U58 Preview 3: Dark Hunter Ranger Archetype

[Wahnsinnig]

Dark Hunter is a new Ranger Archetype with themes of Assassination, sneaking, hunting, trapmaking, scavenging, and throwing weapons.

And then you remove evasion and make it wear medium armour, so a lot of important abilities in tempest and deepwood stalker become inaccesible for it.

This is just ridiculous.

[SWCarter]

Dark Hunter is a new Ranger Archetype with themes of... throwing weapons.

Where does this tree shine for throwers above and beyond other trees?

[xaxaeb]

Where does this tree shine for throwers above and beyond other trees?

Well it's easy.... you make a DH, use DWS as your primary tree with VKF as secondary. And TA-DA you have more SA damage than a regular ranger..... maybe put a couple points into DH tree for more SA


That or by "throwing weapons" Kookie means "throwing bottles". So probably just a typo there....

[koriolis]

Where does this tree shine for throwers above and beyond other trees?

Especially when The Tier 5 Death Attack was moved from Stealth Ranged Assassinate Attack to Stealth Melee Assassinate Attack.
For a class that has obvious ranged perks, this would be a good differentiator for this archetype vs Rogue (and vs Arcane Archer).
With the limitations already on this - Favored Enemies only, less Sneak Attack Dice than a Rogue, no Evasion, etc. - this would be a cool thing going for this archetype.
And if you're hiding and shooting from afar, you don't really need Evasion, you really need to blend in and invisible.

Maybe it was a technical issue or maybe and there's still some Rogue/Monk Archetype being worked upon that clashes with this, but would like to know the rationale behind this change which arguably makes the whole Archetype more mundane.

[spifflove]

Ok my last stab at this (pun intended)
DH keeps evasion (or choice)
DH confined to rogue weapons or sneak attack does not apply
DH gets +1 crit threat and crit range to either puncturing or thrown weapons (or both)
DH gets a flask that has a no save disintegrate chance equal to 1% per ranger level and 100% against favored enemies.

[droid327]

Where does this tree shine for throwers above and beyond other trees?

It doesnt. It was apparently originally intended to, but they never figured out how to implement that, and they seem to have abandoned the idea now.

But just like "Cull the Weak" has been there since the first preview, the devs just dont have attention to even the most basic details like correcting outdated information in their patch notes. Its really disconcerting, even though I want to give the devs every benefit of the doubt, that they put out such a sloppy and unprofessional product, even after it was pointed out to them multiple times in both earlier previews.

[Elfshire]

As a current ranger with a splash of rogue, I look forward to taking this Archetype. I think the sneak attack dice make up for the lack of good Favored Enemy options, even if medium armor doesn't really cater to a trapsmith's party role. It's not ideal, but I'll still use it. But probably not without getting Evasion from elsewhere; there's just too many places in the game where the trapper has to bite the bullet and charge through hell to access a trap-box on the other side of no-mans-land.

The tree that the archetype comes with... ugh. So many problems. I'm sure a lot of this has been pointed out already, but I wanted to add my voice in case it makes it even a tiny bit more likely that the devs will take some of this criticism to heart.

• Has a Core feature that relies on Invisibility, but rangers have no access to the spell or any effect that grants it. Dark Hunter doesn't even offer UMD as a class skill.
• The mission statement of the archetype lists SIX different items. That's too many things to try to be good at. Of those, it's only mediocre at three (assassination, sneaking, trapmaking), and has no support at all for the others (hunting, scavenging, throwing weapons). I'm not even sure what "hunting" and "scavenging" look like in game terms, but it's definitely not represented here.
• Shoehorns in a companion that should really have its own tree. Beastmaster rangers are a thing in many editions of the game, but thematically it makes no sense with sneaky trapper. It's also a huge feature of the tree, despite NOT being one of the items in the list of prominent Archetype features above.

Deepwood Stalker seems like a much more natural fit for the Dark Hunter class than the new tree, honestly. The Dark Wolf should be reserved for a Beastmaster Archetype later.

