Ranger Archive
Thread: Combat Balance What do we want?
...so I will just stop here.So many great ideas.
In the CB realm?
#1 To hit on creatures
#2 Some kind of defence against PvC (increased doge, or defence against poison/bleeds [the P/D would be great in PvP as we dont have much combat skill pts but allows up to level the playing field a bit])
In General?
#3 fix conceal and/or increase masksent abilities
#4 Harvesting increase (2 itmes??)
1. Cammo should not break at the higher levels EVER, except against 'scout' creatures. I get the idea of always having a minimal chance of failure, but this simply does not translate into game play. If I travel to a mission lair my Cammo will typically break about twice on the way (at 125 skill). Proposal is for cammo to give 100% chance of working, except maybe against scout type creatures that apply a negative modifier to it.
2. Terrain Negotiation to give a SLIGHT running speed increase even on flat terrain. This would translate into a minor increase in kiting and escaping from critters.
3. Entertainers to be able to heal BF in higher level camps (maybe a coding issue here I don't know). It is simply ridiculous that they can't. Let's give people a reason to occaisonally pay them to come outdoors.
4. Camps not to go down in combat and to slowly heal diseases over an extended period of time.
5. Increase durations on foraged foods and make them stackable. The previous issue of only chefs being able to stack food is not a problem now that there food buffs are greatly enhanced. Failing which confirm they are a second choice of healing only and scrap everying bar onions and melons. (hehe maybe a bit of frustration showing there -)).
6. Traps - Increase duration of traps, particularly the Ph. Dart and Adhesive Mesh, which are our only distinctive trap abilities. Let creature kiting be something than a Ranger can reliably do.
7. The AOE Stun trap should inflict LARGE amounts of mind damage. Stun is one of the easiest states for advanced combat professions to inflict. By the time a stun trap is thrown a number of combat professions can quite easily have inflicted several K of damage on a group of opponents (whether humanoid or animals) and inflicted stun damage.
8. 'Examine' to reveal the movement speed of creatures; in order that we can work out whether Burst Run is a feasible means of escape. (OK broke my rule, that probably involves a fair amount of thought on re-coding)
9. "State" effects should be an essentially part of combating high level creatures. Currently, spamming the highest DPS attack is the only important factor in high level group combat (assuming a competant tank at the front etc.). State effects need to be able to land on high level creatures in order to make combat more interesting. This issue effects both Ranger traps and combat in general.
10. 'Hit vs. Creatures' - It seems innately wrong that this bonus does not (i) apply to melee attacks; and (ii) apply to special attacks. Until this bonus applies to specials it is useless against mid to high level creatures and has no discernable effect on game play.
11. Defences - Whilst I believe that Ranger skills should be kept mainly as complimentary to the main combat profession skills - rather than the Ranger profession being a combat one in it's own right - by the nature of the profession every Ranger will regularly be mauled by creatures. As such some defensive skills are in order. There is an infinate number of possibilities here; but for my own stab at it:
+ 40 Melee Defense spread over the Advance Trapping and Tracking trees (about the same as a Rifleman does not seem at all out of place
Some minor state defences - Bonues vs. poison and disease would be nice for class distinction. But if this is problematic for some reason, dizzy and intimidate seem to be some of the more common creature attacks. I do not believe that these should be large bonuses, but say +20 resistance against whatever states are felt to be appropriate would make useful complimentary skills.
Then harvesting increases as a correspondents issue later on this year.
Hopefully second timelucky, apologies for the ultiple posting.
We still need a major revamp of the profession, so my ideas are concentrating on things that should hopefully involve minimal complexity in coding - and therefore from my naive perspective can be fit into the combar revamp. New traps etc., working stealth, camp fixes are essential to the entire tree line but I guess will take more Dev time than we are likely to see.
1. Cammo should not break at the higher levels EVER, except against 'scout' creatures. I get the idea of always having a minimal chance of failure, but this simply does not translate into game play. If I travel to a mission lair my Cammo will typically break about twice on the way (at 125 skill). Proposal is for cammo to give 100% chance of working, except maybe against scout type creatures that apply a negative modifier to it.
2. Terrain Negotiation to give a SLIGHT running speed increase even on flat terrain. This would translate into a minor increase in kiting and escaping from critters.
3. Entertainers to be able to heal BF in higher level camps (maybe a coding issue here I don't know). It is simply ridiculous that they can't. Let's give people a reason to occaisonally pay them to come outdoors.
4. Camps not to go down in combat and to slowly heal diseases over an extended period of time.
5. Increase durations on foraged foods and make them stackable. The previous issue of only chefs being able to stack food is not a problem now that there food buffs are greatly enhanced. Failing which confirm they are a second choice of healing only and scrap everying bar onions and melons. (hehe maybe a bit of frustration showing there -)).
