Maze of Illusion Part 2 (Stage 125-132)

For stages 121-124, see part 1.

[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.

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Here 125 done with Master Bernard, Dwight, Ola Brown, and Songster Cony.

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Here is another 125 done with Free Rangers: Glenn, Xan, Shu, SoCo, Opera James, from Arsoitee STSerbvong.

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In 126, you'll have 4 Spades, Ryo, Ambers, Dice, but no Coocoos.

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126 with free rangers: SoCo, Shu, Masked Moon, Xan, by michael suzuki.

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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.

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Stage 128

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.

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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.

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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. 

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If you do not have Red Brown, here are Scott, Rei, Glenn, Shu and Sorcerer Cony.

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Stage 130 - 2 Crockys, Dice, Coocoos, 5 Spades

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.

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Here is a 129 video with pure free farmable rangers by michael suzuki: Glenn, Scott, SoCo, Opera James, Xan

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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.

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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.

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Stage 132 - King King and everyone else

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.

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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.

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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!

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Good luck, everyone! May we all find Sally one day...

Maze of Illusion Part 1

This new area has created more uproar than any other new area in Line Rangers history. I've been busy and not really playing hardcore or playing to win since early last week so I've completely missed some of the drama that has been happening with the game. Though I didn't really live it, I definitely heard about some of the craziness. The short version is, the Maze of Illusion released and many players roflstomped over the whole thing just cleaving down the tower with Cherina spamming. Line then updated the area about an hour to 90 minutes later to buff the enemy tower health a huge amount to make Cherina spamming nonviable. Over the course of the next several days they did various things to the enemies and the stages to tune the difficulty back down, but at the same time they also changed some ranger stats to indirectly tune the difficulty up.

At the time of this writing, they're still tweaking some things and driving us all nuts. Strategies that worked before may not work now and strategies developed today might not work next week. Because of this, I'm almost glad that I've been too busy to really write anything about Maze of Illusion because it would have all been invalidated a couple of times over already, and that would make me pretty darn mad. It is also for this reason that I will not be recording any specific strategies because honestly, I'm not seeing the point if it's invalidated at any time. I'll discuss some good ones that are already out there, though. The area is really tough, and a quick glance at some of these numbers and it will be obvious why it's such a beast.

I did not confirm these numbers, but at a glance, these seem to be about right as of today. Who/where is nonmetoo@lineranger? If anyone knows, please comment & tell me

Example of the flip-flopping by Line: The widely distributed "Free Ranger" video for 124 made by Wei S worked really well for 2 days but on 7/22, the strategy no longer worked due to the tune-up of the stage. Then on 7/23 they reverted the stage back to the way it was pre-7/22.

I have some major gripes about post-release tune-ups, especially ones that happen five days post-release. It's frustrating to players because they've already been challenged once and may have finally nailed it down only to be slapped in the face a second time (or depending on how early you tried it, a third time). And then changing their minds and putting it back to the way it was again. I really don't see the point of it as a developer to do such needless tune ups on an already challenging boss stage. As far as boss stages go, I think the tuning of 124 is perfect where it was, "post-7/17", "pre-7/22", and "post-7/22". It is, after all, the first boss stage of the area.

My next biggest complaint is the reliance on Shu. Players without Ola Brown and Songster Cony can only hope to play with surgical precision relying on Shu heavily for ultra-long range splash to combat Dice. Seriously, what is a free ranger player to do if they missed the 2 Shu events? ...Which is why I'm almost positive that maybe in 3 weeks, they will tweak the stages again to make it possible to clear without Shu.

Stage 121 - Onslaught of Amber and Ryo

Going from 120 to 121 is quite a rude awakening. The ongoing theme of Maze of Illusion is that the damage is front-heavy. There is certainly a lot of splash, but the sheer uptick of damage on tanks compared to the earlier areas is amazing. 121 is by far the easiest stage in the area, and it's the only one that I could confidently label "easy."

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This video made by michael suzuki is my favorite display of 121. It's simple, straightforward and plays to the strengths of all three of our free splash rangers (slow everything, but high damage).

