How to Fix the Ranger Class

How do your boss relics have colors???

I've always personally felt like it'd be neat if bows and guns were divided into their own classifications, with more dedicated armor for specializing within each. From there, I'd also say to let the demolitionist sell the flintlock (and perhaps other low-end blackpowder weapons), to allow for earlier access to firearms (with then some adjusting to its stats), as then dividing the two makes it SO much easier to design a semi-linear progression. Or, for that matter, maybe make blowguns an extremely early-access "firearm," perhaps craftable with wood or the like.

For that matter, though, I think disposable ranged weapons are a very underutilized design space that should be in more of a place like the boomerangs, of helping to solve an early game problems for the pre-hardmode weapons of a given class. Creating some early bow armor and/or accessories that allows a chance for arrows and throwables to be recollected would be great for encouraging special ammo types (and bow could then also further clarify its identity for kiting by doubling down on having cool status additions to pretty much all weapons types, and also then being highly ammo efficient with lots of refund abilities for special arrows and such). Maybe also some additional status effects that throwables would help to apply, to add value to swapping around between them.

Guns, meanwhile, could perhaps gain bonuses that ramp up certain stats like their damage, accuracy, piercing, or fire rate when stationary, while perhaps specializing in gaining higher degrees of knockback to help them with sustaining a fixed position for slightly longer. Thus, bows would be still about heavily kiting and then also stacking status, which has some inherent synergy, while guns would be more "stick and move." Guns, as well, should benefit more from using explosive throwables as a combat option– which could maybe also offer some high risk, high reward ways of interrupting a boss's charge attacks or elsewise helping to reinforce that role of "stopping power." Reducing bullet spread for weapons like the shotgun (and upping knockback) for standing your ground could be interesting, in any case.

Guns would then perhaps be interesting to make into a bit of a money-monger class, perhaps making some early gunner armor or accessories that can help with progressing to the minishark, or helping to justify better bullets earlier, which would also help with affording more bombs than in other classes, as having unique utility is honestly some of the most interesting design space for classes. Plus, making bows and guns directly benefit bombs and throwables (even their damage) would be pretty interesting for enabling more cool challenge runs; albeit we may need more varieties to help justify that kind of thing.

Giving guns a bit better AoE and knockback while bows get to reinforce the traditional strengths of more heavily kiting would be pretty interesting, though. It'd be fine to still let maybe some interesting mixed armor setups benefit kiting with firearms, to keep the existing playstyle intact, but it'd then be "easier, but slightly less optimal." Whereas bow could have a higher ceiling by encouraging more of a swap-oriented playstyle for layering status effects and the like. Both then gain some interesting ways to combat the stigma of "lol just run and shoot," by having more nuanced top-level potential, while not destroying the existing playstyles that plenty of people will still find fun (especially those who don't commit to a class, as is the case for many newer players in particular).

Very much enjoy a lot of your suggested revisions, mind, but I think giving bows and guns more unique identities that are sliiiightly more exclusionary would be a really interesting way to shake up their place in the game, while also opening up more space for resource management with consumables, status rotations, hgh-risk stand-your-ground moments, and other such quirks to spice things up a bit. I definitely have less input for hardmode weapons, beyond the idea that it'd help a lot to keep some clear progresson paths for at least two variants of each throughout hardmode (maybe make bows and repeaters a bit more distinct from each other, with expanded progression for sticking with either and perhaps even early pre-hardmode options for simple crossbows, while also having semi-auto and full-auto firearms likewise provide two distinct approaches as subclasses– which'd help to keep from feeling a loss in variety-of-options by providing bows and guns with some variety in player expression).

I don't think it'd be bad to still keep generalist armor that works for both, mind, as I kinda feel like it's also pretty neat to have slightly-suboptimal armor options that support "dual-class" concepts pretty well in return for slightly worse DPS potential (but better situationality), either. And I also honestly think that having similar distinctions for more distinct possibilities for sublcass divisions within melee, magic, and summoning could also be pretty interesting.

For magic, perhaps have one path that's focused on maximizing ammo efficiency for DPS uptime, and another that's more focused on resource management or burst mana dump/move/recharge cycles. Or maybe a summoning subtype that specs more into variety while another specs into heavily buffing a single summon. Or maybe give melee an option for… actually, that's a bit trickier, as it's been a bit to long since my last melee run that made it to hard mode, so I'm actually curious as to what sort of approach might be more interesting for that… maybe a pseudo "strength vs dex" notion of one that specs more into ranged boomerangs and the like to create space for slower single-target wapons, versus another that's more about close-range kiting with higher attack-speeds? Or maybe turn some throwables into melee "knockback" options, and/or give slower melee weapons more stats to help create space for a stick-and-move feeling similar to the idea for gun redesign, and then maybe also some interesting cross-class synergy then for sword + bow and gun +… axes and greatswords? Or whatever such slower melees.