[Mamalian]

This archetype is a trash fire.

[salmag]

Positives in this v3:

- Tying in Wilderness Lore.

That's about it.

Negatives:

- Too many to list. Please refer to v1 & v2 comments.

What I would change:

- Make Death Attack a Melee OR Range option.
- Make Evasion OR Medium Armor an option.
- Remove the UMD in Tier 3. It is of no use here since DH does not have UMD as a class skill. Make it something USEFUL.

Question:

Does Snap trap count as a Snare or Entangle so there is synergy with Core 20? If not, you can probably get rid of that in Tier 3 as well. Or make a Snare/Entangle SLA for tier 3.

That's about it for now. I know you'll not make any changes this late into it. This sucks because I was hoping to utilize this tree. Maybe I'll try it out if I have a Heart of Wood available. I doubt it though.

[HailBlazR]

How many people are in this hostile crowd? There are definitely a few who like the archetype, and the total number who don't like losing evasion seems a little larger, but how many total people actually said they thought it was a big mistake to take out evasion. I don't think the devs should change their design every time 5-10 people disagree on the internet. Sometimes they do, and other times they have a different plan.

This is an overly verbose - and awfully convenient - way of handwaving any valid criticism that people level at the devs. If you think that losing evasion is such a good thing, then by all means, argue your points.

But I could just as easily say "Look at these SSG apologists, they think the devs' farts smell like rainbows and sunshine; the devs shouldn't listen to these 5-10 people who agree with them on the internet." There's no real argument or discussion to be had there.

Especially when The Tier 5 Death Attack was moved from Stealth Ranged Assassinate Attack to Stealth Melee Assassinate Attack.
For a class that has obvious ranged perks, this would be a good differentiator for this archetype vs Rogue (and vs Arcane Archer).
With the limitations already on this - Favored Enemies only, less Sneak Attack Dice than a Rogue, no Evasion, etc. - this would be a cool thing going for this archetype.
And if you're hiding and shooting from afar, you don't really need Evasion, you really need to blend in and invisible.

Maybe it was a technical issue or maybe and there's still some Rogue/Monk Archetype being worked upon that clashes with this, but would like to know the rationale behind this change which arguably makes the whole Archetype more mundane.

The removal of ranged assassinate completely killed my interest in the tree. Even with ranged assassinate, it's a mostly uninteresting, and niche (at best) tree. Now, it's pretty much useless, just like Sacred Fist.

It might not bother me as much if SSG actually bothered to provide a reason for removing ranged assassinate. But it's their MO to never communicate with us on these things. They just make changes, don't listen to feedback, and expect us to accept it all. There are many reasons DDO why isn't bigger than it currently is; this is one of them. The business model certainly doesn't attract new players, and their implementation model certainly doesn't retain a lot of the veterans. Most of the good players I've met have long since quit.

[Azarak]

The pet should not be a wolf but rather Guenhwyvar's model or something like it because obviously the ranger needs a panther. Also the wolf is just not good anyways for a lot of reasons, if your going to have a pet you need a way to control it like with falconry for instance... although if it's slow like it was with falconry before that's not good either.

[Pretty_Good_Old_One]

As a current ranger with a splash of rogue, I look forward to taking this Archetype. I think the sneak attack dice make up for the lack of good Favored Enemy options, even if medium armor doesn't really cater to a trapsmith's party role. It's not ideal, but I'll still use it. But probably not without getting Evasion from elsewhere; there's just too many places in the game where the trapper has to bite the bullet and charge through hell to access a trap-box on the other side of no-mans-land.

The tree that the archetype comes with... ugh. So many problems. I'm sure a lot of this has been pointed out already, but I wanted to add my voice in case it makes it even a tiny bit more likely that the devs will take some of this criticism to heart.

