Curse

moko · Feb 26, 2007, 11:35 AM // 11:35

R/P, R/W, R/A, they are actually "okay" at using different weapons.

either way, its a support class, and the only skills you see being used are support, so..

ill actually agree with Thom, its not like they are terrible overpowered, theres just not a lot of variety. same with assasins, theres more or less one build everyone is using and they still suck. ;o

Quote:

I think most rangers who use an IAS, (and really, most of them don't, why would you if your dmg sucks anyway?), use Flail.

qft.

Patccmoi · Feb 26, 2007, 06:27 PM // 18:27

Personally i think the original post doesn't do anything AT ALL to help rangers be more versatile. The ONLY thing you'd do is take one of their few currently decent build and make it better.

I can bet that the first thing you'd do if your changes were implemented would be:

Crippling Shot
Distracting Shot
Focused Shot
Apply Poison
Natural Stride
Antidote Signet
Troll Unguent
Rez Sig

And that's it. And the only variations to it that you'd see would be replacing Crippling Shot with Burning Arrows or Broad Head Arrows.

Basically, you looked at your favorite ranger build, one of the only currently strong ranger builds, and buffed it, even at the detriment of other aspects of the ranger class that DO need a buff (for example, Focused Shot, which is one of the few DPS skill rangers, have, should be buffed in damage, not removed to make an even better interrupt than what's already available when Rangers are the best damn interrupters!)

This is the last thing Rangers actually do. Rangers need their OTHER lines to be viable and bows to be a viable damage-dealing weapon (if you build for it at least, using damage prep and damage dealing attack skills).

ANet said they were adding pet control -> this can truly improve Beast Masters if it's done properly. For instance, if you can instantly make your pet switch on your target, it's getting very interesting to use bows/spears from range and use a pet along. To be honest, i feel that a lot of pet skills would need to be nerfed though cause they ARE incredibly powerful atm and just unused because they're limited with dumb pet AI. Otherwise you'll risk running into other Lamentiation-like skills : once the burden making it unusable is removed, the skill is incredibly broken. Skills like Disrupting Lunge and Melandru's Assault are close to that imo. Enraged Lunge is pretty insane too.

Looking at bow attack skills and possibly making them viable at pressure damage dealing would be nice too. Bows could use a better IAS with Tiger's Fury's nerf, though /W does work really well (Frenzy or Flail + Natural Stride go very well together. Frenzy is costy since the change to Expertise though). Since bows are extremely easy to use as spike tools, ANet must mostly be careful not to go for something like high +damage skills (like if they give +10..34..42 damage to some bow skills, it's just gonna be used to spike along with Savage Shot, Favorable Winds and Glass Arrows) but rather cheap, low recharge medium damage bow attacks. For example, Focused Shot could give you +2E if you manage to hit so that it's a 'free' pressure attack skill that can allow rangers to pressure with damage while using interrupts or the like. What Marksmanship needs is more 5E skills with 2-4s recharge that do some +damage but possibly have some nice side-effects too (like if blocked X, etc.). Take for example Splinter Shot, it'd be an interesting attack skill if it was 5/4, +10..22 damage, but at 10/5 it's just never gonna see play.

So in brief, what i personally see required to see more viable ranger builds is:

Marksmanship : more spammable, low cost damage skills with medium +damage (+10..22..26 seems fair for that) but some interesting side effects if blocked, if crits, if hitting an enchanted target, etc. I mean, the skills are already kinda done this way, problem is that in most cases the +damage is too low OR the energy is too high OR the recharge is too high and in the end they're just not viable. The fact that Bows don't have a DW is already enough imo to limit them as damage dealing, they shouldn't be scared to give the skill interesting stats, as long as they're careful not to turn them into spike-skill with too much +damage. Moving Archer's Signet to Marksmanship with stats something like 2/30 could be very good to limit the amount of expertise needed to have a viable Marksman build too and help a lot with the use of Concussion Shot.

Beastmastery : Pet control should fix most of the problems. I'd go along with removing pet DP (otherwise the line will ALWAYS be too dangerous to use in GvG) and actually toning DOWN a couple of skills. Pet attack skills in general are extremely good. Some could use a small buff though (like, the reason Feral Lunge wasn't used isn't because it lacked 5s of bleeding. Talk about the most random skill buff ever)

Wilderness Survival : i think it's actually fine. Won't say every skill is fine, ofc not all of them are but it's the case for all classes. Trappers are actually viable, and the most common bow Ranger builds are pretty much centered on Wilderness Survival (Troll, Natural Stride, Apply Poison... Distracting Shot and Savage Shot could as well be unlinked, only the elite and the condition removal isn't really in Wilderness).

That being said, i don't think anything suggested by the OP helps at all in what i think Rangers are lacking and would just risk creating overpowered skirmishers.

suiraCLAW · Feb 26, 2007, 06:43 PM // 18:43

My list:

Plain buffs:
- Spike trap, barbed trap, tripwire and viper's nest should get a huge damage buff. 60-70 piercing damage at 13 WS/BM sounds fine to me.
- The conditional damage of scavenger's strike should be doubled.
- The healing of predator's pounce should be doubled.
- dryder's defense duration should be doubled.
- Storm embrace should give a speed boost of 33%.

These skills should be reworked:
- Melandru's Resilence 15/0/30
Elite Stance. For 8...18 seconds, you gain Health regeneration of 3 and Energy regeneration of 1 for each Condition and Hex you are suffering, this skill is renewed each time you suffer from a new condition.

- Melandru's Arrows 15/2/12
Elite Preparation. For 24 seconds, whenever your arrows hit, they cause bleeding for 3...21 seconds and your arrows strike for an additional 3...20 damage, this damage is doubled if they hit a foe that is under the effect of an enchantment.

