Patch Notes - June 25th, 2022

RESPAWN OPTIONS FEATURE
We are pleased to announce the respawn from hover window feature! Upon dying players will now be able to chose their home or bind as respawn options. Accepting a resurrect request will unlock the Resurrect option; be resurrected without zoning!

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DEVELOPER NOTE: Previously, when you died, all the data for your character was removed as you were transported to your bind location. With this change, the server now needs to be aware of your character data, but in a dead state.​
  • Please report any behaviors that might seem unintended while dead.
  • This feature can be turned on and off without a patch. If something goes awry, we may have to disable the feature temporarily.
SEASON
Two weeks after this patch, we will be allowing players to leave the season early via a dialogue option. This option will not be allowed to guest locked characters. The reason for this notification is give players time to properly protect themselves from griefing. Please note that once you have left the season, under no circumstances will you be readded.

RANGER
We primarily see a Ranger as the masters of ranged bow combat. They are a master of all forms of weapons, being closer to the warrior side of a warrior/druid hybrid. Melee weapons are not the preferred choice, only chosen in situations when bowing is not possible or to fill an auxiliary tank roll. As an off/aux tank they focus on avoidance and are not about building threat. The follow changes convert old ranger stances into disciplines, while also building upon the themes and roles of a Ranger.

DISCIPLINE ABILITIES
Rangers may purchase the following disciplines from the Ranger Guild. Be sure to explore for additional ranks!​
  • Pinion Shot
    • Loose an arrow at a flying target.
    • This ability uses the new 'Flying' target type, being usable only on enemies with a flying gravity behavior.
    • Requires a bow and consumes an arrow.
    • 30s cooldown.
    • Foresight will now indicate whether a target is a valid flying target in addition to it's normal behavior.

  • Gift of the Fields
    • Search the area for materials to craft arrows.
    • Only usable outside and out of combat.
    • Fletching skill increases the amount of arrows foraged.
    • Forage skill increases the success chance.
    • 5 minute cooldown.

  • Hunter's Lash
    • Strike an animal target with hunter's precision.
    • Restricted to animal target types.
    • Requires a melee weapon.
    • 12s cooldown. (Shared with Jagged Arrow)

  • Jagged Arrow
    • Notch a jagged arrow, dealing damage and inflicting bleed on your target.
    • This bleed will deal reverse splurt physical damage over time.
    • Requires a bow and consumes an arrow.
    • 1 minute duration, 30s cooldown. (Shared with Hunter's Lash)

  • Feral Assault
    • Unleash a focused arrow against your target.
    • This ability's critical strike chance is greatly increased against snared, bleeding, or low life targets. These bonuses are additive.
    • Critical strikes with Feral Assault lower it's cooldown.
    • Requires a bow and consumes an arrow.
    • 45s cooldown (can be reduced to 30s cooldown) (Shared with Force of Vines and Strike of Seasons)

  • Force of Vines
    • You draw strength from the ground below you, empowering your strike and healing your body.
    • Requires a two handed weapon.
    • 30s cooldown. (Shared with Strike of Seasons and Feral Assault)

  • Strike of Seasons
    • An empowered attack infusing your weapon with the power of the seasons.
    • Deals elemental damage based on the season.
      • Spring - Poison
      • Summer - Fire
      • Fall - Disease
      • Winter - Cold
    • Provides a 2 tick beneficial recourse buff based on the season.
      • Spring - Health/mana regen and poison resist.
      • Summer - Damage shield and fire resist.
      • Fall - Armor class and disease resist.
      • Winter - Spell defense and cold resist.
    • Requires dual wielded weapons.
    • 18s cooldown. (Shared with Force of Vines and Feral Assault)

  • Eye of the Raven
    • Scout the landscape through the eye of your target. (Bind Sight)
    • 1 minute duration.
DISCIPLINE BUFFS
  • Flurry of Shots
    • Unleash a flurry of shots, causing each arrow to split into two shots.
    • 10s duration, 2 minute cooldown. (Shared with Relentless Parry)

  • Relentless Parry
    • Enter a survival state, auto-parrying all attacks for 10 seconds.
    • 10s duration, 15 minute cooldown. (Shared with Flurry of Shots)

  • Blade Guard
    • Switch your offhand weapon into a defensive position, increasing parry and riposte at the cost of offhand attacks.
    • This discipline has no stamina upkeep.
    • Requires dual wielded weapons

