Is there a point to melee rangers?

[Gramstaal]

I've played through an entire campaign on Veteran and I've never found a use for them. They are weak, vunerable and have a rather low chance of killing the target, plus they might reveal more enemies.

In most cases I found the shotgun to be more accurate and deadly, coupled with the very strong scouting build that even allows them to shoot twice with a single action later on. Why would I ever want to endanger my Ranger with unrelieable melee weapons when I can scout with them, make them pop out of concealment, kill enemies from a safe distance and then go back into concealment to scout ahead or even go past enemies unnoticed?

[subaryta]

I use them in melee. At least at the beginning of the game they can deal more damage than rifles and they have usually a 90%+ to hit. They can have a perk of not triggering overwatch so they are useful to disable overwatching enemies. It's just a matter of gameplay style you prefer.

[Tenshin51]

There good at dealing w/ sectoids in early game but gotta agreed they useless in the late game due aliens have decent armor so it is much better to use shotgun or rifle.

In the late game i totally much prefer the phantom ranger than the blade master due knowing alien location is useful in the game.

[Flodge]

Early game the 90% hit chance of a blade is actually good odds and the counterattack perk can be a nice backup plan for stun lancers etc - but yeah they become less useful as you progress.

[Edgius Ceaser]

Reaper and Bladestorm are both AMAZING abilities. Bladestorm theoretically lets m,elee attacks hit twice, and saves you against melee enemies. Reaper isn't ammo dependant like Serial, enables you to move and use items at the end of it, and is (often) more accurate.

Treat the Ranger Col. abilities like the Sharpshooters. Fan fire vs Rapid Fire for single target damage, and Serial vs Reaper for AOE cleanup.

[Eggy]

Agreed with the early game usage. Versus those early squishy targets they are great. Especialy when your trying to conserve reloads and ammo.


My experience has been that they cause more problems than they fix.
You move in for a kill and they reveal another pod.
You move in for a kill and that Muton goes "nope" -> face punch.
Bladestorm triggers, spazes out the physics engine and you have borken animations for an entire level.
On the other hand the other range gets a bonus hit and crit from flanking and can perform 2 shots. At one point I saw a crit chance of 105% on one of my rangers shotguns. With that bonus damage on a crit ammo, they chew stuff up.

[Thomas Eichhorst]

Originally posted by Gramstaal:

I've played through an entire campaign on Veteran and I've never found a use for them. They are weak, vunerable and have a rather low chance of killing the target, plus they might reveal more enemies.

In most cases I found the shotgun to be more accurate and deadly, coupled with the very strong scouting build that even allows them to shoot twice with a single action later on. Why would I ever want to endanger my Ranger with unrelieable melee weapons when I can scout with them, make them pop out of concealment, kill enemies from a safe distance and then go back into concealment to scout ahead or even go past enemies unnoticed?

I used a melee ranger to grim reaper the remaining aliens after explosions, and she's been quite good at that.

[Tenshin51]

Originally posted by 82:

Reaper and Bladestorm are both AMAZING abilities. Bladestorm theoretically lets m,elee attacks hit twice, and saves you against melee enemies. Reaper isn't ammo dependant like Serial, enables you to move and use items at the end of it, and is (often) more accurate.

Treat the Ranger Col. abilities like the Sharpshooters. Fan fire vs Rapid Fire for single target damage, and Serial vs Reaper for AOE cleanup.

Problem w/ that late game there are less melee aliens in the game. There are far more better class than melee rangers in the late game in my opinion. Like psi op could mind control the andromedon to kill all chysalids in terror mission. Also when a melee ranger got hit and damage it will take time to use melee ranger in the game. Unless ranger got untouchable sadly this doesn't make a ranger invulnerable unless you applied aid protocol and ranger have psc dodge.

[Inigo]

Melee path Rangers PALE in comparison to sneaky Rangers.

My first Ranger was a Blader because of her higher damage and Run and Gun and other nice things.
She's alright, but the other ranger who was a throaway rookie?

DAMN.

Gets like 25% aim and 15% crit bonus when concealed (and can re-conceal once, ignore squad losing concealment ). Couple that with one of those "plus crit% and more if you are closer" weapon mods and she can wreck house. I HAVE HAD A CRIT SHOT that had a 145% critical chance!

Get her the double shot ability (15 % aim penalty but hey, proximity) and she can ONE SHOT GATEKEEPERS. It's insane.

Reaper? Eh, have 9 damage. I mean 4 because of grazing shots - and then REaper won't work and y ou're standing there in the open at the beginning of your epic life saving combo.
No thank you. Reaper's only saving grace is that the melee attack is guaranteed to hit.

[Count_Zero [DK]]

Late game also gives them a huge advantage. Once they get "Reaper", you can soften up enemies with you other members and finish a round off with 3-4-5 kills with a Ranger. Absolutely devestating if used correctly. And with a bit of luck you can even get him/her back in full cover when you are done reaping alien souls.

Reaper:
"A devastating chain melee attack where the first melee attack cannot miss. Each melee kill in Reaper mode grants an extra action, but further melee attacks deal reduced damage. 4 turn cooldown."