- Incendairy Arrows 25/2/12
Elite Preparation. For 6...26 seconds, targets struck by your arrows are interrupted and set on fire for 1...3 seconds.

- Strike as One 5/0/10
Elite Shout. For 15 seconds, your pet attacks 33% faster and your and your pet's next 5 attacks deal 4...9 additional damage, this damage is doubled if you're under the effects of a preparation.

- Prepared Shot 5/0/6
Elite Bow Attack. This arrow moves tiwce as fast. If this attack hits, you strike for +10...34 damage. If you are under the effects of a Preparation, this attack can not be blocked and you gain 1...7 Energy.

- Lightning Reflexes 5/0/15
Elite Stance. For 5...10 seconds, you have a 75% chance to "block" melee and projectile attacks, and you attack 33% faster.

- Flame Trap 5/2/10
Trap. When Flame Trap is triggered, for 3 seconds all nearby foes are struck for 20...44 fire damage and set on fire for 1...3 seconds. Flame Trap automatically triggers after 40 seconds. While activating this skill, you are easily interrupted.

- Magebane Shot 5/.50/7
Elite Bow Attack. If this attack hits, it interrupts target foe's action. If that action was a Spell, this attack instantly recharges and you gain 7 energy.

Patccmoi · Feb 26, 2007, 07:01 PM // 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

My list:

Plain buffs:
- Spike trap, barbed trap, tripwire and viper's nest should get a huge damage buff. 60-70 piercing damage at 13 WS/BM sounds fine to me.

I'd say ok for Spike Trap (it's an elite after all) but the others need to be maybe around 20-30 damage (still a significant buff). Think of trap stacking, which is really not hard to do especially with trapper speed. Instantly dying just cause you happened to walk on a trap stack is dumb (with 90s duration, would be fairly easy to do on flag stand).

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

- dryder's defense duration should be doubled.

No, the recharge should be halved and if anything the duration slightly nerfed. Would be similar to Dark Escape in effect. Long durations are bad with skills like Oath Shot, and 60s recharge just makes the skill unusable in PvP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

- Storm embrace should give a speed boost of 33%.

Too good for unlinked imo. I think it should have 15-20s recharge instead.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

These skills should be reworked:
- Melandru's Resilence 15/0/30
Elite Stance. For 8...18 seconds, you gain Health regeneration of 3 and Energy regeneration of 1 for each Condition and Hex you are suffering, this skill is renewed each time you suffer from a new condition.

Waaaaay too good for a Mo/R with Draw Conditions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

- Melandru's Arrows 15/2/12
Elite Preparation. For 24 seconds, whenever your arrows hit, they cause bleeding for 3...21 seconds and your arrows strike for an additional 3...20 damage, this damage is doubled if they hit a foe that is under the effect of an enchantment.

Way too good too. It makes Melandru's Arrows stronger than Glass Arrows in every single way and it would absolutely destroy target with enchantments. A Dual-Savage on an enchanted Ele would take out like 50+% of their health.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

- Incendairy Arrows 25/2/12
Elite Preparation. For 6...26 seconds, targets struck by your arrows are interrupted and set on fire for 1...3 seconds.

That's like interrupts for dummies. Seriously too strong too, 25E wouldn't do anything to balance it, you'd just run very high expertise, high wild, and low marks (9-10).

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

- Prepared Shot 5/0/6
Elite Bow Attack. This arrow moves tiwce as fast. If this attack hits, you strike for +10...34 damage. If you are under the effects of a Preparation, this attack can not be blocked and you gain 1...7 Energy.

Too spiky imo. You'd see Prep-Savage spikes for sure, with high Marks, RtW, FW and Vamp you'd have easily +60 armor ignoring damage that can't be blocked from Prep Shot alone. Prep Shot would often do around 100 damage and then a volley of Savages would nail your target. And the spike would actually be free.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

- Lightning Reflexes 5/0/15
Elite Stance. Stance. For 5...10 seconds, you have a 75% chance to "block" melee and projectile attacks, and you attack 33% faster.

Not necessarily a bad idea, but i can't ever remember ANet turning a non-elite into an elite since BWE or the opposite. It just doesn't happen.

Thomas.knbk · Feb 26, 2007, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Not necessarily a bad idea, but i can't ever remember ANet turning a non-elite into an elite since BWE or the opposite. It just doesn't happen.

Healing Hands and Hundred Blades used to be non-elite right?

IMO many of suiraCLAW's buffs were off the mark. Insane spike dmg is not what rangers need. all the 'this dmg is doubled if X'-skills would likely be abused. A preperation that causes bleeding and makes your arrows do +40 dmg is a bit too much.
If Arenanet really announced pet control, I think it's best to wait for that before changing anything on rangers. No one really knows what impact that's going to have, and it might indeed very well be like lamentation.

Patccmoi · Feb 26, 2007, 10:00 PM // 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Healing Hands and Hundred Blades used to be non-elite right?

After BWE? I thought they were changed to elite during the betas, unless it was like a few days after release. I know they weren't non-elite for long at all anyway, and i don't remember anything else since then.

And ya ANet announced pet control, there's a post by Gaile saying so (same one where she said they're also looking at Bow skills and Mesmer PvE options). She said they actually had a version of pet controls functional on beta servers, so this at least is a sure implementation.

It's pretty easy to guess that it'll be very similar to Hero pannel, likely with an agressive/passive/defensive option, possibly flag use, and being able to use Target lock (that'd be quite nice). Maybe with a little luck they'll even add some 'skills' on the pet bar such as 'attack target' or 'come back to me stupid pet'.

