Get a deep dive into the Path of Exile 2 Ranger class in this gameplay walkthrough. The Ranger class is the first of the original Path of Exile classes to be revealed for Path of Exile 2. Path of Exile 2 is an upcoming free-to-play action RPG from Grinding Gear Games, featuring co-op for up to six players. Set years after the original Path of Exile, you will return to the dark world of Wraeclast and seek to end the corruption that is spreading.
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00:00 When we started to work on the Ranger we knew we had to make a class with high agility.
00:13 The dream of fast bow gameplay is legless, so that's what we wanted to deliver.
00:18 The starting point is moving while shooting a bow.
00:21 Any kind of basic arrow skill can be fired while moving, with a movement penalty.
00:26 This immediately gives you a lot more freedom on the battlefield.
00:29 Here I'm starting each battle with a poison burst arrow to poison groups of enemies, then
00:34 using lightning arrow to arc lightning around larger packs.
00:37 For even more mobility, we also have a variety of skills that involve vaulting around the
00:41 battlefield too.
00:43 This is Frost Escape.
00:45 Using it jumps backwards and shoots a freezing arrow at the ground.
00:49 Really useful if monsters close on you and you need to get away.
00:52 Once you've landed, if monsters were frozen, it'd be nice to have somewhere to take advantage
00:56 of that extra time.
00:57 This is where Snipe comes in.
01:00 Snipe is a skill shot that you need to charge up and release at exactly the right time.
01:05 If you land the right timing, Snipe is guaranteed to produce a critical strike, and does a small
01:09 AoE as well, so it's a great finisher.
01:14 You can also move while shooting arrow rain skills too.
01:17 This skill is Lightning Rod.
01:19 It shoots an arrow into the air that sticks into the ground and does a small AoE.
01:23 Once the rods are in the ground though, they attract any arcs of lightning that are nearby,
01:27 causing them to explode again.
01:30 This means you can stack up a bunch of lightning rods in the ground, and bounce lightning between
01:33 them, doing way more damage.
01:37 Now this takes care of packs pretty well, but for bigger enemies I'd like to have something
01:40 that's going to enhance my damage output too.
01:43 This skill is Stormcaller Arrow.
01:46 Using it sticks an arrow into an enemy.
01:48 After a short period of time, a lightning bolt comes from the sky and strikes them.
01:52 This has a high chance to shock them, and shocked enemies take 30% more damage from
01:56 all sources.
01:58 If something big walks along, it's a good idea to throw one of these at them first to
02:01 enhance your damage, before following up with the other combo.
02:06 Now if I really want to enhance this combo, there are a couple of things I could do using
02:09 our support gem system.
02:11 Skills in Path of Exile are granted by items called skill gems.
02:14 Each skill gem has coloured sockets in it, and these sockets are for other items called
02:18 support gems.
02:20 Support gems modify your skills, and it's where a huge amount of the customisation of
02:24 your character comes from.
02:26 Next I'm going to take this multiple projectiles support gem.
02:29 I could add it to my lightning arrow, and it would fire multiple arrows.
02:32 This would increase the number of targets I can hit, but that isn't the effect that
02:35 I'm after.
02:36 If I add it to my lightning rod skill instead, then when I fire it I get a nice group of
02:40 rods.
02:41 This means that I don't have to spend as much time setting up before I can use it with my
02:44 lightning arrow combo.
02:51 I might also add faster projectiles to make the lightning rods land faster too.
02:56 Now next up I'm going to grab this chain support gem.
02:59 Chaining causes many effects to repeat on new targets when you hit them.
03:03 If I add it to my lightning arrow, it will cause the arcs that come out of lightning
03:06 arrow to strike even more targets, rippling along my line of lightning rods for huge amounts
03:10 of damage.
03:21 Now I think we can use support gems to improve stormcaller arrow as well.
03:25 Let's start simple, I'm going to chuck less duration on here.
03:28 This will cause the lightning from the sky to strike a bit faster.
