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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.
Ranger feedback from a player that did it all
Imnotkio
Member, Alpha Two
I'll start by describing my experience: I played a fighter in Phase 1 and switched to Ranger in Phase 2. During this phase, I did pretty much every content in the game extensively (grinded in every corner of every POI in the Riverlands, dozens and dozens of world boss kills (contested and uncontested), multiple dozens of caravan runs (attack and defense), small-scale group pvp, multiple medium-scale raid pvp, guild wars, 10 node wars).
General Issues (TLDR)
Ranger's "class mechanics" are very lackluster, the skill ceiling is very low and the class fantasy is not present
Reasoning
I think the ranger is in a very balanced state. It has decent single-target damage, decent AoE damage, decent mobility, decent utility, decent sustain, and decent CCs.
My biggest problem with Ranger is not that the class is weak, as I don't think it is (I don't think Ranger is weak compared to Mage, I think Mage is just too OP rn). My biggest problem with Ranger is that I believe it lacks in both class fantasy and mechanical complexity/skill ceiling.
At the moment, All you do as a Ranger is throw a few disconnected damage abilities.
In pve, you do snipe (mark), barrage, scattershot, headshot reload barrage/scattershot/headshot. If you are solo you can kite, use traps and vines, the new regen passive to get a decent regen mana and health. If you are farming groups of mob you also add thundering shot and raining death to the rotation. But overall, there is no real mechanical complexity or even a class mechanic. You usually choose one mark and one hunt and stick with it. The same thing goes for ammo enhancement. There is no class resource to manage and the skill synergies are very few and non-important.
In pvp, it's pretty much the same thing. For larger scale pvp, vines become very impactful and you have to kite a little more using dodge, but overall its CC -> do damage. If TTK was higher, maybe the ranger's debuffs (wounds, snare, bleeding, dazed, shocked) would be more impactful and more relevant to fights. But overall it would still remain a very low-skill ceiling archetype.
To top that, I think the ranger lacks in its ability to be more of a long-range killing machine, which is one of the main class fantasies of a ranger archetype. The Mage's abilities have the same range as practically all the Rangers' abilities. The ranger is not rewarded for being able to snare/root a mage and then increase the distance and have that distance advantage. If you are hitting the Mage, the Mage will be hitting you with the same full force. And that goes for classes like bard and cleric as well. Not to mention, this game right now has a ton of mobility throughout all archetypes, and a universal mobility ability (dodge) that can close that gap super quick. So, even the abilities that have a small range advantage on the ranger are meaningless as that gap is closed very quickly.
Last but not least, Ranger is not only an archer/sniper type of archetype. Ranger class fantasy is of the hunter, the tracker. Some abilities for that are present but either fall short or are missing elements to make it work/feel good.
Now, for a rundown of the ranger's abilities:
1. Camouflage
Most of the time nothing happens. When camouflage succeeds, more likely than not one of your gear pieces will still remain visible. Even when everything works as intended and you are fully camouflaged, anyone who wasn't in your render distance before you used it will still see you completely visible.
2. Scatter shot
A lot of the time it bugs out. One bug is that one use of scatter shot consumes all charges. Another issue with scatter shot is that if you use it quickly it shoots in a completely random direction. If you quickly press it, it should always shoot in the direction your character is facing.
3. Disengage
Also bugs a lot, not disengaging in the direction you wanted. The reinvigorating disengage passive is not very useful and sometimes it doesn't trigger
4. Bear trap
trap slinger passive is useless, as the time for the trap to land is sometimes bigger than 1 second (initial arm time). I would suggest trading this passive for a passive in which the trap would become camouflaged after a few seconds (add to the hunter class fantasy, makes traps more useful)
5. Lighting reload
Sometimes bugs and you end up consuming the reload on an already-in-progress ability.
6. Air Strike
Very underwhelming ability, as it's not quick enough for it to be a mobility skill, not enough damage for it to be worth the time you spend on air and the root is not very effective. I think this ability should have a boost damage, and a distance traveled increase, and its animation speed should be tied to either the player's attack or move speed.
