Overview

The Ranger's fantasy is the Wilderness Veteran: blades up close, a bow at range, and a lifetime of fieldcraft that mixes a deep knowledge of the wild with some light woodland magic. Before this update, the class had drifted into something closer to a half-Druid, casting fire and borrowed nature spells between swings. This update pulls it back: the fire nukes, the fire and insect damage-over-time spells, and the elemental weapon and arrow enchantments are gone.

In their place is a fast martial kit built around your two weapons, four stances that change how that kit behaves, practical wound care, and a campfire ability that speeds your group's recovery between fights a few times an hour. What you were already good at stays: moving a group across open country, slipping past danger outdoors, calming beasts, and tracking your quarry.

You also live off the land now foraging food, drink, and cureberries from the wild.

Swordplay and Marksmanship

Your combat abilities come in two sets, swordplay and marksmanship, and each set has an opener: Opening Strike for melee and Leading Shot for the bow. The two openers share a cooldown, so each time they're ready you pick one, melee or ranged.

Using an opener unlocks the follow-up abilities and you can use one follow up ability.

So the rhythm is opener, one follow-up, opener again, and the choice each time is which follow-up the fight calls for.

Swordplay abilities

• Finishing Blow - strike with both blades at once. Needs a weapon in each hand.

• Hamstring Slice - cut at the target's legs and slow its movement.

• Rending Cut - a cut that keeps bleeding after you hit. Landing it again before it wears off deepens the wound.

Marksmanship abilities

• Swift Shot - a hard-hitting, well-placed shot.

• Maiming Shot - a crippling shot that lowers the target's Dexterity - making its attacks less accurate.

• Barbed Shot - an arrow that leaves a bleeding wound. Repeat hits deepen it, the same way they do with Rending Cut.

Leading Shot and the marksmanship abilities need a bow, arrows, and a little distance between you and your target.

Your bleeds are your own, so two Rangers can bleed the same target without getting in each other's way.

Tanglefoot

• Snare the enemies in front of you, snaring several of them at once. It only catches enemies, never your group.

For the pack that's closing in, or the group that's trying to run.

Apex Predator

• The short burst of accuracy and damage you save for the right moment.

Formerly Truestrike. Only the name changed.

Stances

The old Imbue Weapon and Imbue Arrows spells wrapped your attacks in fire, ice, nature, and lightning. They're gone with the rest of the elemental kit. Four new stances take their place: instead of enchanting your weapons, you change how you fight with them.

Three of the stances change what some of your swordplay and marksmanship abilities do.

Warden Stance - Melee DPS

• Your melee attacks hit harder.

• Hamstring Slice also opens a gap in the target's armor for a few seconds, lowering its armor class.

• If your Barbed Shot is bleeding on the target, Rending Cut refreshes that bleed to its full duration.

Hit them with a Barbed Shot on the way in, and every Rending Cut you land keeps that arrow wound open.

Marksman Stance - Ranged DPS

• Your bow attacks hit harder.

• Maiming Shot also snares the target for a few seconds.

• If your Rending Cut is bleeding on the target, Barbed Shot refreshes that bleed to its full duration.

The mirror of Warden. Cut them on the way past, step back with your bow, and keep the blade wound bleeding from range.

In both stances, the refresh only extends a wound you've already opened. It doesn't deepen the wound, and it does nothing if your other bleed isn't on the target.

Work both your ranged and melee attacks and you can keep both bleeds running far longer than either would last alone.

Survivor Stance - Off-tanking

• Your parry and Armor Class go up.

• Hamstring Slice also slows the target's attacks.

For the fight that has one enemy too many.

This is the off-tank stance. With Survivor up, plus Taunt and Kick, you can hold an enemy in a pinch. Aggro control is still limited compared to a dedicated tank, so it's a way to hold the line for a while, not a replacement for the classes built to do it.

Longstrider Stance

• Shift to this stance and your group runs faster outdoors, as long as they stay near you. A member who takes damage slows back down for a while, so it's for covering ground, not for fighting.

Wound Care

You carry herbs, bandages, and poultices, and the know-how to use them. It's based in woodsman's craft, but your healing spells require mana to apply.

Healing Poultice

• Press a poultice to an ally's wound. It heals them straight away and keeps mending them for a short while after. You have to be at their side to apply it.

• Each poultice has a chance to draw out a poison and a disease, and the better poultices do it more reliably. For the times a poultice doesn't take, carry cureberries (see Foraging below).

Formerly the Weak Heal through Greater Heal line. The poultices now run from Weak Healing Poultice up to Superior Healing Poultice.

Regeneration and Pack Regeneration

• Slowly restore health over time, to one ally or to the whole group. Both lines arrive earlier now, and each gained a new top rank: Exceptional Regeneration and Exceptional Pack Regeneration.

Mantle of the Hunter

• Your personal protection: more Armor Class, a thorny damage shield that hurts whatever hits you, and now more Wisdom. It also lets you sense magical effects on what you consider. The whole line starts much earlier than it used to.

Formerly the Prickly, Bristly, Brambly, Spiky and Thorny Tunic line.

Barriers

• Put a thorny damage shield on someone else. The Prickly through Thorny Barrier line arrives earlier now, and Jagged Barrier is a new top rank.

The Campfire

Recuperate

• When the fight's done, gather your group around the fire. Everyone recovers health and mana quickly for a short while.

• You need the warmth of a campfire to call a rest - any campfire will do, including your own Hearth.

