I wanted to bring up something about Ranger ability bloat that has started bothering me more as I get further into the class.

Rangers have several abilities that are essentially mirrored versions of each other for melee and ranged combat. We have a melee version and a ranged version of the ability that resets our timers, the finishing/high-damage attack, the poison-style attack, the hamstring/snare-style attack, and so on.

Functionally, these are mostly the same tools. The difference is simply whether I am standing in melee range or using my bow.

Right now, I actually solve this myself with macros. I put the melee and ranged versions together on one hotkey, and when I press it, the appropriate ability fires depending on whether the target is close enough for melee or far enough away for ranged.

That works really well from a gameplay perspective.

The problem is that even though I can make them feel like four abilities on my hotbar, I still have to memorize/equip eight separate abilities to make that happen.

That feels like a pretty heavy cost for what are essentially four gameplay concepts.

I would love to see each melee/ranged pair combined into a single Ranger ability that automatically uses the appropriate version based on distance.

Basically, make them work natively the way the macros already allow me to use them.

The reason I care about this so much is that I really like Ranger specifically because it is a hybrid.

I know one response might be, “If you mostly play ranged, just memorize the ranged abilities,” or the same argument for melee.

But I don't think that really solves the problem.

If I wanted to specialize almost entirely in ranged combat, I could play an Archer. What attracts me to Ranger is being able to transition naturally between the bow and melee combat and make use of the entire toolkit.

To me, that versatility is a major part of the Ranger identity.

Right now I feel like I have to sacrifice parts of that identity simply because so many ability slots are occupied by duplicate melee/ranged versions of the same tools. There are a lot of utility abilities I genuinely want available, but I have trouble fitting them because eight slots are being consumed by what functionally feels like four abilities.

Combining those eight into four would free up a meaningful amount of space for Ranger utility without actually giving Rangers more power. We already have access to all of these abilities. This would mostly be a usability and class-flow improvement.

It would also make switching between bow and melee feel much more natural. Instead of thinking, “Which version of this same ability did I memorize?” I could simply use the Ranger ability and let my current combat range determine how it executes.

I realize there is a progression issue here because the melee and ranged versions are currently learned or upgraded at different levels. That would obviously need some adjustment. Maybe the unified ability initially only supports one form, then gains the other form later, or its ranks could be shifted around so that progression remains roughly equivalent.

I don't think that part is an unsolvable problem, though.

I would really like Ranger to lean into the idea of being the class that fluidly moves between ranged and melee combat. Combining these mirrored abilities would make that playstyle feel much better while also giving us enough room to actually use more of the Ranger utility toolkit.

For me, this wouldn't be about simplifying Ranger. It would actually let me use more of the class.