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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Ranger vs Mage - Single target damage math
Snekkers
Member, Alpha Two
I see many people saying ranger has good single target damage, and mage is the squishiest class in the game. I am a ranger main, but I want to find out the truth.
First, about mage being squishy. Yes, mage has a bit less HP, but the difference is small. Mage also has a shield that gives 500% power as shield. With 400 magic power, that's 2000 extra health.
Now, let's talk about single target damage. Let's assume both ranger and mage have 400 power. Let's give mage 4000 health and ranger 4400 health. The difference is actually smaller, but making it bigger here will make the math clear.
First, let's look at the ranger. Let's assume ranger starts casting Snipe, it takes about 3 seconds (sometimes more, but let's make it 3 seconds here).
Important to remember that -15% physical mitigation is not flat 15%, so it doesn't just increase damage by 15%.
Snipe deals 1600 damage. If we crit and use Hunt of the Tiger, it's 2880 damage. It's important to remember that using Hunt and Mark of the Tiger looks better in this example because we don't take resistance into account, so in practice these two will be less effective. Using Hunt of the Raven and Mark of the Bear might bring better results.
Now let's move to mage.
Let's start with Fireball.
Important to notice that damage on this screenshot is wrong. Actual number is 250% + 100%. With upgrade augment, it's 250% + 200%. Also good to notice that it costs less mana and has lower cooldown than Snipe. Cast time of Fireball is 2 seconds, and overall damage is 1000 + 800, or 1700 + 800 when crit (assuming DoT damage doesn't crit, because currently crit works weird in Ashes and when you crit with Fireball the burning effect will be perma critting, but I'm not quite sure, so I will act like DoTs can't crit).
Ranger will end his Snipe in 1 second, mage can use Combust now, which is instant cast.
That's additional 500 damage and it also consumes all the burning and increases it by 30%. So during 4 seconds from now ranger will receive 1040 burning damage. From just raw damage, ranger is left with 2900 health. And he didn't finish his Snipe cast yet.
At this point, mage can close distance and use Prismatic Beam to remove ranger like on videos below, but let's assume it's not the case. He stays at range of 30m and decides to cast Frostbolt.
Frostbolt takes 1.1 seconds to cast, so when we are done with Frostbolt cast, ranger's Snipe finishes. Let's assume it crit and also add 15% due to Shaken effect (like I said, it's never 15% more damage, but let's be generous), 3312 damage. Knowing that mage had his shield active, he only lost 880 health. Meanwhile, Frostbolt struck ranger by another 1000. Now question is, what will ranger do? It's hard to predict damage from Barrage, so I will guess later. Now let's assume ranger uses Lightning Reload and charges another Snipe to use his Mark of the Tiger to the fullest. Meanwhile, mage starts basic attacking to stack Frozen effect or casts Cone of Cold to apply Frozen (not sure if Frozen breaks Snipe, let's assume it doesn't).
Cone of Cold is instant cast and deals additional 500 damage. At the end, we cast 2 seconds long Lightning Strike, which should apply Shatter effect.
Together Lightning Strike and Shatter deal another 2400 damage. Ranger will finish his second Snipe in 1 second, so let's just assume in this time mage put Magma Field under him or something. Doesn't really matter.
The moment ranger finishes his second Snipe, the ticking of Conflagrate is also done. In total, ranger dealt 6192 damage, very nice, not enough to kill mage that used his shield. In total, mage dealt 6440, killing ranger far before he is done with his second Snipe.
Let's see if we can use better those 3 seconds instead of casting another Snipe. It will be very much a guess, not something reliable. Let's assume ranger took 20% more attack speed after Snipe. Then most logical thing is to instantly pop Barrage. From experience, it deals about 250-300% damage, so let's say 1200 damage. Then we can cast Vine Field for another 500 damage and Hemorraging.
Hemorraging damage is about 800 more damage. Now I think we have time for Headshot, but let's do double Headshot, give ranger some more time. I will elaborate how we can extend time with mage too. Double Headshot is 2800 damage, when we assume both crit, we get 5040. Looks insane. Now let's sum it up. 7540 from this burst, let's increase it by 15% from Shaken to get 8671, so in total ranger dealt 11,551. Huge!
But let's see how mage can use this additional time. First thing mage can do is start with Lightning spell dealing 700 damage, this will allow Fuze to activate.
When Fuze is active, we do normal combo, now our Conflagrate effect will deal 1560 damage instead. Other thing mage will get is Thermal Equilibrium, which will reset duration of our DoT when we freeze ranger.