  • Savage Strikes
    • Unleashes a hail of melee strikes, granting no fail double and offhand attacks.
    • Moderate stamina drain.
    • Requires dual wielded weapons.
SPELLS
Coat of Arms has been converted to the following spells:​
  • Silent Scroll: Solstice Flare
  • Silent Scroll: Solstice Flare II
    • Channel the heat of the sun to burn your enemies, causing X damage every six seconds for 4 ticks. 1s cast time.
The following quiver spells has been added to lower levels:​
  • Quiver of Fire- Level 29
    • Gives your arrows the chance to burst into flames upon hitting your target, burning nearby creatures for 40 hit points damage.
  • Quiver of Frost- Level 40
    • An arrow coated with frost, which will damage your target for 75 hit points damage.
  • Quiver of Lightning- Level 51
    • Gives your arrows the chance to shock enemies upon hitting them, dealing 100 points of magic damage.
PET MELEE BUG FIX
Pet melee procs with spell ranges less than 50 were failing to complete where the pet's melee attack range was greater than the range of the spell.

Example: A Rangefinder is meleeing a large dragon. The server calculates the melee range at 30 units. Spot will proc, and then fail because the bird is beyond 25 units of range.

We believe this was exasperating player experiences of "Ranger Inconsistency". How many bosses was this effecting? When checked, only one boss in Upper Thaz was small enough to allow spot to land. Seven out of the eleven bosses in Silent Halls were small enough.
  • As such, Pet melee procs with spell ranges less than 51 have been converted to melee range checks.
    • Mage pet procs were generally 50 units. A failed proc would be possible, but only on the largest raid targets. Small improvement here.
    • Ranger pet procs were 25 units. This range was small enough to fail often. Large improvement here.
ARROW USAGE
Arrow consumption is now uniform at all bow delays. eg. Swiftshot, Bow of the Avenger and Ravenclaw will use the same amount of arrows over an equal unit of time.
  • This allows developers the template to create fast bows for future content.
  • Faster bows will provide Rangers an option for more consistent hits.
  • Rangers will continue to consume less arrows than other classes at all levels.
  • The Ranger AA, Returning Shot, will continue to provide a reduction in arrow consumption.
  • The chance to not consume an arrow is clamped between 5% and 95%, so extreme limits of slow or fast bows will suffer a loss.
Because of these adjustments, the following bows have been adjusted:
  • Intermediate Bow
  • Post Intermediate Bow
  • Soul Rake
  • Ravenclaw
  • Starter Bow
  • Learning Bow
  • Yclistinite-reinforced Short Bow
ARROW DAMAGE
In conjunction with the above Ranger patch notes, the arrow damage multiplier has been lowered to 3x (previously 5x). The below two examples will explain this difference:

Pre-Patch:
  • Using a 1 Damage Arrow = 0 added damage
  • Using a 2 Damage Arrow = 5 added damage
  • Using a 3 Damage Arrow = 10 added damage
Post-Patch:
  • Using a 1 Damage Arrow = 0 added damage
  • Using a 2 Damage Arrow = 3 added damage
  • Using a 3 Damage Arrow = 6 added damage
This change softens arrow scaling and allows us to shift a portion of auto attack bow DPS to the new disciplines.
  • Having the best arrows will still be important.
  • It will be easier to add new arrows in the future without shifting Ranger DPS by a large amount.
  • Converting bow damage to discipline damage reduces erratic swings in ranger damage.
  • Moving this damage to disciplines will also reduce the swing between having your bird pet versus not.
GRAVITY BEHAVIOR
We have implemented the client-side support for flying, floating, and levitate. So flying monsters should...fly better. This is more a developer feature, but some might notice the behavioral change. All existing mobs that should fly have been converted to be flying.

