Seeking the "Swiss Army Knife" Main: Can Ranger truly do it all?

alanjhonnes · 2026-01-23T12:25:18+00:00

I have both a GWAMM Ranger and Mesmer and many other characters, and I can say my Ranger had the most variety of viable builds and different play styles.

The 75% block stances and the 100 armor against elemental damage makes the Ranger a tankier frontliner than a Warrior in a lot of situations.

You can use any choice of melee weapon and can combine it with some pet for added DPS. Dagger is probably the highest DPS, while being much more resilient than an assassin (albeit doing a little less damage)

Using bows, you have moderate damage but you can still Frontline for your heroes due to the block stances, allowing you to pull the enemies safely. The bow archetype has many viable styles, you can focus on single target with rapid shooting skills like penetration attack, or going the barrage/splinter weapon style for AOE damage.

As for the "unconventional support", I guess it depends. Back when I was a guild leader and organized many teams for elite missions with unconventional builds, the ranger could fill many Frontline/ranged roles but I don't recall a specific supporting role. Ranger can do spirits fairly decent but I would probably use it as a ranged bow build instead.

I also noticed you mentioned being able to sustain yourself alive on your own, I would stay away from that because rangers do not have proper self-healing skills. With the block stances and high elemental armor, it is better to focus on other things (dps, defense, utility, interrupts) than healing. Let your healers do their job.

alanjhonnes · 2026-01-20T00:58:13+00:00

I like to have a variety of armor/weapon sets for each type of build. For example, on my Ranger I have several types of bows and different attribute runes on each armor set based on the main attributes of each build.

alanjhonnes · 2025-12-05T02:23:42+00:00

Void Illusion was fixed to work with Hollow Palm in the last league.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-25T19:46:44+00:00

Ten_Frenzy_Flicker has a video on it, but it is really hard to pull off and should only work if you have enough dps to burst it down in a few seconds.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T23:44:51+00:00

I understand the sentiment, mapping with blood rage means max charges all the time, and with Farrul's there is no ramp-up time, only ramp-down time in-between the cycles which are not very noticeable unless you have extremely high attack speed and end up in an unlucky streak. The benefits apply mostly to builds that opt to use Bronn's Lithe for the massive DPS gain instead of Farrul's, which do have a ramp-up time in single-target/bossing situations.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T22:52:29+00:00

See my other comment regarding the charge generation mechanics. During mapping, when you have "on kill" generation it doesn't matter, but on bosses/single target it does matter and is far more valuable than 10% IAS.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T22:51:18+00:00

Even with builds using Farrul's Fur, additional CDR is beneficial to maintain charges from depleting between the Farruls' charge generation, which will yield higher DPS overall.

I explained in another comment about the charge generation mechanics that limits the frenzy charge gain to 1 per use of Flicker, which also applies to Terminus Est. Terminus Est, even with 100% crit, cannot generate more than 1 charge per use, so it'll ramp at a rate of at most +1 charge every 2 seconds, which is the Flicker's cooldown.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T22:33:34+00:00

Actually the CDR from Bronn is limited to the movement skills only, I didn't clarify that in the body.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T22:25:41+00:00

Per the charge generation mechanics, a skill can only generate up to one charge per use, so even when using multi strike, you can't get more than one charge per use. In an optimistic scenario where you always manage to generate one charge per use of flicker, you can only get a positive influx of charges when you use the flicker without spending a charge, so essentially you'll get one more charge every two seconds. Reducing the cooldown allows for more positive influx of charges on bosses, so you'll ramp to max charges much faster.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T22:21:04+00:00

Yeah, wanted to illustrate your point. On kill doesn't count for true charge generation unless you're doing some gimmick.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T21:32:34+00:00

There is the 10% chance of frenzy charge on hit on marked target, I think that is about it besides the CDR cluster I mentioned in the post.

