U58 Preview 2: Dark Hunter Ranger Archetype

[Assassination]

Forgive me, maybe I'm missing something... but it seems like what you are saying boils down into the only real value of DH is getting ranger levels with ranger feats and rogue skills for splashing and to more or less ignore the DH tree? Am I correct? At which point, if you are not bothering with the tree at all, if its entirely irrelevant to any build you plan to make with DH... doesn't that say something about the relative usefulness and worth of the tree itself?

Forgive me, but I believe that implies this tree is useless in it's entirety... Goodness. I don't see anything in this tree I would want in my tempest builds. Maybe one sneak attack die extra? It's an awful tree. I hate to say "a slap in the face" to melee, but yeah it is.

[Dandonk]

Forgive me, but I believe that implies this tree is useless in it's entirety... Goodness. I don't see anything in this tree I would want in my tempest builds. Maybe one sneak attack die extra? It's an awful tree. I hate to say "a slap in the face" to melee, but yeah it is.

Yeah. The Dark Hunter class features are fine. The enhancement tree, though, I'd never use.

[Lotoc]

Based on some reading this tree feels more like it should be a universal tree than an Archetype of any particular class:

https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes...arkHunter.html

https://dndtools.net/classes/dark-hunter/

Both of these show this as having no definitive weapon and armor proficiencies.

I mean its a prestige class, pretty much all of the archetypes (and class enhancement trees) are based on prestige classes.
Sacred fist, Acolyte of the Skin, Tenebrous Apostate (Dark Apostate), Stormsinger and so on are all presfige classes that don't grant weapon proficiencies and in some cases requiring proficiences in order to take a level.

[Aelonwy]

Forgive me, but I believe that implies this tree is useless in it's entirety... Goodness. I don't see anything in this tree I would want in my tempest builds. Maybe one sneak attack die extra? It's an awful tree. I hate to say "a slap in the face" to melee, but yeah it is.

I wasn't saying that I felt otherwise only summarizing or trying to summarize the poster I quoted and also trying to point out that if the enhancement tree isn't worthy to use that is a big glaring sign of a problem with the archetype as a whole. Because they are REMOVING a whole heck of a lot of class features, a host of favored enemy feats, evasion, and replacing them with access to this tree, 2 skills, and med armor prof that isn't supported anywhere else from this class or its other trees.

[Coffey]

Its been a week since preview 2 and they dont do previews during the weekends. Thats a lot of time to make the necessary changes to make this tree at least half palatable before preview 3.

[unbongwah]

So far I feel like the main problem with Dark Hunter is a lack of focus. All of the other Archetypes have clearly defined goals which are easily summarized.

Stormsinger? Evocation caster bard with sonic, electric, and cold spells.
Sacred Fist? Unarmed paladin DPS-tank with Radiant Servant for uhh reasons.
Dark Apostate? Shadow-form Necro-focused melee/caster hybrid.
Blightcaster? Druid specializing in acid and poison damage instead of elemental forms.
Acolyte of the Skin? Fiend warlock focused on close-range attacks.

Now we can argue whether these were good ideas and how well they've been implemented and if they fit into the current meta. But it's obvious what the intention behind each Archetype is and you can see how their specific trees are supposed to feed into that core concept.

Dark Hunter feels like it started with the premise of "trapper ranger" but didn't quite know where to go from there. So they just threw a bunch of stuff into the tree; and a lot of it feels like it's at cross purposes with itself, which if anything got worse in this preview than the first one.

• It finally gives rangers a pet with a lot of Enhancements for it; but does nothing to buff pets in general to keep up with power creep.
• There's a few DEX-based Mechanic-style Bombs and an implied reliance on stealth; but it takes away a core feature of most DEX classes (Evasion) and doesn't do enough to support medium armor instead.
• It gets an instakill which is worse than Assassinate (DC calc is the same but works on only a narrow subset of enemies), rendering it a niche ability at best.
• The first preview gave its tier-5 a +2 critical multiplier which opened up some new build possibilities as an alternative to Frenzied Berserker (the only other source of +2x crits); now it's been nerfed to +1 crit multiplier, it's much less interesting, because everyone already gets a +1 crit multiplier from somewhere.

[Coffey]

I thought a +2 Crit Multi to Piercing damage would be great to bolster the use of Rapiers to top tier damage and give Daggers near the same crit profile as the Assassin tree. The +2 Crit was applying to all weapons but must not have been WAI in Preview 1.

They could make it Core 12 instead of Tier 5 so it works with Tempests tier 5. Or +1 in Core 12 and an additional +1 in Core 18.

And if its supposed to be a stealth class then 10% Movement speed is necessary.

[Scrag]

I thought a +2 Crit Multi to Piercing damage would be great to bolster the use of Rapiers to top tier damage and give Daggers near the same crit profile as the Assassin tree. The +2 Crit was applying to all weapons but must not have been WAI in Preview 1.

They could make it Core 12 instead of Tier 5 so it works with Tempests tier 5. Or +1 in Core 12 and an additional +1 in Core 18.

