Ranger Start Tree feedback

The first time i saw the updated tree I said, this is too much untidy, a lot of chaos. Witch and Duelist start areas are a great example of how to do it well. Also, as others pointed out, there are some dextery nodes that shouldn't be there, you feel like you are wasting your points.

About the nodes, well, I like most of them, even if I think that you wanted to include too much stats on each notable, and if you want to make a Ranger is mandatory to go physical damage. The only real problem I see here is the notable "Primal Spirit". It gives 20 dex/int (¿? well... ok), 20% mana reg (not bad but compared to others...) and... 20% increased mana recovery from flasks. Well, that last point, I feel it like a waste. Usually Rangers will have a low mana pool, you will refill that pool before the potion effect ends even if you spam your skill continiously while recovering. Mana Flows (Duelist) and Deep Thoughts are much much better than this. Don't know why dont simply move Mana Geyser closer to Ranger start instead of making that appendix. I feel like it wasn't tested enough.

Primal Spirit is still a pretty nice node, with 40 stats and 20% Mana Regen, especially the early Str and Int. The mana from flasks is pretty worthless due to low mana pools. Since I learned to size my flasks to my mana pool I hardly upgrade them past around Act 2 normal. Auras keep my usable mana pool low, so larger flasks are a waste.

Yep. 20% increased mana recovery from flasks is kinda useless.

After some reflection on the Ranger tree, I believe that it still needs another rework, but this may be beyond a skilltree rework.

The problem mainly stems from the weakness of Dex. I'll say this again and again until I'm blue in the face, but evasion can never be treated as a primary form of defense. Accuracy is something I'm not as concerned with since it's very possible to stack a high chance to hit with the revamp in accuracy, so the main issue is still evasion.

Evasion doesn't work without a life or an ES buffer. A lot of successful endgame evasion builds rely on a whapton of life or ES or a life/ES buffer. Evasion is secondary to it, and for good reason. If I can evade 60% of attacks, the other 40% of the time I'll get hit. And when that 40% hits, what do I have that can mitigate that? I see why certain passives in the Ranger section have been buffed to provide % increase to life and evasion, but the fundamental issue is still there. In fact, the evasion system suffers from fast-hitting enemies than slow-hitting enemies as people like to confuse. Faster-hitting enemies will eat up your entropy much much faster and will cause more damage than slow hitting enemies. (Aside from really accurate/dex monsters)

Yes, I know there's Blind and Enfeeble. But should those be mandatory to evasion builds? In fact, I don't even know why Enfeeble should be an Intelligence curse when it clearly has more uses for dex/str based characters that enter the fray of combat. But that's neither here nor there. Enfeeble has become the de facto curse to use because it's so strong in defending a player from the ramped up damage in endgame maps. Blind requires an extremely fast APS to proc. These aren't ideal solutions to fix evasion, and gems/items should not be the solution to fix evasion. (like how Searing Touch and the Increased Burning Damage support fixed burn builds) Items should never be the fix to fundamental game mechanics. (I'm also alluding to the new post made by Qarl regarding game balance.)

Personally, I'd like to see some more meaningful defense passives in the Ranger tree. Why the EV/HP wheel has melee passives within the same wheel boggles me. For the Ranger to be on an equal footing to some other classes, she needs more life/evasion defense in her defense highway.

The other way to tackle this issue is to change how dex works. Adding a small flat life bonus is the best way to do it, such as 3 life per 10 dex. A character that has 300+ Dex can have an additional 90+ life to their life pool while still allowing the Strength stat to have its own identity.


Bottom Line:
- Dex characters need more life without having to resort to major life-stacking because evasion cannot function as a primary defense.
- The defense highway of the Ranger could be improved to provide better/more defense. (The melee portion of the first wheel is unneeded.)

I agree with pretty much everything Islidox said about evasion in that if it is to try and be a 'primary' defensive measure (the Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics area + Ondar's Guile) then there needs to be a life or ES buffer to it. Although with how ES is halved using the Keystone that leaves just life to be the buffer needed for when those big hits, or rapid amounts of small hits come in and smack us thanks to the entropy system. Personally, I think making Evasion a primary means of defense in this game cannot work given how things are and that it will require too much balancing or reworking of things, and unfortunately, the devs don't seem to be too willing to tackle the core issues with defensive things like armor and evasion being a bit under-performing. I know this is going to potentially go little off-topic but it does apply to Rangers as well so I think it will be fine.

It seems like the devs on one hand have the passive tree setup so that people can choose Armor, Evasion, or Energy Shield as their primary defensive measure (resists notwithstanding because EVERYBODY gets those regardless), but the defensive mechanics say otherwise. Armor has to deal with 'crushing blows' (an outdated mechanic IMHO), Evasion has the entropy system, and Energy Shield has increased status ailment issues (talking about CI here since Life/ES hybrids seem to not be worth using). In fact, without getting too long-winded I'd say that all of these are SECONDARY defenses and the real primary defenses are Dodge and Shield Block and to an extent Endurance Charges. I understand that the devs want defenses to have weaknesses to them...I get that...the problem that I see, especially for Rangers, is that Evasion cannot fulfill the role of a proper defense without massive life stacking, which is also IMHO a primary defense.

