Ranger Start Tree feedback

It takes 4 points to get out of the ranger area via the evasion pathway gaining 18%, 10%, 10%, 10% and thus a net of 48% or 12% evasion per point. Compare this to the duelist which most only put 2 points to reach Leather and Steel gaining 8%, 24% and thus a net of 32% or 16% evasion (AND/OR armor) per point along with negating movement penalties from armor. Also take a look at the clusters with Reflexes and Elusivness both of which with only 3 points (getting all 5 points is not as wise) can gain you 10%, 10%, 30% and thus a net of 50% or 16.6667% evasion per point. These are easily accessible for some rangers who go towards the marauder tree for defenses or shadows/rangers who go and get Mana Geyser.

Not only are the starting evasion nodes on the rangers supposed to be at least equal to other evasion nodes, but since they're the starting nodes, they're supposed to be the best/most efficient in the whole tree so making them just equal (which they aren't) isn't even enough, but they need to be much stronger compared to the examples given. A possible solutions can include buffing the initial node to AT LEAST 20+% and make it so it has a bonus to movement speed and buff the 3 evasion nodes after to 15+% (and/or somehow give another form of bonuses such as life/life regen also if we don't want to simply buff the numbers), but I'll leave it to GGG and others to think of the specifics.

How surprised were you to find out that the main evasion class in the game has some of the worst evasion nodes in the tree?

Enough said.

Okay, fine, let's elaborate a bit. Look at Acceleration near the beginning of the duelist tree. Then look at Haste near the beginning of the shadow tree. Now back to Finesse near the beginning of the ranger tree. Okay, now I don't feel guilty by saying, "enough said."

On a more serious note, ranger should perhaps have a combined (higher) attack speed and movement speed bonuses to replace Finesse since rangers are supposed to be nimble/fast as a melee, but especially also as a ranged evasion character since we need to be able to somewhat kite our opponents (or move out of the way after letting our evasion act on 1-2 hits when the opponents got close) or they'll be destroyed by melee in both PvE and PvP. To be consistent with the relative power of other beginning notables of other characters (especially the duelist and shadow), it can be modified into a +6% attack speed, +4-6% movement speed, and +20 dex node. I said 4-6% movement speed node because if it's similar in power to the Accleration or Haste nodes (which have 12% attack speed or is two 6% attack speed nodes, 10 dex nodes together), the movement speed bonus must be at least 4% since a 6% attack speed node is twice as powerful than a typical, average 3% attack speed node. Since we know that an average movement speed node is 3%, it makes sense that the bonus should be 6% attack speed and probably 6% movement speed, but GGG can play with it and if they consider it too power, make somewhere in the range of 4-6%. Alternatively, Finesse could just become a pure increased movement speed node that gives 10-12% movement speed and 20 dex.

Please do this. Please.

One may think that ranger will get a huge movement speed bonus from these suggested changes. Well, not really. It actually seems perfectly appropriate since rangers (unless it was supposed to be shadow) are supposed to be able to move the fastest in the game and this will also buff their farming/clearing speed compared to other classes that have movement skills such as whirling blades, leap slam, and lightning warp (with lightning warp being the only one usable by a bow user). Ranger's DPS and clearing speed will still pale in comparison to low life righteous fire builds or dual spork totem builds anyway. Melees who want to close in on rangers in PvP can still do so with all their movement abilities and traps. If you're a melee PvPer and don't have any sort of skill to close in on your opponents, you're doing something seriously wrong anyway. Also, the movement speed bonus is not as much as one thinks taking into account that bow users have to stand and shoot and kite, etc.

They're fine as long as they are still highly avoidable (pun not intended) after the tree rework. Not many would complain even if they're deleted entirely from the tree, but I don't think that's a good idea because it seems like a fun (hopefully in the future, viable) way to play if used in conjunction with decent life without having to get Unwavering Stance or Eye of Chayula to prevent stun. But just either move them somewhere so that it's not a main pathway or make sure they don't become those mandatory nodes. This is probably low priority since they thankfully can be easily avoided and most people treat them like the plague. Alternatively, GGG can simply buff these nodes to a higher % and/or consolidate them into 1-2 notable to better incentivize people in getting them because they're currently a big point investment for what they give

