Ranger guild recode ...

[Tarax the Terrible]

Rebel Scum!


Here are my thoughts and ideas, relating to rangers and other more general related mechanics.


1) Give the Rangers a new special <ambush> this is a solo special but effectiveness increases dramatically when teamed with more rangers. It works like an improved back stab and relies on stealth.
It works like this the group moves into a room stealthily.
Leader can signal the ambush single target or every one in area.
Each member auto prepares and whistles a bird call or something like that to signal readiness.
(awareness check on the mobs)
Leader springs ambush.
Heavy initial damage to single target or moderate to all targets.
This has quite a long cooldown, making it more for special fights than every room in a grinder.
Rangers bring bows to ambush. (Making a little equipment hunting item more useful)
They dont need bow skill just ambush skill. Or do it off bow skill if they prefer.

2) Keep brawl it is epic. But please fix that it completes even if they are stunned, as that is buggy.

3) Please reduce the spammy bounce bounce drop brawl cheese. It is pretty weird that rangers are the best thieves in the game.
I suggest some changes
- (global change) Turn off auto sneak and give a big penalty to sneak and hide when you are full of Adrenalin.
- (local change) give Tom Bombadil a new item, a weapon "lanyard". Which you can use for a lesser golden sceptre type functionality. You still unwield but you can't drop the weapon until you untie it. If the weapons is heavy there is a small chance of the lanyard to break. Tom asked for this not me and its not like he is easy to kill.
- (or nerf) make drop brawls very very rare, have armour checks whatever. Fighting rangers for AAs is currently they screw around until they have stolen every weapon you have worth a dam and then they might stand and fight.

4) Address dps fighting power for grinding. Give the rangers a second guild they can switch into and out of, Knights of Gondor. This is more of a straight up fighting guild. So they are rangers when they want to be sneaky fcks and knights when they want to out and out batter stuff.
Can only change in a room in Minas Tirith and it takes some time to do so.

[Kas]

Rebel Scum!


Here are my thoughts and ideas, relating to rangers and other more general related mechanics.


1) Give the Rangers a new special <ambush> this is a solo special but effectiveness increases dramatically when teamed with more rangers. It works like an improved back stab and relies on stealth.
It works like this the group moves into a room stealthily.
Leader can signal the ambush single target or every one in area.
Each member auto prepares and whistles a bird call or something like that to signal readiness.
(awareness check on the mobs)
Leader springs ambush.
Heavy initial damage to single target or moderate to all targets.
This has quite a long cooldown, making it more for special fights than every room in a grinder.
Rangers bring bows to ambush. (Making a little equipment hunting item more useful)
They dont need bow skill just ambush skill. Or do it off bow skill if they prefer.

2) Keep brawl it is epic. But please fix that it completes even if they are stunned, as that is buggy.

3) Please reduce the spammy bounce bounce drop brawl cheese. It is pretty weird that rangers are the best thieves in the game.
I suggest some changes
- (global change) Turn off auto sneak and give a big penalty to sneak and hide when you are full of Adrenalin.
- (local change) give Tom Bombadil a new item, a weapon "lanyard". Which you can use for a lesser golden sceptre type functionality. You still unwield but you can't drop the weapon until you untie it. If the weapons is heavy there is a small chance of the lanyard to break. Tom asked for this not me and its not like he is easy to kill.
- (or nerf) make drop brawls very very rare, have armour checks whatever. Fighting rangers for AAs is currently they screw around until they have stolen every weapon you have worth a dam and then they might stand and fight.

4) Address dps fighting power for grinding. Give the rangers a second guild they can switch into and out of, Knights of Gondor. This is more of a straight up fighting guild. So they are rangers when they want to be sneaky fcks and knights when they want to out and out batter stuff.
Can only change in a room in Minas Tirith and it takes some time to do so.

A few comments + opinions:

1) Can the alphastrike instakill players? This may be an issue since it's no escape but death if you just scale the numbers. Instakilled players will probably not play this game for very long, especially if there are no ways to encounter it.

2 and 3) Brawl is nice, but from my perspective it's currently a broken gamemechanic. If I can dropbrawl imbued rare weapons from the enemy from participating in a fight, it's like removing the chessplayer from the chessboard rather to battle it out. It's no longer a good game, and very pointless for the opponent. A better alternative is to let brawl "disarm" the weaponarm for x seconds without dropping the weapon. Robbing the opponent to execute specials or use weapons/that arm has a good effect, far easier to balance, and a fight can actually occur in that setup. The current stuncomponent there is also broken and needs a recode because it can have 100% overlap, which can result in a permastun. There are far better ways to make this work without relying on broken gamemechanics to win a fight. Dirty tactics, guerillastyle assaults, exploiting weakpoints, range weaponry...wizards can do tons of nice thematic stuff with that.

Cool suggestion though, as the rangers definitely needs their recode.