8. Raining death
I think it is too OP. it does 200~240% damage and applies 2 stacks of wounds in a huge area. You could max stack wounds for a whole party with 5 rangers in 2 seconds.
It needs its AoE Size and reach reduced for sure. Maybe something with a ground template before we shoot so we can aim.
9. Vines
Also too OP. It needs an AoE size reduction by quite a lot.
Also maybe reduce the snares afterward, or make it so the first tick of vine snare and second root.
9. Marks, hunts and ammo
Completely underwhelming design. You'll only choose one of those and you'll stick with it. It's not a class mechanic at all. It doesn't reward you for playing your role, it doesn't create a mechanical complexity, it just fails completely.
Right now we have 3 marks, all offensive. The main issue is that the situational advantage of the marks is not good enough to warrant ppl to use multiple. If you are making a crit build, you'll only use the crit mark. If you're building penetration you'll stick with the mark of the bear. Mark of the Raven is used by ppl who are building for attack speed. Either way, you won't be switching marks realistically, especially since you spend skill points on the marks. Hunts and ammo can be a bit more diverse, but since they require an animation, are not off GCD, and require skill points to spec, it's not worth picking more than one.
suggestion
Rework how it works completely. Remove the hunts/marks/ammo from the skill tree and automatically give it to the ranger for free at certain levels. All of them should be off gcd and should not interrupt any ability (just like the marks already do)
Hunts now have stacks, durations and cooldowns.
Hunt of the Bear: Increased mitigation, increased applied debuffs, and CC duration for targets less than 10 meters away from you, increased damage from melee weapons/abilities. Your regeneration ability is buffed
Hunt of the Raven: Reduces the cooldown of mobility skills (air strike, scatter shot, disengage, stride, and call of the wild), increases your movement speed, increases damage dealt to targets past 20~30 meters
Hunt of the Tiger: Increased attack speed. Your abilities that proc wounds now proc twice the amount, your barbs ammo and thorns now apply hemorrhaging instead of bleeding, and your concussion ammo now has an 80~90% of proccing dazed. and you now gain lifesteal.
Hunt of the Bear would be the hunt for close-quarter situations and for players who choose to go more for melee builds. Hunt of the Raven would be ideal for more sniper fantasies and for keeping your distance from targets, and situations where you need extra mobility. Hunt of the tiger would be for situations where you need that extra sustain, or for applying certain debuffs. Also better for short-bow builds. DPS would be the highest in either raven or bear hunts as they are more situational, to avoid everyone just using tiger all the time. Overall, you could either build around these hunts or use them for situational advantages.
On to the marks, these would complement the hunts. When you mark a target, and you successfully interact with the marked target (I'll explain shortly), you add a hunt stack and refresh its duration.
For example: You start with 0 hunt stacks, you can't activate a hunt. When you mark a target with a mark, you get the opportunity to build hunt stacks. You build these stacks by performing the role successfully. In the case of mark of the raven, you get to build stacks by doing damage to your marked target past 20 meters. Once the threshold of damage is met, you gain a hunt stack, your marks cooldown resets and you can now acquire a second stack by doing the same thing. If you can't acquire a second stack in the duration the hunt is active, the hunt is off, your stacks reset, and you can't acquire hunt stacks until the cooldown ends. If you acquire a second stack, the hunt duration resets, and the buffs get stronger. This goes on until max stacks are reached or the hunt duration ends. You can maintain your hunt at max stacks by performing your role properly and resetting the duration of the hunt.
You could also play with allowing ppl to have multiple hunts active, so they would need to choose if they want 2 stacks of hunt of the raven, or if they want 1 stack of raven and 1 of tiger. You could also choose to allow only 1 hunt active but you can switch which hunt is active by using another hunt and maintaining the stacks. Multiple marks active could also be a discussion.
People would also need to use the proper mark in situations to properly build stacks. A target at close quarters would require mark of the bear to build stacks. A long-range target would build stacks using the mark of the raven. An in-between target would require mark of the tiger. You could also think about other ways other than straight-up damage to build hunt stacks. Like in mark of the bear, you get to build hunts by taking damage from the marked target.
