Ranger:Guide by Lambtor

''More will follow as time allows. This guide is currently under construction.''

=Preparations before leveling=

If you are completely new to Final Fantasy XI, and want to know how to unlock Ranger, you may want to search through another guide or ask someone in game. This guide is focused on how to maximize the effectiveness of your play within the job. If you have unlocked the job, you therefore have a basic job at Lv 30 already. If that Lv 30+ job is one that can use a ranged weapon, and has an ability to build that skill, you may want to spend some time getting that skill to a moderate level. A good idea would be to bring it to that of a Lv 20 ranger, or 60-65 skill, which as a Lv 30 you should be able to do solo without too much difficulty. The jobs that should be able to do this are:


 * THF (C+ Marksmanship, C- Archery)
 * RDM (D Archery)
 * WAR (D Marksmanship, D Archery)
 * SAM (C+ Archery)
 * DRK (E Marksmanship)
 * NIN (C Marksmanship, E Archery)
 * COR (B Marksmanship)

If you have a job at Lv 75 and want to be a more potent ranger, meriting is an option available to you for additional preparations. Recommended merit categories (where possible) before starting the job are:
 * 1) Combat skill - (marksmanship or archery; see "selecting a ranged weapon type" below)
 * 2) Enmity decrease - (higher hate threshold allows you to put down more damage before getting killed or having mages use mp on you)
 * 3) Critical Hit Rate %+
 * 4) STR+

Ranged Attack Damage Modifiers
ALL RANGED ATTACKS AND RANGED WEAPON SKILL DAMAGE ARE BASED ON YOUR RATK VS TARGET DEF FIRST When trying to increase ranged Weapon skill damage, many people tend to think that loading up on AGI+ will benefit you more for marksmanship, and STR+ will help Archery best. The single biggest factor in how much damage ranged weapon skills do is your weapon & ammo base dmg, and after that, it is Ranged Attack (RATK). It is true that Archery weapon skills also have a STR based modifier, and marksmanship has no such secondary STR modifier. However, when you have a choice between RATK+ vs. STR+ or AGI+ and want to increase any ranged Weapon skill dmg, get RATK first, then STR or AGI (assuming you have enough Ranged Accuracy to land ranged weapon skills). Do NOT, however, stack up on AGI for normal Ranged Attack dmg with marksmanship OR archery. RATK and STR still increase normal shot dmg, and AGI does not increase it. You can test this out yourself anytime; go and pick targets with similar levels and swap out pieces of gear. Ranged Attack+ often has a larger impact than STR+ or AGI+.

If you have enough Ranged Accuracy (RACC) to land weapon skills and barrage consistently, the priorities on stats for increasing Weapon Skill damage are: For normal shots, it is:
 * RATK > STR / AGI
 * RATK > STR > AGI

General Guidelines
Rangers have poor base STR. All RNG job traits are accuracy bonuses or Resist Poison. In order to do damage, you first have to make sure you can hit your targets. Since RNG don't have many equipment options to get Ranged Attack+ (compared to standard melee and attack+ gear), and also don't have many job abilities to increase damage (unless through sub job), it's generally easier (and also cheaper) to try to get as much Ranged Accuracy as possible in equipment, and increase Ranged Attack/STR through food.

There are only 2 ways to make up for poor STR and low ranged attack. You can either eat meat foods or equip ranged attack+ gear. Most RNG don't perform as well as they might otherwise be able to because of an inconsistent set of equipment. To maximize your damage output, you need to make a decision on what you're more comfortable with. Either you should equip as much ranged attack and STR+ as possible, and eat sushi, or equip as much ranged accuracy as you can and eat meat. Suggestions for food will be given in their level sections. Inconsistent gear means you will likely see many RNG wearing pieces that have good stat benefits, but conflict with or sacrifice the bonuses available from other gear.

