Improve. The. Ranger. Area.

It is kind of lovely that if you want evasion, the life granted by strength synergizes with it more powerfully than the innate +evasion%.

Ah, poor poor dex. You'll never be as good as vit. Never ever ever.

@LimitedRooster: it's because Accuracy in this game is lame mechanic that scales off too early and Evasion is meant as a secondary defense system. It's no wonder why Dex have it the worst.

GGG, please. Ranger needs a good damage starting path.

Ranger DOES have a good damage starting path. It's just she has to sacrifice everything else in compensation. Let's compare a bit with Duelist. Imagine an LA toon, using a bow with 100 phys and 20 lightning dmg; and let the toon picks all bow nodes with levelling up.

By 15 points the Ranger skill tree can look like this. Effectively, this setup gives her 26% IAS, 12% Acc, 31% Proj Dmg, 54% Phys Dmg.

By 15 points the Duelist skill tree can look like this. Which effectively gives the Duelist 28% IAS, 20% Acc, 36% Proj Dmg, 23% Phys Dmg.

Considering LA converts 50% phys into lightning, the Ranger wins by a head.

But it gets more interesting as the game advances. Let's say that both try to grab another bunch of bow nodes in the southeast corner (the Heavy Draw cluster).

By 28 points and skill tree like this, the Ranger gets 32% IAS, 12% Acc, 31% Proj Dmg, 94% Phys Dmg.

By 26 points and this skill tree, the Duelist gets 34% IAS, 20% Acc, 36% Proj Dmg, 63% Phys Dmg.

The Ranger still wins by a head in damage department, BUT the Duelist has 2 unused points which he can use to grab Leather and Steel. LaS is amazing because it gives superior strategic capabilities to ranged toons. You can put on heaviest armor and still be able to move fast to reposition.

Passing this point, it gets more interesting. As you can see, the Duelist tree has ready access to Mana Flows (3 points for 32% Increased Mana, 40% Mana Regen), Thick Skin (3 points for 34% increased Life), + All Resist (1 point for +6% all resist), Diamond Skin (4 points for +15% all resist plus a bunch of INT).

While for the Ranger has access to what? 3 points for +18% increased life, 3 points for +18% increased mana, 4 points to gain +6% resist all, 6 points to get Diamond Skin. She may ofc go a little out of the way and grab Fitness (6 points away with 26% increased Life) or Thick Skin (4 points for 34% increased Life).

Now, to be fair, the Ranger has a ready access for more proj dmg and ele dmg nodes in the Shadow area, again if she's willing to forgo Life and Mana.

IMO, Ranger area is designed to bring out a DPS ranged toon with little survivability without uber gears; especially because they have expensive access to +movement speed, +resist; and the Dex+Ev working so poorly atm. The assumption is that as a ranged toon, a Ranger will continously reposition herself. But, she can't do damage while moving, and without boost to movespeed, fast monsters (especially flickering ones) can reach her pretty fast. Atm, flickering monsters don't seem to be influenced much by Decoy Totem (try soloing Cruel/Merc Kraytin to see what I mean), they still attack you (not the totem) 50% of the time. Without armor, without fat life, without meat shield, soloing Kraytin with a Ranger on Cruel/Merc is almost impossible. (For comparison, my DW Duelist and Dual Totem Witch ROFL against all the bandits in Cruel.)

Mana is also a huge problem for Rangers.

I'm sorry I can't suggest any satisfactory solution to this problem. Because the main problem of Rangers are survivability in later game without uber gears. Bow Mara or Templar is much more viable than Bow Ranger in Cruel and Merc. Which is kinda sad.

In essence, her defense and melee highways are not up to par. The same case can be made for the Witch to a certain extent.

The ladies in this game have it much harder for some reason.

Rather than just straight buffs; Projectile speed, Chance to Blind/Flee, Mana Gain on Hit and Fire/Cold/Light Penetration are currently not available on the tree and would be a welcome addition to the Ranger's area.

I have lost count on the straight up number of melee Rangers i have actually lost due to... Well pretty much everything people have noted here in this thread. If you're going melee as a Ranger you are at a massive loss within the first 20 points when investing towards melee as compared to the duelist. Melee was not *intended for the Ranger but GGG is seemingly all about giving you options and flexibility. This is flat out evident in the complete lack of care they put into designing the melee nodes for this class.

**The melee nodes at the bottom of the ranger area are basically an option extension for your duelist.**

Dont get me wrong here, as I don't enjoy playing duelist. However, their starting area is 100% better in terms of pretty much everything as they have access to great melee dmg, attack speed, proj damage, life regen and ARMOUR. - Not to mention they also have blood magic and an escape to the Marauder area for even more life/regen.

As a duelist, you only go towards the ranger area to pick up Iron Reflexes and the Thick Skin node, and if you're further out of your mind, you've traveled that far to pick up Arrow Dodging because you think evasion is your HC ticket to winning.


SOLUTION

1) Merge the avoid elemental status affliction nodes with other ranger evasion nodes. IE. First point is 18% to eva, add in you "also avoid 5% of ele status." Continue this pattern for the Heart of the Panther, and the Agility node you hit after you get those eva nodes. This should eventually give the ranger 50-75% chance to avoid elemental status avoidance, and to a lesser degree, stun avoidance.

This is not game breaking GGG, it gives the Ranger its niche, like other classes.

2) Add life nodes. You see the 2 life nodes after the Agility node you can pick up after the evasion nodes at the start of this tree? Not enough. Along with where Iron reflexes is, there MUST MUST MUST be a collection of life nodes to go along with it. If you think Iron Reflexes is your safety net in Melee, you are wrong *unless you have an out of control life pool*. It is for ranged ONLY.

Note: with Iron Reflexes you avoid 1/20 hits or 5%. This massively increases the chance you will be elementally inflicted. Give the ranger those ele afflict avoidance perks and life to balance this out. If you're a developer and are somehow reading this, consider even putting those life nodes behind IR if you cringe at the fact of giving the ranger more life in the bottom right corner. You obviously cringed when you gave her the 3 useless Mana on Kill nodes.

3) Give them a diamond skin. Everyones got it or a variant (Body/Soul, Nullification) except the ranger. Move the duelist one to the left as intended for the duelist.

If you follow these 3 simple requirements.......

CONGRATZ! GGG You've balanced the Ranger a little more!

I'm sad to see the lack of ggg post in this thread, reminds me of the duelist one from closed beta.
Deserved bump

The main problem is the evasion mechanic itself. It works as an entropy value rather than working as a flat % chance to evade. It takes many nodes to move to acrobatics but at the cost of armor and shields. You get flat damage mitigation % with armor, making it unquestionably the best defense mechanic in the game. In order to get flat % evasion, you need dodge from acrobatics and dark vector boots with frenzy charges. Even then, the acrobatics passive granted by Hyrri's Ire is god awful and doesn't stack with the existing acrobatics passive key node. At this time, phase acrobatics is even worse and remotely works with spell block provided by shields. Evasion and armor both need an extreme overhaul as % chance to evade is not nearly as good as % physical damage mitigation. Moreover, those who use Immortal Call can get physical damage immunity. The only possible synergy with evasion at this time is arctic armour at the extreme cost of your mana should you need to move your toon with it being active. A healthy stipulation with arctic armour should be "will NOT WORK with even 1 point in armour" and increase the base damage mitigation values.

The entropy system makes evasion strictly better than a pure RNG chance to evade. I suggest reading up on how it works :)