ENEMY AI BEHAVIOR
We are going to describe an existing enemy behavior:
  1. A tank pulls a mob without damaging it.
  2. While the mob is running towards the tank, a client begins to cast.
  3. The mob will then redirect it's attention to the caster.
This behavior is coded as part of the enemy's AI, independent of threat. There are a few current problems as we see it:
  1. This is not communicated to a player when it happens. We feel that failing and not knowing why or how to prevent this is bad design.
  2. The mechanic can be completely negated by wearing certain end game gear.
As such, we have made the following changes:
  1. The AI mechanic now checks melee range and melee damage taken with target rather than any damage taken for its primary pass / fail.
    • The mechanic will feel uniform at all levels.
    • It can no longer be mitigated with exclusively high tier gear.
  2. A message will be sent to clients on failure.
    • Rampage filter
    • a large bat redirects their attention to Feron's casting.
SPELL BEHAVIOR
  • Shadowstep spells will now properly move a player.
  • Blind spells will now properly blind clients.
  • Poison/disease counters will now display correctly on buff icons.
BIND SIGHT
An additional spell behavior available to us is bind sight. The following spell/item grant players access to this:
  • Bind Sight - Level 8 (Enchanter), Level 10 (Wizard)
  • Ruxim's Class II Machine of Amplification renamed to Ruxim's Class II Machine of Surveillance.
    • Click effect has been changed to Bind Sight (previously Expansion III)
  • Eye of the Raven - Level 19 (Ranger) Described above
ENCHANTER
  • Charm pet damage has been toned down in raid zones.
  • Charm buff duration will no longer be displayed in pet and target windows.
  • Jinx, Vex, and Hex will now give a unique message indicating when the target misses their attack due to being jinxed.
BARD
  • "Skill: Disarm Trap" will now be learnable for Bards at level 20. For the time being, it will need to be purchased from a Rogue vendor. Just a reminder that this Discipline skill replaces the clients native "Disarm/Set Traps" as a workaround.
ROGUE
Last rank Rogue disciplines provided a significant spike of power during progression play. We have shifted this power away from these disciplines and into AAs to create a smoother growth in power.
  • Poison Trap V - Base damage over time lowered to 418. (Previously 500)
  • Incisive Blade VII - Base damage lowered to 385. (Previously 510)
  • Steel Trap V - Base damage lowered to 2530. (Previously 3570)
  • Blast Trap V - Base damage lowered to 1318. (Previously 1515)

  • Insidious Stab - Increases backstab damage by 4% per rank (in addition to previous behavior)
  • Ambuscade Expertise - Increases trap damage by 4% per rank (in addition to previous behavior)
Twin Fangs has been changed from 35 units range to "Melee Range".

RIVER OF RECESS
A new raid encounter can now be accessed within this zone.

LAIR OF MIELECH (MIELECH C)
  • Observant adventurers may find a new way to get into the zone. It is by no means a free ride. Bring a group, or a very strong group depending.
  • Some random encounters for higher level players have been added, as a bonus. You will find them by killing trash mobs in the zone, assuming your group is strong enough.
ITEMS
  • Windworn Boka's ratio has been adjusted.
  • Windworn Boka can now be transformed in a blacksmith's forge.
  • The hate portion of Jyre's Consuming Flame has been increased to 100 (previously 60)
BUGS
  • Fixed instances of "Crossed-Swords" / stuck in combat bug. This was caused by any source adding aggro to a client who was feigned (Script/ DoT). Example: Imp's Fury barrels adds hate to the entire group when it spawns. If one of your members were feigned, they would be instantly bugged. Special thanks to detailed player feedback for finding this bug. Please let us know if other issues of this crop up. Thanks.
  • Wizard PBAoEs will no longer be blocked when you have no target.
  • Ambuscade Expertise will no longer increase the critical strike of all spell damage.
  • Reckless Strike will no longer be usable outside of Reckless Fury.
  • Cagey Footwork is now properly flagged as a beneficial spell and can be manually clicked off.
  • Forbidden Harvest and Strands of Life will no longer grant mana on kills where the corpse is destroyed. (A destroyed corpse is a scripting mechanic that removes the corpse to not provide loot and experience)
  • Fixed haunted zone global messages.
  • Dwarfs now properly get a mining racial bonus.
  • Wood Elves no longer get a mining racial bonus.
  • Flamecannon's range reduced to 250 (uint8 limits).
  • Gold Onyx Necklace changed to properly boost Dex.
  • Fixed a crash caused by traps.
  • Fixed a crash caused by scripted pets and zoning.
MISC
  • Summoned: Shadow Stalker range check should be more consistent.
  • Starla of the Blue Hurricane bugfixes & adjustments (huddling up during a certain phase should be noticeably beneficial now).
  • Starla has had an additional mechanic added for all versions.
  • Mining nodes have been added to River of Recess, Dreadlands, and Bloody Quarry.
  • An illusionary wards are more illusionary.
  • Emir Sharikahn Vahl should be less buggy.
  • Acumen now classified as a permanent buff.
  • Ranger spell vendors sell the correct level spells now.
  • Spirit Anchor duration increased to 2 minutes (previously 30s).
  • Notab's Nug Special renamed to Rumplesnort's Beetle Bug Special.
  • Notab's Payment renamed to Rumplesnort's Payment.
  • Skrula's Payment renamed to Daerith's Payment.
  • Skrula's Troll Swampbrew renamed to Daerith's Troll Swampbrew.
  • Ysanth's Payment renamed to Yssanth's Payment.
  • Ysanth's Apple Wine renamed to Yssanth's Apple Wine.
  • Prismatic Flurry weapon proc will no longer conflict with Gruplok Attuning Rod.
  • Recently-added damage on charm pets was slightly lowered
  • Main Quest item drop rates from goblin scouts and shadewebs in Heartland Plateau increased by 60% and 40% respectively.
 
