Let's talk about Ranger

[Sagacious Sundi]

1. I can't help but laugh when you toy with the "Shadowbind" name lol, the reason it's Shadowbind is because it binds your shadow in place rendering you immobile. ShadowSlow doesn't make any sense at all. XD

Slow/Gravity/Bind are pretty similar when you think about it. >_>

[shirizaan]

HEY GUYS RNG IS STILL GOOD BUT IT NEEDS A BUFF DONT U THINK LOL? IF U DISAGREE STFU AND DON'T POST

if you're going to pretend like you're a despot over the direction this thread can take, you'd probably be more comfortable over at zam.

I didn't pretend to be despot over anything actually. What I posted was "tl ; dr" without the spaces. BG has a word filter for that. I was simply saying that I the wall of text was too large.

[Vertabreaker]

-Eagle eye shot is broken. The fact that slugwinders do more damage then an ability I can only do every 2 hours should point this out.

-The delay on ranged weapons needs to be reduced. I think our dmg output is fine, but when other jobs can attack 3+ times in the same amount of time it takes us to shoot one arrow is a little ridiculous.

-Enfeebling ammo, while it sounds like a good idea, I'm already dropping about 500k+ on ammo, I wouldn't want to buy more arrows when another job can enfeeble for free and have a better chance sticking it. Not to mention inventory space.

-I do however like the idea of a "trap" job ability that would be a semi shadowbind. I think it would be cool if it acted like a THFs "hide" though too.

-I think we should be able to merit barrage recast. Having the ability to merit camo. and not barrage is straight up retarded.

[alphacat]

IF Eagle Eye Shot is broken, then all the smns should be complaining about astral flow. If you're a smn, you know what i'm talking about.

[terraflarex]

Honestly, Ranger is still probably one of the craziest DDs in the game, especially on certain HNM and Salvage bosses. The main advantage over other melee being that you can shoot a gun or bow and remain outside of AOE damage (gun kind of suffers at longer distances though, but they make up for that on zerg fights^^). Ranger is not always the best DD in every situation, but really, if it was, how fair would that be...? EES while not the worst 2hr in the game, probably could stand a buff to 100% acc / slightly more damage as before mentioned. Also, recycle trait built in would be pretty sweet and well worth considering. Even as a 100 woodworker and a career Bow ranger (99% of the time, save zergs) it is pretty costly on ammunitions.

I would probably argue that the biggest problem on ranger is TP build. Unless you're on KC or Ridill, it's rather lengthy building 100-300% TP. I personally feel that rapid shot is pretty good as it is. With full merits and TPing in AF1+1 head, you'll see rapid shot kick in quite a bit. Snapshot, on the other hand, could certainly use an increase in %. I was pretty psyched to see ranger get a ring that enhances snapshot, even if it is just in salvage/assault. If you add some more gear of this type, it will most certainly help rangers in TP building (I.E. - Some kind of grip that enhances snapshot by X%, or adding snapshot enhancement to some foot equip/earring something along those lines) . The change of str and agi to ranged att/acc mentioned before is probably not a bad idea, but I think people are getting this solely from the 2h patch which SE has said is calculating damage wrong. So it's not really fair to compare damages between 2 handed DDs and rangers just yet. We'll see what happens after today's patch.

One other thing I would like to see added to the game for ranger that would be really quite excellent imo: Some kind of 30min stackable food that has a higher ranged attack boost. I use meat on ranger for almost everything because I rarely have accuracy problems anymore, and it's really lame to have to buy red curry to get a good attack bonus. I am not saying there has to be a 30min food that adds as much R.Att as red curry, but something a little better than courel subs please...

And let me just end this with a quote from Iulus:
"Ranger! FUCK YEAH BABY!"

Edit: Apparently the patch has been postponed, time to level up my SAM before it's too late!

[terraflarex]

IF Eagle Eye Shot is broken, then all the smns should be complaining about astral flow. If you're a smn, you know what i'm talking about.

God bless Astral Flow.
Proceed with the ranger discussion.

[Sasarai]

IF Eagle Eye Shot is broken, then all the smns should be complaining about astral flow. If you're a smn, you know what i'm talking about.

Hardly the point, the difference between the potential of EES and Slugwinder relegates the two hour to nothing more than a free TP move. Even then, it STILL misses.

The way Ranger is built is for large accurate spike damage compensating for the slow Ranged Attacks. This is fine, as long as Ranger really do that much more spike damage to justify the upkeep, but they no longer do (especially post-2hand buff). Take into account how Ranger also have nothing in the way of defences and it gets hard to deny the job needs vast improvements to compete.

Un-doing the 2005 nerf entirely would be a start, after that then work on our Ranged Accuracy, having all those traits is lovely but pointless if you are missing more than a SAM getting ridiculas amounts of accuracy just from wearing an Osode and Haidate (Who doesn't pay for each miss!).

[Slayzer]

I could really go for a change in how barrage works. If one shot misses, the rest miss... each individual arrow should have a chance to hit or miss. One could say "well, if your aiming one shot for many arrows, why wouldnt they all miss" but then why could the first arrow hit and the second and thus the remaining miss completely -_-

[Don Katsu]

Allow Rapid shot to lower the delay of Ranged weapons without the TP loss.

[vegetaa]

Suggestions :

- EES : Raise the damage, and add a Stun effect that lasts 15 seconds.

