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This isn't a thread about whether or not the ranger is overpowered, so please don't make it one.
The question I'm asking is, if one does away with the Archer Fighting Style and Two-weapon Fighting Styles completely, and simply makes a ranger player choose between gaining Prime Shot or Beast Mastery, just how much of an impact will that ultimately have on the ranger's ability to do damage?
I figure the archer ranger doesn't really lose anything since Defensive Mobility is close to useless for them anyway, so I guess the real question is about the TWF ranger.
TWF rangers could still take up the TWF feats and since there's no rule about wielding two weapons, a 1st-level ranger isn't really penalised in a sense since they can still grab a longsword and a dagger and roll their TWF attacks as if using the longsword for the damage.
There are very few powers which actually state which weapon you use for the damage, most just state that you have to be wielding two weapons.
You state "this thread is not about whether the Ranger is overpowered". Then you suggest a nerf to the Ranger. Just to be clear: You assume that the Ranger is overpowered and you try to fix it?
Well, just to be clear where I stand, I think you are wrong. I've seen the Ranger in play, I've seen other strikers like Warlocks, Sorcerers and Barbarians in play, and the Ranger is not overpowered. Ok, you don't want to discuss that, and so I don't want to change your opinion, but at least you should state clearly why you try to change the ranger and what the perceived problems are. Don't say "his damage output", because that is his job as a striker.
So, what do you change by removing the TWF and Archer abilities? For the archer, well, he loses a mediocre feat. Defensive mobility is not useless, but if I would build an archery ranger I wouldn't bother to pick it up, there are too many good alternatives now.
As for the melee ranger: Well, guess what, the real power source of the ranger, Twin Strike, is still there. At higher levels, your damage output comes from the bonuses you pile on your Twin Strike damage, not the damage itself. It really doesn't matter that much which damage die your off-hand weapon has. Actually, as a player I'd be tempted to rub it in and go for Daggermaster as Prestige Class (ah, damn, Paragon Path / Whatever). And watch the DM cry as I pile 3 extra attacks on every crit.
Or, I just spend a feat on a Double Sword. Solves the off-hand weapon problem nicely too, and helps with my always low AC. And I'll need it, because the real nerf that you did is by removing Toughness from the TWF Ranger. That hurts hurts hurts.
Basicly, you removed all other options for TWF Rangers and forced 3 feats as first picks: Toughness, Weapon Proficiency: Double Sword and probably Armor Proficiency: Chain Mail. Well, it's harder to survive at low level with the changes, but at Paragon at the latest you wouldn't feel much change and DPR should be at 95 to 100%.
Still, why did you try to fix something that's not broken? Yes, there are a few stupidly good ranger builds, but they are broken not because of the base class, but because of the stuff you pile on. Better fix Stormwarden, or Two-Weapon-Rend, that's where the brokenness is. And to be fair, many of the things that break the Ranger can be used to break the Avenger and the Tempest Fighter too, and even the Sorcerer if you want.
Last edited by mkill; 22nd August 2009 at 04:33 PM..
seriously, the game is mostly about heroic and paragon level. and i think other strikers do just fine in comparison with the rangers.
in my group there is a ranger, an avenger, and a barbarian.
and they are all as much useful.
ranger do slightly more dmg (nothing crazy btw), but he gets less funky options as the 2 others.
There are very few powers which actually state which weapon you use for the damage, most just state that you have to be wielding two weapons.
This is not true. A quick search of the Compendium for ranger powers that include the search term "off hand" turns up 32 hits. Among these are Twin Strike, Thundertusk Boar Strike, Jaws of the Wolf, Two-Fanged Strike, Two Wolf Pounce, Claws of the Griffon, Blade Cascade...many bread-and-butter TWF ranger powers specify attacks with main and off-hand weapons.
Now, I am not sure wielding a short sword in the off-hand vs. a longsword or bastard sword will matter much, because multiple attack powers are strong because of the static damage bonuses, not the x[W] damage dice. But it will reduce a TWF ranger's damage by some small amount.
Re: your proposed change, it might be nice to add an option for a melee ranger that doesn't want an animal companion. Something like the Prime Strike feat, where they get a bonus on melee attacks against isolated targets, or you could give them the Two-Weapon Fighting feat.
There seems to be an unwritten law that any time you start up a thread about disliking feature X, wanting discussion on removing/replacing/changing it, there always pops up half a dozen threadcrappers essentially saying "you are wrong in disliking X; X is great; this thread should not exist".
So don't or you'll have to hate a large proportion of ENWorld posters...
Well, you'd reduce the average damage a little without the two-weapon fighting extra trick.
I am honestly not sure the Beastmaster ability is all that awesome...