I don't see anything bad with them buffing bow skills at the same time as adding pet AI. They just must consider seriously the strength of the current pet skills that were buffed repeatedly to make up for disastrous pet control... which is the same as Lamentation being buffed repeatedly to make up for the disastrous idea of requiring a foe Nearby a spirit.

Falconer · Feb 27, 2007, 02:09 AM // 02:09

Overall, I think rangers have some reasonably well balanced options at this point. But that's mostly due to their non-marksmanship options. The lone exception to this, I believe is burning arrow spread degen builds which are well worth the 12 or 14 points into marksmanship.

EG: trappers, melee beastmasters (pet + spear/scythe/hammer, take your pick), spirit spammer/trapper hybrids in some builds. Choking gas/incendiary arrows sustained interupt. The occasional touch ranger in Cantha... The hallmark of all of these is that none of them rely on the marksmanship spec.

In any case, bow using rangers have one core value, they represent damage w/ strong disruption. The interupts are the price you pay to even be a contender right now as many people have pointed out already.

Honostly, the only way I think Anet can deal w/ making bows competitive is to simply address their slow firing rate. 2.0 -> 1.8s, 2.4 -> 2.1, 2.7 -> 2.4s would make 2 handed bows not so rediculous in comparison to a 1.5s one handed spear plus shield. It ups their viability as a pressure damage weapon which even beastmasters might consider, w/o enhancing their ability to spike at all.

On Cripshot:
I believe that crippling shot is a pretty bad bargain right now. If it was 10 energy for the same effect I'd bring it. This is largely because certain items have changed the nature of conditions so much. Also, there's just raw comparison to every other crippled skill in the game (check out guildwiki's list of cripple skills). Every argument against cripshot came down to this, it was too powerfull w/ the apply poison cover, not that crippling shot itself was broken. But w/ skills like mending touch and the enhanced condition removal in the game now... this is not as problematic.

One stacking condition reducers... These have been introduced since the change, it doesn't last very long against people w/ an anti-cripple item and/or an anti-cripple rune. This is a change to conditions as a whole since the skill was nerfed, but you're far more likely to see an anti-cripple rune setup than any other. Even against someone w/ a single effect it's a noticably reduced cripple. These don't care how well you cover your cripple, it's still reduced, and no ranger can afford to keep reapplying crippling shot every 3-4s to the same target.

The other reason is that I feel that mending touch is slightly overpowered. It's trivially easy to get a 60-70 point heal off a cripshot w/ it, and spend far less energy removing that and other conditions than it cost to apply them in the first place. This is also true against burning arrow, or any other condition heavy setup. .75s cast time makes this skill a hard one to interupt unless you're standing right in the other guys face as well. (I believe mending touch needs a 6s per condition removed recharge time to be balanced w/ mend ailment).

In total, the power of the cripshot was the ability to quickly apply and bury cripling under another easily reapplied condition, making it's removal somewhat costly. Since the crippling is no longer lasting long enough for the energy investiture, that bit is gone. And the ability to keep it covered on those who'd have the most trouble dealing w/ it in the skirmish duels is similarly gone (w/ an amount of healing w/ a low spec which negates most of the value of the apply poison).

I disagree heavily that distracting shot is rediculously broken when compared to other non-elites such as diversion (50s w/o an interupt timing requirement..).

Right now the rangers sustained disruption abilities are one of the few things which garner any respect. It's their one role as a bow ranger which is pretty much universally accepted.

Distracting shot is fine as is... 10s recharge is pretty limiting on using it as a 'spam' interupt. And the 20s is nothing compared to another commonly seen skill seen on practically every domination bar, diversion. I spam savage shot and save dshot for use as my goto point interupt.

On the interupt front, I'd like to see savage shot and punishing shot have their recharges reversed 8s for savage as it's a bit too spamable for a non-elite at 5s, and punishing shot would be much more elite worthy as a spammable 5s interupt IMO.

Magebane shot is just completely backwards IMO... If I'm after constant stream of interupts, I'll go for choking gas/practiced, or choking gas/incendiery combo. As it stands, savage is far better than it IMO... if it interupts a spell get a nice damage bonus, and it's ready in 5s again, costs twice as much, but it's worth it. I'd much prefer magebane if it has a 5s recharge, and recharged in 2s if I MISSED interupting a skill. As such, as a lone elite, I could put it on my bar by itself as my sole interupt.

Overall, I'm very happy w/ what nightfall has done for the ranger bow attack skill selection though. There's a lot of very solid options for 5 and 10 energy skill picks now. One hole in the rangers attack line, is they really don't have much depth of good 15 and 25 energy bow attacks though. Concussion shot is pretty good in PvE or arenas, pin down is marginal in PvP (15s is too long not to be able to reapply the cripple). It's equivalent to warriors having nothing except dinky 4-6 adrenaline skills like cleave, there's really no ranger equivalents to the 10 adrenaline warrior skills like say backbreaker or dragon slash.

Ensign · Feb 27, 2007, 08:51 AM // 08:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

The lone exception to this, I believe is burning arrow spread degen builds which are well worth the 12 or 14 points into marksmanship.

I tend to agree - and I don't think it's even neccessarily because Burning Arrow is a great skill. It has more to do with Burning Arrow giving an Ranger an actual mechanism to do respectable damage, and since so much of the core functionality of a Ranger is non-elite (Distract/Savage, Apply) you can afford to burn your elite on a skill that lets you deal damage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Honostly, the only way I think Anet can deal w/ making bows competitive is to simply address their slow firing rate. 2.0 -> 1.8s, 2.4 -> 2.1, 2.7 -> 2.4s would make 2 handed bows not so rediculous in comparison to a 1.5s one handed spear plus shield.