• You can't fight while you recuperate. Your blows land weakly and you're easier to hurt, so this is for after the pull, never during it. If you're attacked unexpectedly while recuperating, you can click off the buff.

Between pulls the group gathers around the fire, gets its health and mana back, refreshes buffs, and enjoys a bit of downtime together.

Recuperate has a long cooldown, so you won't call a rest after every fight. When you do, it cuts the wait before the next pull. The cooldown also lines up well with buff durations, so the rest break is a natural time to re-apply them.

A group can only benefit from Recuperate every so often, however many Rangers are in the party. Once you've rested, you'll need to wait a while before another rest does you any good.

Hearth of the Ranger

• Build your own campfire. It burns longer than a normal one, and each log you feed it keeps it going longer too.

With a Hearth, you never have to go looking for a fire to rest at.

The Wilds

Open country is where you're most at home. This is the part of your kit for finding your quarry, feeding yourself, covering ground, and getting past what you'd rather not fight.

Tracking

• Unchanged. Tracking is still a skill you train at your guild, and it grows as you level. The more skilled you are, the further away you can pick out a creature and follow it.

Foraging

• Gather food and drink from the wild. What you find is trail food, and eating or drinking it gives you a light resistance to disease or poison.

• You can also forage cureberries, which cure poison and disease. They used to come from a summoning spell; now you find them yourself.

Your pack is never empty for long.

Speed of the Wild, Speed of the Pack, Speed of the Hunter

• Outdoor run speed for one ally or the whole group, and a short outdoor sprint for yourself.

Speed of the Hunter was formerly Speed of the Predator.

Shroud, Camouflage, and Invisibility versus Beasts

• Outdoor concealment for yourself (Shroud) or a party member (Camouflage), and invisibility to beasts for a party member.

• Sneak - move unseen by anything you're behind.

Lull Beasts and Nature's Calm

• Lull Beasts calms a beast so you can walk closer without drawing it in. It's now a four-rank line, Lull Minor Beasts through Lull Greater Beasts, and each rank can calm tougher beasts than the last.

• Nature's Calm calms a creature outdoors for a short time. It's also four ranks (Nature's Calm, Nature's Lull, Nature's Peace and Nature's Serenity), and it's rebuilt from the old Unity spell.

• Terrify Beasts sends a beast running. Formerly Fear Beasts.

And the rest of the kit

• Twisting Roots holds a target in place. Beast Speech lets you talk with animals. Salvage Arrows recovers spent arrows. Enduring Breath lets you breathe underwater. All unchanged.

Group Support

Hunter's Focus

• Sharpen your group's weapon skills and Dexterity, and harden their armor. It's now a group buff you cast instead of an always-on aura.

Formerly Truestrike Aura. The armor it grants replaces the old Woodskin line.

Protection and resistance

• Poison Protection and Poison Resistance, Corruption Protection and Corruption Resistance, and See Invisibility are all still here.

Retained Spell Lines

Combat

• Opening Strike - renamed from Strike

• Leading Shot - renamed from Whistling Shot

• Apex Predator - renamed from Truestrike

• Taunt, Kick, Throw

• Twisting Roots

Wound care and protection

• Healing Poultice line - rebuilt from Weak Heal, Minor Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal

• Regeneration line

• Pack Regeneration line

• Mantle of the Hunter line - renamed from Prickly, Bristly, Brambly, Spiky, and Thorny Tunic

• Prickly, Bristly, Brambly, Spiky and Thorny Barrier

• Poison Protection, Poison Resistance, Corruption Protection, Corruption Resistance

Group

• Hunter's Focus - renamed from Truestrike Aura

Travel and concealment

• Speed of the Wild, Speed of the Pack

• Speed of the Hunter - renamed from Speed of the Predator

• Shroud, Camouflage, Sneak

• Invisibility versus Beasts, See Invisibility

• Enduring Breath

Beasts and calm

• Lull Beasts line - rebuilt from Lull Exceptional Beasts

• Nature's Calm line - rebuilt from Unity

• Terrify Beasts - renamed from Fear Beasts

• Beast Speech

Utility

• Tracking

• Hearth of the Ranger

• Salvage Arrows

• Polar Alignment: North

Several of these moved to new unlock levels as part of a full level-schedule pass.

Removed Spell Lines

• Burning Embers Line and Insect Swarm Line - the fire and insect damage-over-time lines borrowed from the Druid. Your bleeds do this job now.

• Fireburst - the fire nuke line.

• Imbue Arrows and Imbue Weapon (Fire, Ice, Nature and Lightning) - replaced by the stances.

• Woodskin, Stoneskin, Steelskin and Diamondskin and the Union line - the armor buffs. The group version's armor now lives on Hunter's Focus.

• Snare and Ensnare - replaced by Hamstring Slice, Hunter's Net and Marksman Stance's Maiming Shot.

• Sense Magic - folded into Mantle of the Hunter for yourself

• Cure Disease - your poultices can now draw out disease.

• Summon Cureberries - you forage cureberries now instead.

• Unification, Strength of Eth-el, Bind Vision, Death's Demise, Jackal Form, Wolf Form, Greater Shroud, Greater Camouflage, and Fire Protection, Fire Resistance, Cold Protection and Cold Resistance.

Thanks for taking the time to look this over, and for your participation in our Beta. We look forward to getting your feedback after you try out the Ranger update during Early Access!