Ranger Start Tree feedback

"

There are useless nodes that no one ever takes "Some Resistance nodes" (Due to not being appeasing at the % given) "Ondar's Guile" "Alchemist" "Dual Wield nodes" (If your going to dual wield again... 3 other classes do this better then ranger.) "Crystal Skin and avoid chill,shock, ignite nodes" and others.

Ondar's guile is a really good passive, and most of the dual wielding nodes/keystone are good, no need to change those ones. Crystal skin and avoid status ailment ( one of the most useful passive I have ) are also useful and good nodes and don't need to be changed or buffed.

As for a mix of Dext/str .... no, this is one basis of this game, ranger is the dext class, this won't change. Changing the benefits of having a lot of dexterity however ( and nerf Lioneye's/resolute technique ) could work.

Agree with the rest.

GGG, i have one request:

About Evasion do not simply adjustment: Make it viable without Iron reflexe.

The ranger seem to be a disabled character, thats sad you don't think.

"

* Excessive Dex Nodes (Rangers should have a mix of Str/Dex Nodes)

I think there is a lack of Intelligence nodes in the ranger area (to run aura/curse).
Since you take only physical dmg nodes, you won't go in the templar area (elemental way) or shadow (critique.
Mélée physical is enought hard no?, since anger+wrath and most of the curse are intelligence required. I feel this lack a bit unfair.



Ps: Don't be upset/irritated about my english, thats not my language, i try my best. thanks.

"

Lyralei wrote:

Reworking Alchemist to affect all flask's effectiveness and shifting it inside the core Ranger area would make people seriously consider going there. Longer durations or more effective resistance/granite/quicksilver flasks are a very very appealing thing.

I wouldn't say it would make players go into the Ranger starting area, but it is indeed a step in the right direction. Such a powerful notable of such defensive nature should be a starting notable, not one you have to work your way to the outer highways to attain it. The "15% life recovery" portion should be reworked to just "15% recovery from flasks" to make it a very powerful notable.

First of all, I would like to ask, or encourage the developers to ask themselves, what role were the node types inserted in Ranger tree meant to achieve. By that I mean:
In Ranger tree there are many Accuracy nodes, which however are currently not valuable to any starting class and least to Ranger, who gets high accuracy already from dexterity. That is a fact; to be constructive, I´d suggest rather gaining movement speed from dex than accuracy.
Another nodes that are only in dexterity area of passive skill tree and mostly associated w ranger, are movement speed passives. I guess these passives were meant to encourage low-life play that would as a self-defense mechanism use repositioning and outrunning/outmaneuvering the mobs. To this, there are certain issues I think. First of all, I am not sure whether you can just by pure skill and speed increase actually avoid a hit that would otherwise land. Secondly, such a playstyle w low life is counterproductive with most potent builds, since low life value and most of the time little to none life regen mean that meeting w reflect damage pack would probably ended by player oneshotting himself, even if he would be careful enough to avoid melee mobs and projectile shots/spells. Thusly, for people it is more convenient to stack as much life as possible and simply outlast blows rather than running from them. However, I think promoting speed as a viable defense mechanism based on player skill would greatly benefit the game because a) it would matter in PvP b) it would introduce cool repositioning to melee play and c) would promote hit´n´run play w ranged characters. So basically, the suggestion is - to make movespeed passives more attracting than life passives (that is, by number necessary to take to be efficient) after certain value of life nodes.
As for evasion, I guess it was meant to be suppletive mechanism, not to be used on its own, but in accordance w other mechanisms like dodge, block and armor. Though it serves to this end quite well currently (I see no issue w having ca 30-40% eva as ranger), maybe the other mechanisms could be placed more in line, so that going for evasion would naturally lead to adopting them as well.
The next are passives that affect chance of being stunned, shocked etc. It is more convenient to reduce the damage taken, than any of these, moreso in PvP, since players tend to use ele dmg more and increase it more proportionally to phys dmg. Theoretically, with evasion helping to avoid crits, it could be made so that it not only reduces chance to attain ailment, but also to reduce ele crit dmg/further help evasion block crit dmg.
As for skills, as I have not reached the endgame yet and thus cannot say anything about their strength. I am however not sure whether Ice shot is useful. Where I picture it would shine is exactly in build that is lead towards being very mobile w very fast attacks, however due to chill being effected by the strength of an attack rather than its speed, out of end-game scenarios I don´t know how much it would be actually possible to use without certain buff, or tweak due to for example a keystone. Also it is not very viable for ranger as AoE skill due to very small AoE and distance to any passive that would be helpful to this (currently more att speed/mov speed related bonuses are in the opposite direction of anything area of effect related).

