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[Class Discussion] Ranger
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Author:  SeismicRend [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:23 am ]
Post subject:  [Class Discussion] Ranger
Edit: Changed tone of post and trimmed the length.

I'm really enjoying the early levels of Nevergrind. I've been playing each of the classes to find my favorite in time for the server accounts to go live. The game has a lot of great variety to the class design.

I'm curious how people feel about the Ranger. I leveled one to 35 and here are my thoughts so far about the class.

I think the class has an interesting skill set and I like how it takes a lot of inspiration from the Everquest class. The Ranger favors auto attacking with arrow skills to supplement that makes for a nifty number fountain.

However, I find I'm having a lot of trouble making the skills work. At early levels (Act 1), I found the mana cost of Faerie Fire to be really high and the low interrupt chance on the Kick to be disappointing. The opportunity cost of 20 talent points seems like too much in order to get a reliable interrupt.

After Act 2, the mob interaction disappears entirely as the class gains a tremendous power spike from the Snare talent bonus. The talent causes your auto attack to hit four additional times. You don't even have to cast Snare to gain this effect. This one talent turns the Ranger into an auto attacking murder machine. It's a nifty number fountain but not very engaging play to just auto attack mobs one by one rapidly to death. Here's a zone summary of my level 35.

The Ranger has several abilities and talents that look like they'd have interesting swarming potential but I'm at a loss how a Ranger could fight multiple mobs without immediately crumpling. Stuns and spellcasters are particularly dangerous as the Ranger lacks tools to counter them. I could see these vulnerabilities preventing the class from advancing into Nightmare. The class gets a lot of buff-and-forget skills that I feel could be replaced with additional tools.

Thoughts?
Author:  TadaceAce [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
Quote:
Kick needs to have a guaranteed chance to interrupt spell casting. It's the only timing attack the Ranger gets so it needs to be 100%. Otherwise it's just a button to click on cooldown since it's too unreliable to hold in reserve at a 40% chance. The opportunity cost of 20 talent points is too much in order to get a reliable interrupt.


Mobs cast spells almost instantaneously in hell anyway. Kick is really just a damage boost and hope for a lucky interrupt imo.

Quote:
The only way I could get the Ranger to deal damage was through the Snare talent bonus, which frankly is way overpowered. The talent causes your auto attack to hit four additional times. This one talent turns the Ranger into an auto attacking murder machine. It's a nifty number fountain but not very engaging play to just auto attack mobs one by one rapidly to death. Here's a zone summary of my level 35.


Bah, I totally missed this when trying my ranger, Cleric / Shaman get similar things but you don't know they exist until you put points into the talents. Can we add a +0 auto attacks to the talent description so that people can see these? This is fantastic and very likely makes ranger the highest dps in the game, more on this later.

Quote:
Kick interrupts 100% without talent points.
Faerie Fire mana cost lowered/removed.
Snare talent nerfed to the ground.
Warder's Rift redesigned to have opposite effect.
Feet Like Cat redesigned to provide stun immunity.


Kick: sure, if you pay enough attention to interrupt that 0.2s cast, it should be rewarded. It should be this way across all classes.
Faerie Fire: Mana eventually will be a non-issue now that mana leech is fixed. Should only be used on rares or higher anyway.
Snare: You'll find this to be your main source of damage, ranger isn't the only class that gets this fountain of hits and its really the means of playing endgame with an elite weapon.
Warder's Rift: You're looking at it from a chaining perspective, I'm looking at it as about the only way to kill bosses in hell. The only way you're going to be able to keep your health up is to reduce the boss damage even if it hurts yours. I'd support it not being even though, have it reduce your damage less.
Feet Like Cat: Stuns are annoying and frankly make swarming impossible until you have high stun reduction. That's just the way of the game though, any class that can't play as ogre suffers from this. I've brought up that stun durations are a bit much at this point and will hopefully be reduced in the future.

I really wasn't planning on lvling another character but I just might have to try ranger. If I compare "additional" damage beyond the 5 autoattacks between cleric, shaman, and ranger, I find ranger to be the huge front runner. Weaving spells inbetween auto attacks is miserable on shaman / cleric but ranger can just spam skills.

The real power is rapid shot, with the right talents its 4 arrows per global cooldown, each arrow with a chance to deal explosive or lightning damage as well as benefiting from passive +damages. You can easily stack 100 passive damage and push it upwards of 250 which is a whopping 1000+ free damage every global cooldown.

