Ranger

From WikiAOC

The Ranger is a bow-specialist, preferring to stay out of melee combat and dispatch his foes from afar. Relying on accuracy and precision, Rangers are less concerned with mobility and more with self-preservation and maintaining an element of surprise. Masters with their bows, they are able to provide essential ranged cover for their allies, be it through blanketing areas in arrows or sniping vulnerable targets that may be cowering behind the front lines.

In combat, Rangers can make attacks from the default third-person view, or can shift to a first-person zoomed-in view with a crosshair to select specific targets and make use of ranged combo attacks.

Rangers have various stances, including a sniper stance for longer range, piercing stance which allows crossbows a chance to pass through an enemy and hit another, and volley stance for area-of-effect damage.

Rangers have a tracking ability, allowing them to find player or NPC targets.

[edit] Abilities and Combos

• Ranger Abilities
• “Piercing Shots”, which allows the Ranger and their group to penetrate or even eliminate directional shields on their target of choice.
• “Linebreaker”, which is a powerful shot capable of knocking down all foes in a column between the Ranger and his target
• “Volley”, which allows all of the Ranger’s shots to affect additional targets
• “Heartseeker”, which will instantly kill an opposing minion in addition to increasing the likelihood of one’s team performing fatalities for a period of time.

[edit] Specialties

See also: Ranged Combat

• Volley attacks
• Sniper attacks
• Piercing attacks
• Knockdown attacks
• Damage-Over-Time
• Bow/Crossbow
• One-handed Edged weapons
• One-handed Blunt weapons
• Daggers
• Dual-wield
• Shields

[edit] Available races

• Aquilonians
• Cimmerians
• Stygians

[edit] Class Interview

Rangers are indeed primarily focused around ranged combat and, as you noted, are the only class which uses ranged weapons as their main source of offensive firepower. While most other classes can use ranged weapons to some degree, Rangers are exclusive in their proficiency of them and are the sole user of ranged combos. Bows and crossbows are equally favored by the Ranger, with different specializations and combos available for both weapon types.

Although you will be able to use ranged weapons up close, the Ranger will suffer some penalties in melee range. However, he will have a handful of melee combos and crowd control methods to deal with these limitations. In melee combat, Rangers will primarily use one-handed swords in addition to their choice of an off-hand dagger or shield.

Currently, there is no damage reduction on distance shots although there is a range limit imposed on all shots fired. Additionally, Rangers gain some benefit by attacking from upper ground.

All Rogues share the same general skill-set, so you can expect the Ranger to have stealth and climbing abilities that are very much similar to the Barbarian and Assassin classes. (Although Rangers wear the heaviest armor of all the Rogue classes, and thus will usually be at a slight disadvantage for the purposes of sneaking around.)

Additionally, the Rogue archetype feat tree provides many shared abilities and specializations between the three classes. For instance, the general Rogue feats “Cheat the Reaper” (which allows the Rogue to occasionally recover from otherwise fatal wounds) or “Excellent Balance” (which grants the Rogue an ability to escape movement impairing effects) provide archetype-themed bonuses and abilities which reinforce the “roguish” nature of the Ranger, Assassin, and Barbarian.

One of the key weaknesses of the Ranger is, as noted above, the fact that ranged attacks are not always optimal during close-quarters combat. As the majority of their abilities revolve around ranged combat, melee battles will be somewhat to their disadvantage. Although we have given Rangers a handful of abilities to aid them should the need to fight toe-to-toe arise—just as we have given melee classes a couple powerful abilities to cope with ranged opponents—a powerful melee opponent will be a challenge for the Ranger if he is allowed to close within striking distance.

Currently, all classes will have the ability to perform attacks while mounted. That said, mounted archery—as with spell casting—is limited to normal directional attacks, and thus disables the use of the more powerful ranged combos.

Rangers are pretty flexible in their means of attack, with various stances unlocked by feats allowing one to pick and choose the best approach for a given fight. For instance, “Sniper Stance” enables the Ranger to focus primarily on range, damage, and precision while “Shattering Stance” grants all of the Ranger’s attacks a chance to knock down their target as well as damaging nearby hostiles.