Discover a Comprehensive guide about the Ranger Class in Path of Exile 2 including skills and how to play as a Ranger.
Path of Exile 2 has received an initial release on December 6, 2024. The full-release schedule is still TBA, but the developers have confirmed that we will be getting 6 out of the 12 planned Classes in the Early Access itself. Grinding Gear Games has already decided which ones we will see in the Early Access. Ranger Class is one of the best Classes that use arrow skills to tackle enemies and monsters. Unfortunately, the Classes in Path of Exile 2 are gender-locked, meaning you cannot choose the gender of a specific Class as it is predetermined. Explore the new ranger class in Path of Exile 2 and see how she redefines summoner gameplay!
Ranger Class Overview in Path of Exile 2
The Ranger is a ranged Class in the game. But this time around, you won’t be wielding magic but instead dealing physical damage to your foes. Unlike the Sorceress, this Class is also pretty agile, vaulting away whenever needed. It deals physical and elemental bow damage from a distance. Unlike many Classes, the Ranger can shoot while moving, giving players a significant edge on the battlefield. Basic arrow skills can be fired on the go albeit with a slight movement penalty allowing her to reposition while death upon enemies.
Lightning, poison, fire, and frost, as well as using plants and vines are the key elements for the Ranger Class. Any kind of basic arrow skill can be fired while moving with a movement penalty. This immediately gives you a lot more freedom on the battlefield.
Key Features and Mechanics of Ranger Class
Ranger is a dexterity-based character Class renowned for quick attack, agility, and efficiency with bows. The Ranger Class has a Dexterity attribute, meaning the Class will begin on the lower right side of the passive tree. This area is near the Cold Damage, Crit, Bow Damage, Flask Effect, Evasion, and Attack Speed.
The Ranger Class has a versatile skill arsenal that contains skills like Lightning Arrow, Poisonburst Arrow, and Frost Escape. These abilities grant unique effects like area-of-effect poison clouds, chaining damage, and freezing the foes. Skills are combined with support gems like Multiple Projectiles Support, Exploit Weakness Support, Corrosion Support, and Pierce Support, enabling unique effects and attack patterns.
Ranger Class can ride Rhoas that attack without movement penalties. You can fire whilst navigating the map on your Rhoas while maintaining your mobility fully. Dismounting will allow the Rhoas to fight by your side providing additional damage and utility. However, do make sure you don’t get shot because if you do, you will be stunned and leave you vulnerable. These features make the Ranger a versatile and dynamic Class, dealing damage from a distance while also maintaining adaptability and high mobility.
How to play as Ranger Class in Path of Exile 2?
Ranger Class playstyle revolved around run-and-gun tactics at the core. You can move around while attacking or using any damage-dealing skills. Merge this mechanic with strategies like rolling, dodge, and other mobility skills to deal damage to enemies. Electric, Ice, and Poison are three different elements through which Ranger can soak her arrows. The ice arrows allow the players to slow and freeze enemies from a safe distance. The electric arrows bounce between enemies dealing damage to enemy swarms. At last, poison arrows can inflict poison on enemies to deal damage over time.
Optimize damage scale and defense to adjust your build for intense encounters. Use utility flasks to gain enhanced evasion or remove debuffs. Use armor that focuses on avoiding hits and resistances for survival. Avoid melee attacks by staying at mid-range to enhance effectiveness. Use mounts to avoid movement penalties. Choose any Ranger’s ascendancies based on your favorite playstyle. Adjust your play style by connecting active skills with Support Gems.
Ranger Class Skills
Path of Exile 2 offers 21 distinct active skills for Bow which Rangers use in combat. Here’s the list of all active skills for the Ranger Class.
- Lightning Arrow
- Escape Shot
- Poisonburst Arrow
- Snipe
- Lightning Rod
- Stormcaller Arrow
- Barrage
- Electrocuting Rod
- Vine Arrow
- Poison Bloom Arrow
- Gas Arrow
- Plague Bearer
- Rain of Arrows
- Sniper’s Mark
Lightning Arrow
The lightning Arrow allows you to chain damage to nearby enemies. It gives you a little bit of AOE damage without getting support gems. It also gives you an escape shot in which you jump up in the air and shoot a cold arrow. This ability fires an arrow that unleashes electrical arcs between enemies. With gems like multiple projectiles Fork supports, you can transform a single shot into a cascading storm of lightning.
