Hunters, Pets, and procs.

jelzinga_EU wrote: ↑

Tue 29 Jan 2019 5:09 PM

Cadebrennus wrote: ↑

Tue 29 Jan 2019 11:14 AM

jelzinga_EU wrote: ↑

Tue 29 Jan 2019 6:37 AM

While the pet has its uses, I would not be surprised that on Phoenix the DPS of a pet is negative (!) in a lot of fights. It procs defensive procs (heal/ablative) on the enemy. You also ignore the PF damage-add., which doesn't proc defensive procs on enemies. You also ignore that CD reduces evade by 25% where 2H doesn't.

A pet controlling a ranged fight.. Yeah if a hunter could summon the pet on top of his enemy. In a typical scenario on Phoenix with the pet being slower than sprint it means (almost) nothing in a realistic scenario.

There's all sort of little quirks you do not mention and somehow they all are not in the favor of the hunter-class. The only thing the hunter-class has going for it is the fact you can have an endgame-spec at RR1. And even that means the sense of class/spec-progression isn't really there so I'm uncertain if that is an advantage...

The difference is that I was omitting equally. You are not and that is disingenuous. If you're going to bring up the dual wield penalty to block/evade, then you should also bring up the 2hand penalty to parry. If you are going to bring up the dog's triggering of armor procs (which attacks slower than melee, but attacks 100% of the time as opposed to a max of 69% of the time at 50 CD @rr5) then you need to bring up the fact that 2h does as much damage as Celtic Dual with 59% of the reactive procs that Celtic Dual fires off. The only tool that Scouts and Rangers have vs a Caster at range (since you brought them up) is to use a charge then Rapid Fire and hope the Caster's quickcast is down. A Hunter can use the same tactic and have a pet on the Caster by the time both sides have reset the ranged fight. When it comes to Archer vs Archer a Scout can engage, but that's it. A Hunter however can completely shut down another Archer while still having access to his bow. A Scout (as mentioned previously) can use his shield but then he doesn't have his bow out. A Ranger however has neither option. The PF damage add while nice, is far from game breaking or even great. It's okay and that's about it. Above 36 (2nd highest damage add) PF is too cost prohibitive to be useful. There's a lot of talk in the Ranger community (myself included) about whether PF is worth speccing at all.

Regarding melee damage Rangers do not do slightly less damage than Hunters. It is nearly equal and can go either way depending on RNG. What allows Hunters to pull away and above Ranger melee damage is the pet which (yes it has been tested) does as much damage as a slow offhand Blades weapon per hit. Now, the pet attacks slower than a typical melee swing which sucks, but considering the pet attacks 100% of the time and 50 CD swings 69% of the time at RR5 it more than likely evens out damage wise comparing single offhand hits to Hunter pets. In effect the Hunter is swinging a 2hander AND an unstyled offhand (aka the pet) and you can see where the Hunter has a significant melee damage advantage as long as the pet is out.

It is important to know what is going on with other realms and other classes otherwise your statements just look myopic and misinformed. If this is intentional then it's an even bigger disservice to the players who read these forums to gain knowledge about the games and classes.

I think it is safe to say we agree to disagree: Stuff like saying an offhand procs defensives is OK, but you conveniently forget that it can also proc an offensive proc, a hunter-pet can not. A hunter's pet is blue-con at best and due to level-differences it's hit-rate is lowered by a lot (don't know % at the top of my head, but its missing you as much as a lvl 40 mob, so there is that. The "signifcant" melee-damage melts as ice in the sun the moment you consider defenses because the whole debate parry vs evade: By far the most common enemies have evade and no parry (or minor, at best). Halving parry against people who have a typical parry-spec isn't that important, as assassins, other archers and minstrels (your most common enemies) do not parry. Furthermore, I'm uncertain if the parry being halved is even in-game here. Saying Spear is equal to CD means nothing if you don't compare spec-points (where rangers have a disadvantage due to 5 lines vs 4 but an advantage in speccing potential) but my guts says CD > Spear (which is fine, assuming you generally spend more points on it) and the Phoenix-pet is almost a non-factor (no Frenzy, no snare, no disease, no offensive procs).

The ranged advantage you keep describing about locking down enemies is one, but not happening all that often. In an archer stand-off range is king, guess what the hunter has the lowest... yup range. Another factor is frontload (e.g. opening with Critical Shot). Guess what hunters have the lowest.. yup crit-dmg potential (due to recurve bows being faster). Against casters you can use the pet, very true. That is, assuming you open from mid-range as the run-speed of the pet on Phoenix is atrocious.

Not speccing PF as a ranger is something you can discuss but in the end there is no way you can get a better melee-performance with PF simply because it has an offensive (dmg-add) and defensive (spec-AF) benefit which can never be gained by speccing higher Blades/CD. Perhaps you can get a bit more bow and that might be worth it to some.

TL;DR : Hunter is the best hybrid at low RR. At any RR a ranger is the better archer *or* the better melee'er. At very high RR a ranger might be a formidable hybrid too - but on a hunter that is generally better, agreed.

It's obvious that we disagree, but there are some key points you are forgetting:

1) anyone whose blue pet is being blocked/parried/evaded sucks at using their pet and it's on them. It's easy to position your pet on the other side of an attacker if you know how to lead your opponent in a fight. At this point only light tanks should be able to dodge once in a while.

2) Critshot has so many requirements for success that it's almost a non-factor in the difference between classes, especially considering the low bow specs that Archers, and especially Rangers, are using now.

3) Bow speed (ties into 2 above.) Sure they have faster bows. However keep in mind to effectively Rapid Fire a Scout and a Ranger have to bow swap to a 4.0 speed bow anyways to hit cap speed of 1.5. Aside from Critshot ( which as mentioned above, doesn't get to be used a whole lot) a 4.0 speed bow does as much.... wait for it.... DAMAGE PER SECOND as a 5.4 or other bow. In fact, without even looking at Quickness or haste, (let's assume 0 in both) a faster bow will, for example, get off 4 shots in 16 seconds while the 5.4 bow will only get off 3 shots in the same amount of time. That's more real damage.

4) range is a non-factor. There is exactly a 200 unit difference in range between a Scout and a Hunter. There is a 100 unit difference between a Ranger and a Hunter. Go in-game and try these commands out:
/groundset 200
/groundset 100
There. That's it. That's the difference between the classes so stop bringing it up.

5) spec points - it's a lot easier to spec a Scout or Hunter with the spec points and their lines vs a Ranger and their line. Period.

6) PF - according to a lot of Rangers who are already 50 and RvR'ing, not as useful as you make it out to be. Positive point? More points for other lines making it easier to spec like Hunters and Scouts in point 5 above. Downside? The only thing that makes Rangers unique is apparently weak and ineffective.

7) most common enemies and their abilities - this is a problem with players who do nothing but hump the milegates and fight other Stealthers. That's their damn problem that their target list only consisted of the same type (stealthers) and didn't attack other targets other than the odd caster running solo that they could stealth zerg. Do you know what targets I chose during beta? All of them. Didn't matter if it was a plate-wearing large-shield-bearing tank or a caster in his bathrobe, I attacked them all. Otherwise how are you going to know your capabilities? One thing I can tell you is that even with having my own habits and style of play I still had to rework things and switch it up. I also ran with as many different group configurations as possible, stealth and Visi (mostly Visi), in order to try out new tactics and playstyles. If a stealther player finds themselves stuck in a pigeonhole then it's a pigeonhole of their own making and they have only themselves to blame.