Overall, this would make all marks and hunts usable and situational, increase the skill ceiling of the archetype, allow for more different playstyles, fulfill different class fantasies, and reward players for successfully doing their roles.
8. Missing abilities
I'd like to see some melee abilities on the ranger. Rangers should have some tools when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. They should be able to disarm an opponent, push them away, maybe trip them. Not enough damage (initially in the base archetype) to be a melee DPS, but enough tools to feel like they can handle themselves in a brawl.
I'd also love to see Rangers have a tracking tool. Footprints, scents, and any way a ranger can track a player in the region would be cool.
Rangers should also have poison arrows, and the ability to cleanse poison (on himself and others).
General Issues (TLDR)
Ranger's "class mechanics" are very lackluster, the skill ceiling is very low and the class fantasy is not present
Reasoning
I think the ranger is in a very balanced state. It has decent single-target damage, decent AoE damage, decent mobility, decent utility, decent sustain, and decent CCs.
My biggest problem with Ranger is not that the class is weak, as I don't think it is (I don't think Ranger is weak compared to Mage, I think Mage is just too OP rn). My biggest problem with Ranger is that I believe it lacks in both class fantasy and mechanical complexity/skill ceiling.
At the moment, All you do as a Ranger is throw a few disconnected damage abilities.
In pve, you do snipe (mark), barrage, scattershot, headshot reload barrage/scattershot/headshot. If you are solo you can kite, use traps and vines, the new regen passive to get a decent regen mana and health. If you are farming groups of mob you also add thundering shot and raining death to the rotation. But overall, there is no real mechanical complexity or even a class mechanic. You usually choose one mark and one hunt and stick with it. The same thing goes for ammo enhancement. There is no class resource to manage and the skill synergies are very few and non-important.
In pvp, it's pretty much the same thing. For larger scale pvp, vines become very impactful and you have to kite a little more using dodge, but overall its CC -> do damage. If TTK was higher, maybe the ranger's debuffs (wounds, snare, bleeding, dazed, shocked) would be more impactful and more relevant to fights. But overall it would still remain a very low-skill ceiling archetype.
To top that, I think the ranger lacks in its ability to be more of a long-range killing machine, which is one of the main class fantasies of a ranger archetype. The Mage's abilities have the same range as practically all the Rangers' abilities. The ranger is not rewarded for being able to snare/root a mage and then increase the distance and have that distance advantage. If you are hitting the Mage, the Mage will be hitting you with the same full force. And that goes for classes like bard and cleric as well. Not to mention, this game right now has a ton of mobility throughout all archetypes, and a universal mobility ability (dodge) that can close that gap super quick. So, even the abilities that have a small range advantage on the ranger are meaningless as that gap is closed very quickly.
Last but not least, Ranger is not only an archer/sniper type of archetype. Ranger class fantasy is of the hunter, the tracker. Some abilities for that are present but either fall short or are missing elements to make it work/feel good.
Now, for a rundown of the ranger's abilities:
1. Camouflage
Most of the time nothing happens. When camouflage succeeds, more likely than not one of your gear pieces will still remain visible. Even when everything works as intended and you are fully camouflaged, anyone who wasn't in your render distance before you used it will still see you completely visible.
2. Scatter shot
A lot of the time it bugs out. One bug is that one use of scatter shot consumes all charges. Another issue with scatter shot is that if you use it quickly it shoots in a completely random direction. If you quickly press it, it should always shoot in the direction your character is facing.
3. Disengage
Also bugs a lot, not disengaging in the direction you wanted. The reinvigorating disengage passive is not very useful and sometimes it doesn't trigger
4. Bear trap
trap slinger passive is useless, as the time for the trap to land is sometimes bigger than 1 second (initial arm time). I would suggest trading this passive for a passive in which the trap would become camouflaged after a few seconds (add to the hunter class fantasy, makes traps more useful)
5. Lighting reload
Sometimes bugs and you end up consuming the reload on an already-in-progress ability.
