We've made some adjustments to help the ranger, as promised. We'll bee cooking these adjustments into build 98 tomorrow and will get it up to PTS shortly.

The changes?

1. All player ranged weapons have had their attack ranges increased to 180 (up from 115). This increased range applies to all ranger skills as well.

2. Putrid Penetration speed and range has been increased.

3. Trigger Finger Frenzy has been overhauled. The buff now lasts for 15 seconds with a 45 second cooldown. However, the attack speed increase goes from 25% at rank one to 115% at the top rank. This skill is no longer an instant-cast spell and may be interrupted when activated. Also, when under the effects of this skill, your weapon will glow wonderfully.

4. The attack rating modifier of for all ranger skill shots has been significantly increased. This will allow you to more easily penetrate heavily armored opponents with your skill shots.

5. The range of all mage bolt skills have been increased roughly 30%. The only exception to this is Shadow Bolt which was increased by 15%.

steve

What about the Swivels???? =(

:} Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Swivels are unchanged for now. I think you'll get a lot more "bang for buck" out of them with the improved Way of the Roo (+100% to melee attack rating).

Higher hit chance means faster attack speed isn't as needed to do well. If we improved your hit chances without adjusting attack speed bonuses then you may well be overpowered.

That might have us increase monster difficulty to compensate. Increased monster difficulty makes us revisit the balance of everyone else too. It can be a vicious circle!

The trick is to find the minimum interesting and fun changes required to achieve your goals.

Oh, BTW, we increased attack rating to help alleviate the excessive attribute pressure that all melee players face. They need to have str, agi and end to do well. Through proper skills and better armor, melee users can have a larger variety of builds.

steve

If all goes well, when will it go live?

Early next week per the other thread Dec 3 PTS release .... lets hope all goes well.

I have to thank you for this. We are more happy as well as you people keep the 37.5% on time of TTF. On rougly thoughts, without any math, I think fighters and rangers are sort of balanced when putting changes against eachother. On the mage side I do not know.

I heard of hang that now its really difficult for lower level mages. BSOL became pretty nerfed. I dont know anything of it myself, but I can imagine that IF its true and its really nerfed for lower levels, that its far from fun.

But after a time of complaining, there should be a time to thank, and expecially when the players asked and the devs made it less nerfed in Overal (!) way.

Blue Screen of Life is more efficient now, but the increased mana costs have mages feeling the burn when taking damage. At max rank, the skill takes ~80% of damage and applies it to your mana with ~16% inflation. That's pretty efficient.

Still, taking damage reduces your ability to cast spells. So your best bet is to avoid taking damage. The last thing you want to do with blue screen is to trade blows with someone.

It's important to note that we do some manipulation of damage numbers with blue screen in PvP. Damage done to your mana pool is remapped into your level range. This keeps the inflated damage from totally decimating your unadjusted mana pool.

By the way, the new TTF is very deadly. During those 15 seconds, your damage potential is crazy high! When you see your opponent turn that skill on, you gotta get out of the kill zone... or be killed.

steve

right so its an end for endurance mages, like i said time after time.. you making mages being kiters and paper tanks. So basically use BSoL or change class. Thats great in theory but what about against a group of other mages? Who the single mage cant outrun nor kite. And not to mention the low lvl mage who cant out run the higher lvl mage due to speed enhancement gear.

Several issues need to be adressed here. 1) why low rangers gain hps in the middle of a fight is a major flaw
2) low lvl mages are crap even with the adjusted BSoL 3) most important trying to keep everyone from becoming a fighter

The new range on PTS is making life alot easier. True mana is hard to come by even with a balanced build of 55% end 45% int and with that ratio i need spontanious regeneration, heal, hare, BSoL and bookworm on my bar but i was able to compete against stephen on test and have a draw and a win and get a draw against a lvl 100 ranger on my 33 mage. Fire bolt having the longest range in the game is a great boost. so now everyone has to run and dodge a little like a mage. As stephen said at the end of the match "Balance feels good" i have to agree. Kudos to the devs for fixing this in test before it went live.

Edited by aanna (12/08/07 12:05 PM)

my only concern is that the devs are working so hard to balance the classes for pvp that they are losing the easy casual feel to pve :{ Especially since the majority of players don't seem to pvp in the first place. Balance is great for pvp, but it removes the point to multiple class builds in pve by nerfing the few differences they have that make them distinct. it also seems to be removing the point of hybrid classes as the increase difficulty is strongly discouraging spreading your stats and skills too thin :S

I have very mixed reactions about Chunk#2.

Increased stack sizes and secure trading are awesome features that should go into production without delay. Adding advertisements should help NCSoft generate additional revenue so that is also great. Non-members should be thrilled to have bank space and additional access to higher gear levels. Devs recognizing that fighters could use an overall buff is super! What a WONDERFUL patch ... wow, Merry Christmas runners.

The bad part is Chunk #2 did not end there, but went on to revamp both the mage and ranger classes and a healthy percentage of frequently used skills.

Rangers Very few people considered rangers to be overpowered so I am confused by virtually every change. Initially, rangers took a damage nerf almost in 1/3rd of magnitude. Even after "corrections" have been made the damage nerf is obvious in every situation and circumstance. Since monsters got a buff in consecutive chunks the difficulty level was ALREADY going up for PvE rangers without the need to nerf damage. I see several rangers stating "I can live with it" but the changes did not seem necessary to begin with.

Mages With significant changes to mana pools and damage output, mages also face dramatic changes. I am positive that many players will wonder what happened to their "fun" class. Mages appear to be more of a ranged class than before with fewer build options, increased range and a couple of almost mandated skill selections. If the changes to this class go live "as is" BSOL needs to be made available at a very early level.

