Ranger wan-... NEEDS.

[Fetus]

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. ^^

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.

[Hoshi]

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.

[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.

[Alkalinehoe]

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.

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

[Hoshi]

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

[Feliciaa]

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.

[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 :/

[Hoshi]

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 :/

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 >.>;;;;;;;

[Catsby]

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.

[Swords]

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+.