My biggest "complaint" with removing the two-weapon fighting benefit - the Ranger has to use two different damage dice using the same power, and has to carefully make sure he's using the right weapon.
The Tempest Fighter avoids this problem simply by giving benefits to wielding light weapons, so there is no reason to use two different weapons.
I might suggest giving him the Two-Weapon Fighting Feat or Two-Weapon Defense feat for free.
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The point is, you failed to explain WHY it is necessary to nerf the ranger and WHAT needs to be nerfed about the class. If you can't explain what you're trying to achieve, we're left with saying "I like the idea" or "that's stupid". We can't say "this helps to improve the game as you want" or "this doesn't" because we don't know what you want.
And I don't care about what people on the Internet think about me, so please feel welcome.
The point is, you failed to explain WHY it is necessary to nerf the ranger and WHAT needs to be nerfed about the class. If you can't explain what you're trying to achieve, we're left with saying "I like the idea" or "that's stupid". We can't say "this helps to improve the game as you want" or "this doesn't" because we don't know what you want.
It's not necessary to explain anything to you.
I made a very simple request, and you ignored it and blathered on for half a dozen large paragraphs about something that has nothing to do with the topic I started.
If you wanted to argue your point, then make your own goddamned thread, stop shitting in mine.
I have to agree, I am just not sure what all the point of this whole thread IS.
You want to nerf rangers?
A) Why do they need to be nerfed? It may seem obvious to you, but it is a mystery to the rest of us.
B) Why suggest a manner of nerfing which does barely anything? Removing TBF benefits (or archer style benefits either) has marginal impact. Beast Master ranger already attests to that, they have neither of these features and instead gain a new feature which overall is not massively powerful, yet even this mediocre added feature is more than enough to compensate for what was lost.
There are plenty of things one can level against rangers (boring), but they do form the basis for the archetypal bow armed hero.
This isn't a thread about whether or not the ranger is overpowered, so please don't make it one.
The question I'm asking is, if one does away with the Archer Fighting Style and Two-weapon Fighting Styles completely, and simply makes a ranger player choose between gaining Prime Shot or Beast Mastery, just how much of an impact will that ultimately have on the ranger's ability to do damage?
I figure the archer ranger doesn't really lose anything since Defensive Mobility is close to useless for them anyway, so I guess the real question is about the TWF ranger.
TWF rangers could still take up the TWF feats and since there's no rule about wielding two weapons, a 1st-level ranger isn't really penalised in a sense since they can still grab a longsword and a dagger and roll their TWF attacks as if using the longsword for the damage.
There are very few powers which actually state which weapon you use for the damage, most just state that you have to be wielding two weapons.
As inflammatory and ridiculous as this thread is, Ill respond to it honestly...
Removing the archer style class feature would do VERY little to hinder the ranged rangers ability to do damage, as the feature only provides a feat.
Removing the TWF class feature would actually probably bring the TWF (using a main hand and an offhand) down to about the damage level of the beast master ranger. Personally I think the BM ranger is too weak in comparison to other builds, but if that is your goal, that side works out pretty well.
And you probably don't care but I'll mention it anyway (because I feel it's important information for you to have):
This thread is not reasonable because it takes the idea that rangers are overpowered and simply assumes it. Not enough of the ENworld community belives this to make a coherent thread. All this will do is incite arguments to that basic assumption. If that's what you wish to discuss, then make a thread about that. But to make a thread that simply assumes an opinion you hold as fact and attempts a discussion based on that fact will usually end badly.
__________________ Garthanos- fantastic awesome guy of June/09
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Zinovia- fantastic awesome guy of October/09
Looks like the OP fails to come up with a coherent explanation about what this thread is about. Too bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flipguarder
Removing the TWF class feature would actually probably bring the TWF (using a main hand and an offhand) down to about the damage level of the beast master ranger. Personally I think the BM ranger is too weak in comparison to other builds, but if that is your goal, that side works out pretty well.
Except that it doesn't.
You need to look at actual 2WF Ranger builds and analyze where their damage output comes from.
