The last thread I created on rangers was roughly 2 years ago. The link to the thread is http://realm.tempusmud.com/forum/4/22/1121693823 . Since then, there have been several updates and additions to Ranger skills and spells. I'd like to comment on a couple posts from the previous thread that I didn't get a chance to read until now.

Narcissus: "The idea of hitting a vital spot on your enemy for an increase id damage is exactly what critical hit is.

A trend that Tempus has is that as new things are brought in, old things are left behind. Borg is a much newer class than Ranger, so is Mercenary. Therefor I am in now way surprised that they'll get their skills sooner, and attack with a greater speed.

Rangers are the original class of combat finesse on Tempus. (Thief is finesse too, but more tactically than combat) I think this idea still remains of Ranger to the imms, which is why they've never had, and the imms have never seemed receptive to the idea of a brutal offensive skill. Leave the brutality to the brutes. Barbs, Knights, and recently Borgs.

What Rangers really need is to be updated with the same evolution of ideas that is present in the newer classes. They are last decade's model of class. There are plenty of ways to get them up to snuff and keep them a class of combat finesse, rather than just slapping on a brute offence skill."

I think this is an insightful comment which I, and other people, have failed to consider. That is to say, instead of trying to get offensive skills or spells added, maybe the imms would be more receptive to defensive ones.

Nevermore: "Rangers were recently updated… and I'm not talking about the useless call spells. They have been given some nice stuff. Rangers just don't suck anymore and they were definitely not left behind. Rangers definitely attack faster. If you say that a cleric attacks faster, I want what you are smoking. Both of my clerics survive because of dam redux and decent (not great) HP. Its definitely not because they attack fast."

I think the general consensus is that they don't suck, but they're nothing special, either. Next to Monks, for instance, they pale in comparison.

Also, I stand by my observation. Me a gen 10 Ranger/Physic; Dante as a gen10 good Cleric/Psionic; Dante would always hit about 1.25x-1.5x faster than me. I'm sure, though, that without Divine Power, I would have hit faster, but I stand by what I saw.

Merriam: "In regards to the recently added skill, Sidestep, I have been told by two high gen Rangers that sidestep was initially useful, but was weakened shortly after implementation to the point where it misses so much (Pele kick, anyone?) that they recommend I continue to use sweepkick. While mort, I used kick and punch as my main offensive tactics. I kid you not. And I've been to gen 10 and back. Rangers need help, and still do, updates or none (call animal? Please. My call predator gets me a mob with +40 ac and 50 hp at gen 1 level 45. I could remort mage and charm a halfling for more effectiveness).

Are the coders currently pleased with the implementation of the Ranger class?

Merriam"

I can't comment on Sidestep since there's no helpfile on it, I can't even see it in skill list. On the other hand, the part about sweepkick is spot on. Sweepkick is, bar non, the best thing for Rangers to use in combat out of all the skills and spells.

Almost all the other skills and spells are either passive, or you cast once and forget about it until it's time to re-cast. The other portion fall under the "must cast outdoors" condition, and 90% of my time is done indoors.

To kick off this discussion, I would like to suggest a skill that reduces attack rate on the target. Kind of like death touch, except instead of waitstate it just lowers the amount of attacks by the target. Damage would be negligible, like 50 hp. Who needs damage when you got sweepkick!

Correction: The skill name is called sidekick. Sorry about that! Furthermore, call animal has been updated, but still not worth my mana as far as I can tell. It's very, very cool for the roleplay aspect, but falls under the limitation common to every Ranger spell: must be cast outdoors. I tell you, I want to bring the outdoors in. What say ye to that, ye coders and ye mortals?

Counterattack was a good addition to Rangers, but as Jakezor said, attacking fast is not special to Rangers. Any class can get four hits a round, and Ranger definitely doesn't get five in. The point isn't getting in five hits per round, though.

Rangers need help, and as Jakezor said, these need to come in the form of offensive attacks with defensive returns. An example of this type of skill, as he mentioned, is death touch. Trivial damage, substantial negative affects to the enemy.

We also need a remort spell that allows us to use outdoor spells anywhere in game, provided we have this spell activated. I think the spell should cost substantial mana cost to cast or a low duration. Perhaps it could also tick or drain mana away while active instead of having a large casting cost. If this were put in place, call lightning and hailstorm would need to be updated for effective mana cost vs. damage inflicted.

Envenom and elemental branding are interesting concepts, but the mana cost and duration is so low that everybody told me not to practice it. I practiced it anyway, and found out something: they were right. It's just not enough reward for the mana expended.

