Let's talk about Ranger

[alphacat]

Rng has never been a weak job, it's always either a top tier DD or mid-high DD. You have to realize that every 2H can be the most awesome thing ever. Nin has the most useless 2h, and you don't see them whine about it. For them it's a free D2, and they live with it. How about bst 2hr, it's also very very limited. I think you just have to realize that every 2h is not soul voice, and is situational. Rng provides one of the best spike damage in a zerg situation, Sidewinder>EES>Barrage>Sidewinder, now that's fucking sick. The fact that you don't see many people rave about rng is because not many people play it, and that is because money is the limiting factor, not the ability to dish out hurt. It's the same as why corsair isn't played. So, please, just enjoy your job, NO MORE WHINING please!

I wonder if people can get banned for doing specifically what the OP said not to do in what is supposed to be a constructive discussion.


As for the discussion, I'd think it'd help the job's popularity to have a recycle job trait (gotten at low levels) in addition to the gear that provides the trait.

Unless you can't read, there is nothing I said that's against any of OP's rules.

Oh, and for your information, the answer is NO.

[Sekkite]

Unless you can't read, there is nothing I said that's against any of OP's rules.

The OP said:

If you think Ranger is fine the way it is, then feel free to share it, but don't be ugly about it or discourage others from posting their ideas.

You said:

So, please, just enjoy your job, NO MORE WHINING please!

[Abel]

I fully agree that RNG was previously broken, and it made a lot of the same retarded people who flocked to WAR and MNK, and who now flock to SAM DRG and DRK (many of them I see were always there, and thus gave their jobs a bad image). I whole heartedly agree that STR should = ratk and AGI = racc - look at how much racc we normally carry on ourselves, at least +50 or so on a decent rng plus the racc bonuses we have ontop of all that, and some of us still are hitting for 85% with sushi on exp mobs (not colibri since they have the agi of a drunk monkey) and we also hit for very low dmg, adding a lot more ratk and racc would really fix things and I was honestly hoping for RNG to be 'fixed' as well with the update. EES is entirely broken, in a failure sort of way, sure it's nice to be able to a sidewinder, barrage, partial sidewinder via EES, and then another sidewinder but EES as itself should do massive damage when you compare that a WAR who has good acc can do easily more dmg per swing with their 2hr adding up to as much, or easily more in some cases than our 2hr can do, while it isn't instant it can build up very fast, and do damage beyond our 2hr. I'm also a career RNG and this 2h update was the first time I was not only out-parsed but drastically so, by 17% or so on trolls at least.

I feel haste should work partially on ranged attacks, or some sort of snapshot gear rather than the cap of what, 6%? While ranged attacks are calculated differently delay/110 vs delay/60 for melee I believe, but there's also the 1.1~ delay and other delays added up that make it slow ontop of the normal delay of just the bow. The distance for ratk makes sense to me, but since rngs do so much dmg on average, we screw up the distance, make others miss their WS or abilities, and lower our dmg by the mob moving to us, making a lot of higher lvl pts or other people not wanting to invite RNG bc they feel they're gonna make the mob move around so they can do top damage. And we can get more out of prelude + meat + min rather than minx2 or mad/min, (until later on usually, and on HNM and such are also exempt from this) this also aggravates party members and especially bards, at least all those I've pted with, which seem to be exceptionally lazy and constantly whining about something. I know we aren't really supposed to talk about it, but RNG being returned to the way it was, would not break things as long as they added a few adjustments, such as a drastically lower level penalty, but still having it there. This would make more dmg back to normal, but still less than we used to, RNG's are still very useful I am well aware of, but in most cases we just barely pull out ahead of melee that don't spend the gil we do on our damage per shot. And before we spent gil to do the top damage, which makes perfect sense to me, while it drew a lot of people who just squeaked by getting lots of invites due to RNG doing so much damage regardless of having best gear or not. Most of the really good melee weapons aren't even as much as Ebow is, 2m or so compared to like 800k to 1.3m or so, added in about 70k or so for demon arrows, about 80-110k for silv bullets and up to like 190k a stack for kaburas. Food as well and some shihei. But that's all I'll say about that.

