Another GU, Another Lack of Change

[Sydares]

<p><strong>Relevant Ranger patchnotes for GU56, the patch we were all hoping would finally address some of our concerns:</strong></p><p>Spirit-blessed arrows now have a slightly different icon.</p><p>Void-warped Wood now stacks in piles of up to 200.</p><p>...</p><p>I'm pretty stoked, how about you guys?</p>

[bryan4171]

<p>So glad i betrayed SWTOR hurry up and come out!!!</p>

[jjlo69]

<p>what are u talking about we got a shiny new bow if u want to spend 150 raid marks on it ... but heck if u dont have a easy mod tox bow by now... thanx rothgar and zxelgad for the ranger changesim so looking forward to FFXIV myself</p><p>Uncle</p>

[Neiloch]

If they are smart they are at least planning a big PvE GU before the release of FF14. I always gave it up for EQ1/EQ2 for the dedication to PvE content but this recent trend towards PvP seems to indicate they don't plan to do that anymore when that was basically the only thing they had over most other MMO's including raiding. FF14 is poised to crush EQ2 in the PvE area if this continues and they have been getting demolished in PvP since launch by countless MMO's, now they are just getting crushed slightly less. Difference between getting disintegrated and being cut up to a fine pulp. They're working on having sub-par everything instead a few good things. And if its a grab for more customers FF11 also proves this can be done through having a stellar PvE game with only small amounts of PvP, their subs have been beating EQ2 for years, can't imagine FF14 being any different.

[Nevao]

<p><span style="color: #ff9900;">In fairness to the Dev's this is only the first of what I expect to be many pushes to Test before the next GU. At this point the only thing we know for sure is that there is still a lot of polish needed and that at least one Raid zone is missing. Other than that anything could be included.To be honest I'm not expecting much. Partly because its less disappointing when nothing happens (everyone loves a cynic) but mostly because we have a lot of complex issues that have lead to the current state of a relatively unique mechanics class. I don't think ours is going to be a "slap a few abilities in and make some minor changes". Our fixes are going to take a while to develop and code and it sounds like most of the programmers are tied up with performance issues (though I could be wrong on that). Most likely our turn is going to have be in a GU dedicated to class balance or in the next expansion. And that is provided the SP and Leads see our problems as a greater than a slew of other "current issues".Before you get too mad at specific Dev's remember no time frames were given for even the minor things we were promised so far. GU56 was our expectation, not their promise. But still that doesn't stop be me from being disappointed with what I see so far.</span></p>

[Neiloch]

I never truly expected major mechanics changes this GU. By which I am talking about the ranged ae auto attack and ranged flurry. But I did expect some at least minor tweaks to our ranged DPS. I expected this because frankly, its ridiculously easy in terms of executing it. The balancing of it and how much to add would be much harder than actually doing it. A little harder to do, again in terms of numbers, not coding, I would love to see a 'vanguard' solution that gave us ranged variations of melee attacks. they would just share the same timer so we couldn't 'double up' on them. For example we get a ranged version of 'Bloody Reminder'. Maybe even a different name like 'Piercing Reminder.' Make it different by shifting some of the initial damage to the dot portion, or all of it. This way the AA's for the skills wouldn't have to be adjusted either (like the one for the bloody reminder line in TSO). Repeat for other major DPS skills. Don't get these variations through AA or anything either, they are just put in. Maybe make it so their only usable in offensive stance (as if rangers use defensive a lot...). I just think the vanguard rangers are stellar, and before any one suggests it rudely yes I do play it as a matter of fact and raid on the weekends.

[Carpediem]

<p>Everytime we ask for our spot in the lime light they're sooooo busy working on more important things. I'm glad they invested so much of this time into revamping the travel system which has worked perfectly fine for the last 6 years...</p><p>I'm sure the next update we will get to look forward to the return of highpass hold for level 20's, or a revamp of thundering steppes and then have them pass us over again for another 4 months while they fix them.</p><p>This is such crap, I wish for once they would listen to what the players want (Velious and mechanic fixes) instead of some low level crap that we have to much of already.</p><p>One person asked at the last dev Q&A if they could put out one update with just fixes to classes and Xelgad's response was that they're doing that and adding new content on each update. I don't see it...</p><p>During beta testing when we had a dev join our vent for a raid he had no clue about how to play this game. One player asked if their beta buff toon could have some T4 gear and he didn't know what that was, he summoned a bunch of VP gear, then he forgot his mic was on, sat there talking to someone else in the background, joking about how serious people take this game and that real women actually play!</p><p>We try telling them we need fixes and even how to do it. they think they know better...</p>

[Noob1974]

<p>This was the first thing come inot my mind..no changes.....</p><p>It was pretty clear in beta that most ranger would give the devs time till GU 56 to come up with something. It semms they didnt and dont care....</p><p>Fyreflytes "fixing" the hitboxes of mobs is the only thing going to happened at the moment.....</p><p>I think a lot including me will not continue with this game as it stands now.....</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>To be fair I doubt the new zone stuff took away from resources to fix rangers or classes in general. More likely the people who could 'fix' us spent most of the past couple of months working on PvP, considering from the looks of the patch notes a large portion of the GU is PvP related. Basically travel revamp, new good starter city, new easy-moderate x4, 3.0 shaders, minor tweaks, and a pile of PvP bull that means absolutely nothing to me. At least they had enough sense to work on a new x4 since most high end guilds have cleared most if not all the raid content. Updates also indicate they are STILL playing warhammer online. Least they could do is add a version of public quests while they are trying to steal all the PvP features. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://eq2.zam.com/wiki/Category%3AGU56" target="_blank">http://eq2.zam.com/wiki/Category%3AGU56</a></p>

[Venez]

<p>Personally I think that the Managment team are just liars who will tell you whatever you want to hear so you keep your Sub up.</p><p>Its pretty much being proven by the 1000+ posts on the beta forums, next closest scout was 305? posts, and here we are with Melee auto attack still doing more EXT DPS than Ranged EXT DPS, our CAs still behind Swash,Sins, Wizzy,Warlocks not to mention some TANKS.</p><p>Instead of rebalancing the CAs and Bow Mechanics that are already in place, we get the empty promise of they are trying to come up with new ideas on how to fix us........</p><p>Hey MANAGEMENT, you have time to fix your ridiculously broken PVP Battle Grounds, BUT you dont have time to fix a class thats been nerfed in one way or another every xpac for the last 3+yrs, intentionally or not we have been nerfed, you have been told this for 3+yrs and still you keep blowing smoke up every Rangers butt in this game, in case you havent noticed you are losing the customer Ranger base and the ones that havent quit are betraying in what I would consider a large group....NICE !!!</p><p>Hey Greg your walking into a nice and angry player base, hope you can hire at least 1 competent person to fix Rangers.</p>

[kartikeya]

