How-To Guide: Ranger

Jellystone Park Ranger
Smarter than the av-er-age Ranger? The job takes the cake as the most high-end, first-class puller and overall damage-dealer in the entire game, or so they say. Armed with a vast array of weapons and a plethora of Ranger-exclusive weapon skills, plus some of the highest accuracy in the game, Ranger wins the hearts of many in parties. The expense of power is survivability, of course. Possessing some of the lowest evasion and overall defense, but packing an enormous wallop in any party scenario means the Ranger has to make sure that he or she doesn’t go well over the hate threshold. That’s why Paladins make such great tanks for Rangers. Unlike a number of other games, Final Fantasy XI does indeed consume ammunition per use, so this job is quite costly. Plus, when you begin subbing Ninja, you consume even more money because you use Ninja tools as well. But if that doesn’t deter you from the job’s awesome abilities, then dive right in and launch a barrage of arrows through the skulls of your enemies. Slug Shot-- Ho! '''Please note: This is only a guide. Please add anything if it is needed, and take away anything that is either untrue or not needed.'''

Job-Race Combinations
Please note that race is the absolute last thing you should worry about when picking a job. Anything said here is seriously exaggerated. A single piece of gear can often make up for a race's negligible lack in a stat. Every race also gets "Race Specific Equipment", or "RSE", that will boost a race's stats to equal, or possibly even surpass other races.

Hume

 * Hume Rangers have a healthy supply of both ranged power and ranged accuracy, as well as a decent load of survivability to add into the mix through both evasion and endurance. Proving every job ability useful and supplying yourself with a ready balance of equipment will make you an excellent Hume Ranger.

Elvaan

 * Right off the hop, one of my favourite things about Elvaan Rangers is exactly how they shoot their bows. They hold them at like a forty-five degree angle when they shoot them. Back on topic, Elvaan truly have the epitome of strength and a whole lot of endurance through high vitality and HP. You’ll be a lot better off using bows, since strength plays an integral part of their weapon skills, and agility plays more for marksmanship. That’s the only downside; low agility. However, there is a ton of agility-boosting and ranged accuracy-boosting gear out there. Elvaan Rangers, eat your heart out. Don’t forget too, an Elvaan’s high mind stat allows for incredibly powerful Holy Bolt shots.

Tarutaru

 * Tarutaru make awesome Rangers too. An great amount of agility to pull ranged hits out of, and even better with crossbows and gun-type ranged weapons. Being so short and having higher agility of course means Tarutaru enjoy a slightly higher evasion rate, but quite a lot lower endurance than Elvaan, or even Hume. With Utsusemi and a decent tank, that shouldn’t be a problem. As long as you make up with your slightly lower strength with equipment, or the hundreds of ranged attack-boosting equipment, you’ll do fine.

Mithra

 * You’ll have no problem landing hits as a Mithra Ranger. Possessing the highest agility in the game, you already have a ton of ranged accuracy, and if that’s not enough, there’s even more out there. Your slightly lower strength means you have to go and get some ranged attack-boosting equipment here and there, but that’s not even that major of a fact since you’ll be pulling a ton of unwanted hate anyway. Higher agility also means you have better marksmanship (gun) weapon skills than other races.

Galka

 * Bringing both survivability and huge power into the mix of Ranger brings the best of stats it already has and stats it really needs to work on into the mix. Galka Rangers too boast a decent agility, as well as a high strength. This is coupled with the highest vitality and HP in the game to bring you up to the speed where if you get hate, you don’t have to worry about dying as much as other races. Race-specific equipment brings up your already moderate agility even higher.