RNGs crits are also really weak in comparison. With the recent 2h update, i was struggling with high dmg silvs + HF+1 on trolls to do 80dmg a shot @ 72 sometimes up to 100~ on rng trolls and weaker def mobs. As far as I still see people underestimate RNG quite a lot. I've yet to be out-dd'd until my last pt with dual SAMs on Trolls, albeit the SAMs were 75 w/ merits vs my 72 no-merit RNG, but perhaps I just haven't partied with a really good DD yet. Perhaps fixing the ratk and racc so we don't need to rely on so very much loads of racc far more than most melees would have. Random observation; My normal shots with demons+ebow is about 14%tp, however when i EES i get like 21% tp back, is there something I'm missing? And I apologize for the huge amount of text, bad habit of mine. Btw, I'm not trying to complain I love showing others that RNG can deal some serious damage, and all those who say "nin 2hr is weak, yada yada" RNG 2hr is a straight up DD 2hr, they are unable to tank, unable to truly mitigate damage without nin sub, and even then with E evasion and virtually no defensive abilities their only option is to try to kill before being killed and simply enough EES does not allow for this in it's current state. Nin's may of meant to deal damage before, but they're mainly tanks/dd hybrids, they don't complain because their 2hr does something useful for them, and they already deal enough damage that they're fine with it, EES on the other hand is comparable to say Hundred Fists, or something along those lines that is supposed to vastly hurt the mob to drop it fast, and it just is subpar in that comparison.

[alphacat]

I posted why rngs are fine the way they are, and gave my reasonings. Do you have problem understanding the difference between whining and construction comments?

[Sekkite]

I feel haste should work partially on ranged attacks, or some sort of snapshot gear rather than the cap of what, 6%? While ranged attacks are calculated differently delay/110 vs delay/60 for melee I believe, but there's also the 1.1~ delay and other delays added up that make it slow ontop of the normal delay of just the bow. The distance for ratk makes sense to me, but since rngs do so much dmg on average, we screw up the distance, make others miss their WS or abilities, and lower our dmg by the mob moving to us, making a lot of higher lvl pts or other people not wanting to invite RNG bc they feel they're gonna make the mob move around so they can do top damage. And we can get more out of prelude + meat + min rather than minx2 or mad/min, (until later on usually, and on HNM and such are also exempt from this) this also aggravates party members and especially bards, at least all those I've pted with, which seem to be exceptionally lazy and constantly whining about something. I know we aren't really supposed to talk about it, but RNG being returned to the way it was, would not break things as long as they added a few adjustments, such as a drastically lower level penalty, but still having it there. This would make more dmg back to normal, but still less than we used to, RNG's are still very useful I am well aware of, but in most cases we just barely pull out ahead of melee that don't spend the gil we do on our damage per shot. And before we spent gil to do the top damage, which makes perfect sense to me, while it drew a lot of people who just squeaked by getting lots of invites due to RNG doing so much damage regardless of having best gear or not. Most of the really good melee weapons aren't even as much as Ebow is, 2m or so compared to like 800k to 1.3m or so, added in about 70k or so for demon arrows, about 80-110k for silv bullets and up to like 190k a stack for kaburas. Food as well and some shihei. But that's all I'll say about that.

Money spent = best damage was and still is a terrible philosophy. If anything, they should make the recycle job trait much more proliferent. You also make a good point about mob placement if ranger pulls aggro. That is something that should definitely be addressed to make Rangers more appealing for merit parties.

I posted why rngs are fine the way they are, and gave my reasonings. Do you have problem understanding the difference between whining and construction suggestions?

Lemme post the quotes again, but this time bolding the relevant sections you seem to have glazed over.

The OP said:

If you think Ranger is fine the way it is, then feel free to share it, but don't be ugly about it or discourage others from posting their ideas.

You said:

So, please, just enjoy your job, NO MORE WHINING please!

[BRP]

I don't think RNG needs to do any more direct damage. Personally, it'd be nice if they had a buff in the direction of enfeebling in arrows. Najelith vs Galadar(where he gets the arrow in his head in my sig) cutscene inspired me a bit in that direction. I guess they could also use more job abilities, like maybe a "Shadow-Gravity" and maybe an ability or two that differs depending on what type of ranged weapon you use.

