It's end of October/Beginning of November so of course we can't be without more new rangers.
They have continued the Halloween Gacha theme, but it's slightly changed. Instead of a hefty 200 rubies, you spend 150 and get a guaranteed chance to obtain either a 4-star or a 5-star ranger, effectively weeding out all 3-star rubbish ranger results. The yield is now "8+2" for a total of 10 rather than "10+3" for a total of 13. The price per spin is technically better this time (by a fraction, at 15 rubies per spin), but with the number of rangers consistently rising, the odds of you getting the couple of rangers you really need continue to diminish with time.
This month, the limited ranger is "Red" who is apparently an "Angry Bird." Honest to goodness, I don't know what Angry Birds is about because I've never downloaded the game, but I've briefly seen other people play it. It's a totally different genre from Line Rangers, so this is a strange collaborative event between the two games. And being a Limited Ranger, Red is pretty powerful. He has a *TON* of HP but he's going to need it because he's ultra-close range to the enemy. He's on a very long cooldown as well. Check him out:
That's pretty powerful! Here's what I think is the thing: Brown, Cony, Moon, Jessica and James have all been going at this for months. The Angry Birds heard that some guy was messing around with their fellow bird and decided it's time to bring it. Come on, Line Town Friends. It's time to put your game face on. Don't let this crossover bird steal all the credit. [Update: Just read the game notice... This story is exactly why Angry Birds are involved in the Sally rescue!] By the way, if you read the notice carefully, for the rest of November, there will be other Angry Birds events which will grant more of their characters to Line Rangers players. Pretty cute!
Kung Fu Brown is an agile close-range splash unit. His animation is really funny. It looks like he wants to shove his nunchuku up the enemies' face. BTW I'm not a kung fu expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure nunchaku are not... part of Chinese kung fu? At least not traditionally? I guess it's just a Bruce Lee theme. But back to business: 183k splash, very fast move speed... for 330 minerals. Wow, just wow. KFBrown is going to tear melee enemies a new one.
I was initially excited to see the splash screen include a new Jessica, but when I saw what she was I'm completely underwhelmed. I wanted her to be 5-star and very powerful. I think, as many of the readers have expressed, a powerful Jessica ranger is very much overdue. We've pretty much never had a super desirable Jessica. I know, back in the generation 1 days of LR, Charismatic Jessica was a dangerous kitty, and when Warrior Jessica was placed into the map as a free obtainable ranger, it was indeed a big deal and a huge help to the free ranger players. But it's been months since she was relevant in the least. Come on, we want OP Jessica! A 4-star premium health ranger with only 2.2M health with pretty much negligible attack in today's standards... is pretty useless. Driver Brown was free and he sports 2.4M health and costs less. I really don't see the point. Sorry, Jessica :( LINE made you just as a punching bag for Kung Fu Brown (see her description).
Thunder Brown's girlfriend Thunder Cony has finally decided to join the fight. I'm not sure if I like her yet. On the one hand, she's super fast and super cheap for fairly decent attack. If she's spammable, she could be pretty deadly in PVP. And the description... well, I hope they fix it. Cony's not going to be happy about being male. Happy spinning, friends. I haven't got any rubies to spare this time around, but if you guys are getting the new rangers, share your opinions below! Let us know how they play into the Wasteland stages, etc.
If you're not getting the results you want, here are some hilarious pictures of people, presumably in Halloween costumes, to cheer you up. I don't know where these pics were originally from or who these people are, but they are so awesome. LOLOL
First of all, yes, Waste Land is open now! The new treasure increases EXP received.
Hrmmmmmm... preparing for expansion of max player level?
Whoo! Free random rangers
I was all tickled when I got my Mach Brown and Mach Moon today in the mailbox but then when I opened the game this evening, I saw:
Halloween Cony!!!!!!!!
