Made The Mistake Of Going Ranger

[Lust]

Hitting a mid game brick wall on my solo archer playthrough & my property is full of shrubs to fund the never ending need for underwhelming arrows!

What is the best class for solo play ?

[Curv3]

Probably mage or something, but Ive been playing warrior and investing points in both tank and damage and had no problems so far playing solo.

[Lightning]

Easy enough to respec, 10 runes, i would play mage yeah and then use it to farm twink gear for alt, if you wanted to play more than one class without wanting to respec all the time.

[Darkshape]

Early wizard has the same issue of needing to craft ammunition (spell charges), but once you craft some 'eternal' spells it gets a lot better. Eternal fireball is SO much fun!

[Cataclysm™]

there is nothing wrong going ranger... i guess u dont know where to find twigs lol... right after u reach the first home... on the right side after the cliff there is a wolf den...u can just farm there 50+ twigs in less than 3mins, then relog

[Mockingcrow]

Originally posted by Cataclysm™:

there is nothing wrong going ranger... i guess u dont know where to find twigs lol... right after u reach the first home... on the right side after the cliff there is a wolf den...u can just farm there 50+ twigs in less than 3mins, then relog

"full of shrubs to fund the never ending need for underwhelming arrows!"

To me... this implies they have twigs... but they are suggesting the mid-level arrows are too week.

Haven't gone full ranger myself, more of a hybrid ranger/warrior/tank spec, and doing ok. Rangers would need to invest into the tank spec a bit for damage reduc. and health, or the devs need to provide CC abilities to kite without being OP.

[william_es]

Best class for solo is probably mage with a battlemage wand build, but serious skill points into wizard as well.

Battlemage has an ability that makes wands fire double bolts occasionally.

End of the wizard skilltree has 2 abilities that just decimate enemies. One is a chain reaction shock damage bolts going from enemy to enemy. The second causes some enemies to do radial burst damage to surrounding enemies. Combined it means you can whittle down whole packs of enemies very quickly.

Plus the chain reaction shock bolts can be triggered by shooting objects, and then the bolts have a MUCH greater range then the wand has. I killed the first sicklescythe by accident while trying to open doors and fire through them, then slamming the door (mainly because a single scythe took half my health at the time). I found that just shooting the door triggered occasional bolts that would hit the sicklescythe. So I just spam attacked the closed doors and eventually killed him that way. Pretty pathetic, but... a win is a win.

Combined with the radiant aura from the wizard tree, it can do even more damage. In low level areas I just run circles around the bad guys while the aura kills them. Saves wear and tear on the wands.

[Shammy]

Originally posted by Lightning:

Easy enough to respec, 10 runes, i would play mage yeah and then use it to farm twink gear for alt, if you wanted to play more than one class without wanting to respec all the time.

Agreed.
Aside from the one rant post I made this is a pretty good game for an Alpha. The respec is simple and on single-player I have yet to see a cost to respec. Indeed, why would there be. It's a single-player game except where they do coop.
Ranger is quite doable, but he needs to branch out into some other classes to get health, etc. Usually people take two classes.

[kosten07]

I think two handed warrior/barbarian/tank is an excellent option for solo play. The two handed hammer that is 94 damage you get from one of the quests hits like a truck. Plus your super tanky.

You will still want to carry a wand for tower shield mobs and flying bugs. You will still want to carry a bow for hitting switches and the occasional boss gimmick.

Late game iron armor or the paladin set makes you pretty much unkillable.

I would also recommend the two poison resistance nodes in survival and of course, double jump. (Does anyone play without it)

[kosten07]

Also, I agree the ranger class is the weakest class. I leveled as a warrior/ranger hybrid and as soon as I hit that 25+ mob levels the bow really became lackluster. Triple shot is a terrible ability because it screws up your aim. Really annoying when it procs and your 10 feet from a mob and they all miss because of random flght paths. Iron arrows and later explosive arrows did not seem to really pack the same Ooomph that warrior/mage has. I actually went full on ranger with the eagle set before switching over to the warrior build because of how frustrating bows/skills became. I think some fine tuning of bows is definitely in order.

