GreyZ

Could this be added to the topic? Would really love if driving flight finally got a proper fix... https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/79539-105-v567-new-blunderbuss-driving-flight-bug/

If a Ranger has Driving Flight and the shot bounces, the Blunderbuss innate DR reduction is only applied on the first pellet, not on any subsequent pellets. If you only hit one target and the shot does not bounce it works fine. Other DR reductions such as penetrating shot still apply on all pellets consistently.

The difference is that the game approaches those themes with an appropriate seriousness and does not take them lightly. Not the same as making a joke at the expense of a group of people that have historically been oppressed and still severely are in large parts of the world.

Marked Prey seems to do the same thing with the blunderbuss, where the dmg bonus bonus is multiplied with each pellet. Combined with Stalkers Link it leads to some wacky, nigh infinite damage

Expected Result: Each pellet from the blunderbuss receives +20 to accuracy from Stalker's Link Current Result: The accuracy bonus is multiplied with each subsequent pellet, ie: First pellet receives +20 bonus Second pellet +40 bonus Third pellet +60 bonus and so forth It can be observed clearly in the combat log and leads to extremely impressive amounts of crits

so what do you use them for? you use them to generate flanking bonus, additional interrupts, buff your ranger damage and as a tool for the engagement system, for example you can fill up an enemies engagement limit so you can have another party member move without creating disengagement attacks. Very useful for ranged party members who are getting attacked by someone who slipped past your front, such as enemy rogue NPCs with escape. Having an additional body in the field is a quite powerful utility with the engagement system. It's generally better when engaging to let the pet lag behind your front tanks, see how the enemies engage your party members and then use the pet to respond accordingly. All enemies are melee and engaging your tanks? Use the pet to generate flanking bonus for them. An enemy moving past your frontline towards your ranged? Intercept with the pet and force it into engagement and your ranged characters can burst him down without suffering interrupts to their reload and recovery. See a ranged attacker in the back? Move your pet to engage and generate some interrupts and a bonus for your ranger to take him out quickly, the AI might even decide to use a disengagement ability, causing it to spend recovery time where it's not dpsing your party.

Sorry but you are comparing dual wielded sabers to a bow. That is a complete oranges to apples comparison, since you are much more comparing the weapon groups than the classes itself. If we just wanna compare whatever loadout, then here I'll go with lvl 8 offensive dual saber specced fighter against a blunderbuss ranger, both solo: fighter: ranger (weapon swap): ranger (no weapon swap): End results? Fighter dies, Ranger wrecks the entire enemy party in less time than it takes the fighter to die if you weapon swap, and if you don't swap will still win the fight easily. If you wanna argue that ranged weapons have poor sustained damage, then by all means, but the ranger class in itself isn't the culprit then. And I really don't agree personally that all ranged weapons are subpar. Bow's are overall pretty meh, but Arbalests and Rifles? They're pretty damn good at gibbing people. And thanks to swiftaim the Ranger has by far the highest attack speed with those in the game aside of weaponset swapping.

Reminds me a lot of my older brother, actually. He played a lot of PC games when he was much younger, Myst, Diablo, Doom, along with me, but he was never really a gamer, and has since regressed into console-based ineptitude. Auto-aim FPS:s that play themselves for him is his bread and butter. He's got cash coming out of his ears while I have a computer just about to turn 10 years old that's just short of catching fire - I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't overheating, there'd be enough cobwebs in it to stop the fans - and I still laughed at him when he showed off the "amazing" physics and graphics of Battlefield Whatever. All I thought to myself was "this is what console gamers peasants actually believe!". There's precisely three things controllers do better. Platformers, Sports Games, and Fighting Games. I think you might be reading a bit too much into someones preference of what input method they want to use for a game, it's all just about personal comfort Sure if I play multiplayer I'll always use kb+mouse for best precision. But when just relaxing and playing a singleplayer game? I'll do that wherever I'm most comfortable and alotta times that's not necessarily in front of my desk And the controls of a game don't have to be simple in order to be playable with a joypad. For example I wrote a custom profile for VTMB, and I could map all the controls and even all the disciplines to the joypad by making good use of shift modifiers. And many turn based games are also easily playable with joypads or touch screens since they don't require much precision in the first place. I'm actually quite looking forward to when they add joypad controls to Wasteland2 so I can play that on the big screen.

