Improve. The. Ranger. Area.

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Autocthon wrote:

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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.

Ranger has no implicit life leech nodes.
Evasion 'synergizes' with life in a basic way, similar to life and armor, but armor-users also get access to % based life regen and other mechanics like endurance charges, which synergize very strongly with life. Evasion does not have anything like that, save AB+PA, which is regarded as rather weak and is rather far away.

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anubite wrote:

Ranger has no implicit life leech nodes.
Evasion 'synergizes' with life in a basic way, similar to life and armor, but armor-users also get access to % based life regen and other mechanics like endurance charges, which synergize very strongly with life. Evasion does not have anything like that, save AB+PA, which is regarded as rather weak and is rather far away.

What I was implying is that the strongest synergy EV has is with Life and Life Leech.

Basically EV gives you time to leech between hits taken, as long as you can survive hits you'll be fine. The fact that Dex has limited (laughable) access to HP and is the stat area that needs it most (no DR from armor, no inflated HP from ES) is extremely sad.

Dex should have multiple life leech nodes (Claw Leech is the only one in the area for god's sake). It should also have relatively high PER POINT returns from HP investment, when currently it has lower per point returns than Str in terms of %increase per point and MUCH lower returns once you factor bonus HP from strength as a stat.

Edit: Also see my post on the last page. Last post on the page.

I disagree. Life Leech synergizes much more strongly with armor. With evasion, you take full damage at irregular (but not completely random) intervals. With armor, you take smaller bites of damage at regular intervals, which leech is more capable of dealing with. Defense in general, synergizes with life leech (and life regeneration), but evasion is not a special case.

It's not really "special case" so much as that's what you really want on a dedicated evasion character.

You *want* to be able to take the hits that get through (if you manage 70% evasion that's one hit in three) and you *want* to be able to sustain between hits. In terms of "How do I do this" HP and Life Leech are the go-to stats.

Except those stats are the "rarest" stats in the Dex portion of the tree... Despite being probably the most effective stats for an evade build outside of supplementary damage reduction (granite flasks/resists).

I'd *like* to see any (or all of the following)

1) Larger notable healing nodes in god positions for Dex characters
2) +flat/%HP on melee nodes (all of them) with some reduced HP gains in the Str area to compensate
3) Addition of notable/keystone damage reduction for evade characters (possibly requiring acrobatics to get so of them)
4) Addition of notable life leech nodes in the Dex area

Basically the result is upping the returns for HP on evade builds, increasing HP for melee builds across the board, and providing supplementary damage reduction and life leech. That would put Dex in a much more effective position and MORE IMPORTANTLY make raw Evade (in the form of acrobatics) builds more effective. Also change Phase Acrobatics to make it slightly more "worthwhile" though to be honest the only thing "weak" about it is that it requires acrobatics. If you have the rest of the nodes in that cluster you might as well take it.

Also support the Chaos Resistance point being upgraded to a Universal Resistance point, +8% resist everything but physical.

Acrobatics always feels like a chain around my neck. Every build I make that uses evasion but not Frenzy or Shield Block, it's too many points to justify. Would love if we could just have a better evasion formula, take Phase Dodging as a significant node comparable to Elemental Adaptation, and call it a day.

Soo, now that the duelist starting area has received a major buff, and Mana Flows is now right in the middle of the duelist tree, is there any reason to roll a ranger? Other than looks, of course.

Large damage nodes right at the start. Large life nodes right at the start. Mana flows right at the start. Why should I roll a ranger at all?

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Cronos988 wrote:

Soo, now that the duelist starting area has received a major buff, and Mana Flows is now right in the middle of the duelist tree, is there any reason to roll a ranger? Other than looks, of course.

Large damage nodes right at the start. Large life nodes right at the start. Mana flows right at the start. Why should I roll a ranger at all?

I still find the Ranger start decent enough, but only if you basically avoid all the 1H DPS stuff and all that. I don't know much about the Archer builds though I do melee rangers. The 48% evasion into health nodes start is pretty strong in my opinion and you have quick access to more big health nodes+stats. After that it's same as before kinda, go to Duellist area, only now you pick a ton more stuff in there.

Heart of the Panther and all that stuff needs massive buffs in comparison to duellist start. As I said I have no idea about archer builds so don't know how the proj nodes compare since I haven't looked at them anyway.