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From my thread about the clunkiness of charm in general: Would the staff consider adding a class AA called Mind Probe that lets an Enchanter see if a target is charm, stun, and mez immune without incurring agro? Potentially it could also report out remaining charm duration as a safety measure or indicate magic resistance / mitigation but have a small cooldown. The idea is you could manually check in, but maybe only every few minutes or so. Gives room for randomness, but lets you know. Also could be used out of combat to check for potential pet and crowd control opportunities.
Someone else mentioned allowing the ability to see what is charmable. This seems like a fair thing? Would not be hard to implement.
 
We discussed bird pet at length, discussing options etc. It was decided that no change was needed during the discipline rework.
Could we please get a more in-depth explanation as to why it was decided the bird pet would remain unchanged?
 
played my ranger pretty briefly with the new discs - first impressions are that my guy feels worse in extended grind situations. whether it be questing, exping, solo kiting etc. Endurance cost feel pretty high on the disciplines. This is just a stamana / auto shot being tuned lower thing - you've all heard this complaint a million times already so im not gonna elaborate much on it. The bleed arrow disc being 1 minute duration also contributes to this to some extent, theres a lot of situations in this game where you're fighting mobs that just wont live that long. It being a reverse splurt helps alleviate this, but it still feels bad when it uses such a scarce resource to cast.

Feral Assault having interactions with other parts of your toolkit is a really good design choice imo, it makes an otherwise very boring ability have some level of depth. Hoping disc that interact with the rest of your kit in some way is a trend that continues going forward. The cooldown reduction mechanic is really cool but gets overshadowed by the high cost of the ability. The CDR didn't feel particularly impactful when I was limited by endurance cost anyways - ranger damaging spells suffer from this same issue as well.

The lack of any AoE option being added as part of this rework is a little disappointing. I understand not every class is meant to be an AoE specialist but having your only options available as part of your base class kit to damage more than 1 target being either 1.) A level 14 nuke that only works outdoors or 2.) Multi-Dotting (im not sure the dots before razad spell are worth casting but i could be wrong) or 3.) Tanking multiple things and riposting them. This isn't an issue thats exclusive to end-game or highly progressed characters either (but it does get worse the farther you progress), we were regularly fighting 2-4 targets while leveling during season 2 - even on our naked hardcore characters with underleveled defensive skills etc. Currently the class doesn't feel like enough of a single target specialist to compensate for its lack of AoE options, would like to hear others opinions on this.

That being said the new DoT is a really welcome addition to the class. Would be cool to see lower level versions of this DoT and/or Exposure added to the class - before ikisith spells your only damaging spell really worth casting is Icerend. Icerend has horrible mana efficiency especially at low gear levels when your mana pool and flowing thought is in the gutter. It feels strange to have your damage spells gated by recast time while also being super mana inefficient at the same time.

Double shot being a 2 minute CD that no longer exhausts you is a really cool change despite its quirks. Not sure if it'd be feasible to change it so that it causes the next X shots to fire twice, where X scales with your hasted weapon delay so its more consistent and less frustrating to play around. Ideal double shot use is immediately before a bowshot goes off. Regardless of whether you're trying to do this off pure vibes while autofiring or you hold your autoshot for a brief moment to make sure it lines up properly - the 10s window makes it more frustrating rather than rewarding to time properly. The leniency in timing your double shot properly changes based on what weapon you're using and your current haste value. This differs from the rogue burn window where you the number of discs + backstabs you can fit into it is consistent.

The double shot dilemma is also exacerbated by the fact that the window isn't fixed length due to server tics. I did some quick napkin math with Xenlan's current haste values in raid with GoE + fiery - both BW bow and Thaz bow fall into that 1 second window of "my last shot in double shot stance might not go off due to server tic RNG". Not sure how important it is in the grand scheme but using an ability with a pretty precise timing window and having it not matter because you were unlucky feels bad.

Overall positive changes for the class. A lot of long standing issues / frustrations with the class haven't been addressed, but it sounds like more changes might be in the pipeline? It still feels like the class lacks a clear direction / niche and feels at odds with itself, probably gonna make a second post that elaborates more on this.
 
Could we please get a more in-depth explanation as to why it was decided the bird pet would remain unchanged?
It was a collaborative product of multiple devs at a point in the past. A cool idea.

It was an idea that came up as a bonus to rangers adding free damage bonus while alive.
 
It was a collaborative product of multiple devs at a point in the past. A cool idea.

