Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Ranger feedback
ralangorf
Member, Alpha Two
The class fantasy of the ranger from what I can recall in the showcase is that of legolas and the pinnacle ranger archetype from mmos. What we have and are seeing is far different from that. Let me explain:
almost all abilities require cast times and or charge up times. This has three significant effects on gameplay and class fantasy.
Gameplay Issue 1: charging abilities leaves you in a vulnerable/interruptable state. Even while being able to move
Gameplay Issue 2: charging abilities provides perfect information to your opponents allowing them to make quicker decisions based on you charging. Since you have few non-charged abilities. Mobility becomes king. Another area the ranger lacks in but well discuss that in a second.
Class fantasy issue 1: the fantasy is to be slinging arrows and firing snipes. Now for snipe it should be charged. But for everything else why am I casting my abilities? I'm not a mage. I do not "cast" or "charge" up my abilities. This feels like playing caster with a ranger skin on top of it. the fantasy was to press a key and fire an arrow. Press one more and fire another specific arrow. This consistent charging slows down gameplay and groups Archer with the mage as a competitor rather than making it it's own archetype.
This leads into the worse gameplay issue...
Gameplay Issue 3: Archer even at equal gearing due to mobility and utility issues is less desirable than mage overall. You only need a few or one for their passive abilities. And then they become worse mages. Mage has better movement and survivability abilities. Better damaging abilities that multipurpose as aoe.
bonus gameplay issue: scatter shot is one of your best abilities damage and AOE capability wise and it requires significant charge up and also has a directional issue as well as a MOVEMENT PENALITY. You are jolted backwards on release making it more difficult to engage effectively. This should just flat out be removed from the skill along with the charge time.
Suggestion: remove majority of the charging portions from arrows. Thundering shot or whatever shouldn't have a charge time. Neither should majority of the other abilities. To compensate tone the damage down slightly if need be. But the class fantasy is not there right now. On a balance perspective of dmg Im not going to pay it mind. Even if they overtune Archer to be better if still will just play like a caster.
almost all abilities require cast times and or charge up times. This has three significant effects on gameplay and class fantasy.
Gameplay Issue 1: charging abilities leaves you in a vulnerable/interruptable state. Even while being able to move
Gameplay Issue 2: charging abilities provides perfect information to your opponents allowing them to make quicker decisions based on you charging. Since you have few non-charged abilities. Mobility becomes king. Another area the ranger lacks in but well discuss that in a second.
Class fantasy issue 1: the fantasy is to be slinging arrows and firing snipes. Now for snipe it should be charged. But for everything else why am I casting my abilities? I'm not a mage. I do not "cast" or "charge" up my abilities. This feels like playing caster with a ranger skin on top of it. the fantasy was to press a key and fire an arrow. Press one more and fire another specific arrow. This consistent charging slows down gameplay and groups Archer with the mage as a competitor rather than making it it's own archetype.
This leads into the worse gameplay issue...
Gameplay Issue 3: Archer even at equal gearing due to mobility and utility issues is less desirable than mage overall. You only need a few or one for their passive abilities. And then they become worse mages. Mage has better movement and survivability abilities. Better damaging abilities that multipurpose as aoe.
bonus gameplay issue: scatter shot is one of your best abilities damage and AOE capability wise and it requires significant charge up and also has a directional issue as well as a MOVEMENT PENALITY. You are jolted backwards on release making it more difficult to engage effectively. This should just flat out be removed from the skill along with the charge time.
Suggestion: remove majority of the charging portions from arrows. Thundering shot or whatever shouldn't have a charge time. Neither should majority of the other abilities. To compensate tone the damage down slightly if need be. But the class fantasy is not there right now. On a balance perspective of dmg Im not going to pay it mind. Even if they overtune Archer to be better if still will just play like a caster.
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Comments
also, balance you know..it would be too op if the ranger could shoot everything while moving at the speed of light.
Disagree you can balance this. I just edited the post. Even if they bring more DPS it needs to be remarkably more to outweigh the kit being lackluster and also just entirely competing with mage.
mage = more aoe
ranger = more single target
u just want him o shoot faster and do less damage but complain it cant keep up with the mage's damage. what?
At max ranger is worse dps than mage overall. In singles or small scale or gvg... That isn't the problem. They will patch or tweak numbers.
