Ranger Archive

Basically, there is no point to three of the four Ranger disciplines now. Why? The input of vehicles and PRCs have rendered them useless. I certainly don't want those taken out, but the profession itself needs serious rethinking.

First off, Wayfaring. Camo Kits no longer are helpful. In the past, the only thing they were good for is hiding your party while on a long trek. With our superfast speeders now, we can race by all aggro without a care. And if NPC hiding is taken out, that's just another nail in the coffin. Why not just use mask scent? You don't even have to use resources for that. The Terrain Negotiation mods are similarly useless. Who needs to crawl fast besides PVPing rifleman? The only redeeming factor hereare the Burst Run Efficiency mods, but they also no longer matter with the addition of vehicles and galloping animals.

That's one.

Next we have the Frontiering discipline. First off, only two boxes in this line matter, 2 and 4 specifically. 1 and 3 are a complete waste of skill and experience points. The very large camps used to be quite useful when, again, people were on large treks or hunts. Doctors and other crafters had access to stations right there, and took advantage of it. Everyone had a seat! But now, it doesn't matter. PRCs are all a rock throw away. There, you will generally find everything you need, and more (ability to heal battle fatigue, for example). Even if there's no relatively close city, a bike will get you to one in no time. A Basic Camp Kit will suffice in nearly all situations, just so everyone in the pary cancall their vehicles or pets. And as far as I can tell, the Foraging and Camping mods mean absolutely nothing after Survival 4/Master Scout.

That's two.

Let's skip over Tracking for now and move on to Advanced Trapping. First and foremost, trapping in itself is nothing. The only reason people trap is to get to Master Scout and Ranger. Besides our beloved Phecnacine Darts, the effects of traps are minor and, again, useless. The actual skill we gain in all 8 boxes of Trapping is Rescue, which doesn't do that much. You can get enemies off of others and on to you if they run away and you don't. Simple as that.

And now... the discipline that actually means anything. Tracking. This is really one of the most useful skill sets in the entire game. It really doesn't need to be changed. The modifiers don't do much in it (nothing really changes after Novice Ranger), but the advancments in Area Track for each skill make up for that.

So... the Ranger profession needs a serious overhaul. Besides the ingenious Area Track, every skill in the profession is now useless.

The one main change that could help save the entire profession is to model it after the near flaw-less Medic/Doctor/Combat Medic line. Let us experiment on traps, camps and camo kits. Let the Trapping and Camping mods actually mean something. They can be likend to the Med Usage mod. Experienced Frontiersman could craft High Tech Field Base Kits for aspiring Novice Rangers. A hardy Wayfarer could craft a Naboo Camo Kit for some schmuck with Wayfaring 1 that has 10-15 charges. A Trap Master could build a 15-charge Noise Maker for a lowly Novice Scout. That can be the first of many changes to make this a useful profession again.

For Wayfaring, we should be able toconceal from NPCs. Otherwise, there's no real distinction between it and masking scent. At the Wayfaring 4 level, conceal should be compeletely unbreakable. And at the Master Ranger level, you should be able to conceal yourself without any kit (but sure, require them for the concealment of others). But to make them actually worth something, increase the speed of NPC animals and sentients so they can attempt to keep up with roving bikers. Give them secondary abilities that knock people of their vehicles and animals.

For Frontiering, 1 and 3 need to actually have a value. It's about as bad as when Heavy Swordsman's Expert Sword Finesse said nothing. The most important item on the agenda for Ranger camps would be the ability to heal Battle Fatigue. In addition, the intiation of combat and the prolonged abscense of the owner should not break a camp. The skill to heal poison and diseases (for ourself only of course) would be welcomed as well.

For Advanced Trapping, a 100% overhaul is needed. Traps need lasting effects that are dehabilitating to animals, and we also need the addition of sentient traps. Screw Bounty Hunter. It should go to us. The devs have been talking about those special traps for so long, when will we actually get them?

There. Thoughts?

I feel your pain. I mastered ranger about 3 months ago. I dropped all of my ranger skills about 1 week ago. I hated to do it. I waited patiently for the new traps and camps and the /track command. Now they aren't sure about conceal working on NPC's, I don't get it. Areatrack desn't work as good as it used to because nothing spawns until you are 50m away from it. I just got tired of waiting.