<p>While I had very little hope for a complete rebalance this GU (especially when it seems like, from all the dev comments, they are STILL talking about whether we need fixes or not), I was hoping for <em>something. </em>Because frankly if there's no change in GU56 that means no significant change for another three months. I'm okay with a three month GU development cycle when it comes to content, I am increasingly frustrated by all class fixes relegated to the three month cycle as well. It means that even if they do start making fixes, we won't see it until August at best. That's half a year from expansion release. That's <em>not acceptable</em>.</p><p>I'm going to repeat what I've said before: all I want is a solid answer. Are you going to fix the ranger class, yes/no? If no, then I can look to betraying or finding another game. If yes, don't make us wait for the GU cycle. I would be more than willing to wait longer if I knew that something WAS being done. That something WAS coming, and that once it was finished and thoroughly tested, it would be released WITHOUT making us wait an extra few months just to hit the GU cycle.</p><p>Rangers have been at a crisis point for some time and I am very sick and tired of hearing about how so many other things take priority. Certainly, the whole team can't drop everything they're doing to fix one class, but class balance issues are far more important than (as much as I may enjoy them), fluff quests, or Battlegrounds, or a travel system revamp, or all these other bells and whistles that, while nice, are not the core game. When the core game is broken you MUST fix it in a timely manner, or you will start hemorrhaging players. And it's not just rangers that need some serious attention. Balance is completely insane and has been for some time now, and every expansion seems to just make it worse.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>Only thing I have come up with is that they convinced themselves class balance is 'never ending' and trying to ever fix it completely is futile. Even accepting that it might be 'never ending' that just means significant resources should be dedicated to it at all times to maintain at least a moderate balance.</p>

[Nevao]

<p><cite>neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Only thing I have come up with is that they convinced themselves class balance is 'never ending' and trying to ever fix it completely is futile. Even accepting that it might be 'never ending' that just means significant resources should be dedicated to it at all times to maintain at least a moderate balance.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I'm seriously wondering if it's a "# of players issues". Well we have x number of active rangers so it can't be that bad and the problems are tough code fixes... On to X problem that effects more than just highend grouping and raid rangers.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I'm honestly trying to keep an open mind but after the general comunity perception of the former class dev's class bias (hey his class is getting more and more powereful and getting cool toys and ours is not) and the previous SP's constant stream of "Rangers, whatever" jokes it's hard not to be a little paranoid/bitter on the balance issue. </span></p><p><cite>kartikeya wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm going to repeat what I've said before: all I want is a solid answer. Are you going to fix the ranger class, yes/no? If no, then I can look to betraying or finding another game. If yes, don't make us wait for the GU cycle. I would be more than willing to wait longer if I knew that something WAS being done. That something WAS coming, and that once it was finished and thoroughly tested, it would be released WITHOUT making us wait an extra few months just to hit the GU cycle.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">This would go a long, long, long way to satisfying the community. Hell just telling us what the plan is, even if we had to wait until August, would go a long way. At this point we have no idea what anyone is thinking other than a few vague comments from Fyreflyte, though they only touched on function not class balance, and they had the usual "when we get around to it" stipulation. Please just tell us what you are thinking. The silence is just compounding the issue at this point.</span></p>

[Sydares]

<p>After such a massive effort on beta to try to get the Devs attention, even going so far as to bullet-point every single problem that we experience, I'm through trying. They're ignoring us. But don't worry, guys. I'm sure that fix is coming up just around the corner.</p><p>It's shaped like a carrot.</p>

[Ranja]

<p><cite>Sydares wrote</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's shaped like a carrot</p></blockquote><p>Yes a carrot that keeps you paying your subscription in the vain hope they will fix the class you have put 5 years of effort in. SOE is not stupid - they know people are very attached to their characters and will not let go easily.</p><p>However, at some point, you need to vote with your wallet as that is the only language SOE understands.</p>

[Venez]

<p>I bet if you started tearing SoE / EQ2 / Dev Team apart on how poorly they have handeled the Ranger class over the last 3+ years, and how many posts have went ignored , or how the class has went from a T1 DPS class to a T3 sit the bench class over on there wonderfull Twitter and Facebook sites you would get plenty of attention...squeaky wheel on in a highly visible place wouldnt make them happy at all.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>geez that's such a good idea I'm kind of reluctant to do it. In the sense of how effective it would be in making them look bad. These days with how popular those are, doing that would almost be like trashing them during a television commercial</p>

[Ranja]

<p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I bet if you started tearing SoE / EQ2 / Dev Team apart on how poorly they have handeled the Ranger class over the last 3+ years, and how many posts have went ignored , or how the class has went from a T1 DPS class to a T3 sit the bench class over on there wonderfull Twitter and Facebook sites you would get plenty of attention...squeaky wheel on in a highly visible place wouldnt make them happy at all.</p></blockquote><p>hmmm somewthing to think about for sure</p>

[Nevao]

<p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I bet if you started tearing SoE / EQ2 / Dev Team apart on how poorly they have handeled the Ranger class over the last 3+ years, and how many posts have went ignored , or how the class has went from a T1 DPS class to a T3 sit the bench class over on there wonderfull Twitter and Facebook sites you would get plenty of attention...squeaky wheel on in a highly visible place wouldnt make them happy at all.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Do what we want or we'll make you look bad everywhere? Even if that works all you're doing is guaranteeing bad blood towards the class in the future. Blackmail (which this is a version of) might get results now but I think you're creating a worse relationship in the long term and effectively lose your ability to influence things in the future. I would recommend against this approach. If you're that upset the more appropriate response is to just flat out quit paying the subscription fee.</span></p>

[Venez]

<p><cite>Nevao wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I bet if you started tearing SoE / EQ2 / Dev Team apart on how poorly they have handeled the Ranger class over the last 3+ years, and how many posts have went ignored , or how the class has went from a T1 DPS class to a T3 sit the bench class over on there wonderfull Twitter and Facebook sites you would get plenty of attention...squeaky wheel on in a highly visible place wouldnt make them happy at all.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Do what we want or we'll make you look bad everywhere? Even if that works all you're doing is guaranteeing bad blood towards the class in the future. Blackmail (which this is a version of) might get results now but I think you're creating a worse relationship in the long term and effectively lose your ability to influence things in the future. I would recommend against this approach. If you're that upset the more appropriate response is to just flat out quit paying the subscription fee.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;"><span style="color: #ff0000;">Venezs EDIT</span>: Blackmail (which this is a version of) might get results now but I think you're creating a worse relationship in the long term and effectively lose your ability to influence things in the future. </span><span style="color: #ff0000;">This statement made ZERO sense.</span><span style="color: #ff0000;">We lost our ability to influence the future of Rangers <strong>OVER 3yrs ago</strong> when Management made a clear and conciese choice to ignore the customer base of us Rangers.</span></p></blockquote><p>Didnt say do what we want or else, I said publicaly let it be known that they are not interested in keeping ALL of there customers happy, that all they really want is your money and then give examples at how poorly they have handled this class as a example. I think after pushing a group of customers in the closet and refusing to deal with a HUGH list of complaints for over 3yrs, fully deserves some negative feedback so others know what they are getting into before they decide do buy this game and give a monthly Sub. It would also let future customers have a heads up to not start a Ranger if they have any plans at all of joining a END Game Raid Guild.</p><p>And do you honestly think I care about the relationship of the future Management team ??? The whole dev team, management team turns over way to often for me to even worry about that, We have had how many Devs, GMs, Producers ...in the last 3yrs?? As far as im concerned the whole management/development team is totally unstable,which has been proven by the lack of dedication to addressing Rangers for over 3yrs.</p><p>I dont want to cancel my Sub, I want my class that I have played for 6yrs to be fixed,I have continued to pay them for 6yrs for 2 accounts and have 2 more unactive now because of my disgust with this whole ordeal. I think that 3+yrs is more than adequte time for them to fix it. I have /feedback and posted in every beta for the last 3yrs, I have posted on multiple forums for the last 3yrs, offical and unoffical - that I know the Devs go to, even if they are not allowed to post on them (Great choice there btw to limit your community feedback btw).</p><p>Ive been thinking about the whole blog idea for Myspace,Twitter,Facebook for quite some time now. I will eventually type out a whole thing with old posts,data posts, anger posts, idea posts, with dates from multiple sources and post it myself, because quite frankly after 3+yrs im tired of feedbacking, posting,begging,wishing,hopeing that ANYONE at SoE will fix Rangers.</p>

