Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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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 improvements
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
having played about 100 hours of ranger during the tests so far, there are definitley some things that need to be improved, the class plays quite well in a team environment but it is also very underwhelming in many of the class fantasies a ranger would like to have
lets start with the abilities
now i do think ranger get some great abilities, but definitely need some tuning, for a pvp focused game, ranger really falls behind unless you are with a group with 3 healers backing you up
firstly we get scatter shot, great ability for aoe farming, other than this its a bit lackluster, the double charge makes it decent but having a cast time in pvp makes it basically not worth using
headshot, another decent ability, but also with a cast time, this ability is usually not even worth using unless the target is under 50% hp, and even then if you are using a short bow, its a flat dps loss to even cast this, this would be better suited with a longer CD but insta cast
moving on we have our ammo imbues and marks, marks are decent however the CD is way to long and the debuffs are pretty boring, the ammo imbues are pretty lame too considering you can get all three of them baseline by just leveling your wepon tree, would like to see something more interesting
finally we get to snipe, cool ability on paper, however in game, you will use this maybe 1% of the time, the cast time is to long to justify using it for the damage it gives, and with camouflage doing absolutely nothing to give rangers the opener there is just no reason to hard cast a 4 second spell
moving on to some of the passives we get, regeneration ( this does basically nothing ) + 5 hp per second at level 25, basically a waste of a skill, and Camouflage as stated before, does literally nothing, can be seen 30 yrds away by someone half your level, not even sure why this is in game?
the top tier skills for ranger are extremley lackluster compared to other classes tree's Air strike feels like it got giga nerfed and you jump about 1.4 ft high, not really sure why its like this when the show case was way better, call of the wild has niche uses for removing slows maybe, but in duels removing one stun just to get followed up into another 6 second stun, its basically useless
vine field is a decent ability except for the fact that at max level 90% of classes can just remove it so it basically does nothing, ( can be okay in world pvp group vs group )
all in all i feel ranger is in a weird position, they are fun to play, but they don't feel like the second most mobile class in the game, infact far from it, its almost impossible to kite anyone in pvp, they are by far the most squishy class, and their defensives get countered by every single class lol, they definitely need a re work, i would like to see less hard cast abilities, as of right now we don't have one single ability that does not have a cast time, when you look at tank or fighter just moving from target to target insta casting abilities it feels really bad and not smooth
ill also add they are the only class without a hard cc
lets start with the abilities
now i do think ranger get some great abilities, but definitely need some tuning, for a pvp focused game, ranger really falls behind unless you are with a group with 3 healers backing you up
firstly we get scatter shot, great ability for aoe farming, other than this its a bit lackluster, the double charge makes it decent but having a cast time in pvp makes it basically not worth using
headshot, another decent ability, but also with a cast time, this ability is usually not even worth using unless the target is under 50% hp, and even then if you are using a short bow, its a flat dps loss to even cast this, this would be better suited with a longer CD but insta cast
moving on we have our ammo imbues and marks, marks are decent however the CD is way to long and the debuffs are pretty boring, the ammo imbues are pretty lame too considering you can get all three of them baseline by just leveling your wepon tree, would like to see something more interesting
finally we get to snipe, cool ability on paper, however in game, you will use this maybe 1% of the time, the cast time is to long to justify using it for the damage it gives, and with camouflage doing absolutely nothing to give rangers the opener there is just no reason to hard cast a 4 second spell
moving on to some of the passives we get, regeneration ( this does basically nothing ) + 5 hp per second at level 25, basically a waste of a skill, and Camouflage as stated before, does literally nothing, can be seen 30 yrds away by someone half your level, not even sure why this is in game?
the top tier skills for ranger are extremley lackluster compared to other classes tree's Air strike feels like it got giga nerfed and you jump about 1.4 ft high, not really sure why its like this when the show case was way better, call of the wild has niche uses for removing slows maybe, but in duels removing one stun just to get followed up into another 6 second stun, its basically useless
vine field is a decent ability except for the fact that at max level 90% of classes can just remove it so it basically does nothing, ( can be okay in world pvp group vs group )
all in all i feel ranger is in a weird position, they are fun to play, but they don't feel like the second most mobile class in the game, infact far from it, its almost impossible to kite anyone in pvp, they are by far the most squishy class, and their defensives get countered by every single class lol, they definitely need a re work, i would like to see less hard cast abilities, as of right now we don't have one single ability that does not have a cast time, when you look at tank or fighter just moving from target to target insta casting abilities it feels really bad and not smooth
ill also add they are the only class without a hard cc
6
Comments
What could have been one of the more solid upkeep abilities turned out to be a complete joke. It should have been an actual HoT, a small one, like ~3% of HP. every 3s or some such - not something that makes you immortal facetanking everything, but at least something that keeps you chugging along for a bit more and maybe just enough to somehow get you by in the sidelines PvP against random stuff flying around.
Instead, it was +3 HP every regen tick while you have 1k+ HP already when you get it. That was probably my biggest disappointment in Ranger at that point.
