Coat of Arms revamp ideas

Thuug

Dalayan Adventurer
Neat, found my actual account again
Random ideas for new ranger spell, in no particular order.
Since there are no guidelines on what is happening, these are pretty random ideas.


-"Coalescence of Rage" - First, a spell that stacks extra effects based on what is already on the mob, so like say its a base 1k dd or whatever, then if exposure is on the mob, it does an extra cold dd, if the quiver of the legion proc is ticking, it adds its own dot, if drifting death is ticking, adds a heal on the ranger, etc, they'd stack if multiple effects were ticking at once.
-"Warmth of Sihala" - Self buff, adds a reactive heal to any incoming damage (melee, spell, mechanical), either long duration or short duration with a limited number of charges, as a padding effect. Rangers have this druid half that gets ZERO play, not sure how to encourage or reinforce that.
-Sihala's Purity - Self target only (or others, depending on cooldown), a semi long, say minute+ cooldown. Moderate heal (better than the ranger single target heals), cure a number of poison/disease/curse etc. counters.
-"Werewolf Form" - Indoor allowable upgrade to wolf form
-"Power of the Pack" - Short duration dps/movement speed increase for group. The duration would have to be pretty short to not compete with beastlord arena, but the idea of a ranger's utility as a group dps/movement buffer might have some legs.
-Pack Leader" - Put 'buff' on party that lowers stats of group to increase stats of ranger. Say a -haste on party to +overhaste/dual wield? It could be anything, but the limit would be that the ranger is eating a buff slot on the entire group so the effect would have to be pretty noticeable to be worth debuffing your party for your sole benefit and it would probably have to scale based on number of people who had it active to prevent blocking/clicking off. Or code it as the spell on your partymemebers has the effect of giving the stats to the ranger directly.
-"Sihala's Vigour" - Very long recast, spell that gives a +stamina dot for a say thirty seconds to a minute, adding a large amount of stamina, but capping it at say 30% of max, so the ranger would be able to spam abilities while the effect ticked down, but with a cap at the end so it wouldn't just be a full stamina refill.
-"Call of the Apex Predator" - +attack, +dual wield
-"Sihala's Affliction Focus" - Causes all DOT's on the target to do all remaining damage at once and are consumed.
-Same as above but half damage? Unsure how to balance this idea, but I think the core concept is strong.
-"Earth Power"- A bow shot that heals the ranger equal to the damage done. I specified as self only though obviously healing target of target would be more generally useful but it would just mimic the cleric line. Could heal group a bit, as a padding effect also.

other ideas to follow
 
-"Treeform Other" A Root that doesn't break based on getting hit by archery/dots. (I can dream).
-"Sihala's Reflection" A reactive damage shield effect that triggers based on things other than just melee damage.
 
All these out there ideas when you could just add like, a small aoe proc to call of arms or something and then your melee has viable use in xp or wave clearing situations. The melee weapons aren't just stat sticks.

That was kind of (supposed) to be the flavor of razad spells, utility options and side stuff that is useful. I would argue hibernate uh, misses this mark, but well the rest suit this.
 
That was kind of the point of the discussion earlier in disco. In mine, and I believe a few others opinion, Coat of Arms is nearly useless for the time in the game when you have it. Rangers arent tanking much of anything at that point of the game. Making Coat of Arms proc an ae would....umm I dont know what that would change honestly, I could be a really bad kaesora tank? I just simply do NOT tank on kateila and when I do its sad and embarassing comparatively. A ranger with 2100 ac feels MUCH weaker than any plate tank with 2100 ac, and worse than any monk or bard. so I just don't see the attraction of doubling down on something I suck at, so I can become ...still pretty terrible at it.
I want fewer melee abilities, not more, to further dilute the pool of things I actually cast. All the other silent spells all have actual utility while doing things. Coat eats a buff slot for a situation that almost never happens or soloing/xping

If the design intent is that it be improved with the same functionality I can offer ideas on that, but my understanding was that the intention was a full replacement.
 
I hope that in whatever remake of rangers ends up being that rangers will find an aoe option. A lot of rangers talk fondly about their old runic or whatever they had that let them dunk aoes and it is clearly sorely missed. I would love being valid in experience groups.
 
That was kind of the point of the discussion earlier in disco. In mine, and I believe a few others opinion, Coat of Arms is nearly useless for the time in the game when you have it. Rangers arent tanking much of anything at that point of the game. Making Coat of Arms proc an ae would....umm I dont know what that would change honestly, I could be a really bad kaesora tank? I just simply do NOT tank on kateila and when I do its sad and embarassing comparatively. A ranger with 2100 ac feels MUCH weaker than any plate tank with 2100 ac, and worse than any monk or bard. so I just don't see the attraction of doubling down on something I suck at, so I can become ...still pretty terrible at it.
I want fewer melee abilities, not more, to further dilute the pool of things I actually cast. All the other silent spells all have actual utility while doing things. Coat eats a buff slot for a situation that almost never happens or soloing/xping

If the design intent is that it be improved with the same functionality I can offer ideas on that, but my understanding was that the intention was a full replacement.

