U58 Preview 3: Dark Hunter Ranger Archetype

[Seph1roth5]

Most of these archetypes remind me of newbies (particularly in the discord) asking people if they should multiclass wizard with cleric because they want some offensive spells, and maybe throw in druid for a pet. Everyone tries to tell them it's a super bad idea. Not un-meta, not sub-optimal, but BAD, and they go "Well I'm going to do it anyway because I like the theme."

I liked stormsinger, and blightcaster looks interesting (tentatively), but all the others look like hot messes.

[Firebreed]

I miss the times when Devs used to actually replay posts in the Lamannia forums =(, there are almost no conversations this the past 3 preview

We are too hostile, myself included. The problem is, we are like that because the devs don't communicate - it's all ouroboric. The real problem behind this and similar issues is simple: time & money. They need more time & money, and I honestly wish they eventually find both.

[Bjond]

I would disagree. Evasion is not everything and to be honest having medium armor makes tempest more attractive

I kinda agree about evasion, but only "kinda". I just ran a trapper without evasion and it was rather annoying until L26 when I could get it via SD:3. It wasn't exactly impossible to trap, but the VON corridor was particularly irritating when I'm used to just strolling through and instead had to have someone come heal me.

I liked seeing the various changes made to help support a trapper in medium armor, but really it's flavor at a cost. Anyone that checks the math will use Light over Medium. Access to Evasion isn't the draw. It's that Light has more mitigation. Evasion is just the cherry on top.

IMHO, I would like to see Light, Medium, & Plate acquire "equal" mitigation in all respects for all damage types. That's how D&D worked. The mitigation imbalance in DDO is not a D&D thing, though Light needing more stats to "max" it's mitigation is very similar. That kind of change is hard to creep up on though. Much of DDO's game balance is tied to armor weight imbalance.

[Talan]

As has been mentioned, removing evasion seems odd for this archtype. On the new trapper archtype, do we dip Rogue 2 to take Evasion?... seems counter-intuitive to the purpose of the class.

However, if removal of evasion and pushing Medium Armour is maintained can we please ask for the class trees which are intended to work with this archtype to also function with Medium Armour.

I believe these are:

In Deepwood Stalker - Survivalist I, II and III - not sure if this is an actual issue or just a tool tip issue?

In Tempest - Tier 2: Improved Dodge, Tier 3: Improved Mobility, Tier 4: Elaborate Parry, Capstone: Dervish

Also, please carefully consider wolf survivability at least during Elite/ R1 play; which will primarily come down to the ease of healing it during combat whilst not nerfing the Ranger's own DPS or survivability (which will be an issue if seeking to target healing flasks on the wolf).

I'm very interested in the flavour of this archtype, but the mechanics ranger class need to be their to support it.

[kiaoto]

Postered wrote"The removal of ranged assassinate completely killed my interest in the tree. " Very well said. I rather go assassin than this tree.

[xaxaeb]

We are too hostile, myself included. The problem is, we are like that because the devs don't communicate - it's all ouroboric. The real problem behind this and similar issues is simple: time & money. They need more time & money, and I honestly wish they eventually find both.

Well..... they did consciously decide to reduce their income by screwing over VIPs. And time is also their decision. I don't think anyone would've complained if we were getting archetypes in packs of 2, rather than 3. Or even 1 + base class rework, if the class is overdue.
I wish the devs all the best, but these are self-inflicted wounds.

[SocratesBastardSon]

Well..... they did consciously decide to reduce their income by screwing over VIPs. [ ...] but these are self-inflicted wounds.

It is remarkable how little the devs have interacted with the player base compared to the past. I haven't confirmed this for myself, but I read someone point out that Lynabel hasn't posted anything since November, and he was the most prolific respondent among the devs. It looks like a pattern.

I have no proof, but it's not hard to conclude that there was a conscious decision behind what looks like a deliberate absence. I quote xaxaeb not because I'm criticizing, the post is merely illustrative, namely, that the devs have made mistakes to which players are responding. Fair. I agree with his criticism. But isn't it also fair to remember that no one is perfect (I do not doubt that xaxaeb is aware of that basic fact; again, I'm not criticizing xaxaeb). More, it may be that devs have to make decisions for reasons they don't always, and for various reasons believe they cannot, share with the players. I like transparency, but having worked in public relations businesses I know that isn't always possible.

