Came up with this idea while trying to think of a way rangers could seal the kill more often. Rangers lack oomph at higher ranks. If you don't agree with me, look at Tjok's pks. Over 400 hours and only 80some pks. Not to say this is what I'm after, but just more practicality for the class at higher levels without making it impossible to get away from a ranger in the woods. So, here it is:

Pounce. Similar to the skill some shifters have. Could only be checked while in the wilderness. When an enemy flees, the skill is checked and you quickly and viciously pursue your enemy and start attacking right away. It could be size-based, whereas the smaller you are, the more success you will have. This could make up for the smaller races who can't bearcharge very well. Obviously this would have to be something used at a much higher level and increases slowly. Would help the ranger sealing the kill a little better and maybe inspire a few more rangers about.

Thoughts, questions, flames, all welcome.

Having a more thorough understanding of the ranger class now that I've played it a good bit and gotten all the ranger skills of the class, the trouble I'm having as a non-giant ranger is landing the kill. I ambushed, snared, ambushed, bearcharged a thief smaller than me and they still got away with plenty of health. Bearcharge didn't even lag long enough to get in a second one before the thief fled. I'm not the best pker, but I would think that this combo could at least bring someone to the brink of death before fleeing. It didn't even come close.

Rangers are not druids or magicians, so I wouldn't expect a druid-like spell to fix the problem. However, I do like Tjok's idea of a sequester-type thing to prevent fleeing. To decrease overpoweredness, perhaps limit it to the wilds of the area you're in. One you flee that area, the anti-recall, anti-teleport is lifted and you can transport yourself however you wish. This way, you can still use the tactic of either follow and ambush, or follow and entangle and land the kill if they don't get out of area.

Tanking for rangers in the wilds is unmatched and perfect. I wouldn't change a thing defensively. They get hit often enough and skills are completely effective on them to not have balance issues. As for pure offensive power, they can do some nasty things in one good ambush, but flee, quaff neutralizes this too easily.

Suggestions to alleviate this:

- Fear of the Wilds - An automatic skill, or an ambush type available at level 45, that strikes a target with paranoia in the wilds of the area, such that they fear an ambush so much they won't take their eyes from their surroundings long enough to quaff a potion or eat a pill or concentrate on a teleporting spell.

- Pounce - Stated before.

- Harass/Confuse - Being that a ranger's specialty is the ambush, an enemy who is surprised by an attack becomes so confused and disoriented as to what they carry that they have problems figuring out what to quaff/eat in their inventory. They still know what they carry, but not in the order they carry it, so they would reach into the pocket with the steaks instead the pack with the potions. Doesn't affect magical/divine transportation. Idea borrowed from Romance of the Three Kingdoms games where an ambush may confuse a target.

- Stake pit - Ranger creates a pit filled with sharpened stakes that a victim/group of victims can fall into. Causes a couple rounds of lag, does light damage, reduces movement points to zero. Because of the effort to make it, cannot be used with snare and takes the same amount of time to create another one. Flying, natural ability to fly negates triggering it, but it also remains undiscovered. Once the pit has been fallen into, others following after cannot fall into as well, such as snare.

- Animal Emulation - Ranger studies a path of one of several animal species that determines effectiveness of certain skills and adds one or two. (i.e. studying the nature of the bear makes bearcharge more effective, a tiger would be able to pounce, a wolf enjoys a pack sense with other wolf students and would greatly increase combat prowess, eagle enjoys swift combat, wilderness familiarity used everywhere except under water) Chosen like a weapon spec at a high level.


Comments, Suggestions, Flames welcome.

>- Fear of the Wilds - An automatic skill, or an ambush type
>available at level 45, that strikes a target with paranoia in
>the wilds of the area, such that they fear an ambush so much
>they won't take their eyes from their surroundings long enough
>to quaff a potion or eat a pill or concentrate on a
>teleporting spell.

Aren't Tribs not scared enough to go retrieve from against that lone Outlander and his four imaginary cabalmates that the Trib thinks are in hiding in the bushes? I think such no recall skill is BS, since it makes people more inclined not to go the wilderness, since their ability to get away is seriously hindered by this.