Jakezor is right. Ranger needs to be revisited and redefined, keeping in mind the role of a Ranger, which may itself need to be defined.

Sincerely,

Merriam

I'd like to throw out an idea for improving rangers, stealing from Pokemon of all places. In that game, there are "spells" called rainy day and sunny day. They each last for 5 rounds of turn based combat. When rainy day is active, water based spells have increased power, and lightning spells have increased accuracy. When sunny day is active, fire based spells have increased power, and lightning based spells have decreased accuracy.

Now, I think we could expand the idea and revamp rangers to give them various elemental spells (in addition to call lightning and hail storm). I guess there could be fire, water, ice, lightning, and plant spells. Then you could have something like sunny day and rainy day as remort spells. So maybe when sunny day is active, the rangers' new fire spell is amplified and he can use plant based spells anywhere. But, water and ice (hail storm) based spells would be decreased and lightning (call lightning) wouldn't work at all.

Now, in addition to these weather change spells being remort spells, I would think they would only be castable outside of battle, cost a LOT of mana, and last for a short duration.

On another note, I still stand by my stance that I don't think critical hits should be a ranger skill. It really makes more sense for this to be a barb or possibly knight skill. And, I would really like to see it as an actual skill that you can train and get better through gen.

Also, this probably shouldn't be in this thread (but I'll put it in anyway), if you're looking for a class that's been left behind, I'd like to say that knight has been seriously left behind. At least rangers have a good bunch of unique skills. Knights, not counting their remort skills), have only 4 unique skills: holytouch, behead, shield mastery, and calm. All their other skills are shared with various other classes.

We may have unique stuff, but that doesn't mean it's useful. I'm not gung-ho about animal kin (no animal aggro) or hailstorm (cast for twice as much mana as a primary ranger for half as much damage as you get from secondary fission blast with half as much mana. Nothing like being ¹⁄₄ as effective with your PRIMARY class than as your weakened secondary).

What you've just suggested to make outdoor spells work inside seems ridiculous. An extremely short duration which lasts five rounds, or at least only a few rounds, and cannot be cast in battle, but must be cast outside of battle, and which costs loads of mana. Sounds like another envenom/elemental branding to me. Cast a 450 mana flag on your weapon to have a little more hitroll for almost one and a half ticks.

No thank you. I need something viable. Rangers need more elemental/nature damage. It's the way I see us, and it's what I think Selene would grant us, by definition.

Merriam

Hmm, maybe since i've never played a ranger i don't totally understand your plight. So if i misunderstand the class or its abilities please let me know.

You complain about your spells not working well or half as good as your second class. Isn't this a bad comparison if your second class is a primary "spell caster"? Isn't ranger a melee class first and formost? If thats the case then why should their spells be more effective than a primary spell casters, even if it is your second class?

Here's what i understand to be the ranger's strengths: -Decent Hitpoints -Ability to dual wield effectively- which possibly gives access to greater damroll, affects, and spell casting weapons -A knockdown move -Critical hits -Good damage reduction -An out of battle healing skill, however minor it is -track and spirit track (i had to borrow a high gen ranger just the other day to help me find a mob so i personally think this one has decent value -triple attack

That seems like a fairly decent list to me! Granted there aren't any of the mob-screwing affects that monks or psions have but i dont really see that as necessay when you take into account the other things the rangers do. Which is why i dont see them needing a deathtouch style skill, how would that jive with what they already have?

It seems to me that every class has upsides and downsides. With Dolza the great weakness is any sort of undead and to some degree low hitpoints. None of my pinches work and none of the psion stuff works either but that's the price i pay for picking those classes. The trade off is that i get good dam redux from both classes to compensate for lower hitpoints.

With rangers it looks to be the difference between inside and outside. Someone mentioned a lack of outdoor higher level zones…what about the heavens and some of hell. From what i remember much of the first couple of levels of hell were outside. From kicking around through heaven recently much of it was outside on the sea or the mountains, even some of the gods live outside there instead of indoors.

I'm not trying to knock people or their ideas, i'm just tring to establish a baseline of what rangers are good at so we can build from there. So looking at what i perceive they're good at here are some suggestions for improvement:

Critical Hits: Does this increase with gen? If not could it? What about a skill that you train as a remort to improved Crits either their frequency or their damage?

Two weapon skills: Two-weapon defense. The trained ranger can use their dual wielding to parry their opponents weapon strikes or turn the weapon of their opponenet lessening the damage done by a strike. This could be a trainiable still thats always active once learned.

