Ranger Expertise AAs

[Nevao]

Overall the upper portion of the Ranger’s (EoF) tree is in pretty good shape, at least in my humble opinion. Unfortunately the “Expertise” section is starting to show it’s age and with the GU61 AA dewebbing and AA review I’m hoping we can get a few of them looked at. So starting from left to right:

• Conservation: This is a great utility AA, no real concerns here.
• Hook Arrow: I’ve only started playing with this one recently, but it definitely an interesting ability. I’m loving it for pulling social mobs. That said:
  • The forced next melee crit seems a bit dated now that it’s possible, and rather easy, to get 100% crit rate. Would be nice if this gave you X potency on your next CA instead.
  • It would be nice if we could pull the mob the edge of melee range instead of right on top of you? That way you can use your ranged arts, or at least Auto Attack.
  • Bug: According to ACT Hook Arrow does do damage, but the examine window does not show what the damage range is. Consequently there’s no way to tell if anything is modifying it or not.
  • Bug: I seriously doubt this effects non-training dummy play, but I’ve noticed that if I lead off with Hook Arrow and then stop combat that the dummy “breaks” and you have to take it down. I only mention this in case it could be a symptom of a different problem I have not yet experienced
• Extension: I’m sure there are some solo players taking this for the 15% range extension, but as long as we’re required to be in melee range to be 100% the only portion of this that is getting used is the 5% CA Resistablity portion. The only problem is that our CA’s hit for 100% in raids the vast majority of the time even without it. Since this ability is essentially the same ability as Swashbuckler’s “Reach” (they even get a ranged weapon damage increase) would it be possible to get the melee increase for us. Since many AE’s have an up to 9 meters initial range this would provide a bit of survivability while still keeping us in relatively close (if we want to do full damage). I’m not sure what this could be changed to if that’s not acceptable for some reason, but it’s needs something as in it’s current state it provides situational at best impact.
• Double Arrow: Of the four “Expertise” abilities this one has “aged” the most. 8 Multi-Attack is just one more point than a DoV Red Adorn and I’m hoping these endlines were not meant to be easily equaled by a blue stat adornment. It’s also the only “T1 DPS” Endline that is subject to a soft cap. Well I suppose Assassin’s Repeated Stabbings is as well, but Recovery is not something that other classes can easily cap and it’s fairly important to how the Assassin class plays. Unless the amount of available MA goes up dramatically with the next set of raid zones/expansion then once you hit 500 then this AA has minor return on return on investment and can be effectively rendered useless by getting to 500 MA. This one needs to be completely replaced as it’s our pure DPS option. Perhaps either a burst ability on a 5 minute recast ability like Manaburn or Focused Casting. Or some kind of indirect utility like Excessive Bleeding. The idea I’ve been kicking around in my head is distance based Potency or CB ‘bonus’. So for example if you’re less than 5 meters give a 15% bonus, less than ten meters a 10% and greater than 10 meters a 5% bonus. Ability creation is not my strong suit though so I’m sure others can and will come up with better ideas.

[Gaige]

I was told no predator AAs were changing for GU61~

[Nevao]

Wouldn't suprise me if they are happy with Pred DPS, but I figured it was worth mentioning since we were on an AA review. Even if they don't want to add a DPS option so sort of utility would be welcome.

[Nevao]

Double Arrow: Instead of having this give 8% MA how about making it a Double Up style ability, where it recasts any Ranged (only) CAs cast in the last 4 to 5 seconds (have to go longer than Brigs due to Ranger cast times) recastable once every 2 minutes? This would give us an DPS AA that is still consistent with the name/idea and boosts our Combat Art damage instead of our Auto Attack damage.

[Tokenki]

Right now, most Rangers are only accepted into groups if the group has all the other bases covered.  Every other class in the game has something useful to offer a group.  Rangers have high dps only.

To make a Ranger a more "useful" class, how about an AA line that will upgrade the Hawk Attack feature.  The hate mitigation this spell offers is nice, but the durability of the hawk is too low.  By allowing the hawk to last longer, and be immune to AoE damage like the Shaman's spirit dog would go a long way to making Rangers a valued class.

AA posibility: Increase duration by 8 seconds per point, final point makes the hawk immune to AoE effects.  This will allow the hawk to be up almost all the time, and give rangers the utility to decrease group hate, something which Rangers have been asking to get for a long time.  This will increase the parody of Rangers and Assassins as well, as Assassins have the hate transfer ability.  

[Nevao]

Tokenki wrote:

To make a Ranger a more "useful" class, how about an AA line that will upgrade the Hawk Attack feature.  The hate mitigation this spell offers is nice, but the durability of the hawk is too low.  By allowing the hawk to last longer, and be immune to AoE damage like the Shaman's spirit dog would go a long way to making Rangers a valued class.

This is pretty much the consensus that seems to be forming on what we would like for utility, though personally I'd like to see it "until cancelled" simply so we don't have to waist DPS recasting it.