Life buffs [and spectral throw] make early game easier

With all the buffs to life (base life and passive nodes), it seems like the early game is a bit ez-mode. This is fine for new players and is only really an issue in normal act 1/2, but I'm wondering if this will make races a bit boring.

[EDIT: This thread became a discussion about ranger racing times, and how spectral throw is really powerful for racing.]

Those life buffs barely affect early racing. It's only ~6 more life per life node early game.

There are even some racers taking their first life node at level 13.

If anything some classes got nerfed to make racing extremely hard for them.

What's a ranger supposed to now? Cleave is useless and Bows are a huge gamble. There is no consistency for ranger at all. I guess you will have to mule spectral throw? Not really sure.

Also, I talked about this with Janimauk yesterday, the increased mana cost for auras means that you cannot possibly run an aura with a bow, so any bow build got nerfed unbelievably hard in the early game.

Descent will be extremely difficult for rangers without the ability to run an aura and outside of descent rangers will have to probably mule spectral throw (or something like that), because bow and cleave ranger is alot worse than pre-patch.

Level 13 is still pretty early in a race. I'm thinking it will make Brutus (lvl 9/10) a bit easier, merveil a decent amount easier, and Sins/bandits/etc considerably less risky.

-----------
Agreed about cleave making the 'best race strategy' less obvious, especially for ranger. Maybe they'll make spectral throw an early ranger option? Or maybe you'll just have to hold out until melee splash. In any case, nerfing cleave is good for racing overall IMO.

I disagree with your 'bows can't run auras' claim though. I don't see why it's any easier for melee ranger than bow ranger, RoA isn't that much more mana intensive. Just grab hatred and use a higher phys dmg, lower aspd bow. Don't forget the phys rolls on bows can be better now, so if you're lucky then bows have it made.

"

dudiobugtron wrote:

Level 13 is still pretty early in a race. I'm thinking it will make Brutus (lvl 9/10) a bit easier, merveil a decent amount easier, and Sins/bandits/etc considerably less risky.

-----------
Agreed about cleave making the 'best race strategy' less obvious, especially for ranger. Maybe they'll make spectral throw an early ranger option? Or maybe you'll just have to hold out until melee splash. In any case, nerfing cleave is good for racing overall IMO.

I disagree with your 'bows can't run auras' claim though. I don't see why it's any easier for melee ranger than bow ranger, RoA isn't that much more mana intensive. Just grab hatred and use a higher phys dmg, lower aspd bow. Don't forget the phys rolls on bows can be better now, so if you're lucky then bows have it made.

No running an aura with a bow was already difficult pre-patch, now it is actually impossible. Why? Simple. RoA costs more money than melee skills and with a short bow you attack significantly faster. It is simply impossible to sustain the mana, bow ranger wasn't viable in solo races in the past and it won't be viable in the future (even less so actually). A luck-based stat roll doesn't make up for a 30% more expensive aura, what matters the most in races is consistency. Bow ranger simply isn't consistent.

GGG did nothing to address the severe early game issues with bows (lack of upgrades, mana cost) that everyone who raced as ranger in the past complained about.

This has been discussed ad nauseam, but one of the biggest problems with ranger is the simple fact that from lvl 5 (short bow) you don't really get an upgrade until you hit lvl 15 (compositie bow), simply because long bows are so slow, any dual ele dmg short bow will do more damage than a dual ele dmg long bow.

Also the amount of absolutely useless stats you can roll on bows is only paralleled by the amount of absolutely useless stats you can roll on wands.

I agree with your overall sentiment that bows are too luck-based to be reliable; there just isn't enough chance for a good one to drop.

However, I disagree with your arguments where you just ignored all the things I said. :P
Especially, the bit about how the new phys rolls available for bow might mean you actually get a good alternative to an ele short bow. A dual phys or phys+ele roll long bow with hatred may well out-dps a dual ele short-bow with wrath.

"

dudiobugtron wrote:

I agree with your overall sentiment that bows are too luck-based to be reliable; there just isn't enough chance for a good one to drop.

However, I disagree with your arguments where you just ignored all the things I said. :P
Especially, the bit about how the new phys rolls available for bow might mean you actually get a good alternative to an ele short bow. A dual phys or phys+ele roll long bow with hatred may well out-dps a dual ele short-bow with wrath.

Yeah it might, but you won't consistently get it in a race and all that matters in a race is consistency, if you want to do well consistently you can't rely on rolling good gear.

I've rolled roughly 40 bows since the release of 1.0 and about 2-3 of them had ok rolls. (that is with alchs,chances and chaos which you often times don't even get in races)

You are playing the odds as bow ranger, which is never a good thing to do if your plan is to do well in races consistently.

You need to run a build that is in a sense "bulletproof", in other words a build that still works with terrible gear... bow ranger doesn't, hell bow ranger couldn't even keep up with other builds pre-patch if you got decent gear, the only way for bow ranger to keep up (pre and post patch) is amazing RNG, which is a statistical anomaly.