If we're remaking starting area though, I'd like the ES stuff in witch starting area to be moved around a bit so you can exit it via 3x8% ES instead of being forced into taking an ES reduction which does nothing if you go EB after. Lining it differently so it's health or ES with ES cd and the big ES inbetween would be good, and changing mana flask passive to charge recovery instead of mana gained.

But yeah the ranger start has some stuff needed. The stun passives are also fairly bad in my opinion I don't think anyone takes them cause even though the effect is pretty decent, the % is low enough that it's not reliable. The stun recovery ones are even worse.

Today I came to stunning conclusion that Finesse isn't worth it unless that's your planned route to Duelist. If you're going Shadow-Center-Duelist, meeeeh. I'm passing up 4% attack speed in my bow area already, so why wouldn't I bypass it in my backbone if it saves me a couple points?

The same logic applies to the 10% evasion squares. Leather and Steel and TWO Reflexes I can reach for, so why waste points on them?

The +27% IAS from the patch has turned me into a spoiled brat I suppose. With decelerating returns from my newfound zoominess, I'm even less interested in the Ranger "defense" wing.

I find that both the defense highway AND the melee highway to be subpar if not downright useless. Anubite covered the melee highway well, and I might come up with something later. I want to focus on the defense highway moreso.

Defense: Overall VERY lackluster

Issue 1: 48% evasion right off the bat may sound good, but let's be realistic - most Rangers take Iron Reflexes. A Steel Skin cluster will outdo those 4 points in evasion by 2%-4% (either the 10/10/30 or 12/10/30 cluster) with 1 less passive point invested. In comparison with other classes, their defense highway is far more interesting than just evasionx4 regardless of the amounts. The Ranger is also the only class that starts with a passive in a secondary defense passive rather than life or mana (compared to Witch or Marauder). This doesn’t make sense and leads to a weaker character.

Issue 2: Finesse is weak, and what I mean by weak is that compared to its counterpart Acceleration, it loses out by 8% attack speed, which is immense even if it provides 10 extra dex.

Issue 3: Avoid Stun, Stun Recovery passives are useless. I have yet to see people use these passives when they could choose evasion and life. And since the current metagame of PoE is to stack life as much as possible, being stunned isn't really an issue.

Issue 4: The next 2 8% life nodes are also weak compared to other life passives in other class defense highways because you have to spend a total of 6 passives to get the entire life passives. (2 8%life, 1 10+dex, 3 8%life) Peppering the Ranger tree with some minor 8% life passives is a band-aid type job that further weakens the Ranger in terms of point efficiency and skill effectiveness.

I'd rather see something like this:



A = 24% evasion, 12+ life
B = 12% life
C/D = 8% life
E = 12% mana
F = 8% mana
G = 20% mana regen
H = Finesse, 30+ Dex, 6% attack speed, 2% move speed
I/J = 14% evasion
K/L = 15% reduced enemy critical multiplier damage
M = Heart of Panther, 12% life, 20+ int, 20+ str

With this setup, you have a total of:
52% evasion
40% life
12+ life
20% mana
20% mana regen
30% reduced critical multiplier damage
6% attack speed
2% move speed
30+ dex
20+ int
20+ str

This makes it a far stronger defense highway and a reason to actually invest in the Ranger tree. It would actually make more sense to start as a Ranger than a Templar/Marauder that have far stronger starting defense/offense highways.

Thank you for making this thread. As a woman with a pixie cut, the ranger is my favorite character. But if there were an option to swap her cosmetics with any other classes starting position, I'd do it in a heartbeat, regardless of price. It's so bad. As isildox pointed out, the defence route is strictly inferior to other classes' mitigation (and I say mitigation instead of avoidance because, let's be real, evasion is awful and you need Iron Reflexes) nodes. Armor is also just not good, since it has less of an effect with higher hits. But you have to take it, because there's no other way out. As a two handed ranger, it's kind of infuriating to be forced to take lackluster nodes. If I were a Templar or Marauder, I'd get twice the benefit for the same amount of points, and still have the choice of armor nodes.

Also, could the ranger get a leech node? Marauder has 2% life leech; the shadow has 2% mana leech; perhaps the ranger could get 1 & 1? It's an uninspired addition, but still, an improvement.