Weapon

 * As I said earlier, Ranger does get a wide variety of weapons to choose from. By that, I meant for main/sub weapons, you should stick with axes and daggers, and for everything else, I just meant that you can choose from almost any ranged weapon in the game. Let’s look at your normal weapons first. You might think to yourself, “Axes? Why axes?” The answer’s simple: they have high damage per hit, Rangers have decent skill in them, and a number of them later on have great boosts to your ranged attacks. Lv.63’s Fransisca, though hard to obtain, is one of the best things you could own as a Ranger. Lv.70’s Kriegsbeil axe is also really awesome. Other than those two, I’d say stick with daggers. Especially when you hit Lv.28 and can equip Archer’s Knives. They’re cheap and absolutely amazing for Rangers. At Lv.30, there’s two higher quality daggers that are more expensive, but slightly better. The Chiroptera Dagger at Lv.38 is great, but really hard to get. At Lv.61, buying some Trailer’s Kukri can be awesome too. Remember, as a Ranger, you’ll be subbing Ninja almost all the time in party scenarios, so buying two of the best things you can get is the best thing you can do. Other than that, though, there’s not really a lot of good hand-held weapons to choose from.
 * Now onto the piece de resistance. Ranged weapons. I’m glad they didn’t call Rangers “Archers”, because that only qualifies one of three great types of weapons that Rangers can use. Let’s start with Archery, shall we? You have your choice of Shortbows and Longbows. Personally, I choose the Longbow. They’re more powerful over time, generally have far better stats, and, let’s face it- longer delay means less shots fired, which means less money spent for even more damage. Plus, when you get Barrage, you fire off anywhere between four to six shots instantly. Would you rather hit six shots that hit for 50 damage, or six shots that hit for 100 damage? I dunno. Shortbows still find their places in peoples’ hearts. Next on the checklist of weapons are Marksmanship Crossbows. Crossbows are generally really weak, but have amazing status effects. When you get to the levels where you use Holy Bolts, you should definitely carry these around. On top of the high damage with Holy Bolts, they also fire quite quickly and their ammo can be swapped as often as you want without the TP penalty. This means you can deal damage, drain HP, sleep, poison, and even defense-down targets all in a short interval. Marksmanship skill also shares its place with Guns and Cannons. Guns are high damage, high delay weapons that take forever to fire and forever to reload, but deal insane damage per hit. These rarely get any status effects and generally have the lower end of stat buffs. However, in late-game, they’re the best damage over time weapons you could have.

Armor

 * Ranger certainly doesn’t get heavy armor. It doesn’t even have access to the Harness sets of equipment. It’s basically all either leather or mage-like equipment. Two very prominent pieces of gear are Leaping Boots (+3 AGI) and the Empress Band (+3 AGI). They’re both low-level, both really, really expensive, and both amazing for this job, and a lot of other jobs. Personally, when I leveled Ranger, I went with a lot of agility and ranged accuracy equipment. One thing I got before I even started it was the Trailer’s Tunica. It looks cool, has good stats, is low level, and super-easy to get. Just kill a never-camped NM in the Horutoto Ruins. Now, just because I went with ranged accuracy doesn’t mean you have to. Ranged attack equipment is also useful and extensively useful later on. There are several rings throughout your game time that lower your melee accuracy in place for ranged accuracy. The higher-quality versions are often quite cheap and very useful. Another useful piece of gear for Rangers is the Peacock Charm. Super-expensive and quite difficult to get, but with +10 ranged accuracy, there’s no better piece. My advice to you? Pick up where your race lacks in stats. Playing Mithra or Tarutaru, pick up some extra damaging gear. Playing Galka or Elvaan, pick up lots of ranged accuracy. I went Mithra when I played Ranger, but I still went with accuracy. I also never missed more than one shot every five minutes, and still out-damaged everyone else in my party. Just proves you can do whatever you want and still get a ton of damage out.

Advanced Job Quest

 * The path to becoming a Ranger is honestly one of the easiest there is in the entire game. I’d actually say this is the easiest advanced job quest in the game, especially if you have quick access to Jeuno and/or Windurst (such as being allied to Windurst and talking to the pay warp Tarutaru in Aht Urghan Whitegate). It’s as simple as talking to Perih Vashai in Windurst Waters. Then, go to Jeuno and take a Chocobo through Sauromugue to a little cave on the western side (L-10). Go to the back of the cave and touch the bones, and then wait for the Old Sabertooth to die of natural causes (that is to say, don’t attack it!!). When he dies, touch the bones again, then bring back the Old Tiger’s Fang to Perih. That’s it! Congratulations! You can now become a Ranger.

