The Witch and Ranger Zones are the weakest in the game

The skill grid is perhaps biased in favor of defense; defense nodes are generally better. So it's natural for the two ranged characters to be the weakest on paper. That is fine, but they don't really get anything worth the exchange of defense. Their damage nodes should be a wag above average for their sacrifice, otherwise why not start somewhere else, get teh defense and teh damage?

The witch has it easier due to minions of course - Conjure Skeleton is like a wall of steel. The ranger doesn't get that kind of alternative defense support (until they give her a puppy), but let's compare zones as they are now.

For the ranger specifically, her significant nodes are all over the place instead of going to one singular purpose. Stuff the classes get:


Ranger: Evasion, 6% shield block, an 18% life node, and a fitness (+10% life, +20 str) node in the back 40. The only significant quality about her is her superior access to the Frenzy nodes, which is great if you're going to use Frenzy as your primary attack. Which you should. Because it melts faces. (And I guess she gets +30% elemental damage on weapons for three points, but that's still put to shame by the Templar's options in that area.)

Her Celerity node is kind of a kaizo trap. It's 2 to 2.7% movement speed per skill point and leads to a dead end. Unless there's going to be a huge shake up in her zone, I'd open this skill up more.

One of her resist groups is locked behind a barrier of 2 intelligence nodes. The Duelist's Diamond Skin (+15% all) is 3 responsible dex nodes away from Golem's Blood, and only costs a single point. Growl. Hiss.

One thing that aggravates me are her Projectile Damage nodes. These are really nice as far as damage nodes go - they multiply your physical damage which might yield elemental damage which is again multiplied by the Projectile Damage node. She gets 27% of this stuff. In contrast, the Shadow gets 28% for the same cost, which is immediately followed by the 12% IAS +20 dex node. (The ranger has to spend 3 points to get her 12 IAS btw.)

This enrages me since one of these projectile damage nodes is dressed up like a Significant Node. "Perfect Aim: +15% Projectile damage, +20 dex. Great deal man!" But the nodes before it give a measly +6. Perfect Aim gives you jack shit.

At least give the sister her 8% projectile nodes, man.


Shadow:: He gets a good deal of IAS, almost all of the critical hit chance, the powerful Nullification, a drop of mana leech, a Fitness node in a sane place.. a good zone with a few focused options and nodes that are actually good.


Duelist: He has dual block and life regen. If you don't want dual block and life regen you should go somewhere else. But at least he does these things well.


Marauder: This guy is an absolute beast. All of his good stuff is right in his face, he doesn't have to hike for a thing. He gets very respectable life regen, 45% resistance to everything, +5% max resist, 3% life leech, a Versatility node (+20 dex, int, +5% accuracy).. just a ton of power.

I understand why the Witch and Ranger don't get something like a Versatility node - attacks require the accuracy stat, which is a crippling effect Witch and the Ranger don't suffer from. Though in my opinion the Ranger suffers from having to take Dex instead of Str..


Templar: A very respectable ~36/51% resist, though he has to stretch further than the Marauder to get it. Elemental weapon damage. Totems. Precision nodes to make up for his accuracy weakness. +20% to the radius of his Ground Slams or spells right in his face. A good amount of Energy Shield.


Witch: A good minion node, she's at least a tiny bit better with minions than the Templar is. Her 15% resist lies entirely in the Walker skills, which are weaker than the Marauder's basic +15% Fire/Ice/Lit resist nodes. She gets +20% AoE radii too, though it costs an additional point over what the Templar spends. ~+57% Energy Shield, which is less than the Shadow's and Templar's 70-80%.

What bothers me most about this is that Body and Soul, and Nullification, make Arcane focus look like dog poo. Body and Soul is easily twice as powerful as it is.

When you really stop and think about it, her tree is really about elemental status effects.

She also has a ton of wand nodes that, after around 60 skill points will let you start doing about 6 times the listed damage of your wand.


So.

Since they're made of glass, I'd suggest around a 10% nudge up in dps. The Shadow effectively has that already with his IAS; the rest of the glass section of the tree ought to get that in other stats. That way you have that intermixing multiplication of stats us sperglords love so much.

For the witch:

* I'd add a couple more AoE radius nodes so she can get up to 30%. Ideally, in-between the Templar and her. With it a little more accessible to her.

* Reachable "+5% chance to cause a status effect with [element]" nodes in-between the Shadow and herself. Ditto with her having better accessibility to it.

* Buff Arcane Focus slightly. It's a signature skill: she's the pure Int class, she should have decent shield nodes that make you feel good about getting them. In the area of +20-25% energy shield and 10% increase shield cooldown recovery.

* The total +element damage nodes for wands could be buffed to 15-20%. I get the Templar's weapon ele damage is his thing, but access to that from the witch would help a bit for wand builds, which are atrocious in the early game. It takes up so much of the tree though, that some effort at support should be made for it.


For the ranger:

* Complete the circle with the life and Fitness node. It won't destroy the world if she has some decent access to strength.

* Celerity in a sane spot. Bringing Ambidexterity with it couldn't hurt.

* It costs the Marauder 4 points to walk to the totem bundle. It takes the Ranger 9 points to get to the trap bundle. This does have the bonus of granting her the critical hit nodes, but not a boon if you don't want it. A better place for the Trap suite is where the shield block bundle currently is.


