Improve. The. Ranger. Area.

I thought about it some and I still don't know how best to answer this.

I think Cronos identified something important - Dual purpose passives are great and the ranger could use more.

I think conceptually, Rangers should be focused on fast attacks, but also needs more defense in the starting tree. (In fact, Ranger, Shadow and Duelist all need more).

Some ideas for keystones would be 12% increased damage 10% reduced mana cost of melee attacks (or all attacks, maybe?), to synergize with fast attack speeds.

Other types of things could be increased melee damage + all resist, or increased melee damage + life%. The access to HP and defensive stats is really important, but most of all I think something needs to be done to make evasion a better stat.

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anubite wrote:

Not a bad set of suggestions, but I guess I'm struggling to justify those changes. You'd effectively be making the Ranger into a slightly different Duelist in terms of build purposes, since they already occupy similar areas of the passive tree.

Hmm, maybe the new Weapon Artistry should be +6% dual-wield or shield block, +6% attack speed to make it more different from Dervish. I think that particular cluster is a chance to make ranger most unique.

I think the best way to make ranger dual-wield and duelist dual-wield different is to make duelist more physical-oriented and make ranger more elemental-oriented. She's not a templar and shouldn't have elemental damage nodes everywhere, but really focusing on attack speed, while keeping duelist a bit less focused on it, would make the distinction fine. Maybe the duelist starting nodes should be changed to focus a little less on speed... and maybe the 6% physical nodes I suggested earlier should be 4% physical 2% attack speed nodes.

Let me add another change: the two improved stun recovery nodes right above life... switch them with the reduced critical multiplier nodes that the Marauder has. Evasion-based characters need something like that to prevent being one-shotted by some random crit somewhere down the line, and maras could use the extra stun recovery (unless they go cheesy Unwavering Stance).

The whole Dex area needs to have more effective access to HP nodes (to offset the fact that EV isn't a mitigation stat). Considering HP is king the act that Dex characters are pretty well prevented from getting enough to survive being one shotted is a problem.

Edit: IF Ranger/Shadow/Duelist could take a hit and not die in one shot then EV would be a better stat. The problem with EV is that you need HP to take advantage of it properly... Which Dex classes have very little of.

Certainly that feeds back into the meme that "every base attribute should provide some base +life".

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Autocthon wrote:

The whole Dex area needs to have more effective access to HP nodes

What the heck are you talking about, the dex area is peppered with life nodes. 16 just in the ranger zone, 29 if you count those in-between classes...

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Thalandor wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

The whole Dex area needs to have more effective access to HP nodes

What the heck are you talking about, the dex area is peppered with life nodes. 16 just in the ranger zone, 29 if you count those in-between classes...

And those 16 life nodes give us, what exactly? 134% life and +10 strength. At that point, you have spent almost half your points, and have nothing to show except for +48% evasion and some dex. No Int, almost no strength, no mana nodes, no offensive nodes.

For fun, I took your suggestion of taking all the life nodes immediately available and came up with this charming build.

Now that might be a viable melee ranger, but judging from the stats, it really doesn't look all that impressive, or does it?

Cronos illustrates a good point - there are a lot of life nodes, but at the end of the day, that's all you've got as a ranger, lol. Seems kind of silly! There's also nothing in the Ranger area that synergizes with all that life. Marauder/Templar/Duelist have life regen or various offensive passives mixed in (like +AOE), the Ranger doesn't.

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anubite wrote:

Cronos illustrates a good point - there are a lot of life nodes, but at the end of the day, that's all you've got as a ranger, lol. Seems kind of silly! There's also nothing in the Ranger area that synergizes with all that life. Marauder/Templar/Duelist have life regen or various offensive passives mixed in (like +AOE), the Ranger doesn't.

EV synergizes with life.

Or rather it synergizes with life leech and life.

It seems to me it is a certain lack of notables. I shifted some points here and there, but it just seems I cannot get anywhere. Everything has large opportunity costs. I mean see that Ambidexterity node? 18% damage and 4% atkspeed sounds really good. Only I need to spend 2 points on dex first. Which means that I only get 6% damage and some 1,33% atkspeed per point. And suddenly the node is no longer attractive.

Actually, If those were strength or Int nodes, I would take them.

Dex is just really bad across the board.

Personally I'd add some large HP nodes (18-25% notables) in key areas then rework the whole tree to give 2%^(4% on notables) HP on melee damage nodes.

From there drop HP gains in Str to make up for the ridiculous amount of melee nodes you'll have off the bat. Dex needs to be cleaned up, it has really poor sequencing for skills, but giving %HP to melee will help melee builds a massive amount (and make EV a more attractive stat).

Then add some additional cool notables, for instance a blood drinker, and maybe a diamond skin. Preferably in convenient locations. Definitely need more leech nodes. HP Regen would be cool, but I think leech is "better" for dex characters (need to regenerate quickly not steadily).