So I'm having real trouble playing a ranged character, I'm playing with a friend and we don't take companions (missing lone wolf talent really bad haha) but it's proving to be quite difficult as even when my friend had charged into 2 people of the 4 we were facing, during their next turns they ALL proceeded to move past him and run to me about 15m behind him and attack me. 3 of them moved through his Opportunist with a 2hander. Through fire, through stun water and oil, anything just to get to me.
Now as CC is so much harder now and for a huntsman (need to shred their magic or physical armour before I can use most of my crowd controlling arrows on them) I can't stop all 4 of them attacking me. We've tried invisibility but once they see me again they move for me again. We tried teleporting them away but they just run back past my friend to get to me. They seem to be stuck on me and even when he's there, hitting them in the face with a 2hander, they are walking *away* from melee range with him just to head for me. ALL of them. Even when he hits them with opportunist. Then once I die (every time we've tried this I've been first to die, *every* time) and he resurrects me somewhere way away from them all, they have all turned from him and rushed to me to try and kill me, again, regardless of opportunist or his proximity of melee range.
Now granted anyone with some sense would target the high damage, weakest target first, that makes real life sense, but we are given no ways in game to avoid this at all. There is no taunt that I have seen so far (still very early game but so far it's been a pain getting as far as we have without a taunt or lonewolf/one man army talent) and stunning, freezing, knocking down, etc. is impossible to do early into the battle as they all have huge amounts of magic or physical armour and a huntsman has no quick way to deal magic armour damage to allow a stun or freeze arrow or anything to work.
So every combat with multiple opponents so far, is a few rounds of me getting swarmed and focused and my melee tank friend being ignored til I'm dead and then resurrecting me only to have me focused down again at least *every time* and him being left to basically try and win the fight on his own. Now this does not scream sense to me in a game, it makes it virtually impossible to play ranged as it stands, without either taking companions (which if they are ranged, I'm not sure will fare any better than I) or taking only small battles until we hit level 8 and take the one man army talent... that still won't stop them targeting me but it may help me survive a little longer I guess.
Now I don't hate companions, I play with them in my solo games (haven't gone far in those yet either) but my friend and I love playing the 2 man party. We feel it leaves us feeling more badass and takes less time when playing co-op and is something we loved about D:OS1 but we are struggling here. Several battles we have walked away from as unwinnable because of the factors mentioned above. All of the enemies target me at range instead of the guy in their faces, we have no more health or survivability than any of them and find ourselves often outnumbered/overwhelmed because of this. We don't want to take companions but it seems our only choice at the moment if we want to continue. Without companions we also have less actions that can be taken on our side, where the enemy has 4 AP pools compared to our 2 at about the same size meaning each turn we can do less to them than they can do to us. Literally half as much really.
But honestly, if there was some way to generate threat, some way to make them focus the tank, some sort of proximity targeting system in place, I might not feel so utterly persecuted for playing a ranged class or not taking companions. If crowd control was easier I might not have it so bad because I'd have ways to stop them getting to me. If we had a talent like lone wolf or some sort of innate passive up-scaling when choosing not to take companions then maybe I might not die like a candles flame in the wind and put up more of a fight than a wet leek, like I currently do.
As it stands we feel compelled to either take companions or start again with 2 tank melee classes so that this is not an issue. This does not feel like the freedom of choice this game has promised us...
