Best Of

I have been solely playing ranger for all phase 2 and mained it in phase 1. This last update felt much better and like a step in the right direction but still missing the class fantasy.

Focus. The introduction of a class resource is huge for ranger. While this is the case, it definitely feels a little shallow in comparison with the advantage of the rogue and some of the other class resources but obviously this can be tuned. The damage boost is nice though.

Salvo. Salvo is definitely a nice ability and the charges that regenerate so quickly gives the ability to back to back silence and combo in our ammo imbues more efficiently and at will. Has decent damage although the cast time feels long when hitting all 6 charges.

Power shot. This ability is honestly one of my favorite. Its a long range ability added to our kit that actually gives some feeling of class fantasy with the longer poking range than other classes. This I feel should be more leaned into making many more of our abilities have the edge on classes in range by 5-10 meters as options to extend our auto attack range to give us the feeling of keeping the enemy at bay and being able to poke the enemy if not hit them decently hard from long range. I cannot overstate how impactful this would feel to the class to give us the role of long range skirmishers and punishing the enemy for getting to close to siege defenses before their team is ready.

Hunts and marks. This one kind of confuses me. Replacing the hunts effect while casting the mark seems like it is almost entirely only useful when fighting in a group to help them land a crit or some other debuff. I think it felt much better when it stacked. Sure its on a reduced cooldown but at least in the crit department its at the moment better to keep the hunt of the tiger and never hit mark unless you have a group targeting them. The streamlining of hunts and marks in the ability tree definitely feels better but I'd love some more ability synergies than we currently have. Comparing our skill synergies to the bard and rogue we see an obvious difference. This is probably because of when the different classes were designed.

Barrage. This skills feels fine but again has nearly no synergy with skills except snipe. In reality, snipe is too much of the rangers dps. It has too long a cooldown and is very punishing to try to pull off. Unfortunately its the one that also has the most synergy with other abilities as it has shaken and increased attack speed after casting so its necessary for a good dps burst especially once the ttk is fixed.

Removing the jump from scatter shot was good and adjusting the reliability of concuss ammo is very nice making thundering shot much more viable.

Overall though ranger still definitely has a way to go. I do feel like we have too many effects that need multiple abilities to set up and those ability have cast times that make pulling off combos to get effects surprisingly punishing in smaller scenarios and even larger ones as we are slowed or in the case of snipe, stuck in place for 3 seconds by which point we have been run over or the enemy has died, backed out of range, or broken line of sight. Without snipe, it feels like we are spamming abilities and praying the enemy dies before jumping back out of range as we have no defensives or heals. Also, our t3 damage abilities feel practically useless and I don't really use them unless I'm out of abilities.

Overall the main issue with the ranger still remains class fantasy. It still feels quite bland compared to the other classes and especially compared to rogue and bard(understandably but still) There are various ways you can fix this I'm sure but I think the easiest and most universal would be extending the range. By increasing the range of the ranger, it would increase the need for them as skirmishers with the enemy and make their casts more viable as they could hit them from further away without being punished quite as harshly. This would also give us a higher skill cap as we strive to keep away from the enemy while skirmishing with no defensives. Giving us more synergy with our abilities and even making some of them instant cast or free movement would give us some more mobility which many classes are surpassing us in. Any healing or regen would be welcome and silences or cc shots that don't require as much set up would also feel good I think. Obviously I'm no game developer but these are just some things to consider when looking at the future of ranger. This update was definitely a step in the right direction and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where this class goes in the future as I'm dedicated to playing it no matter what. But I am particularly partial to long range and abilities that pierce multiple targets or explode, whatever feels powerful in a fantasy sense.

It's been a few days since our list of changes and fixes for the Ranger.

Have you had a chance to play a Ranger since March 27? If so, what are your thoughts on the changes?

Roshen wrote: »

Ranger Archetype Changes

• New Ranger Archetype Resource -  Focus
  • This resource starts and caps at 100. Ranger abilities deal up to 15% more damage depending on how much Focus is stored when damage occurs, and consume a proportional amount of Focus after the hit. 3 Focus regenerates per second, and weapon combo finishers restore 10 Focus

• New Ranger Ability - Salvo
  • Fires all charges to deal 50% damage to the target enemy per shot when activated
  • Stores up to 6 charges
  • Generate 1 charge every 3 seconds and from weapon finishers
  • Salvo replaces Barrage as the Ranger starting ability
  • Triggers Enhance Armament effects

• New Ranger Ability - Power Shot
  • Deals 200% damage to target enemy. Generates 25 Focus and does not consume Focus on hit
  • This has been added as a tier 1 Skill Tree ability
  • Power Shot can be Lightning Reloaded

