Could Rangers be made to use 'pugil' and 'lash' with the same efficiency/success rate as a Warrior specialized in these weapons would have?

This is not as much a plea for a change as it is an attempt to hear the staff's pov on it however.

Logically speaking, why should a ranger be any better at pugil and lash than a non-specialized warrior?

Logically speaking, why should a ranger be any better at pugil and lash than a non-specialized warrior?

If anything, they'd be slightly worse.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

So Nreisshe was right and I was wrong. Rangers are designed as forest assassins, rather than forest warriors.

Thank you.

Warriors study nothing but combat and the use of weapons. Rangers study forest craft, herbs, hunting, a litte bit of magic, and combat and weapons. It stands to reason warriors are going to be able to use weapons better than any other class merely because it is the sole focus of their training.

Pure weapon skills will be best employed by warriors, on account of it's the only thing they get. If rangers got super weapon skills on top of the rest of their portfolio, why would you play a warrior?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Phew... glad to hear that pugil and lash are "super weapon skills".

I thought my cloud giant was a retard for practicing these.

All in good fun, Valg, I'm just giddy to have caught you on dropping such silly words... out of context, of course. ;-P

At this point we're going a little off-topic with this in my opinion, but why not;

' If rangers got super weapon skills on top of the rest of their portfolio, why would you play a warrior? '

That's an odd comment from your part. Primarily because Rangers and especially those without a decent knowledge of staves, scrolls and more general 'preps' are rather restricted to wilderness areas which constitutes a considerable drawback to their otherwise powerful abilities. While in itself it's logical, as Isildur would put it, for the class to be designed this way given its theme and in-game background, I'd say this has also been the source of the most frequently heard 'complaint' on the class - namely that it is 'boring' for a number of people.

While playing the character of Breireth, I took note of Nreisshe's forest assassin playing style as she herself once put it. She appeared to be doing quite well with it from what I saw, and that was probably putting it a little bit mildly as well, so I grabbed this opportunity to take a completely different approach to the class from what Nreisshe was doing, in order to indirectly compare results with her and thus discover a little bit more about what yourself and others on the staff exactly had in mind for this class when you shaped it into its current form.

The result was that I intentionally starting using a PKing strategy with Breireth which was, for all intents and purposes, heavily based on a 'forest warrior' mentality. It essentially came down to capitalizing on the element of surpise to a lesser extent than what Nreisshe was doing, by using disarming and/or crippling ambushes rather than all-out damage ambushes, while afterwards relying on innate ranger skills which in my view seemed to lend themselves to the 'forest warrior' mentality - wilderness familiarity along with flee + herbs, one-to-two ticks of camping while camouflaged, serpent strike, pugil with imbued staffs, bearcharge, etc. As I'm sure you or others on staff noted while the character was still active, I also attempted to combine with numerous exotic weapon skills to further increase what I hoped to be the efficiency of this approach.

As a result, I was quite surprised to see just how inneffective it turned out to be in general. A large number of classes had means to keep me from camouflaging a second time after the opening strike, taking away much of the initial advantage I had over them as a ranger in one command, ambush disarm was rendered completely ineffective by any opponent using a get 1./wield 1. trigger or even so much as one with quick reflexes and reasonable typing skills, an ambush disarm/drive combination always ended up in the drive taking place before the disarming attempt, bearcharge was unreliable for a Felar ranger character as was the lash skill (which of course also forced me to surrender wielding my imbued staffs or spears), and so on. In short, all of this resulted in me being quite unable to do any reliable command denial on my opponents mid-combat. This not only kept me from holding an opponent in place while I could have gained the upperhand through wilderness familiarity-based straight combat rounds, but worse still it also granted a great many of my opponents nearly complete freedom to use their own skills on me during those combat rounds, usually with very unfavorable results on my part.

The exotic weapons skills I went after did little to compensate for all of this, though I found they did make a notable difference when I fought outside of wilderness areas from time to time, providing me with both better standard defenses as well as new skills to use.

At the end of the character, I simply took all of this as proof that Nreisshe was right in her approach to the class and that mine was indeed dead wrong. Rangers indeed seem to be designed as forest assassins rather than forest warriors. I asked the thread's original question just as a way to confirm this, because I assumed the staff would heartily disagree with improving the effectiveness of any skills which could empower the forest warrior approach a little, if they indeed had designed the class to be at its best when played with a forest assassin mindset.

Anyway, my apologies if this became a bit long.

Assorted comments inline...

>While playing the character of Breireth, I took note of
>Nreisshe's forest assassin playing style as she herself once
>put it. She appeared to be doing quite well with it from what
>I saw, and that was probably putting it a little bit mildly as
>well, so I grabbed this opportunity to take a completely
>different approach to the class from what Nreisshe was doing,
>in order to indirectly compare results with her and thus
>discover a little bit more about what yourself and others on
>the staff exactly had in mind for this class when you shaped
>it into its current form.

With no offense intended, the inherent flaw in doing this kind of comparison is that Nreisshe is probably, at this stage in your respective CFing experiences, an overall better player than you are.

I didn't see many if any of Breireth's fights and I've seen a few dozen of Nreisshe's, so it's possible that I could be wrong.

>As
>I'm sure you or others on staff noted while the character was
>still active, I also attempted to combine with numerous exotic
>weapon skills to further increase what I hoped to be the
>efficiency of this approach.

