Ranger Start Tree feedback

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Mateq wrote:

I think that big hits dmg reduction keystone could be pretty easy balanced, like taking es to consideration when hit is made, halving/removing whole armor...

Another ideas:

1. Some cool crit mechanics. I would like to see something like:

a) Keystone passive: Triples your crit chance, but halves your attack speed.
This could reduce mana problem for crit characters. Example
100 weapon dmg, 1 attack/s 20% crit chance, 300% crit dmg, before this:
Over 20s we get 16x100+4*300 giving us 2800 overall dmg
After:
Over 20s we get 4x100+6*300 for overall 2200 dmg, and half the mana cost.
So it simply reduces our dps unless we get crazy amounts of crit, reducing continuity/fluency but heavily boosting mana regen.

b )Another:
Maybe circle or Keystone:
Your crit effects are +10/10/30 or +50 stronger.
For example instead of igniting target for 100dmg over 4s, it could ignite for 150(over 4s), instead of 1s shock we would get 1,5s and so on.

c) Your crits/killing blows deal additional 10% of damage dealt as aoe(with something like 15 radius)


2. Something to do with attack speed:

a) Keystone Passive: Your every attack is now followed by additional one dealing 10% of that dmg.

b) Less dmg but more as:
Some berserker one Keystone would be like you attack faster, but your hits are less likely to hit/crit. This would maybe make accurancy rating more attractive.

I like your ideas Mateq! Perhaps lowering attack speed is a bit much of a drawback for a class centered on attack speed itself. Maybe increasing crit chance and crit damage at the expense of doing much less damage with normal hits.

I'd also like to see on-crit effects as well as on-evasion/dodge effects since that really ties in well with the whole concept.

Maybe even a notable/keystone to add an additional projectile for bow users and/or add an additional attack for melee users.

I'd also like to reiterate the possibility of flask management being a part of the ranger's area centered around the Alchemist node, or even a keystone in which you gain a significant amount of healing and charges from flasks at the expense of never gaining benefits from life/mana regen.

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a) Keystone passive: Triples your crit chance, but halves your attack speed.
This could reduce mana problem for crit characters. Example
100 weapon dmg, 1 attack/s 20% crit chance, 300% crit dmg, before this:
Over 20s we get 16x100+4*300 giving us 2800 overall dmg
After:
Over 20s we get 4x100+6*300 for overall 2200 dmg, and half the mana cost.
So it simply reduces our dps unless we get crazy amounts of crit, reducing continuity/fluency but heavily boosting mana regen.

This would be really really powerful.
A CI dagger crit character using that would only need 33% crit chance to get to 100%, and that would just make his dps explode, be cause he could just focus on crit multipliers after this.

So let's say that with such a char, I have 500% crit mult ( easy to get, try crit weakness on top of it after, it will double the dps ) :
without the keystone : 14*100 + *6*500 = 4400
with the keystone : 10*500 = 5000

if you use crit weakness, this would bring result in 7400 to 10000.
And 500 crit multiplier is not difficult to have, with powercharges and power charge on crit, one woudln't even need to spend points in the skill tree to reach 100% crit chances.

And I have not even been speaking about the armor formula that makes big hits over many small hits much more efficients.

the b) and c) ideas seem more reasonnable to me and good.

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a) Keystone Passive: Your every attack is now followed by additional one dealing 10% of that dmg.

this has nothing to do with attack speed.

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SaranCadrey wrote:

I'd also like to reiterate the possibility of flask management being a part of the ranger's area centered around the Alchemist node, or even a keystone in which you gain a significant amount of healing and charges from flasks at the expense of never gaining benefits from life/mana regen.

This is something I'd agree with as well. Sorta like a Vaal Pact but opposite.

Nature's Essence - "The power of nature, harnessed and distilled to perfection"

20% increased flask effect, 100% increased flask recovery speed. Life regeneration and life leech have no effect.



Now that would be a keystone I'd love to experiment with, considering that the Ranger tree has no nearby life regen/leech nodes available unless she goes far out of her way. It would also supplement Evasion very nicely amongst other forms of defense.

Oh I would really like to add that the ranger quest rewards need some loving. Easily the weakest part about melee ranger is the inaccessibility to melee gems from quest rewards, especially the support gems, how many times can you give me lesser projectiles, faster projectiles, or increase crit damage before you give me an added fire damage or faster attacks or mana or life leech?

Rangers are always partly elemental (I dislike this a lot) and there is no usable skill gems for physical builds (roa and split arrow excluded), also rangers completely lacks physical damage support. So my suggestion is moving melee part from middle to side, leaving space for more (physical) bow nodes and life.



After adding pic realised that shield and melee nodes would be better in between of shadow and ranger but hope you get the point still! :p

Dreamer mode activated; keystone which allows 100% non-elemental builds:

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25% of physical damage is added as chaos damage. You can't deal elemental damage.

1st I thought Hey, lets convert all elemental to 50% chaos. Well that would be again path of elemental nodes, so ended up with this. I chose chaos damage over physical because there is no conversion like this making it unique and build allowing, and not only for rangers.

