Raid Ranger fix/idea thread for coming expansion

[Twyxx]

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.

[Landiin]

• Fix our hate issue. It is bad enough if your in a solid group with a solid tank. Jump into a PUG and your going to be tanking most of the time.
• I can't agree more on AMMO. Something has to be done about this, other class don't have to spend 200p + a raid to do their best DPS.
• Un-Nerf Fatal Combination to parse well, make it rewarding to be able to stand in the sweet spot and do both melee and ranged.
• We need a raid and group wide buff to realy adds something to the raid and group. Our DPS isn't that much better then others to justify bringing us just for DPS.

I've only been playing a ranger for a little over a year so you guys will know more then me about what is realy need but just from what I've seen these issues need addressing.

[Neiloch]

Twyxx wrote:

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.

Yep. All true. I suppose an argument could be made for some of those classes listed not being T1 but they have ALL challenged me on the parse or outright beat me even if it was situational/sporadic.

If DPS was a matter of balancing it against utility, Rangers should be destroying the parse by a far margin.

• Melee Range: The entire idea of survivability through range is at least severely lessened when a very high DPS and low reuse CA requires melee range. I thank the devs every raid day our prestige abilities didn't just upgrade damage on more melee CA's again.

• Replace Double Arrow.  If this was changed/upgraded at all I can't see how it could be worse. Terrible, terrible end line these days. This is another example of why these types of upgrades need to be percentage based, not raw point based.

• Hawk: My problem with hawk is that it is group only. Hate transfers are inherently raid wide. Really they are 'who ever is hitting the main target' wide. Hate transfers boost the hate of the target against EVERYONE, relatively 'lowering' the hate of everyone but the person who has the buff. The hawk hate siphon only lowers the hate of the non-fighters in the group. Only way the hawk would be equal to any hate transfer but still lowering aggro is if it did some sort of raid wide, non-fighter deaggro that wasn't hindered by stat caps.

• AMMO: At the very least it make it possible so players can create 'handcrafted' arrows in bulk like the dragon bone arrows. The current low yield version only serves to waste player time and give an advantage to people using crafting bots. Keeping it like it is I can only assume SoE wants crafting bots to have an advantage or they are ignorant of the situation. Anything else would be sadism or apathy.

Here are my thoughts for Trick Shot I laid out a while ago.

Neiloch@Butcherblock wrote:

http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/3715608873

Trick Shot is terrible.

• First you have to be lucky enough for the enemy in question to actually hit the intended tank. This can be sidetracked by the mob changing targets for the myriad of possible reasons or if your tank is a brawler who's entire job is to be an avoidance tank and not get hit by the mob, making this effect much harder to apply.
• Second even IF you get past these problems, the effect it applies is roughly a 10 second hate gain buff you can't even maintain, it has to be repeatedly applied, and thus repeatedly getting through the problems listed before.
• Third "Hate Gain" buff. Hate gain is OFTEN capped by tanks, making this effect useless in such cases.

So, you get it to actually apply, you stay on top of it so it's on MAYBE half the time, and it can still be a COMPLETE waste outside of the damage the attack itself does.

I propose the following changes to "Trick Shot":

• First the effect should apply immediately to your target's target. E.G. I shoot an enemy with trick shot, and the enemies targeted player immediately gets the 'Blamed' buff, if fighter.
• Second, keep the 10 second temporary nature of the buff, explained next.
• Third change the hate gain buff to a hate transfer. This would keep in line with the intent of the overall hate effect the original Trick Shot and circumvent any 'hate gain' cap problems.

The hate transfer would only be up for 10 seconds when trick shot reuse is much higher (21 seconds with 42% reuse), is applied in an atypical manner (through target of target) and would need to be repeatedly applied. This opposed to a 'set it and forget it' typical hate transfer. For these reasons I think it is entirely reasonable the transfer amount be quite high. Possibly even approaching 50% if highest tier (level 87 version) and master quality.