You overestimate the time Valg spends watching people play the game these days instead of fixing bugs or doing other people's dirty work. ;)

>bearcharge was unreliable
>for a Felar ranger character

Bearcharge, actually, is extremely reliable. What it's not is extremely good for a felar ranger. You probably need to think of it as being more like trip and less like bash for such a character -- good for slowing down a next command, but put it out of your mind that you'll lag someone out entirely with it alone.

And really, this is as it should be -- consider the archetypal "should I throw command denial attacks?" question of: if both my opponent and I walked away from our computers right now, which character would win? A felar ranger in the wilderness (geared correctly, etc.) beats damn near everything in that situation; if it could also lag you straight out, it'd be crazy good.

>I
>asked the thread's original question just as a way to confirm
>this, because I assumed the staff would heartily disagree with
>improving the effectiveness of any skills which could empower
>the forest warrior approach a little

It's more that we don't agree with your solution, I think.

I remember once a time, some players complained that warriors didn't have a good opening attack. They wanted us to give warriors cleave, which we didn't do, instead giving them feint, drive, dash, and weapon specialization.

This whole thread feels less like you're going for a balance solution and more like you want us to tell you that you're right about your conception of our conception of the ranger class.

One big advantage that rangers have over warriors in combat is in the prepping arena.

1) Rangers have staves and scrolls, which gives them more and better options in several cases.

2) Rangers' easy and very effective concealment often means they can minimize the drawback of some prep items. Being held (for example) in the middle of the Eastern Road as a warrior is potentially very bad. Being held as a camouflaged ranger is less likely to be a big deal.

3) Because you exert a lot of control over when/if a fight will happen, you tend to waste less preps. A warrior (sans strange bracers) can't realistically be hasted every time he *might* get into a fight, for example. Even if he busts out a haste only every time he actually sees an enemy in his PK range nearby, there's still going to be a lot of waste. A ranger not only has access to easier options for haste (see 1), but should almost never burn a use and not get real use out of it, either because s/he's about to attack someone (who won't know the fight is coming until it starts) or because s/he's about to leave the wilderness to do something especially stupid or dangerous.


As another aside, it's dangerous to try to draw conclusions based on looking at two characters, because you never know if one of those characters has access to resources the other doesn't. Role contest winners, for example... ;)

' With no offense intended, the inherent flaw in doing this kind of comparison is that Nreisshe is probably, at this stage in your respective CFing experiences, an overall better player than you are. '

Don't worry. And I'm well aware of this, as a matter of fact. The reason why I remain convinced that this comparison I made has some merit however, is because I feel I too could have landed considerably more kills with Breireth had I followed Nreisshe's example, rather than purposefully pursuing a strategy that involved a radically different approach from hers. In the same way, I still tend to believe Nreisshe herself would have landed fewer kills than she currently has had she attempted Breireth's approach. It was thus mainly the difference of these two approaches that I was speaking of, rather than the differences in quality between Nreisshe's player and myself.

' You overestimate the time Valg spends watching people play the game these days instead of fixing bugs or doing other people's dirty work. ;) '

Eheh. That comment was mostly a reference to the conversation I had with someone on staff when I made a pray about a certain exotic weapon skill not performing the way that I had hoped it would. I just had assumed that some of the details and some of the comments of that conversation would end up circling around a bit amongst the staff. Hence the remark of 'as I'm sure you know'.

' good for slowing down a next command, but put it out of your mind that you'll lag someone out entirely with it alone. '

So I noticed.

'It's more that we don't agree with your solution, I think. '

You have me wrong here I believe. The thread's original question was in no way intended as a way to propose a possible 'remedy' to my lack of success in PK with Breireth. Indeed, I don't blame that on the class its design to begin with. It was only ment as a way for me to confirm through feedback from the staff that Rangers simply are not best played as straight-up 'forest warriors', in a somewhat similar way an Elven warrior is best not played in the same way as a Fire giant axe specialist, to make a wild but hopefully not entirely incorrect comparison.

' This whole thread feels less like you're going for a balance solution and more like you want us to tell you that you're right about your conception of our conception of the ranger class. '

That's exactly correct, actually. This thread was never about a balance issue, but merely about trying to provoke some feedback along the lines you have just given.

And thank you for that, by the way.

true warriors study only weapons and combat but they are not masters of all weapons. It seems odd that a class that has a more limited number of options in terms of offense has to use these abilities at a decreased proficiency. This doesn't seem realistic to me, yes rangers have others skills, so do all classes, warriors can bash, feint, get fourth attack and weapon specs etc. Rangers have a limited number of weapon choices and associated skills it would seem that for these limited number of skills they should work with a high degree of reliability. If all I can do is pugil with my staff why wouldn't I learn to do it well I've got nothing else to do with it? It is not like they learn spec skills with these weapons, they cannot entwine or spin, nor should they.

Anyway, I've been drinking so maybe I'm just argumenative tonight and since Valg already weighed in I guess it's a mute point :9

Warrior: Gets combat abilities. Few abilities have any use outside of combat.

Ranger: Gets some combat abilities. Also gets some healing/recuperation, excellent concealment/surprise, some protection. Therefore, pure combat abilities aren't as good in general.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Why not replace pugil with the one-round staff equivalent to serpent strike?