Xerot
Legacy Supporter 4
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2012
UPDATED 11/26/12, please scroll to the blue text on this post to see the new thoughts!
Yeah, you've likely heard me bitching plenty in O and elite recently. I've listened and I'll be putting down my thoughts here now. Let me start by at least stating how I feel ranger stands currently
Warriors, on the other hand, have high sustainability due to strong armor, and a significant number of skills that utilize fatigue that instantly deal damage, and they have a pretty good array, regardless of their specialization. Rogues will generally lose any fight if they aren't max level, but they can at least have a chance of success if they get the element of surprise (As they're meant to) and burn them fast enough before they can either jump or fight back. That's assuming you're a ninja, of course. Any other rogue will generally be wise enough to just sneak around and forget about engaging them entirely.
Casters, while they have little to no armor, have a very high burst damage potential, and can burn a class down before they recognize what's going on. Adding on AoE's and suppression skills make them fearsome in the hands of the skilled. Rangers make quick work of them simply due to ice arrow alone, which I feel, is wrong.
Hamstring - 6 Fatigue, active skill. Your next arrow, should it hit your target, is aimed at their legs, crippling them for 7 seconds. 15 second cooldown. The slow would slow as much as the current ice arrow slows.
Piercer - 8 fatigue, 20 mana, active skill. Your next arrow pierces through the opponents defenses, ignoring armor and dealing an additional 50-100 damage. 10 second cooldown. Only useable while sneaking.
Elemental arrows - Tweak them to have a chance to apply an effect while costing 1 mana per arrow. 20-50% would be reasonable. Ice arrow's slow is reduced by 50%, allowing the enemy some mobility when struck.
Barrage - Can apply elemental arrow effect that is currently active
SmokeArrow - 4 fatigue, 20 mana, active skill. Your next arrow bursts into a cloud of choking gas, silencing the target hit for 5 seconds. 30 second cooldown.
Leap - Similar to dragoon's jump, but with a lower height and higher cooldown. 4 fatigue, 20 second cooldown. Allows some mobility for rangers, letting them prowl atop trees and be nimble, like the real thing!
These are all ideas, so they wouldn't necessarily ALL have to pop up. But I made them with the intention of balance in mind. It causes Ranger suppression to be more skill-based, IE aiming the arrow and leading it into a target rather than spraying and praying, then running once you get a hit in. It also allows them to have some form of assassination ability with high damage output and armor piercing, so that getting the jump on a warrior actually puts you at some form of advantage.
I believe that covers everything. Bear in mind that I have only ranger balancing in mind, considering the other classes current abilities. This could change should a large class revamp occur in the future, but as things stand now, this is where I believe we can strike some sort of balance. I do like the thought of being able to fight back without relying on enchantments and armor all the time. They should grant an advantage, but not a necessary edge to play the class properly in PVP fashion.
Please let me know your thoughts and concerns, and I hope to see some kind of change in due time!
~Xerot
UPDATE 11/26/12
You guys have spoken, and I've taken all of your thoughts and concerns into careful consideration to create a definite list of tweaks I would like to see. Take these changes I recommend with the ideals of a Ranger in mind, the greatest one being Freedom.
Before I discuss skills, I should at least make some points on their default set-up. Melee damage is hilariously low, let's face it. The only time we would ever use it is in the situation that we get caught or failed to keep them from reaching us. It's a sort of last-stand thing, but it's nigh upon hopeless. I'd personally prefer we get swords instead of axes, but the major thing being no utility in close-range combat at all. Hell, I think pyromancers deal more damage with an axe than we do. So to at least balance this so that we can stand a chance at close range, we should get either a boost to our axes (Not dramatic, but nothing to scoff at either. Maybe 5-10 damage at max level with an axe. That'd make it 40 damage, right?) or gain envenom to be able to dole out some kind of damage at close range, should we be forced to fight close. This is more my own thoughts, but they're nothing like the skill tweaks I have listed below.
ICE ARROW - You guys spoke out, and I've listened. I've decided to think of having the skill replaced with a more unique skill, Smoke Arrow.