I am also master rifleman and at this point in time master scout/master marksman is a better way to spend my skill points. I love ranger, when they add all the new stuff I will be back(if I'm still playing). Ranger is now like Smuggler neither profession has anything to do with the title of the profession. Hopefully I will see you guys in a few patches.

Whatever happened to the revamp of the trapping line that was supposed to happen way back. Back when I had both Ranger and BH (and no medic skillz) the field base was a godsend for healing wounds on the cheap. I never had any use for crawl speed...and never made a camo kit due to the floral component. Trapping was the first line I dropped...the two traps rarely worked (hope that is at least fixed) and I never really used /rescue too much. The only line I liked was the hunt master track...bonuses to harvests as well as the areatrack command.

Modular camps and hunting blinds,,,,whatever happened to those

ahh the musings of a former ranger....

/agree

Ok, I see some of the people are restless. Yeah, we got a lot of love early, now we have to wait and the kids in the back seat want to know when we are gonna get there.

I can answer your camo and TN arguements together. What happens when you dismount to fight? I always maskscent or camo my group. Common sense, as I don't want nearby creatures to aggro in. Plus I would rather fight one beast at a time, and the method I use means I at least need to be masked or camo'd. Dunno bout you, but I prefer not to have to engage 3 war grondas at a time solo.

I move when I fight, using the terrain to my advantage. TN kicks azz in running up a hill from a Sharnaff. Running away is bad, running around while the creature bleeds out is fun. However, that crawling stuff is useless - I use pistols. Let us swim faster, or run farther, or something, not crawl - always have hate low crawling.

Vehicles are nice, but they break, or get sat on by a rancor. And you can't use em in combat. Yes you can speed by the monsters now. But that one time your ride is getting about broke, and the beasts get in a shot or three and it goes disabled - and this has happened- tell me you don't want TN to wander out of the hills.

Traps. Ok, they are broke. But I still use many of them to keep me alive and let me solo the big game I want to hunt - for creds and a better harvest. I always use traps, even grouped, to help make killing the beasts easier.

Not that I totally disagree with ya. I would like to be able to experiment on traps, and camps. And camps do need to be fixed.Healing Battle Fatigue should be included, after all, it enhances interaction between professions, as only Entertainers can heal BF. Right now why take a Dancer with ya on a hunt? no use at all.

Bounty Hunter needs an overhaul - in that why do they need scout?? Make em master some "Combat" profession instead, like Brawler. That would stop the whining about getting Ranger skills. They are "MAN"hunters, not creature hunters. Had to label their snitches cuz they couldn't find em for crapssakes, buncha dumbbunnies.

Anyhow, look at the glass as half full, work with what you have, and have a modicum of faith that NRass will stay on GreenMarine and get our fecal matter sorted out.

In the meantime, go sell crappy hides to grinders and make a milion or two, and try not to laff at them.

JB

I dropped Master and the trapping line a couple of days ago because I have become enamored with the idea of being a combat badass. Frontiering is next, and although it will hurt a lot to drop it because it took so long to get, I think I've crafted a total of one HTFB since I made Master weeks ago. I don't need camps to heal my wounds, and I can call my bike with a basic kit.

I do agree with JB on the camo thing. Eventually you're going to have to get off your speeder and do something, and camo can still be a life saver in a fight. I'll keep wayfaring as long as it continues to work on NPC's, tracking for as long as possible (I made about 30 15-use Dathomir kits before I dropped Master), and I'd pick trapping back up in a second if they improved the crafting aspect of it.

I have to say though, so far the only thing I miss is the Title and the ability to see a creature's damage potential. To make myself feel better, yesterday I went to Lok and soloed a Kimo.

Yup.

We had a bunch of wonderful things that were gonna be added a few months back like the /track command, new traps and new camps. Here it is a few months later and we find our abilities less useful than ever. Nobody needs /maskscent or /conceal since they can fly by angry mobs in a speeder. /Conceal won't be working against NPCs. And we're stuck being glorified scouts.

One step forward, 2 steps back.

I have found one more use for the Ranger - assisting Bio-Engineers in the field.

I went up to Dathomir yesterday with a BE, applied camo, and when she got attacked by the bull rancors she was gathering DNA from (which was pretty rare, thanks to the camo) I'd /rescue and let her get out of the way while I took care of the beasties. Worked quite well, she got a couple dozen samples.

