The Ultimate PvE Ranger Guide for Ashes of Creation

The Ranger Archetype in Ashes of Creation is a powerful class that can quickly turn the tide of battle with crowd control, while also having the ability to provide a significant amount of single target damage. With unmatched mobility, Rangers have a plethora of abilities to help with disengaging a bad situation.

In Ashes of Creation, the Ranger class is a high skill ceiling, high reward Archetype that quickly comes online when mastered and geared. Landing Vine Fields on a large group of opponents followed up by Snipes and Scatter Shots plus the AoE from your party members can make quick work in defeating an entire opposing group.

For those of you looking for a PvP specific guide, please click the link below.

Strengths

• High single target damage.
• Unmatched mobility.
• Best crowd control of all archetypes.

Weaknesses

• Incredibly squishy.
• Highly gear reliant for effective DPS.
• High skill ceiling for solo and group play.

The Ranger in Ashes of Creation currently has a few Marks and Hunts to play with, however currently the system is a bit clunky. There are several Hunts and Marks in the talent tree and choosing the best option can change based on what kind of encounter you are dealing with at any given time. While leveling up, and early on at level 25 using Hunt of the Raven will be your go to.

As you progress with your gear at level 25 you will want to transition to Hunt of the Tiger as Physical Penetration will start to have diminishing returns and the additional critial damage from Hunt of the Tiger will be more beneficial.

When it comes to Marks, you also have a few choices in the talent tree. It is important to note that these Hunts do not stack with each other from other Rangers; if you are playing in a group you will want to ensure that you are either staggering when each Ranger uses their Hunt, or run a different Hunt on each Ranger.

For both solo and group play in PvE your best option is Mark of the Bear. Reducing your targets mitigation by 25% will increase your damage on that target by 8 seconds by a significant amount so ensure you are using it on cooldown. It is also important to note that Marks have a travel time once cast on a target. A good trick is to start casting your Snipe ability, and once the cast is halfway finished use your Hunt as it can be used while Snipe is being cast. This will also ensure that you are not wasting several seconds of Hunt uptime.

In Ashes of Creation, you are not limited to a certain type of gear. Rangers will take advantage of Light, Medium, and Heavy gear types to achieve the best possible gearset. With that said, each type of armor includes a set bonus based on how many pieces of gear you have of that type. As a Ranger, the medium armor set 3 piece bonus for the additional Base Critical Chance will be your primary focus in your gearset. The 5 piece bonus providing additional movement speed is definitely nice, but not at the expense of a potentially better overall gear piece that may be light or heavy armor such as Black Feathered Tunic which is a light armor chest, but the stats are above and beyond better than anything else available in medium armor.

When it comes to weapons as a Ranger, any and all weapon types are usable, even spellbooks, however you will want to aim for specific weapon types such as one-handed swords and energy focuses, or two-handed swords as these weapons will provide you with the best DPS increase and utlity from the talent trees. All melee weapons are purely stat sticks for Rangers so simply look for upgrades with the most Physical Power available.

For the bows you have two options; Shortbows and Longbows. For PvE it is important to note that both options are perfectly viable. Shortbows are your fast and lower damage option, while the Longbows are your slower, higher damage option. From a strictly PvE perspective, the edge goes to the shortbow as you will benefit greatly from Arrowstorm providing a significant amount of added damage and the small amount of lost range of the Longbow is not important in PvE.

As a Ranger you have a wide variety of consumables to choose from with food, potions, salves, and scrolls. As the nodes and artisan skills progress you will have access to a large variety of each consumable which will increase your overall damage output significantly. All of the common versions of consumables can be purchased from node vendors for next to nothing so you should always keep consumables on you.

• Rations – Restores 3% Health and 3% Mana for 20 seconds.
• Novice Scroll of Strength – Increases Strength by 7 for 2 hours.
• Fresh Salad – Increases Physical Power Rating by 20 for 1 hour.
• Health or Mana Salve – Health or Mana Salves recover 17 Health or 17 Mana every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. Only one salve type can be used at a time. These salves will provide more resources than a potion so it is recommended to always use salves instead.

With the recent new patch, Rangers recieved near to nothing new compared to the other classes. The only notable new change outside of a few updated sound effects is as follows:

• New passive ability: Siphoning Regeneration – Each time the target of your regeneration effect deals damage to your Marked target, they gain Health and Mana equal to 5% of the damage dealt for 5 seconds.