Ranger Team Lead Pages

Again, I am stealing, erm, borrowing from Oaklief I hope he doesn't mind! As time goes by, this page will be strictly ranger and anrcher related.

This list is modified with each version, to provide the developers with a quick list of the top concerns of rangers. As always, if you are aware that a certain issue or bug has been addressed, or if you are aware of a new issue or bug that is not on the list, please contact me so that I may verify it and let the developers know about the change.

Being Targeted – pets and mobs in general need to lose a character from targeting when she enters stealth if they are outside detection radius. This is more important now that the level-based "to hit" modifiers are removed and pets hit more frequently. Because they still track stealthed characters, and always seem to move faster than normal run speed, it is impossible to escape them.

Remaining Targeted – Fixed by 1.62

Glowing Name – characters in stealth mode have their name glowing brightly over their head when you see them, which adds significantly to the ease of spotting them. I'm pretty sure all stealth spec classes would agree that when in stealth mode their name (and the realm invader or realm defender name replacements) either should be not sent to the client (best case as it prevents Odin’s Eye from identifying you), be made invisible, or be made translucent like the character model itself. There is also a suggestion that although faces are not able to be made translucent, perhaps a mask or veil over the face would cover this and might remove the "floating face" syndrome. I’m not familiar enough with the technical details of the graphics to say this for sure, but it might be worth consideration.

Unstealthing on Nocking – with visual arrow flights in, there is a strong feeling that the chance to lose stealth upon nocking an arrow should be retuned. The developers have stated that a 2/3 spec in any skill should be sufficient. The current formula for unstealthing upon nocking an arrow leads to players feeling they MUST have full stealth spec, and thus leads them to a Sniper career as they don't have the points to train in other skills - odd as it sounds, reducing the level of stealth spec necessary to remain hidden would actually move more rangers away from the Sniper role and into Rangering roles. The idea is that instead of using (stealth spec)/(character level) as the chance to have stealth drop on the draw, we'd have 1.5*(stealth spec)/(character level) as the chance to have stealth drop on the draw, and retain the 20% penalty when attempting a critical shot. This would allow archers who choose to follow the harder path of the Sniper to never uncloak on the draw (still uncloaking when they loose the shot) in exchange for the pain and suffering they put forth to level, but would allow the melee-oriented archers much more reasonable chances while following the recommendations that Mythic has published over and over.

Death by Stealth – It used to be when you tried to sneak past a purple mob it would unstealth you and you immediately knew you had to run. Now it just attacks you without warning and you lose precious seconds unstealthing. You should get a warning, like "The bwca sees you!" and any mob that attacks you should immediately unstealth you.

Seeing while Dead – this bug was supposedly fixed at one point, but dead characters can still see stealthed characters. Combine this with See Hidden and one dead assassin is the perfect scout. You can’t touch him, and you can’t sneak past him.

Special Animations - For as much discussion as stealth instigates, actually pressing the button and going into stealth mode is rather anticlimactic! It would be fun to have an animation of the character gathering their cloak around them and hunkering down to stealth before they actually do go transparent. Would tie in nicely with the small amount of time we are forced to wait before we can restealth anyways.

