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Aion Class Overview: An Intro to the Ranger
MMORPG.com's Josh Price takes this quick look at his early experiences playing a Ranger in NCsoft's Aion.
By Josh Price on September 30, 2009
When the open beta started, I decided to dive head first into the Ranger class, and boy am I glad I did. After having sunk over twenty five levels with both the Assassin and the Gladiator during the previous closed beta events, I must say that I had (and am having)a good time with the Ranger, a rip roarin' good time, even. The class is not without its faults, though. Luckily, most of those faults are only below level twenty. During this time the Ranger can be a bore and a hassle to play, due to a limited number of abilities. But if you're willing to see it through until the late teens, you'll find yourself quickly filling those britches. Some might say that it's like growing into adulthood; let's just hope you're not a late bloomer.
Between the levels of one and ten you're basically, for all intents and purposes, playing an assassin. I actually think that the Ranger should have its own archetype with another ranged physical class and the assassin should have its own sister class, a warden or a thief possibly. Maybe something that could be added for an expansion? You won't even see a bow until level ten, when it is presented to you as a quest reward. You still get new ranks in all of the melee abilities that were used getting this far. I know a lot of Rangers use melee to their advantage due to the lack of archery skills at this level. They will pull and attack with the bow until the mob gets within melee range, then they'll weapon swap to a dagger/sword combo for the finish. This is all well and good, and I'm sure it's a highly viable option for any inclined to proceed down that route, but ultimately, I found myself far too lazy for this.
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You may want to consider stopping by the Trade Broker to pick up a good bow, it can greatly assist in making those terrible teens much less terrible. Which brings me to my next point: item enhancement. I'm actually pretty surprised as to how many people were unaware of this game mechanic during the beta phase of the game. Basically, enhancement allows you to break down unwanted gear with extraction tools and use the resulting enchantment stones to upgrade your gear. If you're new to it, you should definitely go track down some information on it and give it a read. The amazingly complicated strategy I used, which became quite successful, was to buy a decent weapon and then upgrade it as I leveled. In my case, I bought a Frozen Bow at about level twelve to use at fourteen. By seventeen, I had upgraded my bow eight times, giving it an additional thirty two points of damage. This extra damage (about a 30% increase), made any it better than just about any subsequent bows for quite a few levels. These upgrades only apply to the physical damage of the bow, any other stats (accuracy, physical crit.) all remain the same. Because of this, by around level twenty these stats may have overtaken my little Frozen Bow by so much that it may have been better to switch to another bow. But, I really wanted to wait until a bow's base damage matched my bow's modified damage, which was found at around level twenty four. Whether this was the most efficient choice, I don't know. I basically just wanted to run around with a brag-worthy weapon for as long as possible.
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Playing a hunter during those terrible teens was relatively easy, despite being boring. There is a bit more kiting until sixteen since you have to wait for your only two skills to recharge. At thirteen, you get Spike Trap, which can definitely help snare a target in place if you wanted to get a lot of range on it, or for add control. Aside from that though, the only real lifeline comes in at sixteen when you get Stunning Shot. it is an attack that, as the name would imply, stuns the target--always nifty, although it doesn't seem to be a 100% proc rate. To help its awesomeness further, Stunning Shot has a weird little quirk where it will, on occasion, deal a great deal more damage than it lists on the tooltip, and not just crit damage, but non crit extreme damage. It will either hit for 300-400 or 800-1000. There doesn't seem to be any solid reasoning for this, so I just assume it's one of those nifty bugs that when fixed will make Rangers everywhere shed a tear for. Things are only uphill from there, with new skills being added every three levels. Rotations seem pretty loose this low, your best bet is to just save up anything you can cast while moving for when you're--well, moving.
I definitely look forward to further advancing my little robin hood over time. I also look forward to posting any musings I get during the later levels of the class and anything I do while getting there.
Nice post :)
Playing a ranger myself but haven't been playing much cause the lack of time ..
But I really look forward to level my ranger after I read your thread .. gj
Ranger of Aion: a lesson how NOT to make classes.
Below 20 imba too weak, above imba too strong.
Ridiculous.
Playing a Ranger myself in release...had played a gladiator and ranger in CB/OB and enjoyed both, but hearing all the good feedback for rangers post level 19 made me want to stick it out. I'm up to level 15 now and enjoying him, although he is difficult to solo all the time due to his general squishy-ness.
Going to look into this weapon enhancing thing when I get home tonight. Thanks for the tip.
-G
Good news because I started a ranger and was thinking of going back to chanter do to ranger bordem. I will now stick it out and to see what lvl 20+ brings. Thanks for the encouragement.
Nice post on a class I rarely see. Ranged combat isn't my style, so I went assassin, but many of the problems are similar. Keep in mind you can use a bow as a 'sin, as well.
I don't want to sound evil or anything, but you get stunning shot at 19. 16 is that rapid fire skill. Forgot the name.
