Ranger: Deepwood Stalker Changes

[Assassination]

Good discussion going here.

I'd like to see this added. Since deepwood and tempest seem to be based on dexterity, how aboout a clikie to boost our dexterity!

Tier 2: Inspirational Coordination: On activation you gain an insight bonus to your dexterity equal to your "wisdom" bonus for 30/60/120....

Also, if there is to be a "crit bonus", I'd like to see that happen at lvl 3 or 6 in the core of deepwood. That would keep multiclassing options open, kind of like bards swashbuckling.

Let the debate continue!

[Assassination]

Maybe This:

Core 2 (lvl 3): Ranger Danger: While dual wielding bladed weapons you gain a +1 competence bonus to crit multiplier....

Core 3 (lvl 6): Bow Badness : While using a short or longbow you gain a +1 comp to crit multiplier and +1 to crit range.... "No Xbows"!!!!!

Play On!

[draven1]

Maybe This:

Core 2 (lvl 3): Ranger Danger: While dual wielding bladed weapons you gain a +1 competence bonus to crit multiplier....

Core 3 (lvl 6): Bow Badness : While using a short or longbow you gain a +1 comp to crit multiplier and +1 to crit range.... "No Xbows"!!!!!

Play On!

Many people just want to steamrolling AUTO-ATTACKING blitzer?

We have already 2 such classes here : BARB & PALLY.

There is no need to add more.

If crit enhancement needed, make it short-term active one, not passive one.
Make player's skill important, not toon's power.

[barecm]

Many people just want to steamrolling AUTO-ATTACKING blitzer?

We have already 2 such classes here : BARB & PALLY.

There is no need to add more.

If crit enhancement needed, make it short-term active one, not passive one.
Make player's skill important, not toon's power.

The problem for me and others is that they already have a crit and/or vorpal expansion on many martial classes and some races as well, but nothing for rangers. Specifically, nothing for bow use. So, the net is that class is now significantly weaker than the others as a result. Just because the devs came to their senses and said... No more crit / vorpal expansion, doesn't remove what they have already done. At this point, there is still no reason to go beyond 5-6 levels of ranger. The whole point of the class rebalances started as a result of no one going more than 2 levels of paladin. So, here we now are with Rangers and in typical fashion of how Rangers are treated in this game, they do not get the same love as other classes. It is so blatant and yet there are folks defending it and saying we don't need more classes like barb, paladin, and rogue... well guess what, if you don't make the other classes appealing, that is all you will have sooner or later . If you can't tell by playing the game, there aren't too many martial characters out there that are not one of those classes already.

[Assassination]

If there are no additions to the crit range and multipliers for rangers, we are forced to continue playing our superior 14 or 15 pally, 5 or 6 ranger builds...

They have to give rangers something...

Or continue rangers current path: You are a ranger. A stepping stone to completionist. You long to be a paladin, bard, barbarian, rogue, or warlock, but you are a ranger. Spending so much time in the woods has made you slow and ineffective: -1 crit multiplier....-1 crit range...

[Arlathen]

They have to give rangers something...

Yes, they do. It doesn't just have to be Crit Profile, but its the obvious one to match previous enhancement overhauls. Wherever/however it lands, it just needs to be typed Competence bonus to ensure things don't get even more insane. I would personally like to see a 12+ Ranger requirement though (maybe even Ranger 18, because of Monkchers), otherwise Ranger 6 becomes the new super-splash that isn't alignment restricted.

Finally, isn't Paladin 14/Monk 6 the new Monkcher build (Manyshot/10k Stars/Holy Sword) parading around these days? I would of thought so.

[HastyPudding]

If there are no additions to the crit range and multipliers for rangers, we are forced to continue playing our superior 14 or 15 pally, 5 or 6 ranger builds...

They have to give rangers something...

I'd put it in the 12, 18, or 20 cores, then, to prevent abuse. These 14 or 15 paladin/5 or 6 xxxx builds make this game extremely hard to balance, as you can go tier 5 in any tree (usually were the good stuff is like critical multipliers) and still get to use holy sword and/or zeal. I'm absolutely dreading seeing what abomination is going to come from 15 paladin/5 fighter once the kensei tree gets revamped. Holy sword is a veritable Damocles Sword on this game, at the moment.


I may be off on a minority here, but wouldn't adding a +2 bonus to saves against poison and disease in certain cores be interesting enough with the whole survivalist theme? The capstone could add immunity to natural poisons and diseases. Or, perhaps simply adding immunity to natural poisons/diseases in the level 12 core.

[Arlathen]

Holy sword is a veritable Damocles Sword on this game, at the moment.

