Ranger wan-... NEEDS.

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Originally Posted by Neisan_Quetz

stuff about hate and snapshot.

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This guy is on the right track. Ranged attacks are like job abilities that have been gerry rigged to deal damage and give TP (complete with movement locking and cooldowns). This extends to all ranged attacks but Ranger is hurt most by it.

Nah, the Thief is tanking a bunch of stuff, and he can easily keep hate with all the double/triple/quadruple attack he has. RR is just to make sure hate stays on him after he gathers his initial 20 seconds or so of attacking.

The reason why the WAR goes down so much is because he's hell bent on doing all the damage ever to a mob, which reminds me of what was said earlier...KC can make you do retarded damage, but how long is that going to last if you're dead? And how much help are you to anyone when you're lying face down on the ground?

I think the bigger problem has nothing to do with DDs, though there are obvious problems. I totally agree with your idea of Snapshot, but the biggest issue for job interactivity and role should be PLDs, and the fact that their hate cap isn't broken.

I don't think the problem with RNG is a lack of damage. We're relatively on par (despite paying). We still can get hate just like every other DD.
Problem is, when RNG gets hate, it screws everyone else including the RNG. Now the RNG's distance nerf comes into play. Now every other melee DD has missed his WS as the mob comes raging after you. Now every mage is muttering "Gawd damm RNG!" as AoE moves towards them and they have to pump out a ton of Cure V's to save your ass.
Until the enmity formula is changed, the bottom line is that a RNG has to hold back to keep everyone happy and that will always nerf your parse.

The only DDs I can think of that don't need to hold back are DRG and MNK

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Originally Posted by Mirabelle

I don't think the problem with RNG is a lack of damage. We're relatively on par (despite paying). We still can get hate just like every other DD.
Problem is, when RNG gets hate, it screws everyone else including the RNG. Now the RNG's distance nerf comes into play. Now every other melee DD has missed his WS as the mob comes raging after you. Now every mage is muttering "Gawd damm RNG!" as AoE moves towards them and they have to pump out a ton of Cure V's to save your ass.
Until the enmity formula is changed, the bottom line is that a RNG has to hold back to keep everyone happy and that will always nerf your parse.

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I guess this is probably my biggest beef about rng also. Granted my blu and thf, as of now, bury my rng in overall dmg but it is mainly due to the fact that enmity builds fast on rng and survivability is a joke. Have to stand in a "sweet spot" to get ideal damage numbers and when you pull hate you cause it to run away from other melee.
Even without Jishnu's Radiance, rng can still put out decent dmg, but at the same time I don't know any that would...after my last instance on rng, I sure as hell won't. Even spacing out my attacks I pulled hate...over a blm of all things.

I wish SE would have kept the plan to lower rng enmity if out of the sweet spot, shot for shot, cause rng really could have used it. If I remember right this was one of those adjustments they planned about a year ago, but ended up scrapping after test phase for some reason.

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Originally Posted by Kitkat

enmity stuff...

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This is kind of a problem for any job that deals damage and isn't trying to tank, not just Ranger. It really is a mystery why the dev team chose not to go with the -enmity stuff for ranger though.

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Originally Posted by Catsby

This is kind of a problem for any job that deals damage and isn't trying to tank, not just Ranger. It really is a mystery why the dev team chose not to go with the -enmity stuff for ranger though.

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I think SE did not add the -enmity stuff because of the advantage bow users would gain over Xbow + Gun users and with the type of -enmity gear we have there was the potential of making it so we just about never pull hate.

However, I think they should have at least given us 2 JAs similar to DRG's High and Super jump. That way there is still a need to watch hate but it's no longer a "I have hate but there is nothing I can do about it besides watch the mob take my face off"

Yes, this happens on all jobs, but even with all the -enmity they gave rng this time around I still produce enmity much faster than other DD jobs I have that actually do more in less time. My blu has capped haste in gear+15% from spell+15%DA and in one attack round I can potentially do 2-3x the dmg of one shot and pull less hate than I would on rng. In or out of abyssea I run into this very issue. 2500 Quad continuum and my enmity decays faster than on my rng who does equal/less damage. The best part is, my blu has no -enmity on at all, infact +enmity while my rng is -13 at all times and up to -40 for WS. Something is visibly wrong with enmity generation with ranged attacks considering this, especially when I hold back on purpose as rng and still gain hate.