6. Traps - Increase duration of traps, particularly the Ph. Dart and Adhesive Mesh, which are our only distinctive trap abilities. Let creature kiting be something than a Ranger can reliably do.
7. The AOE Stun trap should inflict LARGE amounts of mind damage. Stun is one of the easiest states for advanced combat professions to inflict. By the time a stun trap is thrown a number of combat professions can quite easily have inflicted several K of damage on a group of opponents (whether humanoid or animals) and inflicted stun damage.
8. 'Examine' to reveal the movement speed of creatures; in order that we can work out whether Burst Run is a feasible means of escape. (OK broke my rule, that probably involves a fair amount of thought on re-coding)
9. "State" effects should be an essentially part of combating high level creatures. Currently, spamming the highest DPS attack is the only important factor in high level group combat (assuming a competant tank at the front etc.). State effects need to be able to land on high level creatures in order to make combat more interesting. This issue effects both Ranger traps and combat in general.
10. 'Hit vs. Creatures' - It seems innately wrong that this bonus does not (i) apply to melee attacks; and (ii) apply to special attacks. Until this bonus applies to specials it is useless against mid to high level creatures and has no discernable effect on game play.
11. Defences - Whilst I believe that Ranger skills should be kept mainly as complimentary to the main combat profession skills - rather than the Ranger profession being a combat one in it's own right - by the nature of the profession every Ranger will regularly be mauled by creatures. As such some defensive skills are in order. There is an infinate number of possibilities here; but for my own stab at it:
+ 40 Melee Defense spread over the Advance Trapping and Tracking trees (about the same as a Rifleman does not seem at all out of place)
Some minor state defences - Bonues vs. poison and disease would be nice for class distinction. But if this is problematic for some reason, dizzy and intimidate seem to be some of the more common creature attacks. I do not believe that these should be large bonuses, but say +20 resistance against whatever states are felt to be appropriate would make useful complimentary skills.
Then harvesting increases as a correspondents issue later on this year.
Make my camps have a purpose other then looking pretty by alowing them to heal BF. Make my traps work against players in PvP and NPC's
Ebe
ack!... how could i forget!!??
/rescue - needs to be changed, currently it isless effectivethan thenovice brawler skill /taunt... it needs to reliably draw the aggroed critters off of the person being rescued... someideas tossed around to improve upon it: it could force the person being rescued to /peace (would require group or consent to avoid griefing), it could provide temporary defensive bonuses to the ranger, it could force the creature toflee (similar to the aforementioned /spook), it could force the creature to /peace for a time (similar to /feigndeath)...
as for the ranger weapon stuff... i'm all for the traplauncher or even simply traps remaining our "weapon"- but only if traps get hit really big in the revamp... also, i'm fine with /stealth remaining combat-free, i can still think of plenty of uses for it... i just feel that if anyone does want combat stealth, they should ask for a weapon to go along with it, otherwise the idea could propose enough of an unbalancing that thedevswon't even try to balance it...
and MorBal... please do post how you feel, there are probably lots of other folks who feel the same way... also, it has the very important affect of making us find justification for our arguments... besides, no one can post here saying they have the full support of everyone in the ranger community (especially me... heh)
Kiryoku wrote:
ack!... how could i forget!!??
/rescue - needs to be changed, currently it isless effectivethan thenovice brawler skill /taunt... it needs to reliably draw the aggroed critters off of the person being rescued... someideas tossed around to improve upon it: it could force the person being rescued to /peace (would require group or consent to avoid griefing), it could provide temporary defensive bonuses to the ranger, it could force the creature toflee (similar to the aforementioned /spook), it could force the creature to /peace for a time (similar to /feigndeath)...
as for the ranger weapon stuff... i'm all for the traplauncher or even simply traps remaining our "weapon"- but only if traps get hit really big in the revamp... also, i'm fine with /stealth remaining combat-free, i can still think of plenty of uses for it... i just feel that if anyone does want combat stealth, they should ask for a weapon to go along with it, otherwise the idea could propose enough of an unbalancing that thedevswon't even try to balance it...
and MorBal... please do post how you feel, there are probably lots of other folks who feel the same way... also, it has the very important affect of making us find justification for our arguments... besides, no one can post here saying they have the full support of everyone in the ranger community (especially me... heh)
Rescue is not as useless as it might seem:
Just the other day, I was hunting with a group of friends. At one point, a lair exploded on us. I noticed that my pistoleer friend (armored and buffed...) had his HAMs dropping way too quickly. I /rescued him and found out why. I had about 10 mereks agroed on me
. I used /burstrun and just ran around in circles until my friends had enough time to get everythingback together. I'm fairly certain it saved us from a deathblow and I wasn't even armored or buffed. I think the main reason that /rescue doesn't seem very useful to most people is that things rarely get that bad (I've used it maybe 5 times since launch but it was the second or third time for that same pistoleer ). When things get really bad, it can save your group. But most Rangers avoid getting into those situations whenever possible.