I have no comments on your other suggestions, since I do not know the ranger class well enough.

This is not an outlander skill, it is a ranger skill. There are rangers in the Fortress, Battleragers, and Outlanders. Druids get something like this with The Hunt, except it lasts quite a while. This would be a more limited, downscaled similar version that would only apply to wilds in the same area. The wilds are easy enough to walk out of, so that's why I suggested this.

But let's not forget that one of those imaginary friends is always a ranger or druid. :D

And Outlander came into mind since it is the only cabal actually in wilderness.

>Having a more thorough understanding of the ranger class now
>that I've played it a good bit and gotten all the ranger
>skills of the class, the trouble I'm having as a non-giant
>ranger is landing the kill. I ambushed, snared, ambushed,
>bearcharged a thief smaller than me and they still got away
>with plenty of health. Bearcharge didn't even lag long enough
>to get in a second one before the thief fled. I'm not the best
>pker, but I would think that this combo could at least bring
>someone to the brink of death before fleeing. It didn't even
>come close.
>


This seems really odd. Were you wielding axes? Good dam roll? High avg. weapon? Thieves don't have many hit points. It should have been near death or dead, even if you weren't hasted. What you're describing is as close as you get to a sure kill.


>- Animal Emulation - Ranger studies a path of one of several
>animal species that determines effectiveness of certain skills
>and adds one or two. (i.e. studying the nature of the bear
>makes bearcharge more effective, a tiger would be able to
>pounce, a wolf enjoys a pack sense with other wolf students
>and would greatly increase combat prowess, eagle enjoys swift
>combat, wilderness familiarity used everywhere except under
>water) Chosen like a weapon spec at a high level.
>


This sounds like a cool and interesting idea. Moreover, it is closer to what Nepenthe said below about his vision of the ranger-improvement arc. Also, I think someone hashed out something similar to this about a year ago.

Anyway, it might be worthwhile to hash it out, draw up something more detailed, and email it directly to Nepenthe and Valg for consideration. It might even be better yet for you to Imm and send it to them afterwards :P

But game balance wise, I don't know. Probably I'll put this as a quest idea.

>>This seems really odd. Were you wielding axes? Good dam roll? High avg. weapon? Thieves don't have many hit points. It should have been near death or dead, even if you weren't hasted. What you're describing is as close as you get to a sure kill.<<

The thief obviously had some protections, but I had high hit/dam, great weapon, and many advantages in my favor. Ambush, snare, ambush, bearcharge was my series of attacks, acting as soon as the lag was over, and he still got away. Through whatever protection he had, I was still hitting quite hard. So... I don't know. It was quite frustrating losing this particular kill, but it seems to happen often with rangers, especially if you're not of the giant class. Can only continue and hope things change for the better. I really dislike having to resort to ganking, but it may come to that just to bring someone along who can lag.

If you're who I think you are I'll give you a few tips regarding why you might have trouble sealing kills.

One of the good things about being a ranger is that you're almost impossible to kill if you are cautious. As a result, you should have superb armor. You'll need it to lay down enough damage to finish people fast enough that they do not get away. Using entangle to halve movement helps a lot in the lower ranks and sometimes in raid situations where they're going to be around for a while but overall I found the most effective thing to do was to hit hard enough to kill them in the ambush and ensuing snare lag with call lightning.

I like this line of thinking as I really would like to see rangers get some loving. Lack of new skills at higher levels, tough to finish the kill even if you call lightning etc. are issues. There need to be some new ideas. Having said that I think the basic structure of the class is fine. Rangers are my favorite class and the ideas are really meant to improve an already good thing. My suggestions tie in to your last point.

