Feldon One of the unique characteristics of the Ranger mythical bow Eagle’s Talon is that it allowed the user to do ranged auto-attacks at point blank range (zero meters distance).
Once a ranger has completed the Epic Repercussions quests, they are awarded an enervated version of Eagle’s Talon with all of the special effects stripped off, and then zero-concentration spells are added to their Knowledge book to get all those unique effects on whatever bow they decide to use. The issue is that those persistent buffs do not grant the ability to use other bows at point blank (0m) range.
Fyreflyte has given some unexpected response on the subject of rangers always being able to use their bows from point blank range:
I feel rangers ought to be encouraged to deal their damage at range. I don’t plan on releasing any more bows with a min range of 0. Standard longbows have a minimum range of 2, which is close enough to use your CAs, so at present there is no benefit to 0 range except that it makes your positioning slightly more convenient.
The issue with having no 0m range bow is that some epic mobs are so gigantic, and their “hit boxes” are so large, that a ranger must back out 20-30 meters to get to a range where both melee and ranged combat arts are usable.
Flyreflyte continued with:
We’ve been discussing this internally, and have some good ideas for it. We’ve been holding off on touching this, however, until we can get a good idea of where everyone’s at after the stat changes and consolidation. Just to quell any suspicions, the ideas all focus on providing an incentive to attack from range, rather than a penalty for using the current melee range methods.
A ranger usually stands at 5 meters so that all of their ranged and melee attacks are available. A ranger that uses only ranged attacks is losing up to 40% of their DPS. It’s usually only done if the mob has a particularly nasty Area of Effect (AoE) attack. We’re not sure how this change will work. Although as he said it’s in the planning stages, not set in stone.
I have noticed with this expansion, that they are moving back to more traditional ideals of which classes should use which types of weapons and in what manner they should be used. Caring where a ranger stands ideologically, pushing certain weapons to certain class types with the Stat set ups etc.. Now this has always been true to some extent, but as with the example here,” providing an incentive to attack from range”. Why. heheh I mean what is the endgame of making a ranger move farther back or forward, game wise. Why reduce a players choices, on an issue of aesthetic ideology. Now I am a swashy and I notice the same with weapon drops now, in general. I guess I just mean that Gnome SK’s, Swashies with huge axes etc are the spice of game life, so why would you spend time limiting choices.
Aren’t most swashies running around with an item or AA that extends their melee weapon range to be similar to that of a short bow anyway? 🙂