That's right Stunning Shot is at 19. I find the cd's a bit too long for a ranger on sword and bow skills. it's not like they are doing any amazing damage where they need a longer cd then a mage skill. I am killing stuff as fast or faster with a lev 13 Spirit Master as I do with a lev 18 Ranger ; I take a tenth of the damage and I don't have to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off to avoid taking damage. I am hoping for bigs things with a ranger but in watching higher lev rangers they really don't seem to be doing any kind of amazing damage. They do seem to have a lot of shut downs against casters later.
So up to lev 18 it seems to be a kite alot class which is hard because your targets reset if you go to far out of their pathing area. Meaning that you might have lost half of your health to the target and they reset back to full. Using swords on things around your level means taking alot of damage and hoping that you don't aggro anything else to dirt nap you. Weapon swapping is ok but you risk pulling aggro from other mops and/or your target resetting. Also, the sword attacks and bow attacks are on the same cd which is annoying because alot of times you swap to swords and can only use auto attack, and vice versa. If you like more challenging game play esp. for the first 19 levs roll a ranger. At this point I am not understanding the longer cooldowns, the cd's overlapping, the lack of damage. Versus casters; even a clerics damage is as good and the mage class blows ranger damage off the map. Keep in mind this is talking to lev 18.
Yeah, I realized a while back that I mixed up Arrow Strike & Stunning Shot's level. Oh well.
Sorry for nitpicking, but you also called the class 'Hunter' in one of the later paragraphs. An honest mistake, but not helping the "wow clone" mentality some have toward Aion =/.
Well, I personally blame MMORPG editors for not catching that one, it was something I was doing during early on in OB but have since broken myself of it, though violently.
Started a Ranger, like him so far, kind of grindey at his current level of 12. Good to know it get's better down the road. Thanks for the info. :-)
I can speak only for all classes up to 15 (I have - so far, as I love to level all classes nearly at same time - only 2 lv. 17, both mages, rest 16 except ranger and gladiator), but so far the worst of the worst is ranger. Just bad. Damage (upgrades or not) from bow is just silly. Class specific abilities not even to mention.
For me is terrible design flow if somebody has to play ranger as assassin up to 19 or so. Or if some class is ridiculously weak nearly up to half of levels.
Ok, of course is possible I need to "learn" the class, maybe I’m not playing right ... but then this should be problem for me with all classes ... but it is not. Only ranger. So far the most disappointing class is ranger. Despite I'm forcing myself to play it. Have tryed differetn approach ... nothing work. Again, ok, .... always somebody is first and somebody last ... but ranger last place lags terribly behind its predecessor.
No, it's not that, at least not entirely; the Ranger in Aion is, for a ranged archetype, sadly lacking in ranged skills in the early game; things don't start to get better until you get Arrow Strike I at 16 -- your first ranged chain -- then Stunning Shot I at 19; until then, you're going to feel a bit like Sir Robin, shooting and running away shooting (if you try to stay as a ranged attacker). On the other hand, learning to use the knuckles in the combat mechanics is extremely helpful to Rangers -- jumpshotting and weaving -- and your mid teens is a good place to practice.
Both jumpshotting and weaving take advantage of the timing of attacks to eliminate getting rooted in place while an attack animates, letting you a) attack faster, and b) keep moving (to keep up your distance from your target as well as get the combat modifiers for moving). When you move forward, you get a bonus to your physical attack; you'll see a white up-chevron displayed behind your character when you have a weapon out and have the bonus active. It lasts for a second or two after you stop, so you can't move, stop, then run through all your attacks, and expect to get the bonus for all of them.
Jumpshotting is taking advantage of animations being interrupted when you land from a jump. This works best if you use the left+right mouse buttons to move forward, because it is less finger-juggling. Basically, all you need to do is jump, release any movement key/mouse buttons, hit the key for an attack that would normally root you (like '1' for your autoattack), then as soon as you land, press the movement buttons again. Done in the right order (the game has to see you 'stop' by releasing the movement control while you're in the air), you'll turn and fire your attack while you're still coming down from your jump, and when you land, the animation is interrupted and you can keep moving, while the attack still goes off. It's pretty easy to do with the autoattack, harder with the other ones (Swift Shot and Stunning Shot). Arrow Strike and Entangling Shot you don't get rooted for, so you can fire these on the run and don't need to jumpshot them.
Weaving takes advantage of the fact that once the autoattack starts, it takes effect much quicker than the full animation; you can start your autoattack, if you watch your combat log when you start an autoattack, you will see the actual damage report before the animation completes; at that point, you can hit another skill, and the autoattack animation will stop, replaced by the skill animation -- but since the attack's already gone off as far as the server is concerned, you get a slight speedup on your attack rate.
If you look up 'jumpshot' and 'weaving' on pretty much any Aion site, you'll find a discussion with video examples of how to make both of these work -- and in the low to mid teens, you've got plenty of time to practice.