Hello folks

First i think i ought to introduce myself, so that you can guess from what perspective i am coming from:

I play a ranger here on Uth with the name fresa. I have been playing DAOC since feb 2002, prevalently stealthers.
I really enjoy the game again here on Uthgard as a ranger and i think the class is an enjoyable, playable class with some flaws.

Let me stress, that i am very impressed by the way this server is being run. And extremely thankful.
And in light of these wonderful efforts, that the staff is expending, it can only be humble suggestions, that one can make.


BUT let us ask, if the stealther classes (on which i want to focus here-don't feel insulted, if you are not playing one of these classes, we love you all too, that play other classes ):

Where are my fellow enemies of the scout and the hunter class?
Now and then you can see a rare scout like beastmaster leeching or a beautiful Lady in a group. Sometimes you see a brave hunter like Caon fighting like a lion, but still losing in the end.

The most active/successful lvl 50 hunter(we are not talking about bgs here) in terms of earned realmpoints is at this very moment, when i check:
Caon with 42,602 LWRP. That makes him the 246th best RP-earner on Uth currently. And that's the best hunter!

Then there is the most successful scout, which is BEastmaster with 59,402
LWRP. That makes him the 156th best RP-earner on this server.

Due to selfbuffs and superior melee(dw halves evade on Uth) than the other fellow archers rangers however are able to enter the top 50 RP-earners, though rarely make it into the top 20.


So WHY do these two classes underperform so clearly?
Some feeble-minded persons could think, that it is just the players, who play these classes, that suck. I think, we don't even need to discuss this.

The playing field for most RVR is Agramon. Action concentrates on the MGs of the three realms. All stealth classes will meet there with some inevitability.


My opinion, why we have such blatant underperformance of the hunter and the scout class is as follows:

1. Archery alone can't kill almost any decent opponent in the current state of the game (the recent critshot-nerf added only to the miserable situation; outright misses of arrows and overall lower dmg than on live-servers in the old days are another factor)

2. Archer-classes have low hps (e.g. my ranger buffed with con and str/con pot is at 1300 hps)

3. the predator archetype for archers, which is assassins, has superior detecting stealth capability(camo is almost a non-factor as you know)
->detect hidden (hence archers need to spend more points into mos than assassins and can't get initiative with bow-here underperformance of archery enhances the problem furthermore: even if an archer would be able to initiate with bow, he would get smashed into the ground, if not a melee specced ranger).

4. Poisons on Uth have a relatively strong impact on the low hps, the archer classes have when in RVR.

For instance the Str/con-debuff poison alone halves a ranger's con-stat, taking away from those 1300 hps, that he initially got after pot-buffage, already about 250-300 hps (1 point in con is 3,4 hps for archers).

Then on top there is the trend of assassins speccing the realm ability viper 3, that grants 100% dmg increase to their dot-poison. With maximum resists of 26% body the lifebane-poison of the assassin will tick for 120 dmg. So my 1k hps, that i have left after the debuff-poison has hit me, will be diminished by this kind of poison damage rapidly. I guess it's 5 ticks per appliance of the dot-poison, but it doesn't matter anyways, since any competent assassin will have learned on his way to viper3 to switch weapons and reapply poison constantly.

Without immunity timer to poisons purge cannot be the counter-RA, that one might object here. Purge it and it gets reapplied.

The only time a ranger really has a chance of winning, when everything goes into his favour (excellent opening of fight, nice evade-luck, crits, etc.), is when he has at least ip2/purge2 rdy for a fight.
If the bow would be able to kill something and not just a leeching tool, i'd say that's fair enough for rangers . But for scouts and hunters i cannot imagine to have a chance of winning even with these RAs against a competent assassin with viper3.

Then there is the tactic to snare the poisoned opponent with garrotte or snare-poison in order to let the viper-dot do the job (hello eshhee). How to counter that?
You can only purge once. Admittedly this tactic is seldomly used on Uth, probably due to lack of necessity, but it will be, if it gets necessary.

Three possible adjustments come here to mind:
First: Nerf maximum poison dmg per tick/ammount of con-debuff.
Second: Grant an immunity timer for a certain ammount of time (maybe 1-2 minutes), after the poison that has been applied, has faded out.
Third: assassins only get the poisons they spec for and +envenom from items and rr don't factor in (Cons:infs relatively favoured this way).