03:32 Next up we have a support called shock proliferation.
03:35 This support makes it so that any enemies shocked by the skill will also have the shock
03:39 jumped on nearby enemies, meaning they'll take the extra damage as well.
03:45 It's just a chance to proc, so it's not going to proc on every single pack, but when it
03:49 does a pack will go down ultra quick.
03:55 Another useful empowering skill is barrage.
03:58 Barrage is one of the rare cooldown skills in PoE 2.
04:01 It enhances whatever your next attack is to fire three times.
04:04 With what we have here, I think it might be a good idea to use it with lightning arrow.
04:08 It'll generate three times as many lightning explosions.
04:13 You could also use it at just the right moment with snipe, or any number of other skills
04:17 depending on what effect you need more of right now.
04:19 It's very versatile and can be used in a range of situations.
04:26 Now even as mobile as the ranger is, it's still very useful to slow monsters down, and
04:30 a ranger certainly has quite a few tools to do this.
04:33 If you're prepared to get up close and personal, we have a skill called electrocuting rod.
04:38 Just jump over the enemy and shoot it into them.
04:41 Once the rod's in place, any lightning damage they take will build up a special electrocute
04:44 gauge.
04:45 Once the gauge is full, the monster is totally suppressed, allowing you to kill them easily.
04:52 Now sometimes when you use electrocuting rod, the enemy dies before you get a chance to
04:55 electrocute them.
04:56 I think there's another support gem I could add to my lightning arrow to fix this problem.
05:01 Neural overload will make it easier to electrocute enemies.
05:04 If the skill it's attached to puts them over 50% of their electrocute bar, it will trigger
05:08 instantly.
05:29 Now this skill works really well for suppressing a single large enemy, but I'd like to improve
05:33 my crowd control ability for groups as well.
05:37 I'm going to add a support gem called frozen nexus to my frost escape.
05:41 This makes an area of chilled ground around frozen enemies.
05:44 I'll also add deep freeze to it as well, which will make the freezes last a bit longer.
05:51 Now when I use my frost escape on that front enemy, others nearby are slowed down.
05:56 It would also be good if I had a way to slow enemies down when they're farther away from
05:59 me as well, so this would be a great time to start getting into the ranger's poison
06:03 and plant-based skill set.
06:05 To start with, let's have a look at vine arrow.
06:08 This skill fires an arrow into the air that creates a small plant where it lands.
06:12 The plant sends out tendrils to nearby enemies, slowing them down and poisoning them.
06:17 But it does have another function too.
06:19 If the plant gets further poisoned, it transfers that poison to the monsters it's attached
06:23 to.
06:24 Normally you would only be able to get one stack of poison on a monster at a time, but
06:27 you can put as much poison as you want on this plant.
06:31 You could just use the plant to slow monsters down and not worry about the poison part,
06:35 but if you want to go all in on poison, this is the way to do it.
06:39 Now if you do want to focus on poisons more, another useful skill is poison bloom arrow.
06:44 This skill creates these plant pustules on the ground.
06:47 If you wait a little while, they'll explode.
06:51 Just like any other plant skill, these plants respond well to poison.
06:55 Shoot the poison burst arrow at enemies nearby and watch your plants grow more and more powerful.
07:00 Poisoning the pustules causes them to do much more damage and makes them explode much faster
07:03 as well.
07:06 I can also add the pierce support to poison burst arrow.
07:10 Doing this will mean I get multiple poison bursts as it goes through each monster.
07:29 We also have another skill to make a nice environment for your plants to grow - gas
07:33 cloud arrow.
07:34 This skill shoots the ground and creates a cloud of gas that continuously poisons things
07:38 inside it.
07:41 Throw your plants down, then put a gas cloud on top.
07:44 The constant poisoning will make them grow.
08:00 Another poison related skill we have on the ranger is called plague bearer.
08:03 This is a reservation skill, meaning it uses spirit.
08:07 When I enable it, I get this counter that counts up whenever I apply poison to a monster.