The real question is their defense. You've got a slow (only hits one target, bummer), warders rift, a long cooldown heal, mitigation from high parry / riposte, and the potential regen from warders rift (no idea how much this heals). Depending on how far you can stretch life leech I really don't thinking this is enough to do endgame. To put it in perspective, I put cleric as kind of the mitigation benchmark for endgame, 7 second heal, guardian angel, and massive mitigation through buffs is just enough for most scenarios.

I'll level my ranger a bit tomorrow and see what happens. Can't believe I missed the +4 autoattacks hidden in snare.
Author:  SeismicRend [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
TadaceAce wrote:
I'll level my ranger a bit tomorrow and see what happens. Can't believe I missed the +4 autoattacks hidden in snare.


Cool, I'd be curious to hear how your impression compares. It's kind of funny considering our different reactions. I lament crazy auto attack damage as missing out on interesting gameplay because it makes half of the hotbar obsolete while you enjoy the number crunching and seeing how high you can push the dps. The class definitely favors a +damage gearing strategy.
Author:  TadaceAce [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 3:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
Quote:
Cool, I'd be curious to hear how your impression compares. It's kind of funny considering our different reactions. I lament crazy auto attack damage as missing out on interesting gameplay because it makes half of the hotbar obsolete while you enjoy the number crunching and seeing how high you can push the dps. The class definitely favors a +damage gearing strategy.


It just means you have to be more selective on when you use your spells as to not miss an autoattack. It's a fun mechanic albeit something that should probably be changed. In classic EQ if you were casting when an auto attack would have taken place it queued the auto attack until after the spell was done. Skills can be used at will though.
Author:  Maelfyn [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
Yeah, this is something I have given thought about. Should the auto attack timer reset or just continue looping? In classic EQ I don't really remember clearly queueing up your auto attack. Not that it has to be like EQ, but it's a nice reference point. How should it be? I'm not really sure.
Author:  SeismicRend [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
TadaceAce wrote:
It just means you have to be more selective on when you use your spells as to not miss an autoattack.


Yeah weaving spells between auto attacks is an interesting concept but doesn't work in practice for the Ranger. That timing goes out the window when you introduce parries. My ranger has 25% chance to parry thanks to the Snare talent.
Author:  TadaceAce [ Mon Apr 13, 2015 11:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
Image
This is more or less what endgame dps will look like. I've got the main talents that'll boost dps and two req60+ elite weapons.

DPS is on point for ranger, its pretty consistent and its just as high if not higher than my other big dps chars. Its also fun, fast hitting with lots of explosions and lightning strikes.

...Also warder's rift is a very fun and useful mechanic. I can't help but tell enemies to "get in their bubble" when I use it.

He's finishing up nightmare right now but I'm fairly certain his survivability in hell is going to be potato. Most of his healing comes from leech which just doesn't cut it in hell. The heal is garbage, it heals for significantly less than regular caster heals on a decade (16s) cooldown. The slow and riposte help but they aren't enough. For bosses it'll be warder's rift and then weapon shield between rifts which will slow down the fight enough to survive but it'll also make the boss take 15 minutes.

I posted that warders rift talent bonus as well as the lvl20 bonus are broken and hopefully Mael isn't stingy with the regen value. Once it's fixed I'll report back how he fairs late in hell.
Author:  pharmakos [ Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
Maelfyn wrote:
Yeah, this is something I have given thought about. Should the auto attack timer reset or just continue looping? In classic EQ I don't really remember clearly queueing up your auto attack. Not that it has to be like EQ, but it's a nice reference point. How should it be? I'm not really sure.


auto attacks queue in EQ. say you're a paladin with a 60 delay sword, and you're trying to cast a stun that has a 3 second cast time. if you turn on autoattack and perform your first swing at t=0seconds, then start casting your stun any time before t=3s, your next melee swing will happen at t=6s. if you cast your stun any time after t=3s, though (say, at t=5s), your next melee swing will come as soon as your spell finishes casting (at t=8s then).

as an aside (since it doesn't apply to the targetting system NG has)... if you have a melee swing that attempts to trigger but you don't have a mob targeted, or the mob you have targeted is too far away or out of your line of sight, then your timer will reset... so say with that same 60 delay weapon you swing at t=0s, then at t=6s you accidentally turn around and your target is behind you, your next melee swing will not attempt until t=12s
Author:  pharmakos [ Tue Apr 14, 2015 12:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: [Class Discussion] Ranger
oh, also worth noting for you newer guys, at one point in NG beta rangers were pretty much the most powerful class to the point of being way overpowered. they got nerfed down to be more in line with other classes. perhaps they got overnerfed? idk. i haven't played a ranger past level 20 or so.
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