I. General Job Information
   a. Job Traits
   b. Job Abilities
   c. Subjobs
   d. Merit Points
   e. Job Points/Gifts
II. Weapons
III. Equipment
     a. Archery
          i. Phaosphaelia
          ii. Yoichinoyumi
          iii. Hangaku-no-Yumi
     b. Marksmanship
          i. Annihilator




So you want to be a Ranger but you aren't completely sure about the job. Here are some common questions that people ask regarding Ranger:

Wasn't Ranger damaged Nerfed? In 2005, SE made some changes to ranged attacks. First they introduced a system that calculated damage and acuracy based on the players distance to the monster. If you stood close, ranged attacks would have less attack power but more accuracy. If you stood far away from the monster, your ranged attacks would have more attack power but less accuracy. In addition to this, SE changed the damage calculations to match melee attacks and included level correction into the ranged attack damage equation. This basically was an attack penalty based on the level difference between you and the monster. The higher the level was of the monster you were facing the bigger the attack penalty was. Over the years there have been improvements to the job through traits and abilities that have brought Rangers damage dealing capabilitiy on par with or better than other damage dealers.

Isn't Ranger expensive? Ranger is one of three jobs in Final Fantasy XI that uses consumables to perform their job. In the past, Ranger was expensive due to the cost of ammunition and Recycle was only available through the relic hat (which had a low proc rate). The intoduction of Recycle through tier 2 merits helped alieviate some of the cost but not by much. Today, Ranger is much cheaper due to the fact that you can now reach the Recycle cap through merits, traits, and gear and also high level ammunition is readily available through non gil means such as exchanging Sparks through records of emminence or via plasm trade through delve. To give you an example of capped recycle, at a 90% recycle rate, you can shoot 990 times and only use 1 stack (99) of ammunition.

What's the difference between bow and gun? Bows tend to have a lower delay and lower damage output while guns have a higher delay with more damage potential. The Skirmish bow is an exception to this rule though

I keep hearing about something called a sweet spot. What is it? The sweet spot is the optimal distance to fire your weapon from. The trait "Dead Aim" will provide an attack bonus when firing from the sweet spot. Your sweet spot can be determined by the log messages when your ranged attacks land. If you see "Strikes true pummeling Target" then you are in the sweet spot. If you see the message that you hit the target "Squarely" then you are close to the sweet spot. Bows have a further sweet spot than guns.

Ok so I am reading posts and people keep talking about 3/4 recycle. What the heck is that? 3/4 recycle is when you setup your gear so that the total recycle rate is 75% or above. This will result in 3 out of your 4 shots recycling with the reforged relic hat and full recycle merits because each time recycle procs you will gain an extra +5 TP to your hit. So if you normally gain 16 TP from a shot, when recycle procs you will get 21. This is important because players tend to use a 3/4 recycle build in order to provide extra TP and allow them to reach 100% TP sooner over the cousre of 4-5 shots.




Wide Scan (1): Allows NPC's and Monsters to show up on your map. The radius of widescan increases ever 20 levels up to level 60. This trait is useful for hunting NM's or looking for NPC's for specific quests. NPC's will show up as green dots on the map while mobs will show up as red dots.

Alertness (5): Not to much has been figured out about this trait, but the going theory is that it lowers the chance of aggro but there isn't enough data to give a specific percentage.

Accuracy Bonus (10): Increases accuracy of melee and ranged attacks. The amount given will increase to another tier based on level which can be found in the table below:

Level	+Acc
10	+10
30	+22
50	35
70	+48
86	+60
>92	+72

Rapid Shot (15): Occasionally reduces the aiming delay. This is different from snapshot in that the amount of snapshot will always reduce the ranged delay by that percentage whereas rapid shot is a proc based job trait.

Recycle (20): Occasionally allows ranged attacks without using ammo. The hard cap on this trait is 90% meaning that at the cap you can shoot 100 times and have 90 items of ammunition left. The reforged relic hat augments recycle so that when recycle procs, you are given an extra +1 TP for every merit you have into recycle.