I reaaaally hope so, one thing I dont need from IE games is the equivalent picking up companions at a higher level and having them be stuck with low hp rolls and terrible weapon proficiences and terrible thief skill distributions

Is there any information on if they level scale when you recruit them or if they come with preset talents? (ie do you risk picking up gimped versions if you do not recruit them asap)

Yeah and quite frankly if you are diligent with keeping debuffs up on enemies, a rogue will out damage any other class, be it ranged or melee if they are specced for it And actually in a prolonged larger engagement a ranger doesn't stack up too bad against a rogue. Since you are not dependent on debuffs to max out your damage, you have some fantastic modals, you can have driving flight which passively gives you even more damage and you have an encounter ability that gives +100% damage on an attack (albeit over an insanely long duration). That all adds up to some respectable sustained dps. Granted alotta fights can be solved by instagibbing most of the enemy force wth quad blunderbuss, no argument against that, but some of the bigger encounters that I've seen do profit from having a solid sustained damage instead of just burst. For me it's also personally a toss up between the two, but I think I might end up going with the ranger. I just enjoy the micro of the pet and the uility you get through it. Plus I like having my wolf right from the start of the game until the very end as my permanent companion, I'm just sentimental like that :D

I find rangers quite fun. They're very micro intensive if you want to use the pets effectively, but I enjoy that. Simply having an additional body in the field gives you a nice tool for the engagement system. I've mainly used wolves personally due to their high movement speed and since they can disengage pretty easily. I will typically have my tanks engage the enemy first before I send the pet in, to avoid it being the sole engagement target of an enemy. I'll then use it to create flanking for my melee characters or send it at targets of opportunity. Another great use is to your pet to peel off engagement if an enemy makes it through your front (like a rogue with escape). You simply put your pet on that enemy and that can allow your ranged characters to retreat without provoking disengagement attacks since it will fill up the enemies engagement slot and you don't need to pull any of your main melee party members back to do that or waste recovery on a disengagement ability. The pets are just a really cool tool and I feel people tend to not micro them enough to get the most out of them (which is understandable since not everyone likes to micro as much). Just gotta be especially careful to not cluster them with the rest of your frontline if you're facing an enemy with AoE attacks. And of course your pet adds free interrupts on your enemies, which reduces some damage on your team. And yes some dps but it's not enough to be worth mentioning, they're far more utility than damage. Also love to use the wolf for scouting due to hits high movement speed. As for the ranger himself, well as has been mentioned you can do melee builds if you go full on pet link build. Personally I prefer the ranged builds. Doesn't have the burstiness that a rogue marksman has, but it's by no means bad. I tend to go for gun multi-gun set builds, which works really well with the ranger. For one you have the Vicious Aim modal which is perfect for that since it increases your damage and hit chance quite significantly at an attack rate loss which doesnt impact you much in this case. Combine that with Penetrating Shot talent (you can have both modals active at the same time) and you output some respectable damage. If you're going for a single heavy hitter ranged build like an arbalest or arquebus without set switching I would go for Swift Aim and Gunner, combine that with a high dex and you can get an insanely high reload speed that no other class can match. And of course you have Wounding shot which is ok. On paper it does a very high amount of damage, the problem though is that the DOT effect is over a waaay too long time, so it will only be max effective in prolonged fights and can also be countered by some spells. But it also has two engagement uses straight off the bat, which is ok considering the total damage on it. If they reduced the time on the dot, this could be a great ability. Add to that Driving flight which adds a fun shotgun effect to your attacks and lets you wipe out mooks very efficiently especially with an arquebus or arbalest and altogether the ranger has a pretty respectable sustained ranged damage. Also Master's call is an awesome awesome ability, if you micro your ranger and pet to get the most out of it.

True, might is very straight forward, can't really go wrong with it. But looking at it from a endgame min-max perspective you can stack very high amount of damage multipliers in the late game through weapon quality enchants, secondary damage, slaying, modals, talents, sneak attacks, crits etc and might doesnt scale with anything, while recovery scales with everything. If you for example ended up with a 100% damage bonus through all of that, every % of attack speed increase gives you twice as much dps as every additional % of damage bonus. So the big factor is how much DR you need to expect in the late game, that's a big deciding balance factor. So for example a high dex rogue with an estoc could be dishing out significantly more overall dps than a high might rogue, depending on available equipment and endgame dr of enemies.

well just a very simplistic example for weapon damage: 1 attack per second 10 base damage + 20% dmg through some talent + 10% through enchantment = 13 dps 1 attack per second 10 base damage + 20% dmg through some talent + 10% through enchantment + 20% through might = 15 dps 1 attack per second +20% speed bonus (so effectively 1.2 attacks per second ) 10 base damage + 20% dmg through some talent + 10% through enchantment = 15.6 dps Since damage multipliers are additive in poe, the more you stack, the more you end up profiting from an increased attack rate. Of course this is just theorycraft, but it's just something to keep in mind in regards to recovery bonus scaling. Basically any damage multiplier you have will scale with reduced recovery times, which is not the case with might. Not trying to say Dex is better or even as good as might, I don't know the game anywhere well enough to make any kind of judgement like that, but it's just important to keep in mind that the math and impact of a damage bonus and a recovery bonus are quite different.

Well what you have to keep in mind though is that reducing your recovery effectively acts as a multiplier for ALL your damage bonuses, while might is only a multiplier for your base damage.