WARNING - This thread isn’t made for new players or those that seek guidance on how to use said class, please look for proper threads regarding it such as class overviews and build guides. Design Breakdown is a design discussion thread only and has no purpose to help players on practical aspects of the game.
Starting another Design Breakdown with a recently updated class that rose on popularity recently, this is no other than Ranger. In case this is your first time on a Design Breakdown topic go to this link for some basic information.
Ranger - RANK 2 - ATTACK
“Rangers specialize in fighting against multiple enemies with their quick and long-range attacks.”
This is actually a good description on the class, it explain the identity and even has a catch on it. Last breakdown was Highlander and it was supposed have this same identity so some may question if this would be acceptable. As they don’t share the same tree and their base gameplay is different it shouldn’t be a problem at all as some skills can’t be executed on each other limitations, one thing swordsmen can’t do is a skill that targets a single enemy and uses it as a device for extra damage.
Ranger’s theme is at an archetype level which means it carries a lot of traits from other archer fantasies and has few restrictions on what is out of their range. It’s likely that it originated from forest rangers as they’re usually associated to nature and the main difference of a regular archer and a ranger can lie on the environment and tactics employed on such, another possibility may be related to elves on RPGs as they do live in forest and are known as skilled archers and that may be the how they adapted it to humans that have similar combat skills. For this breakdown i won’t take anything else than a more skilled archer as nothing else will help on the analysis.
Barrage (B) - Counter Lead
A straight barrage shot that hits a wide area, by having each arrow to be released individually opens a window for enemies to dodge if the user has low DEX yet that also adds sense of realism to it.
It feels like this was supposed to be the Lead skill but it only offers damage on a special hitbox, not that those aren’t good but Barrage has some room for extra improvement. Having it to be casted from close range in cone offers some risk on the execution for extra damage as multiple hitboxes can hit the same target, it isn’t clear if the skill uses AAR or targeting to track enemies but it seems like each arrow can hit only one unless the target dies which will make the arrow hit the next one. The knockback attribute works as a way to make the skill hit different enemies and also make it safer to use at close range, it’s a great option to have when using it.
The way Barrage is executed makes it feel like the natural progression is to have it firing more arrows however due the placement it may be troublesome to have 15+ arrows being shot. It’s a shame tho as it would allow Ranger to have a skill that allow it to burst at close range and hit several enemies from afar and even more than one time per cast, it also makes other skills attractive as it would be highly affected by attack speed due the additional shots. For that to work Barrage has to be promoted to c2 at least and that can hurt the first circle as it is one of the core skills, the other way to do it is by having additional half arrow per level but that kind of scaling isn’t good for new players to get into and can also be deceiving on tooltip.
High Anchoring (A) - Lead
An arrow that pushes a crowd of enemies back from raw strength, it’s exaggerated from how powerful a bow can be but as we deal with fantasy it is acceptable. This skill used to have a casting time, which is an useful mechanic to sell powerful physical blows, but as it wasn’t practical it is long gone, even tho having it uninterruptible could be enough to address the problem.
High Anchoring makes good use of overscaling as AAR effectiveness is based on enemy size, this means each 3 levels can vary from 3 to 1 extra enemy. This feature is further explored with the continuous fire attribute but it just gives Ranger a gimmick instead of improving the skills themselves. It could be nice to have some more damage per level here as everything else is on spot.
Critical Shot (D) - Relief
Before going into the skill itself we must understand what critical is in RPG games and why it’s so important to archers. When developing the first RPGs with classes, and that includes tabletop RPG, some problems came up and one of them was to deal with how to hit enemies. The solution for it was to use numbers, as stats, and probability, with dies, which results into two states as either hit or miss, however that doesn’t connect with real life as some hits can be deadly and for that they added a new component to the mechanic, critical. As archers may have more opportunities to aim in combat they embraced it and since then they had walked together, that can also be related to the fact they could distribute their points differently as they had the range advantage but we can’t be sure on which one was the defining factor, and that’s how Critical Shot came to be.