Animal Companion: What if instead of summoning a couple of wimpy animals, as the ranger increases in gen his ability to call an animal becomes more powerful. Perhaps good rangers could call beasts from the higher planes, like animals touched by the gods of Lunia. Evil rangers could call beasts filled with the malice and evil of hell. I think this would be best used to call one single powerful entity instead of several mediocre ones. Think of a big gnarly prehistoric bear with brimstone breath, razor sharp claws that leave bleeding wounds, and a diseased bite or a shining silver elephant from the upper heavnes with a sonic attack with his trunk, savage golden tusks, and a trample that shakes the ground.

Elemental spells: I dont even know what these are! However, I'll suggest a couple of things anyway.
Sleet storm: this could be something that doesnt cause much damage at all, however it leaves an icy coating on the ground. This could give a chance for all mobs in the room to fall down when the move around. Due to the rangers long association with the elements and traveling over icy and dangerous ground s/he wouldn't suffer the falling chance.
Hailstorm: large chunks of ice fall from the sky hitting your opponent and possibly causing them to drop their weapon or something held as they try to duck and cover their head.
Could it be possible for a ranger to cast something like sleet storm inside using the moisture that's in the room already? This doesnt help every weather affect but it could bring a little relief to them.

Entangle: What if this scaled with gens too? At first it's just normal entangling vines. Later you could cause thorny growth to spring up and not only hold the opponent but damage them slightly. Finally the most experienced rangers can cause spiked, poisonous plants to grow wrapping up the enemy, stabbing them, and poisoning their blood with mother nature's own natural poisons.

Swarm: What if rangers could summon swarms of biting and stinging insects to attack an enemy? Now, you might think a swarm of bees, spiders, or whatever wouldnt be that bad? Think about this, it might not do a great amt of damage but it would be very difficult for the opponent to concentrate on casting spells, defend themselves, or attack back. Not only that but it would be hard to knock them off since hitting a swarm of bees with an axe doesn't do much damage. A flamestrike on the other hand would be an effective, if painful, way to get rid of them.

Ok, thats all i can think of for now. What are your thoughts? respectfully, Dolza

The thing about Rangers is that close to all their skills and spells aren't directly combat related. Most of them would fall under what I like to call Quality of Life category, meaning that they're helpful in their own way to make playing easier, but when it comes down to killing things, which is how you progress in this game, they don't have a meaningful impact.

Now, it's pretty clear by looking at Rangers that they are not an offensive class. They appear to be more defensive, but even that isn't exactly obvious. Stoneskin and Thornskin are definitely defensive, but at the same time Mages also have prismatic sphere and mana shield on top of 3 good debuffs: slow, curse, and blind.

A lot of people see Rangers as being the best tanks in the game. Like I posted in the previous thread, I always found that odd since a good aligned Cleric/Psi can reach 75% without any special equipment like oedits, and on top of that they can heal themselves better than anybody and have all the great psionic debuffs (clumsy, weakness, and vertigo among others) and with Divine Power they have almost as many health points as a Ranger

So what are Rangers? I remember Azimuth posted that they were roguish in nature. OK, so there's sneak and hide. But the combat skills don't really reflect that. I mean, Pele kick? I'm not feeling it. That's why I suggested the kind of skill in the opening post, instead of relying on brute strength to cut off a limb, or a head, the Ranger would go about slashing at arms and shoulders to reduce the combat effectiveness of his target.

Or, there's the route of elemental magic and communion with nature, which I find equally as compelling. I really liked your ideas in this regard, Dolza.

I was thinking, as far as creature summoning went, that the animals could be broken down into three categories: Tank, attacker, debuff/buffer. The idea is, at some point in the game, you choose which type of animal you would want, and then after that you can only summon that particular animal. At the same time you choose, that animal is bound to you and as you level and gen up, your familiar/pet/whatever levels up with you and unlocks skills and spells at certain levels.

So for example you could choose a bear type creature with high defense and damage reduction, but low damroll; a wolf with high damroll and low defense; and maybe a bird that will debuff your target and give you some buffs at the same time.

Good posts! A follow-up on elemental spells and on call animal spells:

Call animal spells were buffed but I haven't been playing my ranger so I can't comment on effectiveness "in the field." Only some of them were strengthened, and you still must cast outside. This means that in order to fight indoors (there are few viable outdoor zones) I must go outdoors, get my pet, and run inside and fight. If the pet dies, I must find outdoors again and return to the zone after re-summoning my pet. Call animal should call them FROM the outdoors TO you. And I wish I knew what the difference was between the five call spells, cause I don't know whether I want to summon a predator or a rodent. What's the benefit of a rodent over a predator?

