Rangers, post your fixes. For all aspects of the game.

[Orthureon]

Mine personally, I am a PVPer so some of my suggestions are more PVP centric. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. But the majority is aimed at improving our overall desirability. They are as follows:

• 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, increase the de-hate amount by 25%.
• 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 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 10% ammo conservation.

Feel free to add your ideas here.

[Junniper]

So I just saw on the patch notes for Wednesday, Nov 7th 2012..

 Ranger

Rangers rejoice! Ranged multi-attack, flurry and ae auto-attack no longer consumes extra ammo.

 

 

 

This is pratcially a dumb idea.

What's the point of ammo if you don't use any like intended?

Instead of removing the extra arrows shot, just make it so woodworkers make 500 instead of 100 at a time with no change in cost.  Without point that, you are simply removing the need for woodworkers to really want to craft.  Just level up to make a few arrows... wow..  really?

[Twyxx]

Junniper wrote:

What's the point of ammo?

There is no point of ammo.

[Shotneedle]

Orthureon wrote:

Mine personally, I am a PVPer so some of my suggestions are more PVP centric. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. But the majority is aimed at improving our overall desirability. They are as follows:

• 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.
• Annoying for PvE too.
• 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.
• +1
• Lowered casting time on most abilities.
• +1
• Focus Aim: 5% damage increase, 25% strikethrough, have it last longer and be raidwide.
• No.
• 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.
• No.
• 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.
• Eh...half the damage, at most.
• 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.
• Unavoidable (in pve, anyway. Maybe not in pvp) is pretty much all it needs
• 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.
• Hawk is fine, just needs ae avoidance.
• Thorny Trap: Reduce the casting time to 1s, increase the damage caused drastically. After the initial hit triggers a DoT.
• Maybe not...drastically...but reduce cast time for sure.
• Catlike Reflexes: Enable it to work in PVP, increase the de-hate amount by 25%.
• It would still do nothing in pvp.
• 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).
• No.
• Snipe: Add an effect that increases the damage the target takes by 5%.
• Lol no. Add 3% max hp debuff.
• 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.
• No.
• Conservation: Added affect of 10% ammo conservation.
• And No.

Feel free to add your ideas here.

.

[Landiin]

The only thing really wrong with his focus aim suggestion is the 25% strikethrough. The 5% inc in dmg would be a nice touch maybe change it to 2.5% and then on snipe add 2.5% so you could basically keep a 5% dmg inc on the mob at all times.

[Neiloch]

Giving rangers a max HP debuff is boring. No better than asking rangers get a hate xfer or straight up copying other scout abilities. A debuff to increase incoming damage by a percent has already been used successfully in other MMO's which is where I got the idea. Although where I have seen it was much higher than 2-5%, more like 10-15%

I just want a debuff, because debuffs are inherently group/raid wide benefit, with universal appeal. Not one that only helps melee's or ranged attacks or whatever. That's why I don't like any of the ideas that increase melee centric stats. Max HP debuff would qualify but like I said, its boring. I'd like it to be something that increases damage, or allows for more damage without being specific to types of damage or their source.

If not a debuff the only other idea I really liked was a raid wide range increase for everything. Just straight up +range on CA's, melee, nukes, heals, buffs, debuffs, everything with a range parameter on it. And not by percent either, like +5 or 10 range.

Funny one would be if they had lots of brawler mobs and rangers got a debuff that essentially 'unbrawlers' them lol. Just completely destroys all the mobs avoidance so melees can hit it like a 'normal' mob again.

[Shotneedle]

Max HP debuffs are pretty much all that's keeping rangers from being in raid over assassins/bls. Why not give them a max hp debuff, even if boring?

We already have debuffs that increase incoming damage on mobs. It caps at 50% and is called mitigation. A 5% increase in damage recieved debuff akin to the new swash/necro prestiges is bad because it would easily be 200k+ dps at all times no matter how much hp the mob has, and it would outclass the swashbuckler(/brigand) and necro prestige abilties by miles, unless it was under 1% increase.

So your choices would be max hp debuffs a little more powerful than the beastlord's, or your range suggestion which is nearly useless anyway except for MT healers (if they're not a defiler).

[Neiloch]

[email protected] Bayle wrote:

Max HP debuffs are pretty much all that's keeping rangers from being in raid over assassins/bls. Why not give them a max hp debuff, even if boring?

Because the devs are not fans of copy/pasting assassin abilities to rangers or classes in general for balance as history would show. It would work, but I think they aren't going to do it so I don't want to waste my time asking for it. If they are I wish they would hop to it already.

As for the range increase idea, it was just an attempt at something with universal appeal while being 'ranger'-e. Still I'm not a terribly big fan of it as I'm sure there would be fights where it means nothing while the other 'competing' debuffs are still highly useful.