• Ranger Mark and Hunt Revamp
  • Mark of the Tiger, Bear, and Raven have been combined into a single ability, Mark Prey. Mark Prey will apply the Tiger, Bear, or Raven Mark to the target depending on what Hunt is currently active
  • When a Mark is used, the Hunt buff effect temporarily leaves the caster and applies a debuff to the target. When the Mark duration ends or the target dies, the Hunt buff returns to the caster and also grants them a temporary defensive buff
  • Mark cooldown has been reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
  • Mark of the Bear mitigation debuff has been decreased from 25% to 15%

• Barrage Ability Changes
  • Moved to being a tier 2 learned Skill Tree ability
  • Cooldown has been increased from 12 seconds to 15 seconds
  • Weapon combos no longer refresh partial cooldown
  • No longer triggers Enhance Armament (ammo) effects
  • Removed Expeditious Barrage passive

• Arrowstorm - Fixed a bug causing this to trigger many more times than intended with certain abilities
• Removed self knockback from Scatter Shot
• Increased chance for Enhance Armament: Concussive to apply dazed effect from 50% to 100%, to be in line with other enhancements

Probably going to echo some of the feedback already given but the changes are steps in the right direction but it is like trying to fix a broken car just by changing the wheels and giving it a paint job. The underlying class of the Ranger still needs work and a clear identity.

The changes:
Focus is erm interesting and a damage boost is always welcome, but feels like an addon to the class, I don’t think about or play around it, I just have it there.

Salvo is good new ability, it has meant the barrage is pretty much redundant now and should be replaced (see below) It would be nice that if you use the ability and the target is killed, the remaning charges are stored so you don't just shoot the dead body.

Power shot is a good new ability, but i would like to see a change in the animation so it’s not just a sped up version of Snipe.

Hunts and marks were bloated so happy to see them getting streamlined although, given what they do, you’re still just going to pick one and stick with it. The actual effects of these hunts need to be looked at. If this is a key identity of the Ranger then make them highly effective, they are already on a 30s cooldown so could do with beefing up a bit.

The change to enhance armament is quality, love this change!

Barrage is now pretty useless. I would like to see some creativity with this ability to give us something new. Knock back has been removed from Scatter shot (which is much appreciated) so maybe Barrage could become a knock back ability with low damage. The augment could be a cone knock back to try and keep with the Ranger identity of actually keeping players away so you can kite and play around them.

Airstrike. It's the big ability of the Ranger and it's lackluster, the animation, the ability itself just leaves a lot to be desired. It was so much better in the Ranger showcase. I think it needs more mobility to take you higher and further and I'd actually like it if the "airstrike" felt a little like one and came down and caused players hit to be tripped.

Disengage, please fix this. Half the time I am still hitting an invisible wall, it doesn’t feel as fluid/effective as the Rogue’s feint. It needs more range so we can actually escape and kite. The Ranger is also supposed to be the second most mobile class and it feels like one of the worst, please give us some more mobility in skills and abilities to enable us to play with distances of engagements.

Traps. I would advocate that you could play into your described Ranger identity by removing the thrown trap and making it camouflaged and making the activation area of the standard trap bigger to make it effective.

Ultimately, I still think the Ranger is lacking an identity. Too many abilities slow you or have cast times and it seems like we’re playing a physical Mage at the minute but with much less mobility and survivability. We need more range! Give a passive or built in mechanic or something that allows us to actually play at range. The Ranger is described as being able to “track” why not add this as a counter to Rogues, don’t reveal them from stealth but show their delayed footsteps whilst in stealth? I feel the team could push the boat out a bit more and lean into the Ranger being able to “harness nature’s fury” and use of “crippling weapon strikes”.

Ranger is in a rough spot. You lose to mages, you lose to rogues, you lose to fighters, you lose to tanks, you break even with clerics and you lose you bards. The only place you'll have a good time is in larger scale group content where you can press buttons without so much scrutiny.

It has a cool kit but it doesn't work, and it's not fun to have classes that are only viable in raid content.
There has been an insane amount of power creep with the bard and rogue classes taking the podium in almost all categories, it would just be much better if some of the older classes like ranger actually received some innovation and interesting changes (NOT just giving us barrage 2.0 and power shot 2.0), rather than shoveling all of the new and powerful skills into new classes.

I don't think ranger has a single favourable matchup in the open world. Some are laughably one sided (rogue, fighter) and others are a 50/50 at best.

Ranger does not really have access to range, nor do they have access to the mobility required to kite any of the classes in the game.
They only have one semi-reliable control skill (and one wildly unreliable trap). The silence takes too long to be used, and is very clunky. You can be waiting up to 5 seconds for the silence to hit sometimes.

The only way to win a 1v1 fight seems to be to basically cheese a snipe from stealth and go for the finish before they have a chance to recover initiative.

It's tremendously disappointing to see a new class like the rogue be introduced with basically zero vulnerabilities and all of the attack options in the world, and see older classes like the ranger (which just received a very mild "rework" - i.e. significant nerf to marks and the addition of barrage 2 and power shot 2) be left completely in the dust.