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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
200 hours on ranger, these are the changes i would like to see
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hey guys, i decided to make a post breaking down the ranger kit and changes that i would like to see and think need to happen if we keep these current skill trees'. I would be interested to see who agrees and disagrees and if you would like to add anything!
First off the class at level 25 does feel fun to play, however that is in niche environments and i think that as of right now, ranger feels WAY to much like a physical damage mage, other than snipe i believe strongly that ranger should not have cast time abilities, obviously that would have to be balanced but it does not feel like good gameplay. I Think our Mobility really needs to be looked at, Intrepid stated that ranger would be the second most mobile class in the game sitting under the rogue, as of right now that is not the case any nowhere near.
rangers mobility right now is limited to Disengage, Air strike i will not count as it roots you in place and is not reactive, but i will get to this later, as of right now, a simple roll goes further than disengage and adds incentives to use, Fighters charge goes 4x the distance of Disengage, Tanks charge goes 4x the distance of disengage, Mages Blink goes 3-4x the distance of Disengage, meanwhile all these skills feel fluid to use whilst Disengage feels clunky, and omni directional disengage does not work a solid amount of the time. Bards out pace us by a large margin, and clerics all use ranged weapons so disengage is mostly useless vs a cleric
i would also like to note that kiting as a ranger is non existent as we have no range bonus over any other class and this is a large reason why people love playing the hunter / ranger class, The shortbow/longbow skill tree's need to be looked at as what passives they could benefit to ranger, i will say that right now arrow storm literally makes the class and it is not even a class skill its a weapon passive
Moving on to our abilities-
Weapon Imbues - all 3 of these needs to be totally scrapped and re worked, all 3 of them are just passives we get already through our weapon skill tree's and it feels like no thought was really put into these, especially when you see other classes' weapon imbues, ( bless weapon ) or the mages weapon imbues, both of these sinc really well with their kits and add feel crucial to use
Scatter Shot - This spell is decent and i like that it procs our imbues, i would say though there needs to be better passives associated with this skill, the pushback on the instant cast needs to be optional
Headshot - this skill is actually in quite a good place and a skill i like alot with ranger, i will add though that it is extremley bad before you hit a certain amount of psyical power, so much so that you will hardly use it until later in the game, and this is the first skill you get, its also useless half the fight as it does not do enough damage until the target is under 50% hp, maybe you could add another effect ( does 50% more damage if the target is bleeding ) or something
Snipe - great opener, both passives with this skill are nice for the ranger kit and sinc quite well, the cast time is a bit long so you will only ever use it as an opener, i would like to see other passives, maybe along the lines reducing cast time if X happens
Regeneration and the new Regen skill associated with regen, firstly i don't know why the passive for regen is at the very top of the skill tree but not important right now, the skill its self feels very lackluster, it also seems to be tied to server lag so if the server is lagging, our regen sets back to a default 10 per tick and the skill does nothing 99% of the time, secondly having our defensives tied to our marks is absolutely terrible, the defensive is nice in SUPER Niche environments like soloing something in pve, but in pvp its garbage and needs to be looked at, you can't state that the target is '' marked for death '' but then expect us to use our marks as a defensive. The other issue is we should use our defensives as a way to defend/reset but instead we are forced to try and push more damage when we need to back out of the fight to make our defensive even do anything, where as a fighter will just click one button and heal 80% of their hp
Marks, all 3 of these are nice, but the CD and up time on them is absolutely terrible, they need to be changed, and re balanced, we should be able to have atleast 50% uptime on marks if not more.