Soloing 1 to 10

 * In comparison to other jobs, this is a moderate task. It’s not all that easy, because you’re working with low evasion, low defense. And it’s not all that hard, because you’re working with some great firepower. As a low-level Ranger, I suggest picking up a Shortbow and some arrows. Pull monsters at long range with your bow, then start attacking them with an Axe. Near the end of the fight, fire off an arrow to finish them off and get a lot more TP. In these levels, your better bet would be to use Raging Axe to fight the monsters. Using ranged weapon skills at such close range is pretty pointless. When you get to Lv.5, get a Longbow (or Longbow +1 if you can afford it) and beat things even more senseless. At Lv.7 you finally get some melee equipment and should be able to take a little bit more damage.

Valkurm 10-20

 * As long as you didn’t make the mistake I did, these levels shouldn’t be too bad for you. I went into Valkurm with a crossbow, expecting to skill-up my marksmanship for Thief. Bad idea. Come here with a Longbow, really. Now, Valkurm is the first day of the rest of your life, so to speak. What I mean by that is, what you do here is basically what you’ll be doing until Lv.75. That is to say, pulling and damage-dealing. If any party asks you to tank, decline the offer immediately; there is no way a Ranger has any capability of tanking. You’d literally be better off with the White Mage tanking. You get Scavenge at Lv.10, but it’s not all that useful. Still, it’s there, so you could use it to get a free arrow or something. You have Widescan. In fact, you’re one of only two jobs in the game that gets Widescan. I suggest using it when pulling, especially if there’s no monsters to pull. Also, when you pull, I suggest you go to the absolute maximum range. That way you won’t get hit on your way to the party. Remember, if you get hit, it’s debatably worse than if the White Mage gets hit, so taking too much damage isn’t a good thing. As for support job? Um, I don’t really know. Warrior, I guess. Just don’t use Provoke. Until you get Sidewinder or Slug Shot, I suggest using Flaming Arrow / Hot Shot.

Mid-levels 20-40

 * I personally found these levels to be the most fun, by far. At 20, I picked up a Longbow, and at 30, I picked up Barrage. Best things to happen to me, really. Subbing Ninja really helped me out as well. At Lv.30, if you’re an Elvaan, you might very well want to start using Holy Bolts. If you’re anything else, spamming your arrows is still probably better. Nothing really changes all that much from Lv.20 to Lv.30 (as is the case for most jobs). But once you hit Lv.30, you have an amazing new job ability called Barrage that really changes up your strategy. One of the better strategies is, near the monster’s halfway point in HP, to use Sharpshot, then Flaming Arrow / Hot Shot, and then use Barrage, then a ranged attack. Doing this will hopefully dole-out a ton of damage and get you about 80% TP back almost instantly. And if you’re lucky, you’ll kill the monster in the process. Because basically, if you don’t kill it, it’s going to kill you.

Your AF Weapon

 * Like most artifact weapons, Ranger’s is pretty pathetic. It’s a Shortbow, no less. In honesty, you’d be a heck of a lot better off with a Shikar Bow or Battle Bow +1. The agility +4 doesn’t amount to anything. On the other hand, you have to get the weapon before you can get your AF anyway, so you might as well get the quest done.
 * To get your bow, you first have to talk to Perih again in Windurst Waters. She hands you a key item which you are to take to Semih Lafihna. Go to Ranguemont Pass off of San d’Oria’s East Ronfaure. Head north to (F-10). Watch a quick cutscene after talking to Perchond, then talk to Myffore and head through the door. Head to (E-5) on the map and start killing Evil Weapons for their Glittersand drop. Head back once you have the drop, and trade it to Perchond. Head to Jugner Forest during a full moon and find Alexius at (I-6). Talk to him, then inspect the ??? just south of the lake. Watch a quick cutscene, then head back to Windurst and talk to Perih. Congratulations! You have your first piece of artifact equipment.