Stormcaller Arrow
A tactical choice for players who prefer delayed but devastating strikes. This arrow summons a powerful bolt of lightning from the sky and supporting it with gems like less duration reduces a delay allowing for quicker strikes against fast-moving targets. Freeze the battlefields with things like Forst Escape. The shocked enemies get 30% more damage from all sources.
Gas Arrow
A tactical skill that creates a lingering poison cloud in the targeted area. Pair it with an area of effect support to expand the poison radius or use the trigger on death to unleash explosive results. You can also detonate the gas clouds with explosives attacks to deal additional damage.
Vine Arrow
This unique ability summons plants that root enemies in place while applying a stacking poison debuff. Once the debuff reaches its maximum stacks, it transfers to enemies causing enormous bursts of poison of damage very cool. Combine this with Poison Bloom support to spread the stacks across groups for more AOE deliciousness.
Barrage
This ability fires volatile shots that trigger an area of explosion when detonated and it can be devastating when using it in synergy with the Gas Arrow. It can create a chain reaction of poison and fire damage which is more effective and looks great to use as well.
Snipe
Snipe is a charged skill shot that requires precision and timing. When you release a snipe at the right moment it’s a guaranteed critical strike to its target dealing massive single-target damage and a small AOE burst. This makes it an excellent finisher and particularly good against clusters of enemies immobilized by things like Frost Escape. Use this skill to get out of range and disable your enemy and then charge up and release snipe when they’re locked in place. This allows you to maximize the damage potential of both skills whilst keeping yourself at a safe distance.
Rain of Arrows
A Classic AOE from POE 1 with some really nice synergies. This is a simple yet versatile ability. It fires a volley of arrows into the air that rain down over a targeted area dealing decent AOE damage at long range. Now, Frenzy Charges are a core mechanic that provides boosts to attack speed and skill functionality across various abilities. In the case of Rain of Arrows, Frenzy Charges extend the skill duration allowing it to sustain longer on the battlefield.
Escape Shot
This skill allows the players to jump backward and shoot an arrow on the ground that freezes enemies in an area. It converts 100% physical damage to cold damage.
Electrocuting Rod
First, jump over the enemy and shoot it into them. Once the rods are in place, any lightning damage they take will build up a special electrocute gauge. Once the gauge is full, the monster is totally suppressed allowing you to kill them easily. Sometimes when you use Electrocuting Rod the enemies die before you get a chance to electrocute them. Neural Overload makes it easier to electrocute enemies. If the skillets attached to put them over 50% of their electrocute bar, it will trigger.
Poison Burst Arrow
Shoot an arrow that creates a cloud of poison gas upon impact. It poisons a cluster of enemies and damages them over time.
Plague Bearer
Plague Bearer is another poison-related skill that uses spirit. Enable it to get the counter that counts up whenever you apply poison to enemies. You can see the counter on the skill increasing as each new enemy is poisoned. Fight the enemies and make sure to poison them as much to build up the counter. It does take quite a while to get the counter up to 100% but it’s worth it. Unleash the poison to create a big explosion around your character dealing a large amount of damage.
Sniper’s Mark
Put it on the enemy and it will grant you a frenzy charge when you crit them. First, we snipers marked an enemy and then sniped them.
Lightning Rod
This ability shoots an arrow into the air that explodes when it lands and sticks to the ground, allowing the enemy to take damage. The arrow explodes again when the lightning arc comes across the stuck arrow. Players can have multiple stuck arrows as well.
Poison Bloom Arrow
This ability allows the players to place many plant pustules on the ground that will explode after a short duration. It deals damage and poisons the nearby enemies. However, if you further poison the pustules then the damage dealt by the explosion also increases and reduces the time to explode.