It was an idea that came up as a bonus to rangers adding free damage bonus while alive.
if the ranger class is stuck with the bird and its not going to be made less squishy it would be cool to at least have some kind of pet heal or some other agency in keeping it alive. Or a way to quickly resummon it if it does perish. Right now the only thing I can do as a player to extend the life of my trusty bird - the artist formerly known as vizicsacsi - is to queue up my mic in discord and ask politely for the healer to gheal for my bird.

I'm glad the devs think its a cool idea and enjoy it existing - i'm not even being facetious just to clear that up, having an idea you find cool thematically and implementing it feels good - but the current implementation of the bird has been pretty universally frustrating to players for a literal decade. Any questions or pleas to buff its survivability, rework it, or even discuss it in any way have been met with silence. Even your response here doesn't really clear up any questions about why the bird is this seemingly untouchable idea that cannot be improved in any way. The ranger has basically 0 control over whether the bird lives or dies, healers are forced to either gheal specifically for the bird or it dies the first time the fight does any dangerous raidwide damage, sometimes it just straight up gets 1 shot to unavoidable damage regardless. Ranger damage also hasn't tuned in a way where it feels like the bird living is a bonus. Rather, it feels more like you're penalized for the bird dying rather than rewarded for keeping it alive. Part of this is because of the aforementioned lack of agency over its survival.
 
Apologies in advance, this post ended up being way longer than expected. Just kind of a general discussion of the ranger class, what its good at, the issues it has, and how it feels like a class that just has a major identity crisis. Mostly looking from the POV of being level 65 with your core AAs (first 500ish or whatever), the class plays very differently before you get your initial bow AAs and while you’re leveling.

Ranger Strengths
  • Ranged.
  • Limited spell casting / fast casting damage spells. The best class at doing damage on the move
  • Tankiest class (excluding actual tanks) against auto attack / ramp / phantomstrike damage but at the cost of doing even more abysmal damage than you normally do when forced in melee.
  • Relatively easy to play / box
  • Above average on demand damage with new discs (assuming you don’t low roll autoshots)
  • Brings a unique +40 ATK buff to the raid. Brings a small but unique AC / Resist debuff from runic 1 proc.

Ranger Drawbacks
  • Very mediocre / bad damage in the early / mid tiers (Hopefully no longer an issue because of new discs)
  • Squishiest class vs spell damage (the most common form of raidwide damage) in a typical raid setting. They will almost always be the person you are casting a gheal for or require some other kind of extra attention.
  • Tankiness vs auto attack damage is reliant on dual wielding and neutering your damage.
  • Lowest lows of any dps class which can make them unreliable for handling certain mechanics (AKA the auto shot can miss dilemma)
  • Essentially non-existent AoE
  • High Resource cost on abilities - The OOM very quickly and run out of stamina very quickly. This is exacerbated at low gear levels.
  • Reliable damage sources are relatively infrequent (30-45s for disc, icerend is only every 12s)
  • Portion of Damage tied to DoT effects (dots are just kind of clunky in this game in general, a lot of things die too quickly to get full value)
  • Portion of Damage is reliant on the squishiest pet (strictly talking about DPS class pets, im aware shaman / SK pets have less hp. unsure on druid) which is known to die on hard encounters OR cause a lot of strain on healer mana to keep it alive.
  • Lowest DPS of any class when forced into melee range.
  • Primarily a physical damage dealer, making them more reliant on having proper buff / debuff support to do maximum damage
  • Very crowded buffslots due to being a hybrid.
  • Primary damaging nuke has 0 resist adjust
  • Utility is almost non-existent. Their best healing spell is not very good, even with heal9 its doing less than 10% of your HP non-crit with appropriate gear. Snare / root are very limited in their usefulness, are baseline abilities available to a plethora of other classes (on top of other classes having better snares + roots), and are available to every class through clickies.
  • The general annoyance of dealing with arrows. Swapping ammo mid boss fight when I swap from the boss to an add because the add has a different body type is actually the most cringe thing in the world but its a non-negligible damage increase that takes very little effort. Having to level fletching in Seasons also seemed like literal hell.
  • Needs to position behind mobs for maximum damage (Crippling shot AA gives pinning shots damage bonus when flanking)

