Proposed fixes to the Ranger class 2012

[Orthureon]

Alright here is a completely new idea list some old some new, some revised. Some with shout outs to Rangers on the Beta forums; Twyxx, Neiloch mainly.

• No minimum range on ANY combat arts or bow autoattack. This is mainly a cure for PVP since as soon as any melee class gets on top of you it is usually lights out. But I have been finding more and more in my soloing travels that many mobs have huge hitboxes. This could be an add-on to our myth buff since our mythical bow removed the minimum range from our CAs and Autoattacks.
• Extension: Bonus increased to 10% and maximum range of melee based combat arts increased to a minimum of 10m, enabling us to remain at a farther range at any given time.
• Lowered casting time on most abilities.
• Focus Aim: 5% damage increase, 25% strikethrough, have it last longer and be raidwide.
• Makeshift Arrow: Change it to an Until Cancelled buff without a trigger count. Add an effect called "Shattered Fragments" (or something lol) Which has a percent chance to proc 50% of the damage caused by Makeshift Arrow in a 10m radius with a DoT effect after the initial damage.
• Double Arrow: Change it to an effect that ALWAYS triggers a focus damage effect equal to the damage of your autoattack. Only triggers one time, not off of multiattacks. IE: So you hit for 50k autoattack, Double Arrow hits for 50k, then the rest of your multiattacks/flurry go off.
• Hookshot: pulls the enemy to you and causes high piercing damage. The attack is guaranteed to hit and the next attack made will crit and do 10% more damage. Possible increase to recast time as it would actually be a good attack.
• Hawk Attack: Siphons 25% of the groupwide/raidwide hate to the fighter with the highest current hate position. If no fighter is present it siphons the hate to the hawk. The hawk will have 50% HP, and 75% of the Avoidance and Mitigation of the Ranger using it. IE Ranger has 50k HP 75% avoidance and 60% mitigation. The hawk would have 25k HP, 56% avoidance, 45% mitigation.
• Thorny Trap: Reduce the casting time to 1s, increase the damage caused drastically. After the initial hit triggers a DoT.
• Catlike Reflexes: Enable it to work in PVP. In PVE reduces hate with the enemy by 5% per proc (instead of a static value), lowers hate position by 1.
• Killing Instinct: Changed from DPS and Ranged Skill increase to Autoattack multiplier increase and damage proc for the Ranger and a groupwide 5% Ability Double Cast (this effect would apply to the ranger as well).
• Snipe: Add an effect that increases the damage the target takes by 2-5%.
• Hunter's Instinct: The current bonuses it gives, plus 5% dodge chance. Groupwide buff with the group portion being half the effect of the self buff portion.
• Conservation: Added affect of 20% ammo conservation.

[Opeij]

Agree with this 100%. The only other thing that could be added is maybe some more ammo con somewhere (like 10-20% more) but if these actually get changed, I think i'd be too excited about the changes to worry about ammo con.

[ZUES]

Make. Rangers. Desirable. For. Raids.

Give us utility!

Any utility!

And tier 1 DPS equal to the assassin and beastlord!

[Neiloch]

Orthureon wrote:

So just some tweaks I and I am sure many other Rangers would like to see.

• Remove minimum range from all of our abilities, including our bow autoattack (the mythical weapon has a 0-40m range), and increase the maximum range to all of our Melee based CAs to 10 or 15 meters. I would imagine they could easily add this bonus to our Extension AA ability. Minimum range I wouldn't have a problem with if they were more consistent with their hitboxes.
• Change Double Arrow to 10-15% Flurry or something unique like 5-10% AE Multiattack. This would just have the same problem later on when we get ae auto and flurry maxed out. Needs to be percent based what ever it is, even if they changed it to increase multi attack by 8% of our base.
• Lower cast times slightly on some of our CAs Ranged CA's really need to be brought down in casting times I agree.
• Change the Hawk Attack to give the hawk a lot more HP and to basically Intervene 25-50% of the time on incoming damage to the Ranger, or group. Basically like a flying ward. Not a fan of this one, wards aren't a ranger thing. If i were to change hawk it would be to siphon raid wide hate from all non-fighters while not being able to steal aggro due to this massive siphon.
• Lower the cast time on Thorny Trap by 1s, increase the damage it does drastically and add a DoT effect to it. It is after all a long recast. This would be nice i guess but wouldn't solve any problems we have.
• Add 5-10% Flurry and AE autoattack to the Focus Aim buff, both to the Ranger and the group. Again same as the double arrow idea, soon as those stats start being capped more it will be useless/much less desirable. Outside of the damage proc we are already getting I would like it to proc some kind of special, guaranteed strikethrough for all attacks. Usually called 'True Strike' ranger-like classes.

