[OPINION] Rangers have the most interesting and balanced martial skills

[mant2si]

Today I gave chance to single class Ghost Heart and was pleasantly surprised

All their active skills is unique, usefully and very cheap
 
   * +10 acc, to all attack vs foe   | 1B
   * +20 acc, full attack                 | 1B  
   *  teleport with 60DM                | 1B
   *  -30 sec to foe buffs               | 1B
   * AOE immobilized with 80DM | 2B
   * 2x primary attack                   | 2B
   * AOE full attack                       | 3B

I usually need only 2 skills from Paladin tree, 2 - 3 from Rogue tree, 2 from Fighter tree, 1 from Barbarian tree and at least ~6 from Rangers. So near no useless choices

* All their passives is super usefully
 
  * +10 Accuracy
  * +10 Accuracy < 50HP
  * +1 projectile
  * +8 ranger deflection
  * +15 AOE defenses
  * +4 acc for range attack
  * +50% recovery while running
  * +20% reload speed
  * +50% chance to interrupt with any weapon
  * -10 Deflection for animal miss

When most of the classes has only 1 or 2 strategy, rangers fight always unique, you don't relay on AOE one-shot or super high HP regen or deflection stacking, or infinity summons :D

You can manage aggro via animal, you can manage your position with evasive roll, stack on HIT bonuses with Whirling Strikes or use Watershaper's Focus with Twinned Shot, or just kill all mages with 3x Thorny Roots ? Or maybe you need dispel enemies buffs with AOE weapon ? Restart fight with Shadowed Hunters. Stunlock boss ? Stunning Shots + Blunderbuss. Fight with single enemy ? Use Accurate Wounding Shot + with DW sabers. You even don't need worry about penetration because you will usually do crits with +50% to pen

I can only hope that Obsidian will balance other classes as they balanced rangers

Edited July 27, 2018 by mant2si

[gkathellar]

Rangers have lots of good abilities, but I wouldn't say they're particularly interesting, at least not until PL 7. Not particularly uninteresting, either - certainly Wounding Shot spam is no more boring than FoD spam, and they have the added micro of the pet in any case.

 

But yeah, until PL 7-8, you're pretty much a less-complicated rogue with a pet.

[Verde]

Why would they balance other classes to the lowest common denominator all kidding aside, judging by the poll on this forum, Ranger is widely considered the worst class in this game (I believe the votes were around 30%).

 

As far as interesting I personally think they are the least interesting after trying a number of combinations.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Verde

[mant2si]

Rangers have lots of good abilities, but I wouldn't say they're particularly interesting, at least not until PL 7. Not particularly uninteresting, either - certainly Wounding Shot spam is no more boring than FoD spam, and they have the added micro of the pet in any case.

 

But yeah, until PL 7-8, you're pretty much a less-complicated rogue with a pet.

Rogues doesn't have any AOE abilities, when rangers have full attack AOE with same price as crippling strike. In fact rogues can't do anything than DPS

 

Why would they balance other classes to the lowest common denominator all kidding aside, judging by the poll on this forum, Ranger is widely considered the worst class in this game (I believe the votes were around 30%).

 

As far as interesting I personally think they are the least interesting after trying a number of combinations.

Huh, so you never saw how rangers stack +30% DM lash with +20 accuracy from single skill and then one shot queen & co  :D

Edited July 27, 2018 by mant2si

[Verde]

Nope I haven't :D

[gkathellar]

 

Rangers have lots of good abilities, but I wouldn't say they're particularly interesting, at least not until PL 7. Not particularly uninteresting, either - certainly Wounding Shot spam is no more boring than FoD spam, and they have the added micro of the pet in any case.

 

But yeah, until PL 7-8, you're pretty much a less-complicated rogue with a pet.

Rogues doesn't has any AOE abilities, when ranger has full attack AOE with same price as crippling strike.

 

... at PL 8. You may notice that I specifically mentioned PL 7 as a break point for when the ranger becomes more interesting (which is bad design, imo - it'd be an improvement if rangers got more of their non-pet effects earlier, and got some strong pet effects later).

 

 

In fact rogues can't do anything than cause some portion of damage

 

That big tree full of debuffs, teleportation and invisibility notwithstanding, of course.

Edited July 27, 2018 by gkathellar

[mant2si]

....

Evasive roll - L3

Binding roots - L5

Evasive Fire - L5

Driving Flight - L5

....

 

And when I wrote about rogue, I mean  their role in the party - invise or more T1 afflictions didn't change your playstyle, you just use same strategy again and again ... 

Edited July 27, 2018 by mant2si

[gkathellar]

 

....

Evasive roll - L3

Binding roots - L5

Evasive Fire - L5

Driving Flight - L5

....

