Ranger

Ranger.

Ranger is a trainable class unlocked by turning in 3 Ancient Treasure to Zhoom in Sandsea. It costs an additional 14 Ancient Treasures to fully train this class.

Ranger uses a mechanic known as Focus, which is built using left side skills, and is lost when using defensive skills. Focus increases critical damage, and gives Ranger double turns when maxed. In addition, Ranger deals extra damage if its STR and DEX stats are close to each other.

Skills

• Sky Assault
  • 40 MP, 9 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Attacks all enemies for 2 hits of 90% Pierce damage (180% total).

• MultiShot
  • 35 MP, 1 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Attacks all enemies for 1 hit of 100% Pierce damage.

• Flashbang
  • 30 MP, 15 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 25% Pierce damage.
  • Inflicts 'Stunned' for 3 turns, a stun.

• Tracker's Shot
  • 20 MP, 9 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Applies 'Tracking' for 5 turns inclusive.
    • +80 Bonus.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 75% Pierce damage with +100 Bonus.

• Spotter's Shot
  • 20 MP, 3 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Applies 'Spotted' for 2 turns inclusive.
    • +200 Crit.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 75% Pierce damage with -200 Crit.

• Power Shot
  • 15 MP, 1 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 120% Pierce damage.

• Viper's Arrow
  • 20 MP, 0 CD
  • Generates 1 Focus.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 50% Pierce damage.
  • Inflicts 'Venom' for 10 turns, a 34X% Poison DoT.
    • X is the number of times this effect has been inflicted on the enemy, capped at 5 (max 170%).
    • 'Venom' duration does not refresh with each stack.
    • DoT damage range will update with each stack, even at 5 stacks.

• Attack
  • 0 MP, 0 CD
  • Heals the player for 15 MP.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 100% damage.

• Quick Reflexes (DA-locked)
  • 40 MP, 9 CD
  • Consumes up to 4 Focus.
  • Applies 'Reflexes' for 4 turns inclusive.
    • +175 Melee/Pierce/Magic.

• Cripple (DA-locked)
  • 30 MP, 9 CD
  • Consumes up to 2 Focus.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 100% Melee damage.
  • Inflicts 'Crippled' for 1 turn.
    • -120 Bonus.

• Kick (DA-locked)
  • 40 MP, 15 CD
  • Consumes up to 2 Focus.
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 50% Melee damage.
  • Inflicts 'Weakened' for 3 turns.
    • -50 Boost.

• Recover (DA-locked)
  • 0 MP, 29 CD (carries between battles)
  • Consumes up to 4 Focus.
  • Heals the player for 50% of their maximum HP.
  • Heals the player for 25% of their maximum MP.
  • Attacks for 2 hits of 40% Melee damage (80% total).

• Dual Wield (DA-locked)
  • 15 MP, 1 CD
  • Attacks for 2 hits of 60% Melee damage (120% total).

• Armorslash (DA-locked)
  • 25 MP, 9 CD
  • Attacks for 1 hit of 100% Melee damage.
  • Inflicts 'Broken Armor' for 5 turns inclusive.
    • -20 All.
    • +20 Health.

• Purge (DA-locked)
  • 40 MP, 9 CD
  • Deals Pierce damage if your DEX >= your STR, otherwise Melee.
  • Attacks for 2 hits of 70% damage (140% total) with +200 Crit.
    • Attack has doubled Focus Crit multiplier (+0.5x per Focus instead of +0.25x, max +2.5x)

Mechanics

Focus

• Ranger has a Focus counter that starts at 0 and caps at 5.
  • 0.25X Crit multiplier. X focus stacked.
  • Focus increases by 1 every time a left side skill is used.
  • Defensive skills consume 2 - 4 Focus (or all, if less than the required amount) when used.
• Each stack of Focus increases the Crit multiplier of all subsequent Ranger skills by +0.25.
  • This means when generating Focus, the crit multiplier before using the skill is applied.
  • At 5 Focus, all Ranger skills have a base critical multiplier of 3.00x before INT.
    • Purge instead gains +0.5 Crit multiplier per stack, having a maximum base crit multiplier of 4.25x before INT at 5 Focus.

Extra Actions

• Ranger passively gains an extra action each turn as long as it ends its first action with 5 Focus. A turn where you take an extra action is also known as a double turn.
  • 1.25 Crit multiplier. Extra attack!
• Using a defensive skill as the first action will disable the second action for that turn, as you lose 4 Focus.
• Using a potion, trinket, or an On-Demand special as the first action will disable the second action for that turn.
• Defeating a monster as the first action will disable the second action for that turn.
  • If using MultiShot or Sky Assault, you will retain your second action if the last enemy damaged is not killed.

Mainstat

• All class skills gain 5% base damage per hit if STR or DEX is your highest stat.
  • All class skills instead gain 25% base damage per hit if your STR and DEX are both higher than INT and within ceil(level / 10) apart (9 at Level 90).
• Stats gained from equipment are included when comparing stats before increasing base damage.

Stat Distribution / Rotation

Ranger is very unique among the other classes in that it utilizes a hybrid stat distribution. As a result, there are two distinct stat builds for Ranger:

STR/DEX Ranger

100+ STR / 100+ DEX / 200 END

• This stat distribution is the "intended" setup for Ranger, due to the damage passive, and all skills being Pierce or Melee.
  • This is just a baseline; points can be taken out of STR and DEX to feed into WIS or CHA for comfort/utility, while retaining similar damage.

This setup piles on massive amounts of damage using Ranger's various offensive skills at max Focus, with a DEX swap and a balanced nuke swap.

1. Quick Reflexes
2. Viper's Arrow
3. Viper's Arrow
4. Viper's Arrow
5. Viper's Arrow
6. Viper's Arrow + Armorslash
7. Spotter's Shot + Dual Wield/Multi
8. Sky Assault + Dual Wield/Multi
9. Purge + Reflexes

In case the monster has a shorter rotation than 8 turns, the following can be used instead:

1. Quick Reflexes
2. Viper's Arrow
3. Viper's Arrow
4. Viper's Arrow
5. Viper's Arrow
6. Viper's Arrow + Armorslash
7. Purge + (Spotter's Shot
8. Sky Assault) + Reflexes

Strategy

Ranger is an offensively potent class, helped further along by being the only non-Epoch class with permanent double turns. After setting up, Ranger constantly loops powerful buffs and debuffs while piling on damage. Thanks to permanent double turns, Ranger can swap to offensive gear on its first turn, and use its second turn to swap back to defensive gear.

As a result, if optimizing, all strong attacks should be used on the first turn to take advantage of an offensive gearswap. In addition, because Venom's damage updates each time it is applied, it is possible to do a large DEX gearswap, and use Uragiri/Verraad to fuel an extremely powerful Venom DoT. To take advantage of both parts of its kit, the following is recommended:

• 100+ STR / 100+ DEX split Ranger gets the most benefit out of the +25% base damage increase
• 200 DEX Ranger for when raw DoT damage is more important than on-hit damage
• 50 STR / 50 DEX / 100+ CHA split ranger in cases where hitting the off-target is not meaningful (because they heal or negate damage)

All three versions can use the Reflex loop, which provides ample defense that can chain into Hawk for recovery or attempt to restart the Venom stack on a second target.

However, because of the lengthy setup time required though, Ranger is not recommended as a questing class, as its base damage without double turns or Focus is quite low.