Level 30
Twin Strike: 2 attacks, +36 vs. AC (+39 if no other creatures are adjacent to the target)
Main Hand: 2d10+21 damage, reroll all 1's (2d10+45, reroll all 1's with Bloodclaw and Reckless)
Main Hand, Critical: 7d6+41 damage, reroll all 1's (7d6+65, reroll all 1's with Bloodclaw and Reckless)
Off Hand: 2d10+20 damage, reroll all 1's (2d10+44, reroll all 1's with Bloodclaw and Reckless)
Off Hand, Critical: 7d8+40 damage, reroll all 1's (7d8+64, reroll all 1's with Bloodclaw and Reckless)
Basic Melee, Two-Weapon Opening: 3d10+33 damage, reroll all 1’s (3d10+57, reroll all 1's with Bloodclaw and Reckless)
Basic Melee, Two-Weapon Opening, Critical: 7d8+63 damage, reroll all 1’s (7d8+97, reroll all 1's with Bloodclaw and Reckless)
Quarry: +3d8 damage
Rending Tempest: +1d10 damage
Blade Storm: 8 damage
Twin-Blade Storm: 8 lightning damage to two targets
- Extra damage on melee attacks from items, such as from Iron Armbands of Power
- Extra attacks on crit
- Extra attacks from stances
- Extra static damage from class features such as Stormwarden
The off-hand damage die is just a drop in the bucket. Reducing that to a d6 or d4 is not going to change much. As I already wrote in the first post that noone read, you can easily circumvent that with
- Double weapons, which are in fact broken instead of the Ranger
- Using daggers and going daggermaster
In the end, the OP is wrong on 3 levels:
1. Dealing high damage as a striker is broken
2. The Ranger class itself is the source of the Ranger's high damage output
3. Removing the TWF class features will change this.
And circle gets the square. Thanks for the clarification, that makes a LOT of sense.
On a side note, the idea of lowering the dpr of the ranger by getting rid of the archer fighting style class feature is humorous to me.
__________________ Garthanos- fantastic awesome guy of June/09
Sporemine- fantastic awesome guy of July/09
Michaelsomething- fantastic awesome guy of August/09
Thaumaturge- fantastic awesome guy of September/09
Zinovia- fantastic awesome guy of October/09
The question I'm asking is, if one does away with the Archer Fighting Style and Two-weapon Fighting Styles completely, and simply makes a ranger player choose between gaining Prime Shot or Beast Mastery, just how much of an impact will that ultimately have on the ranger's ability to do damage?
To return to the original question; as the thread has shown this has minimal impact on Archer and BM rangers and little impact on TW rangers. Despite all the aggro in this tread, there has been some soild information and your question has been answered.
What I think this will do is make people think twice about TW rangers, probably opting for the other selections, unless they have made an analysis similar to the one here.
Depending on what you want, this might be good.
If you want more archer and BM rangers, this might work.
If what you don't want is a two-bastard-sword ranger looking ridiculous, then this might be the way to go, possibly adding a damage bonus to rangers using genuine off-hand weapons.
If what you want are rangers wielding double weapons, this is definitely the way to go (personally, I banned these in my game).
if you want to nerf 2WF ranger damage, this might do less than you expected.
__________________ Carl Cramér
Member of the Netbook of Feats review board.
If you do away w/the archery then you are left without ANY archers
Any old fighter can (and arguably should pick up a bow)... but the Archer Ranger is a Robinhood or a William Tell, or (movie) Legalos and supposed to be quite astounding... thing is some consider the results of multi-attacks after you add all the static damage mind you... too mechanically astounding.
Any old fighter can (and arguably should pick up a bow)... but the Archer Ranger is a Robinhood or a William Tell, or (movie) Legalos and supposed to be quite astounding... thing is some consider the results of multi-attacks after you add all the static damage mind you... too mechanically astounding.
A fighter should pick up a javelin. Or possibly a throwing axe. A bow? Even a Dex fighter is likely to be 2-3 points worse off using that.
__________________ Carl Cramér
Member of the Netbook of Feats review board.
A fighter should pick up a javelin. Or possibly a throwing axe. A bow? Even a Dex fighter is likely to be 2-3 points worse off using that.
Ah true other ranged weapons will work better in some situations (yeah technically the Ranger is the true Dex fighter)... ... I guess pinned down and unable to reach your enemies is too "realistic" as the number of times the answer to both DM's and PC to strategic conundrums ends up being... include more ranged capable enemies ... or include more ranged capable pcs seems remarkable. An archetypal fantasy example ... I seem to recall every fighting member of the company of the ring was outfitted with a ranged weapon (were even the hobbits after picking up blades? and Bilbo considered himself quite expert with a simple thrown stone.).
I can see why Paladins and Avengers would be against archetype ;-),
I guess a ranged Defender doesnt work too great....
I guess a holy bowman champion of pelor.. Ranger multiclassed cleric? or maybe just reskinning the radiant beams as arrows... but maybe we need something like a divine translation of the Bard Paragon path...
A feat I just was inspired to Perceptive Targeting : you may use Wisdom in place of Dex for ranged attacks (could be fun for my Strength Wisdom Paladin - or at least nice for any divine). --- when your god is a sun god being squeamish about ranged or having problems with a bow when your god is the moon doesnt make any sense).
More archery not less ;-0
Last edited by Garthanos; 31st August 2009 at 03:52 PM..
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