This is a proposal I put before the staff for review. Since there seems to be alot of dejection from our Rangers, I thought I would post it for your review as well.
After looking over the fighter classes pretty carefully, its clear that
Rangers are lagging behind the classes in ability now. My desire is to see
two divisions within the fighter classes, one being the standard Tanking
class of warriors/pals/aps and the like, and the other being a more damage
focused class for rangers and rogues. Not going so far as monk-like damage,
but giving the rogues and rangers the ability to deal excellent damage will
ensure their place in groups, give them an edge. The tanks already have
their dedicated spot, and will always be a staple class of any group. If
Rogues and Rangers do equal amounts of good damage in battle, players will
have some variety in the kind of fighter they play and people wont get left
behind. After all the testing and turning of knobs this week, I think that
Rogues, Warriors, Paladins, and APs have reached a good balance point with
regards to melee combat, Rogues are extremely useful and very deadly - a job
well done. The knob tweaking has high level warriors hitting at 85%, exactly
what we wanted. However a number of problems exist that I propose to solve
below:
Problem: Rangers are much less significant than Rogues in damage output,
and suffer some key penalties. Rogues can Trip (bash) mobs while still
dual-wielding in combat, whereas Rangers must relinquish a weapon and hold a
shield in order to bash, reducing the damage they can do and making Rogues
better bashers overall as they do more damage at the same time. Rangers do
less damage compared to Rogue skills, like backstab, vital hit, poison,
circle, and the others. Rogues also get all sorts of awesome skills, they
are a great class now and I think D2 hit it right on the mark.
Proposed Solution: We upgrade Rangers to be equal to rogues in damage output. Our
idea is to do this by making them Masters of archery. The missile system
code is very elaborate, and I would love to see it get fully used on S3. Its
not simlpe to use, you can aggro the wrong mobs if your not careful, and
allows for all sorts of interesting scenarios. The damage upgrades on S2 to
archery went too far and were downgraded, but here are some ideas on how I
would like to improve the class (many of these suggestions came from a group
of ranger mortals via Waelos, its in large part their recommendation and I
think they did a great job of proposing a balanced Ranger):
A) We increase damage done by arrows using a control knob and stat tracking, until we reach a point that Rangers and Rogues are doing equal damage. It will most definitely be an upgrade to damage, and will be adjustable during alpha testing the same way we tweaked Warrior thac0 to a fine edge. Archery Thac0 and Damage will both be knobbed and tracked.
B) Reduce Rogue range weapon ability _slightly_. Because rogues only use throwing
for luring mobs and playing, and to ensure the Ranger is the recognized
defacto range specialist, we reduce the number of attacks from 4 to 3. I asked several Rogues how often they used Thrown and they all said
only really to lure, their new melee skills are too superior to give up.
Thus this reduction wont hurt their class, but will help the rangers be
giving them a solid "niche"
C) Right now, if a mob has missile shield, archery is useless. We would
convert the Missile Shield spell from a "100% blocking all arrows" defense
to a Stone-Skin/Scales based spell, that absorbes X amount of damage and
then falls, revealing the target fully to the Rangers fire, but offering
high level mobs a re-castable defense (assuming they aren't on the ground from bashing and tripping
D) Limit distance shots to one per round, and reduce the damage. Ranged
shots are only good for luring, and reducing the damage and number they can
fire into adjoining rooms to 1 will greatly prevent players from using
Archery to twink mobs.
E) Re-adjust missile snare so that the archer's skill plays into the calculation. The better the archer is at archery, the less teh chance the enemy can snag your arrows.
F) A new Ranger spell called, "Natures Fury", which allows the ranger to
either heat or chill their arrowheads by hundreds of degrees just before
they fire. They wouldn't be "on-fire", but rather Extremely hot or cold
(like having someone stab you with a knife whose blade was heated to 500
degrees - it would BURN). This would modify damage done to the mob, in most
cases causing alot more. If he fires Hot arrows into a daemon or Cold arrows into
an Ice elemental, it'll laugh and thank the Ranger. But otherwise it would
be a nice way to extend . We can tweak the effect to equalize them to Rogue damage.
G) Extend pass without trace, its current 40 seconds in duration, which
is very weak, almost useless. Extention to 120 seconds and study the effect
is our suggestion.
H) Transport Via plants should have a target room set by the Ranger
within a zone (it wont work outside a zone). The Ranger would set the home
location (have to be plants present) when in that room and the spell cast,
and at some later point if they need to get out quick from a fight, trigger
the spell and pop out at the designation spot. It wont work if the ranger
leaves the zone.
I) Addition of proc arrows to the game. This was always intended, the support to do so exists, it just hasn't been done. As part of the upgrade I'll add a number of proced arrow types around the game, to spice things up.
J) Directed Shot Option. If a room is big enough to allow it, you'll be able to take position for melee firing on a selected side of the room, meaning your Arrows will fly towards the mob in a given direction. This would allow the archer to prevent alot of stray arrow from aggro-ing mobs, but still present the possibility that Some may go astray in other directions - hense keeping some risk factor. Like Voker spell feedback and all the other classes, there has to be a negative to it, something that makes it a challenge
K) Allow a chance to proc on the second weapon Held. If after all this, the Ranger really REALLY wants to use melee weapons all the time, I will tie the ability for the second weapon to proc to the rangers skill at dual-wield. The higher the skill, the more the second weapon will proc.
Thats it for my Revised proposal. I think the changes would make the Ranger
a deadly archer, a powerful damage class, and equal to the Rogue in
importance. Their spells are good now, but mostly for soloing and not
group-based combat. As you can see, the above spells/skills would be
targetted especially for group combat, like Rogues have, and some nice
utilitarian spells to boot. It would knock out the twink potential by
reducing ranged shots, and make them alot more viable without making them
some kind of super-class.
What do you guys think Now?
Kris
[This message has been edited by Miax (edited 04-10-2001).]
Im hoping this will actually go in someday.
, or become an accomplished archer. I think they should excel at either but be relatively mediocre at their non choice. Thats just my thoughts anyhoo.