General Discussion

In this week's Feedback Friday feature on the Tabula Rasa community site, the folks at NCsoft give us a peek at upcoming changes to the Ranger and the Spy.

This week we share some of the upcoming changes to the Ranger and Spy classes in 1.7. Keep in mind that some of these changes are still in progress and are subject to be being tweaked or reworked before they reach PTS. You may question why Spy and Sniper are being addressed in 1.6 and 1.7. The Classes and Combat Team felt the Spy and Sniper classes were focused on TSR and Blades. Their abilities did not provide them with the tools they needed to play their class effectively. While they had huge damage numbers on their weapons, that was all they had. Our goal now is to allow the player the option to use these newly tweaked abilities in addition to their main weapons to create a more interactive, well rounded combat dynamic. They will soon be better equipped to setup more affective shots, mitigate incoming damage, and escape otherwise certain death.

Polarity Field was swapped with Magnesium Flash and then Mag Flash was enhanced to become Tactical Evasion. Tactical Evasion was placed on the Ranger tier as lack of survivability is a problem that all Rangers share. Tactical Evasion is meant to assist in solving this problem.

Ranger:
Equipment: Stealth armor will now reduce the wearer’s radar signature in PvP duels. The distance that a player will show up will change depending on how many skill points they place in the skill and how many pieces of Stealth armor they are wearing.

Abilities:
Fire Support: This ability will replace Carpet Bombing and will now be a mixture between the area of effect damage that Carpet Bombing had and a single target, stunning Ion Strike. Rank 5 will also have a wall of fire that crafty Rangers can use in a number of situations. The reason Carpet Bombing is being replaced is to offer players more choices and a better skill. Since the higher ranks of Carpet Bombing had such limited use, the Classes and Combat team felt this skill should be reworked.

Read more here.

Welcome changes.

I wish they'd do something about the thrax "knock back" for melee classes, at lvl 35ish it can be detrimental when coming up against groups of mobs.

Also alot of the spy skills are rarely used, would be nice to see more utility.

thank god. all i ever used was rage and my blade. polymorph sometimes too. not much else. it's nice they're adding variety to a previously one-dimensional class.

Tao Illwind, Leader of Vooshwraang Clan, Orion Server

Do you think a) more ppl play those classes and b) that's why they targeted those classes with the changes?

Have they Made Bows avalible yet? That was one of the things I really wanted to see.

Exo, Medic, Grenadier? Oh wait... spies, spies and more Jedi... er spies. Typical.

Heh, they're nerfing Blade damage to encourage people to use crappy skills that still sound pretty crappy even after these changes? Man, I'm glad I steered clear of this game after such a disappointing and frustrating beta.

They still don't know what they're doing, do they? Oh well, hope Lord British enjoys LARP'ing it up on his trip to space.