Overview
This is a general guide for players to get a smoother playthrough and be most effective with their ranger.
For a TL;DR, here’s the skill sheet.
“Why would I pick Ranger?”
Difficulty
Early Game – Normal
Mid Game – Easy
End Game – Easy
Gear Dependancy
Basically none, can beat everything even with a weak bow. The only difficulty that having weaker gear gives you as a ranger is a slower time-to-kill, but this is easy to remedy via merchants.
Pros
– Beginner Friendly.
– Rangers are the easiest way to play the game. They don’t have to worry too much about defenses, and because of that, they can focus fully on their offense and dodging.
– Kiting is extremely easy with backflipping and the gigantic range that you can shoot from. Enemies always move slower than you can backflip, so in open spaces, you are king.
– Can go through fights without a scratch due to range advantage against melees, opposing ranged and spellcasters. You can strafe to dodge and retaliate against mages and opposing ranged, while backflipping and kiting melee attackers.
– Cheap to invest into. Good gear for a Ranger isn’t as expensive as a greatsword, mage, or dual wielding build.
– Not Mana Intensive. Very good for getting people into grips with how MP consumption works in D2ED.
– Crits hard, all the time, as it benefits the most from Heightened Reflexes.
Cons
– Tight spaces are difficult to work with. Rangers work primarily with having room to dodge and to kite.
– Squishy against melee, usually.
– Hitboxes of corpses can sometimes block your arrows, and uneven terrain makes it difficult to fight.
– You have one less piece of gear to put charms into.
Explanations: Introduction
First off, lets get this part out of the way.
Mind reading and Wisdom are suggested if it’s the first time you are playing the game.
The major draw to this game is that it has really good story, and exploring it to it’s fullest is absolutely recommended, both for good EXP gain, and that of just enjoyment of the voice actors, references, etcetera. Combat itself is a drawback. It’s not that great. But the positives of the game tend to heavily outweigh the good, thankfully.
If you are experienced however, wisdom and mindreading are not useful unless you want to minmax exp gain, and then once you’ve arrived at the battle tower you respec and re-allocate those points elseware.
Keep in mind each time you respec, you get a higher cost.
Explanations: Priority Skills
Let’s talk about the priority skill investments.
The tl;dr for priority, from highest to lowest:
Way of the Ranger > Ranger Strength > Ranger Surprise > Death Blow > Splitting Arrows = Explosive Arrows > Stun Arrows > Curse > Charm > Reflect
If you are are unable to upgrade the highest skill in priority, like Way of the Ranger is either maxed at it’s current tier, or you’re not high enough level to spend the skill points into the skill, invest in the next skill in line, Ranger Strength. If same issue occurs, you continue until you properly allocate your skills in the just priority.
No matter what, WotR percentage increase is just too good to pass up. It shoots up to triple damage by level 5.
In the context of utility passives, from highest to lowest:
Lockpick > Potion Efficiency
Ranger Surprise and Ranger Strength
These two are undoubtedly the highest priority out of all the skills in your arsenal. Ranger Surprise gives the strongest damage resistance down globally, and Ranger Strength increases the damage you deal with bows. These will be what you upgrade at the battle tower once you meet your trainers.
Potion Efficiency
Potion Efficiency doesn’t need to be invested in right away, however, once you do get a good amount of dexterity potions, this essentially makes your bursts stronger by strengthening the capabilities of your potions. No reason not to take this, at any level of the game, provided you keep yourself stocked on potions.
Lockpick
Lockpick is integral. More money, more gear, any gear you don’t use means more money—
This is pretty important to nab. I would personally take this before Potion Efficiency.
Charm
Basically gives you more damage via an add, as if you had a summon. This also gets rid of one less enemy temporarily, and sometimes their allies kill them. This helps get heat off you, making it easier to burst down individuals and wipe out packs.
Curse
Best used to make your Croud Control more effective. This also weakens their offensive stats. So essentially, Curse > Stun Shot > Charm.