For example: wearing a headpiece that gives STR+ and also wearing hand gear that gives only RACC/AGI, at a level when ranged attack+ is available in hand gear and head gear. If you decide to go with the ranged attack/STR equipment route and eat sushi, devote all your equipment slots to boosting these statistics. When exp parties are fighting lower level targets (Tough-Very Tough), you can sometimes swap out some ranged accuracy in favor of ranged attack and still hit consistently enough to benefit from eating meat. The best way to find out if you're maximizing your dmg output is to run your own tests in the field. Before Lv 50 you won't have many choices of RACC vs. RATK, but keep this in mind as options become available.

In the earlier levels you won't have a lot of ranged accuracy available to you in gear, and not many foods provide this benefit either. In the level sections, food suggestions for RACC+ will be provided, but it's good to note here that for any job you should NOT eat sushi for accuracy before level 40. Other foods provide static amounts of RACC+ that are either equal to or greater than what sushi will give, and should be considered first. If these foods are unavailable at your AH, only go to sushi as a last resort.

When you do eat sushi in exp sessions, try to use sole for the STR+, as the AGI+ from squid will not be noticed in your DoT, and will have a minimal boost on marksmanship weapon skill dmg. The small amount of STR+ in sole sushi will make only a 2-3 point dmg/shot difference in normal ranged attacks, but that serves better than the 0 increase from AGI+.

Changing ranged weapons will cause you to lose TP, but changing ammunition does not. If you change ammunition and the game automatically un-equips your ranged weapon because of it, you will still keep TP. There are no throwing weapon skills.

Haste does not effect ranged attack delay, so don't bother trying to knock yourself out to get haste+% gear.

Ranged Weapon Types
Standard melee weapons will not be covered in this guide unless they affect ranged attacks, as the vast majority of your damage will be from ranged attacks and weapon skills.

Rangers can use longbows, short bows, crossbows, guns, and throwing weapons. All of these weapons are considered piercing damage (with the only possible exception being boomerangs; these might be slashing or blunt), and inherit the bonuses or penalties of piercing vs. your target. Many undead are strong to piercing (but holy bolts avoid this problem slightly via additional effect: light dmg), and many exp targets are weak to it (birds, greater birds, bats, flies).

No rangers I know use short bows as a main weapon (example: Sniping Bow - RNG artifact weapon). Short bows have roughly half the delay of longbows, and about half the base dmg of longbows for the level they can be equipped at. Short bows often give a slight amount of ranged accuracy or AGI, but little or no ranged attack. The lower base dmg may be offset by the lower delay when compared to other weapons, which means the ability to gain TP at a good rate. The price of maintaining TP gain with the lower delay is much higher in Ammunition, though. Fire more shots to keep TP gain rate roughly the same as longbows, meaning you pay more money to do it. The lower base dmg of short bows also means weaker weapon skills, barrages, and weaker Eagle Eye Shot if you decide to use the job abilities when you have 1 equipped.

Having to hit your ranged attack macro more often is another drawback of short bows, as the delay between shots gets worse anytime you are slow with the buttons. Fewer shots allow your performance to depend more on your character setup than on your ability to mash a single button for hours at a time.

For these reasons, many RNG stay away from short bows as a general rule. Short bows do have a slight edge when you may want to use arrows that give an additional effect, though. More shots means the effect will have more chances to kick in, or more elemental damage will be put on the target (see Lv 40-50 and Lv 50-60 sections for more on elemental arrows).

The only low delay bow that is worth mentioning is Loxley bow (Lv 57), because it allows sleep arrows to be fired rapidly when the situation requires it, or you need to claim targets competitively and shadowbind isn't available.

Short bows can do dependable damage and competitively gain TP, but a lack of ranged attack+, and low base dmg means JA and weapon skills won't put up much for you.

Longbows are a solid weapon type for the majority of situations you face as RNG. They have high base dmg, and most longbows give a fair amount of ranged attack+ and/or ranged accuracy+. They have higher delay than short bows or most crossbows, but they gain TP at a rate high enough to prevent it from being a real disadvantage. High base dmg also translates to higher damage weapon skills and JA (Job abilities), to make them a good choice for exp parties.

