Xerot
Legacy Supporter 4
I passed it by the devs as a bug initially, since ice volley currently deals vanilla damage. But according to what responses I've received so far, it was designed in such a way to prevent exploitation while keeping the volley aspect of it.
There's two ways I can think of at least improving or balancing it more towards the current standard.
The first being that because it deals effectively no damage right now, it can be reworked to have a longer slow. 2 seconds, unfortunately, doesn't amount to much of anything currently, as most classes have movement abilities to either negate or just push through said slow. And even if it doesn't, it takes roughly 1 solid second or more to pull back an arrow far enough to deal some semblance of damage. So upping the slow duration would justify spending the stamina on such a skill, allowing for 1-2 easier shots on an enemy, while keeping them at bay.
The second suggestion, if the longer slow duration sounds too terrifying in a group situation, would be to rework it to work similar to Envenom. Reasoning behind this being that if you have some skill at aiming, you'll be able to slow the enemy for a decent amount of time while maximizing damage output against a single target. I've always seen ranger as a class able to focus down a single target from a distance, while maintaining said distance. For Crowd Control, we have explosive shot now. So maybe if frost volley operated similar to envenom for about... maybe a 6-10 second duration on the bow as a 1-2 second slow when applied, it would be more valuable in a ranger's skillset.
The justification behind having it changed, currently, lies in it's value in a rotation. When you're in any kind of fight, as a ranger, you're looking to burn an opponent down quickly with a bow, rather than draw out the fight. With frost volley doing no actual damage and with only a 2 second slow, it isn't even enough to offer a chance to disengage an opponent, let alone keep them from running away. Also bearing in mind that we don't have the luxury of being able to whale on an enemy and be at relatively even odds when they're in our face. We have to focus on keeping that distance. Unfortunately, with what slows we have, one being melee, which you shouldn't ever be using unless you get ambushed (also has the same slow duration) it doesn't allow us to keep that distance unless the class we're facing capitalizes on keeping that distance as well.
And the kicker to that being that most of them have very solid DoTs/roots/stuns that prevent an enemy from acting *at all*, or running away/getting too close. So... A slow that relies more on skill while dealing some damage to keep from burning precious distance between you and your enemy is probably reasonable to have.
(I could personally do without the whole volley thing in general - The goal is to be able to aim a bow and shoot, not aim in a general area and hope it hits to deal damage.)
There's two ways I can think of at least improving or balancing it more towards the current standard.
The first being that because it deals effectively no damage right now, it can be reworked to have a longer slow. 2 seconds, unfortunately, doesn't amount to much of anything currently, as most classes have movement abilities to either negate or just push through said slow. And even if it doesn't, it takes roughly 1 solid second or more to pull back an arrow far enough to deal some semblance of damage. So upping the slow duration would justify spending the stamina on such a skill, allowing for 1-2 easier shots on an enemy, while keeping them at bay.
The second suggestion, if the longer slow duration sounds too terrifying in a group situation, would be to rework it to work similar to Envenom. Reasoning behind this being that if you have some skill at aiming, you'll be able to slow the enemy for a decent amount of time while maximizing damage output against a single target. I've always seen ranger as a class able to focus down a single target from a distance, while maintaining said distance. For Crowd Control, we have explosive shot now. So maybe if frost volley operated similar to envenom for about... maybe a 6-10 second duration on the bow as a 1-2 second slow when applied, it would be more valuable in a ranger's skillset.
The justification behind having it changed, currently, lies in it's value in a rotation. When you're in any kind of fight, as a ranger, you're looking to burn an opponent down quickly with a bow, rather than draw out the fight. With frost volley doing no actual damage and with only a 2 second slow, it isn't even enough to offer a chance to disengage an opponent, let alone keep them from running away. Also bearing in mind that we don't have the luxury of being able to whale on an enemy and be at relatively even odds when they're in our face. We have to focus on keeping that distance. Unfortunately, with what slows we have, one being melee, which you shouldn't ever be using unless you get ambushed (also has the same slow duration) it doesn't allow us to keep that distance unless the class we're facing capitalizes on keeping that distance as well.
And the kicker to that being that most of them have very solid DoTs/roots/stuns that prevent an enemy from acting *at all*, or running away/getting too close. So... A slow that relies more on skill while dealing some damage to keep from burning precious distance between you and your enemy is probably reasonable to have.
(I could personally do without the whole volley thing in general - The goal is to be able to aim a bow and shoot, not aim in a general area and hope it hits to deal damage.)