Skills/Builds/Attributes
Overall, I see build and attribute choices being narrowed and I do not see this as a positive change for Dungeon Runners (example below). The freedom of choice was very appealing part of the game and being able to mix-match skills at whim was AWESOME. Cookie cutter builds may now become more prevalent reducing the overall enjoyment of the game.

There also seems to be a sharp contrast in the way TFF and BSOL are being handled. With TFF, Stephen has basically said the skill was overpowered and thus a "default" selection for rangers. With BSOL, the class changes almost makes it basically a requirement for mages. Sharp contrast!


The resistance changes should have been coupled with encounter changes, but that does not appear to have happened. Sissirat, Abaddon, Shadow Queen and other encounters have just had their difficulty levels exponentially increased. This may not appear to be game-breaking, but since many bosses are gatekeepers this may prevent players from accessing new content without "external" assistance.


example (overdramatized to make the point)
Chunk #2 Problem Rangers took an overall massive damage nerf that was "corrected" by the devs.

How was it corrected?

Stephen states, "Putrid Penetration speed and range has been increased." -and- "The attack rating modifier of for all ranger skill shots has been significantly increased. This will allow you to more easily penetrate heavily armored opponents with your skill shots."

What was gained?
TFF was nerfed and is no longer an “automatic” choice for rangers.

What is lost?
Increases to mob defenses coupled with a damage nerf made the gap betwen rangers and mobs larger. To counteract some of the nerf, rangers are now basically REQUIRED to use specific skills limiting build choices. TFF is no longer an easy choice, but if rangers want better dps you will now need to take skill X, Y & Z. Now I need to remove other skills from my toon for improved skill shots that improve my DPS, but will still be LOWER than pre-chunk changes. I also now need to evaluate my equipment because with the new skills some gear just no longer "fits.” Of course, farming Abaddon just got exponentially harder so I will need to do HDOL3 or Ratsputin.

Exactly where is the fun-filled, wide-opened, unrestricted game that I once could enjoy in 15 minute increments?


There are many WONDERFUL changes in this chunk that need to be implemented directly. I just hope additional time is spent on the more sweeping class changes before this gets rushed into production.

My suggestion is to scale back the class and skill changes, implement the "no-brainer" items and go have some egg nog.

WOW......well done and I agree completly.........after that piece Tristanne, Ill even buy the eggog

I also agree with alvera as we did some testing on PTS in pvp. Even with her 15 second buff she couldnt kill Clamm then again i used heal, and mana spells. For abby you need TTF and 15 seconds just doesnt seem to cut it.

I read another post where mama and stephen tried abby on normal with a ranger and mage, so atleast he can see what we are all talking about.

I am not sure how to correct this for pve/pvp but then again that is why i am employed by NCsoft ).

My main concern is not how a small minority of PvP players cope with dramatic class changes. Many of these changes appear to be driven by PvP that will impact the majority of the players. This isn't the tail wagging the dog, this is the flea on the tail wagging the dog. Ghad ... omg, I hate you! (note: Crickette - that was not an attack on Ghad we really do have a love to hate relationship. HEHE!)

The DR devs do listen to their player base and have already made changes based upon feedback. As noted early, some of these changes are wonderful and should go in immediately. It appears other changes just need more testing and tweaking, but should not delay the "no brainer" changes.

lol I respect you tristanne even when I dont always agree with you....BUT in this case we both agree

yup, yup
/hug crickette

I totally understand the apprehensive feelings some of you have about these coming changes. I do want to reiterate that these changes are not based solely on PvP needs. If they were then we would keep them in PvP where they belong.

It's my belief that these changes help make the game more interesting. You're going to have to adapt, that much is certain. The game, even with these changes, is very playable... and fun!

steve

i believe if you make abby harder to solo then there should be gear as well to even the playing field. Fighters have the advantage soloing right now cause of the nice cinder gear available. Mages can get all cooled or freezing stuff with hot-tempered for Fire Resist. Mages will kill alot slower but will use less pots cause of their 2500+ FR.

Rangers basically only have 3 nice items for FR, coolers, ringlets, and i forget the miner helm name as i dont have that yet. With TFF down to 15 seconds its either kill him in those 15 seconds or sit idle for 40 seconds waiting for cooldown. Which is were speed not crits will come more into play and this also goes back to the gear issue for rangers.

Even with the adjustments to TFF the skill is literally worthless in PvE and PvP. Even the new glowing effect works against rangers in PvP, but I forget it is now "fun."

Abby isn't the only encounter where the ranger damage nerf is still blatantly obvious, but it may be the most glaring. In the current build I can do Abby on Insane usually in under 53 seconds. Alvera is currently built for speed and not crits. In this current build I have a very difficult time doing Abby on normal in 60 seconds (with 10 times the consumables).

I can assure you there isn't any "fun" in seeing your class nerfed and your damage crippled. I believe there are only 2 apologists for the ranger in chunk#2 and even those 2 admit there are required changes that need to be implemented.

Observation of a newbie:
I've been playing just over a month now and really enjoy the game. However I don't really understand how Ranger is over powered. I started as a Ranger and enjoyed playing him. In solo play I had to be careful of damage taken and found I needed either the stomp skill to get mobs off my back or 'Ring of Fire' and 'Gaseous Blast' to soften them up for the kill and if I was careful and kept an eye on the health meter I did okay. In a team with a fighter the Ranger did great since the mobs usually went after the fighter so I could calmly pick them off from a distance. Then when I hit the broken Abyss Mill quest I started a Mage - I was shocked how quick the Mage burned through mobs. Yes he was downing pots at a high rate but with some good End. bonuses from equipment that isn't too bad now.
My point then, since I am probably not being clear is I don't see Rangers being overpowered and the changes look to make it even harder (and a grind) to be a ranger PVE.

Is Ranger DR's Smuggler?