Like short bows, longbows also have the ability to use additional effect arrows for the chance of hitting targets with bad statuses. Silence, attack down, sleep, and elemental damage are all possible with the appropriate arrows. The slight versatility here is worth mentioning, but elemental damage from arrows is not generally very high, nor are the status effects very likely to activate (with the exception of sleep arrows; if a target can be slept, arrows will put it to sleep for a short time at a good success rate, and don't seem to get resisted over time like the sleep spell does). The reason for this may be that additional effect elemental damage is likely based on your INT. It generally gets very difficult to load up on multiple stats with gear and food, and there isn't any overall gain to loading up on INT instead of RACC, RATK, STR, or AGI.

Crossbows are another good weapon choice for RNG. In the early levels you'll notice a big disparity in base dmg when compared to longbows. Like short bows, they also have shorter delay. What crossbows do have, however, is a wide range of ammunition. Toward the upper levels you'll see bolts with moderate base dmg, and these will compliment a wide array of additional effect bolts.

Additional effect bolts/arrows are not like most melee weapons with added effects. Effects on bolts/arrows will kick in as much as 80-90% of the time depending on the target and the type of status bolt/arrow. Some ammunition has effects that activate 100% of the time like holy bolts (Lv 30). sleep bolts (Lv 30), bloody bolts (Lv 25), and acid bolts (Lv 15) are also pretty reliable, with a high chance of activating. One more note about holy bolts: additional effect damage is not added to your enmity total.

Some targets won't process defense down very often, and some are near impossible to get it to stick on. For targets where the effect does land reliably, everyone else around you will be happy you did it. This is mentioned in the Lv 10-20 section, but it's important to note here: the additional effect of acid bolts will not process often on targets with high wind resistance, if at all. This means puks, greater birds, golems, ice or wind elementals, colibri, etc.

Acid bolts for defense down, holy bolts for additional effect damage, and mythril/darksteel for JA/weapon skills turn crossbow into as good of an overall weapon as you'll find anywhere in the game for RNG. Most bolts are also fairly cheap ammunition because they are not created from high level crafts. This allows for versatility, competitive TP gain, moderate weapon skills/JA dmg, and consistent ammunition costs.

Guns have 2 things; highest base dmg of any weapon in the game (ranged or not), and highest delay of any weapon in the game (if you don't count un-upgraded relic weapons). Ranged weapons overall have a TP gain penalty as it is, considering their delay (the delay/TP return for standard melee weapons is about 25% more than ranged). Guns seem to suffer the most from this penalty, however. RNG Guns have the worst TP gain rate of any weapon type in the game. Guns also don't typically give large amounts of ranged attack+ or ranged accuracy+ until very late levels. There are also only 2 forms of ammunition available to guns; high base dmg or stun bullets.

The high base dmg will not make up for the horrible delay/TP gain through weapon skills and JA. Guns are also expensive to maintain. In the early levels, guns aren't worth even looking at, due to the high delay, lack of RACC+ (Lv 34 is the first gun that RNG can equip with RACC+ as of this writing), and lack of RATK+. There aren't many reasons why guns are not a great weapon choice, but the few listed are very important reasons to avoid using them in exp parties.

The advantage of guns, however, is the high base dmg. The highest base dmg weapon in FFXI is a Culverin+1 and Heavy shells (51+99 = 150). This allows for the highest amount of damage possible with JA and weapon skills. The high dmg makes guns a decent option where targets have very high defense, but in extended fights they will still be outperformed by comparable longbows, when total damage over time is added up. The high base dmg of guns gives them their place; anytime you need to put up as much damage as possible in very little time, where all you do is stack JAs and weapon skills. This means mission fights, BCNMs, dynamis bosses, etc.