In abyssea I can understand this since most NM (Tier II and up) generally has some form of hate reset move, but at almost anything I do in or out of abyssea in comparison to other DD jobs I play that has either +enmity or no -enmity...I can't, so this isn't just a matter of "every DD has the problem," so much as it is vastly more noticeable on rng even when holding back. I've also compared the hate generation to other DD jobs I have, not just blu (such as war, drk, blm, thf), just trying to say that either the decay of enmity from ranged attack is lower/broken or that it generates high enough enmity that coupling it with JA most rng use regularly it isn't outlandish for people to request something to help lower it against the job.

After about 2-3 WS, all DDs should be capped on hate. So virtually -ENM in abyssea for DDs isn't realistic.

JA:Sniper Ranged attacks create no enmity. Lvl99 of course as it more pertains to endgame activities.
idk could prolly jusy copy code from the jump hate shed save an animation opa! /happy rngs

edit: no i wont sub drg.

As for Ranged attack gear what is optimal for ws without sacrificing other mods? anybody good at math have some numbers?

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Originally Posted by Saiken

JA:Sniper Ranged attacks create no enmity. Lvl99 of course as it more pertains to endgame activities.
idk could prolly jusy copy code from the jump hate shed save an animation opa! /happy rngs

edit: no i wont sub drg.

As for Ranged attack gear what is optimal for ws without sacrificing other mods? anybody good at math have some numbers?

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What WS do you intend to use?

Jishnu's Radiance woebow

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Originally Posted by Alkalinehoe

After about 2-3 WS, all DDs should be capped on hate. So virtually -ENM in abyssea for DDs isn't realistic.

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That wasn't what the point was about, it was about the fact that enmity builds faster and the fact that being able to strip/negate it would be nice. Especially when any of my other DD jobs don't gain hate nearly as fast even though I would be dealing more damage. I like rng, but at the same time having a mob turn and run at me like I just insulted its mother after 3-5 shots perplexes me when my other DD's will do more damage than those 3-5 shots in a smaller time frame. If I used Barrage or something, yeah I expect the mob to B-line it over to me, but just from standard shots...not so much.

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Originally Posted by Kitkat

I guess this is probably my biggest beef about rng also. Granted my blu and thf, as of now, bury my rng in overall dmg but it is mainly due to the fact that enmity builds fast on rng and survivability is a joke. Have to stand in a "sweet spot" to get ideal damage numbers and when you pull hate you cause it to run away from other melee.
Even without Jishnu's Radiance, rng can still put out decent dmg, but at the same time I don't know any that would...after my last instance on rng, I sure as hell won't. Even spacing out my attacks I pulled hate...over a blm of all things.

I wish SE would have kept the plan to lower rng enmity if out of the sweet spot, shot for shot, cause rng really could have used it. If I remember right this was one of those adjustments they planned about a year ago, but ended up scrapping after test phase for some reason.

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It's sadly been this way since the huge 2005 nerf. SE just needs to make another ability that would allow you to shoot from any distance and not have changes in accuracy and attack, but your melee attacks would not grant TP. That way we could stay Melee distance and not have to worry about pulling mobs away from everyone else.

The other biggest flaw with RNG is the ammo needs to be sold from NPC's at this point SE, seriously make it happen.

<waits for Bow or Crossbow/Gun to be designed into the Character costume> Not too much of a big deal I suppose, but it would be cool having a bow on your back or a gun at your side. :-3

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Originally Posted by Raka

<waits for Bow or Crossbow/Gun to be designed into the Character costume> Not too much of a big deal I suppose, but it would be cool having a bow on your back or a gun at your side. :-3

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I would like that as well, but won't ever happen as long as PS2 support continues =/.

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Originally Posted by Raka

<waits for Bow or Crossbow/Gun to be designed into the Character costume> Not too much of a big deal I suppose, but it would be cool having a bow on your back or a gun at your side. :-3

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Wouldn't that be neat? I've always wanted to see this implemented.

