Ranger Archive
Thread: How to greatly improve two of our lines.
I would like to make a suggestion to return to the name of Field Bioscience and to move Tracking under Wayfaring and Tracking. I believe Field Bioscience should be solely the creature hunting bonus, creature knowledge, harvesting, and sampling. All the things that should make us better hunters. Tracking easily falls under the wayfaring tree as it has to do with the study of the ground, the terrain and environment. This will vamp up the current Wayfaring tree to an acceptable level and would actually benefit the Bounty Hunters who need better speed more than harvesting provides.
One of the proposals to give Master Rangers a bonus is the request to be allowed to harvest multiple creatures. I fear that the dev team might not be inclined to do this with the amount of people harvesting as it is. With Tracking moved from the Field Bioscience tree, that will equate to less higher level harvesters, due to the Bounty Hunters who took that line for the tracking skill, will now be in the Wayfaring and Tracking line instead. Therefore possibly giving us full Rangers better odds to get such a bonus.
With better camo kits, terrain negotiation, and tracking (solo and area), the Wayfaring line will be better fleshed out.
Now that leaves us with the Field Bioscience line. Currently we have Harvesting, Examine, and Creature to Hit bonus (not including tracking of course). We already have asked that harvesting amounts be examined a little more by the devs to be sure that we are getting a significant amount more than Scouts. We’ve asked that Examine be a little more useful. This week I made a suggestion that we be allowed to Sample the corpse of an animal we kill to know what the stats are for each type of organics (OQ, Mall, SR, etc…). These have all be implemented in the Ranger report that N’Raas has so awesomely put together.
I would like to see Creature to Hit bonus vamped up further so that being a Ranger actually has a much bigger benefit in PvE. Currently as it is, by moving up the tree, we’re not seeing any creatures con’ing much lower as in other master professions. We should get that PvE bonus to allow us to be better harvesters for the community. By making us stronger in PvE, I don’t see how that’s causing an imbalance. We should be strong against CH pets anyway in PvP.
I’d also like to elaborate on Sampling (perhaps called Tissue Sampling, or something else more fitting). As N’Raas writes, it’s to give us a window we can bring up to inspect the quality of resources found on our kill to help us decide which resource to harvest. We’d also like the window to tell us if the animal is low, medium, or full on each resource due to its condition.
I suggest the skills be increased in the following manner
Novice Ranger – Sampling 20 points - Leathery Hide, Avian Bone, Avian Meat
Sampling 1 – Sampling 20 points - Scaley Hide, Insect Meat
Sampling 2 – Sampling 20 points - Bristly hide, Carnivore meat, Animal bone
Sampling 3 – Sampling 20 points - Reptilian meat, Wild Meat, Domesticated Meat
Sampling 4 – Sampling 20 points - Wooley Hide, Herbivore Meat
This way Hunt Masters will have full benefits of Sampling and Master Ranger will be able to Harvest more than one type resource. But I think that if the Master Ranger decides to take more than one type of resource, that we should have a small penalty on the number of hides, bones, or meat that we take in order to keep some balance. Also there should be a risk to lose one or more of the resources should we try to completely fillet the animal of all it’s available resources, just to put a little risk in the skill.
I know that all this might never be able to happen because there are people who only have the current Tracking line because they wanted Tracking, but perhaps it’s not too late to make the change. Perhaps there can be a short time window to regain the scout xp and put it in the other tree. I know this might be huge hurdles, but I honestly feel this is the way that they should have set up the trees in the first place, so it’s worth a shot to promote it now before it gets even later.
One of the proposals to give Master Rangers a bonus is the request to be allowed to harvest multiple creatures.
That should have been multiple harvests (bone, meat, and hide) off of one creature.. not multiple creatures.
Sorry about that.
This would definately be a step in the right direction. Nice take on it.
/sign
Thank you LastEE. I admit I was hoping for a bit more feedback but perhaps it was too long..??..
Cliff notes version : Move tracking to Wayfaring and call the now named Tracking line back to Field Bioscience and improve creature to hit and put in corpse sampling.
"I admit I was hoping for a bit more feedback but perhaps it was too long"
Could be... Perhaps it is not controversial enough to make anyone comment. 
Or perhaps it is too ambitious for most Rangers...
The forum works in mysterious ways.
Or perhaps it is too ambitious for most Rangers...
But it's not that crazy of an idea, is it? I mean, wouldn't it make sense?
Ahh well.. 
I wonder how many people want the harvesting and tracking ability without wayfaring? Those people might lose out.
Even with the idea of getting more information it still seem to leave the former Bio-Science line feeling light. (Funny considering it was that way until the profession hotfix.) It could always be expanded upon though. Maybe have an option for harvested items that give a small bonus to maskscent (+15-20) or other abilities. They could act like powerups and have a limited number of uses each.
I agree this is a good proposal and makes very good sense. I also suggest we furter boose the Bioscience line by adding in a DAMAGE bonus as well as a too hit bonus. It makes perfect sense to me that we should do better damage to a creature that we have all this vast knowledge on. Using the same weapon an advanced weapon user should in my opinin do less damage then a ranger does to creatures.
I suggest something like +5% damage at novice, +10% at BioS 1, +15% at BioS 2, +18% at BioS 3, +21% at BioS 4, and finally +25% at master. Not sure how these number would effect the damage of weapon special shots. But the goal should be numbers that let us do slightly better damage as an equal of an advanced weapon skill.
For example in my opinion a master pistoleer usuing Fan Shot should do about 10-15% less damage then the Master Ranger/ Master Pistoleer using Fan Shot. Hopefully the numbers could be set in such a way that we would at least be equal to BH and Smuggler damage output for thier weapons lines vs creatures only. Not even going to expect to equala commando as they are the damage dealers period i guess.
anyway what ever they do i think when it comes too hitting a creature, the ranger should be doing the most damage what ever weapon he is using even Brawling. In balance with someone equally advanced in thier chosen weapon.
So in essence what i gues i am trying to say is if all other factiors is equal. I have 3rd box in pistoleer stances, my BH freind has his 3rd box in his combat tree, we both have average WS crafted weapons. Then over say a 30 sec time interval, the ranger should somehow be dealing out more damage cause we are in effect usuing our knowledge of the creature to harm it more with each shot we take
That's a good way to do it.. I was think Creature to Hit should not only be how often but also how hard, but to add a seperate skill that boosts damage is a great suggestion. It beefs the line even more and really helps us stand out as hunters.