Un peu passé inaperçu car non posté dans le forum des Reports :
(feedback en italique - il faut juste que le vbcode soit pas désactivé...)
Hunter report (11/24/2003, DAOC v1.66)
Overview
Hunters are a class that has no easily identifiable niche in RvR or PvE. Unlike traditional "hybrids" which are effectively still a melee classes, the Hunter is a class whose two primary roles (stealther and ranged dmg dealer) are more effectively done by other classes (casters deal two to three times more damage per second than a Hunter, and assassins are better fighters and less detectable). In PvE, Hunters do not offer anything necessary to the group since their tank-like damage comes without the survivability of a tank, thus it is always better to have a tank instead of a Hunter.
Concerns
Hunters are unable to perform against assassins. I ran a battery of tests with a Hunter fighting a non-optimized Infiltrator. In all areas, I have superior realm ranks, stats, resists, and equipment. In the case where I opened with True Sight and shot the Infiltrator three times, I lost 8 out of 12 times. In the case where we both opened up in melee with no special abilities used, I lost 11 out of 15 times. The reason there is that little of a difference between my "best case scenario" and a "neutral scenario" is Evade 7. The difference in dmg output is significant, but not as drastic as the large difference between dmg avoidance (this includes ensuring the pet reduces his Evade 7). Summaries of the tests are available for test 1 and for test 2.
Start a TL forum discussion on this and work with MythicChris to try and duplicate this test. The tests we've run internally in the exact same situation have resulted in very different results.
Hunters perform poorly against casters. Rapid fire does not allow ignoring of interruptions akin to QuickCast. Any caster is able to regain the intiative and suppress a Hunter from firing if they respond promptly. In addition, the DPS of a casted spell is literally 2 or 3 times that of a bow, given casters the preferred role of ranged dmg dealer. A Hunter is limited by the absorb and AF of the target, and thus his bow is capable of dealing ~200 dmg to plate all the way up to the cap of ~450 dmg per arrow to cloth wearers when heavily buffed with a 3 second delay. A caster's DD is capable of dealing 500+ dmg to 26% resists with a 1 second delay when buffed with dex/acuity. Because casters can deal damage out so quickly, the pet is not able to reach the caster before the Hunter dies or is mezzed/stunned multiple times per summon. The pet can only be commanded to attack within 1500 range, which is equal to caster DD nuke range. Mezzing/rooting a pet delivers too little of a time advantage to the Hunter since casters cast far faster than Hunters can fire.
We need to find a way to make the pet play a more significant role for hunters. If we cannot, then we need to come up with something else. Hunters have always been balanced based on the assumption that they had a usable pet that is effective in many situations. I think we can all agree that the pet isn't as effective as it should be.
Hunters lack a group role. Stealth in RvR has very little use for a Hunter due to assassin Detect Hidden, See Hidden, and the extremely small chance a Hunter can defeat an assassin (even with the advantage of True Sight). Thus, Hunters cannot "scout" and are restricted to roaming with groups of visible players for protection. For general gank groups, Hunters deal less damage than casters, and do not have CC spells such as root/mez/stun. For keep sieges, Volley hits only 5 random targets max, and thus does not do as much aggregate damage as a good GTAE spell into the middle of a keep. In PvE, a Hunter does not provde a group benefit. A Hunter can deal out the dmg of a tank, but without the benefits of blocking/parrying damage and with the limitations of ammunition, making them less useful than a tank. Their abilities at pulling are slower than shouts, and not as useful as mez/root pulling for the exp bonus of grouping monsters.
Not all classes can provide a benefit to a group. If a class that can solo well in PvE and solo with some effectiveness in RvR also provided great bonus to a group, then why would anyone ever play a support class? We need to keep the trade offs in mind. People who play healers, or bards, or aug clerics/mind sorcs etc, bring a lot of benefit to a group in exchange for being very group dependant.
We can look at increasing the groupability of all classes in the game, but only if we protect the groupability of support classes who rely almost exclusively on being grouped.