I agree with the idea that Camo should shed some amount of enmity. It also shouldn't generate any enmity to use. Oh, man... you're concealed... how offensive and wrath-invoking. Scavenge is still the most worthless JA ever. A shame that it'll never turn into a useful ability. There should be some combo with Bounty Shot+Scavenge. Not sure how that would work, though. Auto-shoot is a must, really. It's BS that melee can auto-attack and I have to continually press the /ra macro just to perform the most simple and imperative part of my job as a Ranger...

Some other random ideas...

Job Trait: Sniper - Increases the damage of your ranged critical hits. 3-5% per tier, maybe? I dunno'.

Job Ability: Hawk Eye Shot - Increases the rate of critial hits with ranged weapons. 3-5% per tier? Shares a timer with Unlimited Shot. Has the same cast time, recast time and duration of Double Shot.

Job Ability: Defense Reflex - Instantly moves you some distance away from the target you're currently engaged with. Instant cast time, 3 minute recast or something.

Good or bad, just some ideas I had that seemed to address some of the issues or adjustments some players are looking for.

All 3 of those JAs/JT would be very welcomed without breaking the job. We would gain a decent dmg boost that would make up for our lack of access to march and haste.

I can't think of any additions for Sniper or Hawk Eye Shot as they seem powerful enough on their own.

The only addition I can think of is for Defense Reflex. Maybe have it move the user into the "Sweet Spot" and drop a % (not all) of the user's current enmity? I'm a bow user though so one of the marksmanship/Xbow masters would need to add some input about being thrown into the "Sweet Spot".

Overall 3 really good ideas that I wish SE would really look into. If they don't want to give us access to haste or march at least let us be a job that hits hard. ^^

Is there any way to know what the exact "sweet spot" is or is it different per mob?

Sweet spots are weapon specific. I think someone posted some of those somewhere but it would have been for 75 weapons and I don't remember where ;;. You can find the sweet spot pretty fast though... just try a few different shots at different distances.

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Originally Posted by Feliciaa

All 3 of those JAs/JT would be very welcomed without breaking the job. We would gain a decent dmg boost that would make up for our lack of access to march and haste.

I can't think of any additions for Sniper or Hawk Eye Shot as they seem powerful enough on their own.

The only addition I can think of is for Defense Reflex. Maybe have it move the user into the "Sweet Spot" and drop a % (not all) of the user's current enmity? I'm a bow user though so one of the marksmanship/Xbow masters would need to add some input about being thrown into the "Sweet Spot".

Overall 3 really good ideas that I wish SE would really look into. If they don't want to give us access to haste or march at least let us be a job that hits hard. ^^

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Thank you for your kind words. Oh, yeah, jumping into the "sweet spot" for whatever ranged weapon you have equipped could be nice. I like it. But like you said, any commentary from gun/crossbow users would be useful.

I thought about a enmity shedding effect, but if they would just integrate that as part of Camo, then I don't think it would be needed. Just my thoughts, though.

I thought of a different JA, too. A few people have mentioned something about physical damage reduction being mostly inaccessible for Ranger. I think this might alleviate it to some degree.

Job Ability: (Don't have a name for it.) - Significantly increases your evasion and grants a certain amount of physical damage reduction for the duration of effect. I was thinking the evasion bonus would be something really potent like a wyvern Wind Wall TP move. Coupled with like a -25% physical damage take secondary effect, it could be a really nice OHSHI situation ability, maybe? Something significant, but only lasting a very short time, with a rapidly decaying effect. Maybe like a 30 second duration or less... 5+ minute recast?

Just another idea I had last night. Not sure if it's game-breaking or not. Any input is welcome.

The issue with pulling hate doesn't come from the fact that rangers go down in 3 hits. They do by the way. :P With a good healer any job can remain standing (I have a number of deathless Ixions to stand testament to that).