More than any class, she feels like a dumping ground for bad Duelist and Shadow nodes. The Duelist has awesome Marauder and Duelist nodes. The Templar has awesome Witch and Marauder nodes. The Ranger has so-so bow nodes, and some decent life nodes, which you can get anywhere. She doesn't even have any aptitude for traps - I just hope this version of the tree is a complete placeholder for her.

In a larger sense most of the significant weapon nodes could use zazzing up. Something on the level of Dual/Staff block or Claw Leech or Galvanic Hammer..


... And I'm sorry in retrospect for making such a long post full of neckbearding. I really let my rationalizing get away from me there.

I disagree? The Ranger has some of the best clusters in the game. Has the easiest access to massive critical multiplier. Has access to tons of life and evasion.

Witch outclasses Templar in minions by far. Witch has the most optimal access to all minion nodes and can easily get enough mana to do whatever.

I'd say the weakest clusters are the Marauder/Templar, but they're only weak if you're not going Resolute Technique or Totems.

A cold crit CI witch is currently the best high offense and high defense AoE character available.

Thanks for your thoughtful and considered feedback.

Some of the things which appear odd at first glance, like the 8% Shadow projectile damage vs the Rangers early 6% nodes are the result of testing from beta, metrics produced on what is actually happening to players, and race results. Some of these things that appear to be aberrations are the result of balance tweaks.

We do make mistakes also, so please do keep providing feedback (and trying to prove us wrong). We do tend to test claims made in feedback when we get it (even if we've tested it before, as repeated feedback that seems to be wrong to us is generally the sign of another problem we haven't noticed.

Specific comments to note:

Movement Speed is very powerful, and tends to be undervalued by players.

We don't intend every class to have equal costs for all game elements. Yes, a ranger has to pay more for resistances from passives than a Duelist.

In play, Shadows tend to be squishier than Rangers, and often have to work hard for their damage.

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Qarl wrote:

In play, Shadows tend to be squishier than Rangers, and often have to work hard for their damage.

...What kind of logic is this? Weaker defensively AND offensively? Why would you do this on purpose?

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Xendran wrote:

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Qarl wrote:

In play, Shadows tend to be squishier than Rangers, and often have to work hard for their damage.

...What kind of logic is this? Weaker defensively AND offensively? Why would you do this on purpose?

I think you may be misreading what I said.

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Qarl wrote:

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Xendran wrote:

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Qarl wrote:

In play, Shadows tend to be squishier than Rangers, and often have to work hard for their damage.

...What kind of logic is this? Weaker defensively AND offensively? Why would you do this on purpose?

I think you may be misreading what I said.

Well the way it's worded it implies that the class is both weaker in defences, and more difficult to obtain offense. It just struck me as odd.

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Xendran wrote:

Well the way it's worded it implies that the class is both weaker in defences, and more difficult to obtain offence. It just struck me as odd.

I'm not entirely convinced you are not going out of your way to misunderstand.

My original comment was in reference to Shadow Projectile Damage passives being 8% while Ranger passives were 6%, (rather than a stand alone comment), but discussing it as stand alone comment, I'll note the following:

The average Shadow that is built in the game to date has had less survivability than the average Ranger. (I base this on the statistics we have). This is my basis for the statement that Shadows tend to be squishier.

This does not mean they are weaker defensively, if I was looking for extremely survivable characters at several levels, Shadow's would certainly feature prominently. More so than Rangers. At post 60 levels, survivability of Shadows and Rangers is pretty equivalent.

For offensiveness, Ranger's do not have to work hard for damage. It is pretty straightforwardly handed to them in frequent increments throughout the game. You can certainly employ a lot of tricks to get more damage out of them that may not be entirely obvious. (Path of Exile allows a lot difference between characters of the same level, from a balance perspective I both love and hate this in extreme measures.)

Shadows get given a lot of early damage, and then it starts becoming a little less obvious how to keep up that damage. There is a lot of offensiveness to be built, but its a bit harder work. As the Shadow is a hybrid with a lot of build options, the path may seem less clear, where 90% of Rangers get built around very similar patterns.

(If you are about to complain that all classes should have equal complexity, this has much to do with what we have noticed about player choices. We do have a lot of interesting side options with rangers, and the 10% who different things with Rangers really do explore them in some depth, but most of our players who choose Ranger, know exactly what they want out of the class.)

So, Shadows tend to be squishier than Rangers, and often have to work hard for their damage. And this does not mean they are weaker defensively and offensively.

That makes a lot more sense, the average player tends to MAKE their shadow squishier. Saying that the class itself in play 'tends to be more squishy' led me to believe it was the actual design of the class, and not just the way the playerbase has been building their shadows.

And no, i'm not going to complain that all classes shoudl have equal complexity. Currently the only class i have a problem with is marauder because it's starting area is too universally good for characters using that side of the tree.

I'm new and I only have a little bit of time playing, about 12 hours I guess. And I don't find the witch to be weak early on because of the skills she has like the ice pulse which just gets fools off you really nicely, though during the 3 hour race I had to spam portals just to beat Merveil before she could kill me xD, which I didn't have to do when I played as maurader