Lets talk about Armour, Energy Shield, and Evasion.

Disclaimer: I'm mainly a HC player and the following concerns are going to reflect that.

So I've played a Witch and a Ranger to 25+ now, and it seems to me that Energy Shield is just vastly superior to Evasion when it really matters (I have no experience with Armour so I don't know how that compares).

Here's the problem.

When you get critted by one of the many enemies capable of dishing out massive crits as a Witch you get a big dent in your shield, after which you can scurry off to safety and recharge.

When you get critted by one of the many enemies capable of dishing out massive crits as a Ranger you get a big dent in your HP pool, after which you will probably die.

With the Ranger I was running into problems as early as Act 2 on normal that I never experienced as a Witch simply because the shield is always on and always helpful.

Now obviously, Evasion can't be always on, but the fact that it isn't means that it is useless when it really matters. Most people don't die by continuously taking sustained damage; they die when they get surprised by massive crits. This hits Rangers especially hard since they rely solely on Evasion in virtue of being the only pure Dex class.

Fortunately I think there's a pretty simple solution: the Ranger just needs more HP to compensate for the lack of Armour and Energy Shield (consider how much higher the effective HP of a Witch is compared to a Ranger of a similar level).

Granted, things might change as you get higher level, but at least there are talents to increase shield capacity. The poor, poor Ranger on the other hand only gets talents to increase Evasion, which doesn't really help to rectify the problem.

I've resorted to stacking a good deal of energy shield on my ranger. I had like a 66% chance to evade at one point and was still hurting so much so I had to kite seemingly unnecessarily where other classes can rely on their own tricks to mitigate damage.

It's true that a ranger with only evasion for defence is the least survivable character type, for precisely the reasons you mentioned.

While 50% evasion and 50% damage reduction will average out to the same amount of long-term damage, a hit that takes 50% of a damage reduction character's life will outright kill the evader.

I only see it as being a problem as long as there are enemies in the game that can one-shot you.

As long as you can survive one hit, you're no worse off with evasion compared to DR.

Having at least one fast-acting life flask (bubbling, catalysed, seething) is essential at higher levels

I wouldn't say you're no worse off... the ranger is always worse off, as there's a MUCH smaller buffer once you get hit. Failing a dodge 2-3 times in a row is very possible, and is deadly to a ranger but to nobody else.

I had these same concerns over in alpha, and I possibly brought them up in the thread about marauders and their 75% DR + elemental resist + huge hp = invincible.

It's too easy to close the gap on rangers (physical ranged distance,) and imo you cannot give them more hp, because more hp simply mimics the ES mechanic.

So at the end of the day, some creativity will have to be inserted into the game to make the Ranger a more viable long term class imo... There have to be other mechanics involved, or the average evasion rate for pure rangers needs to go up.

I meant purely in terms of evasion vs DR, not in terms of marauder vs ranger.

A marauder with endurance charges has spent a lot of points getting those endurance charges - a typical ranger with frenzy charges gets extra damage output instead of defence. Rangers are definitely the glass cannon class.

I agree the ranger needs some extra defensive options.

But I stand by my statement that evasion is no worse than DR as long as you don't get one-shot.

I'd extend the concept of 1 shot to '1 damage encounter'. Where the encounter is defined as the time between when you first get hit and when you've achieved safety either by physical distance or flask.

Given those parameters, Rangers are still much worse off. Statistically it should come out the same damage over time, but the chunkiness of the Ranger's system means that the discrete statistic should kill Rangers much more often... since consecutive hits N resulting in a death during 1 damage encounter will always be fewer in the case of the Ranger.

I think you're under estimating the active ability called kiting.
I'm only level 9 at the moment on my ranger but I feel that I've had zero issues trying to stay alive.
I simply do the scoot and shoot method and make sure I always have room to back away from mobs.
There's obviously some enemy's that have ranged ability but they 'should' be doing less damage then melee type damage.

Kiting is definitely viable, but it requires a lot of space that isn't always available.

It's also very easy to close the distance on a ranger, because of the limited view distance.

A marauder could also kite using ground slam...

I think you'll find that at higher difficulties ranged damage is serious damage... no joke, it hurts.

"

Drb00 wrote:

I'm only level 9 at the moment on my ranger but I feel that I've had zero issues trying to stay alive.

You've had no issues with this because you're only level 9. I don't mean to be rude but you really need to experience the higher difficulties before you can accurately comment on this issue. The first difficulty is very easy. Even in Cruel, it's not uncommon for an average zombie to be able to kill a ranger in one hit. You can imagine what something like a rock monster or a rare monster is capable of.

Zeto is right. Even if a hit doesn't kill you outright, it'll probably drop you to about 10% of your hp at which point the next hit will kill you.

I'm playing a melee ranger at the moment and even with a shield the only reason the build is viable is because of the skill Viper Strike. It allows you to kill most enemies in one or two hits and a lot of running away. I don't mind the overall fragility because I find the challenge rewarding but the prevalence of one-hit kills is just not fun because there's no player skill involved in staying alive. As a Ranger, dying is a statistical certainty and nothing you as a player can do can truly escape that fact. No other class has this problem.

"

tpapp157 wrote:

"

Drb00 wrote:

I'm only level 9 at the moment on my ranger but I feel that I've had zero issues trying to stay alive.

You've had no issues with this because you're only level 9. I don't mean to be rude but you really need to experience the higher difficulties before you can accurately comment on this issue. The first difficulty is very easy. Even in Cruel, it's not uncommon for an average zombie to be able to kill a ranger in one hit. You can imagine what something like a rock monster or a rare monster is capable of.

Zeto is right. Even if a hit doesn't kill you outright, it'll probably drop you to about 10% of your hp at which point the next hit will kill you.

I'm playing a melee ranger at the moment and even with a shield the only reason the build is viable is because of the skill Viper Strike. It allows you to kill most enemies in one or two hits and a lot of running away. I don't mind the overall fragility because I find the challenge rewarding but the prevalence of one-hit kills is just not fun because there's no player skill involved in staying alive. As a Ranger, dying is a statistical certainty and nothing you as a player can do can truly escape that fact. No other class has this problem.

No offense taken, I know I'm only level 9 and that's why I clearly stated that.
I'm not sure why you'd want to go melee with a "Ranger" the name alone says that you should be using "ranged" weapons to kill stuff.
Is kiting stuff really not a viable option at higher levels? Do the mobs get faster? or is there something I'm missing here? Since I've been able to kite pretty much everything, with the exception of a few monsters.