Again, I agree - and I'd reduce the refire rate on bows even more than that, down to 1.6 for shortbows. Consider that a 1.6 refire rate on a shortbow is what a Ranger would need for his autoattack damage to match up with an *Assassin*.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

I believe that crippling shot is a pretty bad bargain right now...This is largely because certain items have changed the nature of conditions so much....w/ skills like mending touch and the enhanced condition removal in the game now... this is not as problematic.

Absolutely. The addition of runes and Mending Touch have radically altered the condition landscape - plus, teams are much more aware and prepared for skirmishes than they have been in the past. "You're All Alone!" and Blinding Surge created a very condition heavy metagame that people adapted to, and the lessons learned are not going to go away. Conditions as anything other than very short term answers (blind to stop a spike, or cripple that lasts just long enough to catch up to someone) simply are not reliable at all. Crippling Shot is a weak elite now, though it still sees some play simply because, well, it is a snare on demand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

This is a change to conditions as a whole since the skill was nerfed, but you're far more likely to see an anti-cripple rune setup than any other.

I disagree here - the double condition reduction mods are most commonly used on blind, not cripple. That's because double blind reduction usually reduces blind down to a duration that it's not really problematic anymore - cripple on the other hand really needs to be pulled before it expires normally in skirmish, because waiting longer gets you killed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

I disagree heavily that distracting shot is rediculously broken when compared to other non-elites such as diversion (50s w/o an interupt timing requirement..).

It's not ridiculously broken, but it is overpowered. I wouldn't do much more than drop the recharge to 15s. Comparing it to Diversion to show that it's not overpowered isn't exactly fair, as Diversion is overpowered as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

It's equivalent to warriors having nothing except dinky 4-6 adrenaline skills like cleave, there's really no ranger equivalents to the 10 adrenaline warrior skills like say backbreaker or dragon slash.

Remember that those big skills don't get used for pressure or tactically for the most part - they're used to spike people. As you might recall, Rangers don't have any problem spiking people.

Peace,
-CxE

dgb · Feb 27, 2007, 09:12 AM // 09:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

It's not ridiculously broken, but it is overpowered. I wouldn't do much more than drop the recharge to 15s. Comparing it to Diversion to show that it's not overpowered isn't exactly fair, as Diversion is overpowered as well.

I'm not convinced that Distracting Shot and Diversion being overpowered is a *bad* thing when for the last six months to a year, A-Net has shown themselves to have a lot of difficulty keeping the balance of the game in order. If you've got something that's horribly broken going around (which lets face it, is a pretty common situation these days), then having Distracting Shot and Diversion is one of the few things that can help a balanced build come out on top as they brutalise everything under the sun.

The problem of them being overpowered themselves only tends to turn up when the rest of the skills are either balanced or substandard and not used. When there are stand out overpowered skills, hard, general counters that are overpowered themselves tend to save you.

Bugeater · Feb 27, 2007, 03:01 PM // 15:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Remember that those big skills don't get used for pressure or tactically for the most part - they're used to spike people. As you might recall, Rangers don't have any problem spiking people.

Yes and No. Anet has done it's patented self-screw maneuver in this area as well. Rangers can spike decently when they have 4 skills dedicated to a spike. What they can't do is get a utility/damage bar and add a decent mini-spike skill like a warrior can, and if they added such a skill, we'd be in rangerspike land all over again. But they might be able to add a powerful effect elite without making rangers a spike machine.

suiraCLAW · Feb 27, 2007, 06:05 PM // 18:05

First of all, the main point of my buffs were too give rangers at least a few pressure elites. In other words, making a "moebius strike" kind of skill for rangers: a skill that gives a rather one-dimensional class (spike or interrupting + spreading conditions) the ability to do something else (pressure).

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Waaaaay too good for a Mo/R with Draw Conditions.

Would you always take a Mo/R with draw + (my proposed) melandru's resilence over a RC prot monk?

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Way too good too. It makes Melandru's Arrows stronger than Glass Arrows in every single way and it would absolutely destroy target with enchantments. A Dual-Savage on an enchanted Ele would take out like 50+% of their health.

Ok, the damage is indeed a bit over the top, 2-14 might be a bit better. Still, ATM Melandru's Arrows is rubbish compared with Kindle Arrows and Barbed Arrows.

Quote:

Too spiky IMHO. You'd see Prep-Savage spikes for sure, with high Marks, RtW, FW and Vamp you'd have easily +60 armor ignoring damage that can't be blocked from Prep Shot alone. Prep Shot would often do around 100 damage and then a volley of Savages would nail your target. And the spike would actually be free.

+60 armor ignoring damage isn't scary on a ranger IMO. In fact you can easily get +80 armor ignoring damage on a ranger by using Marauder's Shot -> Punishing Shot with high marks, RTW, FW etc. Energy isn't really an issue if you only use those attack skills for Spiking. In other words: full ranger spikes running prepared shot wouldn't be common.

Besides, imagine that you're running an adrenal spike, you already have one (sp/dismember) warrior, one (sp/boa) Assasin, one dominating mesmer and one air ele. Now, you need to decide what your last character is that helps with the spike:
- An extra air ele, which takes beside their 2 spike skills several support spells like blinding flash, wards and/or healing skills.
- A water ele, running Shatter Stone and Vapor blade to spike plus several other snares and support skills (wards, healing skills).
- A Paragon with Cruel Spear and Harrier's toss to spike plus several other pressure skills (slayers spear), utility skills (go for the eyes, make haste) and/or support skills (stand your ground, hexbreaker aria).
- An extra dominating Mesmer, with Spiritual pain -> wastrel's demise as spike plus other utility skills like expel hexes, power leek, signet of humility, etc.
- A dedicated split character.
- A ranger using my version of Prepared Shot, savage shot and read the wind to spike. Too bad the only thing he can do besides spiking is interrupting and doing some damage...
- Something else.

