How Necessary are Ranged

[LtKillroy]

About how many ranged mercenaries do most people use, and what kinds. Currently my only ranged (5 person party) is a shaman, and when it first dawned on me that is bad for flying enemies, I was kinda like crap. But I'm not sure what a good number is. For right now I was thinking just one archer or something, but long run I don't now. I've seen a few people's formations, but they all are fairly different, so what is the average?

[Arietta]

melee heavy formations are the flavor of the month atm... sure air is annoying but its not like its impossible. You just have to rest after battle after all the skill spam :)

[jesada89237]

Ranged mercenaries aren't exactly necessary, and if you're running a mostly melee build, you would probably only have a prophet, monk, and oracle - maybe a cannoneer.

[cfk]

A range does allow you to hit scrolls in pvp and get one of the weakened mobs who move back in pve.

[chocomog]

a lot of people use very melee heavy (5-6 melee) and prophet to boost the melee and grab the bonus scrolls.

[LtKillroy]

Alright thanks, I was a little worried that I was doing it really bad, but I didn't want to change my lineup without more information.

[kaiser99]

Yea, i am also using a heavy melee build with 5 melees 1 arti, and 3 mage at the mostlast row ( witch monk shaman) and 2 swordie and a sword main. Doing well at the quest i am on now, gonna get prophet and oracle asap lol. Gonna try out let exo in the tanking position behind my witch, and see how it goes.

[Kaiten]

Yeah, like someone said, ranged are for canceling scrolls. It's more important at later ages of the game when people can actually afford to craft scrolls and start spamming them. This is only pvp wise.

I tend to classify magic separate from ranged. For flying monsters, at least they let you use magic on them for a real slow kill.

[LostCause]

Range so far is not totally necessary as like what some have said Melee is the flavor of the month. Until range get buffed or melee get nerf, there is no real reason to get range beside for scroll canceling and to atk air.

[Ferishi]

Ranged isn't even really good for attacking air in PvP. The archer nerf makes it pretty darn hard to take down a witch. Heck, it makes it hard for an archer to take down a beat-up frontliner that retreats to the back row, even.

In PvM, it's nice to be able to tag cowardly monsters, bonus monsters, and flying monsters. There's no PvM archer nerf like there is for PvP so they can actually kill what they're aiming at for once.

[Balathorn]

Yes long range mercs are so unnecessary that we see "zomg nerf pvp scrollz" whines every day >.>.

Also, Ferishi, staves get reduces damage from long range mercs :).

[Ferishi]

Yes, and that's why archer mercs are so horrible for PvP now for attacking air (considering that the only air merc in a game is a staff user).

Archers suffer in general from that arrow-to-staff nerf. The whole POINT of being a long range archer that can select any target in the enemy formation is that you can use your RANGE to hit the soft spongy characters in the back (typically staff users), and that point is rendered kind of moot when long ranged attacks are nerfed against the very same type of characters that a archers exist to shoot in the first place. Why on earth would I care that I can choose to shoot your soft spongy monk instead of your big durable armoured swordsman if my arrows don't do any damage to your soft spongy monk anyways?

Hence most archers (IE, the obligatory prophet everyone has to boost their melee-ers) are just used to shoot down scrolls, particularly when comboed with a cannon user or a gunner (typically there primarily to stun other characters, but being able to shoot down scrolls is a nice additional use. The nerf doesn't affect them as much because they're there first for the stunning, with the damage being a secondary bonus. So it's just archers that really get screwed. Not that the prophet minds because she's there to boost your melee-ers, primarily)

......................which I guess takes us back to the original topic. Wel, all the top Korean teams had a prophet and at least one cannon user, so I guess that does tell you that a little ranged is indeed necessary for PvP. As for PvM, they're nice for several other reasons but I guess not NECESSARY, per say... but the same can be said for almost any merc in PvM. PvM isn't as strict as PvP, although it does get harder at higher levels with stronger monsters...

[Indian]

having ranged mercs opens more options for you.

[methane]

Well range merc consist of archers,prophet,gunner and etc..... They really are necessary in my sense. The only range merc i think is not so useful is archers. If you are clearing scrolls then gunner can do the job just fine same for cannons. So now it boils down to gunners and cannons and prophet. Prohet as you know exist for her buff skills so you wouldnt really care about her attacks with a bow. Cannons and gunners exist to stun. Which cannon excel in. For gunner she can stun and also damage. Her wildshow is comparable to swordsman flame sword and hits 3targets in a row. Therefore i think ranged merc is needed.

[Ironhart]

Ranged mercs are worthless for anything besides their special abilities in the current metagame thanks to the availability of scrolls. Stunning is the primary use for ranged mercs in case anyone hasnt noticed since a) they do crap damage compared to melee (MUCH lower weapon attack, no bonus damage to melee, reduced damage to staffs) while STILL having lower survivability (LOL!) and b) melees get even better thanks to prophets, who, by the way, are also shooting your ranged for lots of damage.