Ranger Class Ascendancies
Ascendancies are the specializations for your character, granting you additional options to customize them to your play style. As you progress you will unlock powerful ascendancy options to refine further and enhance your build and they are dropping each Class with two. Rangers have two Ascendancies, Deadeye and Pathfinder.
Deadeye is a ranged powerhouse focusing on accuracy and speed. This allows you to move swiftly and rapidly shoot arrows with 100% accuracy, making gameplay more effective. It provides significant buffs to the bow capabilities through passive skills like Endless Munitions and Eagle Eye. With quality of life and movement improvements provided by skills such as Gathering Winds, the player can avoid enemies.
Pathfinder is an ascendancy that makes you a master of poison and utility. It excels at flask management and stacking poison damage skills. This allows the Ranger to throw various concussions at the cost of consuming a flask charge. Each concussion serves A variety of uses under different scenarios. Using them can give players perks in combat.
Deadeye
- Endless Munitions- A passive skill allows the players to fire an additional projectile every attack, increasing the possible damage dealt in a shorter time.
- Gathering Winds- This allows the players to increase their movement speed whenever they attack an enemy. However, any accumulated movement speed bonus will disappear once players get hit by an attack.
- Eagle Eye- It allows the player to ignore accuracy penalties when firing errors from a distance. Players can redistribute any accuracy points into their build into other useful stats.
Pathfinder
- Bleeding Concoction- Allow the players to throw a concussion that makes enemies bleed and take damage over time.
- Fulminating Concoction– Throws a concussion that explodes and shocks nearby enemies, making them take extra damage from attacks.
- Contagious Contamination- Spead poison effect from one enemy to another. When an enemy dies it will take the most damage, dealing poison to the head and spread to nearby enemies within 1.5 meters.
- Overwhelming Toxicity- It allows the players to double the number of poisons that can be inflicted on enemies at the cost of reducing the duration of the poison effect by 35%.
- Running Assault- This passive skill allows the players to move master while attacking or executing abilities by reducing the movement speed penalty by 30%.
- Relentless Pursuit- It makes the players immune to being slowed by enemies.
Path of Exile 2 Ranger skill support gems
Each skill has a capacity for three different support gems. The gems match the corresponding color on the skill and further empower the skills. You can swap them to other skills as long as color matches when required. The gems provide advantages and act as buffs to create stronger effects.
Gems | Effects |
---|---|
Multiple Projectiles Support | Deals 66% less projectile damage and fires two more projectiles |
Exploit Weakness Support | Deals 50% more damage to foes with broken armor |
Corrosion Support | Poison applied by supported skills breaks armor. |
Pierce Support | Deal 30% less projectile damage and bore one more target. |
Deep Freeze Support | Inflict the freezing effect that lasts an additional 0.5 seconds. |
Frozen Nexus Support | It deals a 400% enhanced Effect of chill on foes. |
Neural Overload Support | Electrocute enemies on hit. |
Shock Proliferation | It enhances the 20% chance of shocking nearby enemies in a 2.5-meter radius. |
Less Duration | 20% less skill effect duration |
Chain Support | It chains more time and deals 50% damage on each hit. |
Faster Projectiles Support | Projectile speed increased by 30% |
FAQs About the Ranger Class in Path of Exile 2
Q1: Is Ranger a Good Class in Path of Exile 2?
Yes, the Ranger Class is the best Class in Path of Exile 2 because it is a dexterity-based character Class renowned for quick attack, agility, and efficiency with bows. It deals physical and elemental bow damage from a distance.
Q2: Should you choose Ranger Class in Path of Exile 2?
Ranger is the best Class to choose because it offers agile and mobile playstyle making this Class a strong choice. It grants powerful skills like Lightning Arrow, Escape Shot, and Lightning Rod to deal massive damage. Rangers can also gain access to the Rhoa mount which offers unique mobility and additional attack options.
Q3: What Gender is the Ranger Class in Path of Exile 2?
Ranger Class is traditionally female and the character design reflects her dexterity-based nature that fits her role as a nimble archer in Path of Exile 2.
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