SMOKE ARROW - 6 Fatigue, 10 mana to activate. Arms your arrows with a volatile powder that bursts into a blinding dust upon impact. Targets struck will be inflicted with BLINDNESS for 2-4 seconds, and inflicting slow III for .5 seconds. Each arrow fired costs 15 mana. (I designed this skill bearing mobility and utility in mind. In team fights, this will cause rangers to be extremely high priority targets, but in return increases their value in a team-situation, by disorienting their prey with a wicked blindness effect. This also applies slowness for one particular reason, to interrupt an opponents sprinting. I would personally want to test this against a wide array of classes to see what would need to be tweaked, but I find this to be a valuable replacement, especially in situations that require the ranger to escape. Disorienting the enemy while being chased allows you to 'Juke' the opponent during the brief moment you blind them, which can allow you to Camo safely, or run in the opposite direction to prevent them from giving chase with ease.)
KINDRED SPIRIT - 10 Fatigue, 50 mana to use, 10 minute cooldown. Requires cooked beef to use. Summons a tamed wolf upon your calling, which will follow and aid you. (Since WOLF is broken due to issues with breeding, a skill that allows you to summon a wolf would be more valuable, since more often than not, one would have to search for a wolf that would die in 1-2 hits by the enemy. Not a worthwhile investment, by any means. Creating a skill that can instead summon a familiar of sorts with a high cooldown will cause it to be more valuable to the hunting Ranger.)
HEART SEEKER - 10 fatigue, 10 second cooldown, 1 second charge, high range. Requires redstone dust to use. Enchant a single arrow to seek out the target's life, which fires true at their heart. (Minus the flavor text, basically an arrow that will not miss. Replaces barrage. Whether or not this arrow could potentially carry your passive arrow effects is unseen, but the idea is to offer an active skill that acts more of a target-specific attack rather than having arrows literally pour out of your body and pray one of 'em hits. This allows for the conservative ranger to have an active skill other than Kick available to use, while holding enough restrictions to prevent it from being a trump card. Initiating with this particular skill can prove to do many things. If it CAN carry passive arrow effects, you can use this to strike a strafing target that is fleeing to secure a kill with a poison arrow. Or landing a smoke arrow on a persuing target to ensure a window of opportunity to escape or fight back. I feel a skill like this could open many creative windows to how the Ranger is played, and allows for an even greater array of combos.) SIDENOTE - I'm thinking the best means of making this particular skill work is by having it work similar to fireblast, or spawning the arrow on the target. This is a bit of a radical idea, so making it work in a way that is reasonable with the coders is paramount to making it a thing.
NATURAL GRACE - 25 mana to use, lasts 20 seconds, 60 second cooldown. Your training in the wild has sharpened your wit and changed your body, allowing you to move with greater speed for a period of time. (I don't know if this particular skill should replace something, but would act as a good replacement for Ice Arrow. Mobility has long been an issue I've encountered as the Ranger, and knowing Lore, this isn't accurate at all, as far as I'm concerned. It'll only apply Speed I, but even something like that allows for a means of escaping vicious predators, IE Dragoons, Ninjas, Samurais, etc... While offering an ability to stalk prey, so to speak. Another name could be THRILL OF THE HUNT, but that's up to those that could implement them.)
POISON ARROW (Modified) - same costs. Changes regard a greater amount of initial damage upon application, 30 magic damage + 20 poison damage, dealing 5 per tick. (This change makes dealing with armored opponents more reasonable than freezing them in place and turning them into a temporary pincushion before they slaughter you. This has a higher focus on damage over support/utility, by dealing a greater initial damage, but a reduced overall damage over time.)
PHEW. That's a lot of text. Those're the tweaks I've come up with after compiling and testing with what we've got already. Input as usual is appreciated, the closer we can move to achieving a greater balance, the sooner I can enjoy the hunt once again. :3
Yeah, you've likely heard me bitching plenty in O and elite recently. I've listened and I'll be putting down my thoughts here now. Let me start by at least stating how I feel ranger stands currently
- - Anything not wearing armor gets decimated by us, plain and simple. Ice arrow is hilariously powerful and no damage mitigation makes us fearsome.
- - Anything sporting full chain or more suddenly becomes a major threat. Ice arrow can delay them and allow us to get more hits off, but the damage mitigation is high enough to make our 180 damage arrows at max level deal... about 60, if my math's right. And this is a fully charged arrow, as well. God forbid you get anything with full iron, let alone anybody with diamond pieces. You're better off being called support by that point.
- - We rely on being sneaky and clever. Camo gives us some leverage, but we have no mobility whatsoever currently. Once we're caught, we rely on enchantments and ice arrow to repel enemies very briefly. Once we're beyond that, though, there's no escape.