Critical Shot is a skill that dwells on a delicate territory, whenever it has 100% critical rate it defeats the purpose of the mechanic yet it needs it to keep the name (which isn’t a reason to) as it’s expected to always hit critical, it cannot work as a buff either as it will boost Ranger to be out of charts as a low rank class with hard access to the stat. The critical attack boost component was added recently and doesn’t really help it as it only requires the skill to land in order to take the buff and leveling the skill has no effect on it, this means that anyone with it at level 1 can get the bonus with a pointless stacking minigame that can be achieved easily on the first unload, and that promoted it from an skippable skill to a single point one.
Going straight to the point, Critical Shot can easily be removed as it doesn’t provide anything special aside the new gimmick it has, the real challenge is to make it engaging, fair and interesting to level when other within the same class skills can do it better. Having the buff to last longer when leveled or even applying all stacks when killing the target can help with that but it may not be enough to make it relevant, personally i’d make it as a casting skill with high skill factor.
Steady Aim (C) - Complement
To aim sturdy is to make shots more precise and that is known since people started to study how to better use bows, this gives consistency to archers as they can have a fixed point to aim within a larger target and hit it more often.
As any % based skill it suffers from being lackluster early and really impactul later on, having no floor also contributes for it and diminishes the skill viability on lower levels, and as a rank 2 skill it’s hard for it to keep a good balance between being relevant and how much power it can provide, and the additional damage can easily be ignored as it is too low and doesn’t scale with any stat. The new two attributes added to it for c2 and c3 are cheap ways to improve Ranger and keep c1 at the same power level, this kind of design works more as a restrain than as an expansion on the later circle power as the buff doesn’t have downtime anymore, and taking in consideration that higher circles already can level skills further it only widens the already present gap.
Steady Aim is a great skill yet it doesn’t explore the most of its theme as it goes for the obvious route with bonus damage, as much as having better aim increases the lethality it would be more effective regarding accuracy and it’s guaranteed that having it with critical rate would swing the archer balance in a blink. A more interesting approach is to have it as a variance reductor making damage more consistent as weapons have minimal and maximal attack, it can be as simple as increase the minimal PAtk capped with the maximum counterpart. Sniper’s Serenity already does that but it’s limited to rifles only and also isn’t the most exciting skill to have at c3, having Steady Aim to take its spot can help with gem diversity as red gems on weapon don’t seem to be popular for other archer classes. Now even that all said it doesn’t mean the skill itself is bad aside for the lack of floor, however the current nature can make it an issue later on.
A pretty solid circle that does what it promises and that’s actually something unusual to see on a breakdown, even Barrage and High Anchoring having the same crowd fighting aspect their mechanics address it in different ways. The first one has potential to be used as a burst skill at close range and is limited to 5 enemies at mid to long range if it doesn’t kill them, meanwhile the second can is more consistent on damage and targeting with the possibility of being further expanded with additional AAR.
Barrage have room for improvement yet it isn’t really needed as its design granted it some natural depth, the only skill that is under the line is Critical Shot but it still has some minimal value and that compromises point distribution as it is outperformed by all c1 skills. Steady Aim can be a dangerous skill as it deals with raw % consistent damage bonus and is introduced quite early in game, it does require some more commitment to be significant yet it affect most of archer skills in a long duration buff.
Time Bomb Arrow (C) - High Lead
One advantage bows have over other ranged weapons is that they have things attached to arrows, explosives seems like a good choice for combat but they don’t seem to fit Ranger as much.
Time Bomb Arrow has two issues, the first one is that it doesn’t explode immediately and the second one is that it will deal damage at impact which will make it harder to use against multiple enemies, it also doesn’t inform what happens if the target dies on the first impact as we can expect it either to explode right up or to be ignored as no one has the debuff. One huge miss is how the skill doesn’t inform how targeting is done for the explosion, it’s assumed to be AAR but it would be nice to have it written down. The new attribute tries to expand the time element of it but it only makes it more troublesome to use but that may be a personal issue with it.