Other talking points / random thoughts that I don’t feel like belong in either of the above categories
  • Rangers seem to generate relatively low threat compared to other classes. I’m fairly certain healers generate more threat a lot of the time. This is normally a good thing, but there are times where you want to generate threat to take advantage of how tanky you are but just can’t.
  • Character progression has very large power spikes and it generally feels like you dont get a lot out of heavy investment into your character. The only tomes that feel high impact for rangers is their class tomes. After that you just kind get the spell damage ones but the damage your spells do is really bad (less so w/ the new razad dot, but r1 proc and bow proc were the overwhelming majority of spell damage done on a ranger). A lot of your regular gear upgrades don’t feel great either. You don’t benefit from bane on gear or double attack mods like melee dps. Your spell damage is the minority of your damage and your most frequent spell cast is every 12s which makes scaling spell damage feel not impactful either. Your character basically lives or dies based on how strong your bow is.
  • Often feels like it gets the worst of both worlds of melee dps and caster DPS. Bane is an example of this - rangers have to care about bodytype without actually benefitting from worn bane on gear. Their damage profile is more similar to a spell caster (larger less frequent hits) but with the drawbacks of melee damage (being able to miss, mitigated by AC, reliance on ATK buffs, large variance in damage between hits). Autoshot apparently doesn’t benefit from the melee crit tome. Doesn’t benefit from reverse DS effects like deific brand but also doesn’t benefit from spellward.
  • Their utility / buffs / debuffs are arguably the least impactful of any class aside from the classes that literally do not have any buffs / debuffs (monk, rogue). Wizard is the only class that I think has worse buffs / debuffs / utility.
  • The new changes seem to shift ranger damage more towards being a steady, consistent damage dealer rather than a burn class. However, their mana and endurance cost are incredibly prohibitive with their current tuning and you’ll run OOM / out of endurance very quickly even if you’re just pressing your 1 nuke / disc on cooldown. You end up pooling / conserving resources like a burn class regardless.
  • Its strengths feel largely irrelevant in an overwhelming majority of situations. Being very tanky vs auto attacks doesn’t really matter if you’re never tanking / can’t generate enough threat to tank in a pinch. Even if you’re meleeing in a duo, you don’t really want to use Blade Guard since it disables offhand attacks. Very few mobs utilize phantom strikes or similar mechanics. I can’t really think of any fights with enough forced movement to make rangers freedom of movement feel like a noteworthy advantage over the other ranged dps classes. Fights in this game have to be designed around the fact that people have to stop and stand still for 5 to 6 seconds at a time to cast spells. This doesn't even consider you taking advantage of all the janky EQ casting quirks (2s spell lockout you can use for movement after every cast, spell surge being more or less useable while running, being able to start a cast -> run around -> finish the cast if you end back where you started). Snare + root become largely irrelevant after leveling and aren’t something unique to rangers.
TLDR (closest you’re gonna get to one); I guess the purpose of this is to point out that rangers are a class that have a lot of restrictions and/or conditions to meet to not be penalized but they lack a clear advantage that comes from meeting these conditions. A squishy class that has a squishy pet, requires a lot of buff / debuff support, has to work around dots and relatively long cooldown rotational spells, cannot deal AoE damage, cannot be in melee range, high resource cost spells/disc, is reliant on a tradeskill / platinum investment to do competitive damage, almost non existent utility, poor buffs / debuffs. The class suffers from an identity crisis. From a player perspective, it feels like it is designed to compensate for its drawbacks by being an absolute cannon that will windmill dunk on other DPS in a majority single target situations. At various points in time devs have seemed to treat / talk about the class as if it is a tanky dps class that provides buffs, support, and other utility to the raid - simply put this is not the reality of how the class functions at level 65. It feels like ranger either needs to be given buffs / debuffs / utility people actually care about as well as addressing the fact its a mana sponge in raid OR it needs to lean into being a class cannon with a handful of drawbacks and get its damage tuned to properly compensate for that.
 
if the ranger class is stuck with the bird and its not going to be made less squishy it would be cool to at least have some kind of pet heal or some other agency in keeping it alive. Or a way to quickly resummon it if it does perish. Right now the only thing I can do as a player to extend the life of my trusty bird - the artist formerly known as vizicsacsi - is to queue up my mic in discord and ask politely for the healer to gheal for my bird.
As someone who plays a healer occasionally on raids and basically 100% of the time in groups, this statement is completely true. I can’t count the number of times I said in discord, “ghealing for trad’s/ellomish’s/chitlins’s bird” knowing that it is pretty important for their dps contribution for it to stay alive. I took 2 rangers (T15 and T12, both with R2 birds) to Plane of Water last night, and their birds required more healing than literally their near naked bard and naked enchanter they were getting relics for.

If birds are here to stay, which it sounds like they are, it’d be neat for rangers to get some kind of innate deific brand for them. Your successful bow shot hits for “x“, it heals your bird for y type of thing. A class tome could then build on this for the ranger, healing them for 1/2/3/4% of their bow damage on a successful shot.