6. Air Strike
Very underwhelming ability, as it's not quick enough for it to be a mobility skill, not enough damage for it to be worth the time you spend on air and the root is not very effective. I think this ability should have a boost damage, and a distance traveled increase, and its animation speed should be tied to either the player's attack or move speed.
8. Raining death
I think it is too OP. it does 200~240% damage and applies 2 stacks of wounds in a huge area. You could max stack wounds for a whole party with 5 rangers in 2 seconds.
It needs its AoE Size and reach reduced for sure. Maybe something with a ground template before we shoot so we can aim.
9. Vines
Also too OP. It needs an AoE size reduction by quite a lot.
Also maybe reduce the snares afterward, or make it so the first tick of vine snare and second root.
9. Marks, hunts and ammo
Completely underwhelming design. You'll only choose one of those and you'll stick with it. It's not a class mechanic at all. It doesn't reward you for playing your role, it doesn't create a mechanical complexity, it just fails completely.
Right now we have 3 marks, all offensive. The main issue is that the situational advantage of the marks is not good enough to warrant ppl to use multiple. If you are making a crit build, you'll only use the crit mark. If you're building penetration you'll stick with the mark of the bear. Mark of the Raven is used by ppl who are building for attack speed. Either way, you won't be switching marks realistically, especially since you spend skill points on the marks. Hunts and ammo can be a bit more diverse, but since they require an animation, are not off GCD, and require skill points to spec, it's not worth picking more than one.
suggestion
Rework how it works completely. Remove the hunts/marks/ammo from the skill tree and automatically give it to the ranger for free at certain levels. All of them should be off gcd and should not interrupt any ability (just like the marks already do)
Hunts now have stacks, durations and cooldowns.
Hunt of the Bear: Increased mitigation, increased applied debuffs, and CC duration for targets less than 10 meters away from you, increased damage from melee weapons/abilities. Your regeneration ability is buffed
Hunt of the Raven: Reduces the cooldown of mobility skills (air strike, scatter shot, disengage, stride, and call of the wild), increases your movement speed, increases damage dealt to targets past 20~30 meters
Hunt of the Tiger: Increased attack speed. Your abilities that proc wounds now proc twice the amount, your barbs ammo and thorns now apply hemorrhaging instead of bleeding, and your concussion ammo now has an 80~90% of proccing dazed. and you now gain lifesteal.
Hunt of the Bear would be the hunt for close-quarter situations and for players who choose to go more for melee builds. Hunt of the Raven would be ideal for more sniper fantasies and for keeping your distance from targets, and situations where you need extra mobility. Hunt of the tiger would be for situations where you need that extra sustain, or for applying certain debuffs. Also better for short-bow builds. DPS would be the highest in either raven or bear hunts as they are more situational, to avoid everyone just using tiger all the time. Overall, you could either build around these hunts or use them for situational advantages.
On to the marks, these would complement the hunts. When you mark a target, and you successfully interact with the marked target (I'll explain shortly), you add a hunt stack and refresh its duration.
For example: You start with 0 hunt stacks, you can't activate a hunt. When you mark a target with a mark, you get the opportunity to build hunt stacks. You build these stacks by performing the role successfully. In the case of mark of the raven, you get to build stacks by doing damage to your marked target past 20 meters. Once the threshold of damage is met, you gain a hunt stack, your marks cooldown resets and you can now acquire a second stack by doing the same thing. If you can't acquire a second stack in the duration the hunt is active, the hunt is off, your stacks reset, and you can't acquire hunt stacks until the cooldown ends. If you acquire a second stack, the hunt duration resets, and the buffs get stronger. This goes on until max stacks are reached or the hunt duration ends. You can maintain your hunt at max stacks by performing your role properly and resetting the duration of the hunt.
You could also play with allowing ppl to have multiple hunts active, so they would need to choose if they want 2 stacks of hunt of the raven, or if they want 1 stack of raven and 1 of tiger. You could also choose to allow only 1 hunt active but you can switch which hunt is active by using another hunt and maintaining the stacks. Multiple marks active could also be a discussion.
