago and it took him not being there to get it done apparently.</p><p>Only excuse I can think of for him is that he WANTED to change that stuff but his hands were otherwise tied by the producer or some other governing body and didn't allow him to do it, but I find that very hard to believe.</p><p>Maybe this shifting of blame is what made him such a [Removed for Content] poor dev in the first place. "lockeye made the skills its not my fault they suck, I just have his job now and the ability to change them to actually be good what could I possibly do?"</p><p>If something is broke NOW its the fault of who ever is working on the game NOW. Obviously if their 'new; to the position they get a grace period but anything more than a GU or 2 makes it way past due.</p>

[EQ2Magroo]

<p>I think somebody touched on this in another thread, but I'm guessing the root problem is that the devs believe our Ranged AA is so high as to trivialize solo content (especially outdoor zones) and this needs fixing. Unfortunately they have found no way of fixing this other than to nerf our Ranged AA, which affects group and raid play not just solo.</p><p>Case in point yesterday I was running some writs in JW killing various solo mobs, I could basically just run across the zone one-shotting everything from range without stopping to worry about power/health. I got quite a few "I wish I could do that" tells from other players, and to the devs I bet this looks like an over-powered class, so hence the nerfs.</p><p>This is all a result of the high max damage/long recharge mechanic that was put in for longbows that is now coming back to bit them on the backside. It just doesn't scale. The devs need to balance the combat game where some classes hit often for small damage, and others less frequently but for high damage, and then combine this with mobs that have lowish hit points (solo mobs) and those mobs with crazy high hit points (raid mobs).</p><p>Implementing a mechanism that covers these widely varied combat scenario seems to beyond the capabilities of the devs at this point in time, but we can only hope now that they are simplifying the game they will be able to get a handle on it.</p><p>I don't really have any solution other than what we had in previous releases - outdoor solo combat can be pretty trivial for Rangers. If you want to make a mob more difficult, then "General V'Deers" it a bit.</p>

[Benk]

<p>Any class in gear "not intended for solo play" will obliterate solo content.</p>

[Neiloch]

Solo capability should have NOTHING to do with grouping and raiding. The only balance they should be looking at with solo is: Can you effectively solo content that is meant to be soloed? Circle one. Yes-----No If they circle yes then boom solo balance is done, next problem please. Beyond that it should simply be 'fun factor' EQ1 and EQ2 has always had problems with 'you got your peanut butter in my chocolate' when it comes to combat mechanics. They try to correct one aspect and it has ridiculously huge ripple effects. Solo, grouping and raiding should be considered different 'spheres' and balanced independently imo.

[Noob1974]

<p>Look at how assasins were looking to get the damage shields changed in their favor and they were changed......</p><p>(giving it was good for every melee class)</p><p>Ranger want to have change game mechanics.....nothing happenes..........</p>

[Crychtonn]

<p>Your sad anwser shows you either didn't bother to do what I asked or you did and failed to figure out basic mechanics.</p><p>Basic CA mechanic's 101</p><p>Things that inherently add to the damage a CA does: positioning / stealth requirements to cast</p><p>Things that reduce the damage a CA does: Control Effects / Debuffs</p><p>Which class has alot more of the first and less of the second???  ding ding ding assassins</p><p>PS ~ The mechanic used to balance out having to be in melee range vs useable from a distance is increased cast time.  (Just encase people couldn't figure that one out either).</p><p>Scream all you want but an ability with no attack requirements doesn't and shouldn't do equal damage to an ability that requires specific conditions to be used.  Want some ranger CA's to do more damage lobby to remove the useless snare from rear shot or with worthless stun/knockdown/blurred vision from sniper shot.  It sucks but those little add ons take away from actual damage.  And each time there's a level increase the amount of damage increases.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>First, nice job stretching this out as long as possible. See that last post you made? Now put that in the first reply saying you know why, hey DAYS saved time, learn to converse properly. Socratic method is a huge waste of time. Secondly, 'CA Mechanics 101' isn't some immutable law of physics they can't break. Everything you said can EASILY be ignored to bring us into ACTUAL balance opposed to this BS balance you have laid out. You can say its balanced until your blue in the face but you yourself would say its not, so the system is f'd, not actually balanced, and again the FAULT OF WHAT EVER DEV WAS IN CHARGE WITH THE LATEST TIERS.</p><p>Hey guess what? Ranged CA's DO have requirements on them. Its called not moving and not being closer than 2 meters while other melee CA's can work opposed to those conditions. ALL of our ranged CA's have a positional and/or stealth requirement. Where's this magical balance chart now?</p><p>Only way it would work the way you laid out is if all their values were equal. Such as every debuff being equally useful, and every CA execution requirement being the same. This is not the case. Making something do less damage because it has 'a debuff' rather than seeing it as 'a powerful debuff' or a 'non-epic debuff' or 'only useful soloing debuff' is extremely ignorant behavior. It has a snare on it make it do less damage! Yeah but its only useful in soloing and MAYBE grouping. I don't care it counts as a debuff so make it do less damage DUR I like apples.</p><p>Increased cast time is a JOKE. 95% of the time any ranger that knows what they are doing at fighting in melee CA range which negates any 'bonus' to the ranged CA's being ranged. Wouldn't be so bad is the myth 'under 5 meters' buff was increased casting speed rather than auto attack damage. That whole system of balance just reeks of someone who doesn't actually play the game or have a full understanding of it even if they do.</p><p>In the end it doesn't matter thing 1 how balanced the devs think it is, its how balanced the majority of the player base think it is and the majority of ALL players, not just ones that play rangers, think rangers are underpowered. This is evident by mad rangers, betrayed rangers, and even non-rangers offering pity and condolences for 'leveling and playing/being' a ranger. What ever system they used to get here needs to be thrown out, post-haste, and i would highly suggest they be more flexible as to not screw themselves with the rule book(s) they wrote.</p>

