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How are the rangers doing?
Vangarse
Member Posts: 15
I haven't logged into the game for months now since the class became useless. I was just wondering if there were any changes or interest left in the ranger class. I had a master ranger until the hologrind/lag/bikes/player cities made the game difficult to enjoy.
Vangarse...out!
Comments
I played on the European-Chienma [how ever you spell that] and one of the first things I mastered was Ranger.
The class is more broken now then it was ever before. Yeah it was nice to be the only Ranger on-line for days at a time, but the overall skills where broken.
I was a master ranger looking for a whatever and I did a /track... I didn't find anything in the 500m area I could track... next thing my buddy tells me to turn around, and there it was... what I was looking for... but I couldn't track it.
After that I dumped the skill... it's still worthless... the last camp you can make was impressive, but that's about it. The game right now is very enjoyable. Rides are "working". No more getting throw 200m from your bike everytime you get off of it... that was fun.
Player cities work? kinda... lag for me wasn't there... and I played on a server that was at least 3500 miles away.
What will he do next?
Ranger was my all-time favorite profession in SWG. However, sadly to this day its useless. Recent addition of harvest droid and food makes a master scout just as effective as a master ranger.
Camoflauge still does nothing and devs wont say (even after the coorespondent quit because of lack of response) what camo was intended to do. There was speculation that it was intended to sneak past npcs and boost maskscent bonus but SOE refused to say what it was meant to do. Obviously it must have had some purpose but whatever it was it didnt work.
Traps of course are a joke, why waste skill points on them when any melee profession is much more effective. The ranger rep submitted several excellent ideas on how to make traps more effective... things like timer traps that capture and hold animals for harvesting, stuff like that but was ignored by SOE.
Tents are supposed to provide defensive bonus and repeal aggressive mobs at max level but they dont really work. The usefulness of tents was nerfed when devs eliminated the need for camps to take out droids / creatures (CH). So there's a healing bonus for the larger master ranger camp, big deal when you can just take out a med droid anyway. Again, a "balance" by SOE that really hurt this profession.
Tracking sort of works but at this point mostly useless. For one thing, 500m is too close to be worth anything. Secondly, bikes make it impossible to track a player (kinda killed my dream of selling my tracking services to BH for jedi tracking) as they are too fast for such a small distance track. 3rd, it doesnt work 50% of the time.
Overall, not a single thing has changed as far as fixes go. And with addition of harvesting droid and harvesting food bonuses, many rangers dropped out back to novice scouting.
Most of the rangers I knew who stuck it out were role players mostly. Otherwise its a waste of skill points when all you really need is novice or master scout (for max harvesting).
The sad part is there isnt any fixes coming in the future either for rangers. Next patch is being dedicated for Image Designers (again) !!! The most stupidest profession in this game and they are actually getting their second publish (1st was a few months back). Rangers, pistoleers, carbineer, CH, and many other professions are so badly broken yet SOE decides its more important to dedicate yet ANOTHER publish for hair coloring and tattoos argh. Time frame is basically Image publish, then JTL, then Combat Revamp, and after POSSIBLY a smuggler revamp (originally was on schedule ahead of combat revamp but not mentioned anymore so who knows). You'll notice there's no mention of ranger fixes or changes in there. So basically publishes are already planned out through end of year and probably into Feb / March at least. I'd say we'd be lucky if they fixed ranger class by July (2nd yr anniversary) 2005
Another thing I love is how broken rifleman is.
4343 rifleman, I couldn't even hurt things... PvP I sucked compared to all the uber 1337 TKM/Fencers that have +30000 dodge to anything...
I love it, they run up to you, knock you down, you're dead. Or if you run, they do an attack that can hit you the same distance your rifle could, but they are TK... go figure that one out.
What will he do next?
Vangarse...out!
This is one of the few times I agree with Admriker. Ranger is still as broken as ever. The only slight thing you have going for you is the healing bonus where you actually get wounds healed just by sittling there. Yeah that's neat if you have 3 hours to kill. Personally I've always liked traps, and sticky mesh can be useful if you get caught without buffs, but traps are pretty useless
Tracking (which is what made me try the profession) is still horked Camo kits do nothing (but they do it well) and camps don't keep out hostiles.
I currently have a master Ranger in SWG.
Why?
Because I HOPE SOE makes good on its promises to enhance Rangers, currently slated for after JTL release, along with the smuggler changes.
Among things that have been promoted for the change (since Rangers supposedly are THE class for hunting critters...):
-Specialized Camps...with add-on modules like machine gun nests for defense, additional offense/defense to party members WITHOUT causing camp to be abandoned, etc. Note that the proposed modules WILL require help from other classes to construct (ahead of time) such as Squad Leader for the machine gun nest (auto attacks incoming hostiles as they approach).
-combining existing trees to FREE UP one entire tree
-the NEW TREE will be HUNTING (proposed). Rangers are proposed to receive 3 Ranger-only weapons. Hunting Dagger for melee, and Hunting Bow and Master Hunting Bow for ranged. At master level, Ranger may be able to one-shot a critter with the Master-Ranger-only Master Hunting Bow. Description of successful attack is something like--as the arrow is let fly, it approaches the creature, igniting in a BLINDING light, emitting a piercing SCREAM, imbedding near the creatures heart. On a successful crit the arrowhead DETONATES, effectively one-shotting the creature. Note that there is a CHANCE (not guarantee) of critting the creature.
-there are other changes slated, but the NEW CAMPS and RANGER ONLY WEAPONS are the major proposed changes.
Further info can be obtained from the Ranger profession forum on the official SWG boards. If you are interested in the latest details and/or changes in the plans, best to check there. But the above is a summary of proposed changes.
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Darkage of Camelot | Since Day 1 |
Seabasz 50 Hero | Lancelot / Hib
Seabas 50 Enchanter | Lancelot / Hib
Vlyden 50 Bezerker | Guinevere / Mid
Vlyden 50 Armsman | Bors / Alb
Hellzpyro 40 Wizard | Merlin / Alb
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Darkage of Camelot
Seabasz 50 Hero | Lancelot / Hib
Seabas 50 Enchanter | Lancelot / Hib
Vlyden 50 Bezerker | Guinevere / Mid
Vydien 50 Armsman | Bors / Alb
Hellzpyro 50 Wizard | Merlin / Alb
Oceany 45 BM | Mordred / Mid
Seabasy 48 Bard | Mordred / Hib
Not during the JTL roll out...heh
Bit off topic but just out of curosity is the squad leader still the most useless combat profession in SWG?
Now i tried this little beauty of a profession.Firstly,half the skills did not work and ones that did were a big joke.
Secondly,SWG is so much a solo mmorpg that most people don't want to group at all.Quite often people will only group to get missions and then go solo it.The mere word squad leader implies your need to have a group to be of any use.
What will he do next?
Actually Squad Leader has one good skill that is quite useful for PvP. The Form Up command removes dizzy states, and it's the first block in the skill trees so it's not a large skill point drain to get.