I didn't take the time to read all of these as it was getting very repetitive even after 4 or 5 pages.

I know GGG does not want to make any keystone that will be "mandatory" but this seems to be the only way to fix Rangers unless a Dex mechanic is changed, or evasion is changed. Buff all the attack nodes you want or rearrange the tree all you want, but as was stated before, getting life or ES from str or int trumps evasion from dex.

Two ideas. Dodge chance, 10% of your evade chance gets added as dodge stat. For example, 50% evade chance, you also get 5% dodge. Or maybe add it to block chance instead. This way points could be spent elsewhere instead of some shield or dual wield block chances, tho my vote is for dodge. Also IR would kill it, and grace would provide nearly nothing if used alone.

OR perhaps nodes that return life for successful evasions. Higher the the evasion rating the higher the healing. Again IR would kill it, and grace would provide nearly nothing if used alone.

This would allow tweaking in the tree but help to fix the fundamental flaw with the dex/evasion build. I love the idea behind evasion, it just doesn't keep you alive against 10 enemies or 1 big hitter like it should.

If anyone stated something like this before, sorry didn't mean to rip you off, just great minds think alike, that's all :D

I haven't played much ranger in past but I started building melee ranger on onslaught.

Most important feedback I have is regarding the avoid stun nodes since I feel lot of people haven't tested these out and I in my build did.

TL;DR of the build
Life/ES Armor/evasion Ghostreaver Frenzy Claw

Stun Avoidance
I combine the innate stun avoidance of energyshield (50%) with the stun avoidance nodes of ranger (24%) and duelist (8%) which gives me quite decent total chance of dodging stuns.

Against single monsters I seem to get stunned rarely

I still haven't made my way to shadow tree and havent acquired suitable evasion/es gear to completely test how this works together against huge monster packs because lack of my ES.

Yes I do feel these nodes can be good and useful for melee/evasion characters who do not have chance of going unwavering stance.

The things I find most lacking from the Ranger area are:

Life regeneration
Elemental resists
Crit chance with anything other than a bow

Some other comments about that general area of the tree:

Accuracy really needs a rethink - I think it needs to have more benefits than just hitting reliably. It feels unfair that high-Dex attackers, who supposedly specialise in accuracy, have this great struggle to hit things reliably when they are competing against spellcasters and Resolute Technique users who are absolutely, unerringly accurate. The nodes that give 8-12% accuracy and nothing else simply aren't strong enough in this context. Same goes for the base accuracy awarded by Dexterity.

Heavy Draw gives increased stun duration on bows. Unfortunately, bows are a really bad choice of weapon for inflicting stuns in the first place, so that extra duration is mostly moot.

The King of the Hill circle feels underpowered. Who cares about arrow speed anyway? Change 'arrow speed' to 'knockback distance' and you have an interesting circle for knockback lovers.

The Raptor Talons circle is not useful at the moment. Why would you use claws unless you are going to the Shadow area? If you do go to the Shadow area, there are better claw passives that you are unlikely to run out of, so even then, Raptor Talons is redundant.

The avoid status effect passives are interesting. Evasion builds already have very good protection against status effects from evadable attacks, but not so much against spells. 75% chance to avoid shock is actually a pretty good deal IMO, but for chill/freeze/burn only 55% is available, which is not so special. Perhaps there should be some magic/rare item mods that add status avoidance chance for specific statuses? It would be nice to have some more options in between full susceptibility and full immunity (as conferred by certain uniques).

Today's announcement of patch 0.11.1 that Shield Charge can be evaded, including Rhoas Charge is exciting news for Rangers and evasion characters. This looks like the beginning of making evasion much more relevant and I can't wait to see what other tweaks might happen within the next few patches!

Aggre
Im not playing Ranger, but i saw whole passive tree and imo:
Maurader starting position is much better than Ranger.
You can start as a Maurader and go same build like La, Roa etc and it will be much better.
I would never go as a Maureder for those 4x increased eva nodes..

Change this "Path of Mauraders" :P