Ranger Archive

Say if my only skills were rifle 4 and master Ranger, would the character be capable of holding his own in combat, both alone and in groups? I am a little worried about damage production with only these skills. Any old beta hands that were at that skill mix or simular?

Madagain

I'm not from the beta but I've been determined to play a ranger for a while now and this is my take on her: the makings of a great solo adventurer but not necessarily PvP when you consider characters such as master pistoleer/rifleman, commando, etc. Augmenting her skills w/ some weapon training is the obvious and possibly best choice, and seems fully viable in this context. Just my thoughts, as I may not know as much as someone from beta.

i was a ranger in beta and also a pistoleer.

i found that pistol was awesome. i throw a couple traps at creature then spam the target with Body Shot

its health is wiped out fast and i was very successful soloing for a long time

i would definitly suggest a ranger specialize in a weapon profession since you can master 3 skills

i do scout, ranger, pistoleer with just the pistol brach of marksman

Ranger itself is really more about support, survival, and movement than combat, so you may want more than just Rifle 4 (I assume you mean Marksman rifle specialist). You should have sufficient points to go on to Rifleman, unless you have other skills in mind that you didn't mention.

Ranger skill lines:

Wayfaring: movement & concealment bonuses

Frontiering: big camps for groups, higher foraging ability

Field Bioscience: better creature identification (vulnerabilities, special attacks, etc.) & harvesting

Traps: area effect crowd control (AE stuns & blinds), usable only on animals

Ranger does need more content & abilities, and I expect it will get it before long, but expect moreto flesh out these lines, rather than any heavy-hitting combat abilities.

You can get to Master Marksman and Master Ranger.
There are enough skill points to get both of these.
Thats my goal.
Getting the Master Marksman should be done first that way you can go out on your own and do the things needed to become a Master Scout and then onto Master Scout/Master Ranger.

I was takin down Dewbacks and Banthas by myself in Beta after I got to Master Marksman and was almost a Master Scout by the end of Beta. (Only played 4 weeks on and off)

So, if you go this route make sure you get in a group and go for the big game that way you get MAX exp. I went up three skill levels in pistol during a hunt one night.

Of course everybody has there own way of doing things and you will have to find yours and above all else have FUN doing it.

See ya in game.
Kaxx - in game

No, the ranger is not a fleshed out profession. In fact, rangers lost their conceal ability just before the end of beta. That means the wayfaring line in ranger provides nothing but increased movement speed and better mask scent. Also, ranger camps are nice, but rarely used. I was a ranger in beta, and on several occasions I had groups tell me not to use better camps so that low level scouts could get exp (I won't mention the ninja camping). The trapping line was ok, but I never once used the rescue ability.

As the others have stated, taking a weapon profession is a must. Pistoleer and marksmen seem to be the most popular. But really it is more of a personal preference issue.

I still plan to be a ranger/marksman. I'm just hoping the dev's will finish up the profession and fix the conceal ability. But given the fact that I never once saw a the devs respond to issues raised by the rangers in beta, I'm not holding my breath. Incidently, in roughly 2 months of beta testing, I saw a total of 3 rangers (including myself). That should tell you finished the profession is.

Umba_Gumba,

Do you know why the conceal ability was removed? I'm heading toward Ranger myself and I'd really like to know why they chaned it.

Griefs? Exploits?

Lyfisin

aka "Orion"

Because no one really understood what it did, or if it even worked. You didnt get any messages.
I don't even think the Devs had a clue to what it did.

Ranger for PVP bring absolutely no value to the table. I made Ranger, and then decided to try PVP in the last days of Beta. Boy...was that a downer. But, like most of the other proffesions they will be worked out before most people get there, or so the Devs hope.
I had Pistol 4, TK novice and Ranger. The TK and Pistol were useful for PVP.
Run speed did something in PVP.....it got me out of some fights.

Ranger is just a PVE thing. Thats all.

Ranger is only a supporter. If you want to be a good PvPer, max your combat skills and get good medical abilities.