[Thalric]

Because people think it is a lot more fun to fight against someone who breaks their weapons, compared to stealing them.
It is basically the same thing.

[Tarax the Terrible]

Well if u did get insta gibbed next time u heard an owl hoot you would run for your life lol.
I think the damage should have quite a high cap, but there should be time to react.

If You hear the calls and leave they know the ambush is foiled and shoot after you doing about a third of the damage.

Cus if it a big team who all manage to sneak by you and you and don't react to the numerous bird calls that their enemies should soon learn means an ambush is being set then you deserve the damage you would have taken otherwise if they had just walked in and attacked instead of setting up.

And yes it would give rangers in pve mode bonus starting dmg. But that could be balanced and angry wizards in other domains could start coding counters if they felt an npc was being abused.

[Tarax the Terrible]

Because people think it is a lot more fun to fight against someone who breaks their weapons, compared to stealing them.
It is basically the same thing.

Well its not the same, cus I have had my clubs appear on AH shortly afterwards.
But yeah I can see how both are annoying to play against.
Although I am sure one is more costly to perform and therefore less spammy?

But something that I find pretty cool about Middle Earth guilds in general is that there can be counters to certain things given the right level of preparation. So if what Tharlic mentions is an issue then perhaps give rangers the ability to enchant a certain class of weapons (say for example they can only be mithril) and that grants them a level of resistance. Might take ten times as many attempts, when they would probably be rather doing something else.
But make it costly and not something that can be performed quickly, Like can only be done in the guild hall and takes time, but then lasts a while.

If we got lanyards I reckon their enemies might be happy with that trade?

[Arman]

I don't think there are any shortages of ideas for recoding the rangers of Gondor, more the lack of someone to do it. It's a big job recoding an old guild! I am pretty sure both Gorboth and Varian have had design plans for the guild, but just not the developers to work on it.

I think another issue though is the ranger CLASS TYPE. The jack of all trades master of none guild type - which doesn't really work in Genesis. An occupational ranger class is essentially stuck in effectiveness halfway between a functional occupational guild of a different class and a layman guild. Personally I think the class may need redefining what its role is supposed to be. The jack of all trades role has pretty much been taken over by the mercenary concept.

[Drazson]

I don't know how or why my question sparked this all over again (since there are no wizards assigned to rangers) I just asked about the stealth review progress cause it was a topic here last time

Edit: Would it make sense to open a topic on stealth update for both wizard and player feedback on the issue?

[Cerin]

I don't think there are any shortages of ideas for recoding the rangers of Gondor, more the lack of someone to do it. It's a big job recoding an old guild! I am pretty sure both Gorboth and Varian have had design plans for the guild, but just not the developers to work on it.

I think another issue though is the ranger CLASS TYPE. The jack of all trades master of none guild type - which doesn't really work in Genesis. An occupational ranger class is essentially stuck in effectiveness halfway between a functional occupational guild of a different class and a layman guild. Personally I think the class may need redefining what its role is supposed to be. The jack of all trades role has pretty much been taken over by the mercenary concept.

But if you followed the lore with the current timeline Rangers wouldnt really be a jack of all trades would they? My LoTR knowledge is sorely lacking but I dont remember the Rangers having spells or being super sneaky. They seemed more like wildnerness foot soldiers to me.

Wouldnt it be much easier rather then re-writing the whole guild to just remove and rework the class skills and abilities? I mean it seems like everything else in the guild works just fine, its their abilities and skills that make them... unfavorable.

[Tarax the Terrible]

I've read the books several times but when I think of the lore and rangers the same things always springs to mind.
The scene in the film where the hobbits first encounter them right in the middle of them ambushing the group of Haradrim.
And later on all the same dudes switch to being knights to try and defend Osgiliath.
Exactly why I was thinking of ambushes and being able to switch to being a knigget.

And then they get rekt by Nazguls mmmmmm I bet only genesis fans were the ones rooting for the Nazgul lol

Oh and they did have cleanse spell, used by Aragorn with Athelas to try and draw out the Nazgul black breath poison.
Only rangers should have cleanse IMO.

[Cerin]

I've read the books several times but when I think of the lore and rangers the same things always springs to mind.
The scene in the film where the hobbits first encounter them right in the middle of them ambushing the group of Haradrim.
And later on all the same dudes switch to being knights to try and defend Osgiliath.
Exactly why I was thinking of ambushes and being able to switch to being a knigget.

And then they get rekt by Nazguls mmmmmm I bet only genesis fans were the ones rooting for the Nazgul lol

Oh and they did have cleanse spell, used by Aragorn with Athelas to try and draw out the Nazgul black breath poison.
Only rangers should have cleanse IMO.

But was that a Ranger thing or because of his upbringing? Cause I never heard or saw any other Ranger use a spell... but like I said my knowledge is the movies and the book "The Hobbit" when I was like 10.