The incoming damage debuff could be based on the target max health (pre max HP debuffs of course). The more health they have, the more damage the target will take via the debuff. Adjusting the amount and being percentage based makes it scale in usefulness just like the max hp debuffs. But apparently that type of debuff is now the domain of other classes so I guess its out.

Only other idea I came up with and liked was some sort of 'truestrike' ability. Basically the 'truestrike' idea is a kind of 'veto' on a miss/resist/defended attack. Land a hit where you would otherwise not land regardless of the targets defensive stats. Accuracy and strikethrough on crack and would work for spells. The ability would fit well on the group portion of Focus Aim imo and would work well with the new 'charge' mechanics introduced in the prestige abilities. Unfortunately I'm not sure all the mechanics needed are in place for it. Plus it could set a precedent for a type of 'arms race', new stats and mechanics to counteract previously added mechanics. Think AE's, then AE avoids, then unavoidable AE's, etc. Also this ability would lose appeal on encounters that already have high hit rates and i'm sure there are other drawbacks I haven't thought of.

In some ways I'm more interested in what the devs think rangers are bringing that doesn't warrant a max HP debuff when we are the only scout DPS to not get one. Nothing rangers exclusively have is as useful. Ranger debuffs amount to elemental resist, decreasing 'defense' with snipe and wounding shot.

[Shotneedle]

If I had to guess, it would be being the only scout to do more than half (3/4ths?) of your dps at range.

[Landiin]

How is that bringing anything of value?

[Shotneedle]

It doesn't, with the proportions of ward values to hp meaning scouts never have to joust anymore.

[decator666]

The only complaint I have about my ranger is the cooldowns of many of our shots.  I have put 10% into the heroic skill to lower the cooldown and it helps a bit but my stream of arrows really needs less cooldown along with the 14 minute shot.

Aside from that...Rangers rock!

[Lethlian]

At this stage of the game (for me at least) the last bit of changes I would love to see is;

1) Complete removely of minimun range penalty on our CA(s) and ranged melee attack.

2) All current CA(s) with less then 10m range, be set to a standard of 10m range base.

3) Add a Max HP debuff to snipe as others have mentioned.

I can live without the hate transfer, plus I don't feel its really warranted anyways. (side note, just make Cat like reflexes proc a positional dehate tbh) If the above 3 were actually ever implemented into the game (in addition to the changes they've made for us now in CoE beta update notes), I would *likely* never post plea or complaint for rangers on the forum again. (well thats probably a stretch but you get the idea

At the very minimun I think a Max HP debuff with the added dmg they just implented to Focus Aim could be compeling enough for guilds wanting to have a full time ranger....but I suppose only time will tell.

Respectfully,

Lethlian

[Neiloch]

I posted this on the new forums but as you know, lol at getting attention on the live forums.

So after much thought last night and this morning and discussion in a thread in the old forums I have come to the conclusion that it is a huge oversight rangers do not have a max HP debuff. This is not and can not be a 'assassins have it so we want it too.' this is because this type of debuff is actually quite common. Every DPS scout has a version of this except Rangers and there are other classes outside of those with one as well. I would compare rangers not having a max HP debuff to not having something as basic as a deaggro or a x2 debuff. Actually worse since a max HP debuff is useful in heroic content as well while the x2 buff is not. So not only do we have no utility (except for the new prestige abilities that everyone got a counterpart of) we don't even have a debuff that is nearly 'standard issue' for scouts. The only way I will stop wanting this is if someone can point out what rangers do that apparently none of the other DPS scouts can that has just as much universal appeal as a max HP debuff thus justifying why we don't one. I'm sure it will be a groundbreaking explanation if it's possible since the entire EQ2 community doesn't know about it or severely underestimates it's value what ever it may be.

[Landiin]

/sarcastic But Neil, we can range...

[Davngr1]

not gona lie..  i hate the fact that the "cool kids" got assassin HP debuff nerfed since it is the original assassin debuff.   but..     loosing the hp debuff makes it a lot easier to use double conversion since the rest of the lines are terrible and the fact that assassins lost that HP debuff opens up for rangers having it as far as balance goes.  

[Neiloch]

Xelgad wrote:

Lastly, double conversion specs are intended to be the more versatile option. For example, a Fighter might want some DPS and some tanking abilities. If everything is balanced as intended, classes with two DPS lines should always find that choosing one line yields a greater output.

Double conversion isnt supposed to be best for DPS classes apparently. Up side is if double conversion is better, they will probably buff at least one of the lines instaed of nerfing the conversion abilities.

If they give rangers a max HP debuff through the prestige lines it will be bittersweet imo. I like the lines we currently have they just need to be tweaked with some numbers shifted around. Ideally if they just dont add it outright to something I would like it to replace the hilariously useless 'double arrow' in the EoF tree.