The ranger tree itself is morefor PvE. However, currently (IMHO) the most effective PvPers are Creature Handlers, so your +tohit against their creatures might help. Afaik traps don't work against pets anymore (changed short before release).

If you have enough skillpoints, you might want to trainthe wayfaring tree of ranger, to get a small speedbonus.

Conceal was removed not because of the players, but because of the NPCs. As far as I remember the patchnotes mentioned that conceal and maskscent let the AI do idioticthings.

I haven't started the character yet, but I was pondering making a Ranger/Squad Leader to help out a PA... basically figuring I'd have great support potential. Is that viable? Personal Combat skill-wise, I'd only have specialist in a weapon and ranged support

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kinnah wrote:

Ranger is only a supporter. If you want to be a good PvPer, max your combat skills and get good medical abilities.

The ranger tree itself is morefor PvE. However, currently (IMHO) the most effective PvPers are Creature Handlers, so your +tohit against their creatures might help. Afaik traps don't work against pets anymore (changed short before release).

If you have enough skillpoints, you might want to trainthe wayfaring tree of ranger, to get a small speedbonus.

Conceal was removed not because of the players, but because of the NPCs. As far as I remember the patchnotes mentioned that conceal and maskscent let the AI do idioticthings.

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Ranger is not a fleshed out skill tree - its still very much in beta. Here is what I know of the skill tree from beta days:

Conceal at the higher levels virtually let you go anywhere. You could run around Endor without getting aggro'd by any creatures, for example. Short of the hostile NPCs, you could explore anywhere, and this is precisely the reason I wanted to progress to the Ranger skill tree in beta. The reason it gave no success message in beta, was because it was always successful and there was no chance to fail against creatures. It may have been this very trait that got it removed. As Kinnah already mentions in this post, there was a patch note in beta saying that they fixed an AI issue that had to do with Conceal and Mask Scent. Only thing Mask Scent is still here, but Conceal is gone. Devs haven't made any comments in beta, or during Live, as to why its gone and when, if ever, its coming back.

Why is the Ranger skill tree in Beta? This is going to be a bit detailed, so bear with me on the length.

Back in beta, there weren't many players advancing to Ranger at all. Much like now. As a result, it wasn't a highly tested skill tree. Less bug reports and balance issues filed resulted in the Ranger skill tree pretty much taking a back seat to the more popular skill trees with issues. The last 4 weeks were a real rush job by the Devs (don't blame them, that was obviously Sony's/Lucasarts idea), so the less-played classes (Fencer, Polearm specialist, Commandos, Rangers, etc) got very little bug fixes or balance issues.

So now we are live with the same issues. Here are the issues back in beta that still apply:

The Strengths of a Ranger are supposed to be focused totally in Player vs. Enemy. Or more specifically, Player vs. Creature. They are not a PvP skill tree. So the important thing to focus on, when considering balance, is the skill tree's primary orientation - Player vs. Creature, a continuation of the Scout class in an elite profession type. Does it meet this standard?

The answer, in a nutshell, is no, it doesn't. Let me explain.

Wayfaring. What does it do beyond the Explore skill which you get in Scout? Lets your travel up hills a bit faster, but that only puts you at normal run speed which isn't much better than Explore 4. Does it let you have a faster run speed, in general? I heard rumors in beta that it did, but haven't seen any proof that it actually does this. The skill tree gives you a bigger bonus in camoflauge, which applies to your mask scent, but mask scent will still fail, and you still end up being detected from time to time.

Is Wayfaring worth the extra 100,000 scout experience and the 14 skill points to learn? Not without the Conceal skill it isn't. Even with the Conceal skill, which came at the very first skill box in Wayfaring, I would stop at the first skill box in Wayfaring and not take it any further.

It all hinges on the run speed then. Make Wayfaring relate directly to your normal run speed. Each box of Wayfaring increases your top run speed slightly. This would definitely make the skill tree worth it over the Explore tree in Scout.