Every ranger should be able to choose a particular animal to emulate. A spirit beast, a totem, call it what you like. Depending on what animal you pick you would get a certain set of skills. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, we do away with serpentstrike, bearcharge, backrake. Okay, the ranger reaches level 20 and needs to pick his beast. Let's say he picks the wolf. Picking wolf will allow him to learn the 3 wolf skills. One could be something like trance for HP (wolves are known for endurance, no). Another might be something relating to the howl of the wolf (like a tweaked warcry). The third could be perhaps a simple beast call. These are all points of discussion but the totem is in some sense analogous to a specialization or dedication. It does not need to be limited to 3 skills, more can be incorporated. Other animals could be deer, lynx, musk ox, artic fox etc. There could even be a tie-in to environment. If you pick artic fox you are a ranger of artic landscapes and your skills work better there than in other wilderness environments. Just another angle to allow more customization as it were.

A final thought, you harass/confuse and fear of the wilds would make a good additional type of ambush. You could forgo damage for some form of disorientation.

a ranger is mostly about timing and preparing the ground.

nt

I think this is an interesting idea for non-giant rangers (who do not get full use out of bearcharge) as a level 42+ skill. But I don't think this answers the essential issue with playing rangers, which is the limitations you have in terms of PK.

There are basically two reliable ways to kill decent people at hero*: (1) snare herding, and (2) the odd scrolls/staves/lag kill. While a "pounce" skill would be cool, it doesn't lend itself to expanding these ways. Something I always wanted was an "insect swarm/sequester"-like skill, where the victim can not use magical transportation in the woodlands, which allows you to make full use of pathfinding, entangle, and the other ranger skills/spells. You look at fights involving rangers that had "insect swarm" and it's almost a completely different class. This would definately make rangers more deadly and varied in the wilds - if that is a necessary goal.

What would make rangers played more, however, is if "wilderness familiarity" worked in cities, as well - like surrounding the sunrise does in all enclosed spaces. The way it is now, you go into a city, you suddenly transform into an AP without bash/trip/spells/unholy_weapon.

* Hero PKing is more difficult because: no more ranking = less time spent in wilds, victims have more HP and are more likely to recall/teleport asap.

>Something I always wanted was
>an "insect swarm/sequester"-like skill, where the victim can
>not use magical transportation in the woodlands, which allows
>you to make full use of pathfinding, entangle, and the other
>ranger skills/spells. You look at fights involving rangers
>that had "insect swarm" and it's almost a completely different
>class. This would definately make rangers more deadly and
>varied in the wilds - if that is a necessary goal.

Once upon a time I kicked around the idea of putting more of a saving throw on insect swarm and giving it to rangers as a level 45 spell. Some variant of that still might happen someday, but I think you're more likely to see a more comprehensive reimagining of rangers and less of a one-spell type of fix.

>What would make rangers played more, however, is if
>"wilderness familiarity" worked in cities, as well - like
>surrounding the sunrise does in all enclosed spaces. The way
>it is now, you go into a city, you suddenly transform into an
>AP without bash/trip/spells/unholy_weapon.

It does, under certain limited circumstances, admittedly.

>* Hero PKing is more difficult because: no more ranking = less
>time spent in wilds, victims have more HP and are more likely
>to recall/teleport asap.

One of the solutions to that is more area based and less class based, I think -- more gear and preps and quests and what have you in wildernessy areas. To a degree I intended Ysigrath to address some of that when I wrote it, but more's needed, even as brutal as a ranger in that area can be.

At least the outside of the Fortress is wildernessy. Scion and Fortress rangers have some room to play in, there. There's a bit of material for Battle to work with as well. (Outlander, of course, is covered, but you never want the wildernessy cabal to be the only attractive cabal for a ranger.)

Rangers are incredibly lethal until they reach the rank where the majority of their range either doesn't rank or ranks in areas without any wilderness. You can easily level sit at 40 and stack up PKs as a human ranger but honestly, thats sorta lame. The problem is at hero people have enough hp to withstand the initial waylay + bearcharge and they just immediately flee/teleport. Thats if you get them in a snare. If you don't, they flee/teleport or word once the ambush hits. You wind up spending all your time trying to either A) assemble gangs to make the most use out of the two rounds lag you get them on post-snare or B) trying to patiently wait for people to enter cursed wooded areas. Bearcharge, IMHO, is only decent if you're a cloud giant who is enlarged. I used it plenty and I can honestly say at best it lagged like trip for me, and that's a stretch. I don't really even think it lagged that well often. Granted, being a dodging class I kept low weight, so that's obviously a factor.

