Ranger: Tempest Changes

[Zzevel]

/signed

Please reduce the cost of dance of death to 1/1/1 per tier devs ! It is very expensive currently.

I am having problems picking up the newer tier 5's otherwise.

A Thousand Cuts: Melee Dual Wielding Attack. Deals +1/+3/+5(W) damage. You gain +15/+30/+45 doublestrike, +15/30/45 Melee Power, 15 seconds. Cooldown: 90 seconds.


WHY?

You are potentially getting +5[W] AND also Doublestrike AND Melee Power...for 15 FREEKING seconds its not a one and done like most attack clicks... It should be expensive. Well worth the cost for the duration IMO (the only thing is the cooldown should be ~45 seconds as 90 is excessive as a tier 5)

[FranOhmsford]

Ok Devs, let's simplify it. You wanna know if the tree is good.

Ask yourself, would you play a pure 20 ranger instead of a pure paladin, barbarian, rogue or bard for dps? No? Than it's bad.

Would you play for dps a splashed ranger instead of a rogue/barbarian/bard/paladin? No? Than it's terrible.

The biggest issue is that the main advantage a Ranger had over either a Barbarian or Rogue {Self-Healing potential} has completely vanished!

So to make up for that Ranger needs massive buffs to it's DPS and Defensive potential!

Honestly Ranger was never a good Pure Build and it's good that the Devs are going top heavy on these trees this time around {6 Ranger Splash is still going to be highly desirable for Feats if nothing else!}.

[Jetrule]

Lvl 18 core. multi selector +1 crit range or multiplier on 1 handed slashing weapons. Capstone Multi selector to enhance crit multi or crit range by +1. This would be useful for hand axes, kukris, bastard swords, long swords, battle axes, dwarven war axes, kamas, khopeshes, and scimitars. The power level of these crit enhancements would not be superior to holy sword or barb critical rage or swashbuckling. Especially considering it would not be fully implemented except for lvl 20 rangers and has limited weapon uses. I would suggest the same thing for bows in arcane archer. And +1 crit multi added to the headshot attack of deep wood stalker.

Pandora's box is open on crits. don't close it for rangers.

[DevilYouKnow]

A Thousand Cuts: Melee Dual Wielding Attack. Deals +1/+3/+5(W) damage. You gain +15/+30/+45 doublestrike, +15/30/45 Melee Power, 15 seconds. Cooldown: 90 seconds.


WHY?

You are potentially getting +5[W] AND also Doublestrike AND Melee Power...for 10 FREEKING seconds its not a one and done like most attack clicks... It should be expensive. Well worth the cost for the duration IMO (the only thing is the cooldown should be ~45 seconds as 90 is excessive as a tier 5)

Really ? How often will you encouter multiple mobs at the same time, while inside a pug or raid ?

It isn't useful for boss fights either. It is way too expensive, due to being only situationally wothwhile by itself.

Dance of death should be reduced to 1/1/1 per tier. I won't have enough ap for the other tier 5 abilities otherwise.

[Xionanx]

I see nothing in the Tempest tree that would make me consider even splashing a Ranger for TWF'ing or considering Ranger as my primary class for a Melee build.

So far the Ranger Pass:

DWS = Meh..
Tempest = Why Bother.. play a Bard/Fighter/Barb/Pally.. anything else that does melee 10x better and is more survivable due to better armor, self healing, etc.

Honestly, I haven't cared about rangers for melee for so long... the only thing I care about ranger for is the possibility of a good bow user, and they haven't been that in a long time either. I wish I had some better feedback for the tempest tree, I really do, but when I look at it and the DWS tree.. and then remember the other classes and their tree's.. all I can do is think, "meh" I'll make a barb if I want to dual wield, and I'll make it INT based for harper enhancements.. and I'll be better then any pure tempest ranger every day of the week.

Does anyone look at the new Tempest/DWS and think "man.. that will make a good build to replace my TWF'ing (rogue/pally/barb/monk/etc)". I really want to know!

Are there some amazing changes coming to "Bows" in the form of flat attack speed increases, improvements to manyshot, etc; Because at this point I am loosing hope for AA to be good.

[Jiirix]

Would it be possible to add "You don't auto-fail a reflex save on a one" to the tempest capstone? Rangers don't get improved evasion and this would be a unique littel bonus for pure melee rangers. Swshbuckler got evasion in their capstone, just saying..

[Qhualor]

Ok Devs, let's simplify it. You wanna know if the tree is good.

Ask yourself, would you play a pure 20 ranger instead of a pure paladin, barbarian, rogue or bard for dps? No? Than it's bad.