My point is: prepared shot would be an awesome spike skill on paper, but nobody would (IMO) actually run it in a pure spike build. Ranger's are (IMHO) extremely bad spikers, unless they can use overpowered combination of skills.

IMO, a prepared shot ranger would do exactly the same as a spear master paragon (the damage would be comparable).

If you're still convinced that it would be too strong, delete the "cannot be blocked" part.

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I'd say OK for Spike Trap (it's an elite after all) but the others need to be maybe around 20-30 damage (still a significant buff). Think of trap stacking, which is really not hard to do especially with trapper speed. Instantly dying just cause you happened to walk on a trap stack is dumb (with 90s duration, would be fairly easy to do on flag stand).

I tend to agree with you, 20-30 damage would indeed be a nice improvement, finally giving people a reason to run trappers beside "let us take a character that can cause bleeding, crippling and blind".

Still, would you really run a character dedicated to trap stacking (even with 70 dmg)? One person would need to lay 7-8 traps down to get even a small chance of killing a wounded/DP'ed 60 AL target.

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No, the recharge should be halved and if anything the duration slightly nerfed. Would be similar to Dark Escape in effect. Long durations are bad with skills like Oath Shot, and 60s recharge just makes the skill unusable in PvP.

My version would be useful for putting a flag into the flag stand, but that buff is another nice solution.

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That's like interrupts for dummies. Seriously too strong too, 25E wouldn't do anything to balance it, you'd just run very high expertise, high wild, and low marks (9-10).

That buff would make incendairy arrows comparable to Choking Gas + Practiced Stance.

Patccmoi · Feb 27, 2007, 07:35 PM // 19:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bugeater

Yes and No. Anet has done it's patented self-screw maneuver in this area as well. Rangers can spike decently when they have 4 skills dedicated to a spike. What they can't do is get a utility/damage bar and add a decent mini-spike skill like a warrior can, and if they added such a skill, we'd be in rangerspike land all over again. But they might be able to add a powerful effect elite without making rangers a spike machine.

You don't need 4 skills dedicated to a spike at all. We ran often in GvG a damage based ranger that could do a mini-spike. I mean, you'll use a damage prep (if you count that as a skill dedicated to a spike, well fine, but i mean it's just a skill slot you'd use for any damage bow bar) and a spike skill (options being Marauder's Shot, Dual Shot or Forked Arrow depending on your prep and team setup. Marauder's if you want to use a condition prep or RtW, Dual if you want to use Kindle/Glass and your team runs Aegis or the like, and Forked if you're not likely to be enchanted). The other skill that you'll use to spike is Savage Shot because of its activation, and saying that this is a dedicated skill just makes no sense, Savage is just a staple ranger skill and i couldn't even consider making a bow Ranger without Savage Shot.

Just Forked-Savage with Kindle Arrows will easily take 30-40% health from a 60AL target, which is very good for a mini-spike not including a DW. We spike usually with Evis-Exec + Forked-Savage + some form of elemental spike (Air or Channeling, sometimes Dom Mesmer with EBurn-WD) and it kills 60-70AL straight pretty easily. It's a spike that loses its strength against high AL though, but against low AL it's very deadly.

We use this for ranger in GvG atm :

Practiced Shot
Savage Shot
Distracting Shot
Forked Arrow
Ignite/Kindle Arrows (depends if you want better DPS or spike. Ignite also allows you to choose between Physical or Elemental damage, which is useful when skirmishing against rangers where Kindle is just horrible)
Natural Stride
Mending Touch / Troll / Debilitating Shot (depends on the rest of the team setup and how much you plan for the char to be skirmishing)
Rez Signet

Does decent damage (still lowest DPS than a real pressure damage char, but it's not bad), has a good mini-spike (which adds 10% AP cause you switch to vamp Horn to spike), and it's pretty good in splits. Practiced is needed to keep your damage going constantly, but you could easily replace it with something else if you plan to use Forked less often. Also allows to go for higher Marks and Wild and lower Expertise (just 10 Exp works fine with Practiced giving lots of energy). I'm not gonna say it's an awesome setup and it could likely be improved, but i think it's a decent utility bar with a mini-spike (very good interrupts that you can use pretty much on recharge, good running support if needed, decent skirmisher). I feel that conditions are worse and worse in skirmishes anyway cause of all the Mending Touch on every potential skirmisher so i'd rather have Kindle adding damage every shot than Poison doing some degen that just ends up healing your target when they use MT anyway.

I like the idea of lowering the bows refire rate, but the thing is i don't think you can compare something like shortbow DPS vs dagger DPS because this ignores preparations which are a big part of rangers. If you use a damage prep (RtW, Kindle, Ignite...) your base DPS on 60AL is already actually decent. And the problem if you lower bow refire rate is that those prep can get seriously powerful when you add an IAS. Not sure it'd be too good, but they gotta be careful for that too. No other weapon actually has the option of doing something like adding 20 fire damage that is applied separately from your weapon damage (so goes through Prot Spirit/Spirit Bond, etc.). Sure, it takes a skill slot, but it's still there while others just can't even consider using a skill slot for it (if Warriors had an 'Ignite Blade' prep in Tactics, it'd likely be pretty popular!). 2->1.8 (or 1.75 like hammer/scythe) might be better than 2->1.6.

