Ranger direction, Ranged DPS

So originally rangers on Nexus were kind of 50/50 in that they could easily be melee oriented if they wanted to be. Once snipe came along, I think nearly every ranger realized that snipe was crazy strong it could not be ignored. A ranged backstab with no downside. And while haste was not quite as strong as berserk, it was probably the second best damage increase mechanic, it probably outdamaged fighter multis while the haste was active, while also having the perk of increased move speed, which was essential for kiting.

Ranger is definately the closest thing to a Ranged Physical DPS class in Nexus. I think that is probably the niche they want to fill. I def think a ranger should have access to two hand bows, like longbows but other than that they really had good damage and might need a slight nerf to compensate for access to stronger weapons.

That said if you’re giving other classes new things, you don’t want to leave Rangers feeling too left, so perhaps some quality of life tweaks to their tracking skills. Scouting during quests could be vitally important. Maybe give Rangers more evals than any other class or aside from evals, give them an ability similiar to eval that maybe doesn’t give all the stats of a mob but could divine some of the creatures abilites, ie the ranger notices dirty claws that look riddled with disease, so you know it diseases or something along those lines.

Another MUD I played Rangers were essentially vampire hunters, and it was a very pvp oriented MUD. Rangers had a spell they could learn called Track, that would just instantly teleport you to your target (which was great for pvp). Although Nexus was never a pvp environment, a spell like that could be useful for it you snuck deep into an enemy camp and needed to safely get out you could Track back to your party. I mean you could just use a teleport device but being able to get directly back to your group could be handy, especially if you didn’t have a mage to summon. There might have to be something put on track like, only usuable outside combat, so if you actually took aggro you would still be kinda screwed and have to get into a safe spot before you could track away. Otherwise you could just track to whoever is online to save yourself from deaths everytime.

I can’t remember if rangers had to physically sneak into the rooms everytime, didn’t they have an ability to scout the next room from one room away, like scout east? scout west?

Unfortunately Rangers had to successfully sneak into a room to be able to see things in it. Scouting 1 room ahead is what I would expect rangers to be able to do. It should not reveal everything in the room, like hiden or invisible mobs should not pop-out.

But generally thing’s that stand out in the open should be shown.

Also, as we are discussing improvements and additions for each class might as well throw some ideas here as well:
Multishot - lowers the damage but hits multiple times (either the same target ot multiple targets) - each hit has chance to be critical strike.
Elemental arrows:
Flame arrow - bonus fire damange or leaving a DOT.
Frost arrow - adds +1 action time on mobs
Rooting shot - binds target to it’s current location within the room for X amount of time

One hand cross bows vs 2 hand bows/crossbows
One hand crossbows deal less damage but have lower time between attacks while 2 hand would be the oposite.

Rooting arrow perhaps might be limited to 2hand only?

if balanced properly, those could just add different options for playstyle rather than drastic change in damage output.

note: it would be so awsome if rangers could use long shot, to shoot/attract mobs from 1 room away, but that would be probably very unbalanced :frowning:

Unfortunately, sneaking into an adjacent room to do a quick scout was much easier for thieves and that horribly pissed me off as a ranger. I do like a lot of these ideas here but in general I like the idea of sub classes that was brought up. It’s very much D&D like where you pick your class, then your specialization. I think a Ranger would have to do from the get go decide which specialization they are going to do because Dexterity may be a crucial stat to both specializations but if you went to the side of Melee, then you’re going to need some other stats beefed up a bit. Where with a missile player you can min/max your stats to make you a one hit wonder so to speak.

That other MUD I was referring to the rangers were actually all melee dual wielding class and had an ability called Ambush that did less damage than backstab but hit with both weapons instead of one, so the damage came out relatively the same as backstab just divided into two hits. You could probably just add something like that to make a melee ranger on par with a ranged ranger.

I guess I was curious whether people wanted to see them as a flexible class that could do melee or ranged, or more interested in seeing them be a more dedicated ranged physical damage role. We have so many melee classes already, and I think that is probably why they added snipe in the first place, was that haste alone wasn’t keeping pace with most the other classes, and they wanted to make ranger a more missile centric class so they had more of a niche.

It just seems like if your going to make some cool ranged weapons it would be nice to have at least one class that was dedicated to using them.

And also I agree that while thieves should be able to do a fine job scouting, rangers should have a few more perks to make them the premier scouting class, which is why I was trying to suggest some tweaks in that line of thought.