It allows you to contribute better on raid fights with aoe situations or be better involved in the xp meta of "pull 30+ shitty monsters at a time" without having to resort to begging melee to punch barrels or plinking away at one target with a bow while casters annihilate the rest of the pull. It's an extra option you didn't have before, which is nice. Options are good.

It's like 6000+ AAs to be done, I highly doubt most players who can get razad spells wouldn't find a use for an aoe option in xp before they're done.
 
A ranger that jumps in melee so they can proc this theoretical ae proc is unlikely to contribute meaningfully in any of those situations versus just, you know, shooting with a bow. 300 dps (call it 500 with the coat of arms bonus,, which I think is over estimating) on a single target with a chance at some proc hitting other things, or 1500 dps or whatever on a single target with archery, its difficult to imagine an ae that is going to offset that. Ranger melee skills are really bad. If the theoretical proc were made good enough to really matter in those situations, then it would be probably too good overall. If ranger ae'ing should be a thing, just use Crater or the Imp bow and do more damage...or you know, add an ae option to bow shooting in the upcoming revamp. That would be an obvious addition.

But since this discussion is about random revamps of the spell, sure adding an AE Proc is an idea.
 
a world where rangers get high single target damage while bowing and high aoe damage while meleeing would be ideal for me to consider it as a main. whirling tempest sounded pretty cool to me but i can roll with punches pretty well so rangers getting turned into a bow version of rogues will be mostly seamless.

im personally dreading the rework because i liked using rangers double damage stance to cheese certain phases of bosses so that you basically get to skip all of the mechanics in that phase.
 
A ranger that jumps in melee so they can proc this theoretical ae proc is unlikely to contribute meaningfully in any of those situations versus just, you know, shooting with a bow. 300 dps (call it 500 with the coat of arms bonus,, which I think is over estimating) on a single target with a chance at some proc hitting other things, or 1500 dps or whatever on a single target with archery, its difficult to imagine an ae that is going to offset that. Ranger melee skills are really bad. If the theoretical proc were made good enough to really matter in those situations, then it would be probably too good overall. If ranger ae'ing should be a thing, just use Crater or the Imp bow and do more damage...or you know, add an ae option to bow shooting in the upcoming revamp. That would be an obvious addition.

But since this discussion is about random revamps of the spell, sure adding an AE Proc is an idea.

Ranger melee skills are not bad, what? They get capped offense, capped melee skills, guaranteed dual wield and double attack from AAs, and crippling strikes. In what world is that "bad"? You are severely underestimating ranger melee damage. If you're suggesting they don't have a steroid to use it compared to other melee, sure, but that's, again, an option that can come up in the rework. Or say, a tome that was put in and then ripped out because it was bugged and/or someone didn't like the idea. Or a spell they could use to further improve their melee damage.

Bow aoe options are (unintentionally or not) suboptimal anyway. The barrels from bloodstorm do decent damage but they require someone else to explode them (ideally a tank because the explosion is added to the attacker's damage) and sometimes cause problems with being locked in combat. Crater has a knockback attached to it which is the opposite of what you want to do when you're trying to aoe things.

EDIT: Forgot about fulminator which is alright I guess but haven't seen too many of them. Either way, you're far more likely to not get an aoe option on a bow compared to other melee weapon options.
 
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Yes so rangers have the aas that literally every other melee class has, but lacks all the class features that push those other classes into a higher tier. Monk fists don't even need to be discussed, but beastlords have all the same things, plus a pet, plus spells and mimic stance, rogues have all of that plus backstab and disciplines...I guess strictly speaking Ranger melee is good compared to bard melee, minus proc bonus, songs and bellow nuking....and equal to, or with coat, maybe better than non dps stance /disc using warrior....
Being essentially at the baseline for classes that have dual wield doesn't make it 'good'. Melee isn't a focus for the class and how melee damage compares numerically to archery damage isn't something that can be overcome as the class currently stands.

My continuing position is that if the devs were to MAKE ranger melee near as good as archery would entail a lot of focus for no real gain to the class. Either one or the other is going to end up better, in which case the other is not used and since the position of the devs so far has been to keep the number of abilities added roughly balanced between the classes, any addition of melee abilities is going to take up design space from archery abilities, therefore making the class less interesting and harder to balance as a result, since one of the current issues with rangers is the lack of things to do, turn on autofire, hit Exposure, chain Icerend until you run out of mana halfway through the fight, burn as necessary.