Stage 122 - Ryo, Amber and Sally's genetic mutation

This stage is almost exactly the same as 121, but with the added damage from the long range Coocoo birds. It's a tough stage but it plays very well with lowbies. If you've been an avid player of Rangers in the last month or so, this video by free ranger master strategist Wei S may be right for you as it uses event rangers Red Brown and Shu.

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If you are a purist, then michael suzuki has a 3-lowbie strategy that may break a few fingers, but is very good as well.

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For the master of Gacha premiums, here's a video by Naratah featuring Susu, Hitman, Hip Hop Brown, Dancer King Boss and Dumpy.

Stage 123 - Dice of Death

123 may be the first place where the majority of people will get hung up. This stage is ridiculously tough if you don't have access to a few key rangers. In fact, from here on out, without ultra long-range rangers, you're in for some pain. For free players, you haven't gotten Witch Cony maxed, it's time to do that. Free players who got Shu are better off. Teams who have access to Ola Brown and Songster Cony are definitely better off. Why? The Dice enemy throws long-range splash damage to everything in the front to almost everything in the back. He deals a lot of damage and has a huge chunk of HP (even after he got nerfed post-release). I kid you not, this enemy is the biggest problem in the entire area. The way to deal with him is to simply out-range him, or wait till all of them pop out and tornado to restack them all for an all-out slaughter and hope you kill them all before your invincibility and ice shot run out. If you have SongCo, Ola, Shu, DKB or Prince, by all means, use them because they out-range the Dice's splash. 

Here is Wei S' Shu free ranger video on 123. It does rely a bit on powerful friend help, but by and large a strong display of lowbie + Shu play.

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Stage 124 - Amber, Spade, Ryo, Dice, Coocoo

At the time of this writing, Stage 124 only features 1 Spade enemy and therefore the strategy by Wei S works perfectly fine. This is very difficult to pull off without Shu (though you can replace Shu with Ola/SongCo if you have them). The highlights as provided by Wei S are: Begin with Xan, then Sol. You're stalling for all of the Ryos to come out (roughly until the procession reaches your tower and hits it for about 3-5 million HP) then you can tornado the whole lot back and begin deploying Sol, Opera, Shu and Friend Help. Right as the mushroom enemies meet your rangers, you want to use your invincibility. Before invincibility runs out, use meteor. Right before invincibility ends (try to time it so you waste as little time as possible), use ice shot. If all the mushrooms, bunnies and dice die at this point, then you know you've timed it correctly. From here on out, you're just going to need Xan, Shu and Witch Cony. Maximize your deployment of Shu and Cony by timing it so you only have one Xan out at any time. Xan can withstand 7 Spade attacks before dying, and you'll want to deploy a new Xan when the 5th attack hits the current Xan. You will likely hit Hurry Up, but you should still down the tower before the Hurry Up pressure becomes too great. 

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If you have Ola, SongCo and Dwight mastered, there's the LOL easy way to do 124.

If 124 flip-flops back to the 2-Spade version at some point, you can check out this video by Katsunco, which uses Bernard, SoCo, Ola and Hip Hop. Wei S also figured out how to game the trigger so that you'd only ever get 1 Spade if the stage does pop 2 of them (one at the regular start point and one when you reach the tower).

For this part 1 post, I'll end it here at 124. The latter part of the area is quite different and needs to be discussed separately. For stages 125-132, see Part 2.

Since a lot of death is expected to happen throughout the course of this area's stages, how can you use Gold Brown to your advantage? It's "semi-random"... Gold Brown is triggered when you happen to lose a whole bunch of consecutive times on the same stage. This is an article brought to you by the LINE Rangers 台灣社團. Basically, if you fail to clear a stage about ~10 times in a row, you can expect that Gold Brown will come and assist you soon. If you wish to force a trigger, you can simply start the stage you need Gold Brown on, wait until the first friend support unit shows up, and if it is not Gold Brown, just pause the game and hit Restart. Repeat until he shows up. According to the article, Gold Brown is a Splash class, he does 235k per hit, hits once per 5 seconds (47k DPS), Normal move speed, and he has about 8 million HP. Neat-o!