Gacha Event updated (limited time) - More on this in a minute
Halloween Cony is so cute. I love her little wizard hat. She reminds me of my first Cony, Magician Cony. When I first started playing the game, I got Magician Cony and I could not be happier. Halloween Cony brought me back to that nostalgic feeling a bit. It's funny to even use the word "nostalgic" for a game that is less than a year old, but it's been a long journey.
Halloween Cony IS pretty OP. I like her a lot. I don't have her mastered, but even so, she's crazy powerful. Her cooldown is, as expected, a bit long, but it's not as long as some other "OP" splash rangers out there -- and this is based on no numbers whatsoever, by the way. It's based on me playing 2 of the new stages with her on my team and just kinda marveling at her. Her speed across the board is just fantastic. And the stats? Brace yourself.
488k splash damage! 3.53M HP?! :O!
Mine isn't mastered, but she's still pretty freakin' mighty
Back to the gacha event that is going on right now until the end of Halloween -- when I first read the splash screen for the first event, I was all super confused. What on earth does this even mean? Well, this is how it breaks down:
It's a whole other gacha panel that costs 200 rubies to play once.
The possible contents of your gacha result are 4 or 5 stars only, meaning there are NO 3 star rangers in the Halloween Gacha
Instead of 2 bonus free spins by paying 200 rubies, you get 3 bonus free spins (because if you do the math, 100 rubies buys you 5+1 = 6 spins, 200 rubies would normally buy you 12 spins. The Halloween Gacha buys you 13 spins instead).
I haven't spent any serious money on the game in a few months and I've passed over a few limited rangers as a result. But this Halloween Gacha event is very compelling. It's attractive because you're guaranteed to not get any rubbish 3 star crap that frankly, I don't even use for combining anymore (I just sell for coin). It's more worth it than any Premium gachas were previously because of the 3 spin bonus. Now, unfortunately, you are NOT exempt from receiving farmable free rangers nor the lesser exciting 4 and 5 star rangers from the earlier generations, but it's still mounds better than receiving Hero Jessica for the 500th time.
My yield from 600 rubies:
Halloween Cony x2
Luke x3
Hip Hop Brown X2
Maestro Boss x2
Cherina
Muay Thai Brown
Junior Cony x2
Legend Boss
Luis
Somchai
Honey
Bernard
Sorcerer Cony
Gentleman James
Summer Brown x3
Biker James x3
Frog Brown x3 (first time I've gotten him in Gacha, but he was reportedly in the mix intermittently)
Sindy x2
Fighter Moon
Songster Cony
Macho Moon
Rapper Boss
Lightning Jessica
Abdula
Clara
General Brown
This Halloween Gacha event is going on for 2 weeks so if you wanna throw down some money, now's the time. It's what we've been clamoring about for months and this is LINE's response to our feedback. All in all, I'm pleased with this. This is the most satisfied I've felt with the Gacha in a very, very long time. Perhaps in all of my time playing this game. BTW, we are supposedly getting increased chances (whatever that means) to receive all October new rangers during the current Double Chance/Ruby Bonus period as well (until October 18).
So with all that excitement, I'm heading into Waste Land! The zone looks pretty hard and I'm kind of confused, because I think I saw the birds from Maze of Illusion in the first couple stages... running out of ideas for enemy design, maybe? Oh and... guess who? THUNDER BROWN is the new farmable 5 star ranger. I would be pretty pleased with this selection, but I admit that Thunder Brown's arrival is dampened a lot by the availability of Driver Brown. Still, for players who didn't have the feathers, time or opportunity to grind stages to get the limited edition Driver Brown, Thunder Brown will make a great addition to the tanking team.
Over the last 3 days I've played the Friendship Gacha 300 times. 287 spins yielded goose eggs. I got 13 Songster Conys. That's a 4.3% rate of fishing out a Songster. Not great, but not terrible and right on part with the previous Macho Moon FP event.
Some readers commented that they had long streaks of nothing, then got back to back Conys. I didn't have such dramatic results but I did usually have pretty long runs coming up empty, then I'd get a few pop out pretty tightly. Odd patterns...