Throwing weapons should never be used in an exp situation for any reason, because there are no throwing weapon skills. When you reach Lv 70+, you will probably want to go back and build up throwing for fighting gods in sky. The only time rangers actually use throwing skill is to toss special ammunition (winds) at gods. More about winds will be mentioned in the Lv 70-75 section.

Personally, I recommend crossbow > longbow > gun > short bow as far as exp weapon types go. Feel free to try them all out and use what not only works best for you, but also is the most fun.

Double Weakness Status
When you die (and it will happen, regardless of how prepared you are), you may already know you will be in a 'weakness' status for 5 minutes once someone raises you. If you are killed again while weakened, however, once you get raised you will be in double weakened status. This was instituted in an update quite some time ago, to prevent parties and alliances from relying too heavily on RNG and BLM to win them difficult fights. While in this status, do not bother to engage with ranged attacks. No amount of RACC+ gear, merit points spent, and/or sushi will allow you to hit a target at all, let alone with any consistency. I would not recommend even attempting your 2 hour if you are double weakened. If you are in this status, use standard melee weapon skills if TP allows, then wait the weakness out by resting the entire time. Once you become unweak, the time spent resting will bring your hp heal/tic into the upper 30s or 40s without signet active, and much higher with it on.

=Ability, Equipment, Subjob and Food Notes=

Soloing for EXP
Immediately you'll notice upon changing to ranger that you do not have a lot of what most other melee jobs get. Rangers do not take hits well, and are not meant to be tanks. Rangers cannot heal themselves without resting until later levels (see Lv 20-30). Rangers are meant to put large holes in things, and do it quickly. Rangers have:
 * Low HP
 * Low VIT
 * Low STR (Lower base STR than all jobs except SMN and [BLM]])
 * High AGI
 * E rating in evasion (same as BLM, PLD has a C; Lv 75 RNG evasion caps at 200 without merits)
 * No parrying skill (unless available from subjob)
 * No shield skill (unless available from sub, and cannot equip any shields outside of the BCNM 30 rewards)
 * Low defense (cannot equip heavy armor; only cloth shirts/robes etc. and light scale armor, with a few exceptions)

When you're solo and just starting out, the easiest and sometimes only way to stay alive is to take out targets quickly.

For the first few levels, use a longbow; because when you are soloing, a high damage weapon only benefits you. In exp situations, higher delay on longbows can be a disadvantage (compared to other options at that level, which will be mentioned in the level range sections), but when soloing, it helps to put as much damage as possible into that initial shot (also referred to as pull shot) on the target. This will give you possibly 2 shots of damage before mobile targets can come up and hit you. Your early exp should focus on stationary targets like worms if possible, as you'll only get hit with the occasional stone spell.

This is also the best time to work on how to do what you'll be asked for most often in exp groups: pulling. When soloing, start with stationary targets and then work up to mobile targets when you get a bit farther out into the field. Fighting beastmen as an early soloist will give you practice on the basics of party camps and pulling. You can search for safe areas, shoot a nearby beastman, then run back to the safe spot and minimize the possibility of additional enemies teaming up on you.

One more note for early soloists: as mentioned before, undead are weak to blunt, but strong to piercing weapons. They also have abilities that can drain HP -and you don't have much- so avoid undead when choosing exp targets.

Pulling and Links
You’ll notice soon that certain targets link, and with practice you'll be able to pull enemies that are close to each other, but do not link on to you. Early on, most enemies will link only when they see another enemy like them running after you. If their backs are turned and a nearby friend of theirs is on you, they will stay where they are. In the upper levels, some enemies link on sound. If they are close enough to hear one of theirs run by on the way to you, they will turn around and join them.