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Other than that Ranger felt okay and even good when I fired it up as my first character, but when I put it aside to try my second character - Mage it was like "what Ranger". The power diff is mental and yeah I am sure there will be balance/tuning. But how can you tune something mechanically great like Shell vs something terrible Regeneration, without reworking the latter into actual heal over time - I have no idea.
definitely agree, on paper i think regeneration could be a great ability and i think it should also be a % based hot like you stated, with the dps people are doing atm i don't think 3% max hp every few seconds is to much, i am currently level 25, with regeneration gear, i have about 550 regeneration and i get 9 hp/s with 4000 ish health, so at level 50 we would max out at about 30 hp/s with 25000 ish hp?
camouflage is in a really bad spot too, whilst i understand ranger should not have a pure form stealth, camo could be stealth for a duration, or atleast work as intended, i think it should be an ability that ensures the ranger gets the opener, OR is able to escape, as of right now it just makes your character model look blury and every single person in a 50 yrd radius can see you like normal
Definitely, I'm not sure if attack speed removes cast time at level 50, but as of right now, we don't have a single ability that does not have a cast time, not one, so I would love for this to change, headshot should 100% be insta cast
attack speed does reduce cast times it seems atleast in terms with hasten snipe passive increases Attack speed by 20% also reduces cast times by 20% it seems
yep i have noticed this, however still not a big enough reduction to really cast during pve lol, im curious if their plans are to make it so we can stack enough haste to make these skills isntant at 50, either way it feels bad
1)Synergy: the bard/mage/ cleric synergy is insane for what it does for magic. not sure if its supposed to be that good but even nerfed it leaves rangers in the dust. about the only great synergy I can see is using a short bow to help clerics with mana regen while having a 100% uptime on our finishers (why oh why cant they stack better?)
2) Marks: It seems there needs to be 2 kinds of marks, Type A: permanent mark for damage/penetration/effect X and type B: the kind in use now for go dmg, quickly apply stacks of wound or effect Y. right now it feels wonky
3) Snipe: I almost have zero usage for snipe in groups, cast time is huge no crit bonus below 20 yards, cant move ect. honestly only way i see to change this is either make it a charge or take off the min distance crit chance bonus.
4) spell choice: AOE actually works great but eats thru mana, single target your kind of hard stuck, cant use snipe, head shot is great but only really good below 50% in conjunction with lightning reload, and you have barrage. vines and bear trap are actually pretty great CC.
Ranger feels good and its actually super fun, but starts to falls behind in group settings the higher the comp is. definitely needs some love, buffs and a little tweaking.
~Ltz
Great points
there is nothing wrong with ranger falling out in group setting, but it would be nice if it would rule in single target scenario as a trade off, sadly its not the case now
Ranger is currently the highest ST dps, but the rotation is boring
My quick thoughts after playing ranger to lvl 16.
•"Headshot" have no cast bar but is a 1.5 sec cast, therefore feels delayed and laggy. Not good feel.
•Ranger does not really have a good feeling rotation. Im missing more dots and a channeling ability.
• I kinda want a pet i think.
Overall pretty decent. Its fun kiting around and shooting while moving and stopping quickly to do big damage.
Ranger is in need of some more diverse options in the skill tree. Mage gets to pick between 3x "insta" cast firebolts or one big fireball. Bards have numerous AE/self/single target options. I think Snipe needs this kind of morph.
Why does Ammo only work with 2 attacks and a finisher? Add it to another single target ability. Hunts are fine.
Marks should have a tradeoff option to debuff the target (helps group), or buff the caster (selfish/solo or AE). Long cooldown, powerful effect
Ranger in general needs more instant casts or run-casts. Ranger specifically could use one more damaging attack added early on.
Ranger could really use a melee-CC skill, and/or a melee finisher. Perhaps an option for headshot to be insta-cast and very short range? Disengage could deal damage on takeoff and landing (making it a type of charge ability when using the disengage in the direction you're moving). This would support a dive-style gameplay.
Balance type feedback, even though we know it's not tuned:
* Damage is ok, but mana costs are very high. I auto attack way too much to conserve mana
* Regeneration should be doubled/tripled, but not 10x. It shouldn't even be as good as the worst Cleric HoT since it's free and always on
* Raining Death has too low of an effect for the 45s cooldown
Definitely agree, I'd also like a viable way to kite in PvP/pve, you can technically kite bad pve mobs but in PvP kiting is honestly not even an option, the fact that you can't jump and 180 without a self snare whilst turning feels really bad, the same for auto attacks, whilst kiting in PvP you can only kite to run away as turning to even attempt an attack will get you caught, and even running away for the most part doesn't work as every class has insane gap closes
I almost feel like it should be 30 sec CD and 20-30 sec active. So you can single in on one enemy to hunt and keep your eyes at.
It basically takes 2 Rangers to match the ranged damage output of a mage in groups.
If Multiple Rangers in a group focus fire on a single target, it comps down the health fast, but a mage or fighter can take a fair portion of the health down of the rest of the group while we are focusing on that one target.
Camo should be renamed Wolf Repentant, which is a mislabeled BBQ sauce bottle. I swear all it does it light me up like a Xmas tree and draw mobs closer to me. I get that we are not the Assassin class, but Rangers are still suppose to be stealthy and get the drop on targets.
Now that I've leveled my Ranger up a bit, even with gear, she's a little lackluster compared to others with similar gear. I don't know... maybe I need to level her up some more.
Lmao agree on the Camo, the other issue it has is your nameplate can still be seen lol
not really, will make a post about that later today