[-=Hoss=-]

<p>I say do it.  It won't really stress relations because you know they will delete your posts.  But it might get them to come here and throw another bone.</p><p>So whatever became of the dev during beta that said he saw some things wrong with ranger and wanted to fix them as soon as he was given time to?  That was fireflyght wasn't it?</p>

[Ranja]

<p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Nevao wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I bet if you started tearing SoE / EQ2 / Dev Team apart on how poorly they have handeled the Ranger class over the last 3+ years, and how many posts have went ignored , or how the class has went from a T1 DPS class to a T3 sit the bench class over on there wonderfull Twitter and Facebook sites you would get plenty of attention...squeaky wheel on in a highly visible place wouldnt make them happy at all.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Do what we want or we'll make you look bad everywhere? Even if that works all you're doing is guaranteeing bad blood towards the class in the future. Blackmail (which this is a version of) might get results now but I think you're creating a worse relationship in the long term and effectively lose your ability to influence things in the future. I would recommend against this approach. If you're that upset the more appropriate response is to just flat out quit paying the subscription fee.</span></p></blockquote><p>Didnt say do what we want or else, I said publicaly let it be known that they are not interested in keeping ALL of there customers happy, that all they really want is your money and then give examples at how poorly they have handled this class as a example. I think after pushing a group of customers in the closet and refusing to deal with a HUGH list of complaints for over 3yrs, fully deserves some negative feedback so others know what they are getting into before they decide do buy this game and give a monthly Sub. It would also let future customers have a heads up to not start a Ranger if they have any plans at all of joining a END Game Raid Guild.</p><p>And do you honestly think I care about the relationship of the future Management team ??? The whole dev team, management team turns over way to often for me to even worry about that, We have had how many Devs, GMs, Producers ...in the last 3yrs?? As far as im concerned the whole management/development team is totally unstable,which has been proven by the lack of dedication to addressing Rangers for over 3yrs.</p><p>I dont want to cancel my Sub, I want my class that I have played for 6yrs to be fixed,I have continued to pay them for 6yrs for 2 accounts and have 2 more unactive now because of my disgust with this whole ordeal. I think that 3+yrs is more than adequte time for them to fix it. I have /feedback and posted in every beta for the last 3yrs, I have posted on multiple forums for the last 3yrs, offical and unoffical - that I know the Devs go to, even if they are not allowed to post on them (Great choice there btw to limit your community feedback btw).</p><p>Ive been thinking about the whole blog idea for Myspace,Twitter,Facebook for quite some time now. I will eventually type out a whole thing with old posts,data posts, anger posts, idea posts, with dates from multiple sources and post it myself, because quite frankly after 3+yrs im tired of feedbacking, posting,begging,wishing,hopeing that ANYONE at SoE will fix Rangers.</p></blockquote><p>When you do it give me the link to your blog post or facebook or twitter or whatever medium you use and I will cross link to it with my blog, facebook account and twitter.</p><p>We oculd even start a facebook page called SOE sucks and encourage people to submit their horror stories of SOE interaction. It would be funny to see how many fans we get.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>The fact that people are even considering this would definitely get me off my butt and do SOMETHING for rangers as a dev, if only to slow them down lol. Seriously just upping ranged CA damage would go a long way imo, literally just going to the code, highlighting some numbers, hitting "delete" and replacing it with even a slightly higher number. Even if it didn't fix a lot of problems it would be <strong>something</strong> small in the vague direction we want. To me its QUITE clear their focus is more 'new' subscribers, hoping efforts will earn more subscribers and overtake the amount of disgruntled players leaving by a large amount......... lol</p>

[kartikeya]

<p><cite>-=Hoss=- wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I say do it.  It won't really stress relations because you know they will delete your posts.  But it might get them to come here and throw another bone.</p><p>So whatever became of the dev during beta that said he saw some things wrong with ranger and wanted to fix them as soon as he was given time to?  That was fireflyght wasn't it?</p></blockquote><p>It was Xelgad. I had a brief flicker of hope, but the absolute silence since Beta ended has pretty much blown that out again. Fyreflyte seems (or at least seems to be communicating the impression) obsessed with the whole fighting at ranged thing, as if that were somehow our biggest complaint. Sure, it would be fantastic if it worked, but it still won't FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM. Which is that we need a serious DPS boost and some small utility attention. We need a revamp along the same lines as SKs and coercers have received in the past.</p><p>We need a developer to sit down, go over our class with a fine toothed comb, compare our performance to that of other classes, and then adjust accordingly. I played both a SK and a coercer before said revamps, and I can say without hesitation that their issues, while great, were not as freaking unbelievably bad as ranger issues have been for years, and years, and years. (And while they certainly still have certain issues, as all classes do, they're in a far better place now than they were).</p><p>And we need it to be a developer willing to dedicate themselves to the job, rather than certain other ex-developers who obviously considered the entire matter an annoyance and weren't willing to actually sit down and do the work.</p>

[Odysia]

<p>Honestly, they aren't going to fix rangers. Publically shaming them about it isn't going to help; they won't want to be percieved as caving to that short of thing because it would set a bad precedent.</p><p>Frankly, if you want to get their attention you need to get a significant number of people that feel strongly enough about it to unsub, and then organise them to all unsub at the same time. People drifting away from the game in ones and twos isn't noticeable to them. But if you got say 50 rangers on each server to do it, enough to put a 5 figure dent in the monthly cash flow, along with a private petition, maybe they would take customer satisfaction a bit more seriously.</p><p>(I would imagine they project cash flow versus account expiry, so you might not need to actually have your account time out before they noticed it. You could always resub after a couple of weeks.)</p>

[-=Hoss=-]

