Another Potential Job: the Ranger

[AriaValkyrie]

Hello again!
I had a lot of fun making my last potential job being my Hybrid Melee/Caster Green Mage, so I wanted to try making some more!

I decided on the Ranger for a couple reasons, namely that there's only one job's gear that isn't shared by another, being scouting gear, which works quite well thematically for Rangers. Typically, of course, the ranger's weapon of choice is the bow, which is taken by a certain other job.

Several games, however, have Rangers able to equip knives: Typically used for throwing, but could certainly be used for some deadly close quarters combat.

Additionally, I do like the way Rangers work in other games, like tabletop rpgs, where rangers additionally have access to magic, typically druid spells, of which the closest comparison in FF is Geomancy.


Design-wise, I created the Ranger as another hybrid Melee/Ranged, skewed heavily towards melee.
Their melee aspect is a single dagger/short sword. While there are two sword-wielding jobs, it is the most fitting for Ranger's melee weapon.
Their ranged aspect is a hand-crossbow. Lightweight and capable of being wielded in the off-hand.



Let's get into the skills

One of the biggest aspects of Ranger is Camouflage



Camouflage is similar to Ninja's Hide, but more integral to combat, possibly also to a lower degree of effectiveness. One major aspect of Ranger is planning out weaponskills to enter Concealment. Several weaponskills grant Concealment, but the Ranger may also use Camouflage during downtime.



The Melee skills



The Ranger has two four-part combos.
The higher damage one grants Concealment at the end of the combo, while the other grants a haste effect in the form of Tailwind(possibly on their job UI), and buffs a ranged attack.



The Ranged Skills



Ranger's Crossbow skills typically include a cast time, but have much higher potency than their melee skills. Called Shot is their spammable skill for times they're away from a boss for some reason, Vital Shot/Last Breath also could be used in those windows, if necessary.
Armor Pierce is their 120s cooldown, a pretty big hit and a 5% damage up.

[AriaValkyrie]

Several of these skills mention Focus, which would be one of the two major things on the Ranger's Job UI



Concentrate historically raised hit rate but works well as a damage boost. Was debating between that or Aim to boost ranged skills but eventually decided on a general buff.
Critical Shot and Poacher's Bane are the biggest skills to time out, as you want to ensure you're using them under Concealment to get an extra boost for the Focus spent.



For AoE skills not included above, the main three-hit combo



Only two-hit until ~lv 74, but basic and simple circle AoEs, though Exploding Bolt, Sonic Shot (based on Sonic Boom from hunter in Tactics A2) and Poacher's Bane all contribute to a bit of diversity in that regard.



For general utility, we also have three abilities



Salve is just a self-heal ability
Dig In is a 60s CD that both lowers damage taken and raises the potency of the Ranger's attacks, so long as the ranger stays still.
Terrain Stride, however, has to do with the last set of Ranger's abilities, inspired by both Geomancer and Elementalist.

[AriaValkyrie]

The Ranger's Terrain abilities are both DoT abilities like Ninja's Doton, but also enhancing effects like Black Mage's Leylines; So long as the Ranger themselves are within the Terrain, they get the benefits. These are one of the core mechanics of the Ranger, and requires foresight and knowledge of the fight to know when and where to properly use these abilities, and when to get their bonuses.

While one could just pick a favorite ability to use, they do also have a secondary effect, granting the Land's Favor, another important aspect of the Job's UI, and contributing to a powerful burst abilities:



Land's Wrath consumes the Land's Favor for a strong, rapid burst window.
Land's Fury is the capstone ability at level 100 (for now) and is a finisher executed after a full set of Land's Wrath, being a huge four-part attack.



The general goal for Ranger's firepower is to make it fast, but not hectic, as almost all of Ranger's attacks are on the GCD. The goal is to place them possibly on-par with ninja, or thereabouts, but with a great deal of optimization for when to plant your Terrain, and knowing how best to time your big hits to land them under Concealment

Potency-wise, all the abilities are mostly to show the general feel and flavor of this version of Ranger.

Lore-wise, I imagine this version of Ranger would be close to the archetypical Ranger in fantasy settings, off on their own and taking care of things in nature and removing threats to the environment. Possibly travelers who picked up a bit of Geomancy at some point.

That's basically all I've got for how this Ranger works! It is a lot of fun to make job concepts so hopefully you found this interesting! Let me know if you have input, too, I'd love to adjust this to be even cleaner of a concept like my Green Mage!

[Tulzscha]

First off I really like the mix of ideas. It's a little weird calling it a Ranger though when it's primarily melee.

The Concealment mechanic looks fun but is that too similar to Ninja?

The persistent ground effects seem to be a core aspect of this job and with a 70% uptime (if I'm reading that right) I feel like it would be an endless source of frustration for the player with how much enemies move around. It could also mess with positionals.

I can't really tell how the Land's Wrath abilities are supposed to work, do you just hit each one in succession then follow up with Land's Fury? Or are they all in one button that changes based on Terrain? And they're all the same except one?

All the Terrain-related abilities seem a little too similar (for my liking anyway). Might be for the best to keep things simple but imo abilities like Stormcaller and Cold Snap are more fun than Overgrowth and Magmatic Blade. It looks like you want to use them all anyway so that might not matter - unless Land's Fury had a different effect based on the Terrains used (based on whichever was used most with a 5th option if they're equal).

Also what's the deal with Vital Shot / Last Breath and Exploding Bolt sharing recast timers? They have very different recast times.