It harkens back to World of Warcraft for me in the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) expansion when tanks began to stack nothing but stamina gems into their gear. Why? Because raid bosses were being designed with large, unavoidable attacks that tanks had to 'soak' and armor could only go so far. Even worse when attacks like Steelbreaker (think that was his name) and Mimiron had attacks that were element based and thus bypassed armor and couldn't be resisted, so it was up to the big defensive cooldowns to weather them, but when those were down...LIFE WAS KING. The other secondary stats like block, dodge, and parry were unacceptable because of their diminishing returns and situational use and life was the universal 'defense' beyond cooldowns. Now, I know the situations and games are not EXACTLY the same, but they share many similarities, and again, it shows very much in the Ranger tree with both the ACrobatics Keystones and even Iron Reflexes.

You cannot even try to use hybrid gear of Evasion/Armor, which actually seems like a very logical, viable choice. The problem is that you can't get enough armor without either using Determination (if you even have the mana to support it), or traveling over to the Strength side, although that isn't necessarily without some perks, but you can forget the Leather and Steel type nodes. You can't 'double dip' into them unless maybe the armor had exactly the same Evasion/Armor values, but that isn't the point. Point is, is that the Ranger tree is very extreme in that it's either you go full Evasion and pray, or you go IR and beef up the Armor what you can, and even then you still don't feel adequately protected and have to resort to life-stacking. Even worse when you use a bow, because then you can't use a shield for the very powerful Block Chance...there's very little if any middle ground and it's frustrating.

Ok...know that was a bit of a tangent but back on track now. I do like the overall improvements to the Ranger tree, and it's definitely a good start, but there are still a few things that are lacking, and the big one to me is mana. Primal Spirit has helped a bit, but it's still not as good as it could be and the Mana Geyser cluster is not in a good position. I can understand it being there for Shadows, but even they have better access to more mana nodes near the Witch area and plenty of incentive to go that way anyway, and are much closer to Eldritch Battery if they don't care about not having ES. But not only that, Rangers still have sparse amounts of 8% mana nodes and if you'll pardon the frustration here...WHERE THE **** ARE THE REDUCED MANA COST NODES?! I'm not asking for a lot of them, but really, just ONE node next to two 8% mana nodes? Come on GGG...please give Rangers a little more mana love...please.

I also think the pathing could be cleaned up just a bit more and making access to life nodes not as cumbersome at times. That and there are few residual +10 dex nodes that are just there as 'filler' and really shouldn't be there, like the one leading to the 'Revenge of the Hunted' cluster. Also, the triple accuracy, attack speed, and movement speed clusters are still wasted and very few if anyone takes them. Most would rather go around them and get to the Duelist area faster via the Strength nodes or right and head along the tree that way...just wasted otherwise. I know that not every cluster can be a must-have or what not, but right now there's not much of a reason to take them period and could use some extra incentive to do so.

I have a few other things to say, but for now I'll leave it at that and say once again that I applaud GGG for making positive steps in the right direction for the Ranger tree and that they are listening, but it still has some ways to go. :)

Accuracy still caps (and is almost guaranteed to with the new beastly Finesse), and traps are still over in Int town.

A ranger primary now has to go evasion, but I suppose that's the same as its always been. I do suppose it's a bit more extreme - since they're life nodes, now every Ranger is automatically in evasion.

Thanks for adding some footspeed to the signature damage nodes; it's an improvement definitely.

The +10% dual wield on the way to Aspect of the Panther feels out of place as mentioned.

Acrobatics is still an auto-take strictly-power-upgrade that's located in a desolate no man's land.



As before, one of the worst aspects of the game is it incentivizes "spreading the wealth" around too much. There's no reason to stack Int or Dex to the ceiling - there's not really such a thing as a pure int Witch or a pure Str marauder or whatever. It's a bit homogenus, is all I'm saying.

"

wiggin wrote:

Yep. 20% increased mana recovery from flasks is kinda useless.

Increased mana recovery is also functionally faster mana recovery, since you're getting more mana spread over the same duration. Therefore it's not worthless.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Increased mana recovery is also functionally faster mana recovery, since you're getting more mana spread over the same duration. Therefore it's not worthless.

You can base your mana recovery on flask maybe to A1 Cruel, so later, those are not very usable.

Especially, if you had to use as many auras as you can to cover poor equipment drops. Mana leech on items will work only with physical bows, and the only good physical bow in this game is Lioneye's Glare, comparable rares are elemental. I don't not why devs are so reluctant to change it to "% of Attack" instead of "% of Physical Attack". Anyway, my ranger still will use BM gem, I ignored Primal Spirit as I don't think it's usable after lvl ~30-40.

"

LimitedRooster wrote:

Acrobatics is still an auto-take strictly-power-upgrade that's located in a desolate no man's land.

It's not that desolate - for instance the Piercing Shots circle is nearby, as is a Frenzy charge. But it is deliberately placed a little bit away from the best Evasion nodes.

As for it being an auto-take, it's not that simple because there's still the option (albeit nerfed somewhat) of taking IR instead, or just supplementing your Eva with some Armour (maybe you don't want to go all the way to a 50-50 hybrid, but there's no reason to abstain from Granite Flasks and Molten Shell). Pure Eva still has the obvious weakness that the damage you take can be very 'spiky', and especially against swarms of trash mobs, a little Armour can go a long way.

Don't increases to flask recovery also apply to leech, or did they fix that?

Anyway as Islidox and Tanakeah, dexterity is a plain shitty attribute that provides bad stats, especially to the majority of players. Mana and life are useful to a huge amount of characters, ES and melee damage also a generally useful stat, accuracy on the other hand is used by only non-casters and most builds try their best to avoid having to spec into it, while the evasion bonus is used by only rangers looking to take acrobatics thanks to the new IR change.

Dex needs a bigass change in order to be anything but "that stay i need in order to use that one really good support gem".