An early guide to playing the Ranger class in PSO2 NGS!
Contents
Range Class Overview
All credit goes to Zanza!
Overview
I’ve spent a lot of time with Ranger over the past week, and just thought I’d write up this small guide on some less than well explained mechanics. Also some basic overviews of the PAs, their uses, and some hopefully useful play tips!
Assault Rifle: Rifle isn’t the same as it was in original PSO2, it’s still for the focus on run-and-gun play but with less overall power than its predecessor. It’s Normal Attack is a steady stream of bullets you can fire while moving. The Weapon Action allows for a lot of mobility while dealing damage, and can be given an invulnerability window with a skill point via Slide Shot Advance.
Rifle PAs
Homing Darts is the best AoE Ranger by itself has to offer. It locks on to targets quickly, very spam-able to clear up the trash mobs! This is arguably the only real “AoE” PA of any account Ranger has, so it’s also the best for any mobbing situation!
Razing Shot, uncharged, is a series of several slug-like shots, and a spiraling, piercing projectile if charged. Decent damage, and you can move or float while charging. This is the most damaging Rifle PA, but will burn through your PP fast, and has no tracking what so ever.
Blaze Shot is a quick movement PA that causes you to lunge forward and then glide along firing shots at your target while held. Great for repositioning in the air or on the ground while dealing moderate damage.
Launcher: Launcher has been heavily overhauled from PSO2, and is actually a very solid weapon choice in NGS. It features powerful shells that deal considerable chunks of damage, and can also charge their normal attack to unleash a fan of shells in front of them. You can also invest a skill point to unlock the ability to make this pattern tighter and more accurate by pressing forward as you fire the charged shot. The Weapon Action of Launcher is probably the most important to Ranger as a class, as the Sticky Bomb will burst for a moderate amount of damage and restore a large amount of PP when it does so! This allows you to sustain DPS with PAs for very long periods if you use it as soon as it’s ready in longer boss fights.
Launcher PAs
Fallen Impact is a (hard to) target AoE that will fire and then rain down several bursts of damage in a small area after a second or so. This is a pretty meh PA, all things considered, as it locks you in place while firing it and does underwhelming damage.
Fear Eraser is one of the better damaging and visually satisfying Launcher PAs, locking you in place to fire a piercing beam of energy that deals massive damage, and if maintained long enough, deals an extra burst of damage when it ends. Ideal for when bosses are downed or otherwise immobile, as it has very slow tracking. However, this PA is not very PP friendly, costing a whopping 35 just to activate and doing lackluster damage without the extra PP to maintain the blast for several seconds. Use this with no less than 50/60PP, bare minimum.
Multi-launch is arguably the best thing to happen to Launcher, and is the bread and butter of someone who wants to use Launcher as their primary weapon. As soon as the PA fires up, you can move, and will also maintain altitude as you do so if in the air. This can be very important for allowing you to DPS while avoid attacks and smaller mobs on the ground, while simultaneously giving you some considerable mobility! The attack also homes in on the part of a monster you have targeted, and will strike that part with almost 100% consistency. Amazing for dealing with hard to reach weak points. The drawback is that at the end of this PA, you will be locked in place for about a second. This can leave you open to some attacks like Datl Swords tracking beam attacks, a Peats Swords arm stretch attack, enemy shots, etc, so be mindful of the flow of combat and you shouldn’t have any problems!
PP Management
I think Ranger has some wonderful PP management tools and can maintain an amazing amount of DPS uptime while spamming PAs. Sticky Bombs, as I mentioned before, are the best PP management Ranger has available to them. When mobbing, I recommend throwing it on a tougher mob as you won’t regain PP if it doesn’t explode. During boss fights, hit this as often as possible, ideally around 50% PP or higher, as it takes around 7 seconds or so to actually explode, allowing you to do several PAs. There’s an ability in the Skill Tree for Ranger that will reduce the Cooldown of the Sticky Bombs Weapon Action, and I highly recommend it.
Another useful tool is the Rifle Weapon Actions Grenades/Trap. If you hold the Weapon Action button, you will throw a grenade at your target if you hold a direction, or place an exploding trap at your feet if you don’t press any direction button. This skill is also found in the Ranger Skill tree, and also comes highly recommended as it does pretty decent damage and restores a decent chunk of PP, though not near as much as the Sticky Bomb.
Ideally, using these two together will make PP management much easier. This means less time hitting the normal attack button and more time spamming those flashy PAs, and more DPS!
Skills
As of now, it’s fairly easy to max out all the majorly relevant skills in the Ranger Skill tree. As a rule of thumb, stay away from Bad Condition Ward and Bad Condition Reduction until you have all other skills maxed out. They’re just not very useful, and won’t contribute much at all to your overall survival or damage output. Otherwise, it’s mostly what you prioritize until you can get all the relevant ones!
Weak Bullet is the “must have” Ranger skill that increases damage dealt by 20% to the hit part. This, and Blight Rounds Reinforce are extremely important skills. Take at least 1 point in Blight Rounds early on, and Max it out when you have enough skill points.
All other skills in Ranger are 1 point and all of them are useful to you in some way, and thankfully there’s plenty enough skill points for them since you’re not wasting your skill points in Bad Condition Ward and Bad Condition Reduction, right???
