Ranger spam isn't that fun

I play ranger, and I really enjoy it, but to maximize my damage I’m expected to shoot 3 shots a second, and it’s the goofiest thing to behold in real life because there’s no quiver to grab from.

It’s like playing an accordian at high speeds rather than using a bow.

To help make this feel a bit more fun, why don’t we have to grab a new arrow from behind our backs? I wouldn’t suggest having to “grip” it, but perhaps reaching back and holding the trigger will “hold” an arrow until you release it. If you release it while it’s in the string, it’ll shoot like usual.

but i like my dps pls don’t change

Yeah, totally. Perhaps a slight damage buff per arrow would help sustain similar damage if having to pull a new arrow slows rangers down to 1 shot per second.

It would be great to feel more like Legolas and less like Steve Urkel.

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Keep an eye on your special arrows. I use the piercing one with a short cool down. Every time i can, I charge that attack. It does more damage than i would if i was hitting 3 arrows/second and i don’t have to spam as much.

Ye at level 20 Piercing does ~2700 and Basic arrows does ~600, which makes 2700 > 1800.

Although during Boss fights, shooting just 3 arrows/sec seems like the better strategy since you basically have 100% uptime on your special ability.

Shoot 6 arrows (2 seconds)
100% Ult Charge
Activate Ult
Spam arrows for the 10 sec duration
Shoot 6 arrows
Repeat

Grabbing a belt arrow just ruins the rhythm and sometimes you don’t accurately grab the arrow.

True! Bosses make you sweat :smile:

Yeah, I love the special arrows mechanic, but just want to get away from having to do the accordian spam. Combining those two things sounds like it would be great.

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I feel like that would make archer too easy and unrewarding, I prefer having to move your arms at high speed for long periods of time.

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It adds an extra step (grabbing from your quiver), so it would make it harder to get that 3 hits per second.

Alternatively, nerf quick shots and provide a buff for holding the string longer. Like a charge shot, but much shorter, like 1 second. Then it becomes a game of timing, where holding the shot for exactly 1 second and moving on to the next shot is best. Instead of a game of finding the least strenuous way to spam 4+ shots a second, it would be a game of perfect timing and deliberate aiming, something I think most people like about Ranger.

Personally, I really hate Ranger spam. Providing a better way to play the class at a high level would be great.

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@Nicholas_A

That’s a good place to start. Building on that idea…

A fix may be to have different types of bows that perform better when used a certain way. Speedier bows that are better at machine gun spam, and longbows that are better at taking your time. That way players can pick the one they like the most, and have a valid reason for not doing the other play style, without taking anything away from anyone.

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Just for the record. I like the ranger the way it is. I like the speed and wish I was allowed to shot even faster.

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Strong agree on nerf quick shots and adding bonus for “taking aim”. My thought would be a meter that charges to full in 1 second then slowly degrades. This allows for shooting 1 arrow a second at max damage, which is still fast, but also penalizes for holding the shot too long/short. Seems both more realistic and more skillful than the spam. Would also bring more of a steady rhythm to the fight than just moving your arms as fast as possible.

The charged shot would just take precedence over the meter degrading whenever it was available.

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I agree that the feel of the class should tend towards “fast but accurate with powerups” as opposed to “spam it as fast as humanly possible.”

I’m only up to lvl14 but I find that timing special arrows and powered shots in a rotation is a whole lot more fun than spamming regular arrows and hoping it dies before I do

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I think they’ve already tried to address this with the shot score system and resulting damage multiplier. Hits on smaller targets and at longer distances deal more damage than point blank shots. Most rangers I’ve seen spamming are right in the mob’s face just slinging arrows. It’s fast and sloppy but it gets the job done.

So my question is this: is the range multiplier not balancing with spamshot? I’m my opinion, a Ranger hitting 2 shots a second at near max range, and combining special arrows and charge shot with a maxed multiplier, should out-DPS a spammer who isn’t capitalizing on these mechanics. I guess I have some theorycrafting to do when I get home this afternoon.

I haven’t seen any notable research done in this area, so it will be helpful to get some raw numbers.

Is there a good resource for theorycrafting at this point? I’m just now remembering that the Discord is a thing.

