Best Ranger Equipment?

[burndaddy02]

Looking to get the Ranger soon and I'm wondering what equipment to slot in.

 

I plan to run Strike.

[1Sherman]

First of all, drop the Ranger. It is completely useless because it is a USN CV. Your strike loadout will be strafed to death by enemy IJN and Saipan fighters and 96% of the enemy BBs will be guarded by AA cruisers with Defensive Fire, which will force you to run with the AS loadout and frustrate you to the point where you will sell it and proclaim the 5.5 million credits you get from it to be the best you've ever received.

 

Second of all, if you have no sanity and/or want to tear out your own hair and do, in fact, want to play the Ranger, here's what you do:

 

1: Free XP all her upgrades. You've already said you want to run Strike, so choose it. Keep AS handy though for when you are forced to switch to it to defend yourself.

 

2: Equip the following upgrades: Auxiliary Armaments Mod. 1 (because you have no fighters), Flight Control Mod. 1, Damage Control 1, and Rudder Shift.

 

3: Train the following captain's skills:

Tier 1= Expert Rear Gunner to try to keep fighters off you and BFT for better reloading AA and secondaries.

Tier 2= Torpedo Armament Expertise to get your TBs reloaded faster.

Tier 3= Torpedo Acceleration so you don't have to lead your TBs as much.

Tier 4= Aircraft Servicing Expert to get your planes up faster and/or DE to burn more ships and/or AFT and/or Manual AA Control to protect yourself from enemy CVs who want to assassinate you.

Tier 5= Air Supremacy to give you more planes for enemy AA to farm or Manual Secondaries to protect yourself from enemy DDs.

 

4: Equip the following flags: November Echo Setteseven, Victor Lima, India X-Ray, Juliet Whiskey Unanone.

 

5: Equip premium Damage Control. The faster you can control/repair damage when the enemy CVs come for you, the better. 

 

6: Watch very closely for enemy AA cruisers. If you see one, get away from it immediately. Harass enemy DDs whenever possible. Target lone BBs like a wolfpack targets a lone caribou. Memorize enemy AA values and choose your targets from the weaker ones. Stick with the fleet and watch the minimap at all times to see if/when something's coming for you.

 

7: ?????

 

8: Profit until you sell it in rage and frustration.

[El_Judarino]

A good way to mitigate enemy fighters is to get good at knowing where the best friendly AA is on the map. Draw red fighters over friendly north Carolinas for relatively easy disposal. Beware strafe attacks, they tend to be pretty obvious.

 

I just completed the Ranger grind (all strike all the time). I felt my key to success was asking my team which way they wanted to go and what targets they wanted me to prioritize at the start. By asking what I could do for them, I was starting the match with a spirit of cooperation that I believe only helped matters. This also allowed me to keep my bombers near a friendly AA death ball and I would strike out from there at the nearest red, looking to do damage or break a DD's stealth.

Often my contribution wasn't a kill so much as a key concentration of damage on whatever flank the team was pushing. This generally lead to a cascading victory at that point for my team and barring a complete breakdown on the other side of the map, victory in the match itself.

 

I really think there is some serious merit to that approach as you can check my Ranger stats... The numbers look good, but I assure you, I still only have half a clue what I am doing when I manually drop torps (and miss quite horribly often enough), I'm just pretty confident my strat is good even if my skills are mediocre.

[Numbah18]

Hmm suggestions for a strike Ranger  First off any mods or Captain skills that upgrades your strike craft you want to get so they can withstand enemy AA better, if you can't get something that upgrades your planes then get something that makes your AA better or decreases your rudder-shift time in case you have to dodge an enemy attack. You'll need to stay decently close to your fleet and try to keep tabs on the enemy FT at all times. Don't attack the same place on the map every time you launch your planes either other wise the enemy CV is just going to leave his FT there or the enemy team is going to stick closer together and share there AA.