Amerie Munchkin's Guide to Rangers

Starting out:

When you make your character you have the option of being a celt, elf or lurikeen, firbolgs don't get to be stalkers for obvious reasons Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Celts have the highest str and con, meaning that they can carry more arrows, and generally live longer.

Lurikeens have the highest dex and qui stats, they shoot the fastest and are my personal favorite for this reason and for the fact that they're so small they're harder to target in RvR.

Elves are in between these 2 classes, 5 of their str points and 5 from con are put into int, which isn't a whole lot of good for a ranger at the minute, but a lot of people like the idea of an elf ranger, and they're still stronger than lurikeens.

I would recommend that the starting points are put into dex and qui, for faster shooting, or if you are going with a lurikeen then maybe 10 dex, 10 qui and 10 con would be a good idea.

Spec points:

The general opinion on this is to go max, or close to it with your recurve bow skill when you reach level 5. This means you will do the maximum amount of damage possible to the mob before it reaches you and you wont have to melee too much. Other than this there seem to be 2 main sorts of ranger, the melee ranger and the sniper.

The melee ranger would keep their weapon skill to at least 50% of their level, and would be wise to invest some points into celtic dual as well as have a reasonably high pathfinding skill. Pathfinding provides you with all your buffs, including a very handy self damage add buff, and an instant cast escape speed buff, which can only be used infrequently but has saved me a lot of times. High pathfinding is essential for a solo ranger.

The sniper ranger would have max bow and pathfinding and a high stealth skill, putting any left over points into a weapon skill if they feel like it. This type of ranger is fine at the moment but following the next patch they may be forced to take up a weapons skill, as bows are rumoured to do less damage and to miss more, leaving the mob at a higher health when it reaches you.

Arrows:

This confused me when I started my ranger so I'll put in a quick note about the different types of arrows.

To start with just stick with the arrows you get from your trainer, they're free and pretty crap but you don't need anything that good for now.

As soon as you can afford it buy the clout broadhead arrows, they're 4s for 20 and are much harder hitting than the free ones.

After this I'd recommend plain broadheads for 8s per 20. You can get much more expensive ones that are more accurate and have a longer range but just for PvM I don't think its worth the money, especially if you normally group with other people.

Tree species, ie Blackthorns and Irewoods are very weak to broadhead arrows, you can usually take down a yellow tree well before it reaches you. Not tried with an orange yet, the miss rate is quite bad but with a bit of running and trailing the thing behind you I don't see why an orange tree should be so hard.

As for any class try and keep your armour and weapons blue/yellow or above. For the ranger your bow and weapons are more important than your armour so that’s where to spend your money. You'll notice a huge difference when you first upgrade your blue bow to an orange one, the damage increase is amazing.

Groups:

The rangers usual job in a group is to pull the mob due to their long range attack. Problems can arise with this, the critical shot you use for your first hit sometimes gets a lot of aggro and makes it hard for the tanks to take the mob off you, so if it's a hard hitting mob it might be a good idea just to use a regular shot to pull.

When the tanks in the group have the aggro on them its up to you wether you keep shooting with the bow or go in to melee. Shooting does tend to do more damage and you risk aggroing the mob onto you again.

Soloing:

With good equipment you can expect to solo yellow mobs easily, especially after level 10. Up until then its probably best to stick with blues, but hang in there, after 10 it does get a lot easier. A good tactic to use with higher level yellows is to shoot twice then turn and sprint away until your endurance is down to 1/3rd or so, then turn and shoot again until the mob reaches you. Hopefully by this time it should be down to a quarter of its health at least and you can easily melee it to death. If you miss your critical shot, or more than one of your normal shots however be prepared to run until the mob stops chasing you, rangers aren't made to melee yellows.