yorname

I'm wondering is there any way to make use of carnage crit, besides crit interrupt and Blood Frenzy? I looked at the character creation screen for a long time and couldn't think of synergetic abilities from other classes. The best I could find was the high INT/MIG from Helwalker. AOE melee weapons only trigger carnage once I believe?

Yeah I was talking about Eliminating Blow. Sap doesn't really need any more change I guess.

I see. I often see non-berserker-barbarian as the class that makes use of crit chance (instead of providing it) but I get your point. I guess I'm feeling BS as normal martial ability is a little bit unfocused because hit-to-crit doesn't help with graze or miss (is that correct?), and works best when you already have high accuracy. Like if my accuracy equals enemy defense, using BS means I have ~60% chance to get at least one crit, only 37.5% for a specific weapon crit. It's a huge boost from 0%, but it's still unreliable if the on-crit effect is what I'm paying for. So I still feel the overall damage boost is the main deal. I didn't pay attention to the Sap change before, but why did you give it resolve affliction though. I get that now rogue has all unconditional tier-1 afflictions, but Sap causing shaken, especially an ability called Perplexing Sap causing frightened feels really weird. My proposition was to change only the upgrade. I don't think overkill is a big issue, by design you either hit earlier and deal less damage, or hit later for more damage and waste part of it. It's not like fixed damage that wasting always equals worse.

The power of Eliminating Blow itself is fine, but getting the upgrade only gets an Tier-1 affliction, that's a bit disappointing, especially because it's an ability you have to wait for the right time to use. My proposition is to change from shaken on hit to frightened + sickened on killing blow. Makes more sense that way and feels a little better to invest.

But waiting for the right time is contrary to the purpose of killing the target fast, since barbarian class doesn't add much to a normal hit, you almost need to hold your hand to get the kill. If you get refund on kill with Crushing Blow, you can just queue up multiple uses and almost be sure you get the killing blow and for free. About the purpose of the ability, I think no-recovery at least is unique, and offers some multiclassing potential, like barb/rogue now can kill normal enemies really fast. In comparison 1-Rage Barbaric Smash is sort of awkward as just another martial ability with no clear purpose. Maybe it's personal preference, but I always feel bad when spending resources on martial abilities that only makes a harder hit, like crippling strike or wounding shot. But Barbaric Smash just doesn't have any unique function. Or maybe you can partially revert to the original design: one upgreade has no recovery but no refund, to quickly kill an enemy from full to 0; the other with refund so you only use it as a way to always get the killing blow.

I thought the minimum was around 1s? Really hard to reach with the penalty.

I don't know if this matches your intended purpose for these 2 upgrades: if one is unconditionally cheap and one is unconditionally without recovery, I'd pick the first for more conservative uses and the other one to quickly burst down weaker targets. I think you can push the burst damage idea further: if I want to use a more expensive version to get rid of recovery, it means I really want to be able to quickly kill some weak to mediocre enemies. So you can just give refund to Crushing Blow: it's always worse against tanky enemies, but it shines when you can use it 2 or 3 times to quickly kill someone without costing too much. Thematically, attacking faster and having more accuracy at the same time seems wrong to me.

Currently the +% speed of Bonded Fury and inspirations from Vengeful Grief shows a duration of 15s, maybe because descriptions are auto-generated? Also can stag pet's carnage crit like barbs? Edit: tested, it can also crit and can even hit the original target. Seems to be a good choice for SC ranger.

I wonder if there's a minimal interval between ticks of DoT? I'm playing a party with many summons + Spark the Souls of the Righteous. I tried to add the nerfed Combusting Wounds on top, I can't tell if CW ticks with every Spark, or can't keep up with the speed, only triggering once or twice whenever it's hit with 10+ Sparks. But either way I think currently CW is not broken anymore, theoretically it's 1/6 (or 1/7.2 ?) as powerful as before when abused.

When you look at the crew in combat you'll see their injuries, or when they die if they get 3 injuries. Their job doesn't matter if you enter on board combat, they all randomly join.

played with my ranger save a bit more, suddenly realized that if the attacker has a huge advantage of accuracy, they can affored to DW and use Rushed Reload at the same time for EAB, since it doesn't lose much on grazes. Also BPM nerfed hunting bow and pistol modals a little, so my numbers on them might be on the lower end.

I'm still angry there's no hold position, especially given Stoic Steel exists.

Even if some abilities say "on taking damage", they usually mean "on taking damage with attack rolls". Like Refreshing Defense doesn't add duration on DoT ticks. I wonder if there are other cases where you actually want to use Gouging Strike or Lovers Embrace on yourself? I can only think of monks. A Nalpazca with several DoTs was pretty good when I played one.

I encountered some bugs/annoyances with Bleak Walker's FoD: They can only pick Spirit of Decay when they haven't picked an upgrade for FoD yet, otherwise it's greyed out saying "require FoD" Also Eternal Devotion's text still says burn damage.

