Be prepared to draw your bow and arrows and shoot everything on sight. Let us make a preview of what the Ranger class will be in Path of Exile 2.
Grinding Gear Games introduces the agile Ranger class to Path of Exile 2
Path of the Exile 2, one of the most anticipated dungeon crawlers of 2024, is beginning to look more like a completed game given the amount of content revealed and how much hype we all have for when it releases.
Now it is the turn of the Ranger, a class that specializes in agility, ranged attacks, and special skill effects that will deal great single and AoE damage. Rangers can shoot and move at the same time, meaning that you will get to enjoy a lot of freedom when you deal with enemy mobs and dungeons.
While I tend to favor the more melee-centric classes, with the sheer amount of features and skills that Rangers have at their disposal, I’m thinking maybe I can give these Legolas-inspired characters a chance. Oh, and since we are talking about skills, here are a few that players will be able to use to their advantage.
Ranger Skills
- Frost Escape: the ranger will jump backward while shooting a freezing arrow at the ground.
- Snipe: time a powerful arrow shot correctly and you will deal a guaranteed critical strike.
- Lightning Rod: these arrows will stick to the ground dealing AoE damage while also gathering lightning from their surroundings and each other, causing explosions.
- Stormcaller Arrow: an arrow that will stick to the enemy, who will later suffer the power of a lightning bolt.
- Vine Arrow: an arrow that will create a plant whose tendrils will capture and poison enemies.
- Poison Bloom Arrow: this arrow creates poison pustules in the ground which will explode on contact or over time.
- Electrocuting Rod: shoot this arrow toward an enemy which will fill up a gauge meter when fed with lightning damage. Once full, it will suppress the enemy, making way for you to deal the final blow.
- Gas Cloud Arrow: after shooting an arrow, the ground is filled with a gas could, poisoning everything it touches.
- Plague Bearer: this skill will start a counter that will progress by how many enemies you poison. At every single step to 100%, you can choose to make a poison explosion.
- Rain of Arrows: as its name says, the Ranger will shoot a bunch of arrows to the sky, raining down on your enemies.
- Sniper’s Mark: apply this mark to an enemy and your next critical attack will grant you a frenzy charge.
Ranger Support Gems
To complement skills, we also have a good amount of Support Gems. Each of the skills above will have slots available to be filled with Support Gems, which will modify and heavily boost the effects and way skills are used by each class. In the case of Rangers, we have the following Support Gems which will have your arrows become synonyms for death:
- Multiple Projectiles: multiply the number of projectiles you shoot.
- Exploit Weakness: provide extra damage toward enemies with broken armor.
- Chain: your skill effects will propagate or “chain” toward nearby enemies.
- Less Duration: your skill effects will strike faster.
- Shock Proliferation: grants a chance to deal shock damage to nearby enemies.
- Barrage: makes your next attack fire three times.
- Neural Overload: makes electrocution easier.
- Frozen Nexus: frozen ground will freeze enemies.
- Deep Freeze: freeze status lasts longer.
- Pierce Support: you will get multiple projectiles as long as you pierce through your enemies.
- Corrode Armour: poison will erode enemy armor and break it.
That’s everything we know about the Ranger class in Path of Exile 2. Once we get the chance to test it ourselves via the beta, we will see how well this ranged and agile class stands between the total of 12 classes you can modify to your convenience to create a custom-made build.