Dead Aim: (50)Increases critical hit damage. This trait increases in tiers based on level as seen in the table below:

Level	Crit DMG
50	+10%
60	+20%
70	+30%
80	+35%
90	+40%
99	+45%

True Shot (78): Grants a damage bonus to ranged attacks that are performed from their sweet spot.

Conserve TP (80): Occasionally returns +1-20 TP when using a weaponskill

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Eagle Eye Shot (1): This is Rangers special 1-hour ability. It provides a powerful and accurate ranged attack. Usually useful in situations where you need to perform an attack quickly when the monster you are fighting is at low HP.

Sharpshot (1): This job ability grants +40 Ranged Accuracy for 1 minute. It is useful when paired with Barrage to help the extra hits land

Scavenge(10): This will return a percentage of ammo that you have used within the zone.

Camouflage(20): This job ability will make you invisible however, the duration is very random and isn't as reliable as powders or invisible.

Barrage(30): Fires multiple shots at once. At level 90 it can fire 7 shots, however, barrage will not fire if the next hit misses. You can increase the amount of shots fired through gear.

Shadowbind(40): Binds the target. When used with Hunter's Bracers (and reforged) it increases the bind duration by 45 seconds

Velocity Shot(45): Increases ranged attack speed and ranged attacks (+15% to both) while decreasing melee attack speedn and melee attack power.

Unlimited Shot(51): Allows your next shot to fire without consuming ammunition. This was once used with ex. ammo or expensive ammo. But with the amount of recycle given to ranger it isn't used as much anymore. This job ability shares its timer with double shot

Double Shot(79): Occasionally shoots twice

Bounty Shot(87): Grants a Treasure Hunter debuff to the monster with a base level of 2. Sylvan Gloves increase the TH effect to +3 and Amini Gloves +1 increases the base to 4

Decoy Shot(95): While active, this job ability transfers 80% of your enmity to a party member standing in front of you. If multiple people are standing in front of you, the enmity will be diverted to the player closest to the monster. Before the enmity changes in the April 2015 update, this JA was extremely useful at helping rangers stay under the radar while dealing massive damage. Because this ability has no upper limit to the amount of enmity transfered, rangers can still use this to help "give" hate to a player.

Overkill(96): Second Special Ability for RNG. Gives 50% Snapshot and provides double and triple shot procs.

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Warrior: With the April 2015 Enmity changes, /WAR is the best subjob when there is a dedicated tank. This sub provides access to berserk, aggressor, warcry, and fencer (if using a 1H weapon)

Ninja: Useful for events when there isn't a true dedicated tank. Grants access to Utsusemi which will provde the user with 3 shadows which will absorb melee and ranged attacks along with single target spells.

Samurai: Gives access to meditate, sekkanokki, and hasso (2H). Provides exta store TP through traits to increase TP per hit.

Dancer: Best solo subjob for ranger. Gives access to waltzes and sambas (if you are meleeing)

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The list below is updated as of the April 2015 Update.
I am currently working on Acc Sets so they will be coming soon. I will be dividing the sets based on different critera as seen in the legend below:

HQ - Gear that requires High Tier battle clears including Vagary, Delve, and High Tier Mission Battlefields.

NQ - Gear that only requires Skirmish clears and/or NQ reforged gear.
FS - Fresh Start, gear for those who have just returned to the game or just got to 99. These sets use easily obtained gear through Records of Eminence or Abyssea.




This is the gear to wear before performing a ranged attack. This set will increase snapshot providing you with a lower aiming delay. If you are using gearswap, this is the gear to use in your precast. If you are using macros, macro these items in before you perform /ra.