Yes, accuracy nodes can be important (they're not completely useless.. they're just.. not great) and they should be the best in the ranger tree, which makes sense. However, they shouldn't be placed in front of notable nodes to make them prerequisites to obtaining better nodes such as Perfect Aim or Master Fletcher because it basically downgrades/converts the notables to regular nodes if the character has a Lioneye's or resolute technique (i.e. 24% phys dmg with 2 points to get to Master Fletcher --> 12% phys dmg each; 15% projectile dmg/20 dex with 2 points to get to Perfect Aim --> 7.5% projectile dmg and 10 dex each point which are basically the same as those single points in 12% bow phys dmg nodes or 8% projectile dmg nodes from the starting ranger, duelist, and shadow tree). This doesn't make sense because ranger was supposed to have the best/strongest/most efficient projectile/bow nodes in her starting tree (the average % projectile per point has to necessarily be >8% since the duelist and shadows already have 8% per point) because... well that's her class. You can force me to get Fury Bolts with the mandatory 8% projectile dmg nodes, 12% physical dmg nodes, Acceleration, and/or the 6% bow attack speed node rather than the mandatory accuracy nodes any day.

Give rangers the option to pick up their buff accuracy nodes because they should have the best ones since they're rangers, but don't force them to get it to get out of the tree, especially since the game has mechanics that provides 100% accuracy. Why punish end-game users who may have spent good currency to get a Lioneye's Glare, arguably the best bow in the game for a good number of bow builds, by wasting their points into mandatory accuracy nodes and thus making all the nodes after the accuracy nodes less efficient per point. Same punishment also goes to bow users who spent good number of point investments to get resolute technique.

Terrible, mandatory nodes is a consistent theme we will see throughout the ranger tree. Yes, there sometimes need to be some useless highway nodes to get to the good ones, but some of the ones seen in the ranger area are a bit overboard. This will be better explained as we continue on.

The ranger tree has probably the worst life nodes available for a life based class (unlike for example, witches and shadows who tend to be meant for pure ES or ES/life hybrid) that relies on evasion. This is especially bad since the current mechanics of evasion requires a lot of life for a character to be viable. To look at things purely from a PvP point of view: the fact that there are mechanics in the game that completely bypasses evasion every time such as resolute technique and the use of Lioneye's Glare. Compare that to large physical damage which mostly, but not completely reduces armor's effectiveness, the other main defense.

Let's look at specific examples of some weak life nodes: the set of 3 nodes directly below the Gymnastics node (should be 6%, 6%, and either 8% with X or pure 10%), the cluster of 5 nodes directly below Thieves Craft (just make it... not crappy so some players might actually think about ever getting them please), the set of 3 nodes right near the cluster we just mentioned (lower left), and the cluster of 4 to the right of the 3 skill duration nodes. Also notice the Beef notable (+30 str) which can indeed be good for builds lacking in str. However, the fact that it's a prerequisite to those (crappy) 6% life nodes make those life nodes relatively weak for those who don't need the str. As previously mentioned, the ranger tree is laden with a bunch of crappy "mandatory" prerequisite nodes that cause all the nodes following them to be relatively weak per point.

It is understandable that it may "make sense" initially to have ranger have weaker life nodes because the Marauder is the str/armor-based class and he should have the best life/defensive nodes and so their adjacent classes (Templars and Duelists) should have the second best tier of life nodes, and thus classes further away from their tree such as witches and rangers should theoretically have fewer life nodes and shadow should end up with the least amount theoretically. However that doesn't work because of how evasion currently works in the game since ironically evasion classes actually need more life than armor classes to be viable or at least equal amounts of life. But in order to get even at least an equal amount of life, it means the ranger life nodes must necessarily be stronger than the str class nodes because we must invest in evasion and life just as the str/armor based classes invest in armor and life.. EXCEPT, the str/armmor based classes also get life from all their str attributes already).