• Has a Core feature that relies on Invisibility, but rangers have no access to the spell or any effect that grants it. Dark Hunter doesn't even offer UMD as a class skill.
• The mission statement of the archetype lists SIX different items. That's too many things to try to be good at. Of those, it's only mediocre at three (assassination, sneaking, trapmaking), and has no support at all for the others (hunting, scavenging, throwing weapons). I'm not even sure what "hunting" and "scavenging" look like in game terms, but it's definitely not represented here.
• Shoehorns in a companion that should really have its own tree. Beastmaster rangers are a thing in many editions of the game, but thematically it makes no sense with sneaky trapper. It's also a huge feature of the tree, despite NOT being one of the items in the list of prominent Archetype features above.

Deepwood Stalker seems like a much more natural fit for the Dark Hunter class than the new tree, honestly. The Dark Wolf should be reserved for a Beastmaster Archetype later.

I think you missed an enhancement. The tree has smoke bomb, which gives invisibility, as an SLA. It works with the enhancement that requires invisibility very easily.

[Pretty_Good_Old_One]

This is an overly verbose - and awfully convenient - way of handwaving any valid criticism that people level at the devs. If you think that losing evasion is such a good thing, then by all means, argue your points.

But I could just as easily say "Look at these SSG apologists, they think the devs' farts smell like rainbows and sunshine; the devs shouldn't listen to these 5-10 people who agree with them on the internet." There's no real argument or discussion to be had there.
.

In the chance that you really missed the context of my reply to a previous post, and this isn’t just trying to divide the world into people who have valid criticism on one side and biased fanboys on the other. My earlier post was a reply to a reply about whether the devs are ignoring all our feedback, and then to whether it is tone def to not make a change because as described by someone else “an angry mob was demanding it”

I am all for criticism. I would do a lot of characters differently. Personally, I would happily play a dark ranger with evasion. But I don’t think it shows the devs disrespecting all the players if they don’t change it. I just rather people would focus their criticism on the game rather than painting differences of opinion with how the devs are doing something as not listening to them and being tone def. By that definition , everyone posting here, myself included is ignoring feedback and tone def, because there are always times where people just disagree rather than one side is clearly right.

I totally respect someone even now posting - I really think the class needs evasion.
I think it is detrimental to the whole feedback progress though when people start saying that the devs not putting in evasion means they are ignoring everyone’s feedback, and there is not a point in giving feedback - that is not criticism, it is sour grapes. But if you think it smells like rainbows, more power to you.

[xaxaeb]

How many people are in this hostile crowd? There are definitely a few who like the archetype, and the total number who don't like losing evasion seems a little larger, but how many total people actually said they thought it was a big mistake to take out evasion. I don't think the devs should change their design every time 5-10 people disagree on the internet. Sometimes they do, and other times they have a different plan.

What else are they going to do, if they don't know their own game? Plus they aren't listening at all to any sort of criticism.
I mean "critical chance OR critical multi"? Sure it'll be plenty in slayer areas or up to maybe hard difficulty. But it automatically disqualifies the tree in higher difficulties.
Pet? Same thing, worthless above hard.
"Assassinate"? Thanks, I'll just play assassin to get a proper assassinate ability, not a gimped one.

On a different note, the level 12 core ability is really interesting in that it uses Wilderness Lore, not Ranger levels for sneak attack dice. Seems like there is some interesting multi-class synergy with Barbarian and Druid.

Seems like they took a decent ability and made it trash.... with a pure primal build (any mix of ranger, druid, barbarian) you get 20 wilderness lore feats. So that's 20 SA dice. Preview 2 had "double your SA dice". I've had 20+ SA dice on non-SA focused builds before. A good SA build is more around 40. So it's more like they screwed over multiclass synergy.
They've continuously made the class worse from preview to preview. At this point i'm expecting it to be even worse by the time it hits live.

[Xgya]

The removal of ranged assassinate completely killed my interest in the tree. Even with ranged assassinate, it's a mostly uninteresting, and niche (at best) tree. Now, it's pretty much useless, just like Sacred Fist.

I have to disagree about Fist. While it's not the flashiest build around, it came with a theme and kept to it.
The theme is simple: "Punchy Paladin make Ki spells gooder". It works. It's not astounding, but it does the thing it wants to do.

