So had a lot of fun with Dinvingion as a character, and some aspects of the character were fairly fun, but in general I think there's a reason you never see either of these combos. I specifically made this character to try something that you never see and there's definite reasons why that's true. I spent quite a lot trying to make this "work" but think they need to be revisited/revamped or edges added to fix weaknesses to make them anyway viable or it'll continue to be a class you never see played.

So first up - Animists!

Zephyr: Mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, immunity to dirt-kick and giving someone 0 hour blind when they bash is nice, but I feel like it should do more. It felt like it was just a tool to fight other rangers with (since it's common to dirt/flee/ambush). It also has an ungodly slow duration - even at hero, it's 4-5 hours while at lower levels you're basically casting a 10-20% of your mana pool for 1-2 hours. It should make you immune to wasps, but more on that later. If it made you immune to faerie fog or bard reverberating blast, even better.

Animism: Your basic locate item, but it seemed to be really lacking. At least add in stone or gems as they're natural too - couldn't even find the griffon-face necklaces with it.

Trance: Gotta say, this is one of the big perks of the class. Getting 500+ mana an hour with camp/trance was pretty nice.

Symbiosis: So, I've got mixed feelings on this one. It's a one-round heal, going for an average of maybe 30hp at even hero - it's like 45ish if I was in the desert. It's also like 5-10hp if you're in the Spire or a city (and seems bugged sometimes to last even when ya leave the city until you logout). It will also fail in combat (this happens a lot, even at 100% it's some echo of 'you cannot pull the essence of life while in combat'). So you're basically getting a really low heal that can fail in combat and is location dependent. Did it save me sometimes? Absolutely. Did it make it so I can rejoin fights? Definitely but as a class defining ability I really think the failure should be removed and maybe the amount is raised a little. Getting a 30hp heal that can fail 30% of the time, when shaman/druids/healers/paladins can all heal for way way more it just seems off. This needs to go up more.

Call Messenger: A crappy delivery spell (since it has a lot more restrictions)....more flair than use.

Speak with spirits: I can't remember the last time I've ever needed to use this or track. If you suck at finding people in CF with its tons of areas, then a spell isn't going to help. It's also very vague and says like "male wood-elf left here an hour ago, male wood-elf left here a day ago, etc"....again, not sure really if this is necessary at all but I'm also pretty speedy and can find people usually.

Cloud of wasps: Talk about a love-hate relationship. So you get a spell that maaaaybe works like 20% of the time even mastered. When it does land (2 round lag), it does very minor damage, it slows them, and can do that random stunlock. It can also stunlock you, slow you, and damage you while you fight them. It also seems pretty much tied to their wilderness time - I tried casting it when it was at 100% on Ruosti the wood-elf villager bard for what felt like 20 times in the wilds and it never landed. I feel like this shouldn't hit back against animists. For marshdwellers, fine keep it the same but an animist is a caster and I've got a swirling wind shield on from zephyr - I think I should be immune to my own wasps as this is one of the *very* few options I have to do in combat. It also should work more, seriously. My last fight with Kraldinor I think I cast it 10 times before it landed (that's twenty rounds!). I'm a wood-elf animists, I should be able to somewhat reliably call wasps.

Spirit Allies: I didn't really notice much of a difference honestly, I even spammed up every spell to near perfection (even armor) to get this capped out. My call lightning spells, even as a wood-elf in a lightning storm, sucked majorly. I'm dead serious, I did I think at most a DEMOLISH and I regularly did lower damage (like a freaking mutilate to a hero assassin). I distinctly remember a druid hitting Noviask for an ANNIHILATE through aura/shield pre-40! My spells should be doing a lot more as an animist and this felt pretty lackluster. If you've got dreams of having spells, don't play an animist until this gets changed.

Primordial Vengeance: As someone who has felt this spell on previous chars, yeah it can suck... it also rarely works even at 100%. I could have taken the edge maybe, but again I couldn't land it on a wood-elf bard for the life of me so it seems tied to wilderness time. Even against Kraldinor, I cast it several times without luck. It's a great annoyance, but most people know how to get rid of it. I'm fairly ok with the spell as it is, but it needs to land more when I'm at 100% with spirit allies at 100%. You might be noticing a theme that it'd be nice if spells actually landed when cast...

Gust of Wind: The helpfile is completely wrong, I already reported it - this is basically Earth Ripple. You can throw a single person in a desired direction - only if it's outdoors and it rarely works. Max damage was a demolish. I was waiting for the random chance to throw someone into an avalanche or the ravine...but yeah, no one ever fights out there anyways. It seemed like more of a gimic and I really really wish it worked like the helpfile stated of "throwing people (plural) out of the room". If I could throw people out of a room as an AoE spell, that'd be awesome. Single target direction throw for a level 40 spell that again RARELY works to throw them from the room? Meh. Earth ripple is what, level 26?