08:14 You can see the counter on the skill increasing as each new monster is poisoned.
08:20 Now I'm going to fight these monsters and make sure to poison them as much as I can
08:23 to build up the counter.
08:35 It does take quite a while to get the counter up to 100%, but it's worth it.
08:40 Whenever I choose, I can unleash the poison and a big explosion around my character, dealing
08:44 a large amount of damage.
08:51 Now next up we have a classic - rain of arrows.
08:55 It's simple - shoot a bunch of arrows in the sky and they rain down for a short time.
09:00 It's decent AOE and damage at long range.
09:06 Now this skill doesn't last too long, but we can change that.
09:10 It's time to introduce frenzy charges.
09:13 Frenzy charges are used for a variety of skills on the ranger, but with rain of arrows they
09:17 can be used to extend the duration.
09:20 How do we get some though?
09:22 Here we have a skill called sniper's mark.
09:24 Put it on an enemy and it will grant you a frenzy charge when you crit them.
09:28 Now remember that snipe skill from earlier?
09:30 That skill guarantees a critical hit.
09:32 So first we sniper's marked an enemy, then we sniped them, and after that the next rain
09:36 of arrows will last a really, really long time.
09:41 We still have some weaknesses though.
09:43 While rain of arrows hits enemies with a ton of arrows, each one doesn't do much damage
09:47 individually.
09:48 It would be nice if we had a way to break the armor on enemies so that rain of arrows
09:52 dealt more damage.
09:53 Thankfully we have this corrode armor support gem, and we can put it on our gas cloud arrow.
09:58 Corrode armor causes poison to erode the armor on targets until it's all gone.
10:02 This will significantly increase the damage that rain of arrows does against armored targets.
10:07 Oh yeah, and one more thing about gas clouds.
10:10 They can be detonated with explosions.
10:12 I have an explosive arrow here, let's check it out.
10:24 Now because monsters in gas clouds are likely to have their armor broken, I think there's
10:27 another useful combo we can do.
10:30 This is an exploit weakness support.
10:33 This support provides extra bonus damage to targets that have their armor broken.
10:37 Perfect for what we have going on here.
10:47 So those are just some of the skills we have on the Ranger class in Path of Exile 2.
10:52 Now that we've seen all these skills, let's see how well they do against a much tougher
10:56 enemy.
10:57 Time to fight the boss of the temples, Thanos.
11:04 "What is that?"
11:11 "Chaotic power!"
11:17 "Exalted are the ones!"
11:28 "Stand still!"
11:38 "Behold!
11:43 True power!"
11:50 "Exalted are the ones!"
12:10 "Deadly edge!"
12:30 "Divine blessing!"
12:48 "True power!"
13:08 "I have found your next burial!"
13:28 And that's the Ranger.
13:29 But oh yeah, there was one more thing.
13:32 The mount.
13:33 Check this out.
13:36 Yes, you can ride a rower.
13:37 While riding the rower you can shoot arrows with no movement penalty.
13:41 It's pretty overpowered.
13:42 You can also use your vaulting skills to jump right off the rower's back.
13:45 Once the rower doesn't have a rider it starts attacking monsters, so he's nice to have around,
13:48 even if you're not riding him.
13:51 That said, if you are riding, don't get hit.
13:53 If you take a heavy stun while on a rower, you'll fall off and it takes a while to get
13:56 up, so be careful.
14:00 So that's what we wanted to show you today.
14:02 Now there is just one more rather unfortunate bit of news.
14:05 Path of Exile 2's beta is going to be delayed.
14:08 We previously said that we would get the beta out on June 7th, and while I think we would
14:12 be able to get the game's content ready in time, we underestimated how long it would
14:16 take to get gameplay polished to a standard that we're happy with.
14:19 We're still going to be doing alpha testing in June, but we're going to be delaying the
14:22 beta until later in the year.
14:24 I don't have an exact date for you today, but it should be towards the end of the year.
14:28 In the meantime, you can still play Path of Exile 1 of course.