Stealth Subskills: Camouflage
This ability is a very good thing, but if anything it is slightly less useful than I believe was intended due to the duration of the timer and what causes the timer to reset (recent changes have much improved this concern). Other adjustments to archers and particularly abilities granted to other classes have killed the viability of sniping as an archer tactic in all but the rarest of situations, so a slight strengthening of camouflage is warranted.
Another suggestion is to make camoflage, if available, automatically engage when the character is stelathed. Basically make this a passive ability. This would clear up the much used hotbars for archer classes.
The easiest adjustment to camouflage would be to slightly decrease the timer on re-entering camouflage. While I think that if this is the only change it should be set to 5 minutes, I think setting it to 8 minutes as an intermediate step while looking for a balanced skill is the course of prudence. That would also leave room for some of the other improvements I'd like to see for this skill. Another suggestion for the timer would be to decrease it by 1 minute for every member in the group besides the archer. Then it helps to reward use of this skill for scouting for a group instead of sniping, but that may let groups of archers/assassins become gank squads easier.
I think that it could be improved by adding a speed increase while camouflaged to bring camouflaged speed closer to normal run speed without requiring full stealth spec. After all, the lower archers are willing to leave their stealth skill by having it be useful to them for scouting, the further away assassins can find them with Detect Hidden. Currently groups frequently pass those who are supposed to be scouting for them due to the snails pace of stealth speed, greatly reducing any stealther’s ability to scout and increasing an archer’s desire to go full stealth spec to get every little bit of speed out of the skill that they can so they can be effective group members in RvR. By letting camouflage increase stealth speed when in this scouting mode (not sniping mode) rangers would be better able to keep ahead of their group, or trail an enemy group while stealthed. The anti-sniper stipulations and archer’s increased willingness to leave stealth at a lower spec would combine to make this a balanced skill. Currently, all stealthers have their speed determined by (stealth spec level)/(character level). One suggestion would be to add a flat speed increase when in camouflage mode, another suggestion would be that archers use 1.5*(stealth spec level)/(character level) on the same chart to determine speed when camouflaged, capped at maximum stealth speed. Then a 2/3 stealth spec or higher archer would move at the same speed as a full spec assassin when camouflaged and at 2/3 speed compared to a full-spec assassin when in normal stealth mode, but the assassin would still have a greater detection range all the time. A full stealth spec archer would still move at the same speed as a full stealth spec assassin when camouflaged, but would now move at the same speed as the assassin when in normal stealth mode as well. This is a diminishing return though, so more archers would be likely to stop at 2/3 stealth spec, giving assassins a boost to detect hidden as well.

Stealth Subskills: Reconnaissance
Keep in mind, these discussions are old, but I am keeping htem here for reference as well as a sort of historical outlook. Hopefully there is some hope for good skills based off stealth.
Stealth must get subabilities for archers. I have some recommendations for the archer subabilities which are all geared toward increasing the reconnaissance abilities of archers as well as limit the specialization that archers feel they must put into stealth (once again giving assassins a slight boost to their Detect Hidden skill):

· At 10 spec in stealth archers should receive Danger Sense which alerts the player when a mob scout has focused on the party. This is currently an assassin subability, but a lesser once compared to the others on their spec line and makes sense for those learning to scout for their parties.

· At 12 spec in stealth archers should be able to Determine Safety, which would determine whether a location is within agro range of wandering mobs. This is designed to make archers desired in a group by being able to determine a safe location to camp. It is a low level skill so that new archers can be useful to a group while leveling up, but it will also make rangers useful by being able to predict where guard patrols are in the frontiers.

· At 15 spec in stealth archers should receive Falconry 1, see below for two suggested implementations.

· At 18 spec in stealth archers should get a Social Sense which should be able to determine whether the targetted mob will BAF, predict how many BAF mobs will come with a pull, and determine if the mobs are social enough to call for help. This skill is also designed to help archer group desirability, and has a low suggested spec due to that.

· At 21 spec in stealth archers gain a passive ability to determine a target's class in RvR and realm rank title. This could be as simple as the message upon clicking the target reading "You examine Scout Montish, he is an Albion Warder." (Note the addition of the class there.) This would help the scouting role by allowing us to report back appropriate information. It would also allow you to implement the basics of a Disguise ability, where assassins could pick the wrong fake class to be reported as, and then be able to dress up appropriately. Also, the change for displaying the realm rank is necessary because we often try to initiate combat outside of the "name range" and can't tell the experience of our target unless we memorize lists of names.

· At 25 spec in stealth archers should receive Falconry 2.

· At 29 spec in stealth archers should gain a passive ability to determine a target's guild/alliance in RvR. This could be as simple as message upon clicking the target reading "You examine the Hunter Ailill, he is a member of Fid-Nemith in Strength of Lamfhota." This would help the scouting role by allowing us to report back appropriate information, similar to the 21 spec ability.

· At 33 spec in stealth archers should be able to determine the number of creatures/characters in a 1000 unit radius of your ground target, plus or minus 10% accuracy.

· At 38 spec in stealth archers should receive Falconry 3.

· At 43 spec in stealth archers can determine the average level of the creatures and characters in the same region as the 29 spec ability.