These are with the assumption that evasion gets untouched or doesn't get buffed. A way around needing to stack evasion classes with so many life nodes would be to buff evasion to make it actually more viable. It is unclear how to best buff evasion. One idea might be to give them another extra roll for normal hits just as what was done for critical damage. For example, you're about to get hit by a normal, non-critical attack, your evasion gets rolled to determine whether the hit actually lands; let's assume you fail the evasion roll and your character will get hit. Another roll will now take place to see whether it will mitigate/reduce X% of damage that will be scaled based on how much evasion your character has noting that the % damage reduction has to be inherently low and obviously a lot lower than what one can obtain with armor because otherwise everybody would get evasion and nobody would ever get armor. Think of it as when someone tries to punch your face and you try to evade, but are only partially successful so they still hit your chin, but not your nose, since you failed to be able to completely dodge the entire punch. For a critical attack hit, things remain the same and that there should only be 2 rolls: the first roll to determine whether the attack actually lands, and the second roll to determine whether it'll become a critical or a normal attack if the first hit roll failed (the second crit/non-crit damage roll replaces the additional % damage mitigation/reduction roll of a normal attack). However, adding an extra evasion roll might make the lucky and unlucky mechanics a lot stronger/weaker than intended *shrug*. The only problem is that even after buffing evasion, evasion classes probably still need more life regardless because the game has mechanics that allow another player to completely negate the whole defensive stat of evasion (RT or Lioneye's Glare). Talking in terms of PvP again, of course.

Ranger has some of the worst elemental resistance nodes in the tree. Unlike the witch which can travel to the templar and shadow areas for excellent ES/all elemental resist nodes or overpower shield nodes, ranger only has such luxury with one diamond flesh in the duelist and diamond skin from the marauder tree which is quite far. The shadow evasion/% ES nodes are okay.. but most life based rangers tend not to get them since it's not as efficient per node since they're not ES/life hybrid.

Despite the recent buff, it's still relatively weak because it costs a huge point investment and it's also somewhat out of the way in a number of builds. Iron Reflexes requires probably 2-4 points to get for a good number of typical builds while Acrobatics to Phase Acrobatics require around 7-10 (and with acrobatics one needs EVEN MORE point investment to get life nodes to survive). Yes, completely making Acrobatics negating our armor was an issue and it was been addressed by GGG, but the fact that it requires such as large point investment (including the "hidden," but necessary extra life node investment) is another issue that has yet to be addressed. Now people can take Acrobatics along with Iron Reflexes, but still I suspect that not many are purely Acrobatics since it'll still be quite dangerous to do so.

Consolidate the 3%, 3%, 2%, 2% nodes into either a set of 3 nodes (4%, 3%, 3%) or a set of 2 nodes (5%, 5%). I would opt more for the latter since 7-10 points is a huge difference vs 2-4 points. Or leave them with the same number of nodes, but give each of them extra benefits such as +life or +evasion/armor bonuses or something. Or some combination therefore. The point is, Acrobatics takes a lot of point investment and is one of the main reasons (besides it being just awfully weak) why many people rather get Iron Reflexes instead since with all the points saved, they can get more life nodes (or damage) instead. Though ironically, as mentioned those with Acrobatics and evasion are the ones who actually need more life nodes than those who went Iron Reflexes.

Requires way too many points for what it does. What the notable does is good, but similar to Acrobatics, it just takes too large of a point investment to get, especially since it's pretty out of the way relatively speaking.

The pathway going from Perfect Aim straight up towards the shadow tree is highly inefficient and thus in a min-max perspective, tends to be a lot less viable (another reason why many ranger builds won't be getting those elemental resist nodes even though the nodes SEEM so close). Even the pathway going to the right towards Thieves Craft seems a bit inefficient (especially we were given the option to get the relatively weak physical damage nodes or go around it), but they're not nearly as bad as going straight up from Perfect Aim.

If the ranger tree gets reworked and balanced, we'll hopefully see fewer rangers having to travel all the way west to spec into all the necessary, excellent defensive nodes and elemental resistances in the Marauder/Duelist trees which rangers heavily lack especially since the ranger's offensive nodes aren't good enough to make them viable glass cannon in PvP or PvE either as seen in other games. There's a reason why a good number of ranger builds immediately travel all the way over to those areas. Well, to be fair, before there's also the pre-nerfed elemental adaptation that was completely overpowered, but even now a good number of ranger builds still travel to the duelist/marauder trees because of the harsh lack of (good) life and defensive nodes in the ranger tree especially with evasion is currently an inferior form of defense. You know the ranger tree is bad when even the least slightly competent theorycrafters can make way better bow builds starting as a marauder or duelist which goes against GGG's stance (one I completely agree with) that despite all classes can theoretically become whatever type of character a player wants them to be, when played the way the class was meant to be played, the character should tend to be relatively stronger (i.e. witch should tend to be a stronger summoner/spell caster, duelist should be a relatively stronger/more efficient dual-welder than other classes, etc)