Frontiering. Well foraging is pretty borked - you get a bugged error alot of the time as you advance in Foraging skills, so being better is actually a bad thing until they get this bug nailed down. You don't get any "special items" at this time as the skill tree suggests. There is no point currently in increasing your skill in camp, either. All camps, no matter which one you build, have the same heal rate. In beta, the bigger and better the camp, the better the heal rate. There was a reason to acquire the skills to build the better camps. However, medics complained about this, and as a result, all camps were reduced to the same heal rate of a basic camp. With the same heal rate in all camps, they eliminated any reason to get the better camps. The skill mentions getting a "defense bonus" in better camps, but no one, to my knowledge has ever seen any kind of defensive bonus given to a camp or any difference between the camps in relation to this. The Devs were asked about this in beta, and in live, and I haven't seen any answer from them.

So is the Fronteiring skill tree worth it right now? Nope, certainly not. In fact, getting Frontiering will actually harm you (because of foraging) instead of help you. Its not an improvement over the Survival tree in Scout.

Two things could be done in this regard to make Fronteiring worth spending the skill points and experience on. First, make the better camps progressively have better heal rates. Actually do give camps a defense bonus as well, or make it so that while sitting in a camp, you have an automatic "mask scent" applied to every occupent of the camp, which gets progressively better as the quality of the camp increases. Even just a defensive bonus applied to the player's themselves when they engage in combat inside the camp's radius would be nice. Second, fix the forage skill. Currently there are many bugs with the items in its database. They have the wrong weights and sizes assigned to the more advanced stuff you can forage, and as a result, you get the "item cannot fit in your container" message when trying to forage them.

Field Bioscience skill tree. Is it much better than Hunting in Scout? Well, currently, I haven' heard from any Ranger on whether you can harvest much more over what you can with Hunting 4. I know in beta it didn't make any difference in this regard. Other than that, the skill tree gives you a total of +15 to hit creatures at the top two skill boxes. Is that really worth the 100,000 scout experience and 14 skill points to get it? Nope, you could easily spend the time advancing in Carbine, Pistol, or Rifle specialist trees getting more of a "to hit" bonus for all things - NPC and creature.

Two things that would save this skill tree and they are fairly easy fixes. First, make the "to hit" bonus given for creatures larger, and more cumulative as you progress through the skill tree. Perhaps +5 to hit creatures with the first two boxes, then +7, and +10 for the last two. Second, fix the harvesting bonus. By the time this tree is completed, you should be able to harvest double the number of resources over a scout with Hunt 4.

Until these issues with Field Bioscience are addressed, its not much better than Hunting 4.

Advanced Trapping. Is it really worth it? Nope, the traps are nice, but the effects are either too small to matter for the battle, or don't last long enough. They aren't all much better than the traps you can get with Trapping 4. There just isn't anything here that is interesting enough to bother with all that Trapping experience to advance through the skill tree.

The fix: They can do one of two things (I'm not holding my breath for both). First, they could make more traps available through the skill tree. Make these traps more effective and have longer durations on their effects as you progress as well. Even give a small bonus in the effect of the trap being applied successfully to the target. Second, they could make the more advanced traps be effective on NPC targets as well as creatures. This idea was tossed around in beta a bit. This tree would be fairly popular with this addition, as traps would be fairly useful in PvP situations. PvP is basically the "end game" of Star Wars as well, so this would be a welcome addition to the Ranger profession.

Well, there you have it. When you look at this as a whole, the Ranger profession really doesn't have much at all going for it over the Scout profession. In fact, you'd be wiser to spend your skill points and time in another skill tree that is much more effective in game play. It doesn't have to be this way, however. The ideas, fixes, and solutions I've proposed aren't that difficult of fixes and tweaks - some can be implemented fairly easily in order to make the Ranger profession a truely elite profession type over Scout.

Ugg, now im depressed HEH.

Heh, despite all that I'm still going to be one. Maybe they'll fix me later, whatever, I just like the idea behind ranger. I'm also going for Master Rifleman.

With Master Ranger, Master Rifleman, I have just enough points for Artisan and Survey 1. I'm having plenty of fun with it so far, but I'm a long way from completing it to be sure.