Splitting Arrows
When fighting packs, you rotate between Splitting Arrows and Explosive Shot. Has the capacity to have a “shotgun” effect on single moderate-large sized targets i.e multiple shots will land on the same target.
Explosive Shot
Crowd Control and high damaging AoE. Good on both packs and single target.
Death Blow
Raises your critical chance percentage. Rangers want to crit all the time to exploit Heightened Reflexes bonus.
Reflect
Reflect 20% of the damage received back to whoever dealt it.
Way of the Ranger
Massive damage buff in exchange for weaker melee defenses. Hope you practiced kiting!
Explanations: Preference Skills
Now let’s talk about skills that vary on preference.
Mindreading and Wisdom
As I said in the header, these two aren’t necessary for players who are experienced and know what they’re doing.
However, if you’re new to the game, I highly suggest you pick up these, and then respec out of them once you reach the battle tower. It’s a good idea to explore everything the game has to offer, both for exp and for fun via the story!
Mana Efficiency
I would invest in this when you find yourself out of MP faster than you can kill single mobs in packs.
Hide in Shadows
A good skill for escaping out of bad situations. I really wouldn’t invest in this unless you feel the need to get in-and-out.
Blind
As a Ranger, this skill isn’t that useful. But if for some reason you want to pair this with Evasion investment, be my guest, you can do it. But otherwise, you’re fine just kiting normally, dodging, and strafing.
Life Tap
Helps a lot for Ranger. You shouldn’t really be getting too much ideally anyhow, and if you’re hurting for MP, this lets you burst longer. If you find yourself getting hit a lot, I suggest against this, though.
Master Herbalist
Makes potion brewing less expensive.
Healing
Helps when you don’t have potions or can’t drink one! Not necessary, though. Extremely resource intensive.
Regenerate
Good for saving food and potion for critical moments, but regeneration is also a common stat on most accessories. Very powerful if combined with high level hp regen enchants on accessories.
Explanations: Avoid
Majority of Mage, Warrior, and Dragon Slayer tree are avoided because they do quite literally nothing for a Ranger. The buffs that they have only effect melee attacks, not ranged ones.
You can do a mage subtype if you want to invest on intelligence 1:1 with dexterity, but as you progress you’ll find that Mage Skills don’t really work too well and you’ll just do more damage by stacking your primary stat.
Encumbrance
It’s extremely rare that you will hit inventory cap. Once you hit the battle tower you’ll get a chest where you can store everything, anyway.
Way of the Wise Wizard and Way of the Battle Mage
Useless, they don’t benefit any part of ranger whatsoever.
Summons
Too expensive to invest in via skill points and with MP. You could make an argument for Demon, but your necromancer pet can easily just cover the position that’s meant for Demon, too.
Ranger Stealth
Better for if you just want aggro ranges reduced so you can travel more without pulling a group you don’t want. But you could also just use Hide In Shadows, too.
Evade
Useless because of how good backflipping is, as well as the range you can fight at. This is only useful for melee classes as soft mitigation. Also only effects melee attackers.
Fear
You could make a case for it, but it’s higher downtime than charm and only scatters enemies. You ideally don’t want to scatter enemies, and it’s better to keep them inline with you so that you can make use of Explosive Shot more. Before Explosive Shot, sure. After, no.
Stat Allocation
Priorities
Dexterity > Intelligence > Spirit > Vitality > Strength
Dexterity not only raises damage, but it also raises Heightened Reflexes by 1% for each point invested. Heightened Reflexes caps out at 75%, or 75 Dexterity. Once you reach this point, move to Intelligence and increase that. Any further dexterity increases should only be from gear, or from potions, as after that it’s merely a simple damage increase that isn’t high enough to warrant further point investment when you can make life simpler and easier by investing elseware.
“Why not increase Strength?”
Strength will only benefit Conditioned Body and Melee Resistance as a ranger. As a ranger, CC is extremely rare, and even when you do get hit with CC, it’s not too much of a threat unless you pit yourself too closely to a pack, same goes for melee damage received.