- - We have a high sustained damage, but rangers have *no* burst damage whatsoever. The 2 damage skills we can activate using fatigue are kick, and barrage. And odds are, you don't see a ranger using barrage at all due to the high arrow cost and low damage dealt with each arrow.
Warriors, on the other hand, have high sustainability due to strong armor, and a significant number of skills that utilize fatigue that instantly deal damage, and they have a pretty good array, regardless of their specialization. Rogues will generally lose any fight if they aren't max level, but they can at least have a chance of success if they get the element of surprise (As they're meant to) and burn them fast enough before they can either jump or fight back. That's assuming you're a ninja, of course. Any other rogue will generally be wise enough to just sneak around and forget about engaging them entirely.
Casters, while they have little to no armor, have a very high burst damage potential, and can burn a class down before they recognize what's going on. Adding on AoE's and suppression skills make them fearsome in the hands of the skilled. Rangers make quick work of them simply due to ice arrow alone, which I feel, is wrong.
Now, with all of that said and done, I feel I can safely say that rangers have a good sustainable damage, but there are some major flaws in the class design that can be improved on and balanced in a way that allows rangers to be able to deal damage to armored targets and potentially fight back against warriors, while balancing out their blatant strength against caster classes. Here are some changes I feel that can be made to improve ranger as a class overall, while balancing them appropriately to where we're not death gods or anything.
- Less toggle skills, more active skills - I should explain this one in detail. Rangers have 5 damaging skills available, Kick, Barrage, and the 3 elemental arrows. Barrage deals little damage with a high cost of 6 fatigue and almost half a stack of arrows *per use*. I'm not sure of the damage, but it's nothing very special if the enemy is close enough to denote using it.
- Mobility. All rogue specs save for ranger have some form of escape or mobility enhancing skill, we get pretty boned if we have to try to escape a bad situation.
- Armor piercing - I can't stress this one enough, the damage mitigation from warrior armor is so immense that you'd be fortunate to kill one, even while using ice arrow incessantly.
Hamstring - 6 Fatigue, active skill. Your next arrow, should it hit your target, is aimed at their legs, crippling them for 7 seconds. 15 second cooldown. The slow would slow as much as the current ice arrow slows.
Piercer - 8 fatigue, 20 mana, active skill. Your next arrow pierces through the opponents defenses, ignoring armor and dealing an additional 50-100 damage. 10 second cooldown. Only useable while sneaking.
Elemental arrows - Tweak them to have a chance to apply an effect while costing 1 mana per arrow. 20-50% would be reasonable. Ice arrow's slow is reduced by 50%, allowing the enemy some mobility when struck.
Barrage - Can apply elemental arrow effect that is currently active
SmokeArrow - 4 fatigue, 20 mana, active skill. Your next arrow bursts into a cloud of choking gas, silencing the target hit for 5 seconds. 30 second cooldown.
Leap - Similar to dragoon's jump, but with a lower height and higher cooldown. 4 fatigue, 20 second cooldown. Allows some mobility for rangers, letting them prowl atop trees and be nimble, like the real thing!
These are all ideas, so they wouldn't necessarily ALL have to pop up. But I made them with the intention of balance in mind. It causes Ranger suppression to be more skill-based, IE aiming the arrow and leading it into a target rather than spraying and praying, then running once you get a hit in. It also allows them to have some form of assassination ability with high damage output and armor piercing, so that getting the jump on a warrior actually puts you at some form of advantage.
I believe that covers everything. Bear in mind that I have only ranger balancing in mind, considering the other classes current abilities. This could change should a large class revamp occur in the future, but as things stand now, this is where I believe we can strike some sort of balance. I do like the thought of being able to fight back without relying on enchantments and armor all the time. They should grant an advantage, but not a necessary edge to play the class properly in PVP fashion.
Please let me know your thoughts and concerns, and I hope to see some kind of change in due time!
~Xerot
UPDATE 11/26/12
You guys have spoken, and I've taken all of your thoughts and concerns into careful consideration to create a definite list of tweaks I would like to see. Take these changes I recommend with the ideals of a Ranger in mind, the greatest one being Freedom.