The reason I dismissed your argument offhand is simple... it's a pointless argument. I, quite frankly, don't give a shit that there is some outlying possibility for it to be "good" if you have absolutely amazing RNG, because that will never be a criteria by which we judge viable race builds.

For the same reason you don't go to a casino and play 20 blind all-ins in a row... because you just know that it is statistically very unlikely for such a strategy to be succesful, the risk simply outweighs the potential benefit... same is true for bow ranger.. no difference.

"

Also, I talked about this with Janimauk yesterday, the increased mana cost for auras means that you cannot possibly run an aura with a bow, so any bow build got nerfed unbelievably hard in the early game.

You can but that means you must use slow bows and rely on high ed rolls.

PrePatch bowusers relied on elerolls and fast bows.
The issue now is that you need to create big crowds mob mobs now and this may result in desnyc and problematic search for exp areas especially on A3 races.

City of Sarn has too many slow mobs.
Pools and Streams is too low.
Slums has a bad design and the vipers won't follow you.
Crematorium isn't resetable and open
Now you are already in level 28 zones. Warehouses would work in theory but those annoying wagons prevent effective crowding. Also discharge will be really dangerous and the Ranger isn't a known tankclass.
Marketplace is a good area.
The next area working for crowing is Battlefront but you have to reach at last level 25 and the usual vaal level is 21-23.

Outside of Turbo races where crowding slow mobs becomes easier the ranger will be slower.



I agree that rangers get heavily hit by changes.
When LA was a level 2 gem it was the most powerful gem for racing, then it got nerfed because nobody leveled it over level 5 due to immense mana costs.
Ice Arrow just sucked.
Bow rangers switched to PA and FT shadow did the same->FT+PA nerf and legacy Silver Branch

Now hatred heavily reduces mana making it impossible to sustain mana on fast 2-3linked skills.

"

Level 13 is still pretty early in a race. I'm thinking it will make Brutus (lvl 9/10) a bit easier, merveil a decent amount easier, and Sins/bandits/etc considerably less risky.

Brutus already is a shadow compared to the CB brutus with hook.
The CB Turbo brutus was so strong that he killed 50% for the race population because 1 smash did around 40-50% damage compared to 30% now.

Mervs only danger are the swings. 1 Coral 1 saph does the best job.
Bandits aren't a problem at all and Sins only needs resist.
If you don't have any resists those 30 more HP compared to prepatch will do nothing if you run into a dead end with -40 light and you hit.

What really matters during races is killspeed.

"

Maybe they'll make spectral throw an early ranger option? Or maybe you'll just have to hold out until melee splash. In any case, nerfing cleave is good for racing overall IMO.

Na spectral throw without support gems is a poor starter skill, especially in caves it will be just eaten by walls.
Interesting gems for ST aren't available in races.
Knockback for example can only be acquired by flasks. A heavy knockback build surely could result in many hits in combination with FP.

Some mechanics are still questionable but they could be effective on some classes.
Power Charge on Crit in combination with many hits will instantly result in 3 powercharges because PoE has poor crit rolling mechanics.

"

You need to run a build that is in a sense "bulletproof", in other words a build that still works with terrible gear... bow ranger doesn't, hell bow ranger couldn't even keep up with other builds pre-patch if you got decent gear, the only way for bow ranger to keep up (pre and post patch) is amazing RNG, which is a statistical anomaly.

You know as good as everybody that the "bulletproof" builds relied on less reduced AoE damage, higher attackspeed and powerful duallinks. The chance become to become #1 as witch was zero in Soloraces.
Now cleave got weaker but I would have wished they would also have fixed the LeapSlam AS+MS travel issue, so duelists get the around same travelspeed as marauders or their damage gets heavily nerfed so the need 2 leaps to kill a pack of monkeys for example instead of 1.

"

RoA costs more money than melee skills and with a short bow you attack significantly faster.

Report RoA to support@grindinggear.com

Life increases will smooth out spike damage, nothing wrong with that. If racing feels too easy, youre probably not progressing nearly fast enough.

Wrath often cost half my mana globe anyway, so the switch to % cost shouldnt have much effect overall. Looks like it got a large damage increase as well. Hatred also might not be terrible now with its improved damage % and the new damage affix tiers on bows amd 2handers.

"

SlixSC wrote:

The reason I dismissed your argument offhand is simple... it's a pointless argument. I, quite frankly, don't give a shit that there is some outlying possibility for it to be "good" if you have absolutely amazing RNG, because that will never be a criteria by which we judge viable race builds.

You said that bows were too reliant on luck, and also now couldn't run auras.

I said I agreed that bows were too reliant on luck, but said that bow users can run auras, and in fact will benefit more from them.

You said that they can't run auras because they're too reliant on luck.

I said that this makes no sense.

You are now trying to convince me that my argument made no sense because bows are too reliant on luck.