More inclined to voice my wants this way though:

ZUES wrote:

Make. Rangers. Desirable. For. Raids.

Give us utility!

Any utility!

And tier 1 DPS equal to the assassin and beastlord!

And then give feedback on what they do. I don't want them thinking its our possibly unreasonable ideas or nothing.

[Orthureon]

Neiloch@Butcherblock wrote:

Orthureon wrote:

So just some tweaks I and I am sure many other Rangers would like to see.

• Remove minimum range from all of our abilities, including our bow autoattack (the mythical weapon has a 0-40m range), and increase the maximum range to all of our Melee based CAs to 10 or 15 meters. I would imagine they could easily add this bonus to our Extension AA ability. Minimum range I wouldn't have a problem with if they were more consistent with their hitboxes.
• Change Double Arrow to 10-15% Flurry or something unique like 5-10% AE Multiattack. This would just have the same problem later on when we get ae auto and flurry maxed out. Needs to be percent based what ever it is, even if they changed it to increase multi attack by 8% of our base.
• Lower cast times slightly on some of our CAs Ranged CA's really need to be brought down in casting times I agree.
• Change the Hawk Attack to give the hawk a lot more HP and to basically Intervene 25-50% of the time on incoming damage to the Ranger, or group. Basically like a flying ward. Not a fan of this one, wards aren't a ranger thing. If i were to change hawk it would be to siphon raid wide hate from all non-fighters while not being able to steal aggro due to this massive siphon.
• Lower the cast time on Thorny Trap by 1s, increase the damage it does drastically and add a DoT effect to it. It is after all a long recast. This would be nice i guess but wouldn't solve any problems we have.
• Add 5-10% Flurry and AE autoattack to the Focus Aim buff, both to the Ranger and the group. Again same as the double arrow idea, soon as those stats start being capped more it will be useless/much less desirable. Outside of the damage proc we are already getting I would like it to proc some kind of special, guaranteed strikethrough for all attacks. Usually called 'True Strike' ranger-like classes.

• The first point on minimum range removal was also for PVP purposes since that is my main focus. And hitboxes on some mobs are very strange.
• Fair enough to all of your points. I agree with percent based increases on our current stats, it would make it so it is really never outdated.I guess giving us more stats that will be capped is kind of silly. However, there is no AE Multiattack in game currently, at the very least they could introduce this stat to the ranger exclusively to begin with.
• 5% damage increase, 25-50% strikethrough on Focus Aim, have it last longer and be raidwide.
• Change Makeshift Arrow to an Until Cancelled buff without a trigger count. Add an effect called "Shattered Fragments" (or something lol) Which has a percent chance to proc 50% of the damage caused by Makeshift Arrow in a 10m radius with a DoT effect after the initial damage.
• Change Double Arrow to an effect that ALWAYS triggers a focus damage effect equal to the damage of your autoattack. Only triggers one time, not off of multiattacks. IE: So you hit for 50k autoattack, Double Arrow hits for 50k, then the rest of your multiattacks/flurry go off.
• Hookshot, pulls the enemy to you and causes high piercing damage. The attack is guaranteed to hit and the next attack made will crit and do 10% more damage. Possible increase to recast time as it would actually be a good attack.
• Hawk Attack, siphons 25% of the raidwide hate to the fighter with the highest current hate position.

And then give feedback on what they do. I don't want them thinking its our possibly unreasonable ideas or nothing.

- Leaving it to their discretion completely has gotten the class where it currently is.. so I would rather propose ideas.

[Neiloch]

The problem is past devs weren't very giving to rangers and the design team in general doesn't like going back and changing things. They prefer to pile on new stuff in quantities to try and achieve a net balance. Recent inq and templar changes are good example of this.

Unfortunately this doesn't work well when class has fundamental flaws built into their mechanics. It could work actually, but if they did it for CoE, rangers would be getting nothing short of a large suite of changes and abilities while others would be getting basically what they are getting now.

Rangers need an iconic piece of desired utility. I really can't say it any simpler. A debuff to increase incoming damage by a set percent solves so many problems. Even if it was just 2% that is a raid wide increase of damage by 2% that you can't get anywhere else (far as I know).

[Orthureon]

First post completely re-written with new ideas, or revisions.