[Anima Mundi]

Originally posted by PakaNoHida:

The only way you can fight as a ranger is to kite, which makes for annoying boss fights. We are woefully out dps'd by magic

Oh don't get multi shot, you waste multiple arrows most of the time. Bee sting, also worthless

I mean kiting as been the basis of gameplay for the archer archtype in most RPGs since like, forever? xD


Different opinion here, but im playing solo Ranger and it's been pretty good. The DPS is amazing if you're built for it. Kiting and dodge is easy with investment in stamina.
Compared to my melee fighter of the same level, damage output is much better.
A bit of a glass cannon build, but i enjoy moving around and dodging andd kiting.
When i play an archer i never expect to be able to take hits.

Also comparatively to melee, it is much faster and enjoyable to clear an entire area of mobs. Works well in co-op also.

Mage builds seem to be a little OP right now, but wand play doesn't feel great to me due to the much shorter range. It's also almost impossible to do manual aiming, for someone like me who does not enjoy playing with target lock or auto aims, it feels bad.

The only issue with Ranger right now is the Arrows cost. Something i am sure they will have to address soon.
For now, i just decided to cheese / exploit the system to multiply stacks of twigs, i've already done several hours of farming, and it has gotten too bland and tedious.
Feathers will also need some adjustment.

BTW i see a lot of people talk about the multishot skill. From my tests, the arrow spread of secondary projectiles doesn't matter. Where you are aiming, one arrow will still allways strike right there. The animations can be misleading, but you aren't missing due to multi-shot, you were just not aiming properly. I only use manual aim though, maybe the issue is with the auto aim.
The multishot skill is kind of a must in terms of damage output tbh.

What i'd like to see is more bows variety in terms of Arrow speed, draw times, etc. More variety in projectiles as well. Element infused arrows should be a thing.
Also cosmetic, but adding a quiver to the back of rangers and pulling arrow from quiver animation would be nice.

There seems to currently be a sort of homing mechanics, in that even shots that i know should have missed are stijll hitting mobs if aimed close enough. Either that or their hitboxes are out of scale on long range.
Pair that with the auto aimed hip-shots, and the game does hold your hand quite a bit in terms of combat, but at least archer can manually aim.

Still one of the most fun classes if it wasnt for twig farming. Just exploit, i guess, and wait for them to balance

[TacticalPony]

hit boxes are most likely a bit over-sized while also having a bit of aim assist when you are not specifically aiming.

Twig farming is annoying. Spacing them is a pain, gathering them is a bit annoying, but having a stock of 2,000 arrows is nice.

My entire game time has been done using nothing but wooden arrows so far. I'm, thinking about upgrading but have yet to decide if it was worth the time to use better ammo as it really isn't all that hard to kite with how much stamina and stamina regen you can build up to (3 circles of stamina that refill fairly quickly with my usual water+boiled eggs buff combo).

[Anima Mundi]

For me better arrows is a must. The twigs are whats a pain, the other resources are fine. I kinda try to use more flint, and skip scrap because thats a ararer resource. After that the better arrows are really worth it for me.
I could kite for 8 hours straight with the stamina bars, but being able to down mobs quicker is important for the fun.

About the first point, im not talking about the aim assist when not manually aiming. I always manual aim.
I'm almost certain there is a bit of homing projectile mechanics being applied. I shoot arrow at the wrong time / spot, mob is moving, arrow still homes in and hits mob.

Maybe like you said hitboxes are hugely oversized, but then the oversize only seems to happen in these situations of mob moving, other times when stationary you can shoot to shave their ears and still miss. So i don't know what gives, but i'd put money on there's some shady homing missile thingy going.

I can't be the only one to have this feeling. I could try posting a vid, but probably only way to see the effect is if recorded at very high frame rate and im limited to 60 fps recording

[Anima Mundi]

@TacticalPony another thing, what helped me with the annoying part of spacing shrubs was switching on Snapping with X. Firgured out too late that this works for farming too. Still annoying, but at least with helps speed up the spacing process, specially if you are not trying too hard to pack tightly

[Bongoboy]

Originally posted by Lust:

my property is full of shrubs to fund the never ending need for underwhelming arrows!

The issue is, you get few branches per shrubs. Later on, the other arrows need allot more materials, I remember I got fed up when most of my Scrap Iron went to arrows and I never seemed to have enough of them.
Its kinda sad that Dexterity has no melee option.

The Mage has his little wands that neither cost ammunition or mana that he can swing until they break and he repairs them and then there is the big staff that can be loaded with stuff like a rocket launcher, even with never-ending ammo.

[Qiox]

The best is without a doubt not archer.
I've enjoyed all my time spent leveling a not archer.
You should give it a try!