That will be basically another 1000+ damage. Let's add that to summary, now mage total damage is 9700. As you can see, it's still lower than ranger. But it's important to keep in mind that all math was done in favor of ranger. We assumed every ranger attack was a crit and none of mage's attacks were crits. We also assumed Shaken increases damage by 15%, which would never happen. If we just remove this bonus from Shaken, we will end up with damage very similar to mage. And ranger is pure single target. What mage did here, he can do to some extent to the entire enemy party. Remember that I skipped the use of Prismatic Beam at all. Just for fun, let's sum ranger damage with only every second attack being a crit. 2880 from first Snipe, which makes sense, Snipe has very high crit chance. Then Barrage, we leave as it is, 1200 damage. Vine Field 500 damage, no crit this time. First Headshot 2520 due to crit, second one 1400, no crit. In total, ranger would deal 8500. 9775 if we assume Shaken increases damage by 15%. I most likely skipped some aspects because it's very complicated topic, but I tried to provide arguments and calculate possibilities for both sides.
First, about mage being squishy. Yes, mage has a bit less HP, but the difference is small. Mage also has a shield that gives 500% power as shield. With 400 magic power, that's 2000 extra health.
Now, let's talk about single target damage. Let's assume both ranger and mage have 400 power. Let's give mage 4000 health and ranger 4400 health. The difference is actually smaller, but making it bigger here will make the math clear.
First, let's look at the ranger. Let's assume ranger starts casting Snipe, it takes about 3 seconds (sometimes more, but let's make it 3 seconds here).
Important to remember that -15% physical mitigation is not flat 15%, so it doesn't just increase damage by 15%.
Snipe deals 1600 damage. If we crit and use Hunt of the Tiger, it's 2880 damage. It's important to remember that using Hunt and Mark of the Tiger looks better in this example because we don't take resistance into account, so in practice these two will be less effective. Using Hunt of the Raven and Mark of the Bear might bring better results.
Now let's move to mage.
Let's start with Fireball.
Important to notice that damage on this screenshot is wrong. Actual number is 250% + 100%. With upgrade augment, it's 250% + 200%. Also good to notice that it costs less mana and has lower cooldown than Snipe. Cast time of Fireball is 2 seconds, and overall damage is 1000 + 800, or 1700 + 800 when crit (assuming DoT damage doesn't crit, because currently crit works weird in Ashes and when you crit with Fireball the burning effect will be perma critting, but I'm not quite sure, so I will act like DoTs can't crit).
Ranger will end his Snipe in 1 second, mage can use Combust now, which is instant cast.
That's additional 500 damage and it also consumes all the burning and increases it by 30%. So during 4 seconds from now ranger will receive 1040 burning damage. From just raw damage, ranger is left with 2900 health. And he didn't finish his Snipe cast yet.
At this point, mage can close distance and use Prismatic Beam to remove ranger like on videos below, but let's assume it's not the case. He stays at range of 30m and decides to cast Frostbolt.
Frostbolt takes 1.1 seconds to cast, so when we are done with Frostbolt cast, ranger's Snipe finishes. Let's assume it crit and also add 15% due to Shaken effect (like I said, it's never 15% more damage, but let's be generous), 3312 damage. Knowing that mage had his shield active, he only lost 880 health. Meanwhile, Frostbolt struck ranger by another 1000. Now question is, what will ranger do? It's hard to predict damage from Barrage, so I will guess later. Now let's assume ranger uses Lightning Reload and charges another Snipe to use his Mark of the Tiger to the fullest. Meanwhile, mage starts basic attacking to stack Frozen effect or casts Cone of Cold to apply Frozen (not sure if Frozen breaks Snipe, let's assume it doesn't).
Cone of Cold is instant cast and deals additional 500 damage. At the end, we cast 2 seconds long Lightning Strike, which should apply Shatter effect.
Together Lightning Strike and Shatter deal another 2400 damage. Ranger will finish his second Snipe in 1 second, so let's just assume in this time mage put Magma Field under him or something. Doesn't really matter.
The moment ranger finishes his second Snipe, the ticking of Conflagrate is also done. In total, ranger dealt 6192 damage, very nice, not enough to kill mage that used his shield. In total, mage dealt 6440, killing ranger far before he is done with his second Snipe.
Let's see if we can use better those 3 seconds instead of casting another Snipe. It will be very much a guess, not something reliable. Let's assume ranger took 20% more attack speed after Snipe. Then most logical thing is to instantly pop Barrage. From experience, it deals about 250-300% damage, so let's say 1200 damage. Then we can cast Vine Field for another 500 damage and Hemorraging.
Hemorraging damage is about 800 more damage. Now I think we have time for Headshot, but let's do double Headshot, give ranger some more time. I will elaborate how we can extend time with mage too. Double Headshot is 2800 damage, when we assume both crit, we get 5040. Looks insane. Now let's sum it up. 7540 from this burst, let's increase it by 15% from Shaken to get 8671, so in total ranger dealt 11,551. Huge!