 

And when I wrote about rogue, I mean  their role in the party

 

Evasive Roll is just Escape but 2 PL late

 

And yeah, Rogue is The Single-Target Damage & Control Class, just as Ranger is The Pet Class. They do different things, but ranger takes a long time to get its non pet-effects.

[thundercleese]

Evasive Roll is just Escape but 2 PL late

Not quite; Evasive Roll has no recovery.

[grasida]

Escape also has no recovery. The difference is escape gives a large deflection bonus and immunity to engagement for a very short duration, while evasive roll gives the quick inspiration. Also escape looks much cooler.

[Verde]

You can upgrade Escape to some really nifty abilities too.

[thundercleese]

Escape also has no recovery. The difference is escape gives a large deflection bonus and immunity to engagement for a very short duration, while evasive roll gives the quick inspiration. Also escape looks much cooler.

Coulda sworn I had to wait for recovery after using escape. Though maybe I'm thinking of Smoke Veil lol.

 

The rogues upgrades drastically increase the cost, whereas the rangers keeps it the same. The rogues upgrades are far more impactful though, which makes sense.

[Boeroer]

As I already said in the "strongest/weakest class" thread: rangers have really useful abilities.

 

It's like in PoE: first people complain that wizard and priest are useless, years later wizards and priests are considered the best - although they got a major nerf in between.

 

The reason is that in the beginning, a lot of players judge classes by description and do not try them out. After some time they maybe did and change their minds.

 

That said: the Ranger's animal companion is so much weaker than in PoE (where it got buffed with a patch after it started into the game as weak as now in Deadfire) - it's no fun to build around it. Stuff like Master's Call, Stalker's Link and Takedown Combo is fun, but the stuff that boost the animal Companion itself, like Predator's Sense just makes you cry if you look at the puny base damage + 50%. Like in PoE, they attack superslowly. If they'd just give them a bit more base damage and also scale base damage with level (instead of giving additive dmg bonuses that scale badly with a pet)...

[grasida]

The beta patch speeds them up considerably, though there’s no mention of a change in damage. It will be interesting to see how the pets do now. Their damage is still not recorded on the character sheet, unfortunately.

[Boeroer]

Yeah, I just read about that right after posting.

 

So, a 0.5 sec attack phase and 3 sec recovery now - and less armor penalty. That's a good start. But why do they have recovery penalties from their own skin in the first place?

[knownastherat]

I agree with OP. 

[sinsae]

What would be a good multiclass for Ranger? I want to make a custom adventurer to accompany my Barbarian. I also have Maia in my party as the gunner. I would like the custom adventurer to use the frostseeker. Sort of like another dps

[Manveru123]

For the Frostseeker? Barbarian or Cipher. Frostseeker with Barbs abilities is bonkers :D

[mant2si]

What would be a good multiclass for Ranger? I want to make a custom adventurer to accompany my Barbarian. I also have Maia in my party as the gunner. I would like the custom adventurer to use the frostseeker. Sort of like another dps

I prefer pure rangers, because as multi-class you will miss Stunning Shots, AOE attack and Twin Shot

 

P.S Even Rangers multi classing balanced very well, you get all cool skills only as pure ranger, but good utility skills and accuracy bonus as multiclass

[thundercleese]

Yeah definitely ranger for Frostseeker. Driving flight is reason enough on its own. Single or multi, either will do tons of damage if you are good at grouping.

[Boeroer]

Berserker/Sharpshooter is quite the crazy combo for Frostseeker. You'll miss the Twinned Shot but Tenacious + Bloodlust + Bloodthirst means very high attack speed (to compensate for the Sharpshooter's malus). Also Tenacious, the higher crit damage of Berserker's Frenzy, the crit conversion of Berserker combined with the conversion of the Sharpshooter and Barbaric Blow make this guy crit a lot an really hard.

 

Another nice variant is Geomancer. Essential Phantom will also get Frostseeker (and all other items you wear). The phantom will not have your abilities, but it's fun enough to attack groups with two Frostseekers. I still didn't try out if Combusting Wounds works with Frostseeker or if the ice quenches the burn.

[sinsae]

Huh, I didnt realise the berserker passive crit also applied to range weapons. Thats neat

[Boeroer]

I didn't double-check.

 

It does not.

 

But it seems that Sharpshooter's + Barbaric Blow's conversion (or Accurate Wounding Shot's ACC), combined with high accuracy of the ranger, leads to a lot of crits and high crit damage even without Berserker-Frenzy's conversion.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Boeroer

[sinsae]

I figured 30% crit from berserker would be dumb for ranged weapons haha

[mant2si]

I didn't double-check.

 

It does not.

 

But it seems that Sharpshooter's + Barbaric Blow's or Accurate Wounding Shot's ACC, combined with high accuracy of the ranger, leads to a lot of crits even without Berserker's Frenzy.

But  Frostseeker is just a joke when compare it with your Watershaper's Focus  + Twin Shot combo 

Edited July 27, 2018 by mant2si