Ranger has access to some really nice tools. Many enemies have weakpoints that are only weak to ranged attacks. Some of its best skills in fact revolve around doing bonus damage to weakpoints and damage bonuses to consecutive attacks without moving. Arguably, the most important tool, however is Weak Bullet (W. WB is a powerful debuff that turns a single point(marked with a large red circle) into a glaring weakpoint multiplying all damage dealt to that region by 3. That means hits that would originally have done 100 damage will now do 300 damage, 10,000 damage becomes 30,000 damage, etc. This alone is amazing, but better still all members of your party and even all players in a multiparty area(MPA) can see this mark and get the damage bonus, so it's an extremely potent tool for taking out bosses or other targets with lots of HP. This is an actual damage bonus, it does not reduce defense, so if WB is used on an actual weakpoint that would normally receive 2x damage, all attacks will now do 6x damage for the duration. This bonus applies to all damage and relevant damage multipliers which can lead to absolutely ridiculous numbers and turn long painful fights into little more than an minor annoyance. An experienced Ranger can therefore guide other players to specific points they'd like the rest of the party to attack by marking the target. When your party or MPA sees the mark, they will swarm that spot like piranhas. Several caveats:
-Each mark only lasts 15 seconds.
-If you or anyone else hits the same enemy with a second WB shot, the first one will be removed. In other words any one enemy can only have one active mark at a time. For this reason if you see someone mark a spot, unless you know they missed or make a mistake (for example shooting a Rockbear anywhere other than his face), do not mark another point until that one disappears, or else you'll actually cause more harm than good. Remember: WB is a collaborative effort
-Use of this skill loads "ammo" into your rifle. If you fire a shot, whether you hit or not, your ammo counter will go down by 1.
-Switching off of your equipped rifle will remove all remaining ammo from your clip.
While ammo is loaded, WB shots replace your normal "burst fire" attack. This makes normal attack use for PP regen impossible while ammo is loaded. You can however use PAs with no restrictions.
Increasing ranks in this skill does not make it more effective, but it does give you more shots and reduce the cooldown time allowing you to place more marks and reducing wait time before you can load more bullets. At 1/10, WB has a 2 minute cooldown on use and only gives you 1 round of ammo. At 10/10, cooldown is reduced to 1.5 minutes and you have 4 rounds.
Note: Cooldown begins at activation, not when you fire your last round, so you can load your ammo before the boss teleporter and typically have another clip ready by the time you've used up your first at higher levels.
Assault Rifle in general is an important tool. Not only is it your only method of applying WB, but it allows free movement while shooting at the cost of accuracy. Its PAs are extremely varied, from a small piercing shot, to a powerful single sniper rifle shot, to a powerful shotgun effect and even multitargeting homing missiles. While moving, your burst fire and PAs will have reduced accuracy, resulting in a spray of bullets instead of a tight cluster. This isn't always a bad thing, but if you can, try to remain still for better DPS.
The Launcher is a massive, heavy weapon geared towards mob suppression. It is slow to fire and restricts movement while it's out, but it's extremely powerful and easily takes out large groups of enemies caught in the blasts. Both weapons are important to successfully playing this class, so even if launcher feels cumbersome at first, it's important to give it some time to learn its idiosyncrasies.
A viable alternative to Launcher is the Gunslash, but only using certain PAs. The AoE, damage per hit and range on Launcher is superior to Gunslash, though so give them both a try and see which suits you better, or better yet use both as gunslash is typically good for close range while launcher is great for short to mid range.
Traps are items you have to buy in the store and are consumed on use. They have various purposes, but due to their questionable effectiveness and overly long setup time, you'll be far more effective and more efficiently using your SP by taking skills that more directly affect damage.
Due to the nature of most of Ranger's skills, very few classes benefit from having it as a sub. WB requires a rifle to be used which means (unless you're a Gunner) having an all class rifle, many of which are either very weak or exceedingly rare. While many people would like to have WB on hand, its restrictions make having it in your pocket fairly pointless. For example, maybe as Fighter you'd like to have WB to do even better damage to a boss. This sounds great at first, but your gun damage will be horrendous and switching off of rifle will get rid of all remaining ammo. This will only give you 15 seconds to get the job done and many bosses have so many breakable parts, you're better off taking a subclass that boosts damage at all times rather than 15 second bursts every 2 minutes.
While Gunner benefits greatly from subbing Ranger, the reverse is less so. The best all class TMG is extremely weak and Chain Trigger with rifle is not nearly as potent compared to other options. Still it's not the worst sub you can take, but you're better off with a sub like hunter which boosts damage at all times with little drawback.
New skill: Killing Bonus
Refills a portion of your PP every time an enemy dies nearby. 1PP per level for a maximum of 10. Sounds great, right? I'm not sure if there's a cooldown to this skill or not, it certainly appears so at first glance, but evidence points to proc range on this still to be that of a melee attack. It doesn't really lend itself to standard ranger play except for the occasional rodeo drive as even Additional Bullet's sweet spots are out of this small active zone making the activation rate of of the skill tentative at best. This slows the PP regen rate to something almost unusable in many instances since rangers...you know...range. If you like to mix a lot of melee in, or primarily use diffuse shell, this skill might see a little more use. It's not the worst skill you can get, but it's pretty counter intuitive.
Recommended subclass:
Hunter
Recommended subclass for:
Gunner