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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Why would someone choose a Mage that is only excellent in AoE, mainly useful for PvE, when with the Ranger he can deal much more single-target damage, which is what matters most in PvP?
Because I thought about it, researching more on the topic, and I realized that it doesn’t make sense for the Ranger to be the class with the highest single-target damage at range for one simple reason: it’s the class with the longest range. It’s illogical for the class that can attack from the farthest distance to also deal the most damage. That would make the Ranger completely OP.
On top of that, the Ranger has camouflage (currently bugged, but it will likely be very useful once it is fixed), as well as excellent mobility with skills that allow you to dodge with leaps and move faster. Most of the Ranger’s skills, except for Snipe, don’t even have a casting bar, making them faster and more reliable in combat. This already makes the class incredibly strong. It’s not just about comparing it to the Mage—against any other class, the Ranger would dominate. Imagine being in open-world PvP with camouflage, the longest range, the highest damage, and outstanding mobility. You could easily kill any player or class while keeping them out of reach, and they’d have no way to counter you.
Let’s not forget that the Mage is also a ranged class, but it’s designed as a mid-range class, unlike the Ranger, which excels at long-range combat. One of the Mage’s most powerful DPS abilities is Prismatic Beam, but executing it requires you to position yourself almost in melee range, which is extremely risky for such a fragile class. This clearly highlights the design difference between the two: the Mage takes risks to maximize damage, while the Ranger already has inherent advantages such as range, mobility, and potential camouflage.
Check this. Sniping from the roof, dealing 4k to a cleric and you want to increase his single-target DPS lolmao:
For these reasons, it doesn’t make sense for the Ranger to have the highest Single-Target DPS. It already has unique features that make it powerful. Giving it the highest ranged damage on top of that would make it completely unbalanced and leave it with no real drawbacks, breaking the game’s balance.
Have... have you actually played ranger in current AoC? o.o Literally all of our abilities requires us to stand near still during the animation/cast time. The one exception is barrage - and that one requires a talent point to not be as slow as all the other skills.
Skipping snipe since you already acknowledged our amazing 4 second root 50% miss chance ability:
Headshot - no "cast time"; but an animation that requires you to stand still for about 1.5 seconds.
Scattershot - mostly usefull when fully charged (requires a talent point); which means another 2-3 second rooted ability.
Air strike - literally slower than the regular dodgeroll or higher level sprint. And clumsy af to use.
Vine field - has cast time which forces the caster to stand still.
Thundering shot - slows us with about 70% when we cast it. This one is the most similar to what it feels like playing a regular caster (bard/cleric/mage) in AoC. And ironically enough, our second most mobile ability (second only to barrage when talented).
... Rangers currently act like a turret - if we want to deal damage; we stand very, very, very still. It is nowhere near comparable to hunters' mobility in WoW. You can't even compare it to marksman hunters because those only stay rooted for Aimed Shot - we stay just about rooted for EVERYTHING. Even auto attacks!
Dude you keep saying that mages sacrifice mobility, utility, and survivability to do more damage. You don't understand our point! You haven't played the ranger, you're talking about ideal and how things should be. We are talking about how things are.
The mage does not sacrifice anything!
It is the ranger that sacrifices those!
And even with those sacrifices we still don't do more damage than mages - because of your logic, if we have these sacrifices we should do damage, right?
The mage blink has 1.5 times more distance than the ranger's gymnastics. The other jump that does damage is shorter and much higher cooldown than the backflip we get at lv1, and it is THE LAST skill the ranger receives.
And because we have 2 backflips that means we are mobile? ALL classes in ashes have a dash! Fighter has 2 as well! Bard has 3! Mages have 1!
How is the ranger the most mobile class?
How are rangers mobile when literally every skill is a cast and most of them root us in place for at least 2 seconds (including the animations, not just the loading bar!)
Utility: We have a buff that increases movement speed for our party by 10%
This is our utility? The bard has the EXACT same buff! The difference is that we cast it once and it has 15 min duration, and the bard's is a continuous cast.
We have 1 (one) AOE root for 2 seconds.
And that's it!
How do we rangers do utility? 1 buff and 1 snare that had 65 seconds cooldown and eats 1/8 of our mana?
And we have the trap, which does 50% physical damage, and roots for 3 seconds. It needs to arm for 1 second. Is something that can't be used in PVP unless its blob vs blob fight and you throw it in the middle of 50-man fight. It has a passive that you can throw it at somebody (your still have to aim) and another passive where you have 3 charges but increase the cd with 15s (30s is base). - So this skill is useless unless you fight 1v1 with mobs and you want to kite. Thats it.
The ranger has *the* same amount of hp as the mage +/-.
The mage on top of having the same damage, has a shield that is like 1/3 of his hp bar with an ok cooldown on it, and the shield stays on for 15 seconds.
The ranger indeed, has something that the mage does not have. A buff that gives us a 10 regeneration rating. A buff that basically gives us a regen of ~0.1 hp per second. It is the best buff in history. I am being sarcastic.
Now, don't give me all this stuff about how classes work in Steven's vision. We know as well.
The issue that we have is that *the ranger needs to be reworked heavily*. The ranger is not a ranger. The ranger is a physical mage!
I would also like to point out that in duels our mobility is null, the reason is our flips do nothing as every other class has a counter, pull, charge, etc, our roots so nothing because every class we need them in has a counter, fighter/ tank/ other rangers can simply insta remove it, and the stamina system when fighting melee is horrendous, this is due to the fact that we have no choice but to save our stamina to try and dodge roll, where as the fighter or tank or anyone chasing us for that matter can utilise sprint. This makes our lousy 10% movement buff useless as everyone has more speed baseline. Also we can't use our call of the wild as a speed buff because it's our ONLY defensive and it still sort of sucks because it does not prevent stuns ( our main counter ), so call is a super last resort and only to try and maybe get away
I’d rather the decision be with x ranger I’m higher dmg output but less mobile, as y I’m highly mobile with more cc, but less damage. Same with a mage. Then there’s greater freedom to have an optimal build for a given circumstance.
Anything short of that is recreating the ‘classic mmo’ feel too literally, without adapting and adopting everything that’s been learned in the last 25 years.