Ranger (hippies with pets) Luv/Hate

[Gromnir]

am thinking we had some misconceptions about rangers before we started playing PoE. were our notion that we would stand at a distance and fire deadly arrows at our foes as our bear/wolf/stag acted as a meat shield. that ain't the way things worked out for us in our limited gameplay. 

 

our first ranger build were high dex and might with a 12 for con and a 14 for intellect. it appeared that the ranger had some debuffs and we were hopeful a decent intellect would make those debuffs last longer... am not sure if it works that way or not. in any event, our first mistake were thinking o' our bear as a meat shield. we chose the bear for the increased dt, but even so, whatever damage the bear took, so did our ranger. ouchie. also, our bear were dishing out far more hurt than were our arrows... ridiculous damage compared to our arrows. with our war bow and knight weapon proficiency, we did typical 20 pts o' damage per arrow, but the bear were frequent doing more than 70. bear had far better accuracy as well. unfortunately, at one point it seemed as if every enemy were attacking our bear instead o' the party fighter and so our ranger's stamina and health were dropping very fast. 

 

one immediate annoying observation were that we frequently lost our targeted Marked Prey in the chaotic melee o' combat. which beetle or spider were the marked prey? poop. we frequent had no idea which enemy had the debuffs. 

 

in any event, some quick opinions we got from two ranger characters played up to ogre... 'cause we ain't getting quest xp for any characters.

 

-- we suspect that dex and perception is the best abilities for rangers. our ranger's pet does the damage, so might doesn't mean near as much as we thought it would. instead, we suspect a ranged weapon with a high rate o' fire would be an ideal weapon to be interrupting the baddest enemy in any particular encounter, and then our pet would do actual damage. light armour would speed us up a bit too, no? *shrug* regardless, am thinking rangers might be ideal interrupters.

 

-- we need a good amount of con for our ranger 'cause our pet is gonna get hurt. when our animal gets hurt, so does Gromnir. pet is not a meat shield but freaking voodoo doll... albeit an ambulatory voodoo doll with horns and fangs and whatever.

 

-- am not sure if this is a bug, but only control we got over our voodoo doll is simple attack.  the pets have special attacks, no? seems like we should be able to initiate those special attacks if they got 'em. we had a empty white sub-portrait where we suspect our beasties image shoulda appeared over our own character portrait, but that invariably disappears and clicking the empty portrait didn't do anything anyway.

 

am sure we have other thoughts, but this is at least a start.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[DCParry]

Question - Are these damage results based on beetle bashing? I know beetles are weak to crushing, so maybe the bear's damage was augmented while the piercing damage was normal. 

 

If not, then something seems fishy, and it isn't your pet's lunch. 

 

I bought a ranger hireling and learned very quickly to wait to send her pet in (lion) until the scrum had solidified.

[Gromnir]

Question - Are these damage results based on beetle bashing? I know beetles are weak to crushing, so maybe the bear's damage was augmented while the piercing damage was normal. 

 

If not, then something seems fishy, and it isn't your pet's lunch. 

 

I bought a ranger hireling and learned very quickly to wait to send her pet in (lion) until the scrum had solidified.

bear damage was extreme high v. meredith cronies and beetles and spiders. the damage our boar companion were not nearly so dramatic, but regardless, the majority damage our ranger duo(s) were producing were coming from our animal companion and not the ranger herself.

 

as an aside, stamina never seems to fully regenerate for our rangers. am assuming that is a bug.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[ManifestedISO]

Very amusingly detailed plight. Made me want to play an 'interrupter'. 

[Leferd]

Anyone figure out just what interrupts actually affect? Do they interrupt spells and special actions or do they also interrupt attacks as well?

[Pop]

If my guy getting hit is any indication it interrupts any action. Interrupts won't be a huge concern for melee fighters wielding appreciably fast weapons, but for any ranged fighter not using a bow, spellcaster or otherwise, they're trouble.

[Mayama]

If my guy getting hit is any indication it interrupts any action. Interrupts won't be a huge concern for melee fighters wielding appreciably fast weapons, but for any ranged fighter not using a bow, spellcaster or otherwise, they're trouble.