And if its supposed to be a stealth class then 10% Movement speed is necessary.

+2 crit multiplier with bows would be nice too! I have been finding lately that I really really like moving faster than a snail, so count me in for 10% move speed too!

[droid327]

Dark Hunter feels like it started with the premise of "trapper ranger" but didn't quite know where to go from there. So they just threw a bunch of stuff into the tree; and a lot of it feels like it's at cross purposes with itself, which if anything got worse in this preview than the first one.

Yeah, it needs either a definitional ability, or some core mechanic that its designed around. The semi-assassinate obviously isnt it.

I get the feeling they're trying to make this the Drizzt build without actually saying its the Drizzt build, too, which is further muddying the waters. Something something stealth, something something Underdark.

If they want to make "attack from stealth" the mechanic, they need to reduce the CD on the out-of-stealth buffs so that you can actually use it to open every fight...without nerfing it to the point you wouldnt WANT to - I know how you like to play, devs :P Having a once-a-minute-for-a-few-seconds ability isnt something that will make people want to spec into the tree. Tying buffs to becoming Invis could be some interesting synergies with things like Flicker in Warchanter or Refraction in Feydark, and Invis SLA for Archmage - but again, cant be on minute-long CDs

I think I'd rather see them make Blind the feature mechanic for the tree, though, with various bonuses vs Blind targets (ie build on what the capstone does). I think that'd be an interesting playstyle that opens up other synergies, particularly since that enables Sneaks, and dovetails better into the flow of combat.

[Coffey]

+2 crit multiplier with bows would be nice too! I have been finding lately that I really really like moving faster than a snail, so count me in for 10% move speed too!

The running speed is really nice to have. My Tempest Trap monkey takes a level of Barbarian for the 10% movement speed early on and it feels great!

I hope they make the Wolf as durable as the Pale Master Skele with better damage too.

Im not interested in the Instakill though. The tree needs something like 30 melee and ranged power with 30% DS to make me consider using tier 5. Could add DoD to the DH Tier 5 so its more versatile.

[Assassination]

I wasn't saying that I felt otherwise only summarizing or trying to summarize the poster I quoted and also trying to point out that if the enhancement tree isn't worthy to use that is a big glaring sign of a problem with the archetype as a whole. Because they are REMOVING a whole heck of a lot of class features, a host of favored enemy feats, evasion, and replacing them with access to this tree, 2 skills, and med armor prof that isn't supported anywhere else from this class or its other trees.

I completely agree with you. Tree is a huge problem. Put something useful in it please. Losing evasion is really wierd for a character that is apparently more sneaky and stealthy than a normal ranger. Ranger Trainer, "Hey we know you want to be stealthy and such, try this medium armor on for size... nice it's noisy and heavy, just what you needed".... Ranger to trainer, "Should I try to get out of the way of some of these incoming attacks?".... Trainer, "Nah, just stand there and take it...you're training as a Tanky Ranger now... er wait, that's dark hunter"

Even the ranger trainer is confused with this nonsense.

[Diracorvus]

I don't think every class and archetype needs to be viable for min-maxing. I don't think that's even possible without extreme homogenization of all classes that would make the game very boring. You can already blast through the highest difficulties in minutes, that niche is filled.
People here also said that Dark Apostate would be useless and yet I see a lot of people running around in shadow shroud.

[Scrag]

I don't think every class and archetype needs to be viable for min-maxing. I don't think that's even possible without extreme homogenization of all classes that would make the game very boring. You can already blast through the highest difficulties in minutes, that niche is filled.
People here also said that Dark Apostate would be useless and yet I see a lot of people running around in shadow shroud.

I have a melee dark apostate with tons of dice. 2 fighter, itwf, picking up power attack, cleave, and great cleave as my next three feats. The imbue grant that curses things on critical is pretty interesting when you hit a bunch of things and then prayer for aoe damage for near zero cost. It is comparable damage to holy smite with my spellpower, believe it or not. And its pretty lazy.

That being said, for me the dark hunter is about being flexible. Lots of bow feats, lots of melee feats, TRAPPING! (I hate traps). But there is nothing in the tree that looks good. I end up feeling like _every other tree is better_. Under no build recommendation or ideas I can pull together do I ever actually take any from the u2 tree.

It would be nice not to go horizon walker, or dws + falconry, or really anything else, because this tree just stinks. And as a noob returner, being able to say that is kinda sad.

[neain2008]

Not really. Next life for my (currently raid-parked) thrower will certainly pick DH for it's 6 ranger levels for the couple extra sneak dice, but I won't be in a hurry to do so. That's probably a good thing. Anything that incites an "omg must reroll right now!" reaction is almost certainly too OP.

This idea is actually wrong and here is why.

If you are playing a niche build that this does better (Kinda the 'reason' for the archetypes so that they can make alternate things that might not be Meta or end game OP, but will fill some niche that the devs see), then 100% it should be an "OMG must reroll right now", but only for that specific niche.

What it shouldn't do, is make everyone that looks at the tree, wonder why the tree exists or how it can be used well.