The problem with the shot score system is that it relies heavily on group combat and someone else holding the aggro so that you can keep that ranged distance for the multipliers. Most of the time I play it is solo because I only have 30 mins to an hour to play and any time spent finding a group for random quests is essentially wasted (especially since travel times for quests are lengthy). So unless every mob I fight is my level or lower (and I kill it before it reaches me), more than half of all combat is right in my face and therefore spamming shots between specials is most efficient.

A “paced” shot system like I described above would work well both for the single player and for group combat. It would also force players to be “cool under pressure” when a mob is right in their face and not just spam arrows at short range for max damage.

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Yes, I think the short-range combat is the biggest offender to the “feel” of the class at this point in time.

With the huge cooldown on the trap, it makes it difficult for you to stay “at range” which is like… the name of the class ;).
I don’t know if the solution is giving the ranger a knockback? or something else to keep the ranger in their sweet spot while soloing, like a WoW hunter would use their pet.

That’s not a problem. It’s a mechanism. Yeah, the whole game is designed around group play. The point is, as a Ranger you’ll do your best DPS with skilled shots taken at distance. It’s not punishing soloers for spamming, it’s buffing grouped Rangers who position themselves well for maximum output.

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Well, that’s the thing, for group fights where you can safely stand back, there’s no theory crafting to do. You just spam the arrows and the DPS variation in using the special arrows or not is pretty small, since like the others have said, grabbing an arrow might disrupt your rhythm and you build ult so fast with the spam anyway.

I think the changes with the shot rating system and basic arrow nerf are great, but they only really affected solo play. I’m really enjoying the game and ranger in particular, but with the way the class is set up for group play now, it seems like there’s very little skill that could possibly be involved, from either a strategy or execution standpoint. You just have to shoot as fast as you can from a spot that gives even 30 shot rating and you’ll do just as much DPS as any other ranger.

It’s certainly fun to shoot quickly, but with such a low skill ceiling, I can’t imagine being all that engaged in the combat at endgame.

As for theorycrafting, I’ve done some testing. It seems like the default loadout of Poison/Power is the best setup unless you’re going to have a lot of recurring adds about 30 seconds apart. In that case you’d take fire arrow over poison.

A charged shot takes 2 seconds to charge. I have about 80ms ping, tested it by pulling an arrow back fully while the charge shot was on cd. Once the skill was available, it took about a second for the animation to kick in and another second to complete the charge. This was consistent with timings from using it more generally as an opener.

The damage on a charged shot scales to being a little less than 8 basic shots. It stacks with the power arrow to deal over 11 basic shots worth of damage. So, including the grab, you have to shoot about 5 arrows/second before it outweighs doing charged power shots. I shoot 3-4 a second and look a lot slower than the endgame rangers I’ve seen, so it may not even be worth it for them.

The charged shot does not affect the poison damage or fire rain damage, but the shot rating globes do. So starting with a charged poison arrow into a power shot is a waste of DPS. Your poison/fire damage is capped by your level and then adds whatever stats might modify it on top of that. It’s very strong and quite worth grabbing the poison once you fill up your globe, since (at least at my level) it ticks for 1.5x the basic shot damage.

The Charge shot does not affect the split arrows, which seem to be the weakest arrow, even in solo. The split has 2 middle arrows visually, but only one will do damage.

From what I can tell with attack power/defense, all of the ratios stay exactly the same. So a higher defense monster taking maybe 10% less damage from a basic shot will also take 10% less damage from a charged power shot. Perhaps it would be nice if there was some sort of defense curve, where hitting with hard hitting attacks penetrates more of the defense than basic hits, but you’d still be left with a very simple rotation in party play.

But that IS a problem. Right now the complaint is that spamming arrows isn’t a fun game mechanic. Saying “don’t spam arrows, skilled shots at range are more efficient” is unhelpful when that isn’t even possible for a solo player most of the time. All they are able to do is spam because kiting isn’t a viable game mechanic. I’m fine with a Ranger’s DPS to be most efficient in group play. However, I would prefer if the play-style available to a solo player doesn’t default to spamming arrows whenever they aren’t able to shoot at range.

Saying “don’t play solo, this game is designed with group combat in mind” is also unhelpful for the reasons I stated previously, namely, grouping up takes up game time that many solo players can’t afford.

Switching to a paced shot system for maximum efficiency would improve the solo playstyle while still keeping the rewards for distance, accuracy, and group play in place.

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If you’re curious, here is a mockup i did when I hit level 20.
image

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