People would also need to use the proper mark in situations to properly build stacks. A target at close quarters would require mark of the bear to build stacks. A long-range target would build stacks using the mark of the raven. An in-between target would require mark of the tiger. You could also think about other ways other than straight-up damage to build hunt stacks. Like in mark of the bear, you get to build hunts by taking damage from the marked target.
Overall, this would make all marks and hunts usable and situational, increase the skill ceiling of the archetype, allow for more different playstyles, fulfill different class fantasies, and reward players for successfully doing their roles.
8. Missing abilities
I'd like to see some melee abilities on the ranger. Rangers should have some tools when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. They should be able to disarm an opponent, push them away, maybe trip them. Not enough damage (initially in the base archetype) to be a melee DPS, but enough tools to feel like they can handle themselves in a brawl.
I'd also love to see Rangers have a tracking tool. Footprints, scents, and any way a ranger can track a player in the region would be cool.
Rangers should also have poison arrows, and the ability to cleanse poison (on himself and others).
7
Comments
I do agree class mechanics lack luster and class/fantasy idenity is non existence which are the biggest issues right now.
They definetly need something that defines the class and i think the simple answer here is to up there range by like 20%-30% or something so they have the longest range and a sweet spot they can try and keep people where they cant be hit back, i feel this sweet spot is realy important in this game due to every class getting a ranged weapon everyone is a class equal in range with a ranger it feels odd.
also root in rangers kit is somewhat pointless unless ur running or chasing since they can just range attack u while rooted for basicly same dps which is main ranger CC mechanic.
As a class feature i would kinda like to see them lean it a bit more with the bow mastery passive (reduces CD of barrage and scatter shot by 3 seconds when you do a weapon finisher) i think if they played into this more and applied to all skills (ranger skills are all super long in comparison there 20-60 seconds CDs (most in the 40-60 mark) with like exception of barrage and scatter shot) i feel this would make it a more enjoyable play state and make weaving basic attacks in super important
As for skills
1 Camo, is unreliable dosnt work half the time or you just dont know it is working or not but it a neat skill when it works
2. Scattershot, it a big buggy with use sometime it does the button press when holding it down sometime it launch the sniped version then the 2nd charge as a instant version at the same time consuming both charges
3. Disengage feel like you should never use it in a fight it doesnt give u evasion at all so effective it stops you dpsing for a second while doing it while the enemy just chunking ur HP for the entire duration, i feel this skill need to act like a dodge and provide the evasion bonus that dodge does at same time (or add an attack to it while in air where u fling like 3 arrows as ur dodging at somone so ur atleast trading dmg or something
4. Bear trap, i like your idea about them going camo after a bit but yeah traps need something i find it somewhat useless cause typicaly if u do hit it they be immune to root/snare alot of the time due to ranger kit provide alot fo that that there always immune to the CC and the dmg isnt there to use, if it did a short stun it would be better since it a CC that is reliable for rangers due to not doing it themself. Maybe they be more useful with rogues where u can stand with your back to a trap but other than that they dont have a purpose it feels atm outside of being super situations in tunnels
5. lightning reload yep had this bug happen often the skill itself is good just bugs that need fixed here
6. air stripe 100% agree outside of using it as vertical mobility the skill is useless its slower than run speed so it not a mobile skill and root is meh since they can just CC clear it or range u while rooted for almost same amount of dmg :P
7. Marks CD are way to long i think it be fine if they do what i said above with bow mastery passive
8. Ammo is kinda a boring buff where u take 1 of them and leave it on. i think you should make instant buff kinda like fighter stances but they alter like 3 different skill in a meaningful way, like concussion ammo could make thundering shot instance cast and silences or aimshot knockdown for 1 second or scatter shot interupt all spell casts. the bleeding ammo could make vine field larger aoe and rain of death apply hemorage and things like that
9. Hunts are probaly find as a flat buff like they are now but they are just somewhat boring buffs but not everything needs to be exciting
As for OP missing melee ability you will probaly see things like that with secondary classes if they take fighter/rogue and tank and so on
Well, sure, but core class mechanic sounds like something that should
I think it would be more practical to extend rangers range rather than punish everyone elses.
i would agree