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Kiting as a ranger

ChicagoChicago Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
edited November 20 in Ranger Archetype
I think anyone playing ranger also loves the aspect of kiting and out playing people in PvP/pve, it's a bit of the class fantasy and I am really hoping that ranger can do this in the long run.

As of right now, here are my issues with kiting, we usually can get the opener with Camo but after you open almost all classes can catch you, fighters have leaps and charges, tanks have pulls and insane hard CC, bards have more movement speed, mages have sleeps and slows, and clerics also have a hard stun and mostly just use wands so kiting is not really even an option. The other issue is once they do catch you, we have zero hard CC and we are the only class with absolutely 0 defensives, other than try to kite

Once they do catch you we have some options, we have one cc break which doesn't really help to much because most classes have more than one cc, we have vine field which is a great ability but again at level 25 most classes can remove the root, we have air strike another decent ability but definitely needs some work.
Any of these abilities will help us gain a little distance but the issue that I found was, due to how combat works in AOC, auto attacks will self snare you and all of rangers abilities have a cast time, so kiting whilst attacking is next to impossible against a skilled opponent.

The other issue I found is, when you turn it is not fluid, you can't jump, 180, shoot and keep running in a straight line, the 180 feels like you are jumping through glue and you cant even make it back to your original position before you land, this highly effects kiting

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this and potential fixes

Comments

  • ShabooeyShabooey Member, Alpha Two
    I think two things that could definitely help would be a trap and hunt change. Personally I'd love to see traps stun enemies and I'd change a hunt or give a new one called hunt of the cheetah or something that massively buffs evasion and sprint speed. Fighters have a form that buffs movement speed so I think it's fitting that a Ranger should have something like this too.
  • SpifSpif Member, Alpha Two
    Kiting other ranged classes makes no sense, unless you have a lot more range than they do. I don't think there's much that can be done about that. Out DPS them (requires class balance), LoS the casts, group for heals, etc. But given the game's design around healing, I don't see Rangers ever beating cleric or bard 1v1, even if wounded was very easy to stack

    Some options:

    1) Give Rangers a ranged interrupt with a moderate cooldown. Castable during other abilities. If interrupts are not in this game, then a short duration Silence option.
    2) I've noticed something missing from older the design video. While Ranger abilities have no minimum range, they had talked about giving Rangers damage bonuses for long range. So far, this is missing (aside from Snipe crit buff talent), and would help out against other ranged classes. I could see this being a new tradeoff skill: either get a damage buff the longer the range to target is, or get a skirmisher-type ability.

    All casts snare during animation, even "insta" casts. That looks like a design here to stay. This doesn't necessarily mean you can't kite, you just have to kite in bursts using gap-makers. Unfortunately, Rangers right now only have 1 big attack, and it's on a 20s cooldown. So it's not like getting that gap to cast uninterrupted gives you any offensive bonus. It's all defense.

    This may be something that will only be solved by archtype options. But here's an idea: Ammo that speeds your movement speed during cast of Barrage, Scattershot and finishers.

  • SnekkersSnekkers Member, Alpha Two
    edited November 21
    Rangers have a silence if you decide to use concussive ammo, which is nice, cuz it comes with a trade off by making you drop other ammo type, the problem is that its bugged and it doesnt work
  • ChicagoChicago Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Snekkers wrote: »
    Rangers have a silence if you decide to use concussive ammo, which is nice, cuz it comes with a trade off by making you drop other ammo type, the problem is that its bugged and it doesnt work

    Concussive is not a silence it's a 25% reduction in casting speed which is pretty useless right now.
  • ShabooeyShabooey Member, Alpha Two
    Would be a massive win for the class if it did have a full proper silence
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    edited November 21
    Chicago wrote: »
    Snekkers wrote: »
    Rangers have a silence if you decide to use concussive ammo, which is nice, cuz it comes with a trade off by making you drop other ammo type, the problem is that its bugged and it doesnt work

    Concussive is not a silence it's a 25% reduction in casting speed which is pretty useless right now.

    it does daze and then the lightning shot is suppose to promote daze to a silence thats whats bugged because cause it currently doesnt promote the daze to a silence
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  • ShivaFangShivaFang Member, Alpha Two
    I have no problem kiting on my ranger...
    ... but I use an energy spellbook that chills targets.
  • ChicagoChicago Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    ShivaFang wrote: »
    I have no problem kiting on my ranger...
    ... but I use an energy spellbook that chills targets.

    It's more for pvp
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    They should make the skill expedius barrage i think it called in the ranger tree should also reduce movement speed penalty when using basic attacks aswell not just for barrage imo
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    ShivaFang wrote: »
    I have no problem kiting on my ranger...
    ... but I use an energy spellbook that chills targets.

    down side with spell book though is you loose out on ranger passive bow mastery which reduces your cooldown on some of ur main skills which is quite big imo
  • ChicagoChicago Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Veeshan wrote: »
    They should make the skill expedius barrage i think it called in the ranger tree should also reduce movement speed penalty when using basic attacks aswell not just for barrage imo

    Agree
  • ChicagoChicago Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Veeshan wrote: »
    ShivaFang wrote: »
    I have no problem kiting on my ranger...
    ... but I use an energy spellbook that chills targets.

    down side with spell book though is you loose out on ranger passive bow mastery which reduces your cooldown on some of ur main skills which is quite big imo

    Yep and this only works for melee mobs with bad ai
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