But really, I feel that may be beside the point. What I think is that the question oughtn't be whether the devs have made mistakes, but what we do in response to perceived mistakes. Anger? Abuse? Immediately accusing them of bad faith? Rudeness? THAT'S the right response? Someone making a mistake (as we view it) and that gives us license to lose our s&!t on the forum?

My guess, and I have no evidence for this other than my own interpretation, is that getting involved on the forums has become distracting, it unavoidably antagonizes a lot of people no matter what they say, and it therefore becomes a distraction from doing the actual work of a developer. Frankly, I couldn't understand why they didn't do this sooner, given the way many people (not all, obviously) appear to have decided that the way they want to react when the devs do explain what they're doing is, well, to be obnoxious. This time around the devs have just dropped the material, presumably read (all? some?) what people write, but then keep exchanges with forum commenters to an absolute minimum.

I think it's too bad, I wish it were otherwise and I liked it when they were more engaged, but I gotta say, it strikes me as entirely rational.

[newmart]

Also, please carefully consider wolf survivability at least during Elite/ R1 play; which will primarily come down to the ease of healing it during combat whilst not nerfing the Ranger's own DPS or survivability (which will be an issue if seeking to target healing flasks on the wolf).

When using pets with all feats they are quite tanky. Primal avatar mantle gives them respectable damage (My skelly is able to tank and KILL the boss in Break in the ice Epic R1 completely alone). If a pet can kill a boss in r1 alone they are working.

I see 2 problems tough. Using primal is viable for all 3 casters that have pets, but to this ranger it's impossible. While it's ok u spend points getting stuff from primal, not using the lv30 pet discourages taking so many feats to improve summons, if u are only using a pet and a summon maybe. Then if u are not taking pet stuff, they really die too fast.

The second problem, while we can squeezy augment summoning and improved augmented summoning in the build, The legendary feat demands too much from all builds (lose dc and a lot of damage with spells from other legendary feats, imbue dices...) to make pets just a little tougher. This feat must be severely improved to justify this, at least giving some on hit dmg like primal mantle or imbue dices (that have synergy with this ranger pet.)

[Lotoc]

Well..... they did consciously decide to reduce their income by screwing over VIPs.

They screwed over VIPs by doing what exactly?
If your argument is the free quests code that was at least a time limited promotion, that currently makes people feel bad about starting the game without VIP subbing because buying quest packs that may be given away free again feels like a bad investment.
If your argument is by making the majority of classes and races free to play; that's why we had daily gold dice for the majority of 2023 as a time limited promotion.
If your argument is daily gold dice as a time limited promotion being a time limited promotion and ending after the limited time the promotion WE WERE TOLD the promotion would be going on for? Seriously they shouldn't have done the gold dice in the first place at this point, people are angrier that it ended than happy it was a thing for the most part of a year to begin with.

Overall the things VIP has lost have been a net gain for the playerbase, personally as someone who VIP subs and still VIP subbed that's fine with me, it means less instances of "Oh don't have that quest" or buying people guest passes.
Sure VIP could do with more value, at this point I mostly use it for elite+ opening on first life characters and the experience boost, personally I was expecting these archetypes to be paid but free to VIP. But I do not begrudge improvements for everyone as an expense to me.

[Dandonk]

They screwed over VIPs by doing what exactly?

VIP used to be access to all quests.

This year we will get:

U58 - quests FTP.

"Mini"-expansion - VIP will have to buy.

Droaam and raid update - free to those who have the content, I imagine.

An adventure pack in Q4.

So, 1/4 of the content will be something new that VIPs get for free. The rest* will be either free to all, or buy for all. That's not what VIP was. So yeah, VIP needs some value back since we now have gone a looooong way from being a general access pass to DDO.

*Depending on how you view Droaam and Raid update. Still less than half of this year's content, in any case.

[xaxaeb]

It is remarkable how little the devs have interacted with the player base compared to the past. I haven't confirmed this for myself, but I read someone point out that Lynabel hasn't posted anything since November, and he was the most prolific respondent among the devs. It looks like a pattern.

I have no proof, but it's not hard to conclude that there was a conscious decision behind what looks like a deliberate absence. I quote xaxaeb not because I'm criticizing, the post is merely illustrative, namely, that the devs have made mistakes to which players are responding. Fair. I agree with his criticism. But isn't it also fair to remember that no one is perfect (I do not doubt that xaxaeb is aware of that basic fact; again, I'm not criticizing xaxaeb). More, it may be that devs have to make decisions for reasons they don't always, and for various reasons believe they cannot, share with the players. I like transparency, but having worked in public relations businesses I know that isn't always possible.