This is a gameplay concern. I'm not sure you're seeing what I'm explaining. It doesn't fulfill the archetype imo and many others have started to notice already.
if you want to shoot fast, use a short bow. it makes sense that a ranger takes time to cast skills since he is basically aiming for a good shot, instead of just shooting everything right away. so from a fantasy perspective, it seems fine to me, since skills do more damage than autos. its like they are hitting a vital spot or something after aiming carefully.
it also has a movement speed buff (I think it runs faster than other classes?) plus 2 dashes (I think the mage only has one?) besides, these arent all the skills. IS already said the ranger will be the 2nd most mobile class in the game after the rogue. what more do u want?xD
Just saying "it has better single target DPS" which currently isn't true in game. Will not cut it to distinguish it. Also unless numbers are giga pumped up. They're in a trashcan spot. And I don't think they should giga buff them. They need design improvements around their kit. Not just 50% inc dmg to all abilities.
You seem too engaged with WOW Hunter class.
But WOW is balanced around PVE. The PVP there is Sh*t. The last expansion where the pvp was good in wow was WOTLK. And in this expansion the Hunter's dmg in PVP was dependent on the armor.
You could be hitting an afk DPS paladin or warrior, and you will need good 2 minutes to kill an afk target.
Ofc they did high dmg to low armor targets, but their whole role there was anti casters.
AOC is taking different approach. and assigning the Ranger different Role. This means different design of the class.
What the... Just a second here. You say I'm too involved in wow/engaged then speak to nuisances in pvp seasons from it. Im not even thinking or talking about wow.
My play experience comes from the games ashes is appealing too. I played years of primeval in Archeage (begrudgingly thru some of its worst periods). Im currently a longbow in TNL. I've also played wow hunter and rift rogue neither of which cast abilities outside of a snipe. I know this archetype a lot. It's never been a caster class nor has it behaved this way in any other mmo. It's odd it's in this boat currently. Fighter isn't casting abilities. Don't know why ranger should.
So I definitely see where you are coming from regarding the "playing mage but with a skin"-feeling. I agree that being locked in animations leave you in a very vulnerable position, and I do believe that is the intentions behind it as Steven has been quoted saying that they want "rangers to optimize good positioning."
I believe this could be resolved by making the difference between shortbow and longbow bigger. Considering ranger seems kinda locked to bow gameplay since our abilities specifically requires those weapons, making the two different bow types invite to more varied gameplays feels kinda... well, mandatory.
I imagine that they could make it slightly similar to the GW2 take on longbow vs shortbow - shortbow has much less range and attack much faster (and is more DoT based), as well as being very mobile with their abilities.... Meanwhile, longbow could keep this "heavy hitting" fantasy with longer animations and cast times, but also greater range and bigger numbers.
As I am a ranger main (I only tried the bard briefly), I am not quite sure how "locked" other classes are into their weapons; but since ranger specifically requires a *BOW* for many abilities, they are very much soft-locked from many other weapons. I am not really too happy about that in general as a ranger in my opinion should have viable melee options (again, GW2 did everything right here); but at the very least they should make sure that the shortbow and the longbow feels and plays differently so that all rangers dont get shoehorned into being a sniper.
Completely agree. Excellent suggestion on how to add more viability to longbow too.
I am slightly concerned if he wants ranger to have "good positioning". The game feels far too mobile for this to really play a part at all quite frankly. Sounds more like a fluff statement than a "how it actually will play" statement.
Bro. Legolas wasn’t a ranger.
Aragorn was a ranger.
The current ranger sucks!
Not from the DPS position, it is a2 barely stage 1. There are no numbers balancing. Even though I would like for the damage to be a bit higher right now.
But from the fact that this is not a ranger. It's not an archer. It's a useless caster. The gameplay and feel of it is bad.
Historically archers did use 2 handed weapons. They did use traps. So I am good with bow+2h sword. But the skills themselves are not a fit for the class right now. Everything stops you from doing anything. Everything is a slow/cast or is AA interrupt. Marks are useless. 6 seconds of anti-buff with 60s cd for 200+ mana where you have time to cast 2 skills .... tf... As for the buffs, same. Either they are bugged or they need to be buffed up. The damage output with any buff on is negligible. With buff or without buff is the same. [I include arrow imbues in buffs]
Another thing that I have a big problem that all skills work with any weapons.
Huh?!? ~Shoots snipe with 1hand and shield~.
Cmon... I would rather have weapon lock skills than have this.
This literally makes weapons useless since you can do anything with each one of them.
The only difference would be the attack speed of the weapon. We could use any weapon we like if it has higher stats.
This concept is, at least to me. Wrong.