Q4 Bearach's set is laughable

Considering it takes just as much resources and effort to obtain the Q4 (Bearach's) set as the Q7 (Herald's) set, and considering both are end game 2H Q sets, it should be just as strong, but of course in its own unique way.

Bearach's set is something you don't see these days, so I feel special owning it, but also sometimes stupid, as it's so inefficient compared to Herald's set. Well, as it's so rarely seen, let me remind you:

Tormentor (bow) on its own tortures targets with 4 seconds of bleeding, dealing 50% base damage each second. This is triggered with scatter shot.


The complete set transforms the bird of prey into a bee swarm that stuns monsters within a 2 meter radius around the hit target.

That's about it.
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The cool thing is that you can enjoy the special ability of the bow without having to get the belt. The Q7 bow doesn't have any such ability. As the bleeding effect is triggered with scatter shot, it gets easily inflicted on a lot of targets. Because bleeding is physical damage, with the 5 point scatter shot talent unlocked it can cause more damage due to 20% armor break.
Sounds interesting to me, but it's relatively weak.

But the main focus is comparing the sets' abilities. Q4 set is laughable here:

You can use the bee swarm after a twice as long time period than the Q7 set user, as net has half the cool down of bird of prey.

Once you release the bees, it's the end of the show. No subsequent attacks can be performed in a comparable manner with the Q7 EA bombardment. Leader monsters are oftentimes immune to stuns, so the bees just deal the basic damage of the bird without stunning. And you can wait for another 20 seconds for another chance.

So while a Q7 user with all EA talents unlocked can absolutely demolish a bigger cluster of enemies, because net has a wider stun + marking AoE and EA can break armor and resistance by 85%, with some 5 or 6 EA's that cost nothing, a Q4 user has one shot every 20 seconds. He can use the bleeding effect, but it's a total 200% base damage over 4 seconds + 300% one time hit compared to some 1250% base damage times 2 for marked targets over 2 seconds + another 1 or 2 additional hits provided the player has full concentration after the 2 seconds of no concentration cost run out. EA has 2 talents increasing its damage, while BoP has 1, and EA has no cooldown.
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Whether the numbers I mentioned are perfectly precise or not, doesn't really matter. Everyone feels Q7 set deals more damage and is more efficient.
I think Q4 should be buffed. Here are some ideas for pve:

- Bird of Prey has even shorter cooldown if using the set
- Bee swarm has much larger AoE and deals more damage than BoP
- Bleeding lasts longer and deals more damage
- Targets hit and stunned by the bees receive more damage from scatter shot & its bleeding effect
- It's possible to use BoP twice in a row.

- EDIT: More interesting ideas posted by readers below -----vvv-----​

 

Very good idea in my opinion. I had the set in my old ranger too and I too felt like its trash.

 

I 've got a suggestion regarding the set.Perhaps apart from the bees,the set could contain this:

Every bleeding foe hit by scatter shot has a 50% (more or less) chance to get marked.That would make the set good at map clearing,like the SW's q8 set,though it still wouldn't even scratch the q7 set.

 

Although it wasn't made to compete with Q7 and it is a decent (not excelent) set for PVE, it is reasonable good for PvP. Some improves can be made with this set, like the mentioned above or to change the ridiculous HP given for completing the set to: 35% increased damage for Scatter Shot.

The base damage for SS should remain the same: 60% * 35% (proposal) = 81%.
With Polished Shooting Technique: 60% * (15% + 35%) = 90%.

That would make a total of 162% - 180% damage for marked enemies. I think it's pretty reasonable compared to the 5+ explosives arrow allowed by Herald's Set.

 

I think this:

or this:

would be good

 

The issue there would be that marking only means potential damage, because marked monsters then need to be hit afterwards.

I think it'd be cool to make the bees a marking element, but in a way mentioned before: When the bees stun enemies in the 2 meter radius, the stunned enemies will be much more vulnerable to scatter shot. Scatter shot because it's the q4 main skill.
This would require some rework of the bee stun, because if you stun a leader monster or a boss, it only lasts like 1 second, and that needs to be prolonged...

 

All right, but doesn't the whole problem lie in q7 set which is broken and OP? While this thingy is weak in PvE, a q7 set ranger outperforms every other RA build and every other class' build that isn't using the said set... well except for SW, as that's the only class that holds the q4-q7 balance.
Q7 set has to be nerfed for DK, ranger and dwarf. That's the only solution. Then we can think about improving q4 set for example, which is outperformed by, for example, 1h builds.

Spoiler: Possible way of future improving of q4 set

Maybe just make it like "For every enemy the Bird of Prey Bee Swarm hits, the active cooldown of BoP is decreased by 10%" and make the AoE as big as 3 metres radius, also it should deal dmg all the enemies in AoE (let's say 200%).

 

You're right, I agree. And I also like your idea of improving Bearach's set.

When I originally posted the topic, I realized it'd be quite a sensitive topic. If we stick to rangers only, I imagined how many of them are using the - just like you said - broken q7 set, and I was afraid that suggesting a big nerf for that would make them all hate me. So instead I tried to suggest improvements for other sets, q4 in this case.

However, I can easily imagine a reasonable nerf for ranger's q7, where for example it keeps the no concentration cost for Explosive Arrow and it gives the buffed power, but only to the first 2 arrows being fired immediately after casting the Net. And that needs to be performed within those 2 seconds, but in case of this nerf it could even be returned to the old 3 seconds, I guess, since as I assume the 1 second removal was most likely done as an attempt to de-op the set by leaving less time for the actual EA bombardment, which apparently still hasn't fixed or balanced the set.
Also the super short cooldown of Net doesn't help it. Perhaps another way of nerfing (or fixing) the q7 set could be that it'd keep all its current features, but they could only be used once in x seconds (like every 30 or more seconds... or so). So the super short Net cooldown would no longer define the frequency at which the q7 buff can be used.


EDIT:
I forgot to mention that q7 gloves have this:

Enemies hit by Net will "Burn", suffering 100% of your base damage as fire damage over 3 seconds.
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...which makes the gaping abyss between q7 and q4 even bigger.