[glowsintheda]

<p>Yeah, its not like snare on rear shot is of any real value, if you are going to open with something solo it is going to be a big stealth attack most likely so rear shot is only of any value in a group, and movement speed reduction is of 0 value in a group with a tank.  The stuff on sniper shot is equally useless.  It would be one thing if there was a useful debuff on there or hell even an interrupt (not sure how they decide what classes get interrupts and which don't but sorcs have tons and I don't see anyone complaining about how little damage their spells do)  I could even see the argument if rogues cas all did less then ours, since most of their stuff does debuffs, but last I checked they still do more CA damage then we do.</p><p>Bottom line is we are far behind where we need to be, and your parroting of former devs rational for screwing us over to advance the class he raids with is not helpful.  If they want to keep our CAs where they are then give them meaningful debuffs, but I think every single ranger out there will tell you, strip all the extra crap off stuff like sniper and rear shot (snaring shot or whatever it is is fine as it is) and boost our CA damage across the board, and fix our AA damage while they are at it</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>Yes the basic vibe/want of people playing rangers is: Make us do more damage while keeping the archetype/playstyle of rangers intact. (not making them melee rangers, relying mostly on our bow basically). Balancing something as situation specific as snares and non-epic status effects against something so completely universal as damage on anything close to a 1:1 scale is incredibly ignorant.</p>

[Crychtonn]

<p><cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yes the basic vibe/want of people playing rangers is: Make us do more damage while keeping the archetype/playstyle of rangers intact. (not making them melee rangers, relying mostly on our bow basically). <span style="color: #ff0000;">Balancing something as situation specific as snares and non-epic status effects against something so completely universal as damage on anything close to a 1:1 scale is incredibly ignorant.</span></p></blockquote><p>And not knowing about or taking the time to learn that mechanic exists and has existed since launch is even more ignorant lol.  Your ignorance is the entire reason I did stretch this out.  I attempted to force you to use your brain and figure these things out for yourself but you failed.</p><p>See and now you and others are saying 'Hey take the snare and stun off so and so and increase it's damage'.  I wish you luck on the attempt and hope you have better results then I did back in the day.  By the way I'm 99.99999% sure I've played a ranger, raided on a ranger, killed more end game content and worked to get ranger problems fixed longer then you.</p><p>I'll leave you to rip or rage at me for my evil post and let you get back to the ignorance that is your bliss.</p>

[glowsintheda]

<p>you know, there was a thread in the non game related forums about how people try to defend indeffensible points on the internet.  You bring to mind a lot of them crychtonn, no one cares what you have killed when you were guilded with the dev, oh lets try to figure out those strats...  You aren't a ranger anymore, we don't care what you think and your superior to everyone else attitude is getting old, go post in the assassin forums where you belong, you may have been a ranger once but not anymore</p><p><a href="http://www.cracked.com/funny-3809-internet-argument-techniques/">http://www.cracked.com/funny-3809-i...ent-techniques/</a></p><p>there ya go, you fall into several of them</p>

[Neiloch]

<p><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yes the basic vibe/want of people playing rangers is: Make us do more damage while keeping the archetype/playstyle of rangers intact. (not making them melee rangers, relying mostly on our bow basically). <span style="color: #ff0000;">Balancing something as situation specific as snares and non-epic status effects against something so completely universal as damage on anything close to a 1:1 scale is incredibly ignorant.</span></p></blockquote><p>And not knowing about or taking the time to learn that mechanic exists and has existed since launch is even more ignorant lol.  Your ignorance is the entire reason I did stretch this out.  I attempted to force you to use your brain and figure these things out for yourself but you failed.</p><p>See and now you and others are saying 'Hey take the snare and stun off so and so and increase it's damage'.  I wish you luck on the attempt and hope you have better results then I did back in the day.  By the way I'm 99.99999% sure I've played a ranger, raided on a ranger, killed more end game content and worked to get ranger problems fixed longer then you.</p><p>I'll leave you to rip or rage at me for my evil post and let you get back to the ignorance that is your bliss.</p></blockquote><p>Is there really any reason to attack my personal character repeatedly? At worst I attacked your discussion format and you leap to basically flaming me. Its like you took attacks on development personally. It serves absolutely no purpose here and I refuse to respond in kind.</p><p>I never asked for the detrimental effects to be removed. If anyone complained about our damage being upped while having things that don't work on a lot of group mobs to a significant effect and never work on raid mobs (except for wounding shot and crit debuff) I wouldn't put much stock into their opinion. You can give everyone debuffs rangers have for all I care, at most it would make everyone better at kiting and soloing if they so desired. Also I never indicated that we need to match assassins, I would gladly take a close 4th place on DPS parses with a little more utility personally. My problem as well as other sorcerers and assassins problem is other classes with MUCH more utility are way to close to us on the parse, and since we are '4th' we are the first to go if they start parsing really high.</p><p>I care not for the effects it would have in PvP. If I wanted to play a PvP game EQ2 would definitely be towards the bottom of the list. I will openly say I feel no pity for PvP'ers on EQ2, same as playing games like Lineage, Aion, or Counter-Strike purely for its PvE.</p><p><strong>Great</strong>, mystery (to me at least) solved, but it changes nothing. My points still stand, we are underpowered and poorly balanced, our utility is lacking and not enough to justify why our DPS is lower the way it is. I'll never ask for these dets to be removed, because that would indicate their actually useful. They can if they want, I can take it or leave it, but I'm not going to act like they give any kind of advantage either. You may have answered the 'why' for our poor DPS development which is fine but my response to it is that is clearly not working and needs to be scrapped by doing what rangers have already been asking for. So we are basically back where we started. Thanks for your time.</p>