I don’t play a ranger and don’t plan to. Kedrin/Kateila/Tev have put thousands of hours into them and can comment better on their gameplay, this is from the healer perspective and I don’t even know if it’s something they’d want.
 
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I can't say 'THIS!!!' enough to what Tevinter posted above as far as overall class issues with rangers. I agree with 100% of what he posted (and I don't agree with ANYONE this much) and cant ask enough for the devs to look at this. and consider.



Random things I would note that aren't super relevant, but noteworthy.
-On aggro: How many rangers have taken the -aggro tome, because its...- aggro...this directly conflicts with this 'off tank' concept. Just a note for the longer playing toons vs the current change in concept.
-Our 'tanking' stance takes away the second weapon hitting, further lowering aggro generation, with no aggro abilities, emergency tanking is very hard (note I am explicitly NOT asking for aggro abilities, just noting the difficulty with regards to the task).
-On damage: Rangers already had the worst mana/damage ratio of any of the dps classes. I didn't expect to get wizard level spells, since we have archery, but combine this with the high stamina cost of our discs, and rangers are now a class that has a short window during which they can actually do damage. This is similar to the other dps classes, most notably rogues who have been revamped, and wizards, who, with the change to their AAs, now are much more of just a burn class with much less sustainability. The 'problem' is that rangers don't do anywhere NEAR rogue or wizzie or mage dps at this point. I'm not suggesting that they should, just that the way it currently stands, rangers are just a third tier dps class that works on the same gameplay loop model as better dps classes (while now lacking burn phase mechanics after the bow flurry revamp). I would suggest that some change be made, either more dps (easiest answer, probably least desireable), more actual utility, in exchange for being less dps than a rogue, or more sustained dps. The idea being, simply for rangers to occupy a space in the raid that isn't just 'We can't have four of the better classes in the raid'. The way bow flurry was changed, indicates that the desire is for rangers to be more sustained vs burst dps (ie using flurry of shots multiple times during a fight), then our abilities should reflect this sustained concept more, mana costs of dps spells and stamina costs of abilities would need to be reevaluated. or give rangers some mechanic to recover both (an interesting idea...stamina/mana drain shot disciplines?)
 
Pet survivability is just something that generally is an issue I think. I summoned my enchanter's pet during a fight recently and it just died on the next AE which was something like 10 seconds later. The problem is your pet doesn't scale with you well so for example my enc's pet is not much better than it was when I got it 10 years ago off the dragons in necropolis.

If pets could get some/more of the AC/HP/resists(including spell ward) of the person summoning it then they could scale better. Currently it's 25% of AC+resists I think? Assuming it works. It's not enough.
 
Pet survivability is just something that generally is an issue I think. I summoned my enchanter's pet during a fight recently and it just died on the next AE which was something like 10 seconds later. The problem is your pet doesn't scale with you well so for example my enc's pet is not much better than it was when I got it 10 years ago off the dragons in necropolis.

If pets could get some/more of the AC/HP/resists(including spell ward) of the person summoning it then they could scale better. Currently it's 25% of AC+resists I think? Assuming it works. It's not enough.

Assuming you are talking the spell Ancient: Guardian of Jayla an Ancient Spell vs a Runic 2 spell. Also, Rangers birds allows them to keep up with other DPS classes. Without it they basically don't have a chance, while an enchanter can still do it's "job" in a raid if their Guardian pet is killed.
 
As someone who plays a healer occasionally on raids and basically 100% of the time in groups, this statement is completely true. I can’t count the number of times I said in discord, “ghealing for trad’s/ellomish’s/chitlins’s bird” knowing that it is pretty important for their dps contribution for it to stay alive. I took 2 rangers (T15 and T12, both with R2 birds) to Plane of Water last night, and their birds required more healing than literally their near naked bard and naked enchanter they were getting relics for.

If birds are here to stay, which it sounds like they are, it’d be neat for rangers to get some kind of innate deific brand for them. Your successful bow shot hits for “x“, it heals your bird for y type of thing. A class tome could then build on this for the ranger, healing them for 1/2/3/4% of their bow damage on a successful shot.

I don’t play a ranger and don’t plan to. Kedrin/Kateila/Tev have put thousands of hours into them and can comment better on their gameplay, this is from the healer perspective and I don’t even know if it’s something they’d want.
To respond to this directly. I personally don't hate the idea of having a pet, and it being a risk vs reward mechanic for a slight dps boost, but my pet dies 10 seconds into I think...ALL of the fights we are doing. There is no risk vs reward because the pet just dies.