I think that damage oriented ranger tend to be underestimated in general using things like Kindle/Ignite. They can really pull their weigth in a spike or in general effectiveness (decent damage and mostly the really good interrupts). Ignite especially is really underestimated imo, doing damage even when blocked. Yes, it's just adjacent, but doing adjacent damage every shot ends up hitting other people quite often in the end and if your build has high pressure it can be interesting.

That being said, marksmanship skills in general still need a lot of help, and i agree that a small refire rate buff would help bow a lot to compete as a damage dealing weapon, but would need to be careful not to make it too good either.

Ensign · Feb 27, 2007, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgb

I'm not convinced that Distracting Shot and Diversion being overpowered is a *bad* thing when for the last six months to a year, A-Net has shown themselves to have a lot of difficulty keeping the balance of the game in order. If you've got something that's horribly broken going around (which lets face it, is a pretty common situation these days), then having Distracting Shot and Diversion is one of the few things that can help a balanced build come out on top as they brutalise everything under the sun.

That's true only if the current broken strategies do not include Rangers or Mesmers, respectively. When Ranger spike was around, every single one of the Rangers had Distracting Shot - and the better teams were more than happy to interrupt Aegises and Ressigs, interrupt counterspikes, or just throw the skill randomly. But that's nowhere near as bad as Diversion. Ever since Nightfall when spiking with Mesmers came into vogue, you have lots and lots of Domination Mesmers that do nothing but spam Diversion on Monks (or whatever other target) between spikes. Now that Mantra of Recovery is more popular, Diversion is even more nutty - you see seas of Diversions being thrown at your casters on recharge, the only breaks coming to spike with your Warriors.

I've been saying that Diversion is too good for a while, and I consider the current flavors of eurospike to be ample evidence that I'm right. My only concern about being right, is that I have zero faith in Arena.net to give the skill a reasonable nerf. Diversion needs some tweaks, but as we all know Arena.net does its balancing in a dark room with a chainsaw. If the choice is between Diversion staying the way it is, and it getting nerfed like Gale was, then I'd rather have it remain the way it is.

Peace,
-CxE

Bugeater · Feb 27, 2007, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

You don't need 4 skills dedicated to a spike at all.
...
Just Forked-Savage with Kindle Arrows will easily take 30-40% health from a 60AL target, which is very good for a mini-spike not including a DW.

I agree that it's pretty good for a mini-spike not including a DW, but a physical spike without a deep wound is a pretty crappy spike. I think the reason your spike worked well is because you had your warrior in there doing Evis+Exec. The ranger is excellent support, but on his own can't really just pick a juicy target and unload.

I think 30-40% is pushing it a bit. Even with 14 Marks and 13 Wilderness, Kindle+Forked+Savage does 3(31.75) + 3(5) + 3(21) = 173.25, 15 armor ignoring with a conditional +27 if they're casting a spell. Against an AL60 target with 600 hp that's just barely 30%. Compare that to Evis+Exec with 14 Axe which does 2(25.1) + 2(3) + 29 + 38 + 100(DW) = 223.2, 173 armor ignoring. The axer does more with just 2 skills.

It's a little bit disingenuous claiming that Savage isn't a spike skill in that build. It's true that it's versitile so it's not totally a spike skill, but if you use it to interrupt, that really cuts down on your spike capabilities. If you're using it to spike, you're not going to have it available when you need to interrupt.

But this really doesn't change my original point that ANet can't add a decent damage skill, even elite, to rangers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Again, I agree - and I'd reduce the refire rate on bows even more than that, down to 1.6 for shortbows. Consider that a 1.6 refire rate on a shortbow is what a Ranger would need for his autoattack damage to match up with an *Assassin*.

huh? When you include double strikes, at 14 spec, auto-attacks on Daggers out DPS both Axes and Swords. 1.6 refire would put it above Axes, Swords, and Spears. I concur with Patccmoi on the refire. I think 1.75 should be about as quick as they go. As it is with just RtW a marksmanship guy is right up there with melee types for auto attack DPS. At 1.75 refire they'd be more like a scythe.

Ensign · Feb 28, 2007, 01:03 AM // 01:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bugeater

huh? When you include double strikes, at 14 spec, auto-attacks on Daggers out DPS both Axes and Swords.

Incorrect. A 13/14 specced Critical/Dagger Assassin still deals less damage with autoattacks than a sword or axe Warrior with 14 in their weapon mastery (though not by too much, ~24 for an Axe, 23.5 for Sword, 23 for Daggers). The much more common 13/12 Crit/Dagger attribute spread clocks in well below Sword/Axe DPS (20.5). Spears are ranged swords in terms of DPS. Shortbows are 80% of daggers.

At 16/13 daggers pass swords at 16 spec for raw DPS, but never catch axes.

1.6 refire shortbow would be ranged daggers.

The 'preparations make a weapon good' argument has failed in practice for nearly two years now. You don't use your skills to make bad weapons ok. You use skills to make good weapons excellent.

Peace,
-CxE

Dzan · Feb 28, 2007, 02:22 AM // 02:22

Rangers inability to be viable pressure characters stems, in my opinion, more from the strong Anti-condition skills introduced in Nightfall than any inherent weakness in Ranger skills.

Falconer · Feb 28, 2007, 04:08 AM // 04:08

I agree w/ that analysis Dzan, rangers in pressure roles are reliant on their ability to spread conditions. But they've greatly enhanced the ability of people to self-heal their conditions w/ interest. As well as made mass condition removal much more painless.

If I put cripple and poison a target w/ low specced mending touch... I need ~7s of poison to make up for the healing power of that skill alone at a low skillspec. Burning arrow suffers from this as well, but much less so because the degen is so high it can manage to slightly overpower this.

