Markman feels like sorc does in d4. lacking in sufficient damage and needing 3 defensive abilities to survive. only getting dodge is not enough to survive, and enemies have enough movement pr ranged options that unless you are running cold they are gonna get into melee very easy. extending the FOV would help
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Out of all the classes, I find marksman to be the weakest.
Damage wise it does okay, but there are so many other characters that not only do as much damage, theyāre much tankier in general.
They need to buff Dark Quiver or change it or something because I almost never see it used and its super awkward to use compared to other buffs like say Dread Shade.
Extending FOV would help, but clearing up some of the ranged blocked shots from steps and stuff would help a lot too.
My biggest issue is what feels like a distinct lack of diversity when it comes to the builds you can do with Marksman that are viable because they are just soooooo squishy. Dodge is okay but you get hit once and you die in a lot of situations. You gotta constantly be on the move to keep from getting overwhelmed.
Rogue has had so many fun builds that were utterly destroyed by the nerf passes, that Iāve lost all interest in the class. I tried picking up the melee Detonating Strike build, but melee is so brokenly painful to play, that it sits on the shelf again.
Itās sad, because thereās so many potentially fun builds, that just donāt stack up to some of the other (real) OP builds out there.
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Yeah, I agree. I mean, I am not saying builds should just completely destroy content without thought, or investment. But most of the seriously OP builds were done with edited gear, in the offline mode game. Iām not sure itās fair to judge a buildās baseline powerlevel, based on how it performs with perfect/near-perfect gear. Because thatās not the real playing experienceā¦ and even when it is reached, the player has already invested so much time, that itās fairly inconsequential at that point.
Of course, people will put up ladders as a counter, but then every build should be 100% equal, across the boardā¦right? No build should have an advantage over another, if weāre using ladder āfairnessā as a barometer for balance.
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Did you mean since the class came out? If memory serves, Rogue wasnāt in Alpha. I remember when it dropped. It brought a lot of new mechanics to the game that were flashy at the time. Since then itās (especially Marksman) definitely gotten surpassed by the changes and adjustments to other classes (except maybe Shaman, and in my opinion Sorcerer - that class has still never gelled for me.)
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Yes, I didnāt realize the game didnāt launch EA with Rogue in it. If thatās the case, I probably started playing shortly after its release.
This caused me to be curious enough to go check out my steam purchase history: Turns out I bought the game in July of 2021.
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Ha, made me look it up also. Couldnt find the exact date, but found my first post:
Also, this was interesting, in my profile:
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Oh gosh, that is just too interesting, this is going to completely derail the threadā¦
I agree with that 200%. Too bad the forum will only let me like your comment once, I would happily put 5-6 hearts. 
To me the problem started with WoW (pretty much when WoW came out), then expanded when most games became online and multiplayer. Basically everything from that point had to be ābalancedā, and balance became the nemesis of fun. All skills, all classes, have to be perfectly equal, and permanently get tweaked to achieve that. Matters became even far worse when streamers started taking the upper hand.
I have seen so, so many builds I enjoyed, in so many games, sacrified on the altar of the evil god balance. I play builds that I like, I donāt care if they never reach deep endgame or if they are weaker than other builds. But nowadays this is not acceptable anymore. Because of balance, everything is permanently changed. It is simply impossible to come back to a character you loved after 6 months or one year, because it will be completely different by then.
Sad times for old fashioned RPG fansā¦
As for āthe point is to have fun adventures in a pretend worldā, it is to me (and apparently to you).
Mechanics are a mean to an end (having adventures), they should never be put first. Quests and above all atmosphere always come first, the build is just a way to get through.
But sadly I fear we are a small minority in the ARPG world, which has become almost entirely focused on technicalities and has forgotten the adventure part.
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you know you love me mate. 
Pity itās not an sp game anymore. Also some do find that kind of thing fun.
Ideally, most builds would be broadly comparable in terms of what they can achieve on the ladder so that fow far you get on that is more of a measure of personal skill/etc. Then youād be able to do more with more builds.
That said, a certain segment of the community always hyper-focusses in on the tinyest improvement/deficiency in builds classes and proclaims that the bestest/worsetest which, IMO, isnāt the most helpful/healthy viewpoint/mindset to have (even if it is a very human one).
Any online game will want to have stuff balanced, youāll find buffs and nerfs to things well before WoW. But yes, streamers and the like do exacerbate it for views/clickbait.