[Twyxx]

Yeah, that didn't take long to get moved/buried. 

I like your idea for trick shot.  Would actually solve a lot of our hate issues, especially during PFT if you can hit trick shot then unload while transferring.  Would make that damage boost before 80% less of a tease if we can actually help the tank build aggro by opening big early.  

Overall it's going to take something significant from the devs to bring us in balance.  From what we're told there's new lvls and prestiges coming.  I'm guessing that's where they'll be addressing things instead of going back and fixing out-of-date stuff like Double Arrow. 

Would be nice to see more of the quality rangers out there get the opportunity to kill the harder content.

[Neiloch]

That's usually how they like to balance, by adding more to the scales. Rangers came a long way in Velious TBH, but just in regards to DPS. Now if we can just get a decent utility boost while maintaining DPS, preferably one that makes sense with with ranged combat style.

[Regolas]

Completely agree with everything said. I don't think we should be the top parsing class by loads (although we should be in the top 3 in every situation), so that only leaves utility to make us viable in raids and even groups. It's not asking much to be on a par desirability wise with our evil opposite, the assassin.

[Twyxx]

Regolas wrote:

Completely agree with everything said. I don't think we should be the top parsing class by loads (although we should be in the top 3 in every situation), so that only leaves utility to make us viable in raids and even groups. It's not asking much to be on a par desirability wise with our evil opposite, the assassin.

That's kinda where we are right now.  I'm almost always top 3 and we have 5 excellent t1s (beastlord, assassin, two warlocks).  We're pretty flexible as far as our dps goes, being effective on both single target and aoe fights.  And some of the fights, like Eriak, definitely show off what we can do.  Our dps is solid.

Just need to bring something else of value to justify our spot over another solid dps class with utility.

[Neiloch]

Basically. Velious was great for us because our DPS finally met the bar. Which is kind of sad "YAY! we're adequate!"I think what we are missing is an indisputably 'good' group/raid buff. All the other T1 DPS classes have at least this. Stat buff, damage proc, hate xfer, etc.

All we bring is pathfinding (useless). Then our temp accuracy/hit chance. The devs can't even really explain how exactly it works as well as being seen as generally useless by the player base. the 'idea' of rangers giving more accuracy makes sense, unfortunately the buff itself isn't in demand and even if it was it only helps out melee characters while utility from other T1 DPS classes tends to help everyone one way or another.

I can think of tons of simple stuff that would work and not seem terribly overpowered but it seems like a waste of time when we aren't getting any feedback. Plus I'd prefer if the ability had 'ranger' flavor to it as well opposed to being bland. Anyway:

-Group AGI or pot or CB buff (boring).

-group damage proc (meh)

-group or raidwide range increase. Everyone being able to do everything at 5 more meters would be a big deal i think, at least on raids.

-Instead of screwing around with accuracy, weapon skill or hit bonus, chance to ignore the various defensive stats like resists and block. "25% chance for an otherwise resisted or avoided attack to land" Works on spells and CA's.

[Corwinus]

Twyxx wrote:

• 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!

I agree with your suggestions Twyxx. For the ammo one above, as my plats were getting drained between the consummables and the adorns, I finally resolved to get to 100% ammo conservation. I got rid of some MA and CC adorns as my MA is above 600 and my CC above 430 unbuffed. I know it is sad because we are the only class compelled to do that but seeing my stock of Dragon Bone Arrows not depleting was a great relief. I will not go back.

Cor

[Twyxx]

Corwin@Oasis wrote:

Twyxx wrote:

• 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!

I agree with your suggestions Twyxx. For the ammo one above, as my plats were getting drained between the consummables and the adorns, I finally resolved to get to 100% ammo conservation. I got rid of some MA and CC adorns as my MA is above 600 and my CC above 430 unbuffed. I know it is sad because we are the only class compelled to do that but seeing my stock of Dragon Bone Arrows not depleting was a great relief. I will not go back.