I think it says something that you need to be able to put -10 condition degen on a target to threaten it seriously. Apply poison, and bleed are pretty much nuisance conditions by themselves, and putting both on a target is childs play to remove and heal in the process. Furthermore overstacking conditions is just gravy to mend ailment which can easily turn itself into a 200 point heal if you go overboard. And draw conditions actually pairs really well w/ mending touch I've found in team support roles.

Hexes are a much nicer option now, as they're much harder to remove en masse unless you've brought some specialized removal. And removing them doesn't tend to give the opposition extra healing benefits most of the time.

Ensign:
You're right, anti-blind is more common in general, especially on the pressure 'line' builds like the warriors/dervish... But among skirmish setups... I've seen a good deal of anti-cripple as well. And some skirmishers such as mesmers or water ellys don't care at all about blind.

Also, my last point on the lack of ranger 'big money' skills. I stand by it, you'll notice I intentionally chose two non-spike warrior skills. Backbreaker isn't seen very often, and when it is, it was on the old school pre-bunny thumpers (who couldn't get a long duration knockdown w/o stonefists and who also had little trouble building up that adrenaline while using energy). Devastating is the primary hammer knockdown/spike skill. Backbreaker can be a kill skill, but more often I used or saw it used as an off-monk shutdown... you backbreak one monk onto his back for 4s while other folks spike out the other one.

Dragon slash isn't really a spike skill in the eviscerate mold, it's a pressure DPS skill. It's only a spike skill in the aspect that, a sword on IAS attacks so fast that 2-3 normal IAS'ed attacks can be a viable spike. Rangers need a strong lead attack followed by an interupt which probably has no damage bonus of it's own. Compare this to an IAS'ed warrior who can pull off 3 normal attacks in the time it takes a ranger to make a single normal attack. Then they can both add a .5s interupt... which I'll point out the warrior has no aftercast tacked on. Eventually this will be a problem when you get enough .5s melee attacks to string together.

But back to the point is that it would be nice to have some high cost skills which could 'compress' the skill bar. 5 energy attacks are nice, because they're cheap, but then again because they're cheap they need to have effects commensurate w/ a 4 energy spell. 10 energy attacks similarly need to have effects commensurate w/ a 8-9 energy spell w/ a 1-2s cast time (correcting for the rangers 3 pips to a casters built in 33% expertise w/ their 4 pips).

Such skills don't necessarily need to be 'spike' skills. EG: a skill which does, use attack skill A, your next 1..3 attack skills gain benefit B might be nice. Or fire attack skill C w/ no greater +dam than power or maruaders shot, if this shot is a critical you gain D added effect (not necessarily raw damage like keen arrow). The net effect of a skill like this is it compresses the bar and allows you to pack more into 1 non-spammable skill as opposed to two small energy spammable skills like you do now.

I agree that diversion is a huge problem. It's also a no-skill skill. You fire it, target either sacs a skill or has it removed somehow, or he's shutdown for 6s. If diversion gets hit, then yeah I can see dshot getting hit. But I rate diversion as an order of magnitude bigger problem than dshot right now, due to it's duration. It's no skill spam application and the fact that it's blackout is over twice as long. A 50s blackout on a 10s recycle is huge compared to a 20s blackout on a 10s recharge which has to be timed precisely. And for those mesmers who are skilled, they can fast cast land it when it's too late to cancel on the same kind of skills which are easy targets for dshot. (though both of these (fast cancelling, and point interupting) are getting really aggravating when the game goes high lag

w/ a yellow or red ping).

The only other issues I have w/ rangers interupts. Concussion shot really should be a hard interupt for it's 25 energy cost, Tongue Biter was too good a daze at 15 energy, but it's not quite good enough a daze now at 25. And that if you pack both dshot and savage shot, due to savage shots recharge it's a bit too available to blindly spam. 2 skill non-elite combo should not be giving you a hard interupt once every ~3s. If you want an interupt that often, an elite should be in the taking.

Bugeater · Feb 28, 2007, 04:11 PM // 16:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Incorrect. A 13/14 specced Critical/Dagger Assassin still deals less damage with autoattacks than a sword or axe Warrior with 14 in their weapon mastery (though not by too much, ~24 for an Axe, 23.5 for Sword, 23 for Daggers).

Crap, my bad. I figured the double strikes in twice. Thanks for the correction.

My only concern with faster bow attacks is that vamp bows get a significant buff. If they changed vamp bows to be 4 instead of 5 then 1.55 would be about ideal for shortbows and would go a long way towards making rangers a viable damage option.

Patccmoi · Feb 28, 2007, 04:29 PM // 16:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Such skills don't necessarily need to be 'spike' skills. EG: a skill which does, use attack skill A, your next 1..3 attack skills gain benefit B might be nice. Or fire attack skill C w/ no greater +dam than power or maruaders shot, if this shot is a critical you gain D added effect (not necessarily raw damage like keen arrow). The net effect of a skill like this is it compresses the bar and allows you to pack more into 1 non-spammable skill as opposed to two small energy spammable skills like you do now.

That's something i was thinking about that i'd like a lot too. Would be nice to see some bow attack skills with interesting effects, like Arc Shot being that you shoot an arrow 150% slower but if it hits your next 1..3 attack skills can't be blocked, or Keen Arrow being something like if you crit, you attack 25% faster for 5..10 seconds. I don't think those skills are necessarily fitting (I'm not really suggesting to replace Arc Shot or Keen Arrow with those effect) but attack skills that had those kind of effects would be MUCH more interesting, giving useful utility that makes a good investment of your skill slots (like Natural Stride does and which is why you see it in nearly every single Ranger skill bar now, cause it's an on-demand self-defense stance that doubles with a very good running skill. Or Savage Shot that is an interrupt that doubles as a spike skill).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

And that if you pack both dshot and savage shot, due to savage shots recharge it's a bit too available to blindly spam. 2 skill non-elite combo should not be giving you a hard interupt once every ~3s. If you want an interupt that often, an elite should be in the taking.

