Ranger Proposal

[MartaDemireux]

Ranger: A ranged DPS which sacrifices its mobility for increased damage and calls upon animals for aid.

Abilities:

30: Take Aim: Bestows the Aim status effect. Increases accuracy by 10%, critical hit damage by 5% and auto-attack potency by 10. Use of certain Weapon Skills will activate the Draw Meter. As the Draw Meter fills your Weapon Skills will become more powerful. Using the Weapon Skill a second time or filling the Draw Meter to maximum strength will follow through with its attack. Ends upon re-use. (More information below)
35: Sten Needle: Rushes into the target to place a trap beneath them. Deals damage over time with a potency of 40 for 9s. After 9s the trap explodes to deal 120 potency damage. Recast: 20s.
40: Camouflage: Conceals the user (10s). Prevents auto-attacks and detection. Wears off if a damaging skill is used. Cannot be used if you have red or flashing enmity. While concealed Shadowbind will gain 180 potency. Its bind effect will be reduced to 5 seconds but it cannot be removed. MP drains while active. Recast: 90s.
45: Sonic Boom: Delivers an attack with a potency of 120 to target and enemies in a cone behind it. 25% chance Wide Volley will receive a 15 potency bonus. TP Cost: 200.
50: Rapid Fire: Your Draw Meter will charge 20% faster and will not drain while moving (15s). Recast: 300s.

Changes to Archer:
Repelling Shot: Will combo with Sten Needle. Combo bonus: Potency of 160 and backstep increased to 12y.
Quick Nock: Gives a 25% chance that Sonic Boom will stun targets (2s).
Swiftsong: While Take Aim is active it cannot effect others and is usable in battle but drains MP.
Bloodletter: With Take Aim active this changes into Animals: Your next attack which uses the Draw Meter will call upon a random animal for aid. The animal called will depend on the Draw Meter. Duration: 10s. Recast: 30s. (more information below)

Animals:

A number will be rolled from 0 to where your Draw Meter is filled to upon execution of your attack. For example if you fill your bar up to 35 and then attack a number will be rolled from 0-35. Windbite and Venomous Bite will continue to use the same mechanic. The Draw Meter will not enhance the potency of animal attacks. Only abilities which activate the Draw Meter will gain the aid of an animal.

0: Mysidian Rabbit: Rabbit in a Black Mage hat appears beside you but does not aid.
1: Squirrel: A Squirrel will attack your target with a potency of 100.
2-5: Bee Swarm: Bees will attack your target with a potency of 100. If Weapon Skill used is AoE this will hit all targets your attack hits.
6-10: Nightingale: A Bluebird will come and heal your HP for 10% of the damage inflicted by your attack. If Weapon Skill used is AoE this will heal party members within 5y of you as well.
11-20: Tree Squirrel: A Tree Squirrel will attack your target from the air and paralyze it for 5s.
21-30: Falcon : A Vulture will attack your target with a potency of 120.
31-40: Skunk: A skunk will attack your target inflicting Blind and Poison with a potency of 20 for 9s.
41-50: Wild Boar: A Wild Hog will attack your target with a potency of 150.
51-100: Unicorn: A Unicorn will heal your MP for 30% of the damage inflicted by your attack (respectively). If Weapon Skill used is AoE this will affect party members within 5y of you as well.

Take Aim:

The Draw Meter will fill from 0-100. Each point will increase the potency of your current skill by 3.5%. Damage over time potency is unaffected. The bar fills up in 5 seconds time. Any movement will drain the meter at twice its charge rate until movement has stopped (approximately. 2.5 seconds to drain a full meter). It is still possible to finish your attack before and during your running out of an AoE in the same manner that ARC/BRD can but keep in mind the animation for your attack will begin the moment you press it the 2nd time.

The following abilities will activate the Draw Meter:

Heavy Shot
Straight Shot
Venomous Bite
Misery's End
Quick Nock
Windbite
Wide Volley
Sonic Boom

Concept: I was noticing that several of Archer's abilities aren't used very often and thought that would be a good place to start thinking about Ranger. Primarily Repelling Shot, Shadowbind and Swiftsong. The new ability Sten Needle will work with Repelling Shot to result in a quick burst of damage every 20s but must be used with care with monster mechanics and the increased backstep. With the addition of Camouflage we see new uses for Shadowbind as a damage source and crowd control. The new stance Take Aim grants the Ranger potential for great damage but at the cost of their mobility. As Archers and Bards are highly mobile and quick with their attacks I felt this would be a good contrast. Under Take Aim Bloodletter will turn into Animals, a classic ability from FFV. Using the same system that was put in place in FFV using the Draw Meter instead of a job level we can see the addition of some added damage or support depending on how the invisible dice roll. It will put the "RNG" in Ranger so to speak! I decided to keep Unicorn in the mix as well in order to help facilitate a bit of MP recovery in order to help maintain Swiftsong. Speaking of which, Swiftsong now becomes usable in battle for the RNG but only for personal use. I feel this is important to keep with this revised version of my idea in order to facilitate moving out of danger while having to be motionless for large amounts of time. With Musketeer and the new dagger class right around the corner I'm waiting on what abilities RNG will get from other classes.