<p><cite>Ranja wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>When you do it give me the link to your blog post or facebook or twitter or whatever medium you use and I will cross link to it with my blog, facebook account and twitter.</p><p>We oculd even start a facebook page called SOE sucks and encourage people to submit their horror stories of SOE interaction. It would be funny to see how many fans we get.</p></blockquote><p>There already was a website like this.  I don't think I'm allowed to say the name of it on the SOE boards, but originally all sorts of domains like SOEsucks linked back to it.  It turned into a pretty popular place.</p><p><cite>kartikeya wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>We need a developer to sit down, go over our class with a fine toothed comb, compare our performance to that of other classes, and then adjust accordingly. I played both a SK and a coercer before said revamps, and I can say without hesitation that their issues, while great, were not as freaking unbelievably bad as ranger issues have been for years, and years, and years. (And while they certainly still have certain issues, as all classes do, they're in a far better place now than they were).</p></blockquote><p>What you need is a dev that plays the class.  All the BS aside about devs buffing thier own classes with evil intentions ... I'm pretty well convinced that the classes who don't get love are the ones who don't have enough devs that know them well enough to come up with cool ideas for them. </p><p>I'd be worried if random_dev1 was given the task to go over my class with a fine toothed comb.  In the past, they said they judged class balance based on game-wide parses (and rangers were king).  I'd love to see what the balance looks like now based on that.  I wonder if they even still look at such things.</p>

[Boise]

<p>Many issues here..no doubt. Brenlo no doubt caused allot of "strife" between Devs (think Aeralik and Fyre here). Now, we have a new Senior producer and still no fixes. Assassins are running away w/ parses while rangers are now being left behind by other substandard classes like Swashs.</p>

[Neiloch]

I would love to know what metrics they are using to determine balance. What I fear the most is they are 'averaging out' numbers/quality across play situations. Such as solo, group, raid, PvP, rather than looking at them independently. Seeing rangers do well in PvP and solo, and good enough in groups and just figuring it evens out with poor raid attendance/performance, when balance should most definitely not be done this way. And I've said this before, I can't see any hugely bad impact that would come from just increasing our DPS. Worst case we do OP'd DPS but we still have little to no utility or any other trait so who could possibly complain a great deal? Wouldn't be nearly as bad as just about any other class doing overpowered DPS.

[Venez]

<p><cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I would love to know what metrics they are using to determine balance. What I fear the most is they are 'averaging out' numbers/quality across play situations. Such as solo, group, raid, PvP, rather than looking at them independently. Seeing rangers do well in PvP and solo, and good enough in groups and just figuring it evens out with poor raid attendance/performance, when balance should most definitely not be done this way. And I've said this before, I can't see any hugely bad impact that would come from just increasing our DPS. Worst case we do OP'd DPS but we still have little to no utility or any other trait so who could possibly complain a great deal? Wouldn't be nearly as bad as just about any other class doing overpowered DPS. <span style="color: #ff0000;">ROFL they would have to up our DPS 20k to keep up with wizards, our Swash is "near" him as is our Warlock . Im quite positive anything they did would not push us past those.</span></blockquote><p>There isnt 50 level 90 Rangers per server to promote a mass exodus let alone 50 that raid.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>Yeah I would have to say raiding rangers all unsubbing wouldn't exactly show a dramatic dip in subscriber numbers. Most 'rangers' are people just screwing around in BG's, soloing or groups, and most of them are alts. Since no one there is playing a ranger, clearly, they probably just look at the stats they have. Fixing rangers wouldn't yield the amount of positive results as other things would. Popular, more played classes will always get attention first. I'm honestly waiting for another big PvP nerf for rangers at this point. Fortunate enough not be getting beat by 20k on the ZW. usually I get 30k ZW or little lower but we've only just killed toxx and started getting T3 legs.</p>

[Raahl]

<p>If I am wrong please correct me.  And I know that group makeup makes a big difference.  So YMMV.</p><hr /><p>Here's the main problem with Rangers and Raiding.</p><ul><li>Casters have Troubadors.</li><li>Melee has Dirges.</li><li>Ranged has nobody.</li></ul><hr /><p>Another problem is that Rangers are not doing T1 damage.  Just looking at some of the parses that the T1 damage classes are putting out there.</p><p>Assassins: 40-50k on average, some insane spikes with a dirge buff.</p><p>Wizards:  35-45k on average, again with some spikes.</p><p>Warlocks:  40-50k on average, with a few very large parses (suspect it was in a large group encounter).</p><p>Rangers: 30-40k on average, with a parses around 45k.</p><p>If the developers could eek out another 5-10k average for Rangers I think we'd be more acceptable for raiding.</p><hr /><p>Another issue with raiding is we don't have any hate transfer.  This makes us less desireable.  Not that I'm asking for one, but bringing something to the table utility wise would help out.</p><hr /><p>I really enjoy playing my Ranger.  Lucky for me I'm not in a hardcore raiding guild and will be able to join in raids.</p>

[glowsintheda]

<p>Dirges are just fine for rangers, the only thing they offer that we can't really take advantage of is BC, but all their other buffs are very nice for us</p>

[Neiloch]

thats actually a big reason why i want rangers to have ranged flurry besides the obvious boost in DPS. Really depressing where basically any melee except a bard is better for BC.

[Raahl]

<p><cite>glowsinthedark wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Dirges are just fine for rangers, the only thing they offer that we can't really take advantage of is BC, but all their other buffs are very nice for us</p></blockquote><p>Doesn't their CoB only affect melee?  Which is what maybe 1/2 the damage that a ranger does?</p>

[Noob1974]

<p>With the latest changes to potency become uncapped as crit bonus, the gap between Sins and ranger will even become wider.Sure it will help our dps to improve, but Mages, Sins and Swashies will benefit more from it.</p><p>That means we all hoped for some tweaks for us, it turns out every other t1 t2 dps class gets a better boost......</p>

[Ranja]

<p><cite>Raahl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>glowsinthedark wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Dirges are just fine for rangers, the only thing they offer that we can't really take advantage of is BC, but all their other buffs are very nice for us</p></blockquote><p>Doesn't their CoB only affect melee?  Which is what maybe 1/2 the damage that a ranger does?</p></blockquote><p>no CoB procs off ranged. Was changed awhile back in our KoS revamp.</p>

[FearDiadh]

<p>I have been raiding as a ranger since KoS and feel like I have a pretty good idea of why the changes are so slow.</p><p>The problem is that we are <span style="text-decoration: underline;">overpowered solo</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">slightly underpowered groupwise</span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">quite underpowered raid wise</span>.  How do you adjust one without affecting the others?  We need more combat art damage to be competitive in a raid, but that would only make the solo situation even more overpowered.</p><p>I hate to complain without offering possible solutions, but I am here to complain about the state of rangers.  So, here are my solutions:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add group and raid only abilities?</span>   ie: Pack Leader - A self buff that gives us increased damage while in a FULL group.</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add more utility to make us desirable to raids?</span>  I don't like this one but it is one way to deal with it.  ie: Make the deagro into a transfer.  Make Focus Aim raid wide. </p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add some support class buffs that people will want to give to the ranger?</span>  ie: Illy could offer a buff that gave 20% increase to ranged combat arts or something.   </p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fix the hit box problems.</span>  This is going to make a minor difference and can not stand alone.  Even with this fixed, we will still be underpowered and unwanted for raids. </p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add bottomless quivers.</span>  Why do I have to pay an extra 1p night over what assassins and sorcerers are paying to do damage? It is wrong for one class to be expected to support an otherwise poorly though out tradeskill.  Give woodworkers some other way to make money.  Also, if my raid guild did not have me to use up those void woods, they could sell them for 10p each. While they improve ranger dps a little and lower raid ranger arrow costs, they are yet another reason to view a ranger as a burden on the raid force.  Leave the ranger and make an extra 10p.  </p>

[Neiloch]

