Jon,
You mentioned that spamming our auto attack ability does not constitute fun gameplay and are looking into ways for improving that. Here are my suggestions.
1. First and foremost, fix the bug with QZ. If you’ve been reading the threads here you know what I’m talking about. I won’t rehash it.
2. Realize and understand that the reason we spammed auto attack is that it is our only damage ability in the SB’s arsenal. The other abilities are for situational purooses only. This was how you guys designed the 5 abilities and we are merely working within those limited confines.
If you understand our class this should be obvious and making drastic changes to our #1 ability in the hopes that we stop spamming it will not accomplish anything except drive players away from the class entirely, which is what has happened. In case you have not been paying attention, the community lost a lot of talented and dedicated Rangers, not only over the nerf but your apparent lack of knowledge in believing we have other damage abilities to use. The community lost faith and feels that the Ranger class is being handled by devs who simply don’t know the class. That is why many of us our shelving our rangers.
3. Very simple. Replace our situational abilities with new damage abilities. Look at our underwater harpoon and the abilities it has as a reference point.
4. Consider doing what other mmo’s (Rift as an example) have done with the ranger class and add an ability that applies a combo stack onto the enemy. Once we have a 5 stack applied to the enemy, we use a combo finisher ability resulting in some burst damage, or a dot, or a boon. Something like this would at the very least add variety to our rotation if you can call it that.
That is all for now. I’m sure others will add to this.
Thanks for reading.