But let's see how mage can use this additional time. First thing mage can do is start with Lightning spell dealing 700 damage, this will allow Fuze to activate.
When Fuze is active, we do normal combo, now our Conflagrate effect will deal 1560 damage instead. Other thing mage will get is Thermal Equilibrium, which will reset duration of our DoT when we freeze ranger.
That will be basically another 1000+ damage. Let's add that to summary, now mage total damage is 9700. As you can see, it's still lower than ranger. But it's important to keep in mind that all math was done in favor of ranger. We assumed every ranger attack was a crit and none of mage's attacks were crits. We also assumed Shaken increases damage by 15%, which would never happen. If we just remove this bonus from Shaken, we will end up with damage very similar to mage. And ranger is pure single target. What mage did here, he can do to some extent to the entire enemy party. Remember that I skipped the use of Prismatic Beam at all. Just for fun, let's sum ranger damage with only every second attack being a crit. 2880 from first Snipe, which makes sense, Snipe has very high crit chance. Then Barrage, we leave as it is, 1200 damage. Vine Field 500 damage, no crit this time. First Headshot 2520 due to crit, second one 1400, no crit. In total, ranger would deal 8500. 9775 if we assume Shaken increases damage by 15%. I most likely skipped some aspects because it's very complicated topic, but I tried to provide arguments and calculate possibilities for both sides.
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Comments
Totally different story for a camouflaged ranger sniping an unshelled mage though
Well, yes, i wanted to show pure ST comparasion of those 2 classes. Ranger basically only has single target, cuz AoE is limited and mobility is not that good in practice with tanks grapples, chilled stacks from mages and bards, etc. You end up being caught pretty easly. Ranger lacks a defensive, which makes it the squishest class in the game.
I wrote this post giving all favors to the ranger, to make sure that at the end there is no doubt that mage has higher st dps. Like you said, in practice mage can do even more damage, remember that fireball cast time is instant after blink, so you can blink, combust, prismatic, and kill ranger in 1s when he is casting snipe.
The fact that rangers don't have any time of shield or sustain also makes it hard for solo content
This is not the case. While mage has lower base hp, they can wear whatever armor they want. I would challenge whether the mage is weaker due to defensives. As for less mobile, yes it has less mobility skills but honestly if you aren't going up mountains, I would prefer blink as it is faster cast so you can start hitting abilities again more quickly. Their abilities have the same range as a ranger with the exception of snipe and raining death (one has a 3.2 second charge and the other tickles). Both classes abilities average about 30 range. If you are referring to the rangers auto attacks being longer then that would depend on what weapon either class chose.
As for class fantasy, mage should be the best ranged aoe class in my opinion, but ranger should be the best ranged single target class. Otherwise, why have a ranger? Our hunts and marks feel weak and take up too many skill point options thus driving us into one build. Our only usefulness would be in the form of roots and vines which mage can simply chill or freeze enemies and get about the same effect. So, while mage is the glass cannon, said glass cannon has a shield while ranger doesn't have any defensives or viable regen options. If ranger is in this state when rogue is developed, we will become useless as they have better invis and mobility and possibly very high single target damage.
I could also tell you that the Ranger can equip plate armor. However, the reality is that, although each class can equip different types of armor, what scales best in terms of stats for the Mage is cloth (intellect and wisdom), while for the Ranger, medium armor is ideal because it provides bonuses to dexterity and strength. It's a fact that any Ranger will have more HP than a Mage, as well as better defense. Regarding the Mage’s Shield ability, honestly, it’s not that impactful since it only lasts a few seconds and has a 45-second cooldown. I’ve played both Ranger and Mage, and the Ranger definitely handles damage better.
In fact, this is the case in many MMORPGs. For instance, in World of Warcraft, Mages are designed to be fragile but capable of delivering high damage at range (DPS), while Hunters (similar to Rangers) have better survivability thanks to their pets, mail armor, and mobility skills. And in WoW Classic, Ranger is the counter of Mage even with less DPS because in PvP the trinity doesn't matter as it does in PvE, and other traits such as mobility, CC, and survivability are more valued in duels.
In Guild Wars 2, Mages (Elementalists) excel at damage but require flawless positioning to survive, whereas Rangers are more versatile and have tools to mitigate damage, such as traps and evasion.
Lastly, I repeat: expecting the Mage to only be good at AOE limits the class. AOE damage is very situational, especially in PvP, and having a class that only excels at area damage while being the weakest makes it inefficient. In my opinion, the purpose of the Ranger should be to focus more on providing utility, with strong marks, good CC, and the ability to apply multiple DOTs like bleeds. Meanwhile, pure ranged damage should be the primary role of the Mage, just as melee damage is for the Fighter.