Ranger: Tempest Changes

[Thar]

What about nerfing warlocks? Warlocks are more overpowered than all 3 of those classes put together. half a party of warlocks will kill everything before the other half has a chance to beat one down one trashmob on EE.

Since that is the newest class and benchmark, nothing here is overpowered, by comparison very very underpowered and the other prementioned melee classes are underpowered compared to warlock. If everyone is so overpowered, i'd expect not to see EN or EH on half of the LFMs.

[Mindos]

if your not adding a crit enhancer you need to make up for a few hundred damage. when you regularly crit for 500 or 1000, the light weapon crits is not up to par and needs a few hundred extra damage to keep up and your not getting access to that in heroics. you can't even say pally's have one weapon anymore since the shield sometimes does more damage than the weapon. it needs to be fair and to scale to epics it has to be a crit enhancer.

Yes, the old Ranger uses two weapons at once so you don't need expanded crit range/multiplier is getting a little of a thin excuse nowadays. I can't barely kill anything in a random pug anymore with my pure ranger with multiple past lives! I might, MIGHT, get to hit a mob twice with my bow and arrow. And if I use many shot, its wasted. Why? Because everything in the room is dead in less then 2 seconds. It is a profoundly odd feeling, running thru a quest, not daring to take my hand off the forward key, lest I fall behind. Nerfing Ranger by proxy by NOT giving it the ROFLstomp abilities you've already handed out to the other classes is really gonna stratify the classes all over again. JUST LIKE WHEN WE STARTED THIS ENDEAVOR.

I add nothing to the group. Nothing. They don't need my weak healing help. My summons are useless. My entangle and snare seem to have no effect. I can't even reach the mobs to once more into the melee before the Warlocks kill them. The squishy Bard runs right past me, dazing and insta-killing everything. The rogue does massive damage with his repeater, which puts my paltry ranged damage to shame. What can I do? I can stand there, build some minor stacks and ranged the boss. Oh, and use manyshot on him too for some relatively minor additional DPS. All the while the pally just stands there toe to toe with the boss, dual wielding two weapons (his shield and bastard sword) much better then I could. But why close to melee anyway? I'm so squishy that I can't take one hit let alone too. The party gets mad at me when they have to stop DPS'ing to throw me a heal. It makes the quest/boss fight last 7 seconds instead of 6.

Devs, run more pugs on live as pure rangers. Then run even more pugs, but this time- DON'T ATTACK ANYTHING. See if the quest completion time changes at all. (maybe add a new pay class to the game, call it RangerPRO? Give that class something cool to make playing a ranger fun again)

[Axeyu]

It looks alright. A few suggestions though.

Consider adding more dodge and dodge cap to the cores. Compared to barbs who gets large amounts of HP, self healing and healing amp and paladins who can compete in DPS while wearing a tower shield a tempest still seems very squishy. I think that dodge would thematically fit pretty well as extra mitigation.

5% Doublestrike from Whirlwind is lackluster. It should add all player races to your favoured enemy list. That would help the general usefulness of tempests a lot.

A Thousand Cuts, a 90 sec cooldown? That does not seem fun. I would much rather see a weaker version with 10 sec uptime and 15 sec cooldown that shares cooldown with Dance of Death. More tactical choices that way.

2d6 lightning damage, even with melee power scaling that is pretty meh. Double it!

+1 Armor Class, Physical Resistance Rating, and Magical Resistance Rating per core is not enough. It needs more AC if it's to compete with heavy armored sword and board builds. Double it, atleast.

[Blastyswa]