Update:
Event has begun! You can play your Friendship Points in the normal gacha for a chance to get Songster Cony. Limited time: ends 11:00am August 11.
Previously Macho Moon and Clara Friendship gacha events were 4% and 7% success rates respectively.
A Songster Cony event is coming for Friendship Point Gacha! If you are having trouble with Maze of Illusion, save your Friendship Points and gear up because Songster Cony's great range as a splash ranger is going to be very helpful! The event is not live yet, but it should be soon.
[July 29, 2014 Updated with free ranger video selections]
Stage 125, 126, 127
For players with access to mastered premium rangers (specifically Ola Brown/Songster Cony/Sorcerer Cony, Prince James/Dancer King Boss, Bernard/Dwight/Susu/Thunder Brown, Hitman/Abdula/KSM) then 125, 126, 127, and 128 will play quite similarly. The goal is to splash down the tower (there'll pretty much be no point in time where you can feasibly single-target attack the tower). The key obstacles to overcome are getting rid of the Ryo mushrooms at the front and the Dice at the back.
The way to do it is to stall as long as possible during the enemy's first pass so that they all pop out. Then tornado them back and then allow all the non-boss enemies to walk forward ahead of the enemy pack. Then you can use ice shot, meteor, then invincibility to clear all the small enemies and weaken the slow mini bosses a great deal. Saving friend help for this critical point in time is best. This will be the common tactic used in just about all the strategies for the rest of the area. What will vary is the number of Spades and Crockys that you'll have to contend with in each stage, with increasingly stronger enemy towers. But the strategies are essentially similar.
And by the way, if you are having a lot of difficulty with stages 124+, spend the time to farm up a master Sorcerer Cony. She is very helpful.
In 125, you'll have 4 Spades, Ryos, Ambers and Dices. This is the free ranger method by Wei S, and it assumes you have access to at least a level 60 Sorcerer Cony from Stage 124.
In 127, you'll have 6 Spades, Ryos, Ambers, Coocoos, but NO Dice, so you can feel free to use your shorter ranged splash units like SoCo and Opera James. Below are 2 good examples by nunbkk.
You guessed it... it's like all of the above, but worse. The combination of Ambers, 11 Dice, Coocoos, 4 Crockys along with 7 Spades makes 128 absolutely brutal. Here is my favorite way to do 128. You need to have KSM, one other mastered long range splash ranger (Ola/Songster/Shu), and Red Brown. Your KSM can be level 70+ and it will still work, but you should have either mastered Ola or Songster to make up for it.
Of course, a free ranger strategy is possible for 128 and several great players have put out videos for it. But my favorite for free rangers is from a Thai player, Arsoitee STSerbvong.
If you have mastered Susu, and a lot of other heavy hitting splash rangers, give this one a try.
Stage 129 - Ryo, Coocoo - Lots!
129 dials the pressure back down again, and things get simpler, but more intensified doses of small enemies. I think they threw this one in here just to give you an easily farmable stage for the last piece of treasure. There are many ways to deal with 129 because of its simplicity, but for main tank, Thunder Brown is my favorite choice. He's really not that pricey to deploy, he's very meaty, and his cooldown is about 2 seconds (mastered). He's spammably delicious!
This video is by far my favorite strategy. It relies a little bit on friend help, but the majority of the pain being dealt is from master Shu while Thunder Brown tanks with his face in the shrooms.
After 129, difficult ramps up again as you head toward the end. Many strategies from 130 through 132 will assume that you have unlocked the treasure. And if you haven't, you really should farm 129 because it helps a lot.
Here is one way to do it with free + event rangers: Mastered Shu, SoCo, and Red Brown.