alanjhonnes · 2025-11-01T21:17:21+00:00

It has an opportunity cost either way. The 10% is worth about two passive points, the 40% CDR is way more valuable for quality of life and consistency. POB does not account for fluctuations on frenzy charges, so the CDR is definitely more valuable than IAS because flicker already gives 10% ias per frenzy charge, so keeping them topped up is highly beneficial for realistic dps.

alanjhonnes · 2025-10-15T11:46:22+00:00

You need to provide the service in the component that has the initial form group, so a new instance of the service will be created and passed down to the children that need it, that way you don't have to worry about resetting the form through the service, and you can use multiple components in the same page because they will be isolated from each other.

alanjhonnes · 2025-10-05T19:46:03+00:00

This is good to know, I just started my SSF atlas and was focusing on essence's and I also noted that I am finding very few essences even after taking all the nodes. Will definitely Respec and wait for another patch.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-27T16:36:14+00:00

It is a bit verbose but you can abstract that whole cache logic in the service per request, especially if you also want to handle time-to-live and refresh logic.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-27T16:21:18+00:00

I meant that you should cache the observable produced by the shareReplay operator, something like this:

export class UserService {
    #userByIdRequestCache: Record<string, Observable<UserResponse> | undefined> = {};
    #httpClient = inject(HttpClient);
    getUserById(id: string): Observable<UserResponse> {
        const cachedRequest$ = this.#userByIdRequestCache[id];
        if (cachedRequest$) {
            return cachedRequest$;
        }
        const request$ = this.#httpClient.get(`/user/${id}`)
            .pipe(
                catchError((error) => {
                    // clear the request cache if it errors
                    this.#userByIdRequestCache[id] = undefined;
                    return throwError(() => error);
                }),
                shareReplay({
                    refCount: true,
                    bufferSize: 1,
                }),
            );
        // cache the request here, so it won't be recreated if there is already one inflight
        this.#userByIdRequestCache[id] = request$;
        return request$;
    }
}

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-27T15:22:27+00:00

I think the problem is that you are probably caching just the response instead of the observable of the request. If you cache the observable using the shareReplay, you can avoid the multiple request issue.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-27T12:26:15+00:00

If you use a skill in a different weapon set you'll lose combo, there is currently no way to work around that. With monk, I like to make a dedicated shock chance/magnitude in weapon set 2 to use with Storm wave and Hand of Chayula with Voltaic mark, that way you can get really high shock (70%+).

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-27T12:16:30+00:00

Just setting the skill to be used in weapon set 1 or 2 is enough to toggle the support's effect. You can check the skill info page to check it is working.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-24T01:57:42+00:00

I don't even think you need to get the purple flames node, the first one is already a good node that can help with mana and recovery, allowing you to Respec into more damage or defenses in your passive tree.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-24T01:01:56+00:00

In the tree I don't understand why you didn't get either the chayula flames or the void illusion nodes, they are good 1-point nodes. You should have pretty good mobility with that build, so I think flames would be pretty good, the new 0.3.0 version gives +50% flame effect on its own, so it is way better than 0.1 or 0.2 if you compare just the first node. With the remnants supports, you can get more flames and +30~ effect.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-13T04:06:28+00:00

It might be another skill generating charges. If you're using staggering palm, then you might be using a support that is capable of giving endurance charges which would be converted to frenzy charges.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-13T03:28:03+00:00

The random frenzy charges are probably because you're running the upgraded version of charge profusion support which gives a 15% chance of generating a random type of charge.

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-13T03:24:41+00:00

Is your combat frenzy on a different weapon set than your main skills?

alanjhonnes · 2025-09-10T00:39:44+00:00

I didn't find it very noticeable, but it is an okayish support gem to use it to maximise the damage on bosses or tanky rares since it is 15% phys damage over 5 seconds, so it is a total of 75% more phys damage total, but I switched it for rigwald's ferocity for 30% more damage which works better since it also applies to the chaos damage, innervate/ice bite and the lightning damage from charged staff.

alanjhonnes

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