EDIT: Oh, and perhaps for flavor's sake, it'd be nice they had some "trap" based ability, like a defense ability. Imagine if a "Snag" would negate the next attack and bind the attacker?

[Darcatvar]

As I see it two major things for RNG that should be adressed are:

Our DOT which has limited ways of being increased currently. If they added a signifiacant amount of +snapshot gear it would help but as VZX has pointed out there is a hard delay between rng atts. Maybe if they allowed haste gear to only affect the hard delay and tossed a couple Snapshot pieces of gear our way things would be pretty nice

A similar AGI = RNG ACC, STR = RNG ATT buff as has been suggested would be nice.

Our RNG ACC still isn't what it should be. Not sure how you would change this other than the agi=rng ac thing or a complete tweak of the equation.


Emp Arrow/Detonator has been buffer and it shows they are at least thinking of us. The WS is useful now I've already posted this but over the weekend I was able to do 1100+ on Kirin fully buffed and 1400 on Suzaku full buffed all at 300tp.

[Damane]

in my opinion giving ranger some more buff on ranged accuracy and thus lowering their need for Racc gear (so they can focuse more on r.att) + makeing hast gear actually also effect ranged attack speed, would "fix" ranger in my eyes. I still dont see the point why haste gear, or haste in general shouldnt affect ranged attacks.

[Intense]

I still dont see the point why haste gear, or haste in general shouldnt affect ranged attacks.

Because in real life when I cast Haste on my Ranger friends, it doesnt effect their ranged attacks... :wink:

p.s. I agree with your R.acc boost idea.

[Damane]

Because in real life when I cast Haste on my Ranger friends, it doesnt effect their ranged attacks... :wink:

p.s. I agree with your R.acc boost idea.

in real life I cant also cast thunderaga 93023 so in my opinion makeing haste effect ranged attacks too, would help RNG on the DoT place a bit.

[Raizins]

Career RNG here as well.

I hit about level 65-68 when the nerf came, so I never really got to experience end game (kirin) as a rng. I was basically used to tearing stuff up in xp pts.

One thing that is annoying about the job is constantly having to spam ranged attack, just to come up nowhere near many other jobs in DoT. I remember in xp, that a ranger would have to pick and choose when to spam /ra, if ever, in order to keep things somewhat orderly in the pt.

I don't think its a bad thing for a player to have to know when to show restraint and when to go all out. It makes things more interesting, and adds a certain level of skill instead of mashing a macro (ctrl/alt + D) all day. Eventually, SAMs and other 2H jobs will have to learn this, rather than going all out and dying before a mob is down to 80% HP.

One adjustment, (besides str:ratk etc) could be to have haste affect /ra delay as well. If not, then introduce more gear with significant improvement to Snapshot. It's annoying to be in dynamis--by the time your first shot lands, the mob is already at 50% health and dropping.

[SeraphusRagnarok]

My philosophy on 2hours is that they are the epitome of your job's potential; however as you get higher level their potency dwindles. Like how barrage/slugshot can match eagle eye shot, monk's attack speed at level 75 is quite high making hundred fists seem slightly less amazing than it did at level 10 when your delay was higher(though it's still good, dont get me wrong), another example is benediction, sure it heals instantly and fully, but at level 75 WHm have effecient MP cost curaga spells making benediction seem slightly less good, except in a pinch. Same thing with THF, perfect dodge owns at low levels before THF's evasion skill becomes high and before they get all those evasion bonuses. Some THFs with stacked eva gear can attain nigh PD status on high lvl mobs,(THF burn on abraxas anyone).

Every 2hour has several points in common. They all epitomize the quintessential theme of the job for a low/extremely effecient cost, however at higher levels most jobs learn abilities that are so near as powerful as their 2hours that their 2 hours are only slightly better.