Stage 131 - Short path with Amber, Ryo, Dice, Crockys, Spades
131 being such a short path creates a terrible challenge with the Dice. But actually, it's not bad at all if you have Sorcerer Cony because she packs serious punch. The first hurdle is to set up your team. You need to stall the first Ryo with as few lowbies as possible, meanwhile deploying as many Conys as you can so you have a small army. Once you get a few Conys out, you can tornado everything back. Follow up with invincibility, ice, and meteor. The goal is to kill all the Dice. There rest of the stage is just keeping the enemy from moving so Cony can splash the tower down.
The Thunder Brown, Ola Brown and KSM trio on this video below by Cheng-Ling Chiang makes 131 fairly simple. If your Ola and KSM are not mastered, you could also throw in SoCo and/or Abdula in the team to increase your damage. If either your Ola or KSM are not mastered, the trio will narrowly miss the damage requirement, so you do need to make up for it by adding another ranger. This strategy does require you to have pretty high mineral production. If you're not cranking out enough units after the ice shot goes out, you might be too low leveled.
132 is the mother of all of the stages. It's got everything. The majority of videos out there require you to have Susu and if you watch the videos, even mastered Susu can't take the heat of this enemy procession for very long. I'll discuss 3 different teams to approach 132.
Premium Rangers: Another one by Cheng-Ling Chiang. This video uses mastered Scott, Thunder Brown, Ola Brown, Songster Cony and Dancer King Boss. Premium rangers, yes, but none of them are from the latest set of rangers. I love that this player pulled out Scott and Thunder Brown, rangers who have been long forgotten.
The strategy is similar to the Stage 124 technique. You stall with Scott and Thunder while leveling minerals and waiting for all the enemies to pop out. Deploy DKB and Ola with any spare minerals. Once they've beaten up your tower for several million HP, use Tornado. Then after using tornado, you wait until about halfway, when the enemies are still marching pretty close together to use Ice Shot, Friend help, Invincibility, and Meteor. After invincibility wears off and King King slaps your team with his hammer, you are guaranteed to get a Thomas, which will further slow down the group and stall while you wait for Hurry Up. You should keep deploying Scott nonstop, Thunder Brown on cooldown, prioritize Ola > Songster, and forget about DKB now. When Hurry Up starts, all the enemies lose half their HP, which should help you clear up King King, the remaining Spades and Coocoos. Once you are done with those, you have to deal with the march of the Hurry Up enemies, which includes another half-health King King. It will hurt, but if you keep the pressure on with Scott and Thunder, they should pretty much stop moving. Use Thomas as soon as you get him. Eventually, Ola Brown and Songster will KO the tower with splash. This is definitely a long battle, even with premium Gacha rangers. Impressive display by Cheng-Ling Chiang.
Free rangers including Event Rangers: if you follow this video below by 黃小翰 and his team, you're doing basically the same thing as the premium rangers, but timing is even tighter, and there's a lot of stalling. After all 5 of the Spades have spawned, you'll already be dealing with 11 Dice. The video waits for Dice #18 to spawn before using tornado.<insert exasperated emoji here!> I believe there are a total of 20 Dice during the normal phase of the stage.
After tornado, keep deploying Red Brown to stall the enemy pack to move slowly together towards you some more. Once there, unleash the pain with Ice Shot and Friend Help. Follow up immediately with Invincibility to maximize your army. Your goal while your items are in effect is to kill all of the dice. After invincibility wears off, you're just stalling again until Hurry Up and Thomas. Hurry Up will chop half of remaining health off King King and the Spades. After Hurry Up has begun, unleash Meteor and Thomas. That should get you very close to killing off the boss units so you can deal with the new Hurry Up units. No more dice spawn *until you get to the tower*, so just stall with Glenn (he's cheaper) and let Cony and Shu deal damage. Once you close in on the enemy tower, use Red Brown again because more Spades, another King King and more Dice start to appear. Continue to deploy Red Brown > Glenn > SoCo > Shu until victorious.