Elemental spells right now are hailstorm and call lightning. Hailstorm is basically a really crappy spell that costs too much mana, and call lightning is a weak spell with a low cost. It's kinda like asking a mage to use burning hands to PK somebody. It's just not viable. We need viable elemental spells.

Thanks,

Merriam

Does any other class get medic? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any, but I could be wrong. Anyway, this is why I ask. With Medic comes the implication that rangers have very solid practical medical understanding. They don't use the help of magic or diety, they heal because they know how to heal. With this knowlege comes the knowlege of how to be effective and efficient with every strike. I think it's a safe assumption to let the imagination wander here and say that Rangers have a very sound grasp of anatomy. The anatomy of all sorts of different creatures? Yes, they can medic damn near anything. This is where they're ability to critical strike comes from. A critical strike is a hit to a specifically vital or "critical" area of the body, where increase in damage comes only from the location and precision of the strike. It's not from some freak burst of energy so you hit with twice the force. Yes this should be a practiced and trained skill, coming after or at the same level as medic, imho. Furthermore, there's no reason a ranger shouldn't be able to make what is known as a called shot, to hamper their opponents. Merc's do it already with hamstring, thieves do it already with gouge, monks do it already with pinches, knights do it already with behead.. etc. etc. It's the same principle. Rangers, combined with their medical knowhow, and their target hitting precision in combat (impale), can resonably hit specific areas of their opponents anatomy to dampen them. Do these locations exist? Ofcourse, if a monk can pinch them, they exist. Also as the combat champions of finesse, I still fail to see why the Ranger has yet to develop the ability to parry an attack or two. Maybe even basic fencing techniques such as parry (block) and repost (which is counter strike). I'm honestly not really feeling the whole elemental thing. As Dolza pointed out, Rangers are primarily combat oriented, they suck at spellcasting, and reasonably so. To be a skilled light footed accurate champion of combat finesse, takes alot more time and effort than swinging an edged weapon like a baseball bat at a neck, so I can very much understand they don't have the time for the devotion and study required to really be any good at spellcasting. Unless Rangers start their lives middle-aged anyway. If we really want all this elemental be one with the magical and mystical side of nature hugatree stuff, we should look into a druid class.

About the whole medic thing. I don't really think having the ability to medic means you have a specific understanding of anatomy to justify critical strike. I think the reason that medic only heals a little bit implies the ranger is only bandaging a wound and doing basic things that would help a hurt person out. From the helpfile and related helpfile, I think medic is more related to firstaid/bandage.

In real life, I recently took a CPR/first aid class, where we were taught how to do basic things such as bandaging people, making slings, what to do to help treat burns, frostbite, and how to perform CPR, and rescue breathing. None of these really requires significant understanding of human anatomy, and I think the same applies with medic.

On another subject, about the whole elemental idea that I suggested earlier. When I was talking about the 5 round thing, I was referring to how it worked in pokemon, 5 rounds of turn based combat. In Tempus, I think it'd be more like how long one of the shorter spells lasted, like telekinesis or something. I do feel that it's justified for the spell to cost a lot of mana because it would seem hard to me to control the weather.

Besides, all those things were the details that I wasn't really interested in getting feedback over. It would be the imms who ultimately decided things such as spells costs/duration/inbattle or not. I'm more interested in getting feedback about the idea of having rangers able to alter the weather as a means of making their elemental spells viable and powered up. For instance, making it so that you could cast entangle indoors. Or making it so that call lightning would be as powerful as electric arc.

But I guess like Narc was saying, the bigger issue here is what should rangers be? Should they be more of the elemental sort of class or more of the finesse fighter sort of class? If they're meant to be finesse, then fine. But if that's the way they're meant to be, then I don't think their elemental spells should be upped in anyway. I don't think it's fair that they should be super fighter and super casters. They should be one or the other. If they're finesse fighters, then I think the elemental branding, elemental offensive spells, and entangle/thornskin should more or less stay the way they are.

However, if people would like to see them more elemental based, I'm just suggesting my idea as one way to do it.