Reigning death - Delete this entire skill, it sucks, its never worth using, its not fun to use, no point to even have it talented
Thundering shot - feels absolutely terrible, i love this skill but the way in functions does not feel good, first of all this skill is how we use our silence, now to setup our silence we need to proc our weapon imbue wich takes up to 4s, or you could get lucky on the 50% chance on barrage but still taking upto 3 seconds, then you need to hard cast a 2s cast ability, then you need to wait another 2-3 seconds while the projectile does mid air acrobatics to even reach the target, by wich time the silence is not effective. Things i would change for this skill, remove the cast time, Remove the animation it does and make it like snipe/headshot, and remove it being tied to our weapon ammo imbue, yes it may need some other balancing but right now it does not feel good to play
Air strike - as stated above this skill is not good to use, the distance traveled is not far enough, the static root before it even starts the animation sucks, the damage it does sucks, the fact that the target needs to be snared for it to even root the target in place sucks, the entire skill is so janky and does not feel good, - i would say change the distance traveled, make it a guaranteed root and remove the animation lock on use
Call of the wild - This skill NEEDS to be off the GCD, it needs to be reactive and needs to be able to be casted while you are mid animation for example while you are casting barrage or headshot, as of right now it feels like by the time the skill actually activates the oportunity for counter play is already gone, even when you get stunned/tripped it still takes a second or so for the skill to activate so alot of the time you have already sat half the stun, this is a class with 0 defensives so this needs to be tuned right, Also i will add that adding the + regen ability currently tied to our marks would be much better suited to be paired with call of the wild, giving us a + regen whilst call of the wild is active
i think that is most of the points i wanted to make, if anyone wants to add anything i would love to read it
First off the class at level 25 does feel fun to play, however that is in niche environments and i think that as of right now, ranger feels WAY to much like a physical damage mage, other than snipe i believe strongly that ranger should not have cast time abilities, obviously that would have to be balanced but it does not feel like good gameplay. I Think our Mobility really needs to be looked at, Intrepid stated that ranger would be the second most mobile class in the game sitting under the rogue, as of right now that is not the case any nowhere near.
rangers mobility right now is limited to Disengage, Air strike i will not count as it roots you in place and is not reactive, but i will get to this later, as of right now, a simple roll goes further than disengage and adds incentives to use, Fighters charge goes 4x the distance of Disengage, Tanks charge goes 4x the distance of disengage, Mages Blink goes 3-4x the distance of Disengage, meanwhile all these skills feel fluid to use whilst Disengage feels clunky, and omni directional disengage does not work a solid amount of the time. Bards out pace us by a large margin, and clerics all use ranged weapons so disengage is mostly useless vs a cleric
i would also like to note that kiting as a ranger is non existent as we have no range bonus over any other class and this is a large reason why people love playing the hunter / ranger class, The shortbow/longbow skill tree's need to be looked at as what passives they could benefit to ranger, i will say that right now arrow storm literally makes the class and it is not even a class skill its a weapon passive
Moving on to our abilities-
Weapon Imbues - all 3 of these needs to be totally scrapped and re worked, all 3 of them are just passives we get already through our weapon skill tree's and it feels like no thought was really put into these, especially when you see other classes' weapon imbues, ( bless weapon ) or the mages weapon imbues, both of these sinc really well with their kits and add feel crucial to use
Scatter Shot - This spell is decent and i like that it procs our imbues, i would say though there needs to be better passives associated with this skill, the pushback on the instant cast needs to be optional
Headshot - this skill is actually in quite a good place and a skill i like alot with ranger, i will add though that it is extremley bad before you hit a certain amount of psyical power, so much so that you will hardly use it until later in the game, and this is the first skill you get, its also useless half the fight as it does not do enough damage until the target is under 50% hp, maybe you could add another effect ( does 50% more damage if the target is bleeding ) or something
Snipe - great opener, both passives with this skill are nice for the ranger kit and sinc quite well, the cast time is a bit long so you will only ever use it as an opener, i would like to see other passives, maybe along the lines reducing cast time if X happens
Regeneration and the new Regen skill associated with regen, firstly i don't know why the passive for regen is at the very top of the skill tree but not important right now, the skill its self feels very lackluster, it also seems to be tied to server lag so if the server is lagging, our regen sets back to a default 10 per tick and the skill does nothing 99% of the time, secondly having our defensives tied to our marks is absolutely terrible, the defensive is nice in SUPER Niche environments like soloing something in pve, but in pvp its garbage and needs to be looked at, you can't state that the target is '' marked for death '' but then expect us to use our marks as a defensive. The other issue is we should use our defensives as a way to defend/reset but instead we are forced to try and push more damage when we need to back out of the fight to make our defensive even do anything, where as a fighter will just click one button and heal 80% of their hp
Marks, all 3 of these are nice, but the CD and up time on them is absolutely terrible, they need to be changed, and re balanced, we should be able to have atleast 50% uptime on marks if not more.