If you don't have Red Brown or Shu, Wei S has a pure farmable free ranger method as well. The basic strategy is the same: stall and wait for many enemies to pop out. Up until tornado it's almost the same as the 黃小翰 free ranger video, however, without Red Brown to help slow down the enemy march and Shu to out-range the Dice, you will be forced to use tornado much earlier. The second significant difference with this video is that King King is much closer to the home tower when Hurry Up begins. It's a longer distance to push toward the enemy tower again, but I suspect he did this intentionally and there's a reason for this. Those of you who read my post about Stage 108 will recall the genius of allowing Hurry Up to begin while your troops are very far away from the enemy tower. Because the enemies have to walk a great distance to you, it buys you more time to exclusively deal with the faster, smaller enemies as they march forward ahead of the mini bosses and spreads out the mini bosses so you can deal with them one at a time rather than all bunched together. This is how Wei S deals with the Amber bunnies, Crocky and the new Spades during Hurry Up. It's tougher in its own way (and about a minute longer than the method with Shu & Red Brown), but such is the life of a free ranger player. Masterful video!
New rangers are here, and by now surely many players have seen them in action in one place or another. I don't have them all personally, so I'll speak to what I can and try to supplement info from other sources. Susu is limited to the next two weeks only, so get him while you can.
Note: The analysis of the new rangers below are valid as of July 2, 2014.
Range comparison between Prince James & Dancer King Boss
Prince James is the new reigning champion of long range. He out-ranges Dancer King Boss by a smidge. There are definite pros to Prince over DKB: At master level, Prince's atk/hp is superior (176409/299376 vs. 139812/224532). But that is where the advantage ends. DKB's unmastered cooldown is only 7 seconds whereas Prince's twice that at 14 seconds. DKB's attack/move stats are both faster than Prince's. DKB is cheaper to deploy at every level. Prince's stats come out to 220.5 damage per mineral; DKB's is 218.5 damage per mineral -- extremely close after the buff to DKB on July 2. But when you factor in the possibility of deploying twice as many DKB in the same amount of time (provided that you are funneling all minerals into prioritizing DKB/Prince deployment), DKB is still a very attractive ranger. The hp difference between a master Prince and a master DKB is only 74844 in favor of Prince, which these days is around 1 extra hit from your typical enemy so health-wise I see them as nearly equal.
In my opinion, Prince vs. DKB is situational. If you can afford to deploy only one attacker every 14 seconds that moves slow-ish, then by all means, go for the higher output Prince. If you need more damage fast to take advantage of some timing opportunity, I think DKB may suit your needs more. Don't get me wrong, though. The amount of damage that Prince James is capable of is insane. Just adjust your team accordingly to account for his long cooldown.
Luis... is such an odd fellow. He's a boy who appears to be naked, hiding in a bush, but he's a jumping ninja...Ok, points for originality. He's melee range (though pretty far back as far as melee goes) and he packs a serious punch with his apples but with 1.4 million HP, so I will compare him to Dwight. Luis is not quite suited for solo tanking and he doesn't really do as much damage as Dwight per deployment. His standard cooldown is slightly shorter, and he's a good deal cheaper. It's pretty close, but Luis is still the better bang for your buck in terms of damage. If you want to compare their tankability (yeah, I made a word up, so sue me!), Luis and Dwight are actually very similar. But Luis will get to the front line faster, which may be more valuable in a pinch. Would I use him as a main tanking ranger? I personally have my reservations, especially since his melee range leaves so much space for the enemy to inch forward. I'm not sure how I really feel about Luis yet. Probably need some more time to find a good scenario to use him.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Luis
520
309
2715
Slow
Normal
4
Dwight
980
250
2733
Fast
Slow
6
Witch and Lucifer are stacked almost on top of each other (white arrow). BCCony is further back (pink arrow)
Best Couple Cony is similar to the others in the Cony speed series. Naturally the first comparable ranger in mind is Witch Cony since they are both 4 stars. BCCony costs a considerable amount more (240 vs. 170) but has the clear advantage in both attack and health. BCCony is an upgrade over Witch Cony in every category. Lucifer Cony was recently buffed to sport more damage and hp which helps her case, but BCCony still does a but more damage. Frankly, with Lucifer so much heartier, she's still a better ranger in my eyes for the cost.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Witch Cony
170
75.2
370
Slow
Very Fast
2
Lucifer Cony
210
166.8
1746
Slow
Very Fast
2
Best Couple Cony
240
173.9
868
Normal
Very Fast
2
BCCony is longer range than both Witch and Lucifer
BCCony moves slightly faster than both Witch and Lucifer
Cooldown is the same for BC, Witch, and Lucifer Cony
By any logical reasoning, BCCony should be 5 stars when stacked up against her counterparts, but oh well.