It is, but the one balancing factor we do have is that all the various Crit enhancements are Competence bonuses, and so don't stack. Adding such to the Ranger tree would simply make a Paladin splash less of a requirement. Adding such a bonus at Ranger 12plus, would mean we'd see more Ranger-based Melee toons with other splashes.

One idea I had was that Critical damage bonuses that apply to a variety of weapons should be retained as a 'heavy' class feature, such as Paladin 14 for Holy Sword or even done as a high tier enhancement. For Critical damage bonuses to specific weapons, let them go in at Tier 5 as we've had for Henshin Mystic, Assassin and Thief-Acrobat. As long as its all competence bonus, you can pick and choose where you get that one bonus from. Ravager Crit-Rage is also fine as a Tier 5 for me, since it's heavily tied into a alignment restricted class and deeply tied into a Class Feature with a heavy penalty - Rage.

Going a step further, it would be interesting to change Celestial Champion in Divine Crusader to be a competence bonus, and then also update Devastating Critical in Legendary Dreadnought to simply be a +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Multiplier. You would instantly shorten the critical damage gap between the classes that have these bonuses natively and those that don't.

I now expect to flamed to within an inch of my life with these suggestions, but hey-ho, I'll ready my popcorn.

[sjbb87]

I think we should stress it more: please give rangers their animal companion.

It is the last chance we players have to make it happen.
So if you want rangers to have their well-deserved pet, make devs know, please /sign.

/sign

[Avenir]

I think we should stress it more: please give rangers their animal companion.

It is the last chance we players have to make it happen.
So if you want rangers to have their well-deserved pet, make devs know, please /sign.

/yep!

[Grailhawk]

Going a step further, it would be interesting to change Celestial Champion in Divine Crusader to be a competence bonus, and then also update Devastating Critical in Legendary Dreadnought to simply be a +1 Competence Bonus to Critical Multiplier. You would instantly shorten the critical damage gap between the classes that have these bonuses natively and those that don't.

Don't mean jack, but I've got your back with that suggestion. Crit Profiles in this game have gone crazy they need to rein them in drastically.

[Darthbadger]

No, please. Enough with the 1% speed per level shticks. Extra speed used to be a perk of barbarian and monk, and now fighter, paladin, rogues and bards have extra speed as well. If this thing continue further, they should just drop the ball and give 1% speed as a granted feat for every character to stop this madness.

This shtick has gotten out of hand and has been a bit bungled IMHO. But, in the contrary point of view:

Consider a party of six, Bard, Barbarian, Warlock, Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger. Guess who's slowest? I guess he's scouting from the rear. Its rather comical at this point. Fast movement should have been reserved for monk and barbarian, maybe ranger...maybe a perk for Air Savants. But we are way past that point. Probably time to just bump up movement speed for everyone by 1% and give up the fight on this one.

[Grailhawk]

This shtick has gotten out of hand and has been a bit bungled IMHO. But, in the contrary point of view:

Consider a party of six, Bard, Barbarian, Warlock, Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger. Guess who's slowest? I guess he's scouting from the rear. Its rather comical at this point. Fast movement should have been reserved for monk and barbarian, maybe ranger...maybe a perk for Air Savants. But we are way past that point. Probably time to just bump up movement speed for everyone by 1% and give up the fight on this one.

The issue was when they gave it to Fighter and Paladin there is no reason why the guy in big heavy armor should be moving faster then the guys in light armor. It almost made sense adding it to the bard tree but not really.

[Bennum]

I think we should stress it more: please give rangers their animal companion.

It is the last chance we players have to make it happen.
So if you want rangers to have their well-deserved pet, make devs know, please /sign.

Wouldn't that somewhat invalidate Druids, people paid for druids ya know. I wouldnt want to see ranger become a paid class.

[Grailhawk]

Wouldn't that somewhat invalidate Druids, people paid for druids ya know. I wouldnt want to see ranger become a paid class.

Not sure how I can see Ranger becoming a pet class, hell not sure there are any pet classes in this game period. But if giving them a pet invalidates Druid then Druids invalidated Artificers?

[Qhualor]

Wouldn't that somewhat invalidate Druids, people paid for druids ya know. I wouldnt want to see ranger become a paid class.

This just gave me a thought. Maybe an animal companion tree for any class separate from the character enhancements. It could be a P2P tree kind of like Harper, but would pose a problem for druids and artificers. Maybe existing accounts with pets could be moved for free. Could be a lot of work though having X companions, but each class would have a set of pets to choose from and level up earning separate AP to spend. Unless it was made as a generic tree.

Just throwing out a thought and something I think would make Turbine some money and the players could get something they have been asking for years.

[mezzorco]

Wouldn't that somewhat invalidate Druids, people paid for druids ya know. I wouldnt want to see ranger become a paid class.