 

Off topic, nice svarte greiner avatar

Edited August 23, 2014 by Mayama

[Leferd]

If my guy getting hit is any indication it interrupts any action. Interrupts won't be a huge concern for melee fighters wielding appreciably fast weapons, but for any ranged fighter not using a bow, spellcaster or otherwise, they're trouble.

Sounds to me then that interrupter builds could be very viable.

[Gromnir]

 

If my guy getting hit is any indication it interrupts any action. Interrupts won't be a huge concern for melee fighters wielding appreciably fast weapons, but for any ranged fighter not using a bow, spellcaster or otherwise, they're trouble.

Sounds to me then that interrupter builds could be very viable.

 

am currently trying it out, but we ran into a new bug: our per encounter abilities is not resetting.

 

also, for whatever reason, our ranger doesn't wish to use her primary weapon set, so am needing to put bow in set II.

 

is all very odd.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Leferd]

Essentially a bow armed high perception/high dexterity ranger could constantly be providing covering fire for your frontline tanks and take pot shots at dangerous spell casters. For this build, might may not even be all that important.

[Gromnir]

Essentially a bow armed high perception/high dexterity ranger could constantly be providing covering fire for your frontline tanks and take pot shots at dangerous spell casters. For this build, might may not even be all that important.

"we suspect that dex and perception is the best abilities for rangers. our ranger's pet does the damage, so might doesn't mean near as much as we thought it would. instead, we suspect a ranged weapon with a high rate o' fire would be an ideal weapon to be interrupting the baddest enemy in any particular encounter, and then our pet would do actual damage. light armour would speed us up a bit too, no? *shrug* regardless, am thinking rangers might be ideal interrupters."

 

the damage transfer between animal companion and ranger does result in the ranger taking front-line melee kinda pain. constitution for the ranger requires some consideration as we ain't figured out an ideal way to bolster animal companions via priest spells to the point where they ain't siphoning the life out o' our ranger.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Leferd]

Dammit Grom. I'm just trying to plagiarize your ideas from your very own thread and pass then off as my own.

[Gromnir]

Dammit Grom. I'm just trying to plagiarize your ideas from your very own thread and pass then off as my own.

that is ok. only 1/3 o' the folks here can make head or tails out o' our posts anyways.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Fluffle]

Making my ranger an interrupter was my goal too.

 

But I didn't succeed.

I tried with all attributes min except for DEX and PER max

 

and then I tried another ranger

with all attributes min except for DEX max

 

and I couldn't see any difference :/

He was using Hunter Bow and was fighting the lions, one at a time

 

The wolf was attacking the lions while ranger shot them.

 

I would really really like to know how I make this interrupt thing work.

 

But the beta has still so many bugs and lacks in combat feedback that at this point

I think I prefer to wait until they fix and improve it.

[Pray]

I hoped that the stat increase of the ranger would also effect the pet - or - they could add a separate level-up system for the pet as well.. This would be awesome.

[Leferd]

Do grazing hits act as successful interrupts? I'd have tested it out myself but I'm suspecting that I'll be away from my rig the next few days.

[Gromnir]

Do grazing hits act as successful interrupts? I'd have tested it out myself but I'm suspecting that I'll be away from my rig the next few days.

it is one o' our more obnoxiously repetitive suggestions 'bout lack o' combat feedback that we would like some/any indication that we have successfully interrupted an ability, spell, attack. if between the rogue companion and our high perception & high dex ranger we could see actual indicators that we were indeed interrupting, then perhaps a perception-based build would be viewed as more beneficial. at this point, Gromnir has guesses and hopes as'posed to evidence.

 

if developers don't want to expand the feedback in the on-screen combat log, perhaps they can add a feature whereby a text log would be saved to a PoE file. is more than a few mmo games we has played where text logs o' combat data is retrievable. such a thing would benefit those o' us numbers nerds without resulting in a in-game combat log that possibly would cause performance issues or other headaches.

 

HA! Good Fun!