Naturally it's a matter of opinion. In my opinion I would say medic is in a whole new league apart from first aid. The healer in Istan (I think?) is a Ranger, and uses medic. And I'm not so sure that medic only heals a little bit, although I can't quote numbers off the top of my head, and I recently froze my morts because some family buisness and moving doesn't allow me to do much in the way of free time. Everybody gets bandage to a degree, and it gives back a couple of hitpoints. Make's sense, slapping on some bandages isn't really much of a healing treatment. First aid is just that, first aid. The minor treatment of minor injuries, but there isn't really any healing involved. When you set a break, or perform cpr, or bandage lacerations, you're not really doing any sort of healing. You're taking care of the immediate problem, not the cause. With your IRL example. What you took was as you stated, a "first aid" course. The things you learned are not the end of treatment, these things are used to stabalize a person who has suffered some kind of trauma, so that they can be transported to a place of healing. To be given specific treatment by knowlegable and skilled physicians. Untill they are properly healed, the problems with them still exist, first aid does not remedy them. This is where I think the leap to medic comes in. Medic takes first aid that step further to healing. Bringing a cure to the cause of the problem. Such as relocating someone's organs after they just got their chest smashed in, reattatching severed apendeges. Sewing up a punctured diaphram. Medic, as I see it, is basically field surgery. This is where the specific medical knowlege is necessary, and anatomy is more than specific medical knowlege, it is a very basic necessary foundation required for medical practice.

I see what you're saying. I was just going strictly by the help file, which says "This skill allows a Ranger to bandage his/her own wounds and may also be performed on others." It says, "See also: BANDAGE, FIRST AID".

And the firstaid help file says, "Those skilled in the ability to apply first aid can efficiently bandage up their wounds or the wounds of others."

But I do see your point. There's no way to know what they were thinking. It could be either or.

I have played ranger. Rangers are a very neat and interesting class. Personally I think they have many helpful abilities in battle and out of battle. I agree with Dolza's post. Each and every class has its ups and down. Some have more ups then others but also have weaknesses. However I can also see Merriam's points. Using elemental branding would be alot more useful if the duration lasted longer. The mana required to cast it is to high of a cost for the benefit. A think a negative effect could be added such as only being able to elemental brand certain materials such as wood, stone, or anything that is a nautral material of the earth. I also would like to see more elemental spells added. Rangers should not get have a powermove but being able to stand in battle is a most for its defenation.

I love the idea of swarms of insects, and I love the idea of entagle and other skills that improve with gen. Even so, if only one change was implemented I would like to see sidekick a ranger only skill with some changes. It currently is useless because you can only learn it after learning sweepkick. Sweepkick has no negative effect when missed. Sidekick, when missed you fall upon the ground with a small waitstate. Sidekick does more more damage then sweepkick. Why not have sidekick be more powerful then sweepkick. Rangers would need to learn both kicks because your gonna want a knockdown early with sweepkick and then later learn a more powerful kick with sidekick. I would only agree with falling to the ground when a sidekick is missed if it would do more damage and knock down the target for a longer ammount of time. It could work almost like a hiptoss. This alone would make the rangter a more unique class and it would make sence. In the help file it says sidekick is a powerful kick into the side of your target. This sidekick could knock the target off balance, sometimes effecting the next few rounds of there dexterity, and knocking them down doing a small ammount of damage, but more then sweepkick.

I think something to also keep into consideration is that Rangers are not really spellcasters. If more spells are added then, I believe, the class will be shoved into some sort of Ranger/Druid limbo and lose whatever identity it had in the first place. Even though there is no Druid class, I believe the distinction would be Rangers::Knights as Druids::Clerics.

If I am a fast and cunning warrior, similar to the mercenary of the future, make me so. If I am a druid, make me so. But right now I am just a flesh shield who is bored in combat. Hence why I have not played my Ranger.

Merriam

I just wanted to revisit what might be seen as a misconception about critical hits.

For the sake of argument, let's say that critical hits appear every 20th attack, and do double damage for that particular attack. I'm not entirely sure if those numbers are correct, but that sounds right to me. So with those numbers, we're looking at a whopping increase of 5% in damage.

If two characters are side by side and one of them is a ranger, and they both do 1000 damage in 20 hits, the ranger will do 1050 damage.

Here are some more ideas I thought I would throw out.

Feint: Requires dual wield. Perform an obvious feint with one weapon, and then slash/pierce/sting/blast/zap the arms of your target. Does -str

Ambush: Surprise your target by attacking them when they least expect it! Does -dex and maybe a hitroll penalty?

Here's a thought I had, what if Rangers could shapeshift? For example they could shapeshift into a bear with a damroll, hitroll, and attack rate penalty, but have some damage reduction, an hp boost, and some extra AC. Or, they shift into a wolf form with an AC and damage reduction penalty, but get a bonus to attack rate, damroll, and hitroll.

cough straight out of World of Warcraft cough

H8r

zerbert

About the shape shifting idea, I actually posted something related to this in my skills/spells ideas thread. I thought it'd be a cool idea if out of the rangers various summons, he could choose 1 as a familiar that would level up (maybe gen up?) as the ranger leveled with him.