Since we spoke of accuracy, the stat bonus given from getting dex seems relatively weak compared to bonuses from obtaining str and int as they give life/% phys dmg and mana/% ES while evasion gives accuracy/%evasion. Accuracy can be important as mentioned, no doubt, but typically not so much for bow users because they have a bunch of excellent accuracy nodes anyway and those who are starving for accuracy tend to be classes that are far away from the ranger tree (templar and witch wanders?) who also didn't take resolute technique, but they have accuracy nodes in their respective areas and some of those builds wouldn't waste all the points to travel to the ranger area just to pick up more dex for accuracy anyway and thus their characters will have low dex regardless.

Compound this with the fact that other bonus dex gives is % evasion. Well % evasion is better than accuracy (what isn't?), but we already know that evasion needs a rework since it still seems to be very weak. There are many threads on the myriad of reasons why evasion is weak such as mechanics that completely bypasses it as mentioned among others, but the point is evasion is bad and we should feel bad. It might be better to give dex better bonuses such as replacing accuracy with either increase attack speed (1-1.5% increased atk spd per 20-40 dex? Figure out the details later), increase movement speed (1% for every 30-50 depending on balance), or critical chance/damage. This goes along with the idea that dex users are supposed to be the more glass cannon or assassin type classes.

If replacing the accuracy bonus from dex to another form of bonus is that much of a concern, simply add a couple more accuracy nodes around the entire tree of all classes while still leaving ranger with the most powerful ones. Just be sure to balance it in a way to make accuracy nodes a lot more powerful so it doesn't take an obscene amount to get a high accuracy % especially against monsters/PvE, but also for PvP. This will work for PvP because even if an opponent has a high hit/accuracy %, it'll be rolled against an evasion class's high evasion % and there's also curses like Enfeeble and gems like Blind to partially counter. Furthermore, this change will give Lioneye an indirect nerf (probably for the better) since accuracy will no longer be as important or hard to get.

Yes, all this is easier said than done, but buffing dex is no easy task in the first place. Basically the dex attribute is relatively weak compared to str and int. I am a bit doubtful GGG would actually change dexterity that drastically since it's such a big overhaul of one of the core mechanics of the game, but I mentioned it just to raise awareness of the issues regardless and the truth has to be spoken.

PoE needs some form of a ranged physical damage gem for both physical wand users as well as bow users. When I was during some testing, bow based skills that are physical-based (i.e. split arrow and puncture, but rain of arrows is an exception--keep reading) are relatively weak if one wants to go pure physical since they lack a physical gem that gives the MORE damage modifier. The exception being rain of arrows where since it's an AoE skill, it can be used in conjunction with concentrated effect increasing it's physical damage drastically. Concentrated effect increased rain of arrows' damage by a vast amount when compared to the amount you can get from split arrow even though split arrow has a damage effectiveness of 80% while rain of arrows only has a damage effectiveness of 75% (both has identical increased physical damage) no matter what combination of gems you use. This makes physical bow skills other than rain of arrows a lot less viable. You may circumvent this problem by going elemental conversion instead and getting weapon elemental damage (also a MORE modifier), but what if you want to use those physical bow skills as.. well.. purely physical damage skills as they were intended to be? Tough luck. Not to mention that rain of arrows can use both concentrated effect and weapon elemental damage... uh huh. At this point rain of arrows just seems like to be the most powerful burst damage bow skill simply because no other arrow skills can take advantage of concentrated effect and if a ranged physical gem is implemented, rain of arrows will become even stronger since that more modifier will work in conjunction with the concentrated effect's more modifier.

What GGG can do is either introduce a new ranged physical damage gem (and perhaps a ranged physical damage on full life gem also if necessary?). Or better yet: simply take out the "Melee" wording in both the Melee Physical Damage gem and the Melee Physical Damage on Full Life gem so they can they be universally used for both ranged and melee attack users (not "spells" because then EK might be unstoppable?) just like how other more damage multiplier gems such as concentrated effect (works both on physical and elemental aoe skills/spells) and weapon elemental damage (works both on melee and ranged skills) can be used by both melee and ranged users. This seems to be the only balance that would make sense and is consistent with everything.