But really, I feel that may be beside the point. What I think is that the question oughtn't be whether the devs have made mistakes, but what we do in response to perceived mistakes. Anger? Abuse? Immediately accusing them of bad faith? Rudeness? THAT'S the right response? Someone making a mistake (as we view it) and that gives us license to lose our s&!t on the forum?

My guess, and I have no evidence for this other than my own interpretation, is that getting involved on the forums has become distracting, it unavoidably antagonizes a lot of people no matter what they say, and it therefore becomes a distraction from doing the actual work of a developer. Frankly, I couldn't understand why they didn't do this sooner, given the way many people (not all, obviously) appear to have decided that the way they want to react when the devs do explain what they're doing is, well, to be obnoxious. This time around the devs have just dropped the material, presumably read (all? some?) what people write, but then keep exchanges with forum commenters to an absolute minimum.

I think it's too bad, I wish it were otherwise and I liked it when they were more engaged, but I gotta say, it strikes me as entirely rational.

It doesn't go to immediate anger and abuse. Most of the time people just roll with the ups and downs of the game. People usually start with trying to provide criticism in a polite manner. But that gets ignored.
The problem is when the overall trend is negative. So the "upset about X" slowly turns into "upset about X and Y" etc. And at some point the cup of negative emotions overflows. When they decided to go through stat squish at cap - I've grumbled about it w/o raising a storm on the forums. And took it as is. Even though it was unnecessary, not thought-through and poorly executed. Looking at you, +2 profane dc helmet at level 7, and +2 profane dc gear at level 29.
But after that we get hit with items that have a +0 bonus..... Great that they listened to criticism there and changed that bonus. But why do we even have to say anything about things like that? It should never cross anyone's mind to create a named item that has something like +0 enchantment DC (or whatever it was). It was one thing when we had +0 items from lootgen. That was a mistake. But a named item with +0 bonus is just spitting in our face.
Even more so, when they've clearly recognized the loss of value of VIPs a long time ago. And just kept ignoring the issue. I'm not going to bash too hard on something i get for free.... it's free. But when I'm paying for VIP, which lost its value - I have every right to be upset about it.

As I've said before here and in other threads, I do want the devs to succeed. I enjoy the game, I want to keep playing and enjoying it. But sometimes it just becomes too much.

They screwed over VIPs by doing what exactly?
If your argument is the free quests code that was at least a time limited promotion, that currently makes people feel bad about starting the game without VIP subbing because buying quest packs that may be given away free again feels like a bad investment.
If your argument is by making the majority of classes and races free to play; that's why we had daily gold dice for the majority of 2023 as a time limited promotion.
If your argument is daily gold dice as a time limited promotion being a time limited promotion and ending after the limited time the promotion WE WERE TOLD the promotion would be going on for? Seriously they shouldn't have done the gold dice in the first place at this point, people are angrier that it ended than happy it was a thing for the most part of a year to begin with.

Overall the things VIP has lost have been a net gain for the playerbase, personally as someone who VIP subs and still VIP subbed that's fine with me, it means less instances of "Oh don't have that quest" or buying people guest passes.
Sure VIP could do with more value, at this point I mostly use it for elite+ opening on first life characters and the experience boost, personally I was expecting these archetypes to be paid but free to VIP. But I do not begrudge improvements for everyone as an expense to me.

Love the free quests code.
Love majority of classes and races being free to play. Even though this dropped a couple weeks after I purchased some missing races/classes.
Love the massive sale they had for older expansions during covid.
All 3 were brilliant moves to try and get new blood into the game. A lot of people have friends who might be curious about the game, but are afraid to start, since they'd have to buy a lot of stuff to keep up.