I can see your point if you put it that way. If resilient is changed, then vicious stands out to be the only price to make it half decent and thus a must pick, I didn't think about it that way but it's true. I think action speed on bonded fury is good, my only concern is that would energized interrupt become better than they should be? Especially for lion. I must say I'm absolutely grateful for your work on this, even though sometimes I might get tunnel visioned, it's always great to have a discussion like this

I meant SC ranger was not getting what's worth the points on the pets, who must rely on pet damage. I agree with resilient which is like pure potd tax and feels bad to pick, but I think paying for PEN is fine because even without it MC's pet can still serve a purpose, so it's not that mandatory for all rangers. Maybe to put it this way: I think pets should have a low base power, somewhere near current version, because MC are okay, but ceiling should be higher than current one, even if some passives are harder to trigger. I think the low base power part is where we disagree. 14 pen is very high for a summon, though SC ranger is also the only pure striker class that relies on summon damage. Chanter and druid has a lot more to do, so for SC ranger maybe let them hit just a little bit harder when they penetrate or crit, that's why I'm more into merciless and predators sense. I don't have a problem with 14 PEN after discussion, currently crit chance is pretty good.

For a functional ranger half, I think (unupgraded) mark, (unupgraded) Hunter's claw, stalker's link and driving flight are really necessary. Which isn't that bad in comparison, considering accuracy helps anything offensive, a MC with such abilities is good enough as a supporting half. Protective companion - stalker's link is the part that's probably problematic. MC Barb is similar in lacking an op ability and relying on small upgrades. Even non-tactician fighters. Unbending is op but that's rarely why people pick a MC fighter Resilient can be something more situational, but I think vicious does serve a purpose of distinguishing "SL only pet" and "having any offensive potential", and it is a meaningful choice imo. Not sure what can be done to stalker's link, does switching SL and protective's effects make sense to you? Even if give pet default 1 engagement, +2 engagement can be situationally useful if I want to get accuracy on more than 1 enemies, or just in case multiple enemies jumped to the back. Makes more sense if this one is behind a mandatory pick.

On the topic of that 2 passives, Confident Aim, Weapon Masteries, Marksman, Gunner vary greatly in terms of importance despite all being "non-core" passives. Weapon mastery is better than before and good in it's own, but weapon specialization is so weak that I practically never find a reason to pay the 2 points. Especially at a pretty high tier when fighter has a lot to pick. Confident Aim I just never picked in BPM, because it only helps a little in extremely unfavorable situations. If my accuracy is so low, I'd never want to waste resources on a one-hit ability if miss chance is so high. For repeated attacks like weapons or pulse AOEs, it feels slightly better but is essentially a pit I really want to crawl out of. When ACC = defense (which is not hard to get except for early game), Confident Aim only moves 6.25 rolls from miss to graze, and loses value with every additional ACC. Compared to Dirty Fighting, the latter is much better because it keeps its value until ACC is 50 higher and there're so many ways to make use of a crit. On the other hand Marksman and Gunner I pretty much always pick. If I'm using ranged and reload weapons. So if we compare "3 or 5 dmg per hit from a pet" with them, I think it's better than weapon specialization and confident aim, but much worse than Marksman or Gunner. Pets are stuck with their weapons so factor in underpen, despite being pretty fast, the power increase is limited and there's no way to scale except making the pets even faster. It's made worse by the already demanding ranger tree, that you need to squeeze a couple points only to get these very mid passives.

Does MC ranger need a better default pet though? They already have +20~40 accuracy over other classes, Driving Flight has huge synergy potentials, a cheap reposition and a non-spell dispel. That's a lot and already holds their own as a multiclass, albeit with pretty heavy investments. Sometimes for a MC combination, it's perfectly fine if they don't have a pet at all, so I just pick Ghost Heart and never summon them. Now if their pet AR and PEN get increased by default, they seem to be getting too much for free. The one thing that I do think is mandatory but shouldn't be, is Protective Companion. By default animals don't have engagements so even if I don't need it to do damage and not pick Vicious, I have to pick this so the animal companion isn't completely useless. Instead of AR and PEN I'd want them to have 1 engagement by default so they can "cover the flanks temporarily" without any investment. That seems to make more sense than a default pet that "can survive and do some damage by can't engage", it would be better if the default pet offers ultility, instead of being a mediocre striker. But the order of Protective Companion and Stalker's Link makes less sense then, if you don't touch the ability tree.

MC ranger can usually get away with minimal investments on their AC, but SC have to make good use of them. Currently the biggest difference between MC and SC animals are energized and intuitive, as other inspirations are either less important or can be (at least partly) accessed in a party. I think it can be pushed a little further, like have the bonuses scale with ranger's PL, so MC's animal don't get too good, and make prestige slightly more attractive.