(My 2 cents)
Overall changes look positive. However, a few comments I have are that
1. Just adding melee power to cores doesn't really fit thematically IMO. More doublestrike and offhand doublestrike would be better personally; perhaps make it so that just with investment in Tempest someone can get something like 100 offhand hit (which is already implemented) 30-40 doublestrike and 50 offhand doublestrike. Since offhand doublestrike isn't affected by anything outside of Tempest at the moment, it would be nice to give it a higher value. In theory, someone starting at 30 doublestrike from tempest could get +10 DC +15 first blood +9 EPL and have 64% doublestrike, with zeal getting it over 100% for an extended period of time. However, the amount of investment and how locked in you would be to that specific destiny/gear (Yes yes, a battlerager's harness would work too, not the point) compensates for that. Tempest is supposed to be (as I understand it) about raining a hail of blows down onto opponents.
2. A Thousand Cuts needs to be either a much smaller permanent bonus (i.e. +15% doublestrike and offhand doublestrike, would help with comment 1) or a smaller bonus that can be activated more, or a long term bonus that is activated once every few minutes (Like Frenzy's or Psionic Surge) If it was kept in its current form I would no doubt still take it, and tap it along with action boosts every once and a while. However, the 90 second cooldown means that if I expect an encounter with a big HP sack within 90 seconds, I won't use it. This really just turns it into a boss fight accelerator, which isn't as useful overall as one of the previous ideas.
3. The Lightning stance is pretty bad. I like the idea, and would consider using it for miorr tanking I suppose, but 2d6 damage scaling with 100% melee power is going to translate to around 5d6 damage in full blitz. Considering that isn't affected by critical hits, that makes it not the most desirable bonus. I personally think it would be cool to make the stance actually make YOU a tempest; something similar to the draconic incarnation energy vortex, but with less of a graphic to be less annoying (Something like warlock ground aura, but electrical) doing something like 1d4 damage per ranger level scaling with 100% melee power per 2 seconds, reduced to per 1 second with second enhancement. Overall, my idea of a tempest is a lightly armored cannonball that dives into a group of enemies and cleaves through them all in a matter of seconds.

[CThruTheEgo]

1. Are rangers the source of lag?
2. This is gonna be a rambling question, but didn't we already adjust str and dex modifiers to off-hand damage some updates ago? I seem to remember a discussion on how some such class was getting 1.5 or 1.75, or .75 or something. I told you it was hazy. It was my understanding that a behind the scenes change had already been done to provide full damage to offhand for dex by default at the conclusion of this vague time of my recollection. If not, then this is HUGE and I thank you. The little known tidbit of how str got full bonus but dex did not was occasionaly listed as one of a dex builds weaknesses.

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post4010428 Here's a post from Cow saying how str and dex are treated differently.

That post from Mr Cow is over 4 years old. All stats function the same now (i.e. 1.5x mod with thf or swf and 0.5x mod with offhand). There was some discussion at one point (don't recall exactly when) about giving the full dex mod to offhand weapons, but that never went live. And as Ellis pointed out, swf provided 2x mod for a time.

[CThruTheEgo]

Rangers don't get anything even close to Coccoon so are literally in the same boat for self-healing ability as Rogues

LOLWUT? Rangers get cure spells. Rogues do not. Rogues have no native method of healing. Scrolls are their only option and it's the worst self healing option in epics. Rangers can use their spells. Yes, cocoon is definitely a better option than either scrolls or cure spells, but rangers are much better off than rogues in the self healing department.

[red_cardinal_]

Good suggestions would be:
- str or dex modifier on trip/improved trip attacks. DC = 10 + (STR or DEX modifier) + trip bonus.
- fix Whirlwind strike feat so that it works for both weapons. Currently it only works for a weapon in the primary hand. For the Tempest it should work for the off-hand weapon as well. So, these would be two computations on each affected mob.
- tier 5 core could get +5% competence bonus to attack speed.

[TheGuyYouKnow]

gotta say just giving tempest some melee power and resistance is not enough to bring them in line with the other reworked melee classes.

cooldowns are to long
many abilities cost too much for too little

things that could be added and fit the theme:
crit extension with light weapons and scimitar?
+1 multiplier on the mainhand and +1 crit range on the offhand
some form of upgraded bark skin that gives +1 false life per caster level when hit for survivability
10% move speed like many other classes now have.
a 360 cleave that hits with both weapons
some building attack speed buff for staying in combat

[Kawai]

fail scale 77.9

F for effort.
F for lack of vision
F for being afraid to make an actual pass.

Did overdoing it @Pally & Borlock get soooo deep in ur psyches or wut?

take a deeeeep breath.
close ur eyes.
and see what needs done!

0-2!

& so help meh ...
if u eff up AA this badly as well??
zOmG!
ima totally fly up there -take a bus -to a taxi -& kick some people in the shins rlly HARD!

& pls quit calling it a PASS when in fact it's only a scaredy cat touching up of some stoopid numbers!

pssssh smh

[FestusHood]

So far the thing that stands out to me as a really bad change is Elaborate Parry. Basically, your objection to Elaborate Parry as it stands is that it's not Uncanny Dodge. That's not a real objection in dnd because classes are supposed to have different abilities. If you want Elaborate Parry to be more useful to people just make it more like Master's Blitz. That is adjust it so that its easier for people to make it last longer. That kind of thing seems more in the spirit of how a ranger is supposed to take damage than the current proposal. Rangers are supposed to be a bit dodgy like a rogue, a bit durable like a fighter. The current proposal cheese ball because the whole idea behind it is something like "every class is supposed to have an emergency dodge button." That's not dnd. That's how you kill dnd class distinctions.

