Hello, Ranger Veteran’s passive is quite flawed/inconsistent. I’m not saying he is bad or isn’t viable in fact he can be a powerhouse in DWONS due to the abundance of specials (Survivalist caches) and the grudge-raker along with a couple other things, but his passive is inconsistent across difficulties and has some apparent flaws.
Survivalist caches are reliant on special spawns, the amount of specials per level varies depending on difficulty, map, twitch mode, weave number, mods etc. There’s too much that affects the scaling of his passive. Pouches also drop where the special dies, potentially out of reach/bounds.
Base Survivalist cache ammunition is a little too low. Too put it into perspective, on Cataclysm Against the grain special count is equivalent to one special every 15 seconds or 4 specials a minute. 40% ammunition every minute, spread across potentially 3 or 4 players. Bounty Hunter can generate roughly 33.3% to 40% ammunition every minute just for himself. Base 10% Survivalist Cache is spread too thin considering other players will take them.
Share and Share alike remedies the above problem of players taking ammunition, you get rewarded for being a team player, taking a pouch yourself provides 20% ammunition. This talent isn’t bad but rather feels like a band-aid fix for an inherent flaw with the passive.
Scavenger is a too inconsistent, left up to a 20% chance for a bomb or potion, if it doesn’t drop then you’re left with 10% ammunition. If it does drop, ammunition % per minute is lowered due to the fact it’s one or the other.
For some odd reason, Survivalist caches round down instead of up. e.g 10% handgun ammunition = 1.8 ammunition, you’ll pick up 1 ammo instead of the more reasonable 2 ammo.
Throwing axes have 0 synergy with caches, whilst throwing axes have infinite ammo, it feels like a missed opportunity and a shame Ranger Veteran can’t make use of his own passive by picking this weapon.
Ingenious Improvisation is also inconsistent, dupes are too rare to count on, simply increasing the number wont fix this issue as it’s still left to chance.
One more thing to point out is how could RV be tweaked to better align with Fatshark’s envision of Ranger Veteran:
“RV is intended to be a very jack of all trades career. Being the only career that can take the load off the ammo consumption of the team while still having both a formidable ranged presence aswell as melee killing/controlling power.”
He currently takes the load off ammo consumption and he has somewhat a ranged presence but not so much melee presence, a jack of all trades career is a far stretch.
I wholeheartedly agree with ypur point that RV is not a jack-of-all-trades at all. His melee is simply not good enough to justify clalling him that.
He’s close though. An effective (and maybe a little lazy but who cares) buff he needs is 125HP (he’s a Dwarf for crying out loud!) and have his underpowered melee weapons buffed a little. Axe and such. Then he’s pretty much balanced out. For comparison: Waystalker has no melee talents at all, but is still a lot better at it because of superior weapon options. Same goes for Bounty Hunter. Those are more jack-of-all-trades than RV, even though they’re top tier at shooting as well… worthy of The Book, that is… grmbl grmbl
His issue is his passive is badly designed and needs a rework, like @James mentioned
This is his biggest issue, only a passive rework would be preffered, i’ve seen @James rework ideas and they are very good, but i’ll let him propose them when he is content with them.
Definitely true. Sword&dagger is a REALLY strong melee weapon, with high speed, innate +10% crit, good dodge, average blocking, decent cleave and can deal with both hordes and elites with the push heavy combo while also having great monster damage. It’s a jack of all trades while also kind of just being good at everything too. And this is without mentioning DD’s (which take more skill to use).
In comparison, dwarf has pickaxe (hot garbage), greathammer (solid, average weapon), axe&shield (a shield weapon), greataxe (literally just worse than greathammer), 1h axe (below average and doesn’t synergize with RV AT ALL because no tHP), hamme&shield (lol), dual hammers (the one strong weapon he has, and it’s still a bit worse than s&d) and 1h hammer (really average). Did I miss anything?
Dwarf, out of all the characters, has overall the weakest melee weapons. Most notably, dwarf doesn’t have a single good cleave weapon like executioner, greatsword or even something like dual swords.
RV was better before 2.0. He lost his THP talent, the bomb/potion talent was combined for an overall nerf, and he doesn’t have anything to really make up for being so squishy. He’s glass but without the cannon. His support is weak as well - ammo is nice but not game changing, same with pots/bombs, and the passive having a 10% chance to double up healing is a 90% chance to have been better off with any other class.
New passive: Instead of chance to dupe healing, make it 100% to clear wounds from allies with no healing, or have a 100% chance to grant THP to allies. Something like that.
That’s the issue, his ammo is literally game changing. It sucks on low difficulties but it’s super strong on higher ones. The healing passive tweak wouldn’t fix his current issues. The bomb dupe talent is strong
The issue there is lack of life. The fact that he have a “game changing ammo” is kinda what define him, like shade have a “game changing boss dps”. It’s okay as it is. In recruit you have less specials therefore less ammo, but you also need less ammo against specials so it balances itself.
Currently, he’s kinda good at “supporting”, but very bad at “carrying”. So if the team does well. It helps. If the team does bad, he won’t really change the game. It’s kinda okay, not all careers needs to do this. But a less heavy cd and bit more life could certainly help him.
Sure on recruit he gets less ammo, but there are less things to shoot. The problem is that on higher difficulties, cata or twitch or cata+ there are so many specials there is so much ammo for the entire party, which makes every career able to spam (cata depending on ranged wep) It’s weak on lower difficulties but super strong on higher ones or gamemodes with lots of specials. With the reload cdr talent and his infinite ammo your cooldown isn’t even 2 minutes and you basically have fast ults because you can keep spamming and get cdr. Rv can do super good dps on higher difficulties and basically carry as a dps. But yes he is squishy but i would rather make his passives more consistent accros difficulties then just add hp.