Sounds like youāre describing proper RPGs rather than action RPGs.
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Kinda. I am a general RPG player more than an ARPG specialist.
Yet I am not sure where this clear-cut distinction comes from. Titan Quest, Diablo 2, Sacred, Diablo 3, Grim Dawn, Van Helsing, Undecember, all have long, interesting and atmospheric campaigns. And now Diablo 4 takes it to a brand new level (yes, sue me, I love that game, to me it really feels like a revolution, leaving every other arpg in the dust).
Basically, the full focus on mechanics instead of story is only valid for PoE (and now LE?) and a few niche solo-developped games like Chronicon.
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I have the same feeling of most here . I guess part of the Marksman problem lies in itās base class.
Rogue has always being a more challengingly class to level. Itās squishy and take a long time until itās defensive systems ābecome onlineā.
You need much more investment in survability and because of that generally the damage feels like lacking.
Many skills most times donāt have a proper base damage.
I guess the devs , as much as I have experienced around here, err on the side of caution, in almost every aspect of the game, afraid of losing control of balance. And it reflects when it comes to give rogue damage. Maybe they are afraid of it loosing control and the class gain too much damage. Maybe itās very difficult to boost some skills, since the class have lot of mechanics that boost the damage of skills, and could easily become uncontrollable.
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This, I think, is trueā¦ unfortunately. I was recalling back to the first āonlineā games I playedā¦ more LAN or CO-OP games via modem connections. Balance was never really a concern, because you were playing WITH someone. But once things went true online, it became more playing AGAINST everyone else. PvP, Ladders, Races, etcā¦ MMOās just exacerbated this with their World 1st races to beat content.
Games, now days, are more about spreadsheets, min/maxing and how fast you can devour content presented. The worst part about this, is I think itās a rather small portion of the player base that has made it this way. But, the majority are meant to suffer because of itā¦
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My understanding is this is still primarily a proper single player ARPG. I donāt see anything on their website or remember any of the devs posting anything that states otherwise. If Ladder replaces everything else as the primary content, I will lose interest and stop playing. I suspect a lot of us will. Iām glad I played the game plenty before any mistakes like that were made.
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I think the genre has a problem when it comes to this.
Like take pokemon for example, in any given game you have as you travel through your game 100-200 options for pokemon to use on your team.
There is very obvious āGoodā choices, and very obvious āBadā choices. But in pokemon I never felt like I have to choose the good option, if you want to keep the route 1 bird and rat on your team, you will still easily win. so if you like those guys, feel free.
Arpgs sometimes play that way too, where you can just use whatever and it works. LE for the most part is true to that.
Marksmen will do 100c and even 200c just fine. The problem is despite this genre being 95% singleplayer focused, and even then only say 25% or less of the players even care about ladder, they still dont want to play whatever is āweakā in the āmetaā they want to play whats strong even if what they like works.
its all a mental thing that bogs down the genre as a whole. So if you have something that is actually op by a decent margin, everyone is just gonna flock to it even if they are then gonna complain about how boring it is. Even though all the other options are perfectly viable too.
So the devs try and solve this problem by not having outlier op builds. But arpg players are pretty much never happy.
As for the OP topic, i agree that marksmen feelsā¦ limp. its certainly not unplayable, and atleast for right now, marksmen has lots of unique builds that only it can access, since its locked skills like det arrow and hail of arrows are pretty good. it feels in a better position then shaman despite probably being weaker then shaman.
It just has a really bad passive tree with lots of stuff that is thematically cool, but comes with downsides no normal player would ever take. Concentration, sniper gambit etc. Are cool thematic nodes but they dont offer enough vs the insane downsides or mechanics they have.
Also the extremely big nerf to crit vuln made builds which use unique bows now need 1 lp to get flat crit and %crit etc. Icicle bowmage has gotten nerfed relentlesslyā¦
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Well so, to use your analogy with Pokemon, what Ladder / competitive multiplayer would be like is if every Pokemon in the entire game were roughly equivalent except for one or two differences, or maybe type differences only. If every class / spec has to be about the same at killing bosses, about the same at overall damage output against mobs, and about the same at movement or clear rate of dungeons, then the differences between them are what weād consider to be mostly cosmetic or surface level. Their actual performance would be the same.
