Core Issue: Rangers are a t1 dps that has far less value to a raid than all the other t1s.
- Assassin: Hate transfer, assassin verdict proc, increased damage below 30%, health debuff, single target poison proc buff.
- Beastlord: Feral--Group potency, crit bonus and a group-wide medium damage proc. Add in the flexibility to go Spiritual--Large group potency/crit bonus buffs, power regen, healing. Diff pets for situational flexibility.
- Wizard: Str/Int group buffs, Ice Lash (large damage proc).
- Warlock: Heals, cures, power regen, hate transfer, Curse of Darkness (medium-large damage proc).
- Conjuror: Call of the Hero, group stoneskins, power regen via shards, elemental toxicity (large damage proc).
- Necromancer: Rez, heals, power regen via dark hearts, elemental toxicity (large damage proc), diff pets for situational flexibility (not sure how viable).
- Ranger: Group accuracy temp buff, small temp group hate siphon buff.
All these classes are capable of putting up at least as much dps as a ranger, but all bring far more value to their group/raid. If you have any of the other t1s available it makes more sense to use one of them over a ranger assuming same gear/skill. If you look at recruitment threads for the top 30 guilds (based on progression) you won't see a single one recruiting a ranger. And of the top 10 guilds there are only 3 that are even using one. Since we bring nothing to the group we're constantly getting shorted on group setups, often being stuck in a mage group which we don't benefit and which doesn't maximize our abilities. The assassin or beastlord get the more powerful off-tank group typically because of transfer (assassin) or more dps/better use of buffs (beastlord).
Rangers either need to 1. be in a class by themselves with dps (by significantly boosting self-buffs) or 2. they need to be given utility to bring us in line with the other dps classes. The disparity between assassins and rangers is the most discouraging.
Would like to get everyone's ideas on how to improve rangers and give us more value to a raid for the coming expansion.
Some ideas to start:
- Melee Range: If we're intended to have a survival value assigned to dps from range then we need to be able to do our maximum dps from range. Currently some of our most efficient ca's are melee with short ranges. I'd rather keep the current range and have SOE remove the penalty to our class for some supposed survivability benefit, but if they want to keep that then our melee ca's need to be bumped out to 10m. Emberstrike especially. Having one of our most efficient spells have a stealth and 5m requirement negates any range survivability penalty in my mind. We have to be up close to maximize our dps.
- Thorny Trap: I see this as an opportunity to give us some added value. Many ways you can go with it, but some possibilities are 1) make root/snare work on epics again, 2) aoe raid buff (ideas...20 re-use, 15 cb, 400 to stat, 10% damage reduction, small trigger stoneskin, aoe block, etc.). Need to drop the cast time though to 2 sec base from 5 sec base and put the damage range on the tool-tip.
- Replace Double Arrow. 8% multi-attack for a class-specific endline is insulting at this point. It was 8% when people were struggling to get 100. Now that most everyone is soft-capped at 600, 8 is a joke. Even if you made it 100 I'm not sure how many people would take it. Suggestions: give us a group damage proc like the other t1s...even something mediocre along the lines of inspired daring but triggering on ranged hits (not just ca and not just melee based--so we have value either in scout or mage group) or something like immunization that mystics have.
- Enhance sprint: Make it 20% reduction per rank to cost no power at 5 points. This would make it so it can actually be used in raid. Would add a strategic/situational value to an aa that is currently completely ignored.
- Debuff: We're one of the few classes that can't debuff our own damage type. Can add a physical mitigation debuff to Bloody Reminder that starts small, but increases with each tick.
- Hawk: Weapon skills from ranger need to carry over to hawk...it has <60% hit rates. Significantly improve the siphon, something similar to what a troub brings for hate reduction. Assassins can sit there in a powerful group and have the advantage of transferring off their hate while rangers aren't able to manage the hate in the same group because non-% based siphon/transfers/reduction does not scale and will never keep up with increasing dps numbers.
- Focus Aim: Add strikethru to focus aim that matches the accuracy component. People don't miss much as is anymore with the current content. Strikethrough would give us situational value for our group on fights where the named is facing the raid.
- Noxious Enfeeblement: make encounter based and change the debuff from crit chance (meaningless today) to something of value like potency.
- Cat-like Reflexes: Make it proc a positional drop instead of static threat value.
- Immobilizing Lunge: Could prevent epic named from mem-wiping for duration.
- Trick shot: Can make it work like a mini coercive shout. Forces mob to target next fighter on hate list.
- AMMO: Something HAS to be done here. It is ridiculously expensive to play a ranger. It costs me 20-100 plat per raid right now depending on the resources costs. Why? That's insane. Remove any ammo consumption from specials (multi/flurry/aoe). Or just get rid of ammo and give woodworkers a free class change potion. The only people making plat off of arrow sales are people using third party afk crafting programs. It's not humanly possible sit there and craft enough arrows manually to feed everyone's consumption needs. Why SOE cares to protect the crafting bots over all the ammo users is beyond me. There are a bunch of threads with a lot of viable solutions. Pick one and FIX THIS!
Would like to see other ideas to fix rangers. Please keep ideas in this thread reasonable not only on a balance perspective, but realistic on a programming/mechanics level as well.