There are other things I think are cheesy, but they aren't being added to the tree according to the proposals. If you're up for changing things that already exist in the tree, I'd be willing to say what I don't like. If that's not really on the table, I'm not sure I have much else to say at this point.

I like this idea. It could be more or less like the version that is on live, except that it would be able to add to the max dex bonus, and only give 1% instead of two. Change it so that it has a 10% chance to proc on hit like masters blitz. Allow it to go on indefinitely as long as all stacks don't expire.

[Xionanx]

Actually, what the devs need to do is find the CURRENT BEST TWF build, based on:
DPS/AC/DODGE/PRR/MRR

And then WORK BACKWARDS FROM THAT AS A TEMPLATE FOR PURE RANGER TWF'ing.

As a START, here is what I recommend JUST to the Tempest Tree:

1. Adding at a minimum +34 total PRR/MRR dispersed in enhancements
2. Adding at a minimum +15 total AC dispersed in enhancements
3. Adding at a minimum +15% total Dodge dispersed in enhancements
4. Adding a 25% increase to the Dodge Cap while wearing Light Armor
5. Rename the Tree from Tempest to Dervish so people get rid of its association with "Weather"
6. Swap the Lightning Damage to be Bleed Damage of 1d6/stack, stacks up to 25 times, 1 additional stack on hit. (damage still scales with Melee Power)
7. "A Thousand Cuts" - You are a blur of whirling death. PASSIVE, for each enemy struck gain 1 Stack of "Dervish" Gain Ability - Deaths Embrace
7a. Dervish - For each stack of Dervish you gain +5% Doublestrike and +5 Melee Power, stacks up to 10 Times, lasts 10 seconds, on expiration you loose 1 stack.
7b. Deaths Embrace - Expend all stacks of Dervish, you are healed for Ranger Level x Stacks x Healing Spell Power

Do that, and you will be getting close to making someone seriously consider a Ranger TWF over a barbarian TWF.

[bbqzor]

Core Abilities

Good changes, if not flashy.

Question: Some places indicate the Whirlwind Doublestrike bonus is Enhancement typed. Meaning it does not stack with items. I am not sure if that information is out of date or not, but can you please verify this stacks with items? No one wants a core (level 18 core at that) which is obsolete by gear almost as soon as it shows up.

Tier One

Fair changes.

Tier Two

Not too impressed with this tier.

The PRR buy is just too expensive (10 prr for 6 points isnt even 2prr/point), and now that the tree adds more PRR its worth less proportionally. I understand that lowering this to 1ap ea is probably not the right direction to go since it would require lowering the prr values. Instead, Id like to see the PRR come up a bit to be worth that 2 ap per level. Going to +4/8/12 (literally 2prr/ap) seems a simply and minor adjustment.

Likewise, the dodge buy is a bit suspect. It not only requires a feat, but a pre-req, effectively making the cost 6ap for 3 dodge (and the feat slot cost but you get the usual return, just lose the choice). I feel like thats a bit of a heavy cost to pay given that at this point in the purchasing there is nothing to increase the dodge cap yet.

Tier Three

Fair changes.

Storm dancer is a decent return, though enemy resistances may persuade people not to take it, but its fine to have a choice in that regard. I think given that tempests are about "effects" it might be nice to see a burst effect here as well. Maybe instead of just shocking, it could be shocking burst? That might help make it a little bit more consistently worth having.

Improved Mobility is another area which is a bit suspect. At this point youre into the line for 2 feats, and 9 ap. And you still only get 3 dodge and 3 dodge cap (plus the usual feats). Thats an extremely deep buy in cost for a minor return. By comparison Ninja Spy gets the same thing (3 dodge and 3 dodge cap) using T1/T2 enhancements with zero feat requirements. I just feel given the heavy demands on feats, tying up essentially two feats and over 10% of your characters AP to get what amounts to 3 dodge (if youre at cap before buying this, this line nets you 3 dodge and raises the cap by 3). The effects are fine, and even the placement is fine. But the net costs just get too steep, relative to what other choices Tempests could make, and what other classes pay for similar.

Tier Four

Good changes.

The new Elaborate Parry is a success. The timing and size of the bonus are very appropriate for the design space, and relative to other options. This is an ability I am happy to see.