It may be better to have the damage improved and make explode on impact to simplify the skill and have the current effect as an attribute instead, else it can at least add an attribute that disables the first hit and allow players to use the skill without generating aggro. Having it moved to c1, possibly switched with Barrage, isn’t a bad idea either.
Few things added to it, Steady Aim gets significantly better with the new attribute and Time Bomb Arrow doesn’t disappoint even being tricky to use. One thing to point out here is how the new skill still goes under the class identity and doesn’t blend with Barrage or High Anchoring. As it needs a target to be used it can infiltrate the enemy lines and damage them from afar, this isn’t possible with both c1 skills as their targeting system takes enemies closest to user.
Bounce Shot (B) - Grand Lead
Having projectiles to be split is something exclusive to firearms as arrows can’t keep a predictable trajectory as they vibrate and aren’t dense enough for their size, it’s far from what can be done but can be ignored as it serves the identity.
Bounce Shot overscale isn’t needed as it only delays its functionality on lower levels and it may be either skipped or maxed, it would be a complete different story if it had fixed damage factor or divided damage per targets as those increase with more levels.
Spiral Arrow (B) - Relief
Taking arrow vibration again it could be possible for it to rotate and even have more lethality power, even if that isn’t the case it’s still within the acceptable.
Spiral Arrow is quite straight forward and it’s a decent offensive skill especially now that ignores 20% of enemy Def and it also has a stacking debuff that increases the number of hits up to a total of 11, those elements make it effective against bosses but not as useful against regular mobs. Having that along the skill makes it overscale and that isn’t really needed with armor bypass.
This last rank comes with an issue. Both new skills are strong and solid but they share the same goals with lower circle skills and can easily replace them. Spiral Arrow is powerful single target skill and can outperform Critical Shot on that regard, it also comes with a critical attribute and is more visually more impressive, and as such could be a great replacement as it’s almost impossible to make it engaging and fair.
Bounce Shot uses the same aiming as Time Bomb Arrow to hit enemies near the target but with an instantaneous effect, it’s also easier to understand the how many enemies will be hit as it says straight up that has increasing targets. That can be solved by having some base AAR to Time Bomb Arrow, as we assume it uses it, and get it into the expandable group.
Aside that the continuous fire attribute of High Anchoring seems pointless as all ranger skills have low cooldown and the highest one isn’t affected by it, the only skill that is really benefits from it is Spiral Arrow due the stacking mechanic, which doesn’t make sense unless we imagine all following classes will only provide stat buffs.
Conclusion
Ranger is so far the best designed class covered in Design Breakdown, it isn’t flawless as some skills aren’t as useful but at least doesn’t have any dead skill. The only issue with it is skill distribution as the last circle introduces skills with similar purposes and Steady Aim seems to be mandatory in all circles.
| C 1 | C 2 | C 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | A | A | B |
| Theme | A | B | A |
| Gameplay | B | C | C |
| Cohesion | A | B | B |
| Point Distribution | E | C | D |
| Dropout | C | B | A |
And that’s how we end the first happy design breakdown, if this you weren’t disappointed drop a like to show your appreciation for this series, if you don’t agree with something feel free to give your opinion on the matter as well. For the next week we’ll have Sadhu and after that a rank 8 class that may be obvious at this point. As usual drop a comment to get the discussion going or just hit the like if you don’t have much to say (that also applies to replies), i’ll also let another poll here for future reference.
Should Design Breakdown expand to other elements other than classes? (ex: Cards, Elemental and Physical Properties, Companions, Weapons, Instances, etc)
- Yes
- Depending on subject
- Not yet
- No
0 voters
, a low class rank monster killer archer would be great, there are not that many.