Meanwhile, here is Dark Hunter's supposed theme

Dark Hunter is a new Ranger Archetype with themes of Assassination, sneaking, hunting, trapmaking, scavenging, and throwing weapons.

Assassination: It has it, to some lesser extent.
Sneaking: It wears medium armor.
Hunting: It can hunt animals. You can forget dragon hunting, it's just not on the list. Maybe having the dog kinda counts?
Trapmaking: It has the feat and a few enhancements. This is one of the few themes it has it actively sticks to, congrats.
Scavenging: I don't know what that would mean in DDO. Maybe the old chest blessing thing would count? Mark of Finding + Scavenging do seem to go hand in hand.
Throwing Weapons: Erm, no. It throws a smoke bomb, but elemental grenades are part of trapmaking.

In fact, if it DID hold to throwing weapons, it'd be interesting.
You'd have a good reason to remove Arcane Archer, since that's a Bow thing.
Remove Tempest too while you're there.

Want the Assassinate? Keep it ranged, make it work like Falconry, but with a big scary black wolf pouncing from the enemy's shadow, biting its head off and waiting to find a new opening and a new throat. So it's a Ranged Assassinate, but with a small delay between the attack and the target's death. Pet wolf still there, but no longer a target or potential liability.

I read the tree. I tried it out. I STILL don't know what it's meant to do besides extra sneak die for my Ranger/Rogue splits.
I went in and asked myself what this build does better or even different from a current Ranger/Rogue split.
It has a pet. It saves on a few skill points. I somehow don't think this is what we should expect from an Archetype.

[Pretty_Good_Old_One]

I have to disagree about Fist. While it's not the flashiest build around, it came with a theme and kept to it.
The theme is simple: "Punchy Paladin make Ki spells gooder". It works. It's not astounding, but it does the thing it wants to do.

Meanwhile, here is Dark Hunter's supposed theme


Assassination: It has it, to some lesser extent.
Sneaking: It wears medium armor.
Hunting: It can hunt animals. You can forget dragon hunting, it's just not on the list. Maybe having the dog kinda counts?
Trapmaking: It has the feat and a few enhancements. This is one of the few themes it has it actively sticks to, congrats.
Scavenging: I don't know what that would mean in DDO. Maybe the old chest blessing thing would count? Mark of Finding + Scavenging do seem to go hand in hand.
Throwing Weapons: Erm, no. It throws a smoke bomb, but elemental grenades are part of trapmaking.

In fact, if it DID hold to throwing weapons, it'd be interesting.
You'd have a good reason to remove Arcane Archer, since that's a Bow thing.
Remove Tempest too while you're there.

Want the Assassinate? Keep it ranged, make it work like Falconry, but with a big scary black wolf pouncing from the enemy's shadow, biting its head off and waiting to find a new opening and a new throat. So it's a Ranged Assassinate, but with a small delay between the attack and the target's death. Pet wolf still there, but no longer a target or potential liability.

I read the tree. I tried it out. I STILL don't know what it's meant to do besides extra sneak die for my Ranger/Rogue splits.
I went in and asked myself what this build does better or even different from a current Ranger/Rogue split.
It has a pet. It saves on a few skill points. I somehow don't think this is what we should expect from an Archetype.

Removing tempest as well is really interesting. What about replacing Tempest with Vile Chemist? It builds on both imbue dice and thrown weapons. Maybe allow reactions, but do not give additional alchemist spells - just the SLAs in the tree, the SLA in DH, and the curative admixture spells already there. It would be a good dagger/dart thrower, with a lot of sneak, imbue, and doubleshot.

[spifflove]

In the chance that you really missed the context of my reply to a previous post, and this isn’t just trying to divide the world into people who have valid criticism on one side and biased fanboys on the other. My earlier post was a reply to a reply about whether the devs are ignoring all our feedback, and then to whether it is tone def to not make a change because as described by someone else “an angry mob was demanding it”

I am all for criticism. I would do a lot of characters differently. Personally, I would happily play a dark ranger with evasion. But I don’t think it shows the devs disrespecting all the players if they don’t change it. I just rather people would focus their criticism on the game rather than painting differences of opinion with how the devs are doing something as not listening to them and being tone def. By that definition , everyone posting here, myself included is ignoring feedback and tone def, because there are always times where people just disagree rather than one side is clearly right.

