The Ultimate PvP Ranger Guide for Ashes of Creation

Rangers play a very important part in PvP, both from a dps output perspective, but more importantly from a utility perspective. Rangers alone can very quickly turn the tide of battle with a single vine field making Rangers a must have class in both small scale, and large scale PvP.

On the flip side, Rangers are also a highly mobile, hard to lock down Archetype that can slip away from a bad engagement and find a better angle to reengage. Add in the utility of movement speed increases that can be applied party wide as well as on caravans and you have a well rounded and engaging Archetype.

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

Strengths

• Extremely powerful group crowd control.
• Highly mobile.
• Very high single target damage.
• Powerful movement speed buffs.

Weaknesses

• Extremely squishy.
• Highly gear dependant.
• Punished easily by missing Vine Field.
• Major abilities can be dodged easily.

As a Ranger you play a very important and critical role in PvP for your team. Regardless of the scale of the fight you are in, you will be responsible for setting up the push into the opposing team by carefully planning and executing a Vine Field on as many opponents tightly groupped together as possible.

Once you have successfully pulled off a Vine Field, your next step is to put out as much damage as possible. Unfortunately this is where the Ranger Archetype starts to fall off. There is very little you have access to in the way of AoE as you only have Thundering Shot and Raining Death to rely on, and in most sitatuons you will want to hold Thundering Shot to silence either a Cleric to remove healing from the fight, or a caster before they can do too much damage to your own team.

You have two main openers you can opt for once the Vine Field has landed. You can either choose to Snipe a Cleric or Mage ideally, as they are rather squishy, and in some cases a single Snipe can almost result in a one shot and then follow the Snipe up with a Headshot or Barrage. Your second opener option is utilizing the small amount of AoE that the Ranger Archetype can provide. Raining Death applies one stack of Wounded, and you can use Lightning Reload to quickly cast Raining Death again for both the damage as well as stack Wounded up to two on the entire group it hits.

The final small role of a Ranger is to provide utility to the group on the battlefield. Party Stride provides 10% movement speed for the entire group for 15 minutes. While this may seem like a small amount, the movement speed is definitely noticeable and helps during a dive into the opposing team. Party Stride and Strider can also be cast directly on caravans making solo and group caravan trips slightly faster.

For a full list of all Ranger Spells, passives, and any other skills, please visit the Ranger Skill Glossary

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. In PvP your armor and magic resist will make a big impact on how much damage you recieve. Each type of armor provides varying amounts of armor and magic resist so you will want a mix of each gear type for the most optimal defense against both physical and magical opponents.

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. be careful that you pay attention and do not buy Spellbows with magical power.

The bow choice is where the big difference comes in for Rangers in PvP. Ideally you will want to always use a Longbow over a Shortbow in PvP. The main reason for this is that you will have additional range on your auto attacks allowing you to poke at your target from a safe range before they have the chance to fight back. This can allow you to build up your Deadly Finisher and Extended Deadly Finisher abilities, and also apply Dazed to your target so that you can immediately cast Thundering Shot and silence them once everyone on your team pushes forward.

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.