Cherina is a very interesting addition to the roster. She's on a 2 second standard cooldown which is a new low for splash rangers. Mastered, she only costs 290 to deploy and she whomps 142965 DPS. Come on! That is sick, by any measure. Yes, she's in melee range. But at over half a million health, she's not fragile and can take a few nasty hits without a problem. She is certainly more sturdy than Dumpy and because she's a splash ranger, her potential damage is even higher than Dumpy's. She moves really fast to the front, so if you get a pack of Cherinas leading the charge, your opponents can be in some serious pain very quickly. She's cute, but she's lethal. I like Cherina a lot. There will probably be stages in the future where she may not be as effective (lots of heavy, frequent splash damage on melee) but frankly, she's probably useful in more situations than not.
Hitman range compared to Ola Brown, SoCo, KSM
Hitman range compared to Shu, Opera James, KSM, Abdula
Hitman is another splash ranger who I'd like to compare to KSM and Abdula because of some close similarities.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
KSM
890
145.5
706.4
Very Slow
Very Slow
7
Abdula
760
91.7
502.4
Normal
Normal
5
Hitman
670
182.2
774.5
Very Fast
Slow
5
So here we can clearly see why Hitman is the new flavor of the month. Note that he does have a slightly lower DPS than KSM (122064 vs. 129499), but proportional to mineral cost Hitman actually pulls ahead in cost efficiency and time efficiency. Hitman also has slightly better range than both Abdula and KSM.
I do not have Best Couple Brown nor Susu so if you guys want to give some in-game insight on how these two play, go right ahead and share that. I'm going to just speak briefly about them based on what I know.
Initially from the numbers, it looks like Best Couple Brown bests the older 4 stars health rangers, but he's otherwise a pretty standard Brown health ranger we know and expect. Nothing spectacular either way, but if you don't have Hip-Hop Brown (everyone's favorite hybrid tank at the current time), mastered BCBrown is in fact better than mastered free ranger Xan in every way except for move speed. Thunder Brown was updated on July 3 to over 1 million HP at master level so he is the meatiest Brown ranger now. When considering tanking units, attack isn't quite as important as their health, move speed, and cooldown time, and in that respect, both BCBrown performs decently for a 4-star ranger. So, he's something to consider if you're shopping for a new tank.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Hip Hop Brown
210
114
2376
Normal
Very Fast
2
General Brown
280
130
1305
Normal
Normal
2.5
Macho Moon
330
26
1229
Very Fast
Fast
2.5
Thunder Brown
370
40
2882
Fast
Slow
2.5
Best Couple Brown
430
46
1848
Very Fast
Normal
3
Xan
500
31
1295
Slow
Very Fast
4
Susu is absolutely phenomenal because of his astonishingly high damage (outperforming KSM) and health for melee range splash but his painfully long standard cooldown of 28 seconds (!!!) is going to mean you have to plan your deployment of other rangers around when he comes off cooldown. Yeah, sure he costs a lot (1140 at master level) but in 28 seconds (14s if he is mastered) you ought to be able to raise enough funds. He books it to the front line pretty quick too, so he can spring into action in a desirable amount of time.
Good luck to everyone on your Gachas if you are trying your luck.