I do think it'd be kinda neat for boomerangs to remain somewhat viable throughout the game, maybe not as a subclass, but just as an option that melee gets to generically benefit from as a way to keep suboptimal-but-safe kiting from being exclusive to other classes in hardmode? But now I'm getting into the weeds a bit with niche ideas, and this post is long enough, lol. This was a video about *ranger*, FFS– how'd my excited rambling get THAT far off-topic??

Anywhos! Just a big ol' gamedev nerd fangirling over cool ideas for how different redesign stuff could work. For the record, I am a very middling Terraria player, so I am absolutely not the best source for these ideas– but it's still just fun to brainstorm cool design concepts. Always a great video when it gives a relatively casual fan of the game so much cool stuff to consider, though! ^^

The 2 evil biome guns could be made to where you can only get them if the arms dealer is living in that evil biome but you can't make housing there so maybe in a graveyard or during a blood moon or something like that. Oh actually have him sell them after you kill that evils boss! That would make sense and you would still use that pistol than you could buy said weapon from him as an upgrade.

I think the musket needs the wood on it changed to purple to match its evil biome like the undertaker

shroomite stealth should be activated by tapping down twice like the forbidden armor set. that way you can sacrifice movement for burst damage which would also prevent lategame ranger from running away so much

Scaling the Pew-matic horn debris with progression based on bullet types could make it viable. Maybe by default it uses no bullets to shoot small random debris if you have no bullets in your inventory (like paintgun, harpoon, etc.) for the rare few who are fighting Deerclops first, but the debris gets stronger (or has better spread and effects) depending on the bullets you use.

As of current, each debris has equal chance to be fired, so better bullet types could just increase the likelihood of stronger debris firing instead. The usefulness could cap off around early hardmode up to the high velocity bullet (giving a chance for the gun to be used during Twins), with a majority of the debris being gems. I think viability in early hardmode is reasonable since Abigail’s Flower for summoners gets a boost in hardmode as well.

29:35
The Story of Red Cloud actually does something similiar as an Expert drop from The Sorrow if I recall.
Every few seconds it automatically switches to different ammo types depending what weapon you use and what bullets or arrows you have on you, so I dont assume it should be hard to code? I do not know coding tho so I apologize.
(I might have gotten some Info wrong)

Flintlock could make sense if youre in mp. The player that found the gun has something better but everyone else gets at least a base gun if they want it

1:43 Copper and tin bows exist!?!

Yay, he's finaly calling deerclops a girl. Love terraria and dont starve

problem with changing the demonite/crimtane weapons to need shadow scales/tissue samples, it makes the eye useless since it's main drop is demonite/crimtane. i'd say a better option is to make demonite and crimtane ore not naturally generate and have you need to fight either the evil boss or the eye to get it

I'll say this, a lack of distinct lines of progression for Ranger make the class better. The sheer variety and diversity of options being so abundant is what makes the class my personal favourite at every stage of the game. Pre-boss there are so many viable weapons for the class: Musket, Undertaker, Demon/Tendon bow, Boomstick, Minishark, Sandgun, Revolver and the Star cannon (if you're lucky enough to get those in accessible gold chests), nevermind the plethora of decent weapons in this same category (snowball cannon, throwing knives/poison knives, shurikens, grenades, harpoon, the ore bows, molotov cocktails and spiky balls) all of which can create a well rounded playstyle with no lack of options and it offers a perfectly viable armour set with the fossil set. And that's all PRE-BOSS, with some notable options excluded for the sake of keeping the list somewhat tame. Honestly speaking, if every class had to follow 1 class's progression type, ranger is the only one where I say it's perfect from beginning to end, there's no overwhelmingly OP options that make all others completely redundant but there's always a good choice.

6:24 The wall of fresh.
It used some mints

Ranger is powerful for one key reason: it is also the throwing class, and that is such a powerful class that Relogic removed it from the game!

You dont need to fix it, its amazing

Ive literally never gotten the boom stick 😭

Pretty sure that you could in the past do the events before the dungeon might be wrong

I think ranger needs an ammo sequencer so you can add a few ichor shots into your gun every once in a while without messing about in your menu.

Same with summoners and a whip sequencer. Give me a post skeletron item that lets me choose 2 whips to automatically wap between. Then upgrade it to 3 with a post mech item. Then 4 post golem. Then 5 post cultist.

Damm. I think I've seen all the thumpnails now with how many times this video is recommended to me

As someone who's playing with throwable/consumables only in mastermode, it feels like a different class. It was a class of its own in like version 1.3 before it became part of ranger in 1.4. The only bad thing is all its weapons are only pre-hardmode.

9:52 dont deerclopses have both genders?

The flintlock pistol shouldn't be removed because it's a great cheap weapon in mediumcore

i think they should remove clorophite bullets