- Bows : Best bow for end-game is a lv55 bow, and this is a fucking shame. I know that EBow and relic are pretty close, and that no other bow should beat relic, but the lack of progression in weapons is just stupid.

- Double attack : That would be great to enhance our DoT.

- Haste : It would also help our DoT.

[Spider-Dan]

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.

Given that RNG has 4 Accuracy Bonus (melee and ranged) traits now, are you suggesting that we lose 2-3 of them?

Hardly an improvement.

[Spider-Dan]

Allow Rapid shot to lower the delay of Ranged weapons without the TP loss.

This is called Snapshot.

[OctavoGilgamesh]

I haven't played rng past level 6 . That being said, I will take a page from EQ2, where I did play rng. Two things that I really think would help rng are :
1. a job trait that "Occasionally Fires 2 arrows", which others have mentioned in some form or another.
2. a bottle of poison you could equip and use as an enchantment that would add an additional effect of poison to your rng'd attacks and does say, 50-100 damage per tic over 4 tics or something. Something heavy and unique in terms of poison, but would help rng dot tremendously, even if parser's don't pick it up.

Enfeebling arrows wouldn't help rng's in xp or endgame, there's always a rdm, brd or nin available for that.

[Turambar]

3 more ideas for Ranger:

1:
Let players alternate between keeping melee or ranged weapons out full-time like Tenzen does. Auto-attack would work the same way. With melee weapons out, you could still /shoot as normal (i.e. slowly). With ranged weapons out, you couldn't melee, but could shoot constantly with no macro pressing and with lower delay (due to the switching animation not playing every time you fire).


2:
Ranged Attack Bonus. This shouldn't be to the same degree as DRKs get Attack Bonus, but maybe 3 tiers of it at 25, 50, and 75 adding the normal +10, +22, and +35 to ranged attack.


3:
Make Slugwinder RNG/COR only. It's just absurd that SAM/RNG can equal or surpass RNG-main in overall DPS while using the best RNG weapon skill. Of course this might not be an issue now, with Yuki/Gekko/Kasha being so much stronger post-8/27/07.

[Fodder]

The one change I feel strongly about seeing for ranger is that I wish they'd fix barrage being 100% miss when rapid shot procs.

Other than that, ranger still kicks ass. It's fun making Archain and Divisortheory cry in GC merit pts when they get too far away'd and lose their TP because the bird they just tried to Mercy Stroke just flew over to peck me in the eye. It's even better when Arch is cussing me out on vent because he swears he would have outparsed me had I not "ruined it" for him.

[Shadida]

1:
Let players alternate between keeping melee or ranged weapons out full-time like Tenzen does. Auto-attack would work the same way. With melee weapons out, you could still /shoot as normal (i.e. slowly). With ranged weapons out, you couldn't melee, but could shoot constantly with no macro pressing and with lower delay (due to the switching animation not playing every time you fire).

I don't have time to make a longer post but I just wanted to say I like this idea (and the idea of auto-ranged generally), though it would take some consideration to work out the exact logistics - would we have to engage, how would WS work, etc.?

[BRP]

Enfeebling arrows wouldn't help rng's in xp or endgame, there's always a rdm, brd or nin available for that.

Uh, I disagree. Well, the xp part anyway. Excluding the few chances that won't have any of those three, sometimes a BRD and RDM are too strained to put on enfeebling and Rangers are naturally pullers, Sleep and Gravity arrows would do a lot for their pulling ability.

[Larrieux]

Would making STR = 2 R.ATK be an overpowering boost? Just wondering as I only leveled RNG to 41 but was just wondering. Otherwise 100% acc EES and ignoring defense seems fair considering you could only potential do this every 2 hours or every few minutes in besieged.

[Turambar]

1:
Let players alternate between keeping melee or ranged weapons out full-time like Tenzen does. Auto-attack would work the same way. With melee weapons out, you could still /shoot as normal (i.e. slowly). With ranged weapons out, you couldn't melee, but could shoot constantly with no macro pressing and with lower delay (due to the switching animation not playing every time you fire).

I don't have time to make a longer post but I just wanted to say I like this idea (and the idea of auto-ranged generally), though it would take some consideration to work out the exact logistics - would we have to engage, how would WS work, etc.?

As I see it, it would work the same way as any melee job. Auto-attack on, except you're shooting instead of flailing around waving your axes at the mob. You have to /attack on to use WS right now anyways, so that wouldn't change at all. If you've ever seen or played the MMO Rappelz, that's how ranged attacks work in that game, except that there's only one weapon slot, and you choose either ranged or melee weapon to equip.

It would be a fundamental change to the combat system, and would really have to be applied to players generally rather than a specific job. Of course, there's very little reason a WAR or NIN or whatever would waste their time shooting rather than meleeing (unless they're trying to skill up), so only RNG and COR would have any reason to use it.

[OctavoGilgamesh]

Enfeebling arrows wouldn't help rng's in xp or endgame, there's always a rdm, brd or nin available for that.

Uh, I disagree. Well, the xp part anyway. Excluding the few chances that won't have any of those three, sometimes a BRD and RDM are too strained to put on enfeebling and Rangers are naturally pullers, Sleep and Gravity arrows would do a lot for their pulling ability.

I'll concur on the grav arrows. That would allow rng's to stay /war and still pull fast moving prey without getting hit before arriving at camp. I'm sure there would be other uses for that as well.