<p>Made my peace with arrows, they have no intention of ever giving us anything that would make it where we aren't losing money on arrows ever. I would liked to have seen the red adornment for Focus Aim make it raid wide as well.</p><p>I'm kind of on the fence about buffs that are dependent on group/raid size, its kind of artificial. But something like a damage increase depending on how many people are within about 50 meters grouped/raided with would be nice, slap it on top of offensive stance. Topping out on a full raid and bringing the DPS up to par, while not increasing solo DPS at all. Make it go on a curve too so that can't just get a nice big boost from duo/trio boxing other accounts. Hard points like boosting at 6, 12, 18 and 24 people wouldnt work well since 1 person being in the raid or not could make or break your DPS.</p><p>I agree with your solo/group/raid power thing. But its BS that any aspect is used against another. How well I solo should have ZERO bearing on raid effectiveness getting fixed, and this goes for all other aspects. PvP shouldn't be considered when balancing grouping etc. They have ways to limit skills in PvP, why not just up our PvE stuff while keeping our PvP damage the same?</p><p>My guilds SK can solo erudin library and theres no way I can do that on my ranger without significantly more difficulty, some mobs would porbably stop me outright. Summoners in general can solo harder stuff in tighter spots, they just can't solo easier stuff as fast as a ranger. So the excuse our solo power would be even more op'd holds no weight with me.</p><p>The game can look perfectly balanced on paper but that means absolutely nothing if the players do not <em>perceive</em> it as balanced. And right now the players perceive rangers as underpowered on raids and groups. Fix it. Damage is our main problem then utility. I try to purposely harp on damage more though because if they ever do decide to take a look at us thats what I want fixed, I don't want to give them an 'out' to not up our DPS and say 'well you wanted more utility so we upped that a small amount instead.'</p>

[FearDiadh]

<p>Something needs to be done.  Is there any class out there that is less wanted for groups and raids?  When was the last time anyone saw, "group of 5 lf ranger then gtg"  or "raid guild looking for able ranger".  I never see anyone request a ranger for anything.  If I apply for a broad 'lf dps', I get turned down half the time after they find out I am a ranger. </p>

[Venez]

<p><cite>Jack@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have been raiding as a ranger since KoS and feel like I have a pretty good idea of why the changes are so slow.</p><p>The problem is that we are <span style="text-decoration: underline;">overpowered solo</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">slightly underpowered groupwise</span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">quite underpowered raid wise</span>.  How do you adjust one without affecting the others?  We need more combat art damage to be competitive in a raid, but that would only make the solo situation even more overpowered. <span style="color: #ff0000;">In no way are we OP with solo content (unless you mean per scout class?), I know SKs that can clear complete zones solo, solo any herioc named. Have you ever watched a wizzy, enchanter or summoner solo??? I know for a fact we dont solo as well as any of the above class's in "alot" of circumstances. Before the xpac, a instanced geard SK could completly clear all of Shard of Fear...not many if any raid geard Rangers  can claim to have done that.</span></p><p>I hate to complain without offering possible solutions, but I am here to complain about the state of rangers.  So, here are my solutions:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add group and raid only abilities?</span>   ie: Pack Leader - A self buff that gives us increased damage while in a FULL group. <span style="color: #ff0000;">Might be a option, not one that I would really push for compared to what we really need which is a major tweak with CAs and Auto Attack being unnerfed.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add more utility to make us desirable to raids?</span>  I don't like this one but it is one way to deal with it.  ie: Make the deagro into a transfer.  Make Focus Aim raid wide. <span style="color: #ff0000;">Have you looked at our "deagro" lately, its not the passive deagro it used to be. Its a ghetto'd drop agro % if you get agro........ as in it sucks. I get agro on a raid mob and the 6% chance to proc means im dead long before it has a chance.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add some support class buffs that people will want to give to the ranger?</span>  ie: Illy could offer a buff that gave 20% increase to ranged combat arts or something.   <span style="color: #ff0000;">And for those guilds that have low buff class's ?? How about they just fix our current CAs and ranged to bring us up where we need to be, instead of forcing us to depend on another class to fix us?</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fix the hit box problems.</span>  This is going to make a minor difference and can not stand alone.  Even with this fixed, we will still be underpowered and unwanted for raids. <span style="color: #ff0000;">VP hit boxs should be fixed STILL, Waansu is doable but his hitbox sucks, still trying to figure out why casters can stand anywhere with no penaltys, yet we still get screwed on certain mobs.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add bottomless quivers.</span>  Why do I have to pay an extra 1p night over what assassins and sorcerers are paying to do damage? It is wrong for one class to be expected to support an otherwise poorly though out tradeskill.  Give woodworkers some other way to make money.  Also, if my raid guild did not have me to use up those void woods, they could sell them for 10p each. While they improve ranger dps a little and lower raid ranger arrow costs, they are yet another reason to view a ranger as a burden on the raid force.  Leave the ranger and make an extra 10p.  <span style="color: #ff0000;">We should get free Ranger only arrows that are better than anyone elses and not have to pay for them. Or in reality arrows should just be removed and the damage should be from the bow itself, and the bow damage modifer should be unnerfed. I dont ever see this happening due to SoEs poor tradeskill design and the uproar it would cause them with woodworkers.</span></p></blockquote>

[FearDiadh]

