Power ranger can be both your favourite lootbag or your worst enemy. First of all, you need to gauge if the ranger you’re facing has any clue what he’s doing or not. Those two are have rather easy tells to help you distinguish, since those two are pretty much entirely different enemies to face.
In general, you want to abuse line of sight or stealth when approaching a ranger. They have about 2k range so in the open you have about zero chance to close in without burning gap closers (Tip: if the ranger knows what he’s doing burning stunbreakers to close in equals getting yourself killed). In melee they are weaker, but still have a lot of tools to stand up to you.
If you see a ranger have signet of stone or both signet of stone and renewal, a wolf and a spider, dog or bird, then there are chances that the ranger knows what he’s doing. Other tells are using a weaponswap, be it s/x or GS, moving while shooting LB, using out of combat mobility and not breaking stealth immediately after using Hunter’s Shot.
On the other hand, if the ranger has signet of the hunt, full signet bar, any pet that’s not one of the mentioned above (Devourers and bears are a dead giveaway), never switches weapons or moves while shooting LB, you can quite safely assume he has no clue.
Now, the tactics. When it comes to clueless rangers, it’s quite possible to make the player panic after backstabbing him from stealth. Usually using BP/HS to enter stealth, backstab, shadow shot, steal to interrupt heal and some autos is enough to down him. If you get hit by a random point blank shot, prepare yourself to use signet of agility and head shot, or you’ll quite possibly eat a rapid fire. Usually there’s no need to worry about the pet since the random bear or cat crap can’t do anything with you moving around. Just remember to save your dodges for rapid fires and you’ll be fine.
Experienced rangers will give you a lot more trouble. I’ll point things you need to watch out for.
- Pet. Wolves can fear you out of shadow refuge or interrupt you with random leaps, spiders can apply ~6 seconds of continous immobilize, birds hit like a truck. Dodge wolf howls, steer clear of birds.
- Weapon swap. If a ranger is any decent, you’ll be forced to deal with the melee swap. On greatsword, you need to dodge maul (bear animation), and be able to deal with counterattack (2 second block that ends in a ~3-4k counter and knockback if you hit in melee. You can safely defuse it with shadow shot).
Sword offers sustained DPS and a ton of evades. Decent rangers are exceedingly hard to backstab since they’ll jump around with sword #2 when you’re stealthed.
Imo, it is best to switch to shortbow and kite the ranger around when he’s in melee weapon swap. Remember that auto bounces between ranger and pet, dealing decent damage. Keeping poison up at all times is also important.
- Rapid Fire. While with scrubs it’s barely of any issue, a good ranger can rapid fire you while you’re executing BP/HS combo or when you’re about to enter refuge. It tracks through stealth, which means more often than not it will hit you at low HP. You’re at an advantage if you have withdraw, since one dodge + withdraw negates rapid fire damage. Headshot can also interrupt it.
- Stomping. When stomping a decent ranger always use stealth (BP/HS combo on his face) or shadowstep stomp. A downed ranger can interrupt a stomp up to 5 times (thunderclap, wolf fear, wolf leap, another thunderclap, another dog leap if he has drakehound), down you and win the downed war. Do not try to burn him down when he’s up from full HP, pet rez heals faster than your dagger auto deals damage.
I’m pretty sure i didin’t cover everything and it’s a wall of text already If you want more tips, contact me in game. Good luck against rangers!
