Ranger Guide by Radiënt: Aim for Perfection/Job/Stats

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==Knowing the job | Choosing your race | Choosing a support job | Equipment | Update notes==
=== Abilities and Traits | Stats, ranged and melee | Choosing your weapon | Endgame roles===
===Knowing the job===
If you are a ranger, you are expected to do four things: dealing damage, pulling, tracking certain monsters or NPCs and landing "winds" on gods. Assuming tracking monsters and NPCs and landing winds are obvious, this sub page will cover all the abilities and traits, weapon choices and endgame roles.
==Stats and Focusses==
Like melee jobs, Rangers need Strength (STR) to enhance their damage. Unlike melee jobs, Rangers need Agility (AGI) for Ranged Accuracy. Dex however still affects your Melee Accuracy and affects your chance to deliver a critical attack as well. Critical Attack on ranged attacks, however, is no where as powerful as on a melee attack. You can find more about that on the pDIF guide.
===Stats description===
Strength (STR):
For me, the most important modifier when it comes to weapon skills. It is commonly mistake that this stat does not affect marksmanship weapon skills at all, this is not correct. Strength is used for Archery as well as Marksmanship, though Archery benefits slightly more since it has Strength as a modifier, though Marksmanship gets more from Agility. You can find more about how Strength works in the fSTR guide. For Trueflight, however, you will need Intelligence to increase the damage. Please see the Intelligence (INT) section.
Dexterity (DEX):
This stat increases your melee accuracy and overal critical hit rate. As a ranger, you'd think this is not important, and surprisingly, ranger has quite alot dexterity. Ofcourse, this is a good thing. Occassionally you will end up shooting from point blank, increased accuracy will help landing your melee attacks, which means a little bit of extra damage as well as extra TP. If that is not the case, you still get the increased critical hit rate on your ranged attacks from a distance. Ofcourse, the increased damage isn't much, but any increased damage is better than no increased damage.
Vitality (VIT):
Vitality is what rangers lack. Technically, we have mage-like hp and defense, in other words: we are incredibly squishy. Vitality directly decreases damage dealt to you, but as a ranger you won't have much of this and not alot of HP either, making shooting from a distance a good choice on certain monsters (like Kirin) that has alot of nasty area moves that tend to ignore Utsusemi and Third Eye effects.
Agility (AGI):
Rangers have alot of natural Agility, which again is a good thing. Agility directly increases your ranged accuracy and is a modifier for almost every ranged weapon skills. However, don't focus too much into this stat when gearing up your ranger. There are alot of ranged accuracy equipment available, rendering this stat somewhat useless. Although if there is nothing better, getting pieces with Agility is a good choice.
Intelligence (INT):
This is where it hurts some time, as a Ranger doesn't have natural high Intelligence. Intelligence directly affects the potency of Bloody bolts as well as the elemental arrow damage. Like physical weapon skills, Intelligence is the primary modifier for Trueflight, but instead of Strength, it uses Intelligence.
Mind (MND):
Mind only has one use for rangers: increase the damage dealt with Holy Bolts. It has no further use than that.
Charisma (CHR):
This has absolutely no use for the Ranger job, perhaps if you set Beastmaster as your support job to increase the odds to charm a monster. Other than that, don't bother with this stat.
Ranged Attack:
Like Strength, it affect Weapon Skills and directly has effect on your regular attacks as well. Sadly there isn't alot of ranged attack gear available, but luckily there is Velocity Shot, so you can ignore this when gearing up. Having too much of this is pointless, as you won't deal more damage if you have capped on the attack vs defense difference, you can find more about this in the pDIF guide.
Ranged Accuracy:
Without a doubt this is the more important stat for rangers. You don't hit, you don't deal damage, you don't do your job. It also applies for landing Winds on gods, where you already have a horrible C-rating on Throwing (capping at 220 skill). Though having too much won't do you any good, just find out how much ranged accuracy you'd need for certain monsters and situations. Best to start off with too much and slowly build down, focussing on more Strength for your weapon skills.
===Stats effect===
A quick overview what each stats gives:
{|cellpadding="2" width="90%" align="top"	
2 STR:
2 DEX:
2 VIT:
2 AGI:
2 INT:
2 MND:	
+1 ranged attack
+1 melee accuracy
+1 defense
+1 ranged accuracy
+1 Additional effect damage*
+1 Additional effect damage*
==Ranged_vs_Melee==
===Main differences===
Ranged weapons are very different than melee weapons. Melee weapons attack, wait for the delay and attacks again. Ranged weapons however, have delay first (aiming delay) based on the weapon delay, fire and get another delay phase (reload delay) based on the ammo used. Critical damage is nowhere as potent as a melee critical hit. While a melee critical hit can suddenly burst out some damage twice the normal damage, a ranged critical hit will barely do 25% more.
===Delay===
Another significant difference is the delay effect. For melee weapons, +60 delay on a weapon would mean an additional 1 second delay between attacks, 360 delay would mean it will take 6 seconds to swing your weapon, however this can be reduces through equipment with delay reduction or haste effect.
For ranged weapons, +110 delay would mean an additional +1 second delay before firing, if that delay is on the ammo it would take +1 second before you can fire again. Unlike melee attacks, haste and delay reduction equipment does not affect it in any way. The only way to get delay reduction with ranged weapons is Velocity Shot, Snapshot and, by chance, Rapid Shot.
===Tactical Points===
TP gain is still the same, despite the difference in the delay. A melee weapon with 480 delay and a ranged weapon with 640+240 delay (weapon+ammo) are both 8 seconds. The difference here is that the melee weapon 13.0% TP and the ranged weapon gets 17.1% TP.