Ranger Archive

Okay it's probaly been said before in so many words. But I think it's important enough to us to try to define this thouroughly to the Devs.

Our traps don't work well because we cannot improve them.

Making traps is a crafting skill.

Rangers/Scouts have no experimentation points in thier skill trees to improve thier traps.

The only aspect of a trap that can be influenced by superior resources ie high Decay Resistance resources whichimproves trap Durability,my guess, the length of the trap holding on the mob.

This can be experimented up with ENGINEERING skill boxes only.

We cannot improve the Quality of a trap in any way. Quality could be an aspect that allows the trap to succeed on tougher animals. (Stink bomb fails plenty on tougher mobs and then the glowwire or phenacineyou just failed with succeeds. ie stink bomb is obtuse, bugged or both and not a viable means to improve the success rate of other traps hitting)

Only three advanced professions, Ranger, Combat Medic and Smuggler combine combat type skills AND crafting type skills in thier trees. Of these three, CM and Smug have Experimentation points included in their ability to make thier specialty items and gain their crafting xp directly. They have control over the quality and effectivenes of their crafted items without having to train Artisan skills. Rangers and Scouts gain Artisan xp when making traps and have no experimentation skill mods for them in their Traps skill tree.

Why did the Devs neglect to give us what was given to similar professions? Traps xp should be gained not by throwing them but by Making them. Experimention skill mods should be added to, at minimum the Ranger boxes.

Instead we have an obtuse skill mod, +Trapping. What does do? Improve our ability to land traps? Improve our ability to make traps? Or nothing much? I don't even really care what it does. Because it gives us absolutely no control over how we use and make our traps.

As it stands, I cannot make a trap using the highest DR materials available for more than low 30s Durability. If I experiment using my one box in Engineering I can raise that a few points.

Here is an interesting example of how unbalanced traps are at the moment.

Last night myself, a doctor and a pistoleer/smuggler fought a juvenile Krayt dragon with a 19k ham bar. I used 2 pets, gurreck lev 50 and a gaping spider also,I believe, lev 50. The level of the krayt was 120. He had 60% resists in in all stats except cold resist.

The Novice (no boxes filled) pistoleer was able to land a health 2 shot. The pets with 70 challenge levels less than the krayt were able to land stuns and poisons. I as a Trapmaster, landed zero traps. I threw everything i had at it. Over and over. It was a very long fight.

Perhaps I shouldn't be able to trap a Krayt. Or even kill one with that small a group. That's not the point. The point is, if a novice pistoleer can bleed it and pet a full 70 levels lower can stun and poison, yes, I should be able to trap it. Because if I can't then I am not the master of hunting critters, the pistoleer is, and the CH.

The Devs need to fix this. I don't know what they were thinking with the mysterious +Trapping mod and the Artisan xp. Perhaps it was just hurried revamping of the Scout class during beta. Maybe this was some obtuse way of limiting our skills so we couldnt root a mob for 10 minutes. I am tired of guessing though. I am only asking for what similar profs have, control and transparency for our crafted skills.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, Mineras. Hopefully the devs are actually considering changing this.

I agree making traps should give trap exp and not crafting which is useless to me..and that we should get points to try to make them stronger..and i myself am pissed being a "Trap master" throwing 20-30 traps on a krayt and not EVEN one hitting..the fact is devs dont love us

On my way to Master Ranger, I was also a Master Artisan. Right before I was a Ranger, I was a novice weaponsmith. I eventually gave up all those 28,000 general crafting exp because I was bored but kept Master Artisan.

Coming back later to get rid of artisan completely, I found that making traps and camps leveled me to Novice Architect! That's 33,000 of experience in general crafting.

So for the time being, I got novice architect and furnished my house.

I have since eliminated my artisan tree skills.

this has already been submitted in a weekly report - both the fact that we cannot experiment, and that we get general crafting xp for traps and camps - no other profession that has profession specific crafting gains xp in another profession.

A scout or ranger could master artisan without ever creating a single item in the artisan tree - which is pretty broke, imo.

Don't worry, this is one of my big pet peeves; I'll be discussing this with the designers once the correspondent program gets going after the big patch push.

Thanks for responding Mineras.

Just thought this might be getting lost in the shuffle. And hoping the Krayt example give you some additional ammo.

Thanks for responding Mineras.

Just thought this might be getting lost in the shuffle. And hoping the Krayt example give you some additional ammo.

Mineras your awesome . Glad to see that the things that bug us also bug you , gives me confidence that you would do what I and the rest of us would do if we could to fix the profession .

And in my opinion , the crafting XP and the non-existent ability to improve traps is a problem , yes , but not THE basic problem .

I believe that the basic problem with traps is the fact that all of them suck ass EXCEPT the Phecnacine Dart . Now that's a major problem for me .

Will keep my fingers crossed for big improvements some time soon .

Peace all and good hunting

Jon

I actually have leveled to Master Artisan more than 1 time counting all the skill boxes I have trained and dropped depending on how many skill points I need. I am still not at Master Ranger but it is in sight now - most likely by the end of the week. I truly do love being a Ranger but I hope the Devs actually give the profession the attention it deserves.