7:42 is a far cry from “insanely good” in lieu of other builds getting two minutes (or more) less than that.
The problem with ranged archtype in GD is lack of player ability to keep that range. Due to player move speed cap, mobility skills CD restrictions,creep immunity to all CC effects and every mob running around with charge skills the range advantage of GD gunslingers last for few seconds. As results “ranged” builds are indistinguishable from melee builds in playstyle.
Unless the core of the problem is deal with all you guys can offer is powercreep. Ranged suck? MOAR dmg. Not enough AoE? MOAR AoE dmg. creeps hits hard? Free armor for everyone in the most convinient way. Creeps still hit hard? Moar ADCTH.
Such “balancing” will end at everyone becaming casters that hit whole screen in AoE, leech full live in instant and don`t move around too much. Oh wait i just described a generic meta build from AoM release and it just get worse in FG. And its getting worse every patch.
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This is true. The increased player mobility and enemy movespeed negated a lot of the feeling of being ranged you get earlier in the game. But without the enemy speed increase you’d be able to kite them forever.
Weaker damage and weaker aoe comes into play because of how they end up in enemies faces late game anyway. It’s not a simple nugget to crack
It’s a Deciever wearing TWO sets with Chaos synergy from BOTH masteries and it’s barely making it to be a build capable of farming 150-170 3 times in a duration of 3 blessings with 1 Vanguard Banner (golden standard for top builds).
It’s a good build from the point of view of how it neatly it was assembled, but if you compare it to current top builds it’s probably one of the saddest and weakest ones.
Well, what do you suggest? Power creep is inevitable, it’s ARPG that gets new content release every so often. When Crate tries to manually stop power creep it results in some very controversial nerfs. One example is actually ranged meta that was nerfed into the ground in AoM while monsters got new buffs and casters and melee got new and stronger toys. And now we have this thread where everybody agrees that Ranged sucks right now. But hey, at least your elemental Luminari Purifier-Gunslinger was stopped in its tracks. And all the other ranged builds wtih him.
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[quote]This is true. The increased player mobility and enemy movespeed negated a lot of the feeling of being ranged you get earlier in the game. But without the enemy speed increase you’d be able to kite them forever.
Weaker damage and weaker aoe comes into play because of how they end up in enemies faces late game anyway. It’s not a simple nugget to crack[/quote]
Its an easy nugget to crack, just let the player play the game, rather that throw the game in the player face.
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Rah’binger has always been my favourite build, but I can’t disagree with any of this. Two sets that work perfectly together, great class synergy, incredible buffs and massive RR. And yet, it’s not even close to what meta builds can do.
I don’t want to rub salt in the wound, because I actually always wanted to make that Deceiver ever since Rah’Zin was announced. But. This is not even close some of the meme specs that I have assembled, like Cold Blade Arc Blademaster (zero dedicated items) or Fire/Vitality Defiler (dedicated set, but Defiler with two types of damages). This is how sad Chaos and ranged are. Together they synergize with more sadness it seems, lol.
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Youre thinking with builds rather that archtypes. OFC ranged suck cause we cant take advantage of our range. You play crucible a lot, you know, the best way to deal with “content” is to stick to it`s face and try to not move too far away to avoid charge triggering and long range nukes. Heck, even bodyblocking was removed from the game, now all we can do is dance around balcony on like 5 metre area.
This need to change. Rather that meaningless dmg numbers.
I am all for it, but I honestly don’t know what to do. I have said multiple times that monsters are ok and endgame is sufficiently difficult and if there are some obvious 5 minute outliers - fix them, but instead difficulty is getting bumped, old Nemeses got buffed, player’s damage got nerfed and it’s all chaos again. Instead of actual Chaos which is still mediocre even with its best specs.
Honestly, all of my top builds that I have put hours and hours into - minmaxing and squeezing out everything out of them are always on the edge of becoming incosistent with the next patch. Like god forbid you enter Crucible or Shards with an underoptimezed spec with low synergy - you will get your face kicked inside your helmet faster than you can say “Deadbuilds”.