That's just my opinion, take it or leave it, but one thing i think we can all agree on, if SE ever made EES stronger and 100% accurate...well I'd hate to be a tank

[BexBLU]

IMO:

EES Needs to be alot better. It's just not right that it can be out-damaged by a weapon skill. It should hit without fail, and do at least twice the damage it currently does.

Recycle should have been a native job ability, not a meritted one. Ranger spends a fortune just to keep up with other DDs. In the current game economy, leveling RNG can be quite a struggle.

Rapid Shot should have several tiers, with each reducing ranged attack delay by a fixed amount. Should stack with Snapshot.

I also agree with Jooeetheplatypus's suggestions.


Those are just my humble thoughts. Although I don't play RNG, so they may not be the most educated suggestions.

[alphacat]

You have to realize that most jobs that were introduced with the original game had their 2h design with lv50 cap in mind. That being said, as the lvl cap became higher, a lot of jobs learn ability that make their 2h pale.

[Intense]

You have to realize that most jobs that were introduced with the original game had their 2h design with lv50 cap in mind. That being said, as the lvl cap became higher, a lot of jobs learn ability that make their 2h pale.

Thats crappy logic though. Why shouldnt a 2hr evolve with the rest of the game?

[Shadida]

A quick inventory of ideas so far, for anyone just joining us:

Eagle Eye Shot 100% hit, and/or improvements
STR = R.atk
AGI = R.acc
Snapshot enhancement gear
Haste at least partially affect ranged attack
More Accuracy Bonus trait
Recycle native trait
Reduced level-pDIF penalty
Minimum range for ranged attack vs sweet spots
Improve ranged critical hits
Consider distance implications for EXP PT
Enfeebling Arrows
Adjust 'reload' delay
Add Rapid Shot II, etc.

[CGB]

I don't have any ideas to improve our ability to compete with the other DDs that haven't already been mentioned, but cost wise, one thing I'd like to see is an improvement to scavenge. I use it pretty much as often as I can (as I have it /recast in my ranged attack macro to remind me), and sometimes I can go over an hour without any results. getting firesand more often with scavenge could really help with ammo costs as I make my own bullets, just a shame I've only dug up about 8 in total from level 60-68, haha.

would be nice if we could dig up some of our ammo back too, maybe by standing over the dead monsters corpse before it disappears? but I guess that's essentially what the recycle trait does, I'm not high enough to have seen how (often) that works yet.

[Sagacious Sundi]

I'm going to ask what RNGs think of these ideas:
-1-2 "Ranged Attack Bonus" and/or "Ranged Accuracy Bonus" job traits
-Shadow Weight: Gravity (mentioned already)
-Shadow Stun
-Shadow Slow: Okay, now this is getting a little silly
-Shadow Haste: >_>
-Actually, instead of those, how about "Ammo Bash" or something, with the ammo used (arrow/bolt/bullet/shell/maybe thrown) changing the added effect, which would be weight (shell?)/stun (bullet?)/slow (bolt?)/knockback (reusable thrown?)/bind (arrow?)/stuff.

(BTW: They don't have to have those "shadow" names.)

EDIT: Just realized "Ranged Bash" sounds ten times better.

[BRP]

Enfeebling Arrows

Well, they already have enfeebling arrows like Sleep Arrow, Attack Down. I meant more accuracy/potency with the current ones(enough to make them feasible compared to RDM and BRD) in addition to new arrows(Dispel, etc). To further develop it, you could have the both the accuracy and potency be based on MND and divide new enfeeble ammo be split among gun and bow... and no new ones that would step on Marksmenship's toes.

EDIT: Scavenger could be improved to produce ex versions of your current ammo... and make it only work on arrows that aren't tagged "rare".

[Melena]

Fixing EES would be a step in the right direction. Nothing says pain then missing slug, barrage, then ees on an exp crab in the boyhada tree. Something similar to the 2h buff where 1agi/str = 1rng acc/atk or slightly below that would be nice. The biggest problem though is tp building. Until rng's have a quick way to build tp outside of barrage every few minutes (and that's assuming all bullets hit), with the way end game LS's focus on dot and speed, rng's will be nothing more then cerebus/dl/kirin/kb fodder, and sit on the sidelines for everything else.