I think a good way to change it would be to have bearcharge be more like bash with the caveat of it not working so well for giants. Right know the exclusive reason I refuse to play wood elf rangers despite how appealing they are is because I know without being a gank-whore (tm) I won't be able to land many if any kills at hero. Also, with the xp penalty, my range won't be conducive to mass pk'ing in the midranks. Result is I'd tank very well but probably land about 30 kills, the same amount I could pull off in 50 hours with an evil conjie or whatever and have the penalty of being a crappy fighter in most raids and in the cities.

All in all, hero ranger life is boring and thats the main problem I see with the class. An idea would be perhaps to give them something similiar to legacies but more ranger based. Trapper, perhaps, or more spell oriented, possibly something that improves their herbs to cure more maledictions. Things of that nature which may make it more appealing to rank past 40.

I played a shield paladin for 500 hours and only had about 35. 80 is nothing to sniff at.

The difference is that rangers are supposed to be one notch below warrior according to helpfiles, players, the academy, etc. with a ranger being able to beat the warrior in the wilds. As it stands, there is not an effective way to lag as it is (bearcharge has less reliability than bash and is fairly useless to anyone but a giant), giving much more power to anyone that can cast spells/use communes. Even anti-paladins get trip AND bash, but I'm not complaining too much about that, nor am I asking for extending lagging priveleges. I'm just asking for a skill to be considered to help seal pks. A pounce or pounce-like skill would still allow a lot of people to get away without overpowering the class, but would have its uses for the lighter weights who play the ranger class.

You can ambush before they hit your snare, then get them to hit your snare.

You can wait until they are hurt before attack. Much of sealing a kill depends on patience.

You can make use of scrolls and things.

Tjok might only have landed 80 kills (which actually I think is a perfectly decent number), but some rangers have focussed more on pk and less on rp, and they've landed lots, unless I'm mistaken.

As far as sealing kills goes, you might want to try entangle. I believe it does more than just reduce moves and dexterity.

Set up your snare such that you can ambush, snare, ambush. Using snare to catch them first isn't that helpful unless you are trying to break apart a group or are going to call in aid that can maledict.

While I'm not going to say that what you're suggesting is a bad tactic, there are definitely other times I like to start with snare, *especially* if your snare is in a location the victim will walk into but isn't painfully obvious, such as right outside a cabal.

Having played two hero rangers one sylvan and one battlerager. I must say rangers are in need of lovin. That being said, the biggest problem with the snare ambush snare scenario is that you are almost always using that against a foe that is expecting you. Like Nep said outside cabals and what not. Ambush for me was always a means to seal a kill and not necessarily start combat.. cap damage always scares people off. I don't know how bearcharge works now but back in the day I could perma lag a giant with my wilderness up and an enlarge on my giant.. nice thought
for snare..

That being said.. more lovin for non magic type rangers plese


Anyway
some ideas
Kads

Just a thought for beefing rangers a bit, without overbalancing... I realize that CotW is a druid-only kinda thing, having the PURE connection to the wilds, but what about animal empathy? A mob-gathering ability that increases with level, can attempt empathy on "natural" mobs of same level or lower (or skill% modded) that will serve the ranger as a friend a la conjurer pet (not zombie/guard, etc.) and follow, attack, and need fed at least once per day or something akin.

Interesting RP options, I dunno. A thought.

HA!

jo!

Rangers are more suited to being loners, and an animal companion wouldn't make much sense, especially for an evil selfish ranger. Physical combat utility skills would be better.

But there is a difference between "are better suited" and "have to be"... Just because it doesnt fit for the role of an evil selfish ranger doesnt mean it wouldnt fit for the rest.
But for PK a combat skill would be better thats true.