From now until June 30, select boss stages will let you bonus roll on a new ranger: Shu. Shu is long-range splash ranger whose power is close to Opera James and Songster Cony. But before we get into the nitty gritty details, has anyone noticed that his attack animation is exactly like Cony's? The legs together, legs apart, jumping up awkwardly to fire a projectile at the enemy, the speedy footies dashing forward... It's Cony. Maybe it's been him inside of a Cony costume all along.
Until June 30 18:00 Japan Standard Time
By the way, along with Shu one more ranger was downloaded into the game but he has not yet made his appearance. Maybe he is going to be released after June 30, when Ola Brown's limited obtainable period has ended.
Susu
LOL Susu is a very silly name. I think it means some funky things in some languages, too. But anyway, Susu looks like an ancient China dynastic warrior, and I would be disappointed if he is not melee. Either he's a fake-out to keep us wondering or he will make his appearance in the game very soon.
Update: A reader pointed out that the demon king (who, by the way, is throwing an exploding lunchbox at you, how cool is that?!), Susu and Shu are characters out of a Taiwanese live action puppetry show whose title is roughly like, super awesome fantasy martial arts heroes (it doesn't sound awesome at all in English. Some things are really lost in translation)... They popularly call Pili. If you want to know why a puppet show is such a big deal, read about the tradition of the show here. Since it's a joint promo, I think we can safely expect Susu will be coming soon.
Here is a look at Su's character on Pili. Su is a swordsman, so he should be a melee ranger. Here is Shu's character on Pili. I assume that something happens to him and becomes a monk over the course of the story. The puppets are stunningly gorgeous. I have to say, I like Shu and Susu about a hundred times more now that I have seen what they were modeled after. When I first saw the demon king, I was already blown away by how cool he looked for a villain. I mean... put him next to the onigiri boss and really, what comparison is there? Now I know he was modeled after this spectacular fellow.
Now on to the ranger!
Level 70 max master Shu
Level 50 Shu
Shu's range compared to Songster, Opera and Clara
Versus Songster Cony
Attack-wise, Shu out-performs SongCo by a big enough margin for it to matter.
He has a bit more health, too, and that's basically what I would say the added cost of deployment is compensating for. Cony costs 320 at lv 50, and 360 at lv 70, which is quite a bit less. So they're not exactly the same, but similar enough. By the way, they're also extremely close in attack range, with Shu winning by a narrow margin.
Versus Opera James
Comparing Shu with Opera James gets a bit more interesting. They're very close in attack:
At level 50 Opera James wins just barely at 11453 vs. 11229 DPS
At level 70, Opera James wins at 27528 vs. 26992 DPS.
The gain here is the health. Opera James only has 96k health while Shu has nearly double at level 70. Opera James costs the same as SongCo, 360 at lv 70. So if you don't have SongCo but you do have Opera James, the decision is a bit harder.
If you are considering Shu vs. Opera for Team Battle Mode, I would definitely go with Shu for no reason other than the added range for survivability.
Versus Clara
A reader brought to my attention that Clara got a 9000 DPS buff sometime between last week and today. This makes her almost a perfect comparison with Shu, too.
At level 70, Shu wins in attack of 26992 vs. Clara's 25303
At level 70, Shu costs 460 while Clara costs 470
At level 70, Shu has 184k HP while Clara only has 66k
Shu's attack and move speed are faster than Clara's. His range is longer, too.
Well, looks like Shu is better than Clara in every way possible, no contest! Poor Clara.
Versus Abdula
At level 70, Abdula does 69668 for 760 mineral and Shu does 26992 for 460 mineral
At level 70, Abdula has 381790 health and Shu has 184312 health.
Abdula costs a lot of money and a lot of people diminish his value because of it. But think about it this way:
Abdula does 91.7 damage per mineral cost while Shu does 58.7 damage per mineral cost
Abdula is 501.4 health per mineral cost while Shu is only 400.7 health per mineral cost
If you look at it cost-to-cost, Abdula is still the better choice for your money. There are, of course, other considerations. Abdula's standard cooldown longer than Shu's. Abdula's range is shorter (it's right between Clara and Opera James'). Shu's move speed is faster than Abdula's. It really depends on what you want on your team. Purely on cost efficiency, Abdula wins. But if you want someone who moves faster, and can be deployed more often, then maybe Shu is a better choice.