It's been said that any new DPS coming from ARC would end up playing too similar to ARC/BRD so I'm hoping that this will give it enough of its own identity. The loss of Bloodletter as a direct attack should greatly help with this as well as its base recast time increased to 30s. Bloodletter, as Animals, now primarily focuses as a mechanic to keep the RNG's MP strong for Swiftsong with the chance of adding other support in lieu of replenishing MP (as it's not a mandatory resource).

[Aeora]

I like it! but Camo - I think that should be left to the Nin class (if it's coming at any point). Though the additional affects to shadow bind would give it much more of an active role in the ARC based rotation. Well thought out!

[Kitru]

It's been said that any new DPS coming from ARC would end up playing just like ARC

It is not that it will play "just like" ARC. It's that it will be too similar to ARC/BRD in playstyle to really make it mean anything. Adding in positioning doesn't change the fundamental nature of ARC/BRD: you're still throwing up your 2 DoTs, maintaining Straight Shot, and spamming Heavy Shot in between (the only change you're adding is that you're replacing a couple Heavy Shots with a Sidewinder; in fact, because of the increase in potency, as long as it's not a fight where you're likely to run out of TP, Sidewinder would simply replace it).

Also, you're ignoring the fact that BRD is explicitly balanced against the other DPS as a DPS. BRD does not have lower DPS because it has support capabilities (the balancing factor for the support is built into the support abilities themselves as well as the recognition that all classes/jobs are supposed to have some form of support/utility); it has lower DPS because it can run around while attacking at range. BRD suffers absolutely no movement penalties in any fights whatsoever because movement doesn't mean shit to them, and all you're doing to restrict their movement as your justification for dramatically increasing their DPS (Sidewinder itself is a 10% increase to damage; even if you ignored every other "positional", you're increasing the DPS of the class/job by a crapload) telling them to stand at a target's side at a distance that almost every BRD already stands in or around anyways.

Also, increasing accuracy on attacks means absolutely nothing. There's a reason that the acc bonus on Hawk's Eye is ignored by anyone and everyone: conditional changes to accuracy are worthless because everyone already builds themselves around getting enough accuracy to always hit (and, since a vast majority of a BRD/ARC's damage is derived from abilities that you are not having them increase the damage of, people would still be capping out accuracy).

In short, you're not really giving them their own identity. You're just cranking the living shit out of their damage to justify their presence in the face of the BRD (completely ignoring the fact that you'd be turning them into the de facto best DPS since they'd have better damage than BRD while simultaneously having virtually identical mobility) with incredibly lax "restrictions" on that increased DPS while having them maintain an effectively identical playstyle.

What you're suggesting is akin to making a new job for LNC that gets better damage than DRG and justifies it by giving Full Thrust an extra 50% potency when used from the flank. It would still play just like DRG. All you're doing is giving them a massive increase to DPS for doing something that they were already likely doing in the first place (and, if they weren't, it's so simple that it would take all of 5 minutes to never notice the requirement again).

[OmegaNovaios]

Kitru is right, your concept is pretty balanced when compared to BRD itself but that is because BRD itself is already fairly OP. That's why they get less WD (Weapon Damage) and have their DPS lowered when singing most of their support actions. In the future when level cap is raised this may work due to the continuation of lower WD compared to other DPS jobs and BRD becoming more supportive and less DPSish due to the nature of how its jobs actions will flow.

Positional requirements for ranged attacks is a cool concept but it needs to effect something other than ACC because that is the first thing any DPS stats for which is going to be aimed for 100% ACC on EVERY attack.

[OmegaNovaios]

What you're suggesting is akin to making a new job for LNC that gets better damage than DRG and justifies it by giving Full Thrust an extra 50% potency when used from the flank. It would still play just like DRG. All you're doing is giving them a massive increase to DPS for doing something that they were already likely doing in the first place (and, if they weren't, it's so simple that it would take all of 5 minutes to never notice the requirement again).

Well the issue currently is BRD is a job highly focused on support when compared to everything ARC has to offer. How else will they add another job for ARC if they can't even consider a non DPS/Support hybrid?

Ranger should be a DPS job when compared to BRD. BRD should be more supportive and less DPSish than it currently is. Hopefully this will resolve when level cap is raised, otherwise ARC/BRD shouldn't have much hope for RNG nor any other job for ARC to exist.

This is but 1 of many holes SE dug themselves into when deciding to put a bandage over the armoury system of 1.0, it either needed to be scrapped or balanced to work, SE did neither and now we have a mess.