If (pulling numbers out of the air), there are 10 new abilities added, five are melee and five are archery then in any encounter, even assuming they are equal, that's at a minimum, five things Im not even looking at using in a fight and almost never will. Just as a variety question there would also likely be significant overlap between anything added strictly for melee and anything added strictly for archery. I don't think trying to add melee support to a ranger is worth the tradeoff.

Theoretically, I like the idea of being able to swap, but practically it's a nightmare unless every added discipline were able to be used in melee as well as at range, which likely brings up the balance issues I mentioned above.

Look at high end ranger spells, the silent spell and the refuge spell are both melee only spells, so ranger post 65 content, 2/5 of your spells do nothing for the class in the huge majority of content. That loss of design space is very noticeable. Other classes suffer from this as well, having some post 65 spells essentially useless but that is another discussion entirely. I actually LIKE Glacial Stike a lot as a snap aggro spell, however the number of times I have cast it in the last six months is below ten casts total. Trying to Icerend, Glacial Strike, Exposure-snap aggro after a tank goes down and then using the parry all stance that is going to get removed in the revamp (I assume so since all exhaustive stances are going away) isn't really something that is going to be a thing going forward. Yes, Ive saved raids with it on occasion but since the difference between DPS and tanking gear is night and day, one doesn't generally survive for long. YMMV
It's not that I think all new/changed ranger spells or abilities should be useful in all circumstances, however since melee lags so far behind and is so different from the main focus of the class, I don't believe that messing with that design space is worth the effort to do so.

As far as adding ae functionality to rangers, the idea of a ranged ae attack would be not 'ae autofire' and more like, as a discipline, every minute or whatever front arc three target hitting shot. There are a few examples of similar ideas on live, and these would both retain the focus on archery and essentially offer the same ae benefit as a random melee proc without forcing a double focus in gear and a loss in dps. It's both thematically and functionally useful, rather than trying to give rangers proc-based whirlwind for...reasons.

When I noted the imp bow and crater as AE options above, it wasn't that they are 'good' (I could write paragraphs on why the imp bow is terrible), it is that they are STILL better than a melee ae proc unless said proc were made so good as it would get nerfed. What would an ae proc that is actually in competition with archery damage actually look like?
 
Beastlords do not have all the same things. Beastlords do not have guaranteed double attack and they seemingly even have worse outcomes from wielding a two hander. I am not sure on the exact chances but I thought a long time ago rangers had the same triple attack chance monks did, obviously monks went a very wild direction in abandoning all weapons but rangers are clearly a cut above every other melee when it comes to autoattacking.
I would accept a burst arrow / arrow volley spell any day for the sake of exping. I just like the option of weapons being more than stat sticks for the class even if its a niche you only engage in for exp or very rare raid content.

Its certainly possible to have both of them interact with each other if the devs really wanted to force you to get in and get out. I just kind of pray that rangers don't have to make a mash button like rogues currently do to condense 7 instant use abilities into one button instead of playing keyboard piano.


Have you used the imp bow in like half a year? Its significantly better than it was. Its one of the more interesting items in the game, fuwok knocked it out of the park.
 
Ranger melee does not have to be as good as bowing, it can be a situationally useful ability. Rogues are not a primary throwing class but they got throwing options that are situationally very useful tools in their bag for handling more situations. It gives them something when they cannot melee and/or meleeing full time would be a healer sponge or for kiting or for other situations. Not every rogue thing they got was melee only, between the discs they got and make poison being changed they gained a lot of utility effects while still doing solid damage (with some quirks I am not absolutely sold on but they work fine so I am willing to let it go).

Here's a melee example for you: There is a fight where you are forced to stand in a position and deal with an add. If you leave this position, you put your raid in danger. If you let the add go, it can also put your raid (or someone at low hp) in danger of dying, thus potentially causing a wipe. In this situation, you can burst an add down with, say, a melee ability, glacial strike, the proc aftereffect from glacial, and icerend. Now you can swap back to bowing and help someone else with their add.

Here's another: a fight spawns lots of crap adds that need to be dealt with before they overwhelm the raid and healers. The adds are scripted, so now there's no general bonus/reward to necros or wizards killing them. The room is not particularly amenable to getting to minimum range to shoot your bow. Here you have an option to deal with said adds with a coat of arms aoe proc (or a melee disc, or a tome, whatever) and help out. Again, a situational tool that improves what you can do and how you can handle the situation.