I understand GGG's original intent may have been to let melees have stronger physical damage since they have to get close to do the damage, but the lack of a ranged physical damage more modifier gem makes ranged physical skills extremely weak. One way to balance if GGG still wants melee physical to rule supreme compared to ranged physical is to nerf the inherent increased damage on the ranged physical skills (buffing melee physical skills' damage may not be a good idea since they do so much damage already and we know how armor works...). But to be honest, it may not be necessary to do this because ranged physical weapons already does lower damage compared to melee weapons that the weapons themselves are the inherent nerf when comparing melee vs ranged physical damage. Hope that makes sense.

General game balance affecting everyone

Change IIQ/IIR gems into white colored gems

Wrath's attribute requirement

Physical Damage Aura gem (low priority, and debatable)

Future PvP Balance (very low priority):

Evasion being completely negated

Block is broken

Low life righteous fire builds

These PvP balances don't have to be implemented any time soon, but definitely should consider them before the game is officially released otherwise PvP will continue to be dominated by low-life RF builds and shield/block builds.. and the most overpowered/broken build of them all: low life RF block builds. GG.

Quality of life issues:

Control + clicking maps into the map receptacle (high priority and an easy fix)

Unable to receive messages while loading between zones

Many of the projectile supports have LESS modifiers which is particularly painful, and they all happen to be dex support gems. Perhaps a "Siegebolt" or heavy projectile style dex support gem that adds More modifier at hefty cost of projectile speed (and possibly 1 less projectile penalty for low levels)? Technically this would slow down RoA if used with it, and be scary to use with slower/short range projectiles such as freeze pulse. It doesn't have to be exactly ranged weapon-centric, but I don't think anyone would mind having a bow/wand-only support gem either. PvP isn't exactly balanced but this should add some flavor to it, I personally wouldn't mind PvPing in the potential equivalent of a shmup.

For PvP, RT users should still be able to miss EV users somewhat. It doesn't have to be perfectly efficient, instead anti-crit rolls should be used against the weapon's base crit chance for a chance to evade, meaning RT users actually do have to invest into some accuracy or pick a weapon with higher crit chance for better RT efficiency. Doesn't exactly make sense and completely counter-intuitive but just throwing loose ideas around.

Alot of what I've listed isn't exactly mendable with ranger tree changes, because I feel Dexterity is a somewhat flawed stat. There's nothing that the ranger can really claim as her own except for powerful status avoids, debatable dodge/evasion, and weak accuracy. Its very difficult to have any sort of build without feeling like you wasted nodes if its not a bow ranger. It feels very bipolar and cluttered and messy in general to melee rangers. You have High dex notables with sometimes strange additions to them in very jaunting spots, causing rangers to want to leave the tree as quick as possible to acquire str and int for their builds, encouraging rangers to invest very little in their local tree. The amount of stat bonuses for dex before you even really leave the local tree is kind of ridiculous compared to say the witch with int. Witch is a bad example as well lol, but consider also the stat/hybrid stat notables for duelist and marauder. The ranger tree cannot compare for multiple reasons, weird pathing and weird notables compounding each other especially, promoting VERY little synergy before leaving the local tree. Wrecking ball is a good notable surrounded by almost nothing related to 2handers for example, due to most of the ranger's melee passives being forced into onehand usage. 2hand rangers early on can only pick up attack speed (unoptimal pathing as well), and... accuracy, maybe sword passives as well. They probably end up stat padding in all 3 stats at that point, since that seems to be the only available option on a small budget. Melee rangers in general run into this issue I feel, especially investing in life/shield block. It's a huge node dump of things you dont want to get to "attractive" notables without being nearly as effective as other builds, and the ranger tree in general, just by virtue of the way it was laid out makes investments and attempts at efficiency seem very risky when you consider the big picture of your build, despite some neat early bonuses like wpn elemental damage. I feel like I'm jumping over pits trying to make sure I don't screw up my build with every single point, and every leap I would make is 1 foot too short of actually making it to the other side.