State Of The Job?

I'm thinking of regearing my RNG, because RNG has always seemed cool to me, even if I may not use it for endgame content. My question is: how does it stack up against COR or BLU in terms of damage? What RME would be good to get? Is it still as fun as it was?

Thank you.

If you love to Pew, the Pew away.

That's all that matters.

Why are we asking how it stacks up with COR.

It can generated ranged TP faster than COR and push out as much damage as a COR w/ Trueflight which is light based and more favorable on a lot more enemies.

They can also grab a Bow and destroy COR damage in anything that requires physical damage.


Outside of that, I don't know they stack up to real DDs like DRK or WAR. Probably lackluster.

Meh this topic is just gonna be a hotbed for arguing. I know you have genuine questions but ya, people are protective of their jobs so there will just be arguing with an OP like that.

***is situational is the answer to your damage questions not just to avoid arguing but also because it's true. If you want to do good damage on ranger it is very achievable, even very good damage. But if you ask it in a way it becomes a penis measuring contest you're not gonna get much but a lot of arguing. If you ask questions like "How can I optimize ranged damage on ranger and is it good?" That's a much easier, and less volatile, question to answer.

Eliroo has some great points on trueflight and bow ranger though. And gun also has situations where it is good (needing lots of accuracy, or enmity control from coronach). For raw damage it's usually going to be xbow > bow > gun, but there's many situations that doesn't hold true. Physical bow is usually strongest. But if you're low manning and don't have enough accuracy for some reason, last stand is higher acc ws. Only the very endgame content makes that matter though because ranger has the highest acc of any job. (was actually low manning maju and testing out physical went from 9k last stands then was doing 16k jishnu's, pdif wasn't capped but accuracy was, switching to trueflight setup and buffs with same 5 people was doing 19k to 40k trueflights and on neak you can do 99999 trueflight with 99999 skillchain and still TP with minimal/no acc buffs/evasion debuffs). With 3 hit sets, ranger can self chain reliably as well which is easy to achieve with samurai roll. As for comparing to other jobs dps, the situations where blu, rng and cor would shine in damage all differ, as well as buffs, and will just lead to arguing and penis waggling so please avoid asking questions like that.

RNG's are being used for end-game content like certain Master Trials and it's only a matter of time before its potential is explored with Reisenjima T4's as well (among other things).

Several of us in my LS are currently dusting off our RNGs and updating the jobs again. A few of us haven't used ours since Divine Might II back in 2013.

Fomalhaut and Afterglow Annihilator are taking center stage with this slow ranged attack come back in an effort to catch up with COR's who are already demonstrating serious DPS potential for end-game.

Oh, I didn't mean to start a hotbed for arguing and my questions were generic because I forgot a lot about RNG. So trueflight is the go-to WS for RNG? Also what's the hierarchy for Snapshot, Rapid Shot, etc. what should I gear towards in my precast set? I looked at the RNG guide here on FFXIAH which kind of helped, but didn't explain a lot of the mechanics behind RNG.

Edit 1: How can I incorporate Recycle and Unlimited shot into my TP sets and maximize RACC?

I'm currently finishing off my RNG although I have yet to actually use it for anything. I look forward to trying stuff with it.

This was posted in the RNG thread, but here's what I recommend (note: I'm just copy/pasting)

ItemSet 345751

With Velocity Shot, augments, merits and gifts it comes out to 87 Rapid Shot and 72 Snap Shot. I don't consider capping Rapid Shot to be nearly as important as Snapshot as it doesn't have increasing marginal returns like Snapshot does. If you use Kustawi +1 you're at 90~94 Rapid Shot.


In regards to midshot builds, I have not ruminated over them enough. Also I don't think this should turn into RNG vs COR, rather RNG + COR. I feel SAM roll is fairly important for RNG DPS, but again I have not ruminated much over midshot builds so Idk.

I've seen a Gastra RNG do some serious deeps. Like 30-50k Trueflights spammed.

Thanks Snaps, that helps a lot. I was thinking for TP build: Precast; stacking rapid/unlimited/snapshot,recycle etc., midcast; RACC.

Then I was thinking of WS (Jishnu's) in the Ambuscade gear with Dead Aim +10, because apparently Dead Aim is totes OP. The math quoted from the RNG guide "The equation at 99 is to simply multiply damage * 1.25 * 1.45 = critical hit damage, or damage * 1.8125 = critical hit damage." for Dead Aim.

Dead Aim does not apply to weaponskills.

With arcadian head and recycle merits you cap recycle, and also get a very large TP gain on 90% of your shots. Arcadian head is the best midshot for tp gain but you lose accuracy. So, in my view at least, just don't bother with recycle if you need to maximize ranged accuracy and on anything you don't need to max ranged accuracy on, arcadian head is very very good.

J/k nevermind.

Also this dagger may still be relevant for Jishnu's RNG

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Oneiros_Knife

Ya as snaps said dead aim isn't applied to weaoponskills. It still has it's place though in increasing Ranger damage. With occassionally does 2x or 3x damage, trueshot, attack/defense ratio capped and a crit, you can get 8k+ ranged attacks on ranger that can also be double shot.