Before I discuss skills, I should at least make some points on their default set-up. Melee damage is hilariously low, let's face it. The only time we would ever use it is in the situation that we get caught or failed to keep them from reaching us. It's a sort of last-stand thing, but it's nigh upon hopeless. I'd personally prefer we get swords instead of axes, but the major thing being no utility in close-range combat at all. Hell, I think pyromancers deal more damage with an axe than we do. So to at least balance this so that we can stand a chance at close range, we should get either a boost to our axes (Not dramatic, but nothing to scoff at either. Maybe 5-10 damage at max level with an axe. That'd make it 40 damage, right?) or gain envenom to be able to dole out some kind of damage at close range, should we be forced to fight close. This is more my own thoughts, but they're nothing like the skill tweaks I have listed below.
ICE ARROW - You guys spoke out, and I've listened. I've decided to think of having the skill replaced with a more unique skill, Smoke Arrow.
SMOKE ARROW - 6 Fatigue, 10 mana to activate. Arms your arrows with a volatile powder that bursts into a blinding dust upon impact. Targets struck will be inflicted with BLINDNESS for 2-4 seconds, and inflicting slow III for .5 seconds. Each arrow fired costs 15 mana. (I designed this skill bearing mobility and utility in mind. In team fights, this will cause rangers to be extremely high priority targets, but in return increases their value in a team-situation, by disorienting their prey with a wicked blindness effect. This also applies slowness for one particular reason, to interrupt an opponents sprinting. I would personally want to test this against a wide array of classes to see what would need to be tweaked, but I find this to be a valuable replacement, especially in situations that require the ranger to escape. Disorienting the enemy while being chased allows you to 'Juke' the opponent during the brief moment you blind them, which can allow you to Camo safely, or run in the opposite direction to prevent them from giving chase with ease.)
KINDRED SPIRIT - 10 Fatigue, 50 mana to use, 10 minute cooldown. Requires cooked beef to use. Summons a tamed wolf upon your calling, which will follow and aid you. (Since WOLF is broken due to issues with breeding, a skill that allows you to summon a wolf would be more valuable, since more often than not, one would have to search for a wolf that would die in 1-2 hits by the enemy. Not a worthwhile investment, by any means. Creating a skill that can instead summon a familiar of sorts with a high cooldown will cause it to be more valuable to the hunting Ranger.)
HEART SEEKER - 10 fatigue, 10 second cooldown, 1 second charge, high range. Requires redstone dust to use. Enchant a single arrow to seek out the target's life, which fires true at their heart. (Minus the flavor text, basically an arrow that will not miss. Replaces barrage. Whether or not this arrow could potentially carry your passive arrow effects is unseen, but the idea is to offer an active skill that acts more of a target-specific attack rather than having arrows literally pour out of your body and pray one of 'em hits. This allows for the conservative ranger to have an active skill other than Kick available to use, while holding enough restrictions to prevent it from being a trump card. Initiating with this particular skill can prove to do many things. If it CAN carry passive arrow effects, you can use this to strike a strafing target that is fleeing to secure a kill with a poison arrow. Or landing a smoke arrow on a persuing target to ensure a window of opportunity to escape or fight back. I feel a skill like this could open many creative windows to how the Ranger is played, and allows for an even greater array of combos.) SIDENOTE - I'm thinking the best means of making this particular skill work is by having it work similar to fireblast, or spawning the arrow on the target. This is a bit of a radical idea, so making it work in a way that is reasonable with the coders is paramount to making it a thing.
NATURAL GRACE - 25 mana to use, lasts 20 seconds, 60 second cooldown. Your training in the wild has sharpened your wit and changed your body, allowing you to move with greater speed for a period of time. (I don't know if this particular skill should replace something, but would act as a good replacement for Ice Arrow. Mobility has long been an issue I've encountered as the Ranger, and knowing Lore, this isn't accurate at all, as far as I'm concerned. It'll only apply Speed I, but even something like that allows for a means of escaping vicious predators, IE Dragoons, Ninjas, Samurais, etc... While offering an ability to stalk prey, so to speak. Another name could be THRILL OF THE HUNT, but that's up to those that could implement them.)
POISON ARROW (Modified) - same costs. Changes regard a greater amount of initial damage upon application, 30 magic damage + 20 poison damage, dealing 5 per tick. (This change makes dealing with armored opponents more reasonable than freezing them in place and turning them into a temporary pincushion before they slaughter you. This has a higher focus on damage over support/utility, by dealing a greater initial damage, but a reduced overall damage over time.)
PHEW. That's a lot of text. Those're the tweaks I've come up with after compiling and testing with what we've got already. Input as usual is appreciated, the closer we can move to achieving a greater balance, the sooner I can enjoy the hunt once again. :3
Also addressed the issue of skills great points given 