Cor

Interesting.  So you don't consume any arrows with 100%?  I'd normally never consider adorning in a way that doesn't maximize dps, but as we're nearing/over cap on a lot of stuff it might be worthwhile with the obscene consumption rates right now.

[Twyxx]

Oh, nm...they're red/yellow adorns only.  Yeah, not reasonable to give up cb for it.

[Corwinus]

Twyxx wrote:

Oh, nm...they're red/yellow adorns only.  Yeah, not reasonable to give up cb for it.

I am at 288 CB unbuffed already but yes you are correct it is basically giving up 18 cb for 90% ammo conservation (the last 10% comes from AAs)

I am still doing my job parsing in the top 3 on a regular basis in raid and I regained some pleasure playing and not having to care about reloading or seeing my plats or my time (i have an alt woodworker) go down the drain.

This is the alternative I chose instead of beating that dead horse as I do not see SOE do anything about it .

Hell, it would be so easy for them to give us 50% ammo conservation instead of 10% with that AA.

Cor

[Neiloch]

If every class had to use just as many consumables I might see that as a reasonable trade off. As it is though, other classes get to work fully, not use as much consumables and keep those slots for CB or w/e else they want.

I'm still amazed they just haven't made it so handcrafted arrows can be made 2k at a time. More actual crafters would get money from arrows, instead of mostly BOTS (read:cheaters), and people wouldn't have to spend so much time doing mind-numbingly boring tasks. the only resource impact would be less time spent. People would still need to have just as many ingredients to make the same amount of arrows.

[Twyxx]

Neiloch@Butcherblock wrote:

If every class had to use just as many consumables I might see that as a reasonable trade off. As it is though, other classes get to work fully, not use as much consumables and keep those slots for CB or w/e else they want.

I'm still amazed they just haven't made it so handcrafted arrows can be made 2k at a time. More actual crafters would get money from arrows, instead of mostly BOTS (read:cheaters), and people wouldn't have to spend so much time doing mind-numbingly boring tasks. the only resource impact would be less time spent. People would still need to have just as many ingredients to make the same amount of arrows.

Have you seen the Guild Wars 2 crafting?  You push one button and it does as many combines as you have mats for in the span of a couple seconds.  They have no ammo in that game either and somehow the game still manages to be ridiculously fun.  Crafting in this eq2 is hideous.  Time sinks that serve no other purpose are terrible and this is a major one.

Your solution is fine.  The million other reasonable solutions that have been suggested are just as fine.  They just need to pick one and go with it.  Are there really any actual non-bot woodworkers left that would cry if ammo was gone?  It's a useless profession and you could very easily combine it with carpentry or give ww's a class change potion.

[Neiloch]

I've crafted in just about every top of the line MMO. NONE of them have a worse crafting system than EQ2. EQ2's crafting is easily one of the worst crafting systems in all video games. I'm referring to the actual act of crafting an item, not the overall system. Maximum amount of work for the least amount you can make for EVERY ITEM. Most other games have either instant creation or 'set it and forget' with varying yields.

-'fix' ammo one way or another

-more focus on range damage, less on melee

-utility: figure out and then make accuracy useful/demanded or slap on another group buff stat/effect that melee and casters will both benefit from AND WANT.

[Neiloch]

Here is my new stance on this:

They need to either revamp a sub-par core ability or add a new one entirely. 'Double Arrow' is also a good candidate for replacement. This while not adding anything new to other classes to effectively close the gap that just keeps getting shifted when abilities are added to everyone.

I suggest a debuff that increases incoming damage to a target by a set percent e.g. 'All incoming damage is increased by x%' is applied to the target. While something like that may seem big, if you 'parsed' HP debuffs as if it was being taken away by damage, it would be HUGE.

Or some other debuff, but I do think it should be a debuff. Group buffs are just that, group buffs, not raid buffs. And a raid buff would seem out of place on a high DPS class imo. Debuffs are inherently group/raid wide because it benefits everyone who is taking part in killing that target.