And another: Your tank is pulling twenty shitty monsters in an xp zone because XPing any other way at high tiers is illegal. You can plink at one target for 1500 dps (these numbers are imaginary, don't think too hard on it) or you can melee one for, I dunno, 900 dps but you also proc an aoe for 500 damage on 5 other targets once in a while and this adds up. It speeds up your xp per hour. You feel more useful in this xp situation because there's very limited spots in xp where single target dps is useful compared to being able to aoe the piss out of things.

It would not require much to make these things possible. It's not taking anything away from archery. From the hints brought around, rangers are not going to become a primary melee class with the rework. They will still primarily be archers. They'll probably end up with something along the lines of rogues where you have less RNG (heh) on missing 5 bow shots during disc because your healer let your bird die because it dies in a stiff breeze and less reliant on weapons/spot procs.


Also to your previous point, rogues did not lose their defensive disc, it just shares a cooldown with the offensive disc so it functions in about the same way: an oh shit button that prevents the ability to use your burn disc so only useful in very dire situations. The difference is instead of exhausting you and preventing any disc use they just have the same cooldown.
 
Ranger melee does not have to be as good as bowing, it can be a situationally useful ability. Rogues are not a primary throwing class but they got throwing options that are situationally very useful tools in their bag for handling more situations. It gives them something when they cannot melee and/or meleeing full time would be a healer sponge or for kiting or for other situations. Not every rogue thing they got was melee only, between the discs they got and make poison being changed they gained a lot of utility effects while still doing solid damage (with some quirks I am not absolutely sold on but they work fine so I am willing to let it go).

Here's a melee example for you: There is a fight where you are forced to stand in a position and deal with an add. If you leave this position, you put your raid in danger. If you let the add go, it can also put your raid (or someone at low hp) in danger of dying, thus potentially causing a wipe. In this situation, you can burst an add down with, say, a melee ability, glacial strike, the proc aftereffect from glacial, and icerend. Now you can swap back to bowing and help someone else with their add.

Here's another: a fight spawns lots of crap adds that need to be dealt with before they overwhelm the raid and healers. The adds are scripted, so now there's no general bonus/reward to necros or wizards killing them. The room is not particularly amenable to getting to minimum range to shoot your bow. Here you have an option to deal with said adds with a coat of arms aoe proc (or a melee disc, or a tome, whatever) and help out. Again, a situational tool that improves what you can do and how you can handle the situation.

And another: Your tank is pulling twenty shitty monsters in an xp zone because XPing any other way at high tiers is illegal. You can plink at one target for 1500 dps (these numbers are imaginary, don't think too hard on it) or you can melee one for, I dunno, 900 dps but you also proc an aoe for 500 damage on 5 other targets once in a while and this adds up. It speeds up your xp per hour. You feel more useful in this xp situation because there's very limited spots in xp where single target dps is useful compared to being able to aoe the piss out of things.

It would not require much to make these things possible. It's not taking anything away from archery. From the hints brought around, rangers are not going to become a primary melee class with the rework. They will still primarily be archers. They'll probably end up with something along the lines of rogues where you have less RNG (heh) on missing 5 bow shots during disc because your healer let your bird die because it dies in a stiff breeze and less reliant on weapons/spot procs.


Also to your previous point, rogues did not lose their defensive disc, it just shares a cooldown with the offensive disc so it functions in about the same way: an oh shit button that prevents the ability to use your burn disc so only useful in very dire situations. The difference is instead of exhausting you and preventing any disc use they just have the same cooldown.

Honestly I can only assume rangers are going to be jousting classes now with a melee discipline they have to run in and hit (the inverse of rogues where they back up and hit their throwing ability for more dps, yes this is a thing). It will probably play pretty weird.

Also now that wizards cant do their jobs anymore the solution is probably to bring mages to things that spawn adds and keep rains going (currently working on a mage after doing Korl and running out of mana at 50% and seeing the writing on the wall). Rangers probably can help a little bit at least, so thats something. They definitely wont be meleeing more than probably pushing a melee discipline button included in the rework though.
 
Focus of the Avenger

Something that interacts with the bow and allows nice positioning is a nice idea in my opinion. How about a fade-and-ambush spell? The ranger steps into the shadows, drops some agro, and the next bow shot fired does big damage at a guaranteed chance to hit. I'm not sure if you could script the damage to tick up based on how long the spell is active, but this would help emphasize the role of a ranger as a highly mobile damage machine. Being able to replace a jolt with it and allow some movement doesn't impact the spell bar in any way and helps develop a rythym for the class beyond autofire.

As a flavor, I'd love for there to be a bonus effect based on any ELEMENTAL damage that's on the bow being used: EG: fire damage (small AOE), ice damage (stacking short duration slow), magic damage (single target DD), poison damage (single target DOT), disease damage (AOE DOT / Debuff). As with the main ability, scale this damage to the quantity on the bow. This second component could also expand into cool itemization options for future ranger gear.
 
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