Mid-High Levels 40-60

 * Levels 45 and 55 will be really nice for you. At 45, you get a relatively new job ability called Velocity Shot, which basically just makes you a fair bit better. Then, at Lv.55, you get either Sidewinder or Slug Shot (depending on which weapon you use mainly). At both times, you’ll instantly find yourself being a whole lot better. During these twenty levels, you start getting your artifact armor and your limit breaking quests completed. Hopefully you won’t find it too troubling.

Your Artifact Armor

 * The first piece you get is your Lv.52 hand pieces. They provide a bonus to dexterity (for critical hit rate and physical attack accuracy), as well as Resist-vs.-Dark (to resist Blind or other dark-related attacks). The best part on these hand pieces, though, is the addition to Shadowbind, making it quite a bit nicer by increasing its duration over double what it normally would be. The second piece you get is your Lv.54 “weed” hat. Unless you’ve never seen a Ranger’s head piece, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that. It’s actually really good, providing you with +5 ranged attack, some HP, and increasing the activation rate on Rapid Shot (making guns quite a bit better now). I’ll be honest, I have no idea what purpose intelligence has for Ranger other than resisting nukes. Your Lv.56 Braccae (legs) give a buff to HP and defense, as well as an accuracy boost to Sharpshot. There’s also a mind +5 boost on them, which would be useful for Holy Bolts, but by that level you could be doing a lot better than those weapons. The Lv.58 Jerkin is next, providing a really nice +10 boost to Ranged Accuracy, and +3 vitality for survivability. It also slightly increases the duration of the normally super-short Camouflage. Finally, your Lv.60 AF boots are great with +4 agility and +5 evasion, as well as an addition to Scavenge to give you better chances of finding items. All-in-all, quite a great set of armor. If anything, it should be used to macro in for boosts to your job abilities.

High Levels 60-75

 * Equipped with artifact armor and other great high-end items, you can go to the final fifteen with little problem. Um, other than that, there’s not really anything all that supreme about these few levels. You should still be getting a ton of invites, and by now your ammo is probably costing you an arm and a leg every time you fire your ranged weapon. On the other hand, you’re still one of the best NM-camping jobs in the game, so as long as you’re not lazy, money shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain.

End-Game

 * (Please add information about Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, merit parties, etc.)

Ninja

 * Your primary support job throughout the game probably. The only exception might be subbing Warrior if you have a Paladin tank or something. Even then, you’ll be pulling a ton of enmity, so Ninja’s Utsusemi will definitely make your life a lot easier. This is a support job that actually puts Dual Wield to use almost instantly, allowing for the extra weapon, namely a second Archer’s or Hawker’s Knife, or even a second Axe. You sacrifice a little bit of damage for a lot of survivability with this sub. Tonko also gives you a much cheaper invisible to the alternative Prism Powders. It also gives a minute amount of agility for ranged accuracy and weapon skill damage.

Warrior

 * A good support job early-game, and a very risky (but amazing) support job in the later-game. It certainly provides ample base damage through Berserk and Warcry, as well as a high base strength and dexterity. If you pull hate, you can use Defender to help yourself out just a little bit. The otherwise amazing job ability Provoke is completely useless for Rangers.

White Mage

 * The only purpose to subbing White Mage is the extra mind for Holy Bolts if you do decide to use them. Since the additional effect (which is where the majority of damage comes from with these Bolts) doesn’t give any enmity, hate isn’t really a problem, so losing out on Utsusemi isn’t all that major. However, if you’re using any other ammo or weapons, leave this sub alone. It’s not even that useful for soloing.