The problem with pulling hate is that you are moving the monster you fight (and this is why your defensive-reflex JA would only be useful for identifying the sweet spot... which you could do on your own pretty quickly). Melee get really angry when you move their monster though ... they can't hit it any more and they lose their tp when they try to ws as the monster runs away. Mages also hate it because they have to reposition and you might be pushing your entire ally into aggro radius of other things or sending a nasty aoe their way if you're standing next to the mages (kind of like people get annoyed when blms pull hate). I think the real fix for this problem is going to have to be reducing the amount of enmity a ranged attack creates or programming the monster's AI in such a way that someone from far away can take more hate than a close range DD without moving the monster (basically even though your hate would be higher than the tank's hate, you would have to hit a certain cap above and beyond the normal one before the monster would move away from what it was already attacking). You might be able to make a feature like that into a job trait which is ranger specific (otherwise I see BLMs abusing that quite a bit).

I like the sniper job trait, that sounds neat. I don't think many people would use hawkeye shot instead of double shot though... you would be lowering your dps by doing so. If it were on it's own timer I would definitely use it though.

I intended for Hawk Eye Shot to share a timer with Unlimited Shot, not with Double Shot. The whole point was to combine the two to greatly enhance your DPS. Or if that's too OP, putting them on separate timers is easy enough.

I admit that the defensive abilities I came up with don't address the core problem of inflammatory enmity gain for RNG, but I think they do address the "omg im gonna die now" situation if you're in a pinch if used properly and quickly.

But I'm not going to toot my horn like I know jack about Ranger, they're just some ideas I thought up that the community might enjoy and/or to bring back some offensive/defensive capabilities to RNG.

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Originally Posted by Fetus

I intended for Hawk Eye Shot to share a timer with Unlimited Shot, not with Double Shot. The whole point was to combine the two to greatly enhance your DPS. Or if that's too OP, putting them on separate timers is easy enough.

I admit that the defensive abilities I came up with don't address the core problem of inflammatory enmity gain for RNG, but I think they do address the "omg im gonna die now" situation if you're in a pinch if used properly and quickly.

But I'm not going to toot my horn like I know jack about Ranger, they're just some ideas I thought up that the community might enjoy and/or to bring back some offensive/defensive capabilities to RNG.

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But Unlimited Shot shares a timer with Double Shot. :x

I guess my thinking is that giving a ranger defensive capabilities is like taking something that's broken and changing the packaging you sell it in. A ranger dying is mostly dependent on how good their healer is. Rangers not being brought to events is not caused by their death, but by the fact that they move the monster. And yeah unlimited shot is shared with double shot already. :P

IMO it sounds like Hawk Eye Shot would be fine if it was not linked to any other JAs. As I think Double shot + Unlimited shot were only linked for easier programing. lol.

As for defensive-reflex, I think having it shed a % of the users enmity would solve the main issue of moving the mob around as long as it was a 20-50% enmity lost. However, after thinking about it just having it shed hate and not move the user would be much easier to add for the design team. (Hope they actually read this stuff as it seems like every RNG is just asking for 1-2 JAs that have timers and work like high jump and super jump. >.>)

IMO I think we should keep building on these defensive capabilities because they can really change how people look at a job. Some really great examples are when SE added JAs like Seigan, Retaliation, and perfect counter. Sure they don't make them invincible but they do make them more desirable.

all very good ideas, id like to add one
a way to see how many arrows you have left in your ammo slot when engaged to a monster.
im tired of pew pew'n my expensive arrows when my stack of tp arrows runs out :/

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Originally Posted by majistical

all very good ideas, id like to add one
a way to see how many arrows you have left in your ammo slot when engaged to a monster.
im tired of pew pew'n my expensive arrows when my stack of tp arrows runs out :/

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Lol that would be awesome... the number of times I've raged when a ws wouldn't go off only to find out I was out of bullets >.>;;;;;;;

Those are pretty cool ideas but I think you guys forgot about the deeply seated problem with hate. It seems everything monster and player related is always getting boosted but enmity values remain static.

On a side note, does anybody have any abyssea parses without crit+ atmas to test max crit rate for ranged attacks? I recently lost a lot of my saved parses and before I go out to retest I figured I would ask. If I remember correctly it was 10% and crit+ gear didn't affect it.