<p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jack@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have been raiding as a ranger since KoS and feel like I have a pretty good idea of why the changes are so slow.</p><p>The problem is that we are <span style="text-decoration: underline;">overpowered solo</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">slightly underpowered groupwise</span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">quite underpowered raid wise</span>.  How do you adjust one without affecting the others?  We need more combat art damage to be competitive in a raid, but that would only make the solo situation even more overpowered. <span style="color: #ff0000;">In no way are we OP with solo content (unless you mean per scout class?), I know SKs that can clear complete zones solo, solo any herioc named. Have you ever watched a wizzy, enchanter or summoner solo??? I know for a fact we dont solo as well as any of the above class's in "alot" of circumstances. Before the xpac, a instanced geard SK could completly clear all of Shard of Fear...not many if any raid geard Rangers  can claim to have done that.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;">Just because someone else is more overpowered, does not mean we aren't.  SKs are in a class of their own and I am not going into that here.  There are enough threads discussing the SK situation at length.</span></p><p><span><span style="color: #00ff00;"><span>I have played an assassin, brigand, monk and fury to 80 and can tell you that the ranger is a ton easier to solo than the others.  </span><span>My ranger is raid geared so I understand there is a difference between him and the normal ranger, but he currently one shots most even con solo mobs with auto attack only.  There isn't even a cast time.  I have no problem taking down yellow ^^^ within a few seconds with little to no risk and very little space to move.   Considering the crit bonus, crit and double attack gear available to everyone this expansion I am pretty sure I could set up a non raid ranger to be able to do the same thing.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;">Rangers do not need and should not get a boost to their solo ability.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;">I hate to complain without offering possible </span>solutions, but I am here to complain about the state of rangers.  So, here are my solutions:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add group and raid only abilities?</span>   ie: Pack Leader - A self buff that gives us increased damage while in a FULL group. <span style="color: #ff0000;">Might be a option, not one that I would really push for compared to what we really need which is a major tweak with CAs and Auto Attack being unnerfed.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;">To me, this is the best option.  It would put us back in T1 damage for raids and groups without adding anything extra for solo.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">Add more utility to make us desirable to </span>raids?</span>  I don't like this one but it is one way to deal with it.  ie: Make the deagro into a transfer.  Make Focus Aim raid wide. <span style="color: #ff0000;">Have you looked at our "deagro" lately, its not the passive deagro it used to be. Its a ghetto'd drop agro % if you get agro........ as in it sucks. I get agro on a raid mob and the 6% chance to proc means im dead long before it has a chance.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;">I am not sure what you are referring to here.  The only thing we have with a percent chance to deagro us is ignorant bliss.  Or the hawk?  The hawk dies so much it never does it's job.  I heard they were making it have a positional drop for us if it died but I never saw it do that in all the times I watched it die to aoe. In a raid it always dies to aoe.</span></p><p><span><span style="color: #00ff00;"><span>I was referring to our Primal Reflexes line which lowers our agro by a certain percent, because that is the ranger version of the assassin hate transfer.  If we do have another deagro ability that has a 6% chance drops me a percentage of hate, I'm interested in hearing where to get it.</span>  </span></span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add some support class buffs that people will want to give to the ranger?</span>  ie: Illy could offer a buff that gave 20% increase to ranged combat arts or something.   <span style="color: #ff0000;">And for those guilds that have low buff class's ?? How about they just fix our current CAs and ranged to bring us up where we need to be, instead of forcing us to depend on another class to fix us?</span></p><p><span style="color: #ffffff;"><span style="color: #00ff00;">I am not talking about pick up raids.  In a pick up raid, most everyone will be doing poorly anyway.  I am talking about mid to high end raiders.  A serious raid force is going to have two support classes in each group.  The current problem is that everyone thinks every buff is better given to someone else besides the ranger. I would like to see someone argue that a buff that added 20% damage to ranged comba</span>t arts was better for the assassin.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fix the hit box problems.</span>  This is going to make a minor difference and can not stand alone.  Even with this fixed, we will still be underpowered and unwanted for raids. <span style="color: #ff0000;">VP hit boxs should be fixed STILL, Waansu is doable but his hitbox sucks, still trying to figure out why casters can stand anywhere with no penaltys, yet we still get screwed on certain mobs.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;">I don't have an answer for this.  It needs to be fixed but I don't know how.  I did not think the zero range on the Eagle's talon was overpowered at all since you still couldn't use most of your combat arts anyway.  I would like to see them just make all bows zero range.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add bottomless quivers.</span>  Why do I have to pay an extra 1p night over what assassins and sorcerers are paying to do damage? It is wrong for one class to be expected to support an otherwise poorly though out tradeskill.  Give woodworkers some other way to make money.  Also, if my raid guild did not have me to use up those void woods, they could sell them for 10p each. While they improve ranger dps a little and lower raid ranger arrow costs, they are yet another reason to view a ranger as a burden on the raid force.  Leave the ranger and make an extra 10p.  <span style="color: #ff0000;">We should get free Ranger only arrows that are better than anyone elses and not have to pay for them. Or in reality arrows should just be removed and the damage should be from the bow itself, and the bow damage modifer should be unnerfed. I dont ever see this happening due to SoEs poor tradeskill design and the uproar it would cause them with woodworkers.</span></p><p><span><span><span style="color: #00ff00;"><span>Maybe they should just let woodworkers make the unlimited quivers.  Handcrafted, mastercrafted, instance dropped and raid dropped versions could exist.</span>  </span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;"> </span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00;">Thanks for your feedback on my ideas.</span></p></blockquote></blockquote>

[Neiloch]

<p>Worst case scenario we get insanely better at soloing and can clear some SF instances solo, awesome we are on par with SK's now on solo ability. Kind of an odd term here but OP'd soloing in general is a 'victimless crime.' I really don't care that SK's can solo like that, its when people say we are op'd solo because of damage so we don't need anymore that I other classes solo ability up. When aspects of overpowered soloing ability bleed over to op'd group or raiding ability, or make it so we dont need groups that it becomes a problem. Unfortunately 'famed' ranger solo ability does not bleed over into OP'd group or raid ability. It kind of bleeds over to PvP I suppose but again that's not my or the majority of the customer bases concern. They have ways of limiting PvP damage anyway, there were several nerfs rangers had to suffer because of PvP balance problems which is just unacceptable. Fear of being too OP'd soloing is is no way a valid excuse to not increase our raid/group DPS at this point. We are meant to be T1 DPS in ALL aspects and that's what I want first and foremost. They could give us bard and enchanter levels of utility and I wouldn't be satisfied until our DPS is clearly T1.</p>

[Nevao]

<p><cite>Jack@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have been raiding as a ranger since KoS and feel like I have a pretty good idea of why the changes are so slow.</p><p>The problem is that we are <span style="text-decoration: underline;">overpowered solo</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">slightly underpowered groupwise</span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">quite underpowered raid wise</span>.  How do you adjust one without affecting the others?  We need more combat art damage to be competitive in a raid, but that would only make the solo situation even more overpowered.</p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I don't know about overpowered solo, but I could see how making changes for raids could get us there. But to others' point I don't think that should be the stick we use to measure against.</span></p><p>I hate to complain without offering possible solutions, but I am here to complain about the state of rangers.  So, here are my solutions:</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add group and raid only abilities?</span>   ie: Pack Leader - A self buff that gives us increased damage while in a FULL group.</p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I like the idea of group and raid only buffs, but they shouldn't require x number of group members. It should be "if in group" or "if in raid". I'd hate to see it just be a straight damage increase, but if that's what it takes... Like Venez though I'd prefer to see this as a last resort though, or something that was implemented for ALL classes (mean some might gain or lose certain abilities if they were not in group/raid)</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add more utility to make us desirable to raids?</span>  I don't like this one but it is one way to deal with it.  ie: Make the deagro into a transfer.  Make Focus Aim raid wide. </p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I'd rather not have the hate transfer, that's just moving us closer to copies of assissins. But as for Focus Aim, I actually don't think it's a bad idea. I think to make it viable though you would have to add spell resist to it though. I'd be willing to give up the self portion if they gave us something useful for a group buff (like a 10% accuracy/10% strike through group buff). </span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add some support class buffs that people will want to give to the ranger?</span>  ie: Illy could offer a buff that gave 20% increase to ranged combat arts or something.   </p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I'm not crazy about having the class require a specific buff to reach optimal performance. Meh, it will have to happen anyway, but I don't want to start there if that make any sense.</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fix the hit box problems.</span>  This is going to make a minor difference and can not stand alone.  Even with this fixed, we will still be underpowered and unwanted for raids. </p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">This needs to be done regardless of what the dev's think about our class balance (and we've been told it will be done just not when or by who)</span></p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Add bottomless quivers.</span>  Why do I have to pay an extra 1p night over what assassins and sorcerers are paying to do damage? It is wrong for one class to be expected to support an otherwise poorly though out tradeskill.  Give woodworkers some other way to make money.  Also, if my raid guild did not have me to use up those void woods, they could sell them for 10p each. While they improve ranger dps a little and lower raid ranger arrow costs, they are yet another reason to view a ranger as a burden on the raid force.  Leave the ranger and make an extra 10p.  </p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">I need to go back and do the math but I think at one point with the Conservation AA and other "abilities' that our arrow consuption was lowered enough that we were paying close to the same nightly cost as other scouts (they were paying more for potions/poisons, we were paying more for arrows). Of course that's going to vary from server to server due to economies. Regardless of all the things we need addressed this one I'm not as concerned about and definitely don't want tackled first. I'd hate to see what limited time they are willing to/can devote to us used to fix this and then still be in the same DPS gap situation.</span></p></blockquote>

