I’m gonna have to join the train here.
Riley I love ranger and I’m not even complaining that much; but I’ve never once used my Ranger ultimate because it takes so long to charge. I’m level 17 and have done the first three dungeons. And i’d like to think I’m normally one of the better DPS.
But let me say that again: I’ve never used my ultimate because it takes so long to charge.
I m gonna chime in here, but just so you know, the mage ult is very dependant on spell rotation, if you use always the same spell it will charge very slowly.
Isn’t it the same for ranger ? i see that you are not using your special arrows and charged shot as much as you could… because you use your “pierce” arrow only after the poison, but the poison arrow cooldown is twice as long as the pierce arrow CD and the charged shot, which means that you are not using everything you can.
I m only pointing this out, because when playing a mage if you don’t use all the spells the ult charge is way slower… and it looks like what you are seeing here
ill try it and get back to you
Not only that, but if you miscast a spell at any point, it significantly increases the time it takes to build an ultimate.
Mage ult only charges fast if you are near-perfect casting and use a 3 spell rotation. Not as easy as other people make it sound… lol
So looking at that video, two things I would note:
You are missing a lot of shots. A lot of the super generation currently comes from the hit streak modifier, where basically you gain a large bonus when you don’t miss shots.
You aren’t using your Charged Shot as soon as it’s available. A lot of the Super generation comes from the Charged Shot now and the ability arrows.
As I explained here: Ranger Feedback (Patch 3.60) the Super generation was re-worked to rely heavily on the use of Charged Shot and ability arrows. In fact I think I state in that post that it would take around 2 minutes and 10 seconds to charge your Super off of basic arrows alone if you never missed a shot and the maximum hit streak modifier were active all the time.
That said, I am planning to take another pass at Super generation for several of the classes as we get ready to roll out the Talents system, and I will look into making it not quite so punishing when those two things (missed shots and not using Charged/ability shots) are happening, as I don’t think it should be that slow even if that’s going on. But if you are wondering where the difference is between how fast I said it should charge and what you’re seeing, I think that’s a large part of it.
You actually just need to alternate 2 spells not 3. Alternating 3 spells won’t give you anymore than alternating 2 as long as frostbolt is apart of both examples. For maximum building you just can’t use the same spell twice in a row.
My rotation uses charged shot and piercing shot twice as often as J’s does and I have the same issue. It’s definitely not just a matter of varying your special arrows.
J was even maximizing his range, as I do, gaining the damage bonus as much as possible. This issue is even more greatly exacerbated in the Soul Keeper fight where every add moves to within melee range and you never get this bonus.
My guess wasn’t that far off, if you see what riley commented, i guess for you it must be about missed shots
Yeah, shout out to Riley for paying attention to how punishing missed shots can be. I pride myself on trading shot speed for accuracy, still putting out 2 arrows on target per second, minimum. I still miss sometimes, but even on the training dummies it’s maybe one in ten, and 90% accuracy is pretty good for any ranged class with an unguided trajectory mechanic on a target that small.
I can confirm that it took me 2:20 when doing the full poison, piercing, piercing rotation.
Still a bit longer than I would expect to be honest.
nah man. I see mages* failing at spells all the time and they still get 3-4 or more charges in the same time as me
^— edited to mages.
I guess you meant mage, and yes mages can miss, but basically, you have to do a full 3 spells rotation without missing to get the max ult charge (which is something like 5%-10%), if you do a 2 spells rotation you will get less than that (something like 3-4%), and if you miss, it cancels the effect ot the current rotation, and you get something like 0.5% charge.
EDIT: these are not accurate numbers, only rough estimation
honestly, you have to also consider the usefullness of the ultimate, because mage ultimate is not that great, if you don’t critic, you get roughly the same damage as an ice lance (on a slowed target), which you could do a lot of times, if you didn’t need to rotate your spells to build up your ult.
So basically you lose quite a bit of DPS to get an ultimate that does not do much, except the convenience of hitting multiple targets (if aligned) and an instant cast.
Yeah I think my point was that I see mages getting 3-4 charges even when I do this rotation using piercing every 5 secs, its still at best 2:20 that I saw (whilst making sure my best not to miss and charging).
I am not saying its too high on mages, I am saying it is way too low for archers.
Lol.
U kidding? Its multi-target and it does an instant crazy amount of damage.
yep i hear you, i just wanted to make sure we are not in a “the grass is greener on the other side” kind of situation 
the mage ult does roughly 10K (non critical) per hit for a geared mage, you do 8k for a critical fireball and i guess close to 10k with a ice lance on a slowed target… so it’s not that great compared to what you need to do to get it… but that’s only my opinion
i guess you have a point.