Note that the levels of these could be adjusted, as could the actual abilities. These are suggestions meant as seeds for brainstorming.
Falconry: Basically the ranger is able to Summon a falcon to view the battlefield through (anyone else remember Beastmaster?) While using the falcon, the ranger cannot move or take any other actions. The falcon should be controlable in all three axis (so they can fly high if they want to). The ranger is able to observe everything that the falcon sees, and report that back to his group/guild/alliance. The falcon can range throughout an entire "zone", but not outside the "zone" that the ranger is in. Each level of flaconry will increase both the speed and the health of the falcon. Both the falcon and the ranger can be attacked while using this ability. If the Falcon is slain before it can get back to the ranger, the ranger suffers a trauma upon it's death (giving the ranger either the effects of Rez sickness or reducing his current hitpoints in half). The falcon should be of a level appropriate to the ranger's level. It CAN attack, however the attacks it does will be limited. One special attack it can have is to cause a nearsight effect on the enemy (i.e. pecking their eyes out!). Again, this is just brainstorming, feel free to add in anything else by sending me feedback.

Stealth Subskills: Tracking
Even though Mythic has said this is off the table, I am leaving it here as a reminder!
The design goals for tracking that I've heard would be wonderful, but admittedly Mythic is having difficulty with making the skill as they desire it useful without making it overpowered. So, I'd like to pass along a suggestion that has been made for an alternate use.

i. Tracking would be gained on the stealth spec line, and would be an active skill on a timer. Suggested timers would be 5 minutes for the first level of tracking and decreasing from there to about 1 minute for the highest level of tracking. Please compare the utility of this skill to ranged insta-cast cc (10 minute timer) and insta-heals (15 minute timer). Tracking needs to be a staple skill for archers. A tracking skill that was on a long reuse timer, and was not overly accurate will actually work against archers abilities to group. It will become an annoyance for a group to follow an archer to find he led them wrong. Coupled with the fact that he won't be able to use it for another 10 minutes and you are better off grabbing a bard and assassin and zipping around looking for people.
ii. Tracking would detect enemy presence from just inside the viewing bubble (to cover lag effects) to a decent distance beyond the viewing bubble. Exact ranges would need to be determined by Mythic as they know how far outside the viewing bubble other players and mobs are tracked on the server. If there is space for it, each additional level of tracking would grant an increase to the maximum range.
iii. All calculations would be performed on the server and only the results would be sent to the archer using tracking to help prevent abuse by those running Odin's Eye or DaoC Unleashed style programs. (A bannable offense, don't go looking for that program!)
iv. Tracking would check each octant (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, or NW) and have a 10% base chance plus a 2% chance per enemy character in that octant of alerting the archer to the presence of enemies in that direction. My suggestion is that hidden characters are included in this percentage chance, though it won't really help locate them due to the minimum range restriction on how tracking would work. True Sight would still be needed to locate hidden characters in viewing range.
v. The archer would receive alerts as to enemies in order from largest group detected to smallest group detected. Groups that were not detected would be omitted from the detection list.
vi. The archer would be able to detect one group per level of tracking skill. So an archer with Tracking 1 would only receive a report about the largest detected population of enemies in one octant. An archer with tracking 3 would receive up to three reports of detected enemy populations.
vii. The messages about detected enemies varies based on the number of enemy players (either realm) in that that octant. Eight or fewer enemies would be listed as "a scouting party," groups of nine to twenty-four enemies would be listed as "a raiding party," and twenty-five or more enemies would be listed as "an enemy incursion." Alternatively eight or fewer enemies could be listed as "some movement," nine to twenty-four enemies would be listed as "light troop movement," and twenty-five or more enemies would be listed as "heavy troop movement."

Please note that this would not increase archer sniping skills, but would definitely help give archers a boost to their scouting role in RvR. It does not fully address the concerns of archers not getting groups, but at least they would be providing a solid benefit for their realm.

Stealth Subskills: Group Camoflage

Damn assassins took this suggestion for an ML10 ability!

In trying to make rangers desired by groups, a group camoflage skill should be allowed. The basic suggested workings are as such:

Can only be used with the same timers as self camoflage.
The whole group must be stationary.
Gives the group a base stealth of 1/2 the ranger's stealth spec.
Is vulnerable to See Hiden and True Sight.

Failing this stealth subskill, this effect can also be achieved via pathfinding as well.

Stylin’ – Every rogue out there wears unrelieved black because of the way the shadowed stealth code works. I don’t claim to understand the process at all, other than it seems to have something to do with the way negative film works. Would it be possible to somehow treat all stealthers as if their armor were black when they were stealthed, but actually have the armor be able to be dyed whatever color the rogue desired for appearances when not stealthed? I know that not much can be done about items with emblems.