Does the Pale Master skeleton invalidate druids? Wizard isn't a paid class, either.

An animal companion fits the Deepwood Stalker theme perfectly, and those that do not want a pet can skip it and save APs.

[EllisDee37]

This just gave me a thought. Maybe an animal companion tree for any class separate from the character enhancements. It could be a P2P tree kind of like Harper, but would pose a problem for druids and artificers. Maybe existing accounts with pets could be moved for free. Could be a lot of work though having X companions, but each class would have a set of pets to choose from and level up earning separate AP to spend. Unless it was made as a generic tree.

Just throwing out a thought and something I think would make Turbine some money and the players could get something they have been asking for years.

It could work as a paid global tree like harper, but characters with druid, artificers and possibly wizards would get access to it for free. Sort of like how that transport between worlds thing is a paid feature, but iconics get access to it for free even if you didn't buy it.

[Steelstar]

People keep saying DWS is just a filler. How can a tree on its own right be a filler?

Then make it a four-tiers only tree and remove the lvl 20 capstone, since DWS is not intended to be a main tree.

Seriously, such a statement from a Dev is unbearable.

There have been a lot of similar statements and arguments in this thread, which has made it difficult to parse out the useful feedback. To clarify:

• We did not say that DWS is a "filler tree". Some players did, who do not seem to like Deepwood Stalker as a concept, but we did not.
• It is not true that it is "not intended to be a main tree" on our end.
• What Severlin did say is that the DPS of Deepwood Stalker is intentionally lower than the other two Ranger trees.
  
  • The biggest reason for this is that Deepwood Stalker's main focus is Versatility. You can gain abilities out of this tree that accentuate Melee, accentuate Ranged, or help you build a character that is proficient (if not top-of-the-line) with both.
  • Severlin did say that this is a good tree to stack on top of other, more DPS-focused trees. This is true, if not the primary function of the tree. If you are Melee Ranger who takes Tempest as their primary tree and want to get some extra Melee attacks or focus on Dexterity, taking some things from Deepwood Stalker can support that.
  
  
• In the end, we see a character that chooses to take Deepwood Stalker as their main tree being a character that wants to switch between Melee and Ranged depending on the situation; the changes we want to make to the tree are the changes that will support that, especially in T5 and later Cores. The results should be viable (we are doing internal DPS testing at the moment with the current round of changes), but not necessarily top-of-the-line in terms of DPS, because some of the damage is traded for versatility.

All the melee stuff in this tree is dex only.
We havent seen tempest yet, but even live version is giving dex stuff, and only str related thing is choose dex or str, you get dex to hit, dex to damage, dex capstone, and if they will add anything its DC will be dex based, and I can bet any money on that.

Ranger is obligated to be dex only class, and using alternate stat for damage is SUPERIOR not suboptimal, because STR does ONLY to hit/damage, while dex adds relfex and AC, so you only gain and don't lose anything, and you don't have anything boosting str based builds in trees, which is extremally stupid because rangers get str to damage with bows, so its logical that they should get some str stuff, or str/dex selectors at least.

Ranger is definitely not obligated to be a DEX only class. Yes, there are some definite benefits to structuring a build around Dexterity when taking enhancements in this tree; it's both thematically and mechanically appropriate. However, stacking sources of Strength are still available in much higher and frequent quantities than Dexterity, especially at endgame, where a STR-focused character can get its STR MUCH higher than a DEX-based character can get their DEX. In short, DEX builds need the support in this tree more than STR builds do.

As for this specific tree, only the following actually applies to DEX specifically:
- You have access abilities that grant DEX directly (making up some of the distance between it and STR... at the cost of AP, which you wouldn't need to spend on a comparable STR build).
- You have access to using DEX for damage... again, at the cost of AP a STR build wouldn't need to spend
- One save DC in one ability

Beyond that, as far as this specific tree goes, you're just as well going STR as DEX. There are definite benefits to both, but DEX needs support in this tree if it's to be anywhere in the ballpark with STR builds.

When you say "bows" are xbows included as well or just regular?

In regards to this tree, when we say Bows we mean Longbows and Shortbows, not Crossbows.

Sev, can we get a tiny thing added to the ranger pass? Namely inceeasing the proc chance of shiradi effects when using a bow. Its kinda sad how this archer tree is use by many builds except archers.

We do not have plans to modify that Epic Destiny as part of this Heroic Class pass, sorry. Though we are aware of that.

Sev, because I, like you, see this tree as more of a utility tree for all rangers, I'd like to see more utility enhancements in it.

for example, how about some CC? either through trapmaking or entangle with a reasonable DC.
only stands to reason a ranger could fix up some traps in the woods...

those are just a few random thoughts, but I believe you get the drift.
don't just promote it as another ranger dps tree, comparable to other ranger dps trees. please use it to make rangers unique.