And before I remember when you posted (like you, personally, Ptiro) build with low DA or low armor and said “DA is just a number” and you could still pilot it and everything was fine.
Chaos isn’t in good state as damage type, not only as ranged. But when you build chaos 2h build and see numbers like 30k or even more WD and wow what a monster 
But nope, in reality it sucks. But concept is still cool and mixing 2 damages is sexy.
But as @Ptirodaktill pointed ranged in GD is basically being melee with pistols/gun in your hand. But considering GD combat mechanics, I think it’s impossible to change it, that’s why we are proposing more damage 
Haha I was actually going to mention your Big Cool as an example of what does better with so much less, but then I decided not to.
Mainly because I think that build should be more a testament to what you can do than what this can’t do, if that makes sense?
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Yeah, ranged in GD doesn’t really feel ranged beyond Campaign.
Thats just sadly the nature of boss rush design. No way you not going to face tank with 4 bum rushing you all over the entire map.
POE deal with this by making 1 boss having multiple phases/mechanics. Which we have in campaign, but not in endgame content.
Really the way PoE deals with this is by making more caster bosses than attacker bosses. Very few PoE bosses “attack” you, most cast spells with a telegraphed projectile of some sort being involved.
You’re right that part of Ranged’s issue is that GD bosses have a “rush” design, but I don’t think phases/mechanics necessarily address that at all.
POE does go overboard with their design but the point is if we dont have boss rush anymore but having one or two bosses maximum for endgame content with more interactive designs like mixed abilities, you wont get into ridiculous situations of being trapped for an aleksander meteor or being consecutively rushed by 4 different melee bosses at same time, which forces you to tank. Then ranged advantage would shine abit because they can avoid stuff and time cooldowns etc.
Currently because how crowded some of the endgame contents are, you play ranged like a poor melee anyway.
Can we mitigate this problem somewhat by making movement speed debuffing and trapping more effective than ever and improving the player’s movement speed limit?
Just gonna echo Ceno’s points. I think he nailed most of the problems of ranged combat. Namely, lack of effective CCs, GD’s boss design and ineffectiveness of pierce-through AoE.
Pierce-through is only a problem in cruci because it is designed to overwhelm you in all directions. It is not a problem in the main campaign or SR where you are confident you can’t get flanked from behind.
That’s why you need to position yourself cleverly so all enemy is in front of you.
Personally I never have a problem in this kind of play style. I consider that as a flavor. It will be boring if all build can do 360° attack.
GD is almost mature and I don’t think it can have a drastic changes as it will also affect other playstyle. It will be very troublesome for crate team.
Make CC more significant on bosses will be fun though. I would love freezing anasteria or korvaak even for 0.5 sec. That will also make other damage type gain their uniqueness.
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If I may add,
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Full Rah’Zin/Harbinger deceiver could do 6:30 in 1.1.4.0. It had one of the highest peak wpn dmg I’ve ever seen in the game (maybe second only to Obsidian). That build from the link - there’s no gt so I can’t really comment on it but from the comments it had 3 sources of flat rr and stuff like that…
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Pure ranged is never gonna be overall as good as pure melee. Ptiro (and Ceno, too) explained this pretty well. All that’s left is to accept this fact. The decent ranged builds are either hybrids (Ludrigan, Runic, Harbinger), not really ranged but spam casters on attack speed (Primal), or fruit of some serious brilliant building skills (Hellborne). And maybe some Fire Strike purifiers. And the pyro. Hey! That’s actually quite a few builds!
I don’t have a problem with it either. 
I also consider it the flavor of gunner builds.
But we have to acknowledge that by their nature of favoring pierce-through over circular AoE, gunners will have a difficult time getting better clear times over melee and casters. I’m fine with accepting that.
Its the other points where we can’t really play as a true gunner because of CC and multiple boss rushes that’s the issue. There’s almost no functional difference to playing ranged over melee. Maybe that’s where the grievance comes from because we’re essentially forced to play melee without the dps and aoe of a true melee build.
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