Like before, I think Storm Tempest is a bit smallish (even at 200 melee power its 6d6 or 20 dmg per hit... mobs with 5-10 resistance degrade it massively relative to most realistic character values). Maybe this could change the scaling to 200% melee power as well as upping the dice or something. I just think this line is something that will be great in heroic, and then sort of drop off in epic. I'd just like to see it maintain relevance. Maybe the first one could be 1d6 plus burst, and this one could be 2d6 plus Lit2. Lots of ideas I'm sure just give it a look.

Tier Five

Great changes.

Like Elaborate Parry, the new Thousand Cuts is very modern and appealing, and plays well with several of the other abilities. This is another ability I am happy to see.

Dual Perfection is likewise something that was mechanically needed for this class to really shrug off a portion of math issues regarding the build, and I am glad to see it addressed readily.

Question though, for Dance of Death, was any consideration given to the "reach" involved? There was a thread some time back examining how hard it is to get twf to reach far enough to ever really catch more than 2 mobs with this, without "perfect alignment" kinds of things happening. I am hoping that as part of the pass, this can be looked at. Maybe if it cant be made "easier" to catch more mobs (ie, the ability adjusts the reach in terms of distance and arc of attack while active) then perhaps it could be made to last 20s with a 30s cd, similar to a regular boost. Then it would at least be less micromanagement to utilize it at reduced effectiveness, while having the exact same uptime/downtime ratio it has now.

Likewise, Dance of Death should really drop to 1/1/1 costing as well. As it stands, even with adjustments as suggested, its really best for a T1 dip given the high strain of enhancements for melee rangers. At 1/1/1 it may be worth trying to pick up extra levels for those rare occasions it helps... but at 2 each its just not going to happen. Hopefully the cost can get brought in line as well.

----------

Overall this is a decent pass. The added melee power and prr, as well as the T4/5s, will help make it modern. The overall AP costs are still a bit high... and there are some things which are still lacking. The dodge increases are too costly for a "skirmish" style class, and some of the abilities (storm dancer, dance of death) are either easily mitigated by mobs, or easily mitigated by the collision system of twf. I would like to see those "unique" things focused on to be sure they actually deliver, same with the lv18 core doublestrike stacking just be sure it works on top of other things. Otherwise the tree will wash out in "effective" choices and just sort of be the same thing as it is now but with slightly bigger numbers. Good potential for a first draft, I hope it can get polished up.

[cru121]

As an alternative to putting more power to enhancement trees, you could make the ranger class features and spells stronger.
* Favored Enemy: Add +3 seeker (vs all). If you have T5/high core in DWS, gain +1 seeker per FE.
* Hide in Plain Sight: Add +5% stacking Ghostly. Add seeker to your non-crit damage if sneak-attacking.
* Animal Growth: Make this an AoE Ram's Might. Additionally, allow characters with access to Favored Enemy: Animals/Magical Beasts or Vermin to fully benefit from this spell. Add +4 melee damage. Make the spell a multiselector, and offer some variants, e.g.:
** Bear: +4 Str, chance to trip/daze/stun?
** Wolf: +4 Dex, chance to limbchop/tendonslice/deceive? Or put some stacking run speed here?
** Boar: +4 Con, PRR

[Alisonique]

Just one request please:

Give rangers an enhanced crit .
everybody else has it.

[BigErkyKid]

I don't like the changes.

1. - The active abilities have an excessively long cool down and a lot aren't very interesting. It would be alright if ranger had a myriad of other helpful abilities. As it stands, it does not. Current abilities for melee include:

- Tendon cut: 12 seconds
Slows movement for 10 seconds. This does not induce helpless or have much of a use IG. It is single target and since you are melee you'll be anyway facing the mob most likely. It might have had a use in a game where most mobs took time to destroy, but that's not DDO right now. Tendon cut, IMHO, would need to induce some helpless state or at least have a trip. Make the slow be the result of a resisted trip DC, a secondary effect.

- Exposing strike: 6 seconds
OK as a secondary ability for bosses.

- Merciful strike: 15 seconds
Lackluster. It is OP in heroics but even with 100% MP scaling it won't kill enemies in epics, which was the original design of the ability, a coup de grace.

- Head strike: 15 seconds
Auto crits are no longer hot. The blind effect is alright, but basically a blind effect every 15 seconds is not great. More can be achieved with weapons and this is a T5!

- Elaborate parry: 90 seconds
Excessive cool down.

- A thousand cuts: 90 seconds
Excessive cool down.