As a note, Spread Shot is an Active Skill, and is found under the same tab as Weak Bullet. When you set this Active skill to your subpalette or Skill bar, you will notice it has a gauge over it. Rifle PAs and Weapon Actions charge this bar, and allow you to use it. It’s fairly neat and fun, dealing decently high damage, and gives invulnerability frames if you have the Spread Shot Quick Getaway skill. Useful for making some space from an aggressive boss or dumping damage into a weak point before getting your distance.
Subclass Options
As far as subclasses go, I haven’t quite tested enough to be sure, but I’ll give you my general impressions.
Force is what I’ve used mostly, and it’s very comfortable. Eradication PP Gain, PP Recovery Boost, and PP Conversion all played a part in my Ranger experience early on. PP Conversion, in my opinion, does begin to fall off in usefulness as you gain more PP and become more comfortable using Sticky Bomb and Grenades/Traps for PP management. However, Force makes Ranger’s very resource thirsty PAs a lot more manageable overall.
Gunner is one I’ve been experimenting with, thinking that Attack PP Recovery would work well, but has surprisingly left me a little more tightly strapped for PP than Force. Otherwise, it offers very little to Ranger.
I believe Hunter would make a good sub for Ranger if you want to be a little more on the defensive side of things, but I haven’t tried it yet, myself. There’s nothing besides Hunters Physique and Flash Guard that benefit Rangers kit specifically, but in theory you’ll generally be able to take more of a beating and super-armor through staggering attacks with Hunter Physique.
Fighter/Techter I probably wouldn’t consider these unless you just want to for your play style. All things said and done, Ranger is incredibly solid on its own so there’s plenty of room to mix it up. Fighter offers the ability to deal considerable amounts of damage and gain PP from downed enemies, which is useful, but only in certain situations where bosses or certain tough enemies are involved. Techter just doesn’t offer much as a subclass, and while the skills to increase Photon Blast Gauge are neat, they’re just allowing you to use a single skill in your kit somewhat more often.
Tips and Tricks
I highly recommend making some combination of an Assault Rifle/ Launcher Multi-Weapon if you’re going to main Ranger. The Rifle and Launcher Weapon actions together provide you with a /lot/ of utility on their own, and being able to use the best PAs of the two weapons makes for some very deadly efficiency. Not having to switch between weapons every time you need to access the ability set of one or the other allows your to be incredibly responsive and versatile on the battlefield in a way that swapping weapons just can’t compare to.
Try to stay in the air and DPS. While counters are all well and good, for Ranger your sustained DPS options and distance will more safely win you the day. There’s tons of tools for this in their kit. Multi-Launch will keep you at the same height it’s activated, buzzing enemies with exploding shells from the skies like a Gundam, and you won’t lose any height as long as you spam it. Launcher normal attack, uncharged, also allows you to maintain height so long as the attacks are chained together and you move in a direction. It seems like you will lose some height slowly if you stay in one place.
Rifle Weapon Action>Launcher Normal or Rifle Weapon Action>Multi-Launch will also help you maintain altitude, reposition in the air, and lose minimal height at the end of the Rifle WA.
My general rotation for a boss ends up looking something like Launcher WA>Weak Bullet>Multi-Launch until approx.40%PP after Sticky Bomb procs>Rifle Grenade WA>Multi-Launch until low PP, repeat. This gets me a pretty decent flow from the class, and I rarely ever feel like I’m running dry on PP unless I mess up.
For those moments when a Boss gets “Downed”, depending on your PP, Weak Bullet>Photon-Blast>Fear Eraser is about as optimum as you can get. If your Photon Blast isn’t available, holding Fear Eraser as long as you can will get the job done.
If your PP is low, hopefully your Rifle Grenadier WA is available to flow into Multi-Launch after Weak Bullet. Fear Eraser is actually a bit of a bad idea in these situations, as the boss will likely start attacking again before you can get enough PP to make it worth using and leaving you open to a damage.
Additional Info
You can cancel multi-launch by dobletaping movement key
- Spread shot – meh 200dmg each 1min and 2sp.
- Fear eraser – gives extra final shot(x4-5 DMG) right after you chanel it 2sec~(u see purple animation) right after that no reason continue cast since lazer weaker then uncharged autoatack, only benefit you can hit weak spot from any direction.
- Razing shot – just crap, don’t have tracking(unreal hit moving target) charged piercing shot same ♥♥♥, just waste of pp, if you want it you can do it for free just hold normal attack and spam X.
- Fallen impact – that crap worse then rifle autoatack just waste pp.
Rifle critical distance indicate by changing lock on center colour “white” to far/close, “red” right distance(also bullet impact have flashes).
Sticky Bomb > Laser
With enough PP or delaying your laser slightly, your sticky bomb will detonate just before you run out of PP, allowing you to continue your laser for twice as long. This can be difficult to pull off on mobile enemies, but the sheer DPS it does far exceeds anything else in your kit. By the time your full laser ends, your next sticky bomb should be off cooldown in a few seconds, giving you just enough time to normal attack to full PP before repeating the combo.
Homing Darts is the best AoE Ranger by itself has to offer. It locks on to targets quickly, very spam-able to clear up the trash mobs! This is arguably the only real “AoE” PA of any account Ranger has, so it’s also the best for any mobbing situation!
This is completely inaccurate unfortunately. IMO, the Rangers best AoE comes from ‘Razing Shot’ while in manual aim. Line targets up, and pierce them all for major damage. When you run out of PP, start sprinting, while still in manual aim, and just do a normal attack. If you line all the enemies up again, you can get full PP in one shot, then repeat. The damage is insane.
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