I personally don't have a problem to be forced to pick a few passives if it's worth, and if I want to go heavy animal companion, like if I don't feel like it, only getting the +engagement passive as GH or using vengeful grief is a choice, so I don't have a problem with their base AR and pen. In theory one ability for pen, one for AR, two for damage isn't neccessarily wrong. Ideally getting the latter 2 passives should be choosing extra good pet over focusing on the ranger themselves. The problem is they kind of never get to be that good pet. Sneak attack and DoT are so common in a party that in like 95% cases their restrictions are not restrictions at all, and with the current numbers, having Merciless Companion + Predator's Sense only feels like a normal, basic hit. Vicious + Resilient turns a temporary engage tool / living +10 accuracy to something that can penetrate and survive, that's fine. But the other 2 combined only adds +8 per hit from animal, which is always worse than +8 per hit from the ranger. Compared to other strikers, 2 ability points for such a small improvement that can't scale and is single-target only is unacceptable. I don't have an idea though. Changing base damage feels too radical, maybe changing the passives to be harder to achieve and better numbers, so I'd need to work to enable my pet? It feels wrong for animal to get deathblows way before rogues actually get deathblows though.

I'm pretty sure that using The Shield Cracks on an enemy affected with the plate aura only further reduced AR by one on my last run, something I kept forgetting and upgrading it into. Can't remember Beza's though. Yeah the animal issue I realized is probably more about the ability tree than specific ability. A scaling sneak attack does feel justified as the only thing similar is the real sneak attack. I expected it to scale back when first time playeda ranger.

Hmmm, I agree with you on Hunter claw and Stalker's link. I ended up with Shadowed hunter as the only healing ability maybe that's why I'm feeling the squishiness. One thing I didn't realize was that SC ranger is so starved of ability points. I didn't even have wounding shot, so that I could get Beast's claw and Concussive Tranquilizer and some of the passives for ranged attacks. This is the point that I'm still not quite convinced, for the 4 abilities that buff animal attacks, missing even one of them makes the animal perform very bad (and is the reason why MC animal is mostly not worth sending forward), what's the point of getting 14 PEN if their average damage per hit is below 20 at lv20? And for such a high price they're still just okay, and this is only the price on the offensive side. So I'm feeling I need to invest a lot to make the animal not a liability. As for penetration, not only megabosses, for many tougher enemies piercing and slashing tend to be "high or higher". I'm pretty sure Blackened Plate doesn't stack with active debuff, so except for situational stuff like Sundering Blow or Rusted Armor, a party usually can only apply -2AR I think. An animal's 14PEN already includes active buff and can't switch, so there's not much more to do about it. Or maybe I should just accept that SC ranger is OP against mobs but more about ultility rather than damage against single target? Although if that's the case I think Heart Seeker is just slightly lacking. It's pretty rare that healing makes a huge difference on enemies, except for solo run, so if the party has a cheap access to weakened, now ranger loses their unique debuff. It's like the modded "XXX the bell" abilities, while having a rogue always frees up a weapon slot for better choices, having say a melee monk or a high accuracy chanter kills most of the point of Heart Seeker, only except for perhaps Doru because 35 res. Something similar to Revenge of Skaen can make it more unique and rewardingI think, like a -7 or 8 CON debuff that doesn't stack with the -5 from affliction. Also does Concussive Tranquilizer work with blunderbuss? I think I'm only getting -30s on multishots. Can't remember if it works for AOE weapons.

I'm wondering the role of animal companions for SC ranger, when fully buffed, they end up with 14PEN piercing/slashing and 130+ACC against marked target, which is good enough for mobs but usually can't penetrate bosses even with the common -2AR debuff, so they really need to score critical hits to do any meaningful damage. A normal party (without going out of the way to stack Blade of the Endless Paths) probably can apply -30 or -40 to deflection with flanking, -10 resolve, -10 from Cap of the Laughingstock, not sure if pike modal stacks with flanking. Which then usually translates to 30% -40 crit chance. There's then also easy intuitive for SC equals 12.5% crit chance. So against such enemies, about 50% of their attacks are meaningful. Now they have energized, but the ranger should already interrupt the hell out of the target. The damage is still less than ideal, a crit is about 20ish damage with all the passives, factor in the severe underpen for non-crits, for a lion that's about 30 dmg per 4s (2 hits including animation) which is pretty hard to further improve. I kind of feel that's too expensive for what we get, a ranger needs to pay a lot to reach this number: vicious companion and bonded fury are absolutely necessary, while merciless companion and predators sense are relatively less impactful. That's 4 ability points, and keeping it alive is also a bond drain, when the whole party can easily have over 150 defenses, animal companion with bonded fury only has 90~110 and hard to further improve. Many times I feel I'd just let it die and use the new vengeful grief. Maybe I'm asking for too much, I feel animal companion is at an awkward position, I either invest a lot and try really hard to keep it alive for mediocre gain, or just go for vengeful grief which is also not bad, but kind of kills the point of ranger, on both "high accuracy" and "animal companion". I wonder if sharing Hunter's claw and/or (mutual) stalker's link is too much. It kind of bothers me that some of the buffs are shared but some are one-way. Hunter's claw only makes a difference in really tough fights where the animal companion either just sit besides the ranger or stays dead, so I think it will make them more relevant, with the +defense upgrade at least.

I kind of always get them unless I can't even grab the core abilities without the points. I could never feel or quantify how important they actually are, it might just as well be placebo effect in many situations. How would you rank them in terms of priority?