When the familiar died, the ranger could resummon it. Anyway, I thought it'd be a good idea to combine this with an animal meld remort spell in which the ranger is about to meld with their familiar and have increased stats and stuff.

I think it's a really cool idea, but I admit it would take a hella lotta coding to do.

I demand that rangers get stun and backstab and pris sphere and behead and nopain and hamstring and summon and manashield. Then we'll finally be a balanced class.

…what?

^^^ Great contribution to the thread.

Dont forget hiptoss Acid!

Rangers are too overpowered anyway, they like get to use two weapons. I mean monks don't even get one. What's up with that?

-Acid, two weapons? comon get real.

Rangers are a good class. I'm not all up on changing them completly or giving them any type of attack that would do as much damage as other classes power moves. However there are some things that do not make sense what so ever. Only two classes get a skill called sidekick. This skill is learned after sweepkick. Now lets compare the two. sweepkick knocks down the target, it does not miss very often inless your fighting a mob that seepkick does not work on. There are alot of those. However when you miss there is no real penality. Sidekick does the same damage as sweepkick, is learned after sweepkick, when you miss sidekick you fall to the ground as if you tried to bash the target. To me sidekick should do more damage then sweepkick, and to miss and fall is fine if there is pluses in using it. Barbarian's know what I'm talking bout becuase they get it too.

As far as a skill to use your combined weapons, I am all for that. It should not do alot of damage but would make a rangers battles less boring. Would give you a reason to use a differant skill other then sweepkick and umm, sweepkick. A bonus to this is you wouldnt be knocking the target down allowing them to hit you back and cuase damage at the same time your hurting there attributes. Makes sense.

I've never played ranger. Not primary, not secodary, never. Everything I'm about to say is pure speculation. With that said, here I go.

Rangers seem fine to me. The complaints I seem to hear about ranger are that they don't have enough offensive moves besides sweepkick, and that they have no power move. Here's what I think about that.

What's needed besides sweepkick? Hiptoss? If you want spells, go secondary phyz or something. The only thing I ever use as a knight is lunge punch and that works just fine for me.

Powermoves aren't as wonderful as they seem. The only reason I use behead in combat is to keep my pets from stealing my kills. I do almost as much damage in attacks while the mob is on the ground from a lunge punch, and I don't get the nasty wait states after it. Only time it's really useful is in arena.

So what don't rangers have? They don't attack as fast or hard as monks, but they've got way more hp. They don't have a skill like hamstring or the damroll/implant bonuses of mercs or borgs, but they get monster damage redux. Any issues with a lack of versatility can be solved by remorting something like phyz or psi.

Again, I haven't played ranger at all, but it seems like a pretty solid class to me.

I've played Ranger. Here me roar.

I like the ideas floating around about combat finesse for Rangers. We aren't Monks and bare fisted. We aren't Knights with hack and slash. We aren't Barbs with brute force to cleave you in two. We're no mages, or psis, or phys's.

We're all about getting our most damage in while we kick the fools to the ground. I think that since dual wield requires a weapon that is in less weight than your primary, that rangers should focus their skill on utilizing their skill with the smaller weapon. Maybe get a hitroll bonus, or get a weapon_speed bonus.

I was thinking something like: Dual-Parry: Usage of two weapons. Increase in chance of deflecting an attack made on the Ranger.

Small Weapon Finess: When dual wielding, which requires a smaller weapon, focus skill on getting faster attacks or more hitroll.

I'm not all into the whole "druid" idea of shapeshifting and other stuff. I do like the post about revamping Elemental Branding. Changing it about certain properites needed to cast the spell. Wood, stone, stuff like that.

I mailed Nothing about how Branding sucks in how long it lasts. Didn't get that good of a response. It costs huge amounts of mana, doesn't last long, and you have to cast it multiple times for the effect you're going for.

Elemental branding costs 155 mana, Attract costs 40. I can cast attract at least 4 times to equal out getting all the effects on the weapon. Attraction also lasts much longer.

Anyway, I want to start toward a trend of a knowledge battle veterarn ranger class. That knows how to fight, rather than just kill.

-Tanin Majere

For what it's worth. In my experience in playing Tempus the best defence is a good offence. It is true that Rangers get a good amount of hitpoints and in later gens are able to generate good damage reduction through stoneskin and thornskin. Rangers do have a very good defence, however, their offence suffers which results in rangers not dropping their opponents quickly and so they take a heavier beating than many other classes.