In Upper Thaaz and SH I just...don't have a pet. I had a number of ideas for the class rework to make pets more interesting, doing different things, and being more survivable, but there was never really a good time to push those ideas, and now, as much as I wish it were otherwise it seems like the core mechanics aren't really going to change.
When Grinkles (all praise be to His name) gave us birdseed, that was a godsend. As it stands now yeah I'm relying on our rogues having Cloudbreaker procs. On raids, I don't have any abilities to try to keep my pet alive as I have no heal or other mechanism that will do close to enough to offset even one ae or riposte and I'd rather my healers are keeping me alive and timing their heals for that rather than my trash pet.

There are also some AAs and items I could mention that would help (corrupt spell, Meilich's Fury spell for example) that every other pet class gets but rangers do not. I've basically resigned myself to Cloudbreaker procs or less dps. I don't really want to juggle more pet things to keep it alive, but it's certainly not a help now.

As a sidenote, I do want to ask about this weapon design. The proc cant be for rangers to use because jousting on a 12 second proc is....not viable. Is it simply that rogues are now weaker ranger pet replacements? If and when new gear is introduced they will ditch these weapons like hotcakes since the weapon hits so hard that rogues cant engage within the first like ten or fifteen seconds of a fight (even more so now with the aggro changes) and the proc only helps one class that might or might not even be present.
I'm happy cloudbreaker exists, because without it I'd be doing even less damage.
 
SEASON
Two weeks after this patch, we will be allowing players to leave the season early via a dialogue option. This option will not be allowed to guest locked characters. The reason for this notification is give players time to properly protect themselves from griefing. Please note that once you have left the season, under no circumstances will you be readded.
This is live now, players who are not guestlocked may unflag for season to join standard play.
 
Empty zones were restarted at the time of this post to push a few fixes/changes:

RESPAWN OPTIONS FEATURE
Death Fatigue duration after accepting a resurrect from the Respawn Options will now be decreased by the amount of time a player had been waiting in the respawn window.

SPELL BEHAVIOR
Knockback spells will now properly knockback clients.
Fixed Shadowstep from triggering server blocks.

ENEMY AI BEHAVIOR
NPCs (player pets) will no longer trigger enemy spell reaction AI behavior.
There is a short grace period after a mob spawns before the spell reaction AI can trigger.

BUGS
Fixed another "crossed swords" bug. Should fix Imp's fury barrels/depopping mobs etc.
Fixed pet health from not displaying correctly after zoning while buffed with Total HP buffs.
Fixed certain debuffs from not displaying when applied from a world trap.
 
Disciplines tick server side in seconds. so you will get 9.0001s to 10.0000s
Oh yeah, I would like to note this. I SWORE I saw my Flurry of shots crap out at like 7 seconds a few times but after this was posted I went and tested it for an hour and it was always at least 9 seconds. So, I was wrong about this, but my other complaints remain...thank you though.
 
  • Rangers seem to generate relatively low threat compared to other classes. I’m fairly certain healers generate more threat a lot of the time. This is normally a good thing, but there are times where you want to generate threat to take advantage of how tanky you are but just can’t.
I remember a random discord conversation with Marza where he mentioned 'uhm, archery shots generate half threat?' when he was looking for something in the code.
 
Random note about rangers that I do feel was overlooked and easy. Can rangers get spell crit for overcap int instead of what they have, which is heal crit for overcap wis. It was a noticeable nerf when the aa lines were split.
 
ENEMY AI BEHAVIOR
We are going to describe an existing enemy behavior:
  1. A tank pulls a mob without damaging it.
  2. While the mob is running towards the tank, a client begins to cast.
  3. The mob will then redirect it's attention to the caster.
This behavior is coded as part of the enemy's AI, independent of threat. There are a few current problems as we see it:
  1. This is not communicated to a player when it happens. We feel that failing and not knowing why or how to prevent this is bad design.
  2. The mechanic can be completely negated by wearing certain end game gear.
As such, we have made the following changes:
  1. The AI mechanic now checks melee range and melee damage taken with target rather than any damage taken for its primary pass / fail.
    • The mechanic will feel uniform at all levels.
    • It can no longer be mitigated with exclusively high tier gear.
  2. A message will be sent to clients on failure.
    • Rampage filter
    • a large bat redirects their attention to Feron's casting.

Can this please be looked at and/or reversed?

This just made the game less fun to play.

There is a great deal of fights in the game where mobs spawn during the fight, if you happen to not be omnipotent and are casting a spell as they spawn you now have aggro and even taunt will not get it off the casters. There is no way to "play the game". The emote you get to "warring" is meaning less. You can't do anything different other than run away with is typically less helpful since it makes the mob harder for the tank to pick up. Also the amount of spam you can get with this new emote is almost comical on some fights.
 
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