Sure, you *could* (if you get lucky) cancel the opposing awakening scroll by wasting 2-3 actions, but you still lose because that disrupts your combo counters. Yes, cannons are used by top players, but their purpose is to cancel scrolls and use aoe rather than attempt to stun (mainly a distraction to force the opponent to scroll or awaken) or do any actual damage with their regular attack. In fact, these builds can pvp without a weapon on them and itd make very little difference.

Mass melee ftw. Ranged builds are complete and utter jokes.

@ guy above me: Archers are better for clearing scrolls because they have better ap, tend to get multiple attacks more compared to gunner (cannons are irrelevant since almost everyone scrolls with a witch) and are also more accurate.

[Jimsta]

Ranged mercs are worthless for anything besides their special abilities in the current metagame thanks to the availability of scrolls. Stunning is the primary use for ranged mercs in case anyone hasnt noticed since a) they do crap damage compared to melee (MUCH lower weapon attack, no bonus damage to melee, reduced damage to staffs) while STILL having lower survivability (LOL!) and b) melees get even better thanks to prophets, who, by the way, are also shooting your ranged for lots of damage.

Sure, you *could* (if you get lucky) cancel the opposing awakening scroll by wasting 2-3 actions, but you still lose because that disrupts your combo counters. Yes, cannons are used by top players, but their purpose is to cancel scrolls and use aoe rather than attempt to stun or do any actual damage with their regular attack. In fact, these builds can pvp without a weapon on them and itd make very little difference.

Mass melee ftw. Ranged builds are complete and utter jokes.

@ guy above me: Archers are better for clearing scrolls because they have better ap, tend to get multiple attacks more compared to gunner (cannons are irrelevant since almost everyone scrolls with a witch) and are also more accurate.

Yea, that's pretty much true...

Even though I run 3 range mercs in my formation (inventor,cannoneer, and proph)

Just waiting till they nerf meele mercs more, and make range uber stronger vs meele or magic.

[Plum]

jep ironhart is right about ranged being meh...and the awsomely useless princess just heightens it.


about cannon stun umm its like this.most builds have a :can::pro::exo:


...so if your cannon hits the back row the enemy :mnk: HAS to awaken himself or else it will be a seal+prophet hit next turn and a stun on the next turn.

this would be the basic combo HOWEVER scrolls(lol awakening and lol puri) can dash all hopes of a stun.also your :spm: could ap drain the :exo: to stop a seal.

[Ironhart]

Yea, which is why I said the one attack from either cannon each turn is simply a distraction to force the enemy to awaken and does not do any real damage. Their real purpose comes in later in the form of aoes.

Of course, the opponent can simply toss a puri scroll up with their witch to remove seal/freeze/silence/deep/smoke, leaving their monks free to awaken on combo 2, once again proving the worthlessness of ranged. As it stands, everything from scrolls to equipment to mercs (prophet vs princess) is just showing what a hard on the devs have for melee.

Diversity? What diversity? Clone builds ftw.

[Spydermage]

well my line up has 1 gunner, 1 archer, 3 mages and 4 melees. so effectively 5 ranges. my melee mostly for protecting the line, my ranges are the one doing most of the killings especially archer and mages. somehow my archer always ended up the one to finish the job.

i guess gunner and archer are good for penetrating deep into enemy lines.

[MrSharp]

What's all this using ranged to cancel scrolls argument ppl are using?

Do scrolls get cancelled if the merc about to use the scroll is attacked?

[SparkGun]

What's all this using ranged to cancel scrolls argument ppl are using?

Do scrolls get cancelled if the merc about to use the scroll is attacked?

Yes, three hits from your enemy and your scroll is gone, not including magic

[MrSharp]

Neat, never knew that.
Learning so much from these forums.

Does this include multiple attacks from a single merc?
Or does it have to be attacks from 3 seperate mercs?

[Samwise93]

Yeah they need to make range more worth it. Until then melee will be abused even more.

[SparkGun]

Neat, never knew that.
Learning so much from these forums.

Does this include multiple attacks from a single merc?
Or does it have to be attacks from 3 seperate mercs?

Multiple attacks count, for example if a gunner attacked twice, it would get rid of 2 of the little balls

[MrSharp]

Multiple attacks count, for example if a gunner attacked twice, it would get rid of 2 of the little balls

Thanks SparkGun.
If there were a way to give thanks/rep in this forum, I would ;)

[AtsushiHayami]

Range isn't that bad currently i got 2 range merc on my build Gunner and Prophet(was gonna say Archer) well prophet is a buffer so we won't count it about the gunner rather useful hits 3 targets in a line and Wild Shooting works prity good too