While on the topic of cooldowns: Shu's standard cooldown is the same as Clara, Opera and SongCo: 8 seconds. Mastered, his CD will be 4 seconds.
All in all, Shu performs exactly where I would expect for a 4 star ranger coming on the scene today. Get him while you can! Soon we won't know if we can get him again or if he'll be in Gacha or what!
P.S. Totally unrelated to Shu, there is a lot of buzz going around about certain ill-gotten ranks in the game. I'm not going to talk about it or refer to it or give it any sort of recognition/acknowledgement because I think the game should be played the way the developers intended. Please respect the rules of the game and my wishes for the blog - no comments about these people! Let's hope that this will blow over soon and be done with it.
As predicted, Line Rangers really will be getting a major overhaul by way of additional game modes. These updates will be live on June 19.
In the splash screen it seems to be saying that the team battle mode is the player vs. player mode that was mentioned, but in the notice, it treats Team Battle and Friend Battle differently. Perhaps we will get to pick random people as well as battle our friends (in case some of us out there don't have any friends to play Rangers with!) So I think there is probably a random vs. random and a friend vs. friend mode.
Endless mode is pretty straight forward and I think it will add to giving people something to do while there are no new zones out. I think it'll be something like 1-3 stages for each zone where you battle with that area's set of enemies in a preconfigured formation. It should be interesting and challenging in its own way. What I think will be a nice twist is that Endless Mode will likely diminish the importance of splash rangers. Endless mode by definition does not have an end point, therefore splashing down a tower is a utility that we will not need. And when dealing with a continuous stream of enemies sometimes it is better to focus down on one enemy and get rid of it with a single target nuking ranger (such as Alice, Dumpy, Dwight, etc.) Splash rangers will still be very useful, of course, but maybe just less so.
And finally, items are changing! Following in suit of many other of Line Games, Rangers will soon get the option of an experience booster item. I really hope that it can be bought with a lot of coins and not a lot of rubies because I fail to see why anyone would sacrifice rubies for more experience. It will give the coin currency (especially those out there with millions sitting idle) some more purpose.
The tower repair item will be changed from a healing + temporary invincibility item to just a temporary invincibility item. I guess we better alter our strategies if our tower remains at the health that it was prior to item usage. This brings to light something important though: now you should probably start upgrading that tower health category that we've all been ignoring. Previously, tower repair really did make having loads of tower health unnecessary. You could practically get twice the tower health with this item. After the update, your tower is as healthy as it ever will be and you will just have to protect it fervently the first time.
[Edit: Although now that I think of it, what good will temporary invincibility do if the enemy is already at your front door? As soon as invincibility ends, they are still there killing the 1-2 rangers you can deploy at a time. You would pretty much have to pair invincibility with tornado to give yourself any hope of continuing combat, right? Unless it is invincibility for your rangers...? The verbiage of the notice leaves much to be desired.]
I don't know what "Friend's Home" feature is but if I had to guess, it might be something that gives us a peek into which rangers our Friends have left for us to use when we summon them. Right now it's a crap shoot whether we get 3 good rangers or 3 lowbies. Maybe this feature will tell us things like ranger name, ranger level, friend's playing progress, etc. That would be so helpful, so we can receive the most applicable set of rangers for the stage we are facing!
Anyway, that's all I have for now. This is all the information that was hinted for us. Will update more when I know more.
In the meantime, to prepare for the new modes, maybe we should all brush up on our strategies and plan our defenses for the new game modes! Maybe the new attack speed post will be useful because in PVP, speed does matter! There's plenty to read and learn on this blog. Please use the search bar at the upper left corner or the right sidebar if you're having trouble finding topics. You can also click on the labels at the bottom of each post to find all the posts that relate to that label name.