CC is within the overall concept of the Deepwood Stalker, we may discuss adding a bit more of that to this tree.

A few points in my opinion:

• Head Shot: Blind effect in and off itself is not so uber-powerful - add the fact that the DC won't be that amazing either this still blows. A +x [w] and guaranteed crit every once in a while is really bad for a tier 5 ability. One thing though that might be interesting is: What about guaranteed vorpal? It would probably still not be enough and a death effect WOULD fit the theme, but I understand that after Coup de Grace the devs don't want to add another insta-kill. Maybe add some effect that only works on Favored Enemies and additionally requires the ranger to be stealthed and the target to have full health or even be completely out of combat (dunno if that would be possible to implement - not talking about sneak-attackable like the prerequisite for Assassinate, but really completely unaware of the player - that would imo fit the stalker theme)

We don't have plans to add an insta-kill to Tier 5 here. However, we have heard that some of you still feel Head Shot is underpowered in its current incarnation, and we'll be taking a look at it.

I have to say that my understanding of Severlins statement is that Deepwood Sniper is a tree that you would take together with Tempest/Arcane Archer depending if you focus on ranged or melee. This does not have to mean that you should always want to take T5 of AA or Tempest. If the trees are balanced correctly this would be a hard choice.

I agree that the wording "Main DPS" tree was not that great but it won't help to rage and call it a filler tree ...

Ok, now some ideas for the tree. The main theme I see is sneak attack, favored enemies and healing.

Cores:
3: add +1 sneak attack die; Exposing Strike/Sniper Shot and 10 positive Spellpower are ok, but for core 3 it seems a bit lackluster
5: add +1 sneak attack die, Mark of the Hunted also removes immunity to Sneak attack; As it is I feel Core 5 is simply to weak

Tier 2:
Empathic Healing: Spell-like ability: You may expend a use of Animal Empathy to produce a positive energy conjuration that heals 1d6 hit points +1/2 per Ranger levels, every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. 2 AP, 1 Tier. This is a hard one. The current effect is very weak and does not scale at all. But simply adding a better spell would be weird since you can take it at level 2.
Faster Sneaking: 25/50/75% same as assassin

Tier 5:
Stalker Training: Rename "Deadly Stalker" - When Fighting against your favored enemies you add a +1 competence bonus to your critical multiplier. I don't like adding 10 Melee power again. That does little to help the tree. Competence means it does not stack with Swashbuckling or Holy Sword.
Improved Archer's Focus: Leave it as it was
Head Shot/Strike: +5(W) attack that is automatically considered a critical threat. On Sneak Attack: The enemy must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + Ranger Level + Dexterity bonus + Bonuses to Assassinate) or die instantly. Cooldown 15 second. In Epics instant kill abilities are not that overpowered since Orange named have Deathward. The DC would be okish with +6 from shadowdancer and an assassinate item. Assassins would still be better with Capstone bonus and Measure the foe.

Additionally the Doubleshot penalty after Manyshot has to be removed. That should be a no-brainer.

Some interesting ideas here, and I wanted to say that this is very well-laid-out and well-spoken set of feedback.

I think we should stress it more: please give rangers their animal companion.

It is the last chance we players have to make it happen.
So if you want rangers to have their well-deserved pet, make devs know, please /sign.

Personally, I'd love to see Rangers get Animal Companions as well, but it's just not in the cards for this pass, sorry.

If there are no additions to the crit range and multipliers for rangers, we are forced to continue playing our superior 14 or 15 pally, 5 or 6 ranger builds...

Said this before, but since it's come up a few times in this thread:

• Nobody's forcing anyone to play particular builds or styles! You are free to play what you want.
• Our goal is to create the building blocks for characters and playstyles, so various players can find one or more they enjoy playing.
• Some players believe that Top DPS is the only "good" way to make a character.
  
  • As a result, feel "forced" to take certain things when they are Top DPS, and "forced" to not take everything else when it isn't.
  • It's definitely one method, and that's what you like playing, great! But that's not the only style people play (not by a long shot), and it's certainly not the only playstyle we build enhancements, items, and abilities for.
  
  
• Play what you want, it's up to you.

Ok, I've seen the changes and read the thread so far. My turn for feedback.
*Feedback cut for space -SteelStar!*

This is another solid set of feedback with some suggestions we're considering. Thanks!

[Bennum]

Not sure how I can see Ranger becoming a pet class, hell not sure there are any pet classes in this game period. But if giving them a pet invalidates Druid then Druids invalidated Artificers?

They are both paid classes, ranger is ftp. That comparison is slightly invalid