Samurai

 * Generally used the other way around. Though Store TP does in fact work with ranged attacks, so it’s quite useful. Once you hit Lv.60 and can use Samurai’s Meditate ability, you can get almost 100% TP in just a few short seconds with Barrage. In place of Utsusemi is the much less-useful Third Eye, but it still can work to save yourself at least one free hit. At Lv.70 when you get Seigan, you can use a Fire Staff (to boost Ranged Attack) and use it to its full effect, allowing you to have even more survivability than subbing Ninja (if you’re lucky). Samurai also gives Resist Blind, allowing for the chance to fully resist the effect, or at the very least lower the duration greatly.

Your Two-Hour Ability

 * The hardest-hitting single-shot two-hour in the game. Bam an instant, powerful, and high-damage hit. You can’t go wrong with this two-hour to save the day. If anything, it’ll give you a ton of hate. It’s really useful in the Promyvions where you need the extra spike of damage right off the hop. It’s useful until about Lv.55 when you get Slug Shot or Sidewinder, which are actually more powerful (yet less accurate, by far) than Eagle Eye Shot. Don’t use it when you’re blinded, and try to use Sharpshot before you use it just in case. There’s not much more to say about it. It’s just a single-shot ranged attack that has wicked accuracy and a fairly large amount of damage.

Job Abilities

 * Sharpshot is your first non-two-hour job ability, which actually starts all the way at Lv.1. It’s very useful in that it increases your ranged accuracy by a ton and removes all accuracy-distance problems you might have. The downside is it has a one-minute duration and a five-minute cool-down after use. On the other hand, that’s how long Barrage’s cool-down is, so you can use them both at the same time. It’s also useful to use just before a weapon skill or your two-hour strategy. Basic strategy is something like, Sharpshot, Unlimited Shot, Weapon Skill, Barrage, ranged attack. By then you should be able to fire off just a couple more quick shots and finish the fight. If not, you’ll at least have a ton of TP and might even be able to fire off a second weapon skill before the ability wears off.
 * Scavenge is available to use at Lv.10 and can be used every five minutes. It’s certainly not the most useful job ability, but it can turn-up some ammo, bolt heads, lumber, or other such things useful to a Ranger. It’s generally useless and fails more often than you can get something, but it’s a free-use job ability, so you might as well use it. Don’t use it during a fight, though. It will give you a tiny bit of enmity. Use it after a fight. I find that’s when you have the best luck getting items anyway.
 * Camouflage is your Lv.20 job ability. It’s a free invisible, basically. Its duration is really short, and completely random, so it’s not very reliable. It also doesn’t work like Thief’s “Hide” ability in that it won’t drop your enmity. On the other hand, it is useful to pass that one monster that’s in your way without using a whole Prism Powder or Shinobi-Tabi.
 * Barrage is probably Ranger’s most useful job ability, and is acquired at Lv.30. It shoots anywhere between 4-6 normal shots in an instant (starting off at 4, working its way to 6 near the end of the game). It has normal accuracy, so if you have a lot of ranged accuracy equipment and Sharpshot active, it has a pretty good chance of landing all of your hits. The best thing about this ability isn’t the ludicrous amounts of damage you can pull-off with it, it’s the amount of TP you can get from it. A normal shot with a slow weapon gives about 15 TP. Multiplying that by 6x gives you 90% TP instantaneously. If you use a weapon skill just prior to Barrage, you should have another 15%, giving you enough to fire off a second weapon skill, potentially skillchaining with yourself. You use Barrage, then you fire a ranged attack to get it to work. It’s not an auto-fire attack. Barrage does not stack with Unlimited Shot. It has a five-minute cool-down timer, same as Sharpshot.
 * Shadowbind is a sure-shooting Bind ability that has a great range and great speed. Once you hit Lv.40 and can use it, you now become one of the best assets to your NM-camping team. The attack will guaranteed bind the target for exactly 20 seconds (25 with AF gloves on at time of use). It’s useful in parties because you can bind things that would otherwise kill your party as you run away.
 * Velocity Shot is a relatively new job ability that Rangers get, increasing ranged attack damage and speed while lowering weapon attack damage and speed. All four are approximately by 15%. The effect has a five-minute duration with a five-minute cool-down, meaning it can be on forever. Unless you’re a melee fighter occasionally, that shouldn’t be any problem whatsoever. You get it at Lv.45.
 * Unlimited Shot is learned at the odd level of Lv.51. I suppose they figured this was a good idea to give people more incentive to get their first limit breaking quest done. It’s on a five-minute counter and allows you to fire a shot without consuming ammo. You’re probably thinking to yourself “how is that useful?” Well, there’s a number of different arrows and bullets that are quite expensive but have amazing stats on them. It’s really useful to use just before a weapon skill and equipping yourself with a really awesome ammo. It doesn’t stack with Barrage, so don’t even try it. They overwrite each other.
 * Flashy Shot is one of two meritable job abilities you can get once you hit Lv.75. It basically treats the target monster as if it were “too weak to be worthwhile” for the next hit, while also giving you a large boost to enmity. It’s great to finish fights with. Despite how useful it sounds, meriting the other three would probably be a little bit more worth your time. If a high-damage job ability is for you, it starts off as a 20 minute cool-down and can be brought down to 15 minutes with full merits.
 * Stealth Shot is kind of the opposite of Flashy Shot. No, you don’t get a decrease in damage, but you do get a decrease in enmity on your next shot. In theory, it’s quite a useful job ability to use simultaneously with Flashy Shot. And that’s true. Especially since it has a nice, low recast of 5 minutes. Each merit added into Stealth Shot reduces enmity by 10, which is a lot.