I feel it might be hard to find any content where you wouldn't want Arcadian head these days. People are capping accuracy on T4 in 1200~ accuracy sets or something. I think this is very doable on RNG given the native +73 accuracy bonus. Maybe some situations (master trials) where you're slightly buff starved, you might consider it.

Ya I agree, usually only CL 135+ is where I'd say it can start being a concern for a very well equipped ranger and even then a lot can be done with buffs etc. For people coming back into the job though, that could be earlier, with a full support stack though and top end gear there's not many examples of a place you can't use arcadian head.

Haven't done any new content, so just me thinking:

Shouldn't ranger be the best DD right now for harder content? You can't really melee harder content and rely on staying max distance to avoid AOE and stuff has tons of evasion.

Ranger can do damage from a safe distance, has a nearly 0 enmity WS(Coronach), has true flight and has the highest accuracy in the entire game. They also added flurry/flurryII so ranger actually scales with mages properly now, yay!

Why isn't ranger thriving in our current game?

First, you can melee endgame content, and very effectively at that. The recent AGI changes made melee extremely viable on everything in the game, the AoE damage adjustments helped increase survivability, and Vex/Attunement remain ridiculous for blocking negative status effects.

Ranger setups can function extremely well for endgame. The issue is that the job itself just isn't as common in comparison to melees. Basically everybody has at least one melee job, usually multiple, whereas ranged jobs are less likely to be found. There's nothing in the game limiting ranged setups, but instead just a lack of interest in them in general from the players.

Ranged setups have excellent potential, people just don't seem to want to do them.

To be fair, it's not like ranged buffs are any different from melee buffs aside from Madrigal/Prelude and Haste/Flurry. Maybe GEO positioning is an issue for Fury or Precision, but eh.

edit: oh yeah, Fighter's Roll

Yeah, can't you just give the ranger the same buffs the melee DD are getting and the ranger can be a DD too?

In stuff you can't melee(which doesn't exist anymore?) you can sit further away and use xbow/bow. In stuff you can melee, you get songs/rolls and just use gun.

Seems like ranger can be used anywhere now, with all the buffs to it, the insane stats they've given it's gear and adding flurry2/velocity shot/tons of snapshot.

It doesn't seem like it should be some completely different role of "ranged", it's just a "physical DD" now like melee that benefits from nearly everything a melee does via buffs now and has it's own form of mage haste!

edit: They need to make Madrigals give racc and just completely remove hunters prulude <_< Like how hunters roll gives both ranged and melee acc...

That's probably the LAST thing holding ranger back from being treated the same as a melee DD. But it's not like the bard can't just single target buff the ranger(s) with prelude ;p. NOT LIKE BARD HAS MUCH TO DO ANYWAYS

edit2: Also make double attack roll give double shot :D :D :D

edit3: What agility change?

I think it was 2-3 months back, they changed the agi/evasion formula which reduced mob evasion. So basically the "you need x acc to participate" or "you need x acc to cap" have been reduced.

@Kiaru-

Nothing is stopping any setup in this game right now outside of forum posts. My shell utilizes our personnel based on the mob and our strengths, whether that be a straight melee zerg, scholar skillchain for black mage bursts, or using a Ranger strategy.

We're lucky-in just the Ranger department we have 3 Yoichis,4 Annis,4 aeonic guns, and 2 aeonic bows. Put in similar numbers for our melees and support staff (probably the most important, 3 Idris in shell) and it gives the freedom to attack mobs in various ways. I don't say these things to brag-several shells can do this. I say these things to show that in a game designed around being able to swap jobs, a group's ability to be flexible is paramount.

And on that note, I need to level more jobs. I'm certainly not flexible enough!

One thing people tend to not talk about is that the Evasion nerfs helped ranger too. That's why I can 5-6 man Neak in about 2 mins. Tank RDM SCH GEO RNG, if blessings are up you don't even really need distract on but it helps for sure as then you can use a lower acc set. Frazzle III handles the magic evasion down. Geo malaise + acumen + entrust AGI. SCH Aurorastorm II and makes a fusion skillchain then you skillchain trueflight off that while mages burst. Barrage, repeat immediately = dead neak. RNG can get over 1700 before buffs in Escha so basically, you can hit t3 reisenjima mobs without support which is good news for trueflight setups. Mochi uses RNG trueflight a lot, so far it's the only strat we have done that let us clear all of escha zi'tah in one radialens.

As for RNG being rare, it's not a lack of interest in ranged setups it's that there's one dedicated RNG DD and about half the jobs in ffxi's 22 job selection are melee DD or can act as one. RNG can mix in with melee but results as would be expected aren't optimal. RNG really wants SAM roll for example, and to stand at trueshot distance, and wants diff bard buffs and needs the geo to position where they can get the benefit. Sadly my experience with that is rng gets none of those things and so just ends up performing a lot worse than they could have otherwise as a result. Gun is an ok option for those kinds of setups though as the trueshot distance is very short.