[Venez]

<p>With a number of other class's fully able to solo more, and not only more but more efficently you cant claim we are OPd with solo lol. Brigands and Swashs can solo alot of triple yellows cause they can stun lock them down, Furys.../chuckle can solo as well as Rangers but whatever. Fact is most dps class's can one shot even con mobs, and most can solo ^^^ yellows, this expansion isnt exactly filled with hard mobs.</p><p>As long as others can solo whatever we can and some can solo ALOT more than we can, I could care less about argueing about us soloing, its a weak reason to not fix a class. No we dont need a boost in soloing</p><p>EDIT: NM im a idiot, i was clicking my hotkey and not my buff.</p>

[Nevao]

<p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Venez, are you trying to imply that the one of the left is the one we have the PvE servers? Last time I checked the one on the right is what we have on the PvE side of the fence.</span></p>

[Neiloch]

<p>Not old and new versions, thats PvP and PvE versions. Notice the checked PvP box. Why are you showing this?</p>

[Venez]

<p>fixed in my edit, sorry examined what was on my hotbar instead of what was in my buff window.</p><p>Odd, all my buffs on my hotbars show as pvp.</p>

[Neiloch]

<p>When it comes to soloing actual SOLO content, yes rangers are extremely efficient. When it comes to soloing small or regular group content, there are several classes better than rangers at it, and those classes are in more demand than rangers in groups and raids. Can't even argue that rangers are a 'solo class' because other classes do it better, and don't have as many problems finding a raid or group spot. So yet another reason why our solo ability should have absolutely no bearing on getting our group and raid DPS up. There is plenty of room to up our DPS before we become 'overpowered' for solo content.</p><p>So what is it? What possible justification could there be to NOT up our DPS?</p><ul><li>PvP DPS can be individually managed. </li><li>Other classes, with more demand, can solo better than us.</li><li>We have less useful utility than other DPS classes. Even if Focus Aim is better some how its not enough to justify a ranger over a rogue or massive sorcerer/assassin DPS.</li><li>We only have as much or less defense than assassins or rogues.</li><li>Melee's can often stay in on AE and survive anyway, so being able to 'dps at range' while other scouts can't is a minimal advantage at best., and not an advantage at all when going against mages.</li></ul><p>I would really love a dev or the producer to answer to this. Even if its 'we don't like rangers' it would be <em>something</em>.</p>

[Alenna]

<p><cite>Boise wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Many issues here..no doubt. Brenlo no doubt caused allot of "strife" between Devs (think Aeralik and Fyre here). Now, we have a new Senior producer and still no fixes. Assassins are running away w/ parses while rangers are now being left behind by other substandard classes like Swashs.</p></blockquote><p>lets be fair here the new producer  had been here only a couple of weeks and this update was in the works months before he came on board.</p>

[Alenna]

<p><cite>Raahl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If I am wrong please correct me.  And I know that group makeup makes a big difference.  So YMMV.</p><hr /><p>Here's the main problem with Rangers and Raiding.</p><ul><li>Casters have Troubadors.</li><li>Melee has Dirges.</li><li>Ranged has nobody.</li></ul><hr /><p>Another problem is that Rangers are not doing T1 damage.  Just looking at some of the parses that the T1 damage classes are putting out there.</p><p>Assassins: 40-50k on average, some insane spikes with a dirge buff.</p><p>Wizards:  35-45k on average, again with some spikes.</p><p>Warlocks:  40-50k on average, with a few very large parses (suspect it was in a large group encounter).</p><p>Rangers: 30-40k on average, with a parses around 45k.</p><p>If the developers could eek out another 5-10k average for Rangers I think we'd be more acceptable for raiding.</p><hr /><p>Another issue with raiding is we don't have any hate transfer.  This makes us less desireable.  Not that I'm asking for one, but bringing something to the table utility wise would help out.</p><hr /><p>I really enjoy playing my Ranger.  Lucky for me I'm not in a hardcore raiding guild and will be able to join in raids.</p></blockquote><p>I'm like you I love my Ranger and I'm not in a hardcore raiding guild and they let me join raids and groups all the time even with my subpar dps.(and I"m not that good of a Ranger yet). but I'm trying to power level one of my healers so that I can bring something to our raids, because I don't like feeling that I"m being carried to so I can get myself geared up to still be a subpar dps class.</p>

[FearDiadh]

<p>I imagine that if this were an 8 page thread by now they would have responded already.  Unfotunately, it isn't likely to make it to 8 pages anymore because so many rangers have quit/betrayed.  It is one of the 4 or 5 lowest population classes there are now.  The only reason it isn't the lowest (guessing here) is that it is popular with the roleplayers and soloers.  You could probably count all the rangers left in mid level to upper level raid guilds on your fingers.</p><p>There will soon be 3x as many level 90 shadowknights as rangers.</p><p>Re: Whether they are not fixing us because of the solo aspect or pvp aspect, I don't know.  I have heard so little regarding rangers and what has been said does not seem to be followed up, that all I have to go on are my guesses.</p>

[Venez]

<p><cite>Jack@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I imagine that if this were an 8 page thread by now they would have responded already.  Unfotunately, it isn't likely to make it to 8 pages anymore because so many rangers have quit/betrayed.  It is one of the 4 or 5 lowest population classes there are now.  The only reason it isn't the lowest (guessing here) is that it is popular with the roleplayers and soloers.  You could probably count all the rangers left in mid level to upper level raid guilds on your fingers.</p><p>There will soon be 3x as many level 90 shadowknights as rangers.</p><p>Re: Whether they are not fixing us because of the solo aspect or pvp aspect, I don't know.  I have heard so little regarding rangers and what has been said does not seem to be followed up, that all I have to go on are my guesses.</p></blockquote><p>we had like 700? posts on the beta forums before Rothgar / Xelgad posted that they would look into it when they had the time and they already had some ideas. Personally I think it was a mercy post to get some of us to shut up. All of the problems and multiple ideas on how to fix them were posted in SF beta, a bunch were posted in each beta for the last 3+ yrs, so its not like they dont know what the community is thinking, its been pretty much spelled out.</p><p>I have seen alot of Rangers I have known in the last 3yrs quit to the constant nerfing of our class, I have seen a handfull of Top End game Rangers betray and another handfull switch mains altogather due to the lack of us being fixed. And still Management and the Dev Team has done very little to help us out - I wont say they havent done anything because they did toss us a bone with fixing Stream and Makeshift, but in reality thats all it was - a bone.</p><p> Go to the offical site and the unoffical site and check how many guilds are recruiting rangers, or have in the last 2yrs. Then tell me how desireable Rangers are. To make it worse check how many Top End Rangers there are currently, as in how many High End Game guilds have one, and for a hugh joke try to app to one.</p>