Job Traits

 * Widescan is a very useful job ability that isn’t used as often as it could be. It’s a trait exclusive to Rangers and Beastmasters. What it does is finds any monster or NPC within a large area around the user. It’s great for camping notorious monsters and pulling in monster-scarce camps. It’s also useful for doing the Promyvions because you can find the different memory receptacles and save a lot of running around. Rangers’ Widescan is quite a lot longer range than Beastmaster’s. You start off on the second tier and work up to a fifth increment in range, whereas Beastmaster is always one (or two) behind you.
 * Alertness is a mostly useless job trait that you get at Lv.5. It basically gives you a tiny chance to not take aggro from sound-aggro monsters. The chance lessened is so minute, it’s really not worth trusting at all. I suppose it can possibly save your life every now and then, but it’s not worth relying on.
 * Accuracy Bonus is one of the nicer things about Ranger. It gives you accuracy and a lot of it. You get the first one at Lv.10 and you get a final, fourth tier at Lv.70. At max, you get +48 accuracy and ranged accuracy. The downside to the trait is that it can’t stack with other support jobs. Otherwise you could do some serious stuff.
 * Rapid Shot. I personally found it to be a pain in the rear, but it’s actually really good. It randomly fires off shots instantly or at about half delay sometimes. I found it really good for fighting, but for pulling it was annoying. I time my ranged attacks and pulling almost perfectly, but with this trait, I’d be totally blown away sometimes, having it fire with 0 delay instead of 300 or whatever. With a whole lot of Rapid Shot-boosting equipment, you can get wicked damage out of guns.
 * Resist Poison may occasionally completely resist the effects of poison. Though that’s quite infrequent. What it does do all the time though is makes the effect’s duration much shorter, making the damage taken through the effect a lot less noticeable.
 * Recycle is one of two meritable job traits. This one may actually recycle your arrows or other ammo, allowing you to occasionally save money here and there. Every merit put into the trait will increase the chance of saving by 5% up to a total of 15%.
 * Snapshot lowers the delay between ranged attacks. It’s quite useful if you find yourself lacking in speed and overall damage (which is quite difficult to see). Every merit put into this trait lowers delay by 2%, up to a total of 6%.