Initial Ranger reactions to 11.2

[shoju]

I pulled the cobwebs off the ranger, and decided I would give 11.2 a try as a ranger. I wanted to see:

1.) Was evasion better, or would I still backtrack to Iron Reflexes.
2.) How is the new starting area?
3.) Is the style of play better?

Well, I haven't played much. I have about 90 minutes in so far. But, I can tell you this: I haven't died. And, it's not because I haven't tried.

My Current Build I spent 30-45 minutes going over the build, and trying to figure out how much I could get at 52 (I leveled to 53 last night). I figured this would be a good place to go tart from, and it would give me a chance to toy around with some of the new / redesigned points.

Now, I'm only planning this build until 70. I figure by 70, I should have killed merc piety, and that means I should have all the "extra" skill points I'm going to end up with. This, is where I think I will end up Assuming that Evasion holds true to my initial findings.

And that is, that the change to evasion and accuracy on monsters, coupled with making the early evasion nodes more attractive by attaching a small life % to them, makes the class feel better. I have more evasion % than I did before. I cleared out the docks and leveled. It felt pretty easy. So I went back to Lunaris via my WP, and went in, and decided since I had just leveled, I should see just how well I can hold up.

Now, currently, I use 2 Life, and 3 mana flasks. I haven't incorporated the Granite I got from MonTy in yet, as I want to see how these changes would work out. I don't use a quicksilver flask, because I'm currently moving at 25% increased speed, with no penalty from gear (love that node)

I rounded up 10, 12, and once even 14 mobs. I dropped Proj Weakness, my LA totem, and proceeded to RoA them down. It got a little hairy at times, I wont lie. But I never got below 400HP. My mind never even said: "I need to run"

Now, I am tempering my initial joy with the fact that I'm unsure how that is going to hold up in the long term. One of my overarching problems with gear in the game, is that unless you have a "god piece" of gear, you just don't upgrade it very fast.

This Is my current gear. it's not "terrible" for now, but I'm worried about my ability to upgrade it, and if Evasion will continue to hold out once the upgrades are slower.

So I guess, after 90 minutes, in A3 Cruel, I'm going to say:

1.) Evasion, seems better, at least in the short term. I will update my feelings as I go along, and hit Piety Cruel, and then Merciless.

2.) The new starting area of the tree feels REALLY good. The Mana Regen Node is a noticeable QOL Improvement. If I'm not topped off after fighting some stuff, I'm not worried about having to pot before I get to another fight.

My HP dropped a little, but that's because I'm not as invested into life nodes yet. I lost ~200 HP, but gained ~16% Evasion. I'm not sure that's a "great" trade off, but the increase in evasion has been noticeable.

My DPS has increased. Same gear, more DPS. And I'm pretty sure I have the same amount of offensive options chosen. Though, I am noticing, that with my current gear, Burning Arrow is a REALLY Attractive option at times. Once I'm stacked on Frenzy, I can swap to BA, and pick off a few stragglers to conserve a little mana (not much, ~10 per cast), and only lose ~50dps. Which isn't much when picking off a few stragglers here and there.

Before the patch, my full stacked Frenzy DPS was ~950. Now, my full stacked Frenzy DPS is 1080. That's not bad, and on some fights, it's actually noticeable. Kole for example, felt much easier to take down.

3.) This was an improvement in the play of the ranger. 100% positive. While I'm not sure that it will be enough, I think from a passive tree POV, this fixed an awful lot.

I will continue to update my Opinion as I play more.