Job Abilities / Traits
Job Ability:

Eagle Eye Shot (2 hour recast, Single shot, Lv 1)

Eagle Eye Shot is a solid 2 hour, as it can provide the extra boost in damage necessary to finish off a target, and therefore prevent the death of other party members, if not your own. All ranged attack damage and accuracy are influenced by the VIT, DEF, evasion, and distance of the target. EES ignores the distance part. The damage output of EES is exactly 5x a ranged attack single shot dmg (ignoring distance penalties). As far as I know, it is impossible to critical hit on EES (I’ve never seen it happen, and have played the job for almost 3 years). EES can miss; I’ve seen it miss on too weak targets, and I’ve seen it connect without any RACC equipment vs. IT+ targets. As a general rule, if the situation gives you the time, try to swap in as much ranged attack+ or STR+ gear as you can before hitting Eagle Eye. Also try to switch to your highest damage ranged weapon and ammo combination as well. You'll likely not notice an RACC penalty but will see a real bonus in dmg with RATK+ stacked on. Don't be afraid to hit your 2 hour when situations get bad, as hitting it just as you see your party get into a situation they won't be able to handle can save a lot of exp loss and arguing about who made what mistake. You don't often have people argue when someone's used their 2 hour early (especially if it's a damage dealer), but you'll have people on your case if your group gets wiped out and your 2 hour could have made a difference.

As previously stated, don't bother to use EES if you are double weakened. Due to the nerf on black magic and ranged attacks while in double weakness status, you'll most likely not hit with EES. If double weakened BLMs can cast flare for 0, there's no reason EES can't miss or do 0 dmg as well.

EES becomes a vital JA for endgame situations and lots of missions. Don’t just keep it in your back pocket; bring what you can to make it as effective as possible when it has to be used.

Sharpshot (5 minute recast, lasts 1 minute, Lv 1)

Early on, this isn't an important job ability, because you can't use it all the time, or with any other JA. From Lv 1-30 you can either use it anytime it's available, or when you have TP to give that small boost to your weapon skill accuracy. This JA is most effective with barrage (Lv 30) and/or flashy shot (Lv 75, 3 merit points). As it is, the JA is not meant to provide a consistent boost to normal hit accuracy the same way other jobs' abilities are (focus, aggressor, hasso). Since it only lasts for 60 seconds, this is best used when you want to unload a weapon skill or fire multiple shots in a row (barrage). Try to get used to activating it with weapon skills early on, but don't depend on it to guarantee a shot will connect, or that it will help your overall RACC by much during the course of an exp session.

Job Trait:

Alertness (Lv 5)

This trait says that it reduces the chance of being detected by enemies. It may slightly reduce the aggro range of those who detect by sight or detect by sound. This does not necessarily allow you to get past enemies without being detected, but it does cause all targets to show up on your radar as red dots. As a general rule of thumb, if a target shows up on the radar, you're inside detection range.

Equipment
There are not many early weapons or armor that help a great deal. For those with gil to spend, there is Feather collar+1 at Lv 7 for a small amount of ranged accuracy. Also at Lv 7, if you've spent the time or the money to get them, Leaping/Bounding Boots are the best you can get until Race-specific gear in the upper 20s. Longbows are the way to go, as ammunition is cheap but provides good damage. There are crossbows also available with bolts for decent damage as well, and will serve to increase your marksmanship skill if you couldn't build it before unlocking the job.

For standard melee weapons, use an axe and swing it on targets between shots.

Weaponskills
10 skill is Hot Shot/Flaming Arrow. It is basically a straight damage weapon skill. Higher TP= more dmg, along with the attributes mentioned at the top of this guide to boost weapon skills.

Subjobs
For the first few levels when you're soloing, you are best served by subbing WHM if you can for cure spells to minimize downtime. If you don't have a sub available that can cure, use /MNK for the extra HP and WAR if you have nothing else. /NIN does not give any benefits to RNG until Lv 24, and doesn't allow a real benefit until after Lv 28-30. An explanation why is in that section.

Food
Grilled hare, meat jerky, and other low level meats are a good way to go, but you may want to use a food that helps reduce downtime. For example, apple pies will keep resting to a minimum if you have /WHM available, due to the extra MP.

Equipment Setup For Endgame
=What to Merit=