Ranger Archive

I've been working towards my Ranger since release, and learning what I could since I wasn’t fortunate enough to be selected to beta. However I'll spare you all the droll back-story.
I'm just here to write about my thoughts on the ranger class, which hopefully you can comment on and Mineras can draw from for his job. First off I'd like to pick apart each skill tree on the Ranger, one grueling critique at a time.
But first I'd like to say I've mastered all the skill lines but Frontiering, on which I am hammering out the last two boxes of the skill line. And now…
~~~Wayfaring: Terrain Negotiation... For all of you that don't know, all the terrain negotiation we get over 50 (Which is coincidentally enough right when we get Master Scout or thereabouts, when it's actually useful since it allows us to move uphill across terrain more quickly) is dumped entirely into, yes, crawling more quickly. Now out of this entire skill line, it increases my crawling speed from normal crawl speed, to about the speed at which someone can walk. Now while convenient in those rare occasions when a mob is just out of reach, this is by no means up to par with what it could be or what we deserve. In addition to increased crawl speed, I'd like to see this go to increased swimming speed as well, and as long as we're negotiating terrain, how about an increased downhill speed to give us an edge when running from enemies. Now, onto Camouflage.

Well Mask Scent I must say is a terrific ability, even if it's a SCOUT ability, the ranger just makes it a bit better. I must say it makes travel a lot quicker, but to have the skill mod for mask scent trained throughout two entire skill lines (scout's and rangers), I find that it's detected a bit too often. "Can hide from even the fiercest creatures" yeah I suppose, if those fierce creatures don't have a challenge level higher then 30. Sure we can dodge those pesky Scyks or Flits, but is this ability really as powerful as it should be? I don't think so... But that's up to you.

~~~Frontiering: *shudders* First off I'd like to say right off the bat that the extra mods to forage are really pretty stupid and I think were thrown in there for something extra to look at. But anyhow, now we're on to CAMPING, huzzah! I know how all you feel about that, so I'll just try and jump straight into the problem here, which is the grinding EXP gain. Why must we, as the Ranger, master of the wilderness, depend on the company of others to gain any semblance of a decent level of xp? A Sociable Ranger seems a bit of an oxymoron. One solution would to be, say, throw an extra 100 - 200 xp for every successful forage. Of course people could macro this, but once you forage a few times the area runs out of things to forage for a short while, and your action pool would be drained fairly quickly, but I see how it could be a problem. However, the main problem with this and I'll stick by this too a fault, is that the other skill lines in the ranger profession do NOT require ENOUGH experience to complete.

Now lets be honest with ourselves here folks, I was able to complete both Wayfaring and Bioscience before I had my first skill trained in Rifleman, that is really unacceptable and I think detracts greatly from the longevity of the class. As of right now I have an extra 100,000 scout xp sitting with me since I mastered wayfaring and bioscience, and it wont let me gain any more then that. I honestly suggest doubling the xp required for each skill in Bioscience, Wayfaring, and Trapping. And trapping too is very easy to increase, just constantly throw traps and snares at high level mobs or join a group fighting high level mobs, not hard. I know you might argue with me on this point but push aside the, "omg dont increase xp u idiot," Just think about it for a while and you'll find this would be the best course of action, in addition to the xp-per-forage deal. Also, I think there should be areas with unique things to forage, like areas where you can only extract specific metals and such. Say, special high quality bones from the Krayt Graveyard, or a rare food item on the slopes of the Lokian volcano. I'm not sure if this is what they had in mind when they implemented the broken ability to forage rare items but whatever...

~~~Field Bioscience... Well we harvest more from each kill, we hit creatures a bit more often, and we can learn more about them when we examine them... wait hold on... this sounds familiar, YES I've got it! I've seen it all before in the Scout class. Where are our unique abilities! Alas, it draws a tear to my eye. All that's to be done here is to improve upon it. I propose a new idea I've been throwing around in my head. *pulls back the curtain* Creature Calling! Yes, this skill would be granted when you become a novice ranger. Now, you select the creature you wish to call, and press the Creature Call ability button, and you will imitate the sound the selected creature naturally makes.

This Creature Call will draw the creature from wherever it was, towards the point from which you used the skill. As you gain skill in the field bioscience skill tree, the range and rate of success of this creature call increases. Once Creature Call is used however, it will have a 20 second timer until you can use it again. Now what this skill can be used for it to bring out a mob from a group of mobs which assist each other. We all know what it's like to attack a mob and have everyone around it try to give you a one way ticket on the pain train to the nearest cloning center. So you stand in place and use the ability, and the creature will waltz over to the place where you used the ability. Of course you can run away in the mean time and use it again or what not. I love the idea myself, and think it would make the Ranger a more unique class from just the scout.

~~~Advanced Trapping... We are the Rescue Ranger... right? Well for the most part, that is when this skill chooses to cooperate with you. More often then not it just won’t work, or go off when I tell it to. Very unwieldy and unpredictable, unfortunately all that can be done about this is for the folks at Lucas Arts and Sony to patch it up. But I favor this ability because it is unique to us rangers, and I'll take all the unique abilities I can get at this point. Throw a snare, rescue your poor friend, and it's all peachy. Anyhow, now that we're talking about traps, lets... talk about traps some more. Now blinding things is nice, and stunning and dizzying is all well and good (although creatures don’t use abilities much or change position so the latter is pretty iffy in usefulness), but I find myself using Snare and Root FAAAAAAR more then any other of my traps as I'm sure you all do too. I say we switch Flash Bomb and that 'ol Sonic thingy for the snare and root trap. This will make the ranger class much more valuable overall which I'm sure is what we're all interested in.
Well all that ranting has exhausted me now all that's left is Master Ranger. Why not throw in a Tracking ability for creatures for good measure, 'eh? I think that'd work out just fine. If all the afore-mentioned doo-dads and frillies were tacked onto the ranger class, I'd be one happy camper (quite literally, huk huk).
Please tell me what you think, poke and prod as you will.

Okasu~ Sniper and Ranger

It makes it soo much easier to throw in humor that all of us relate too and I feel you adressed each issue very well.

I think the rare food we forage should be around equal quality to those of a chef but be different in what they do as to not make rangers the preferred source of stat boosting food. Perhaps food that increases your stats from a % of what you already have?