[AmpelioB]

I like the idea (i didnt read everything yet) but I feel ranger should be more of a ranged job, don't get me wrong I like the clash the idea but I would limit it to 1-3 skill combo and two oGCDs for melee and the rest of skills be ranged with a lot cast time like 1.0~1.5 since crossbows need recharge to shot. also not gonna lie i prefer more the crossbow action for it.

edit 1: also want to note the lack of guaranteed direct hits on skills, i, personally would mix it up a bit the guaranteed crits with them OR alternatively make melee skills dhit and ranged crit it would be a cool mixup of both and would help creating a bit of job identity

[Enkidoh]

Ranger is pretty much just ARC already I'm afraid (there have been dialogue references in Gridania in the past about ARCs of the God's Quiver "going out into the forest on 'rangings'"), and with Yoshi's recent comments about new Jobs in the game will be entirelly original and unique ideas from now on and not reusing existing Job names and ideas from past FF games, RNG's appearence is even more unlikely (same with GEO for that matter, which likewise technically already exist in the lore anyway as just a Far Eastern hybrid of AST and CNJ, as shown in the Swallow's Compass).

Using two outright different weapon types on the same class is incdentally something that simply isn't possible with the Armoury System as it stands (the whole point of the Armoury System is your weapon is your class, a different weapon means a literal different class, so there is no mixing between the two, making your idea not possible sadly.

But hey, I would love to be proven wrong though!

[AmpelioB]

Ranger is pretty much just ARC already I'm afraid (there have been dialogue references in Gridania in the past about ARCs of the God's Quiver "going out into the forest on 'rangings'"), and with Yoshi's recent comments about new Jobs in the game will be entirelly original and unique ideas from now on and not reusing existing Job names and ideas from past FF games, RNG's appearence is even more unlikely (same with GEO for that matter, which likewise technically already exist in the lore anyway as just a Far Eastern hybrid of AST and CNJ, as shown in the Swallow's Compass).

Using two outright different weapon types on the same class is incdentally something that simply isn't possible with the Armoury System as it stands (the whole point of the Armoury System is your weapon is your class, a different weapon means a literal different class, so there is no mixing between the two, making your idea not possible sadly.

But hey, I would love to be proven wrong though!

the comparition to mch is kinda eh to me because mch just use just a bunch of weapons anyway, are we out of options for fire damage now it has flamethrower? eh. (and personality the autocrossbow is just ugly so idc) but i don't like being pessimist about jobs because its not like we arent gonna have gun based jobs like GNB just because we have MCH. i like to think they would just make it nitty

[Tulzscha]

Ranger is pretty much just ARC already I'm afraid (there have been dialogue references in Gridania in the past about ARCs of the God's Quiver "going out into the forest on 'rangings'"), and with Yoshi's recent comments about new Jobs in the game will be entirelly original and unique ideas from now on and not reusing existing Job names and ideas from past FF games, RNG's appearence is even more unlikely (same with GEO for that matter, which likewise technically already exist in the lore anyway as just a Far Eastern hybrid of AST and CNJ, as shown in the Swallow's Compass).

Using two outright different weapon types on the same class is incdentally something that simply isn't possible with the Armoury System as it stands (the whole point of the Armoury System is your weapon is your class, a different weapon means a literal different class, so there is no mixing between the two, making your idea not possible sadly.

But hey, I would love to be proven wrong though!

This job has almost nothing in common with ARC from what I can tell, and I highly doubt they'll never make another job from a previous FF game ever again. At the end of the day they can do whatever they want no matter what some guy said one time years ago.

I would suggest a name change to prevent confusion though (maybe something like 'Survivalist' but a less ugly word). People see 'Ranger' and immediately think of ARC and ranged attacks.

This job uses knives, the crossbow is only used for a few abilities similar to MCH so I don't see that being a problem. But multiple weapons can also work if they have some kind of synergy (see RDM).

[Derio]

This would be perfect if they still allowed jobs to split like Arcanist. However they would most likely go with it being a advanced job that also is placed in the Archer's guild and would use a longbow instead of a standard bow that BRD uses. Could be the 4th ranged physical and fit that spot right under MCH.

[AriaValkyrie]

I can't really tell how the Land's Wrath abilities are supposed to work, do you just hit each one in succession then follow up with Land's Fury? Or are they all in one button that changes based on Terrain? And they're all the same except one?

The goal would be to make executing a Terrain ability grants the Favor from that land, which would be shown on the job's UI, consumed when you use Land's Wrath > Fury, supposed to be a rapid burst window.

Also would be nice to give them all different effects and bonuses but i also don't want to lock it to a particular priority so it can have a different rotation of lands whenever they want a particular effect.

The persistent ground effects

Yeah it'd have a decent uptime for the Terrain effects, certainly possible to boost their effects and lower their duration, I'm also sure that there's calculations on how much a % boost to crit/DH vs potency would be and make them closer to being even, but I *did* want them all to feel different and varied.

Honestly could make them just be a self-boost instead of a persistent AoE, but I was honestly inspired by making an ability like Leylines function different, at least for this initial concept.

Vital Shot / Last Breath and Exploding Bolt sharing recast timers

I could have sworn I changed Exploding Bolt's recast timer but apparently not. It is supposed to have the same cooldown as Vital Shot.

also want to note the lack of guaranteed direct hits on skills, i, personally would mix it up a bit the guaranteed crits with them OR alternatively make melee skills dhit and ranged crit it would be a cool mixup of both and would help creating a bit of job identity

That one could be cool to mess with, would certainly help dictate which Terrain to activate, especially with the change to how guaranteed crit/DH works now.

It's a little weird calling it a Ranger though when it's primarily melee.

This was mostly the working name when I started messing around with it as a concept, honestly if something were to be implemented like this, the name could be changed. I chose Ranger since it fits thematic Scouting gear, and they can wield knifes (at least as throwing weapons) in other games, and I wanted to make them distinct enough from Archer/Bard to be interesting.