Reigning death - Delete this entire skill, it sucks, its never worth using, its not fun to use, no point to even have it talented
Thundering shot - feels absolutely terrible, i love this skill but the way in functions does not feel good, first of all this skill is how we use our silence, now to setup our silence we need to proc our weapon imbue wich takes up to 4s, or you could get lucky on the 50% chance on barrage but still taking upto 3 seconds, then you need to hard cast a 2s cast ability, then you need to wait another 2-3 seconds while the projectile does mid air acrobatics to even reach the target, by wich time the silence is not effective. Things i would change for this skill, remove the cast time, Remove the animation it does and make it like snipe/headshot, and remove it being tied to our weapon ammo imbue, yes it may need some other balancing but right now it does not feel good to play
Air strike - as stated above this skill is not good to use, the distance traveled is not far enough, the static root before it even starts the animation sucks, the damage it does sucks, the fact that the target needs to be snared for it to even root the target in place sucks, the entire skill is so janky and does not feel good, - i would say change the distance traveled, make it a guaranteed root and remove the animation lock on use
Call of the wild - This skill NEEDS to be off the GCD, it needs to be reactive and needs to be able to be casted while you are mid animation for example while you are casting barrage or headshot, as of right now it feels like by the time the skill actually activates the oportunity for counter play is already gone, even when you get stunned/tripped it still takes a second or so for the skill to activate so alot of the time you have already sat half the stun, this is a class with 0 defensives so this needs to be tuned right, Also i will add that adding the + regen ability currently tied to our marks would be much better suited to be paired with call of the wild, giving us a + regen whilst call of the wild is active
i think that is most of the points i wanted to make, if anyone wants to add anything i would love to read it
5
Comments
Snipe is only worth using if u have a longbow and no one looking at you since everyone but rangers have fast hard CC you will never get it off and if you do manage every class counter it quite well simply by holding the block button. So it a surprise or nothing kinda skill and the game doesnt allow for surprise attacks (Caravans u need to run to it to flag so they know ur there and if u purple up on somone and snipe them they wont purple back cause already at disadvantage due to big hit)
Thundering shot is pretty good if it didnt have such a long cast time and slow movement by the time u get it off and projectile hit the target they already cast the spell uwanted to silence along with another one :P if the projectile was fast and u had a way to make it instant cast i think it work well
Airstike is to sluggish and the speed and distance u travel is slower than running so it not even a good mobility skill out side of using it to disengage from a higher location.
A couple thing i would like to see
Bow master passive CD reduction apply to all skills most ranger skills CD are way to long as is and this would reward weaving in auto attacks rotation between skills, this will help alot with reducing these long CDs u can increase the shorter cooldowns slightly to compensate for like thundershot/headshot
Disengage applies a evasion buff when being used
Omi disengage becomes the default and there a new passive that makes thundering shot instant cast and snipe half cast time when used after disengage this makes snipe a little more usable in battle when ur being focused and makes thundering shot a little more reliable with the silence
Thundering shot projectile speed increase substancially
Airstikes goes through the animation faster or covers a bit more ground
A thought for higher levels for rangers
Give a skill that can be used while disengaging, i think this would be neat being able to do a pot shot mid disengage
The main problem I have with this skill (along with Vine Field) is the intended use vs what is available in game. Snipe IS a great opener, and that is what I see it used for most often (the cast time during combat makes it very situational and almost a death sentence in PVP). So, why is it that it has an additive proc to it (hemorrhage) and not a primary (bleed). It feels completely contradictory to use in its current setup, as you're supposed to use it after you've applied bleed (either through weapon or skill proc) and hemorrhage isn't enough of a dmg boost (over bleed) to account for the cast time of Snipe.
This is the same issue I have with Vine Field. It feels backwards to have to proc bleed first, then apply hemorrhage via VF, instead of applying bleed with VF then boosting that with something like Scatter Shot.
Only 100h hunter here...but I would agree, and glad someone brought it up...Even in PVE, I hardly ever see hunters using snipe outside of initial pack engages as "an opener"...instead of using it throughout the fight to apply hemorrhage when everything else is on cooldown. (And sadly, I think it only slightly edges out the dps you could have had with a longbow, if you simply just auto-attacked instead, assuming your attack speed stat is high enough...)
Definitely feels backwards...Wishing that vines/snipe applied bleed and barrage/scatter applied hemorrhaging. Would also be nice if the wind-up was reduced by even just 1 second.
What's even more disheartening, is then comparing it to what the mage does. Mage casts firebolt/fireball which appears to have shorter windup, or magma-field, and then simply instant-casts combust to deal damage AND proc conflag.
Whereas ranger has to either go through an auto-attack finisher sequence with a 50% chance to proc bleeding (without barbs), hit the target with a charged up skillshot that is severely impacted by changes in terrain elevation, or be close enough to use barrage...assuming you've got enhanced armament : barbs for the skills...and then finally you have follow that up with the most telegraphed skill of all time + ~3s windup.
feelsbadman.