The argument is that they stopped releasing "free for vip" content. Instead they switched to mini-expansions, which everyone has to pay for. I'm not saying that it's a bad business model. But then they need to either reduce the price of vip in proportion to the lost value, or give vips some other value.
And people aren't upset that gold rolls stopped. People are upset that we lost value from VIP and after an entire year all we get is "we've been talking last couple weeks". Why haven't they been trying to figure that out for the entire year that the issue has been known? We're not talking about technical stuff like lag. But just flesh out an idea. Talk to the players. The fact that Tolero acknowledged the loss of VIP bonuses was a good thing. The fact that they ignored the issue since then is the problem.
People are upset that there's a complete lack of communication. I mean just compare lammania gear threads from Lynnabel with what we got from Tolero. "Here's a thread, you guys figure out what the gear is"? It's tiny things like this that bring us to a boiling point.

I mean there's overall just so many things that people have been asking for. Reworks on some older enhancement trees, more wings colors, etc. But instead they seem to be rushing out new archetypes. They don't have to release them 3 at a time. Drop 1 or 2, but properly thought out and implemented. And this isn't even an SSG ailment, it's an overall IT problem. It's not always about "new features". Quite often what the consumer wants is a fix to all the tiny (and not so tiny) issues and inconveniences.


Either way, I think we're getting way off topic for the DH comments.

[SocratesBastardSon]

xaxaeb, I agree with 90+% of what you're saying. My point was pretty simple though. If some critical mass of players (whatever that may prove to be) feels authorized to abuse devs, whatever the reasons, then they shouldn't be surprised when the devs decide to longer make themselves available to be abused. That's all I'm saying. There are numerous benefits to a polite society, even if one of the costs is foregoing the pleasures of letting off steam in public.

[clagor]

I like playing Ranger18/Rouge1/Barbarian1 combo.

The replacement of evasion with medium armor seems also odd to me.
The whole class focusses/supports light armor with evasion, but not medium armor.
Please add at least a choice of evasion or medium armor!
(I know ED Shadow Dancer 3 has also evasion)

I always take 1 level of barbarian for the 10% run speed.
And still feeling always running behind the others (also with haste feat).
Especially when casters clear out mobs before i can reach melee range.
Please also add in the new enhancement tree somewhere a 10% speed bonus!
(I think someone in light armor should have more speed as in medium or even heavy armor)

The black wolf is nice, but not so though like the skelly from pale master in an auto heal aura.
Can you add also a regeneration ability to the black wolf for some auto heal in between?

With the new enhancement tree, I am currently not clear if and how I want to change my current Tempest 46 / Deepwood 24 / Horizon Walker 12 combo...

[Oliphant]

Forcing cloth armor and keeping evasion would make more sense.

[Saekee]

i would bring back the stealth ranged assassinate.

It is not OP considering that is does not work on red names and many mob types, and for game balance, sorcs just blow everything up quickly and easily, right? And look at swash coup de grace DCs for example.

If you wish to reduce its effectiveness, make it on mobs that do not have aggro on you. So you need to bluff them or lose it somehow. That was the old assassinate rule that was broken for assassins--just use it here. It forces a slower playstyle over zerging and would be incredibly fun TBH.

An assassin can crouch down and then assassinate a charging armored opponent with a shield in front of them, alert to shenanigans.

[Voxreal]

This is the example of they are going to do what ever they want with out looking at the changes they brought to the game that make this almost unplayable. This will never be fun or viable in endgame content and it is because they have always forgone the rangers specialization in every way possible. The way to change it would require almost a complete rewrite of the class but they should do it and make DWS and this enhancement tree with multi selectors to allow for ranged or melee specialization. It would make the ranger class and these enhancements so much better in that it would at 1st level choose between ranged, melee and pet let them choose then add the proper feats at set levels just let them pick two at 1st. you can then make the enhancement trees with the mutli selectors where needed, this would prevent a lot of what you are trying to prevent i assume.

In closing please do not release this hold off and make it something better.

[Mamalian]

[QUOTE=Saekee;6570857]i would bring back the stealth ranged assassinate./QUOTE]

Hunt's end + Sniper shot. What else you need?

[Saekee]

[QUOTE=Mamalian;6570899]

i would bring back the stealth ranged assassinate./QUOTE]

Hunt's end + Sniper shot. What else you need?

ranged assassinate

[Dreppo]

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.

Please add the red part (mortally wound on failed assassinate attempt) for regular assassins too!

[xaxaeb]

[QUOTE=Mamalian;6570899]

i would bring back the stealth ranged assassinate./QUOTE]

Hunt's end + Sniper shot. What else you need?

Oh yeah.... because the 10k dmg it's gonna do on R10 will insta-kill everything.....
Don't just balance everything for Epic Hard like devs do.