Now I really can't say if Rangers are where they should be or are not quite up to snuff. The shortcomins of the Ranger is pretty easily taken care of with the right remort class. Medic is costly but there are deep greens aswell as endurance or capactiance boost if you go psi or phys. They also have their own spell refresh which isn't too costly, but Rangers get crap for mana. However again, this shortcoming is easily accomidated with psidrain or energy conversion. Also with phys comes alot more ac and the addition of electro statc to add to the Ranger's defence. Whereas with psi you have great damage reduction aswell as psifucks and psiblast. IF Ranger is suffering at the moment it's not by much really. Perhaps an observation might be that psi or phy are really the only two good remort choices due to Ranger's shortcomings, maybe that might point to a problem with Ranger.

If Rangers do need help however it's in their offence. Critical Hit is cool but I'm not convinced it helps all that much. Ranger does have a knockdown but so does damn near everybody. That bit about sidekick as stated above actually does make sense. However, I don't recommend barking up that tree as the only change I would see happening is the skill level positions of the two getting switched. Elemental branding doesn't really appear to be all that effective at increasing offence either. Second weapon is also nice but from what I can tell, rate of attack isn't increased to a point that I can tell from the front side. It's main purpose to me is more hit and damroll than I can get with a shield or something held. Being that I don't think Rangers need alot of help my skill suggestions keeping with the theme of a fighter of finesse are perhaps different fighting styles to chose from similar to what borg has. These fighting styles would work hand-in-hand with second weapon, and only take effect when a second weapon is wielded. An aggresive fighting style would simply increase the Ranger's rate of attack. A defensive style would somewhat negatively impact rate of attack because the ranger would be giving some attention to parrying attacks. The other idea is a 1st gen skill, ambidexterity perhaps, that would allow the Ranger to wield a heavier second weapon than is currently allowed. Either by allowing weapons to be the same weight up to something higher than 6, or maybe the second weapon only needing to be 75% the weight of the primary rather than 50%. This would simply open up some more options in the second weapon slot for maybe a more deadly weapon. Or, the other option it opens up is allowing a lighter weapon in the primary wield position to increase rate of attack. Either of these combat styles or second weapon changes would not be giving Rangers additional "tools" with which to do damage, but rather making them simply more effective round-to-round fighters than they are now.

Dual wield never made sense. Why can you dual wield a 30 lb weapon and a 15 lb weapon, but not a 10 lb weapon and a 9 lb weapon? I know it's because of the weight difference, but it just doesn't make sense that you can wield ³⁰⁄₁₅ but not ¹⁰⁄₉, or ¹⁰⁄₈, or ¹⁰⁄₇.

I think its something to do with balance of the two weapons. You can't be wielding two swords that weight 30 lbs and 29 lbs. Thats just weird. It's about the style of fighting with two weapons, one big and one small. Haven't you seen any movies?! They never come after you with two huge swords!

Dual Parry would be badass though :P

It'd be compairable to the Shield Mastery of Knights. Or Uncanny dodge for thieves, or tumble for Bard's.

-Tanin

So I was reading the description of Rangers under help and I came across this:

"The Ranger pays homage to Selene, the goddess of the Moon and the Wild."

Moon eh? So why not a spell called Moon Fire. Only castable outside, and during the night.

What would the effects be? Something akin to Elemental Branding? Maybe faster attacks or something? Comparable to Beserk?

Attack spell? Flame strike in comparison?

Any other ideas?

-Tanin

ps, something for Wild part of the desc would be cool too.

Sounds like a pretty good idea. It doesn't seem like rangers have any moon-related skills or spells in their arsenal. I don't think it would work too well as an attack spell, but I like the idea of a berserk kind of spell. Something that added various degrees of hitroll depending on the state of the moon (nothing with a new moon, lots during a full moon) would be kind of cool. I think it would work best not as a spell, but as an inherent skill. Just when the ranger walks outside and the moon happens to be out, he gets an automatic 10 hitroll on a full moon.

Ohh, I like that idea. Comparing it to the Evil Clerics. Nice! Only bad thing about it is the whole "outside" thing. I think it should just be affected by the moon phase in general, regardless of inside or out. Com'n! Screw this outside crap!

-Tanin Majere

About the whole outside inside thing. I think the basic problem there is confusion about the spirit of the idea. I'd say a cave in the middle of a forested area is "technically" inside. But seriously, it's just as much widlerness as outside of the cave. Unfortunatly it still needs to be flagged inside or you get other outside stuff that doesnt' make sense. I'd like to see a change from the outside/inside thing to civilization/not civilization. Or something similar.