Specline Issues
Beastcraft. The ability to buff the Hunter's pet is largely unused due to the casting time. While the pet can be summoned with a shout, the Hunter normally does not have time to buff it due to the casting time. Due to the prevalence of buff bots, the pet is typically the only benefit given by Beastcraft. There is very little in this spec line that is not superceded by Augmentation buffs from a Healer/Shaman.
These are good points. If we are going to assume hunter pets need to be insta-cast to be an effective part of the hunter arsenal, we need to assume those pets will not be buffed. One possible dynamic here would be to have insta-cast pets come pre-buffed. As part of this, we'd also need to reward the hunteress who puts in the preparation time to charm and buff a pet by making those pets even tougher.
In light of situation with buffs, we need to do a review of all the self-buffs in the game to either make sure they provide benefit that cannot be received elsewhere, or that the classes who rely on these are not balanced on the assumption that these buffs provide greater value then they currently do.
Spear. The Hunter has only one melee skill line unlike all other rogue/hybrid classes who have at least weapon + shield or weapon + dual-wield, etc. Because of diminishing returns, the Hunter does not deal out as much damage and receive as many useful styles by concentrating in his only weapon spec, as would other classes by spreading them out. The Spear does too little damage to compete with rogues who can dual wield, since the dual-wielding skills were deliberately made to outdamage 2H weapons by a large margin to help light tanks vs. pure tanks. The defensive penalties on the spear are compounding the problem with lower Evade 2.
Make sure you keep us honest regarding spear in the style review. We also need to try and make sword a somewhat viable option for hunters.(although spear should remain the better choice).
Composite Bow. Hunters have the shortest range and the fastest bows, making them the weakest archers for attempting critical shot an enemy. The addition of Rapid Fire has made the "advantage" of a faster selection of bows totally useless. The damage of Volley is directly tied into how slow a bow one is wielding, the slower the bow the greater dmg Volley can deal out. Volley is dealing out too little damage with the bows available to Hunters.
I'll look into this with the item folks.
Stealth. Assassins are the largest segment of active RvR characters in the entire game once you account for buff bots. The huge numbers of assassins RvR'ing makes stealth ineffective for Hunters due to See Hidden and Detect Hidden, and the poor combat abilities of a Hunter vs. an assassin even in the best of situations. Due to this situation game-wide, there is very little benefit to stealth since it cannot be used to "scout".
As I think I mentioned before, an assassin should have the advantage against an archer if the assassin gets the drop on the archer.(and they often will) On the other hand, if an archer gets a drop on the assassin and is able to start attacking at range, that assassin should be in big trouble. We need to identify the situations where this dynamic is not working, and we need to fix it.
Other Issues
Spear style animations. Hunters are one of the most visually unappealing classes in the game to watch because there is only one spear animation for the entire style line, and it is pretty simplistic. In addition, the "unique" look of a Hunter is largely duplicated across the game due to the artifact spears for all realms, but without the animations of the other realms. In terms of visual appeal, Hunters are one of the worst classes since they only one animation, and they share visual features with all other classes now. The technical issues with "hook points" for glowing particle effects also make glowy spears rare.
Noted for the art teams. Also, bring this up in the style review as well, since that will be a good time to try and get some new style animations.
Item problems
Legendary bows. Legendary bows do not deal elemental damage like melee weapons, which is the primary purpose and advantage of an elemental weapon. In addition, the DD proc has a shorter range than maximum archery range. Hunters need to be able to stand off their targets at maximum range to avoid the 1500 range spells from casters, so the proc is largely unused. The legendary bows are also too fast, they are not as good as a PC bow when attempting to critical shot a target.
I'll check with the item folks on this.
Artifact selection. Spears were the unique weapon of choice for Hunters and Heroes. However, with Trials of Atlantis, the spears are now freely available to most classes who can wield slash or thrust weapons. Hunters are unable to activate or effectively wield non-spear weapon artifacts.
The number of artifacts available to each class in the game should more or less be equal. Start a TL thread on this so we can explore any possible inequities.
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