[MartaDemireux]

Yeah that's true on the ACC but I really didn't know what incentive to give without having to weaken the abilities significantly. I'll think on something else. I had another idea floating around to incorporate Animals (FFV) in some way. The random nature of it is displeasing to me, though. Perhaps through a stance and a combo could there be specification on the animals.

You're right Kitru, it really would still have the ARC/BRD bread and butter. I was hoping that between Camouflage+Shadowbind, Sten Needle+Repelling Shot, Sidwinder and requiring moving to the flank and back behind would be enough to distinguish itself and also put it in enough potential danger that some abilities wouldn't always get used when/where they should. While those do further specialize the mechanic already in place it does still function essentially the same with added flare. And in reading your response I realized I ignored my own thought process to that mechanic. I went in thinking "Hey these abilities don't get used much" and forgot to put in a reason to pass up some of ARC/BRD's frequently used abilities (in the same vein that SMN doesn't make frequent use of Physick, Energy drain and Virus and SCH doesn't generally make frequent use Miasma II, Ruin, Ruin II). So I'll look into a way to do that.

[OmegaNovaios]

I had another idea floating around to incorporate Animals (FFV) in some way. The random nature of it is displeasing to me, though. Perhaps through a stance and a combo could there be specification on the animals.

Basically any class can have a 2nd job added with lowered DPS and a pet added similar to SMN. SMN pet is pretty weak compared to the job and LNC really stands out as option to match something previously done in FFXI via a pet wyvern for its 2nd job especially now that lore can't deem a LNC not to have a wyvern (not that lore should deem anything in that sense as having EVERY job under the title of "Lawful Good" is bland) as the new Dragon race will completely blow out the Ishgard view or else there will be a war, which at that point it would probably be the Scions (those protecting the race of the Dragon) v. Ishgard, in which I doubt a LNC would care to befriend such a creature merely to appease Ishgard.

[MartaDemireux]

I didn't really mean for them to have a pet with Animal. In FFV Animal functioned by taking your a random number between 0 and your job level and animals would go in tiers. So if you were job level 99 and the game rolled a 0 you wouldn't get anything, 1 would get you Mysidian Rabbit, I think 30 would get you a Raven that paralyzed (probably not I'd have to look it up) and then the highest one was a 60 so if you rolled a 60-99 you'd get Unicorn which was a major heal or something. It was a really interesting system that I'd like to see in this game. Random enough so every animal sent out will still be beneficial but still have a high chance at being something nice. Preferably not healing even though in both FFIII and FFV RNG was able to and I think Fran functioned well as a healer due to her stat layout in FFXII.

So what I'm trying to think up is a system using combos or another type of process that it will work in tandem with.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think there ought to be any positional requirements on a ranged class like this, especially when one would expect that a Ranger would likely move farther from the heat of battle compared to a Bard. When using as little accuracy as possible, and likely taking on more crit or det in the gear choice exchange, we already have to stay behind enemies (and there is no benefit for flanking when you could be entirely behind). In that sense dodging around positionally is already (a small) part of dps maximization. I wouldn't mind seeing abilities taking on some auxiliary effects depending on the position, but to actually turn them into necessary rotations sounds more akin to a fighter with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other -- dodge, slip behind an enemy, shoot him in the back of the head.

The only major changes to how an archer would move between the jobs of Bard and Ranger is the allowance of a deeper, more steady, and powerful stance being available to the ranger, which would greatly limit his mobility when doing maximum dps (which, while Bard would remain a bit below most dps classes in sheer dps, would move it up just short of melee w/o a DRG (assuming good melee fight conditions), and about on par with DRG's longterm damage when a DRG is present and increasing piercing vulnerability). In this stance most shots would likely carry a cast time or effect tied to the course of the animation, during which movement is allowed but slowed. Perhaps it can come with a stack mechanic which further increases the potency bonus at cost of further increased cast time and slow percentage, quickly reaching a complete stop during the animation. This need not turn Ranger into a true turret dps. The lighter stance, or simply when the toggle is off, could also come with a bonus that would in turn of situation or long-term rotation, cause wildly moving, positional play, similar to a shortbow (or Miqo'te, in lore) style as compared to the more distant and steadily powerful longbow (or Elezen) style.

In either case, the DoTs and Bloodletter procs must behave differently. Unlike with ACN, we can't simply tack on 5 healing/shield and 2 mitigation abilities and call the waste of the other abilities (except as handy, but auxiliary extra dps) well and fine for its role. I haven't anything to recommend yet, however; I can only say that it seems crucial. I'll edit as ideas come to me.

[OmegaNovaios]

Hmm, that would be fairly difficult to work into ARC and to balance it out. Maybe that style would be better off a Class that evolves into RNG and BST where the difference between RNG and BST would be BST also gets a pet Animal in addition to Animal calling and RNG gets stuff that makes the attacks ranged and the job more agile, stealthy, and tactical.