Would you play for dps a splashed ranger instead of a rogue/barbarian/bard/paladin? No? Than it's terrible.

your min/max goggles are on.

[Vargouille]

Would it be possible to add "You don't auto-fail a reflex save on a one" to the tempest capstone? Rangers don't get improved evasion and this would be a unique littel bonus for pure melee rangers.

Tier 5: Evasive Dance: Improves your Evasion ability so on a failed Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, you only take 85/70/50% damage.

Tempests absolutely get Improved Evasion.

[Lorianus]

Dance of death should be reduced to 1/1/1 per tier. I won't have enough ap for the other tier 5 abilities otherwise.

That is very simple logic. Shouldn't be all enhancement been reduced to one AP then? I am sure we could find one player for every enhancement who would take it at one AP per tier, but not two.

[FestusHood]

Elaborate parry probably needs to add your dex score rather than modifier. Right now it just looks like an inferior version of uncanny dodge, which rogues and barbs get completely free. Maybe just change it to add uncanny dodge instead.

[Jiirix]

Tier 5: Evasive Dance: Improves your Evasion ability so on a failed Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, you only take 85/70/50% damage.

Tempests absolutely get Improved Evasion.

I see, you only listed the enhancements that will change. My ranger has 4 lives all as a TWF tempest (none of them pure), but I didn't remember about Evasive Dance. Maybe that is because I parked him at 20 for over a year and played other classes. Good we get a pass now, I am looking forward to having fun in epic levels dualwielding dwarfen axes again.

[DevilYouKnow]

That is very simple logic. Shouldn't be all enhancement been reduced to one AP then? I am sure we could find one player for every enhancement who would take it at one AP per tier, but not two.

Then tell me why you think it should be so expensive ? And don't get me started with powercreep.

That isn't a reason at all.

[DevilYouKnow]

Tier 5: Evasive Dance: Improves your Evasion ability so on a failed Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, you only take 85/70/50% damage.

Tempests absolutely get Improved Evasion.

Varg, would you mind reducing the tier 5 ability dance of death to 1 AP per tier ?

It seems a bit expensive for what it does.

[Zzevel]

Really ? How often will you encouter multiple mobs at the same time, while inside a pug or raid ?

It isn't useful for boss fights either. It is way too expensive, due to being only situationally wothwhile by itself.

Dance of death should be reduced to 1/1/1 per tier. I won't have enough ap for the other tier 5 abilities otherwise.

All the time, not sure what quest you are running that you only get one mob at a time... And how could you believe this kind of damage in a boss fight couldn't be good... it is 5[W], 45 double strike and 45 melee power FOR 15 SECONDS, what do you only get 1 swing in that time? If you add this as a Barbarian or Paladin option today could you immaging the uproar? Its good, heck it's an awesome DPS improvement for this (or ANY) class. As for the price.. choices are good, you shouldn't have the ability to choose all of the good stuff in every tree.

This is a good thing and should be kept expensive every option should not be the best option every time. This option is a GREAT alternative.

[Grailhawk]

All the time, not sure what quest you are running that you only get one mob at a time... And how could you believe this kind of damage in a boss fight couldn't be good... it is 5[W], 45 double strike and 45 melee power FOR 15 SECONDS, what do you only get 1 swing in that time? If you add this as a Barbarian or Paladin option today could you immaging the uproar? Its good, heck it's an awesome DPS improvement for this (or ANY) class. As for the price.. choices are good, you shouldn't have the ability to choose all of the good stuff in every tree.

This is a good thing and should be kept expensive every option should not be the best option every time. This option is a GREAT alternative.

Hes not talking about A Thousand Cuts.

[DevilYouKnow]

All the time, not sure what quest you are running that you only get one mob at a time... And how could you believe this kind of damage in a boss fight couldn't be good... it is 5[W], 45 double strike and 45 melee power FOR 15 SECONDS, what do you only get 1 swing in that time? If you add this as a Barbarian or Paladin option today could you immaging the uproar? Its good, heck it's an awesome DPS improvement for this (or ANY) class. As for the price.. choices are good, you shouldn't have the ability to choose all of the good stuff in every tree.

This is a good thing and should be kept expensive every option should not be the best option every time. This option is a GREAT alternative.

What are you even talking about, good sir ? I am refering to the tier 5 dance of death ability.

Dance of Death: Melee Dual Wielding Attack: Deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage (2/2/2). Your basic attacks when dual wielding strike 2/3/4 targets per swing instead of one for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 15 seconds).

And so what if everyone is number one ? Why does that bother you ? You prefer being number three, but don't want anyone else choosing otherwise ? This makes no sense at all.

[Zzevel]

Hes not talking about A Thousand Cuts.

