Season Three, Event 135: Descent

This is the second time I've tried a ranger for decent and it was as terrible as last time.

Can someone tell me if Rangers are truly a poor starting class, their damage is terrible, in the opening forest I spent a ton of time kiting the beetle packs (not the exploders) the starting weapon and skill gems means it takes quite a lot of hits to kill them.

On a Duelist it's just a case of cleaving and after 3 swings a whole pack will be pretty much dead.

The whole race was one slugfest as a ranger.

All I can say is rangers and decent don't go together unless you get good RNG which isn't something I can be bothered to chance from now on, shame as I'd like to be competitive on a ranger.

"

Tibersanti wrote:

Can someone tell me if Rangers are truly a poor starting class, their damage is terrible, ...

{... long QQ'ing cut ...}

... shame as I'd like to be competitive on a ranger.

The top 20 player had this class breakdown:


The breakdown of registered classes was:


Only 29.5% of players survived. The breakdown of the 386 alive players was:


The average level for all 1305 players was:


The average level by class for all players alive was:


Considering that Rangers had the highest Level / Class for alive players along with 20% of them placing in the top 20 players the numbers speak for themselves that it IS possible to do well with a Ranger.

Is is extremely beneficial to know before hand which chests you want to take ... for the first chest I took the Curious Chest to keep my health + mana up in the early levels. Ended up kiting like crazy only because I was playing extremely defensive but I could easily see the more experienced player going balls to the walls.
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Descent_Chests

This was my 2nd descent race and as a Ranger I did OK. Rangers are no longer gimped like they used to be. The balance is OK.

No offense but unless I'm mistaken your account doesn't even appear in this race so it is hard to tell from your QQing how good / poor you were doing.

Like many things in life you gotta practise to get better. Making excuses about the RNG is just that -- an excuse -- we ALL are in the same boat praying to the RNGs gods for good drops. :-)


--
Secret to Happiness: Release False Expectations -- Michaelangelo, 2009

My post wasn't intended to be the usual QQ, I was genuinely asking if anyone else thought that rangers feel under powered at the start (before you really have chance to gain items/currency)

On a duelist with strictly the starting items we're given I can make it to the end of level 1 in good time and the run feels relatively 'safe' because I know most of the beetle packs are killable. I say relative because RNG can still throw some nasty champion packs in there or large numbers of poison/fire spitters, but generally I'm happy with the Duelists starting setup.

The ranger on the other hand just feels way underpowered and slow to kill mobs in comparison. I tried to kill the same types of monster as I would on my duelist (mainly the non-exploding beetle packs) and cover the same sort of ground, but found that I either had to skip almost everything to survive, or kite packs for probably 3 or 4 times as long as it would have taken a duelist to kill them.

I've only done 2 Ranger runs on Decent, so will do a few more to see if RNG is screwing with me.

Thanks for the breakdowns by the way, where did you get them?

"

Tibersanti wrote:

My post wasn't intended to be the usual QQ, I was genuinely asking if anyone else thought that rangers feel under powered at the start (before you really have chance to gain items/currency)

OK. It was just hard to take someone serious when I couldn't see their name nor rank in the results. :-/ No offense intended even if I was being a little harsh.

Personally everything feels "dog slow" once you've had high movement speed & high killing speed so I can understand the frustration.

I prefer the Duelist too -- he just feels "edgier". Ranger is like "Yawn, <kite, kite, kite> is it dead yet?" :-(

The fact that Duelists were over represented means quite a few others probably share your view.

"

Tibersanti wrote:

I've only done 2 Ranger runs on Decent, so will do a few more to see if RNG is screwing with me.

Yeah, races are _extremely_ sensitive to them RNG roll. :-/

That said, the better players are definitely pushing the edge to make up for it. The more races you do the more you get a feel for where you can play offensive and where you need to be defensive. i.e. I was extremely happy I got to the last normal zone "Tomb of Statues" on my second Descent race.

"

Tibersanti wrote:

Thanks for the breakdowns by the way, where did you get them?

You're welcome.

One the first page on the line where the Ladder results are posted look to the far right: past "Auto refresh" [x], past the "Refresh" button, and you will find the "Export CSV" button. :-)

Your question actually made me curious just how bad (or how good) Rangers did along with all the other classes too so I imported the data into Excel and did some really easy minimal data analysis. I'm always curious to see what characters are picking and why for the races. i.e. Notice how Witches were completely under represented for the Descent. So thank you for providing some motivation too.

I'm thankful GGG publically makes the data available. Plus others can verify my results. ;-)