- Dance of death: 15 seconds
Good!

2. - DPS is lackluster: It is far behind other classes since it lacks a good crit enhancer. Since you gave excellent crit enhancers that stacked with IC to other classes (rogue, bard, paladin, barbarian) it is hard to balance against a class that doesn't have any. The abilities ranger has do not make up for the lack of DPS in a class that only brings to a party DPS. Or do you devs claim that the DPS is comparable? Do you think we got it wrong?

Summary: Abilities have not been updated to something interesting and up to date with the game. Passive DPS is increased (the boring part of DPS) but not enough to make it competitive with current updated classes.

[MonadRebelion]

A lot of people do not like that there isn't anything to adjust crit ranges and multipliers. I think this might well be a good thing. The focus of the tree can be on doing a whole bunch of hits for less damage and stacking effects. The clear winner of all the proposed changes is Tempest Storm. It should be made a bit stronger though. You can keep it doing the same damage, but make a stacking dot effect. Also, make it toggle between being cold focused and electricity focused. Also create an effect that lowers enemy prr/mrr on hit, and make that stack. Don't give this ability to other classes and don't make it easy for light splashes in the tree to get. Do what I suggested about Elaborate Parry. Do all these things and you'll have something interesting.

[Robai]

I'd like to have an option for PRR in Tempest.

For example, Acrobats have this:

Spinning Staff Wall: Activate to gain 50 PRR for 20 seconds. Cooldown: 90 seconds.
Passively provides: While wearing cloth or light armor, gain 5% Dodge, 5% maximum dodge, and 5 Maximum Dexterity Bonus with Light Armor.

There are players, who prefer to have more powerful version of a buff even if it's a clickie (or a boost), but there are also players who hate clicking things (that includes me) and would prefer a lesser bonus, but given as a passive bonus.
I mean for any boosts/clickable type bonuses there should be also a weaker passive version, a player can choose which one (similarly like Bladeforged have to choose between Healer's Friend and Mechanist).

I like Spinning Staff Wall on my Acrobat, but sadly I have to click on it, which is a problem for me since my right hand is on mouse and left hand already have to manage ~30 buttons (and often fail to click the right one).

Let's calculate. 50 PRR for 20 seconds with Cooldown 90 seconds means this: you can have +50 PRR 22% of time, which means on average it's +11 PRR.
So, the passive bonus could be +10 PRR (the advantage of a clikie is that you can have a really good bonus when it's needed most, so I think that +10 PRR would be the right number for a passive bonus, but in my case I would go even for +5 PRR bonus since I really hate clickies).

Please make something like that in Tempest tree.

[Lauf]

I fail to see the reason for adding elemental damage to the class (storm dancer). I object to it for the same reason I've objected to the cold damage in war chanter. Nothing about "bard" says cold damage, and nothing about "ranger" says electrical damage. It would have made an equal amount of (little) sense to call it "igniting a spark" and make it fire damage. If you want to add a melee power based damage proc to rangers, why not type it like you have done with the barb ravager damage? Why the urge to tie it to an element?

[Thar]

A lot of people do not like that there isn't anything to adjust crit ranges and multipliers. I think this might well be a good thing. The focus of the tree can be on doing a whole bunch of hits for less damage and stacking effects. The clear winner of all the proposed changes is Tempest Storm. It should be made a bit stronger though. You can keep it doing the same damage, but make a stacking dot effect. Also, make it toggle between being cold focused and electricity focused. Also create an effect that lowers enemy prr/mrr on hit, and make that stack. Don't give this ability to other classes and don't make it easy for light splashes in the tree to get. Do what I suggested about Elaborate Parry. Do all these things and you'll have something interesting.

do the math, it needs more dps if not adding IC. If you add more dps, you have to spread it out so one thing is not uber. You spread it out and now people are splashing 5 ranger to supplement their pally or barbarian with crit enhancers. You can't balance the class without it and it needs to be a high level in the core.

[Thar]

Am I wrong here?

Dual Perfection: (2 AP) Your off hand weapon now adds your full attribute damage modifier. (For instance, if you have 30 Strength, you'll gain +10 damage with your offhand weapon, like your main hand weapon.)

normally you get half your modifier. so if you have 30 str thats 10/2 = 5. so if your now getting the full 10, then the benefit for 2ap is 5 damage. seems expensive for a tier 5 and underpowered. perhaps if it doubled your modifier for both hands. giving main hand 2x10 and off hand 2x10/2 = 10 then it would be a bit better for 2ap.