What are you even talking about, good sir ? I am refering to the tier 5 dance of death ability.

Dance of Death: Melee Dual Wielding Attack: Deals +1/+3/+5[W] damage (2/2/2). Your basic attacks when dual wielding strike 2/3/4 targets per swing instead of one for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 15 seconds).

Ah truth, I did not put 2 and 8 together when i saw your response on "Deals +1/+3/+5[W]" that it cost too much I saw it as you were talking about A Thousand Cuts... my bad!

[blerkington]

Given that Stalker does not have a Crit extension and Tempest does not have a Crit extension is it save to assume the design decision to leave Rangers as the only melee class with out a Crit extension of some kind has been made and is final?

Barbarian = Critical Rage, Death Frenzy (19-20 +1)
Fighter = Keen Edge
Paladins = Holy Sword
Monks = Earth Stance (19-20 +1), Ninja Mastery, Staff Spec, Violence Begets Violence (not very good but its something)
Rogues = Knife spec, Staff Spec
Bards = Swashbuckler, Exploit Weakness
Ranger = Nothing

Hi,

So this is the DPS tree for melee rangers, is it? It seems like a bad joke to me.

The developers have already made a serious mistake with turning bard, paladin, rogue and barbarian into munchkin classes. Despite all of the warnings that were given, they did it once, twice, thrice, no, count it, FOUR TIMES IN A ROW.

So why make a second, even more serious mistake by stopping halfway? You're too far down the road of boosting classes to stop now, unless you want to entrench a first rate/second rate class division for years to come. And it will be years to come, give the pace at which this exercise is proceeding. When is the next ranger pass scheduled for, I wonder?

I'll say it again; unless you plan on busting out the nerf bat and taking quite a few swings with it at those classes you already did, these 'improvements' are just a big waste of everyone's time. There is just no excuse for leaving rangers, or for that matter any other class, so far behind.

No amount of 'not every class needs to do DPS' rationalisation is going to cut it for this lazy and substandard retooling of rangers, especially when support classes (cough cough, bard) have already been handed such massive damage and survivability increases. And it's not like rangers can contribute a whole lot to a party besides killing things, is it?

You've blown it, and now you need to work on fixing it. Not copping out halfway. Everyone makes mistakes, and people will be glad if you make a conscientious effort to repair the damage that has been done. That would be so much better rather than damaging the game further because you are too proud to admit your mistakes, so now level the playing field, and start thinking about how you're going to rebalance content afterwards.

Thanks.

[PsychoBlonde]

I like the electric damage, that seems kinda neat and flavor-y, but I'd like to see the 2nd rank, instead of adding more of the same, add a Slicing Winds style effect and maybe immunity to air elemental knockdown instead of further electrical resist? Tempest air elemental immunity would be VERY flavor-y and extremely unique. Elaborate parry seems like they just ought to get Uncanny Dodge/Improved Uncanny Dodge and be done with it. It basically does the same thing or almost. Improved Uncanny Dodge is much cooler than many people seem to realize.

I'd like to see some fort penetration somewhere in this tree, as well. That's something you tend to need when you have lots of fast hits as opposed to slower BIG hits, in my experience. The former benefits more from getting lots of crits off while the latter aims more toward maximizing the basic damage of each individual hit. This would be a different direction to go from just "bigger crit multiplier".

Something that might also be cool would be to add an effect where every time you hit a foe they get stacks of a DoT ability that does slashing damage to them and slows them down. So you can run in, hithithithithithit run away (which is basically how melee rangers work anyway), hithithithit another enemy, pretty soon all the enemies are all chewed up and taking damage all the time and then they die.

I'd like to see something that every point of Natural Armor you have adds to your PRR/MRR.

I think the shield bonus from Shield of Whirling steel needs to start at +4 (equivalent to the Shield spell) and go up by +2/core from there. Otherwise it's not even really equivalent to a first level spell. :P

Any consideration for making Tempest very slash-focused? Give them X/slash DR, give them free improved crit slashing, weapon focus slashing, weapon specialization slashing, stuff like that, maybe?

[Arkai]

My thoughts on this: if those are the changes for Tempest tree, you can just spare the effort because nobody is gonna use it after all. This is not what the game has turned about.

I love Tempests and played like 6 ePL with a pure 20 ranger using random scimitars from eveningstar challenges. I love flavour, and I didn't care the absolutely lack of GOOD named scimitars (where's the CITW one? Or maybe the one from MOD or FOT, etc?), but If we are getting a pass, we need some reason to TR into a ranger again, and this tree is not a good one.

Please, add scimitar mastery (range, multipliers) at 18 or 20.