Archer location, I am dissapoint

They'd have to be incredible wand buffs. On the low end of the scale, it takes like 20 points to equal whacking things with a sword with 0 points.

Well, I had some suggestions in the past that were rather well received, I suppose GGG will have one or two ideas for them as well, even if they don't try hard to come up with some.

So far, Wands are rather specialized.
They are the only ranged weapon that allows also using a Shield,
they have very strong passives (but could really use a small phys damage buff),
and their only dedicated ability so far is Power Siphon, which is the only way to actively gain powercharges.

Sadly, they are sorely lacking in actual combat performance.

I think that it's intentional, that wands be "lacking" in combat potential. Someone from GGG recently suggested that was intended, though the current wand passives are very good and make building a wand build very enticing. I suspect one or two wand skills will raise their potential. And really, with power charges getting more use, I think we can agree a hybrid wand + spell build would be really good, provided wands got a little more active skill love.

Daggers/claws/swords/axes are good to focus on, but I would like to see one staff-unique skill. And maybe two or perhaps three wand/bow or wand-unique skills.

Adding more support gems is a must too. They really influence what builds are viable. But there are some passives too, we could use. I'd love to see a passive like this:

Notable Node: Dust and Ash - Enemies that die from burns leave ashes behind instead of a corpse.

Fire spells need some love, cold damage does everything you could ever want. Having a passive for fire spells to "shatter" corpses would pull it closer in line with lightning/cold.

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UnDeaD_CyBorG wrote:

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Qarl wrote:

We do indeed more active skills. The main skill gaps I want to cover next are AOE for Claw and Dagger builds, more Axe and Sword skills (main Duelist deficienct I think comes from Active skill availability), Power charges for Casters, and more options for bow users.

Wait, no Wand skills?

In time yes, but they aren't on my short list of things I want to cover.

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Qarl wrote:

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UnDeaD_CyBorG wrote:

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Qarl wrote:

We do indeed more active skills. The main skill gaps I want to cover next are AOE for Claw and Dagger builds, more Axe and Sword skills (main Duelist deficienct I think comes from Active skill availability), Power charges for Casters, and more options for bow users.

Wait, no Wand skills?

In time yes, but they aren't on my short list of things I want to cover.

Any hopes for a projectile based mobility skill? Pretty please ? :D

The first build I ever tried was wand witch. Right now I'm only level 28 on normal difficulty but that's mainly because I dont want to commit a lot of time to a character that's just going to get wiped soon anyway

but right now at early levels I can one shot most individual mobs and you're right I have a nice shield with lots of stats on it - ranged + shield is pretty nice, I use tempest shield with my wand witch too which is cool

<3 wands

Maybe a support gem that allows bow skills to be used with wands?
Allows a lot of skills to be used with wands at the cost of a support, and by extension, link.

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EpsiIon wrote:

Any hopes for a projectile based mobility skill? Pretty please ? :D

Grappling shot! Do it! Doooo itttttt.

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aimlessgun wrote:

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EpsiIon wrote:

Any hopes for a projectile based mobility skill? Pretty please ? :D

Grappling shot! Do it! Doooo itttttt.

I was thinking grabbling shot for arrows and blink-flash for wands, tp to spot when the projectile hits it, so its near instant. The skill is nearly a necessity if they want pvp to even be partially balanced.

Well, to stay on topic, it might be worth the dev's interest to buff up Ranger's defense highway by introducing more life/evasion/manaregen into it. I'm not sure about you, but I don't think I've ever seen a Ranger take the Avoid Stun or Stun Recovery nodes whatsoever. They make for a weak defense and a waste of passive points that could be better spent on more Evasion.

I bring up mana regen because I find that anything short of Blood Magic, the need to go with Mana Flows is paramount to any successful build and then not enough at times. By slapping on at least 2 supports per skill and IAS from passives and equipment, Rangers tend to run out of steam pretty quick. I'm sure most Duelist builds also run into trouble like that unless they go BM and stack life and life regen like crazy.