Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition How are rangers?

Were they buffed to be more useful?

Anyone recommend a good build?

I think you need a LOT of Dex. Even 7 isn't that good at level 3. Even at a range of like 5 meters I only had a 55% chance to hit.

I have 10 at level 5.

I've gotten to level 7 and really consider investing in the skill ranged precision stance. It costs no AP and significantly improves accuracy, I just typically plant my ranger somewhere with a good line of site and unleash arrows, even when they get too close or far its hard to miss with this skill activated.

Overall, they actually got worse by comparison. They maintain their utility with the special arrows, but they don't do anything that a wizard won't do better, really.

Since special arrows are now fired from the knees, they also have a tendency to snag on everything in the world geometry. With the addition of grenades, although a great addition in it's own right, this utilitarian role is further diminished in value.

With the nerfs to rogues, guerrilla and the sneaking skill, rangers are worse off than pre-EE.

Pretty much this.
To the point I don't really have an idea what to do with my char' in Tactician. Keep going Marksman and hope for the best ? Try to switch to Scoundrel[rogue] but it may be even worse ? Switch to full wizard ( I'm not a big fan ) ?
Essentially the game now asks and push for heavy specialization. Even with lone wolf it seems hard to keep a bit of multitasking and remain useful.

THis is very sad

Hmm, I wonder if that's why I'm really getting hammered in the EE compared to before: my team consists of two archers and two melee type warriors, though even the latter are regularly suffering a real pounding. Reading this, I guess a part of the problem is that I don't like to specialise but prefer a mix of various skills which may be putting me at a disadvantage.

My team is Ranger, Mage, Mage, Madora, and my ranger is still very effective. Of course it's nothing compared to the monster that Madora is. Her Flurry is still insane and she can tank all day. At level 14 my Madora has almost 3x more HP than all my other characters (1500 vs 500 to 600 for others). She is not suffering, she is dominating the battle ground. Maybe you just need to find better gear and add a few Constitution. Honestly I think Tactician is still too easy once you reach level 10+

I tried both Bow and Crossbow and Bow is definitely better to me. Better damage overall and less AP required, which means that with good stats, at the beginning of a fight my ranger can shoot 3 times or use 2 consecutive damage skills. Of course ranger used to be better, but it's still good to me.

They seem to be fine leaning toward the powerful imo, certainly better than rogue. Probably much worse than dual wands but those are in a category of their own so I'm not counting/using them.

I have a knight pc/wizard pc/wizard/ranger party, the ranger's damage output is on par with the 2h fighter.

A few things:
- forget precision stance and per(if you're not using him as a detector, I am but the damage is still fine). Get power stance, pump dex/spd. Special arrows/attacks don't miss, when you are shooting at a target affected by any kind of disable(90% of the time I'd say) you automatically have 100% hit chance anyway.
- talentwise get bully, man-at-arms/mages will get you plenty of knockdowns and you can just go to town. The rest are up to you, ranger seems pretty flexible.
- special arrows: their status% chance doesn't scale with dex/marksman so the direct hit status ones aren't very good. Poisoncloud ones are very easy to craft and they are the gifts that keep on giving: they do their normal damage to the target, do aoe poison to suspectible targets and explode when your fighter lobs in his molotov for a ton of extra damage. I'm a fan of steam and static cloud ones too, but they are a bit harder to get in quantity.
- get 1 point of rogue for 2ap selfhaste and trip, you have high dex anyway and if someone gets close knockdown/2 bully arrows to the face.




It's been very easy since I've got my full 4 man party. It's probably because we both use 2 mages, just with 1 point in each magic skill they have so much control it doesn't really matter what's on the other side.

When all else fails set up a burning oil wall and park the melee in front. Since the smoke blocks los they have to slog through the fire and get ultramurdered by the saved up ap of 4 chars. I'll probably do another playthrough without hard cc mages to see what happens.

It almost looks as if they've made the Ranger worse on purpose, which is a bit sad. It even looks like they've removed the "barrage" skill, which was one of the few things which gave the Ranger an edge in the original. Even worse is that it seems like there are fewer good bows available, so it's really down to wether you want an original character, or you want to go for max damage.

I think Tactician is hard, VERY hard with only 2 chars, which is why we can't afford having a "okay-ish" character. putting points in Bodybuilding and Willpower is mandatory lest you can spend entire fights on the ground waiting for it to end. Ennemies will focus twice as much on you since you have half the characters.
Meaning you'd need defensive capabilities that Marksman doesn't provide anymore, meaning you'd have to raise your defenses, Marksman, and something else on the side. At this rate, you're just better off dropping Marksman entirely as it doesn't bring any utilities other than special arrows ( which do not even require Marksman to be fired I think ? ). What's more it requires some heavy focus on Dex which barely benefits other classes.

In the end there is almost nothing to be gained from a Marskman character except maybe some slightly better damage. It may be a better idea to go dual wield Wand / single wand+shield.
Marksman is in this not very nice place where it is almost exclusive to any other archetypes as it doesn't depend nor really bring synergies to other "classes", while also not being enough as a standalone...

What's the point of playing lone wolf with 2 chars ? I mean, you control only 2 char, you spend most of the time watching the enemy acting, and have a very little diversity. I never played this way, even in orignal. It seems very boring to me.

Adrian, Barrage was not removed, you will get it in Luccula and End of time.

Thanx. I thought it odd that it was missing.

Hard to tell what the consensus is what here....

I dont want to be forced to play a mage / warrior, I want a dex char.

How about Shadow Blade?

Well, I felt like playing 4 chars was desperately long and boring myself ; two more chars in the fight tends to make fights drag even more imho. The fact I can't and mostly don't care about companions ( sorry, Larian writers! ) in cRPGs also obviously plays a big role in me going the dual LW way.
Also we are playing coop and we actually BOTH don't like companions, so yeah we basically both wanted a Lone Wolf character :p

As far as diversity is concerned, you still retain some. Overall I think you gain less ability points than two chars, but this is enough to get some pretty nice combos you wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

Essentially, LW was an alternate play style in Classic DOS, but it somehow became another handicap in DOS:EE Tactician difficulty. This is sad, as it implies some inbalance and restrictions between builds.

I don't get this talk. Marksmen is fine now, and got a fair share of improvements; they got a whole bunch of new skills, I've yet to try out/see the higher level ones, but one of new ones is a skill with massive AoE and farsight is a pretty neat buff with +50 accuracy allowing to put on the damage mode all time; Crossbows seem to be finally viable if you build for crit (and 5ap vs. DoS, i.e. -1 AP cost). The accuracy stance and damage stance each lost their AP penality as well (though the talent that reduced AP costs is now gone for good.).
The special arrows are good as ever.

Dual-lonewolfing Ranger (group trader/crafter, per+dex+spd, xbows) and Mage (all 5 schools + lore) on Tactician right now (coop with a friend). I did this combo before in DoS, and mages are the one that were heavily nerfed in the early levels and certainly not the ranger. Mechanically speaking, I think the ranger has improved a lot and the mage probably as well (OP stone gone, mage seems more focused on CC/support now then damage at least early before you get the good AoE master spells)