I wholeheartedly agree that inside/outside would be better as civilization/uncivilized or something like that in consideration of rangers. I think it would be a nightmare for the builders though. Sticking a civilized/uncivilized flag on each room would be ridiculous. Maybe it could be done where a zone is flagged one way or another. This, of course, brings up the problem of zones with both civilized and uncivilized areas, for example a park in a city. In general, though, I think it could be done.

It's no different than the current inside/outside thing. Consider modrian. All the streets are outside, all the shops and whatnot are inside. But what would keep a Ranger from using entangle if he happens to be in a greenhouse full of life? That's certainly inside, and certainly also civilized. While I mossy cave would be inside but uncivilized. But what about a desert or a Tundra that's devoid of anything. That's very much outside but there's also nothing to use for entanglement. It's all symantics really, and I have no talent with words. My point is simply that the Ranger shouldn't have some of his tools available to him based simply on being indoors or outdoors as it is now. I would like to see a specific room flag for the Ranger so the builder can consider logically in each room, 'Does it make sense that a Ranger can _____ here or not'.

The problem I see with a lot of people is that you're examining Rangers when paired up with another class. That's all well and good, but you have to consider what the Ranger class brings to the table as well.

Rangers have some good general use abilities, and then two awesome spells and it kind of stops there. None of their abilities give them any kind of real role. Mages are obviously high damage spellcasters, Clerics fills the healer/support role, monks do high melee damage and some debuff, Psionics are buff/debuff, etc.

I honestly can't think of any role a Ranger might fit. Mediocre damage both melee and spell, mediocre HP, mediocre buffs and debuffs. The only good aspect about Rangers is there defense which comes in the form of Stoneskin and Thornskin

Ranger is exactly and meant to be exactly as you describe. It's not that these other classes have a role, it's that these other classes have a specilization. (good) Clerics are specialized healers, they're good at that, and are lacking in other areas. Most classes are like this. Ranger, on the other hand, is the blended averaged out class. Ranger is the jack of all trades and the master of none. That's exactly what the class is intended to be. So rather than strong this and weak that, they're medeocre everything. This suits some people, it doesn't suit others. Ranger is often looked at as a defensive class, one of the reasons for this is Ranger is one of the few, if not the only class without a true achilles heel. Many of the ranger skills and abilities are in place to leave the Ranger without a throbbing vulnerability. All Ranger really needs is a boost in their offence. Pick the right remort class, play the character right, and you're going to be lethal.

I agree with Narcissus. I think knights fall into the same general category. We aren't really great at anything, but we don't have any glaring weaknesses. In fact, I think rangers have much more of a role, being defensive tanks, than knights, which have nothing. Stoneskin, thornskin, sweekpick, and high hp make rangers pretty awesome at tanking. What more do you need?

No, Narcissus, that's not accurate. Rangers are supposed to be roguish, that's why they have sneak and hide. The problem is that none of their abilities and spells reflect this. I've been pushing for adding a skill that does a small amount of damage but with a debuff attached to it, something that wasn't dependant on being outdoors or not.

There's a reason that everybody that's played ranger past gen 5 thinks that the class is needing something. It's unfair to require players to rely on their secondary class to be effective.

I would venture to say calling the Ranger Roguish based on having sneak and hide skills is a stretch. The Ranger is a warrior like the Knight and the Barbarian. The Ranger is a woodsman and traditionally a loner. Sneaking, hiding, and tracking are basic hunting skills, be it for food or other agendas. All the other attributes of being a Rogue the Ranger does not posess. They do not use slight of hand, trickery, or blatant exploitation of temporary opportunity. (Backstabbing the stunned guy) Probably the most obvious contrast between a Ranger and a Rogue is that a Ranger can take a hit and doesn't try very hard not to get hit. The Rogue can't take a hit and must form his strategy around this, doing all the Rogue can to avoid getting hit as much as possible.

The Ranger can be compared to the Rogue in some ways yes, but can just as easily be compared similarly to the Knight, to the Barbarian, to the Cleric, and even to the Mage.

The Mercenary is the fighter that is most like the Rogue.

The Ranger, by the way, does not need a remort class. The Ranger has alot to gain with just a little more offence, but it's hardly necessary.

There are many classes on Tempus that gain more from their remort classes if a proper, complimenting class is chosen than the Ranger ever could from it's.

It's not a stretch, I'm using Azimuth's view of the Ranger. I can't remember if he posted it on these boards or the one older one that was using YABB forum software.