[kartikeya]

<p>I can't remember if we ended up tipping 1000 posts on the beta board or not. If we didn't, we were dang close. Pretty sure there were at least 900 posts there.</p>

[Striikor]

<p>We did break 1000 posts on beta. It did get somethings fixed. It did not cause any "overall" issues to be changed.</p>

[Raahl]

<p><cite>Ranja wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Raahl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>glowsinthedark wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Dirges are just fine for rangers, the only thing they offer that we can't really take advantage of is BC, but all their other buffs are very nice for us</p></blockquote><p>Doesn't their CoB only affect melee?  Which is what maybe 1/2 the damage that a ranger does?</p></blockquote><p>no CoB procs off ranged. Was changed awhile back in our KoS revamp.</p></blockquote><p>Thanks.  <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Nevao]

<p><cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I would really love a dev or the producer to answer to this. Even if its 'we don't like rangers' it would be <em>something</em>.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Honestly at this point I'm not expecting too much (Edit: in terms of red name posting). Dev's rarely post about subjects like this until they are ready to address them. I think we've gotten as much "notice" as we're going to get until they are ready to pull the trigger and the previous comments of "when we have time" make me think this is pretty low on the list. But I could be wrong. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">As for the producer, well I'm not sure he's been there long enough to know much more than we are upset but not the full context of the issues. Which is not his fault, it hasn't been that long and while he access to our complaints he would not be doing his job if he just took our words at face value. He has to understand our concerns, understand the devs' concerns, see the underlying data and then prioritize according to everything else that needs to be done. Between that and the fires from the upcoming Live Update 56 I wouldn't be surprised if it's a while before he gets to even looking at our problems.</span></p>

[Neiloch]

Well that's depressing. We basically have to depend on the team that blew smoke up our butts to get the new producer "caught up" on ranger issues. Which isn't many, hey our CA's don't do as much DPS as sorcerers, assassins and in some cases swashbucklers, kthx. That coupled with ignorant trolls getting more attention and defense than people who actually know what's going on in the other thread here.

[Nevao]

<p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Meh, I'm hoping that was more directed at the "Not Real Ranger" comments than the calling out of people who are spouting opinions with no direct knowledge or worse, incorrect understanding of mechanics. If it was though "hey you can say whatever you want no matter how wrong it is and not get called on it" then we have a whole other issue.</span></p>

[Roslyn]

<p>While I am not really a raider in this game, I felt that my 90 ranger wasn't even up to par in grouping situations. I powerleveled a dirge and am much happier with her capabilites and what she brings to groups and the random raids I join. Admittedly, I came from raiding a ranger in Vanguard a year ago, so the disappointment was just waiting for me, but it's amazing to me just how ignored this class is in EQ2! I considered getting my ranger some BGs gear but didn't feel like wasting the plat on poisons and arrows, I just figured I'll level my fury and get tokens on her.</p><p>I realize I'm not saying anything new here, but I just wanted to add another name to the list of people really fed up with rangers. I'm glad I never raided on Roslyn! I'm glad she gets whatever heirloom gear my dirge doesn't need instead of actually working on her - because I already feel like it was a huge waste of time getting attached to the character. At this point the only reason I don't betray her to assassin is because A) her house is fully decorated and B) assassins are divas. ( <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> )</p><p>Oh and as far woodworkers getting angry if they couldn't gouge rangers anymore - as a 90 carpenter, I have zero sympathy. I make plenty of money - not from crafting - without disenfranchizing an entire class population.</p>

[Venez]

<p><cite>Nevao wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Neiloch@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I would really love a dev or the producer to answer to this. Even if its 'we don't like rangers' it would be <em>something</em>.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">Honestly at this point I'm not expecting too much (Edit: in terms of red name posting). Dev's rarely post about subjects like this until they are ready to address them. I think we've gotten as much "notice" as we're going to get until they are ready to pull the trigger and the previous comments of "when we have time" make me think this is pretty low on the list. But I could be wrong. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ff9900;">As for the producer, well I'm not sure he's been there long enough to know much more than we are upset but not the full context of the issues. Which is not his fault, it hasn't been that long and while he access to our complaints he would not be doing his job if he just took our words at face value. He has to understand our concerns, understand the devs' concerns, see the underlying data and then prioritize according to everything else that needs to be done. Between that and the fires from the upcoming Live Update 56 I wouldn't be surprised if it's a while before he gets to even looking at our problems.</span></p></blockquote><p>I also think you will not hear anything from a Dev on this subject here, basically because it would cause a complete firestorm no matter what they said at this point, to many Rangers, to many years of no fixs and hollow promises of "we will look into it" or my favorite "working as intended".</p><p>I cant blame the new producer at all, he is walking into a complete disfunctional mess on alot of differant levels. Besides are there any Devs left from launch? Rothgar maybe? honestly im not sure anymore, or which ones are still here from the end of EoF when this mess started. So you can see the Managment turn over I think has really hurt us because there is not really many if any left that understand that Rangers were always billed as T1 DPS, how many devs know what T1 even means now?</p>

[Gronker]

<p><cite>Venez@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I cant blame the new producer at all, he is walking into a complete disfunctional mess on alot of differant levels. Besides are there any Devs left from launch? Rothgar maybe? honestly im not sure anymore, or which ones are still here from the end of EoF when this mess started. So you can see the Managment turn over I think has really hurt us because there is not really many if any left that understand that Rangers were always billed as T1 DPS, how many devs know what T1 even means now?</p></blockquote><p>I hope you folks realize that 'fixing class woes' is probably a relatively low priority for the new producer.  I'll bet "getting new subs" is probably #1, and "keeping existing subs" is #2.  Growing > sustaining.  Anyways, guess where that puts a specific class (which is not played much).  If the ranger community wants to get fixed, it needs to feed the development track in terms that its familiar with.</p><p>If there was a clear, concise list of "things to fix" thread with "top 3-5 issues" and "other ones" (without a flame war) there that's the best bet.  You'll get 1+ real things fixed and a couple of others with the GU after they notice ...</p>

[kartikeya]

<p><cite>Gronker wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If there was a clear, concise list of "things to fix" thread with "top 3-5 issues" and "other ones" (without a flame war) there that's the best bet.  You'll get 1+ real things fixed and a couple of others with the GU after they notice ...</p></blockquote><p>Unfortunately, we've had lists like that sticked for <em>years</em>. All attempts at making calm, rational posts with clearly labeled issues ordered by severity have been pretty much ignored. Case in point, Stream of Arrows has been broken into uselessness since the end of <em>Desert of Flames</em>, and we only just got it changed into something useful (which, incidently, still has an annoying bug, which still hasn't been fixed).</p><p>I'd argue that class balance issues are one of the top things that drive players away from the game, and that ignoring them is only hurting their player retention, but I'm pretty sure I'd be preaching to the choir. If it were just rangers having giant issues, that might be one thing. Our issues are a big big big problem, we're in bad shape, but we're hardly the only class with big problems. Class balance right now is ridiculously out of sorts, and it's because of this attitude of ignoring a single class's woes until the problem becomes insurmountable that it's this way in the first place.</p>