RÉSUMÉ:
Scouts and Hunters underperform as archery underperforms and assassin predators are too strong.

SOLUTION:
A solution is not easy to find and ofc up to the staff to propose and decide.
All four points, that i have listed here above, provide an opportunity to change the current lacking state of the game in that department.
While the second point appears to be the least favourable one (increase archers hps? i don't think so), the first and the fourth points contain the greatest opportunities to fix this.
The fourth point also might enhance overall balancing on Uth, since other classes suffer as well from the issue of low hps/relatively strong poisons.
And there are good examples of how hard and successful an assassin can be without focussing on viper3 and poison-dmg (Runis, Noir, Lahia, etc.-somehow all infs have it, can't say much about my hibernian collegues, since i don't fight 'em).


Personally i would love to see archery fixed, so that more real archers could be out there on Uth. Imo only the Critshot-ability ought to be returned therefore into the previous version without toggle mode and misses should be made very rare, because every arrow really counts when sneak attacking (guess why i made a lurikeen ranger: i wanted to be an archer!).
If archery can't kill squad, then archer-classes must be given a chance to stand a reasonable chance against other stealth classes in melee, first and foremost assassins.


Long post, thanks everyone, who did, for reading it

Regards,
Fresa.

thanks for the "beautiful Lady"...

i know my scout (Lady) is gimp...but i found my part of fighting..i am just the detector...killing is the job of someone else...means..i uncover enemy stealther and try to stun, wile infis do PA than.
at least some infi´s seem to like me for my MoS lately.

but for scouts its not only archery with is incorrect...
its their defensive too since blocking is to low for all classes with shield...but at least i´ve heard staff is after that one.

Musikus wrote:thanks for the "beautiful Lady"...

i know my scout (Lady) is gimp...but i found my part of fighting..i am just the detector...killing is the job of someone else...means..i uncover enemy stealther and try to stun, wile infis do PA than.
at least some infi´s seem to like me for my MoS lately.

but for scouts its not only archery with is incorrect...
its their defensive too since blocking is to low for all classes with shield...but at least i´ve heard staff is after that one.

Stun and run while infis do pa? Yes nice, gang soloers.
/workship

no..i uncover....with slam...and fight em..and infis join in the fight.

so i do not RUN from a fight...

if a class cant do much allone you have to find a way to survive...mine is to group since a solo scout is mostly a dead scout...fersa pointed clear enough out why.

vangonaj wrote:

Musikus wrote:thanks for the "beautiful Lady"...

i know my scout (Lady) is gimp...but i found my part of fighting..i am just the detector...killing is the job of someone else...means..i uncover enemy stealther and try to stun, wile infis do PA than.
at least some infi´s seem to like me for my MoS lately.

but for scouts its not only archery with is incorrect...
its their defensive too since blocking is to low for all classes with shield...but at least i´ve heard staff is after that one.

Stun and run while infis do pa? Yes nice, gang soloers.
/workship

Yeah that's almost as bad as a gimp SB, that can't kill anything solo, and his healer guildmate grouping at 3 a.m. when theres only a couple of solo people having fun (no I'm not talking about you, but I won't name anyone).

Zaraki wrote:

vangonaj wrote:

Musikus wrote:thanks for the "beautiful Lady"...

i know my scout (Lady) is gimp...but i found my part of fighting..i am just the detector...killing is the job of someone else...means..i uncover enemy stealther and try to stun, wile infis do PA than.
at least some infi´s seem to like me for my MoS lately.

but for scouts its not only archery with is incorrect...
its their defensive too since blocking is to low for all classes with shield...but at least i´ve heard staff is after that one.

Stun and run while infis do pa? Yes nice, gang soloers.
/workship

Yeah that's almost as bad as a gimp SB, that can't kill anything solo, and his healer guildmate grouping at 3 a.m. when theres only a couple of solo people having fun (no I'm not talking about you, but I won't name anyone).

Yes sure haha can you say me when and with who?

Lol, I just said that I'm not talking about you...