Spirit guardian: So it's a pet that does pretty bad damage, has ok health, camos with you, and notifies you when people enter an area or above you in the air (I think). So it's like the Twitchy edge, but always correct. It also supposedly "howls" at people that are hiding and brings them out but I never experienced that. You get a different animal if you call it in different terrains (area means nothing, it's just terrain) and they all did the exact same thing. It'd be cool if they did *something* different like druid pets, even if they're not as cool. It was nice to not have to spam "where" with it around, and was helpful for knowing when Zerodois was poking his head into the cabal but beyond that it was kind of a letdown for a level 42 spell.

Spirit Howl: I just got this when I deleted, spammed it to 100% and used it in a few fights. It didn't seem to be very reliable (I had to cast it I think 5 times to deafen 3 imperials at the vanquisher), it has 2 round lag, and can't be done in combat so you have to initiate with it. It seems it can deafen (for maybe 1 hour?) and can stun for 1 round...but once they're deaf from it, you can't stun them anymore. An area deafen is kind of cool but it didn't seem to work very reliably. Maybe it's a terrain thing, where in the desert it would have been amazing but it was kinda "meh". It could be amazing but I wasn't seeing it. After casting it over ten rounds of flee/return in a raid situation, I felt like I should have just done something else.

Ancestral Spirit: Ok, here's my biggest gripe. It's got 2 round lag, and does horrendous damage (I think I once did a small devastate in my 40s)...but it does have some cool effects: curse, faerie fire, and forcing someone to flee were the three I saw. But here's the catch: it's random as hell (so you can spam it 6+ times and get zero effects) and it ONLY WORKS IN YOUR TERRAIN. You got any idea how lame that is if you're not a woodsman ranger? How often am I going to get a fight in the desert? I can understand it not working in civilized areas, but come on, it needs to work in all wilderness areas. This is one of the huge reasons I deleted Dinvingion because after learning that this spell was basically useless for me, it added another keystroke to "delete".

General feedback for Animists: I think the class needs some serious rebalancing before you see it played more. The fact that the majority of the spells are in the high 30s/40s is pretty crappy, it feels like you constantly have to keep ranking...and then you hit hero range and realize the high level spells are all pretty bad. The animist felt about as deadly as a "wet noodle". I had Kraldinor writhing in agony with wasps, primordial vengeance, dirt kicked and he just sat there and healed through my damage output in the woods (despite having an average 36, +21/+21 weapon and decent gear). All I had at that point was pugil or dervishdance....meh. Rangers should be feared in the woods and I felt like I brought nothing to be feared....and even if it was scary for some reason, it'd take 20+ rounds to get there because every spell is so random if it lands at all. I should have been a caster of the wilds, and I felt like someone had given me a cantrip book of "How to annoy like a fly" while I lost out on major abilities from other rangers. I guess it just goes without saying, play a druid then if you want power.

Next up - Bedouins!

Endure heat: Awesome, but again I think the duration is super low. You first get it and it lasts like 0-1 hours, and at hero it's again super low. There's no reason this shouldn't have the same duration as protection from heat/cold. Stacking this with protection from heat/cold and resist heat gave about 62% resistance which was nice - made Merf's fire control an absolute joke (haha suck it Merf, I sacced your weapons!)

Sandswirl: So you get a vanish in the desert (and not single desert rooms, only full deserts)...yeehaw? Don't explorers get it also? With such a restrictive terrain like this, it should be more.

Stash: Totally flair ability. Why the heck would I need to temporarily hide something in a random room where people can't see it? I can just hand it to a mob or teleport or sacrifice it or a million other options. Just seems pretty lame imho.

Whirling Simoon: Well it only works in the desert, so it's fairly lacking from usage, and I know it *can* blind or spoil drinks but I need to know when it does. There's no echo saying it blinded them or ruined their water containers... and I also think it should be 1-round lag. It does a DEVAS at max (all the way down to a DISMEMBER even with spirit allies 100%). You may think is OP if it went down to single round usage, but again it only works in the desert and it's damage is very random.

Dervishdance: Ok, this is the only reason to ever play a bedouin and I seriously think someone could abuse this. NOT an animist mind you but several other "high damage" rangers. This thing will hit everyone you're fighting 1-3 times (3 max if you get the edge and blind them) and it also feints everyone if you land at least 2 hits on them. It can fail though, even at 100%, so that sucks - another reoccurring theme of "maybe this will work" that really needs to go away for rangers. You lose movement for every hit you make so it is possible to drain your movement with it but as a ranger, that's never really an issue anyways. I only ran out of movement once, and it was because I was practicing this on elves in the vale and was hitting 15+ of them for at least 10 rounds. Here's also the big point if you didn't catch that - it works anywhere. How ironic is it that the strongest bedouin ability works outside the desert?