Ya, i agree that Savage Shot has too good of a recharge too. I was always in favor of putting Punishing Shot on 5s recharge and Savage Shot on 8s recharge. I believe Savage Shot is overpowered ever since it was changed to be a .5s activation because of its dual ability to be used as spike skill and as an interrupt for any skill on only 5s recharge. But i think ANet is mostly scared to do this cause it would make Rangers scream a lot (cause sadly still too many players associate themselves with a profession), but it could pass if it comes along with a significant improvement to bows (like seeing bow refire rate go down, which would be a huge improvement, would likely make Rangers more willing to accept a change to Savage Shot)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The 'preparations make a weapon good' argument has failed in practice for nearly two years now. You don't use your skills to make bad weapons ok. You use skills to make good weapons excellent.

Ok, fair point, i agree with that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bugeater

I agree that it's pretty good for a mini-spike not including a DW, but a physical spike without a deep wound is a pretty crappy spike. I think the reason your spike worked well is because you had your warrior in there doing Evis+Exec. The ranger is excellent support, but on his own can't really just pick a juicy target and unload.

I think 30-40% is pushing it a bit. Even with 14 Marks and 13 Wilderness, Kindle+Forked+Savage does 3(31.75) + 3(5) + 3(21) = 173.25, 15 armor ignoring with a conditional +27 if they're casting a spell. Against an AL60 target with 600 hp that's just barely 30%. Compare that to Evis+Exec with 14 Axe which does 2(25.1) + 2(3) + 29 + 38 + 100(DW) = 223.2, 173 armor ignoring. The axer does more with just 2 skills.

It's a little bit disingenuous claiming that Savage isn't a spike skill in that build. It's true that it's versitile so it's not totally a spike skill, but if you use it to interrupt, that really cuts down on your spike capabilities. If you're using it to spike, you're not going to have it available when you need to interrupt.

If you happen to get a crit, you'll easily get 30-40%. You can get unlucky too, but not everyone has 600 health either, especially once people start to have DP. Either way, it's still a decent spike assist. When you use say 4 people to time a spike, you don't need everyone of them to hit for 30-40% health of target (i just said 3 above but obviously we use more if we can afford to, there's more than 3 offense in the team).

I agree that it doesn't include the DW and that the team spike works in great part because of Eviscerate, but the thing is just how many DWs do you need in a spike? If a warrior is spiking with Eviscerate, do you really need a DW on someone that will spike along? I mean, the ranger isn't trying to solo spike (though he has enough killing power to finish hurt targets). The thing is, Evis-Exec spike does lower damage if you don't count the DW, so it's better to have 1 Forked-Savage + 1 Evis-Exec than 1 Evis-Exec + about any other kind of warrior spike (and it's much harder for them to predict the spike target since there isn't multiple melee converging on the same guy, it's just one warrior that switch targets regularly and sometimes the spike is released along with other range players), and the Ranger does very good utility in between with the interrupts. And Savage can be used for more than spiking cause Eviscerate doesn't exactly recharge in 5s. If you go skirmishing, Savage is just a very nice interrupt. It's a dual-use skill and not a designated spike skill at all.

Narayanese · Mar 03, 2007, 10:10 AM // 10:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Program Ftw

Ok, heres what it was thinking, I would like to see some criticism:
Crippling Shot
Focused Shot
Antidote Signet
Troll Unguent

Focused shot needs to be buffed (higher damage, shorter skill disable) from the current version, not reworked into something even more overpowered than savage shot.
Trull Ungent is already good, mostly by virtue of being in wilderness survival. Don't buff it.
Your antidote signet is overpowered, but I like the concept... perhaps remove 1...4 conditions but keep the 8s recharge?

Quote:

Originally Posted by suiraCLAW

Plain buffs:
- Spike trap, barbed trap, tripwire and viper's nest should get a huge damage buff. 60-70 piercing damage at 13 WS/BM sounds fine to me.
- Melandru's Resilence 15/0/30
- Melandru's Arrows 15/2/12
- Incendairy Arrows 25/2/12
- Strike as One 5/0/10
- Prepared Shot 5/0/6
- Lightning Reflexes 5/0/15
- Flame Trap 5/2/10
- Magebane Shot 5/.50/7

While traps could use a damage buff that buff needs to come with a reduced duration (to, say, 30s from the current 90s), otherwise trap stacking would be too deadly, in particular in farming.
A pet IAS in strike as one would be a good buff, and i like the longer duration (less 'must hit this button immidiately on recharge' that way), but I don't like the preparation bit, it forces you to use apply poison, better to buff the damage by a little than to add that double on prepation.
Your Incendiary Arrows looks ok, perhaps a little shorter duration.

I'd like to see some buffs to pet attacks, as they don't seem to be used.

[skill=text]Heket's Rampage[/skill]: make it end only on the use of weapon attack skills, not pet attack skills.

[skill=text]Savage Pounce[/skill]/[skill=text]Bestial Pounce[/skill]: increase knockdown time to 3 seconds.

[skill=text]Pounce[/skill]: decrease recharge to 8 seconds.

[skill=text]Scavenger Strike[/skill]: remove the condtional damage and instead add 3..12 seconds of deep wound if it strikes a foe suffering from a condition.

[skill=text]Feral Lunge[/skill]: Change the conditional to 'not moving' instead of 'attacking'.

[skill=text]Maiming strike[/skill]: Make the cripple unconditional, and increase the damage to +5..29.