And about nerf assasins poisons why? Now if you fight in hmg is ever 3,4,5 vs1, whith vipper some assasins have little chance for kill something in that fights. And about that for kill something ranger need ip2, purge2... infis, sbs and nss too. They need purge 2 or 3 uo for stuns, remedi vs assasins with viper3. Where is the problem? There are other hunters (i don´t know if scouts) that stop play cause big add too.

In case of Viper 3 you seem to forget that the nf ras came right after toa when every class could overcap Max HP and Const-->about 300 more HP. With lifebane dealing about 60 dmg per tick (360 at all) Viper 3 was a possibility for all stealthers to counter the higher HP Pool of players.

As Uthgard doesnt have ToA the increase of Viper dmg comes out from nowhere to counter a not existing additional HP Pool. Thus there are only two logical ways to adjust poisons in a fair way:

-Reducing influence of Viper. Reducing DoT Posions at all would be a disadvantage for all Assassins who dont spec viper at all.

-Introducing old ra system (or at least in an altered/custom way). In Old Ras only Nightshades were able to spec Viper as an active RA (30 mins reuse, 30 seconds duration). Dmg Bonus would be only available for Nightshades but other stealthers have strong abilities too like double pa for infis for example so it wouldnt be an disadvantage at all.

you can count the scouts on 1 hand here on uthgard in agramon..
some few are raising..but all in all scouts only fill lesser than a side in herald (those who are reasonable played).

so far there are beastmaster, ashyo, salemek, arhale, me (lady).

the last month 3 newcommer joint the active scouts: handcanon, fireants and fortyseven.

the rest of the scouts who are out of BG´s (which means 14 out of 22 level 50 scouts) are inactive but i doubt of the adds..

Yup, I have no problems solo vs hunter or scout. I am not sure if its the poison or the game play. I know they have to take high Mos in order to hide from the assassins so that leaves them with little or no options for more RAs and that leaves them very weak.

Slam botting is a good option for scouts in rvr but then they have to duo or run with a few infs to be successfull. Spear hunters put out decent damage and can be a spotter also in a fg if they are welcome which is very rare.

I think that if we went back to Old Ras then this may help all the stealther classes to balance and perhaps implement Hunter pets based on level and not beastcraft skill level. Then the hunter would have a strong pet but could pass on Beastcraft and go with clickable buffs.

But I would like to add that Robine was very prolific as a archer in the old days. So it can be done.

@Denasti
Sure. But in old days bow damage wasnt nerfed (like I noticed) and no annoying toggle mechanic for critshot.

@Topic
Someone ingame told me, that it isnt possible on Live to repoison with every swing. At the current situation on Uthgard, it works so. Thank god that there is only 1 Inf that knows how to use it that way...

Hopefully Zipp has time to test it in future, then we can be 100% be sure.

Stop qq-ing with your rr4-5 scouts and rangers that you cant do anything , while your only RA is MoS 5.

I dont think a hunter with purge3, ip2, pd3, mopain 2-3, mos4 (that imo its way too waste of rsp), will be easy to kill. Of course thats a rr9 or so one, and noone played hunter too much. Scouts can be played properly too, like only one did, and every archer class can compensate viper with their PD and IP. If viper was not like it is now, any archer class would be impossible to kill by most of assasins out there.

You are doing just like DET 5 tank classes who cry about not being able to kill stealthers with their det5.

I never heard of a dot immunity and there should not be one. Remove PD and IP and Viper too.

The only way these classes underperform by their RR . because while an archer class gets mos5, an assasin one gets viper 3. It's nothing else.

Hi Nixian,

archery is worse now than it was on Uth due to the new Critshot. The crithot at the moment is a toggle button, that prevents the critshot being followed by another critshot, like it was possible before here on Uth and always on live-servers with the old system.

This is a severe nerf to critshot-dmg and overall to archery dmg.

It was implemented with the bugfix of critshot being able to crit itself as well, which was according to changelog on 02.03.2009.

Regards,
Fresa.

what will your rr9.5 model hunter do, when the inf just kites him with snares (garrotte, poison), while viper3 dot is ticking for 120?

Start nuking?

Fresa.

Edit: it is rr9.5, not rr8.