[Daskis]

You can use meele build if you want but its just weaker then shootgun, less damage and less chanace to hit. With talon rounds and laser sight you can get to over 100% crit chance with at meele range with shotgun (on enemies that can be flanked), if you combine it with rapid fire you have around 30 damage.
In this setup ranger should be able to kill most enemies in 1 turn and if you add inspire to it from your psi you do even more damage. Meele ranger is ok for weaker enemies to kill few of them in one reaper that is if you dont miss or enemies dont dodge.
On commander difficulty i just see them underpreforming unless you want to use meele ranger as a cleaner after for example grande to finish off enemies on low hp. (sniper can do it too.)

In short unless you use special setup for meele ranger its just not that good late game and when it comes for last missions i would say i dont see usefulnes for it at all, but thats my opinion.

[pcgunner]

Thanks all for the great insight - I just had the clock go off on the avatar and was thinking I really liked rangers - then I hit a wall at one of the blacklist missions.

The mobs HP was much higher than the damage I was doing and had to adjust my tactics to use Slash only when the mobs health was in range - became a real PITA.

I just got the shard gun and it seems to be a better alternative to taking out mobs. However, I have one ranger that' can't hit the side of a barn and another that one shots injured mobs. Go figure (I won't even get into the Standing right next to a mob and miss issue).

I took 2 rangers and went down 2 paths (Phantom and bladeslinger varying a few choices along the way - I prefer Bladestorm to Implacable) with them to see which I preferred and which was more reliable in combat - for me I think both paths have merit although I'm not close to end game yet so my perspective may change

[Nurgle84]

Are we talking about pure melee or the melee skills in general? If you want to melee, Blademaster is a must, as it brings the swords up to about shotgun levels. In my oppinion this should be changed to something like: Sword damage = Shotgun -1, with Blademaster = Shotgun +1 at same crit levels. (So sword should have about 50% base, compared to Shotgun 10% + 40% flank, you are standing right next to the opponent after all)

After Blademaster, lets see:
- Shadowstep: Would be great, but its in the same slot as Shadowstrike which is awesome. Its useful for getting your Squad out of Overwatch Situations.
- Run and Gun: Even better than the XCom 1 Version, as you can grenade, Hunker or whatever you want. But again, its in the same Slot as Deceive, which is great, as long as you have Shadowstrike
-Bladestorm: Great when you really made a mistake and that Stun Lancer or Berserker reaches you, or the patrol is blowing you concealment by stepping right next to you... Its bad, really bad.
-Untouchable: Good stuff, I even take it on my rangers (which are scouts btw.)
- Reaper: With Reaper they are good in wipping of wounded aka grenaded enemies. So Rapid Fire is good for taking out big guys while reaper is good for multikills.

All together: Melee is not bad, but Scout is way better, especially as the first few perks of the Scout tree brings more to the table. And once you go there, you are pretty much set.

My favorite build looks like:
Blademaster, Shadowstrike, Deceive, Implacable, Untouchable, Rapid Fire

So Scout with light dip into Melee, I do not like Phantom.

If I wanted Melee I would choose:
Blademaster, Shadowstrike (its just to good for the opening shot with Talon rounds), Deceive (A must with Shadowstrike), Implacable, Untouchable, Reaper.

So basically the same, which is a shame. The Melee side of the tree is lacking.

[stevo]

Originally posted by Count_Zero DK:

Late game also gives them a huge advantage. Once they get "Reaper", you can soften up enemies with you other members and finish a round off with 3-4-5 kills with a Ranger. Absolutely devestating if used correctly. And with a bit of luck you can even get him/her back in full cover when you are done reaping alien souls.

Reaper:
"A devastating chain melee attack where the first melee attack cannot miss. Each melee kill in Reaper mode grants an extra action, but further melee attacks deal reduced damage. 4 turn cooldown."

You can achieve the same thing with serial on a sniper, with less risk. Bladestorm can be used rather interestingly, especially with untouchable, essentially acting as a borderline guaranteed overwatch hit on melee enemies with invulnerability, but it's very situational. You also run a very real risk of triggering other pods doing the whole reaper thing if you're not careful.

I'd have to say that melee guys are actually very useful in the midgame and can clutch a lot of situations. But once plasma gear is in, their sword is worthless and phantom ranger with concealed rapidfire hits and implacable trumps him.

They should really consider buffing his sword beyond storm gun damage. Or at the very least give the sword some guaranteed side effects other than minimal chance of stunning or whatever it is.

[Tuco]

Plenty of use for melee in the early game, but I *do* have the distinctive feeling it gets less and less competitive as you approach the end game, where quite frankly disposing quickly of storng enemies is a far bigger priority than cleaning the trash.

In my opinion it's a mix of swords not scaling as well as shotguns (not to mention unlike the latter you can't equip swords with special ammos or perks aimed to armored/mechanical enemies) AND and some limitations in talents (like reaper doing less and less damage at every strike) making them less powerful than they may sound on paper.

I'd love for swords to be a more viable build because it sounds like a lot of fun, but right now I'll take the massive damaged spikes you can get with shotguns and rapid fire over being able to clean the trash mobs that are less and less frequent in the late campaign.

[traumspieler]

Originally posted by bladechild:

They should really consider buffing his sword beyond storm gun damage.

Do it yourself?
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