BE's have come into a new light in this patch, so we may want to start providing this service to them until they fix us =)

Helping BE is exaclty what i was doing. WAS. Now, with the nerf to Camo, what use is mask scenting from rancor if every nightsister clan aggro anyways??

Just because a profession doesn't have any application in combat doesn't make it useless.

"Aside from Making camps that include full crafting stations and 2x modifiers to healing, being able to sneak past animals completely unnoticed except for a few minor failures, and being able to see what is within 500m of you using track, Ranger is completely useless!"

"Aside from healing wounds, Rezzing people, and giving buffs, doctor is completely useless!"

Ranger has its uses. Every profession doesn't have to be the end all of allthe professions. Fix the bugs and make trapping a little better, and ranger is perfectly fine.

Eh, I'll continue my Master Rangering. I've got skill points to play with on other professions to keep me busy.

The ranger traps work fine. I always want to aggro more then one creature at a time... its great fighting whole nest's of grauls. So if that was their intent when theydesigned the traps, then super, they are working as expected.

Of coarse /conceal was not supposed to ever work on NPC's. It only says that it doesin the description of the skill when you hover over it. But that doesnt mean anything right. And especially now that it was nerf'd and they didnt even bother changing the text. Makes perfect sense to nerf a profession that isnt even overpowered in any way. And to nerf them before even fixing any of the many borked parts of it.

My patience is wearing extremely thin with SOE and their half a$$ fixes. Work on the professions. Without them thier is no game. Same goes with quests like theKrayt skull. Fix, fix, fix, and dont move on till all the skills and professions have a use.It is not about the skillsbeing powerful, it is about them being useful. Stop nerfing and start fixing!!!

• Rescue is NOT useful. It is only useful in getting me killed. I suppose it is good for the medic that has to res me.


• A Ranger is NOT useful to the GCW, because scouts can do everything we can do and they even have a few useful traps. Now there is rumor that BH's are getting traps too?Cool, you could just give them ours, we don't want them


• Night Sisters spawn right on top of me and /conceal WAS useful to prevent dieing to a half ass creature spawning system. Not any more though. That has been 'FIXED'If it was never supposed to hide us from NPC's at least change the text under the description of Wayfaring! Either way, it was a programming mistake, so fix it the whole way. Change the text, or make it hide us from NPC's again. In fact just remove the whole tree and give us something else because its stupid now. I do not need to apply camo to other players. 90% of them have maskscent anyway and if they dont they have vehicles.


• Need I even go into bonuses to the forage ability? How much fishing bait does one man need? You even get more of it from looting lairsand off fish... Useless...


• We are supposed to be good at living off the land and surviving in the wilds, but yet we can't fish better then anyone else. I would think that this was a no brainer at developement. With the need for fish as high as it is, this could be our income. or.....


• Someone said jokingly that we should get a milking skill. Actually, why is it we do not have some way to find milk? If anyone should be able to do it, it should be theclass with the most 'Creature Knowledge' skill.

I do not think we are asking for much. Just that the dev's take a good look at the core part of the game. The foundation that all the flashy player cities, and vehicles etc are built on. The professions all need work and it needs to happen sooner than later.

My two cents, rant over

Found another use for us - the silly azz looks good but what good is it HTFB.

On a raid. I had already reconned the sites for the assault team (areatrack worked great, exact numbers of NPC and Players) I then helped by disarming a minefield. Then I set up an HTFB as a rally/medical pt. Some of the combat medics were on the assault team. Twodocs stayed at the camps (actually we had 2 HTFB set up at the time) to help heal/buff. This was a novel idea, someone actually removed head from 4th point of contact and figured a rear area medical pt was useful. Also, if push came to shove, the assaulters could get to the rally pt, call vehicles/mounts and get outta Dodge.

Anyhow, the docs were busy buffing and healing. I was helping heal (wow, 0-0-1-0 in medic, but ty Mandalyn for the excellent heal packs) when we were attacked by some previously dead, now cloned Imp types. We were all TEF'd big time.

Good thing some dipwad Ranger type had Master Pistoleer skills.

So.The recon (Ranger) was important. The disarming of the minefield was a key point in getting our people into a base (Ranger). The HTFB rally point was helping (Ranger) keep our people healed and buffed. Only when directly attacked did I use my only combat skill.

Nearly useless, nah, you just gotta be creative and think outside the box.

JB