General feedback: I think bedouin is relatively ok, but it's kinda lackluster. You also can auto-dirt in deserts (happened twice in my entire 84 hours, including ranking in the deserts multiple times) and your dirt kick can mutilate or be 1 hour longer than normal....but meh. I can find reasons to play every other terrain, especially where you don't lose snare, entangle and bearcharge... some powerhouse cloud giant with the ave 36 ranger staff using dervishdance may surprise some people, but that's really about it. Losing snare, entangle, and bearcharge is pretty rough.


I think some of this could be fixed with edges, some small tweaks to the randomness of the class, and more...I've got ideas for that but I'll leave that work until there's some sort of response to this. I gotta say I am pretty jaded to providing feedback like this because I feel it's never taken seriously or cared about (how many years did I complain about trap thieves or arcane thieves or all the other "forgotten" combos while I heard "they're fine" before something ever changed). Sometimes it feels like it doesn't get changed until Daevryn/Twist makes a mort and goes "oh yeah, this blows!". I'm not expecting the world to revolve around my feedback - just would be nice to see some gameplan here (maybe a wiki post of "coming changes or future considerations" like most games do).

Well hope ya enjoyed the feedback. In short, bedouin only if ya plan to abuse dervishdance and don't play an animist...play something else.

-Torak

Bedouin is fine. You left out probably the biggest perk of being Bedouin: You fight basically the same in civilized as you do in wilderness.

I am fairly certain I have logged way more hours than anyone as a Bedouin, and I think that they are balanced out quite nicely with the other terrain choices. They play out totally different than other terrain choices, but that isn't exactly a terrible thing.

If there are any Bedouin specific questions that you want answered with more clarity, I will do my best to field them.

You make it sound as if giving up entangle, snare, and bearcharge is matched by the perk of fighting in your worst environment.

Dervishdance is nice (annoying it fails at 100%..) and endure heat is somewhat useful (moreso if felar, but not for other races as preps are easy to get) but really not seeing how this matches up to some of the other terrains.

And this is I think my third bedouin - the better one I had was a hunter, but that's another case of snare/entangle/bearcharge not really helping out a bow user that much compared to damage output of dervishdance. But any other ranger type? ehhhh not seeing it.

Bedouin fills a neat niche that allows you to play a ranger that is not wilderness bound. It probably doesn't play like YOU want it to, but that doesn't mean it needs to be adjusted.

Dervishdance really is amazing. It is a ranger combat skill that has a modifier to its dmg (serpent strike does not). It also is one that can be multi-target (I can't think of another ranger skill, not spell, that is). Dervishdance bypasses skills like evade/flow and also is immune to the effects of symphonic echoes. It is also an incredibly high burst skill, which no other terrain gets apart from ambush.

It has been a while, but I don't recall it failing at 100%. Was there another variable at work, like being slowed or maledicted hard that could cause it?

Also, as far as using Bedouin paired with an expertise... I was a Bedouin savage and I racked up a fair amount of pks with the build. I found treating it more like a warrior than a ranger worked best for the skillset.

Iklahn had very high gank ratio, avg solo PKs for the number of hrs played
and even more deaths vs the weakest opposition for a ranger in the game (ragers).
I played against you and you were annoying but never someone I feared and your
build had a lot to do with that.

Not convinced.

Personally, I have never feared rangers, so I don't think saying that you didn't fear me is relevant. The issue is about whether or not Bedouin is a viable terrain choice, or if it needs to be adjusted. The terrain option itself works and it is playable as is. It just needs to be treated different than the other terrain options available. Different does not mean its bad.

If you had gone another 500 hours or so. You didn't even break 200 PKs. I am sure Fiso had at least 300 or so with whatever he was killing you with.

188 and more than twice any other wood-elf ranger isn't good enough?

4th of any ranger over all...

I really can't fathom what more you need to see for someone to say something about rangers.

I hope so at least.

Yeah. I think I underestimated what it takes to be over the top here.

Don't ever underestimate the nonsense that can be said around here. That coupled with not knowing your handle well enough to spot sarcasm...

Whoopsie

Or did you just mean that since most of a beduins skills will work in the city, all they have to worry about is dodging less and no simoon?

But since you don't have any of the "big three" offensive wilderness skills you don't really suffer by fighting out of the wilds like other rangers.