Ranged builds fixing

[DustTheWind]

My feelings on fixing ranged are. The only viable ranged toons should not be just elf/ranger AA at level 20 when they get capstone and slaying arrow. Slaying arrow does 500 damage on a roll of a 20 which significantly increases your damage. But you can only get it once you are level 18 or 20 depending if you are elf or pure ranger. elf only gets it at 20. Then pure ranger gets capstone of +25% attack rate which is actually only +13% at most. I have tested it before and after the capstone.

My issues with these 2 bonuses are you may as well play melee up to 18 or 20 and then recert as AA then. So what is the point of playing ranged toon at lower levels? Not much really. I think they need to scrap the level 18 or 20 slaying arrows and +25% capstone boost and make all ranged toons scale up gradually as they level up instead of this huge boost at level 20. I would give rangers different capstone that maybe increases crit range with bow or maybe in general.

They need to either increase attack speed on ranged which scales with Base Attackt Bonus or multi-shot of less arrows but is permanent. Not clicky.

What else I don't like about slaying arrow is the damage is too sporadic and a lot of damage is wasted. Meaning that even with slaying arrow the dps you do is less than you think because not all of that 500 damage did anything. Take an opponent that was at 32 health for example. You just wasted 468 damage when you successfully rolled a "20" on him.

I am not much in the now with knowledge of how the auto crossbow rogues play so if anyone knows how they play feel free mention.

I am interested in people who have tried to make other ranged characters viable such as throwing axes or throwing star monks ect.

[Heynrich]

u do know u can make a ranger with the right feats to be either tempest or aa right? u dont lose anything....


edit : one of the devs who just did the items in the new raid/area posted that they're working on a bunch of new items geared directly for ranged characters..
he also implied they're going to do something with the attack speed to make it better its never going to have the speed of melee since then it would be a game of all archers ;P

[DustTheWind]

well thats some good news at least as long as they bring them close. and not so much sporadic damage like we get at higher levels. That and terrible damage at lower levels. I don't expect to fire airows at gtwf speed just at least considering making the damage ramp up more gradually instead of ... just wait till you get to level 20 carrot on the end of a stick which is really lame.

[Kriogen]

If ranged would be better, then melee would be obsolete.

[DustTheWind]

But by your own statement because melee is better then ranged should be obsolete. I don't buy it.

[tjaysteno]

Yeah, it annoys me that there's only one reasonable way to play a focused archer (maybe two, kensai might not be awful) and even that's not amazing at level 20. Ranged combat needs a serious overhaul and I'm fine if that means enemy archers hit harder too if it means another option at character creation.

And to ease Kriogen's mind, no one would have them doing as much damage as a barb or kensai, but there is *plenty* of room for ranged DPS to grow before melee becomes obsolete. My AA does about the same damage per strike as a kensai. The problem is we attack at a quarter of the speed even with the capstone. Maybe the solution could be to make Many Shot permanent... Maybe not.

If you look at history, archery played a huge role in shaping warfare, giving immense power to those who used it correctly (like the English, the Huns, and others). But in DDO, the only reason I've found to play one is flavor (AA is a heck of a lot of fun to play when they still do decent damage around level 9-12). IMHO, this is the aspect of the game that needs the most attention and hope the Devs get to fixing it for U8 or U9 at the latest. In the meantime, I'll continue to dust off my AA every once in a while to run a raid while focusing on builds worth their salt.

[Kriogen]

...
And to ease Kriogen's mind, no one would have them doing as much damage as a barb or kensai, but there is *plenty* of room for ranged DPS to grow before melee becomes obsolete. ...

My english is not the best, but will try ...

MMO have funcky rules.

"no one would have them doing as much damage as a barb or kensai," ... this is now. Ranged does less damage then melee. And because of funky MMO rules, people say ranged sucks. If it's not as good as *that* other one , then it must suck. I don't like this, but thats how it is in MMOs. We have this thread, right?

If ranged would do damage high enough so that players would say 'ranged does not suck', then melee's (barb, kensai) would be absolete because ranged has 'range' advantage. It would be 'can do as much DPS as kensai, but at range so mobs can't hit me always'. If it would not be 'as much as kensai' then you would always have someone that will say 'devs, ranged sucks, boost it'.

This is not to be confused with 'different function'. For example casters also do 'damage', but are not competition for melee damage. Casters do damage, but its 'burst', not sustainable as melee. Out of mana problem.

Some common functions in MMO games:
- sustainable damage
- burst damage
- crowd control
- debuffs
- buffs
- healing
- etc

Curently 'sword' and 'bow' are competition for 'sustainable damage' spot. Player want that both (sword and bow) would be equal. But they never can be. Bow has range advantage.

The only way to fix ranged, in my opinion, is that ranged would not have be in the same spot with melee (sustainable damage). Like change it do 'burst damage' or 'debuffs', 'crowd control'.

Oh, funny, it already is in 'burst damage' spot with Multishot. Maybe it just needs lets say 'debuff' (Sunder, Criple, Stun would work with bow) or something in that direction?

Anyway, players asked for more 'ranged damage' since 2006 and not get it. Maybe 'lets make ranged nice cc, debuf combat style' would be more productive?

[Antheal]

Just take Turbine's favorite child, Lord of the Rings Online.

Ranged combat is on par with melee in LOTRO, and absolutely EVERYBODY plays a Hunter in that game. Not one single person plays any of the non-ranged characters, right?

Oh wait, no. They don't.

So, Devs, please explain to all us post-beta DDO players why ranged combat is so woefully underdeveloped compared to melee?

[glowbug]

I had typed alot but lost it, so the short version is this..

I recenly made a tester char, max int max dex repeater rogue.. At lv6 with a shock of PG light repeater he does 1d8 + 7 + 1d6 + 1d6 = 18.5 avg damage per shot with around 80 shots / min

At lvl 20 he could theoretically do 1d12 +16 + 1d6 + 1d6 = 29.5 avg damage per shot with around 120 shots / min

This translates to approx 125% in DPS over the next 14 levels, with much of it coming near the end of that stretch...

So the question is, how much dps does a lvl 20 melée do compared to a lvl 6?

The answer is that ranged dps needs to scale up more quickly than it currently does