I think theres kind of a decaying effect with alot of the updates SE had did to jobs in the past like ranger. If you've been around in FFXI as long as I have you may or may not recall the old Arrowburn parties and how RNG was the big bandwagon job due to their insane power at the time. Now keeping in mind the game was originally designed around level 50, RNG became overpowered because the mechanics designed for level 50 tipped the scales in their favor when the caps were raised to 75. However, the update to ranged attacks balanced out the damage and only the good RNG's could still put out good damage. The problem is the fix for ranged attacks were intended and designed for level 75, now the level cap has risen the mechanics that were designed for 75 comes back to haunt us at 90+.

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Originally Posted by Swords

...The problem is the fix for ranged attacks were intended and designed for level 75, now the level cap has risen the mechanics that were designed for 75 comes back to haunt us at 90+.

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Like not getting a 2-hander bonus for ranged weapons, having distance affect damage, terrible ranged weaponskills and other intentionally lower limits on capabilities compared to melee damage dealers. Keep in mind that all of the jobs couldn't do what they do now when Ranger was first nerfed and if Ranger was never nerfed and all the jobs altered/added in the way they are now Ranger would still probably be bottom tier. Back then you hardly ever saw bards, an X-hit build didn't exist and people tanked sky gods with warrior so naturally being able to get tp from melee+ranged seemed "broken".

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Originally Posted by Virjunior

Wrong. It used to be that DRK sucked unless it bought what used to be 125 million on my server. Ranger was always good, just costly. I love mine now...wouldn't use it for Dynamis, but in EXP parties, camping, Abyssea, and skillchaining whenever possible, I can put out some decent numbers.

A few weeks back, I did between 2800 and 3200 dmg with an Empyreal Arrow to the Iron Giant in Abyssea-Altepa...I can't remember which is was, it was just really friggin high. This is with /NIN sub.

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You do realize that this NM takes doubled damage after certain abilities? I have done over 10k damage to it on thf.

Has anybody actually seen ruzor arrows for sale on their server? there's been sales on titan but hardly any

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Originally Posted by majistical

all very good ideas, id like to add one
a way to see how many arrows you have left in your ammo slot when engaged to a monster.
im tired of pew pew'n my expensive arrows when my stack of tp arrows runs out :/

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Ctrl+ E.
Problem solved.

the whole auto-attack thing, I see a different problem here. Rng-like a couple of other jobs-has the ability to completely blow hate control with their obscenely high damage. That's why ranged attack and nukes are not on auto I think, so you can ride that hate threshold without a quick course in how easy it is to make ranger puree'. probably better (if that's what you want to do) to set a macro of "/ra <bt><wait 19>" and repeat on every line (the 19 being arbitrary, adjust to your party/prey). Still do damage at a decent rate and hopefully come back from the can without a message asking you to get back up!

Or you could just turn around to stop attacking if autoattack for ranged attacks existed.

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Originally Posted by Khajit

Or you could just turn around to stop attacking if autoattack for ranged attacks existed.

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That works. I was thinking more of a toggle for auto ranged attacks in addition to manually doing it. I see the merits of both so why not have both options right?

Does anybody happen to know the cap on ranged critical hit rate and how they are calculated? All I can seem to figure out is that increasing AGI will increase crit rate but I can't seem to find any information on what AGI is being checked against. I also can't seem to figure out how much of an effect it has per point relative to DEX for melee crit rate. I think I might have stumbled upon another arbitrary penalty on the job.

I'm not sure, but any crit hit rate atmas effect ranged crit rates as well. Some have said the regular crit rate can go as high as 95-100% which to me is a little exaggerated (with exception of WAR 2hr), but the two may be intertwined with the exception that AGI mods are used instead of DEX for calculation.

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Originally Posted by Swords

I'm not sure, but any crit hit rate atmas effect ranged crit rates as well. Some have said the regular crit rate can go as high as 95-100% which to me is a little exaggerated (with exception of WAR 2hr), but the two may be intertwined with the exception that AGI mods are used instead of DEX for calculation.

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There have been tests that (last time i looked) showed 100% Critical Hit Rate achievable. but i think it was 95% Adjusted after a while.