It would be in dexterity area, and (as flavor for dexterity is speed and accuracy differences) I planned 3 nodes after the keystone:

5% chance to gain frenzy charge on hit
10% more accuracy rating per frenzy charge

Following with 2nd keystone:

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Chaos damage causes 1 random effect (or just spreading small dot of tar) on hit and blinds on crit

Random effects are:

Spreading tar
Creating chilled ground
Bleeding
Knockback
Stun
Culling
Viper debuff
Poison
Splash (for all attacks and spells)
Dominates
Explodes corpse on kill
etc.

All possible non-elemental effects =p

AS melee splash ranger i would love to see some AOE passives for swords.

Please do not nerf IR, but you should make acrobatics cluster cost less skillpoints (6 skillpoints is too much!!!!!) or give it evade bonus (like +10% evasion rating for every point of acrobatics)

Right now, for melee ranger it's better to go into duelist tree and eventually, even if you speced into acrobatics, going for IR gives me BIGGER phys reduction + enough skill points to take +50% armour rating.

Here's example what i mean:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIABS0FtQguDq0UdRUgGY4ZtBrbG_oi6iP2Jd8ppSzpMHw1hjWSOrM94j7PR35KfU2STshRR1PfVvpY21pIYEtlTWdnZ6Bqk2wWbml0QXTteu-D24TZhO-HGYd2jb-SzZkrm4ObjZu1naqfJ6QZqn-quKvFrEesr6_rt9O5zb2Bvea-p8APwdjDOsS4ytPOcdJN037V7dX418vdDeKA6NbrFO2D7g7v8Plj_Ev8xQ==
Level 68 ranger, IR


Same level: FULL acrobatics cluster

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIABS0FtQguFSAZjhm0Gtsi6iP2LOkwfDWGNZI6sz3iPs9Hfkp9TZJOyFFHU99W-ljbWkhgS2VNZ2dnoGqTbBZuaXTteu-D24TZhO-HGYd2jb-SzZkrm4ObjZu1naqfJ6p_qrirxaxHrK-307nNvYG95r6nwA_DOsS4ytPOcdJN037V7dX418vdDeKA6NbrFO2D7g7v8Plj_Ev8xX8r1orUI92oxqIwcUt4OkLrLA==


With first build it's way easier to mantain survivability, because of how bad evade scales


and yes, i want to see this viable in Hardcore, since im playing only HARDCORE :(

Another problem, Chance to hit of mobs scales up way to fast, so even high amount of evasion rating won't help you really much.

mantaining 60-70% evade is almost impossible (pure evasion, not counting dodge, block)

Thank you for game :3

The Ranger should be the fastest hitting exile, that avoids being wound at all cost and treats the wounds well.

Some ideas..

For the life part:
Keep it with no Lifereg/ll, but improve Flasking:
Several (2 or 3) small clusters with 2 Nodes of "6% Life, 10% Life recovery from Flask" and one Notable with "10% Life, 15% Flask recovery rate".
One Keystone with "recovers 5% of Maxlife on use of Flask".

Avoidance:
Having a Spellblock Keystone for dual-wield or shield would be a nice incentive to dig into the ranger starting area.
Bigger and fewer stun avoidance and elemental status avoidance nodes.
Evasion needs to be adressed, no need to poke on it further.

Summon:
A Ranger should be able to summon one or more companions. A wolf pack, an amur, some crazy beast you make up for wreaclast. Beside the obvious passives and supports for minions, it would be nice to have something like "Leader of the Hunt: dealing a critical strike (player), the companion(s) gain a frenzy charge". Here and there some life on kill and life on hit Nodes for the pack in these summon clusters to salt it.

Fast hitting:
I would prefer a Node like "Spirit Drain: XY Mana per hit" over another Manaflows. It fits better to the fasthitting aspect. Manareg is pointless anyway, if you go full out on frenzy.

Isn't the Ranger area pretty good as it is? I mean, there are already a lot of options, and I like taking that route down to IR...

Melee ranger is a fringe build anyway, right? Really, all we really need is more mana options.

...

However, the companions idea just above this message is kinda nice, hehe.

I don't think anyone has pointed this out yet, so I would like to do so.
This isn't strictly Ranger-related, but it tunes in with the Evasion changes I'm hoping will land in 0.11.2.

When it comes to survivability gems, they are quite interesting.
Molten Shell: As you know, it's a Strength skill gem that scales off your Armour.
Dealing huge damage to packs that attack you is a really good way to tank up and just deal with being attacked.
Tempest Shield: An Intelligence skill gem that scales off your Block chance.
While a bit more niche, it's another skill that gives you more tank while punishing enemies for attacking you.

Now, you should know where I'm going with this; There is no equivalent gem for Dexterity+Evasion characters.

Considering Cold damage is not used yet, and it has slowing properties, it would be a great candidate for a survivability Dexterity skill gem.

Something similar to Tempest Shield, reserves part of your mana but gives you Additional x% to Evade attacks.
Every time you successfully Evade an attack, the attacker is Chilled for a short duration. It would not do any damage, but it would give you a greater ability to be faster than your opponent, which is what Dexterity should be all about.
Extra proposal: Every time you successfully Dodge an attack, the attacker is Frozen for a short duration.
As far as I know, Acrobatics is a passive generally avoided, but this would certainly sweeten the deal.

Also, I would just like to suggest a concept of a mechanic; Your life cannot be decreased by more than x% of your max HP pool per second. (Think Life Leech without Vaal Pact, but defensively)
Could this work, somehow, scaling off something?