I totally respect someone even now posting - I really think the class needs evasion.
I think it is detrimental to the whole feedback progress though when people start saying that the devs not putting in evasion means they are ignoring everyone’s feedback, and there is not a point in giving feedback - that is not criticism, it is sour grapes. But if you think it smells like rainbows, more power to you.

Actually you missed not only the previous post but the previous thread. If you had read iteration 2 you would not have even questioned that there was (and by the responses to your posts still is) an angry mob.

Apparently you cannot read the room.

Finally, ad hominem attacks are not argument. And that’s all you did was make ad hominem attacks and chose to ignore the solutions that I offered in a prior post. You authored discord I authored solutions.

[amessi1]

[*]Death Attack: Stealth Melee Assassinate Attack: On Sneak Attack: Attempt to Assassinate a foe before you. If it is an enemy type that a Dark Hunter could have as a Favored Enemy (Vermin, Elves, Aberrations, Animals, Humanoids, and Monstrous Humanoids) then you attempt to snuff out its life, killing it instantly unless it makes a Fortitude save vs Death (DC 10 + Ranger Level + highest of Dex, Int, or Wis Mod + Assassinate bonuses). If it is a different enemy type, or it makes its Fortitude save, you instead mortally wound it, lowering its Physical and Magical Resistance rating by 10 and dealing an extra 1d20 Bleed damage per character level.

I think what is confusing folks is the first use of the word Assassinate in the sentence above. Plus in kind buries the debuff...maybe:

Stealth Melee Attack: On Sneak Attack attempt to Assassinate a foe if it is an enemy type that a Dark Hunter could have as a Favored Enemy (Vermin, Elves, Aberrations, Animals, Humanoids, and Monstrous Humanoids), killing it instantly unless it makes a Fortitude save vs Death (DC 10 + Ranger Level + highest of Dex, Int, or Wis Mod + Assassinate bonuses). If it is a different enemy type or it makes its Fortitude save, you instead mortally wound it, lowering its Physical and Magical Resistance rating by 10 and dealing an extra 1d20 Bleed damage per character level.

And maybe Death Attack could be Vermin Slayer, Pest Control, Cootie Cutter, Wrath of Darkness, Black Death, Hunter's Prey

[Pretty_Good_Old_One]

Actually you missed not only the previous post but the previous thread. If you had read iteration 2 you would not have even questioned that there was (and by the responses to your posts still is) an angry mob.

Apparently you cannot read the room.

Finally, ad hominem attacks are not argument. And that’s all you did was make ad hominem attacks and chose to ignore the solutions that I offered in a prior post. You authored discord I authored solutions.

Thanks for the response, and I respect your point of view. We are talking at cross purposes. Both of us have now spoken out as what we believe are ad hominem attacks, and I don't see this going anywhere but in circles. If you don't agree with me that there is a significant component of ad hominem attacks against the devs in and around the posts I responded to, I can see how anything I would say about it would appear to be trying to undermine those both arguing for change and exposing that the devs are doing something wrong (ignoring, tone deaf) by not making the change.

I could very well be wrong and what I see as ad hominem attacks against the devs are justified, so I won't continue the loop of rebuttal, with each of us seeing progressive attacks and misrepresentations in the explanations. Right or wrong, you don't need the acrimony and neither do I.

Enjoy the game and keep pushing for what you think will make it better.

[Drinkfist]

I love this. I love that dog with nothing is hidden. I love trapfinding. I love everything about this archetype. New favorite class gonna be going right out the door with it in the next HC. You have no idea how much I wanted a ranger with a leveling pet. I have so many build ideas. Every one of these weaknesses are so easy to fix. I am super excited. Lay it on me.