This is actually a bigger problem in an ARPG than a game like Pokemon, because at least you can battle the Pokemon against each other and create a meta based on their differences. The same idea exists in League of Legends: All the champions are supposed to be roughly equivalent in their ability to do things, but the roles they serve on a team and the combos they create when played together change where they sit in the meta. You donāt have those advantages in an ARPG because everyone is playing against the same content all of the time, which means if all of them perform it roughly the same, the only significant differences are what buttons you press and when to accomplish the same goals.
And to get to my major objection to balancing a game like this for Ladder, the problem is youāre forbidding the players from experiencing the rewards of creativity, going in and finding the specs that are allowed to do a little better than if you were to just pick skills randomly. To sand them all down to a nub is to remove a wide variety of experiences that the player can have, which is ultimately what you want in a game like this. That and, inherently there will be a meta build in any game like this, even if the advantages are marginal. Itās impossible to make every spec perfectly equal.
So why bother? Just to have another competitive peer pressure driven eSport? Personally, I donāt need or want that from ARPGās. And I donāt believe thatās the only model that can succeed either. At this point, the market is probably over-saturated with those. Plus competing directly with PoE is probably not a good idea, I think they have the market capped out at this point. I think a lot more people would play an ARPG if it were the coolest and most interesting one to play, and you could prove it to people. Thatās the kind of game I would want to make, if I were the one making it.
Thatās why Iād make Marksman do whatever I wanted it to do also, instead of trying to balance it for Ladder. (Though I donāt think Iād make it quite as wimpy as it is now.)
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THIS! I understand bug fixes. But yes, it feels like creativity, ingenuity and exploration are punished. Take the latest 60k ward build. Iām sure that will be battered, relentlessly into the ground. Even though (as far as I could tell), itās not abusing any bugs or mechanics. Itās just creative buildingā¦albeit with a very annoying playstyle that will cause many playersā¦myself includedā¦to not even consider trying it.
This kind of sledgehammer-approach to ābalanceā has rendered too many builds either unplayable, or unfun, as well as some legendary items losing their real purpose ā What good is Serpentās Milk now, with the poison cap?
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This is precisely why I really enjoy leveling characters in arpgs. I leveled a character of every class in Grim Dawn to 100 TWICE in standard and once in HC because I really like the feel of my character progressing and in campaign (usually with arpgs) the diffculty is easy enough you can make almost ANYTHING work so you get to play some funky, weird, quirky stuff that often can be a hell of a lot of fun.
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This is going to be a āgeneralā statement. Of course there will be exceptions, but they donāt represent the ānorm.ā Iām a mainline Sentinel player, but Iāve been playing a lot more Rogue (both subclasses) and it took me way too long to realize that the playstyle is 100% different. With LE monsters, even trash mostly have wind up times and telegraphs. With Sentinels, defense wise, itās theyāre more forgiving if you miss a monster āwind upā. Rogues I think it is entirely based around on having to ādodgeā (play wise, not necessarily mechanics wise) the windups. Itās made me really love Bladedancer. Because you really have to play fast (Iām old and not great at it so Iāll never be a great Bladedance player 
).
Marksman however falls really flat by comparison.
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I know the thread has been a little high-jacked but I have to admit, this discussion, germinated by Marksmanās lackluster play, is really interesting to me.
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I happen to agree with eliel77. I think Rogue is probably intended to be more challenging, from how many of its specās are flimsy or donāt deal quite as much damage point-for-point as other classes do.
The way I baseline damage in the game is how much main damage stat % increased is necessary to deal around 40k DPS. This is the approximate minimum you need to be viable in lategame Monolith / Empowered Monolith.
For both of my Rogue builds that was well over 1000% increased damage. Way more if you consider that I had to buff both the main damage type (poison or fire) to 900% as well as increased damage over time to somewhere around 600% (More in the case of fire also, if you consider I was running Soulfire on the fire build.)
For basically every other class I played, they all began to deal around this amount of damage at 800% increased damage, and the most I ever topped out at was around 1000%. Admittedly, my Judgement Sentinel also needed a lot of increased damage-over-time. But these things are not the same considering my Sentinel healed off that damage and had higher baseline survivability than Rogue anyway. The Sentinel also got more room on its gear to get those stats because it got way more free resistances from its spec due to Holy Aura. So the comparison there isnāt even equivalent, for those reasons.
Iām pretty sure that either the devs havenāt had time to beef up Rogue, or they actually want Rogue to be harder to play as a challenge to players who like that play style.
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