Precast Snapshot Gear

Snapshot Set

This set is currently the highest pre-shot snapshot gear available. Haveltron Ring is one of the rewards from SoA and is optional since you may have chose another ring as the reward. Taeon in this section is augmented with Max Snapshot of +5. Lutian Cape is Snapshot +3. Gear options are below: ▪ Head: Amini +1 > Taeon / Amini / Sylvan +2 / Sylvan +1 ▪ Body: Amini +1 > Taeon / Sylvan +2 / Sylvan+1 ▪ Hands: Iutl Gloves +1 / Iutl Gloves / Alruna's Gloves +1 / Taeon ▪ Legs: Natriah Trousers > Mirador Trousers +1 > Taeon ▪ Feet: Taeon > Wurrukatte Boots

ItemSet 334401

Capped Ranged Acc	TP	Jishnu's Radiance Capped Acc	WS
Taeon Gear is Augmented with 20 R.Att/R.Acc, Critical Hitrate +3% and Critical Damage +3%. This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle proc with the Arcadian head. Even though the Amini Gloves +1 give +28 Archery skill (R.Att/R.Acc) the crit bonus on the augmented Taeon Hands are better in that slot. Store TP: +39 TP/Hit: 28.3 / 23.3 R.Acc: +244	ItemSet 334694	Taeon Gear is Augmented with 20 R.Att/R.Acc, Critical Hitrate +3% and Critical Damage +3% This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle proc with the Arcadian head. Even though the Amini Gloves +1 give +28 Archery skill (R.Att/R.Acc) the crit bonus on the augmented Taeon Hands are better in that slot. Store TP: +15 TP/Hit: 21.6 (3/3) R.Acc: +246	ItemSet 334834

 

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Capped Ranged Acc	TP	Jishnu's Radiance Capped Acc	WS
Taeon Boots is Augmented with 20 R.Att/R.Acc, Critical Hitrate +3% and Critical Damage +3%. This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle with Arcadian head even though there is overage in tp since only 42 STP is required. Patentia Sash is used during the TP phase so that Rancorous Mantle can be used for JR allowing a 3 hit after weaponskill. Store TP: +50 TP/Hit: 27.9 / 22.9 R.Acc: +278	ItemSet 334360	Taeon Gear is Augmented with 20 R.Att/R.Acc, Critical Hitrate +3% and Critical Damage +3% This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle proc with the Arcadian head. Even though the Augmented Taeon Gloves gives a Crit Bonus, the Amini Gloves Store TP will help with this hit build allowing you to miss one recycle proc on the next TP phase to get you to 100% Store TP: +29 TP/Hit: 22 (3/3) R.Acc: +280	ItemSet 334794

Capped Ranged Acc	TP	Jishnu's Radiance Capped Acc	WS
This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle with Arcadian head even though there is overage in tp since only 43 STP is required. Due to the higher delay over Relic Bow, it is a bit easier to keep the X-Hit build through the Weaponskill. Store TP: +43 TP/Hit: 26.8 / 21.8 R.Acc: +255	ItemSet 334788	Amini Gloves and K'ayres Ring are kept in this WS set to add more Store TP during the weaponskill allowing 100% TP to reached in 3 hits even if one recycle doesn't proc. Store TP: +29 TP/Hit: 22.6 (3/3) R.Acc: +255	ItemSet 334789

Capped Ranged Acc	TP	Last Stand	WS
This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle with Arcadian head even though there is overage in tp since only 40 STP is required. Due to the high delay similar to the Skirmish Bow, it is a bit easier to keep the X-Hit build through the Weaponskill. Store TP: +40 TP/Hit: 28.3 / 23.3 R.Acc: +285	ItemSet 334402	Taeon Boots is Augmented with 20 R.Att/R.Acc, Critical Hitrate +3% and Critical Damage +3% This set uses the standard 3/4 Recycle proc with the Arcadian head. The Amini gloves provides an increase in Store TP over Taeon even though on paper Taeon increases DPS, but Amini will increase WS frequency. Store TP: +22 TP/Hit: 21.5 (2/2) R.Acc: +284	ItemSet 334806