Missile, Ice Shot and Meteor Damage

Note : This information current as of May 2014 only. 

Missile Damage

Your missile levels up every time you invest some coins into it. In the earlier stages it seems like a great idea to upgrade your missiles because it seemed to do a lot of helpful damage. I have personally felt like the higher my player level became (which in turn meant more coins required for each missile level), the less it was worth to invest coin into a missile. My rangers feel more powerful these days and my missile feels like it's doing a lot less than my rangers. So why would I invest over 100,000 coins into this category at player level 75+? The question has been gnawing at me a while so I decided to try and figure out, how much damage does my missile do? My current missile level is 78.

I used a level 50 Hunt and stage 16's dragon boss to try to approximate some numbers. One hit from Hunt causes 19791 damage (tested it against an enemy tower). In Stage 16, it takes 5 hits to kill the dragon boss so my best guess is that the dragon has between 79164 to 98955 HP. We can then figure that half his health would be somewhere between 39582 to 49477 HP, the point which would be indicated by visually seeing the dragon get knocked back.

I tested by firing the missile and then allowing Hunt to hit him. The missile did some damage, then after Hunt hit him once, the dragon was knocked back (reaching half health). So this was evidence that the missile only did somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 damage, definitely less than 39582 damage since the missile alone didn't knock him back.

From just normal gameplay, I think we can all agree that the missile does a concrete number in damage, and not a set percentage. In later stages, the missile feels like it is hardly doing anything. The boss's health bars don't even move, whereas in lower stages, the missiles seem to be hitting for a large chunk of the boss's health.

It's tough to put an exact number on it, but I think it's safe to say that for a missile that hits approximately 30K (even splashed over a lot of targets), it's hardly worth putting any coin into once you get into the higher player levels. If you want to compare, level 80 Alice does over 220K in one hit. Level 70 Opera James does 109K in one hit, also as splash over all targets in range. 30K splash is peanuts! Upgrading missile becomes astronomically expensive in higher levels and, in my opinion, it isn't worth it. Missile upgrade is low priority along with tower health now. I'll upgrade them when I am sitting on a wealth of gold, but otherwise I'm not going to bother.

Ice Shot Damage

Ice Shot's description states that it "damages enemies by freezing." Does it really? I tested whether it really does by recording videos of myself versus bosses in various stages.

Stage 16 Ice Shot thawing

Stage 64 Ice Shot Thawing

Stage 84 Ice Shot thawing

If you click to enlarge the images, you'll see that indeed Ice Shot does damage them. The damage occurs when the enemies thaw, not when they become frozen. The screenshots also illustrate that Ice Shot does a set percentage of damage since it takes the same "chunk" of health off the bar from bosses that clearly have very different health pools. How many percent? Again, it's hard to say, but I would guess 3% to 5% looks about correct.

Meteor Damage

It always bothered me that the Meteor item cost more than the others. Sure, it does a bunch of damage, but so what? What exactly makes it more powerful than Ice Shot? [NOTE: Below discoveries about meteor are applicable to single player stage mode. Not confirmed for Friend or Team Battle Mode.]

To test, I took a lot of video captures of various stages and watched the playback in slow motion to try to figure it all out. Unfortunately, Meteor's damage is incremental with a damage-over-time element which makes it is difficult to show in still images, so you'll have to take my word for it and maybe test for yourself to see what I mean. 

Meteor does damage five separate times spread over a small area immediately behind the front-most enemy. Each time it tosses a meteor down to the ground, it does an initial amount of damage to anything in that area, then burns them for an additional amount. It does this 5 separate times to 5 different spots. 

This is the shot right before I hit Meteor. The first meteor will target the area where the green UFO enemy is standing. 

Meteor #1

Meteor #2

Meteor #3 - Dragon boss is finally within range and gets hit

Meteor #4

Meteor #5

Notice how the boss's health is lower than when #5 hits. This is the additional burn damage that happens after a meteor hits.

Positioning

I tried over and over and concluded that it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to time it such that the boss gets hit by all 5 meteors. Usually they only get hit by about 3 of the 5 meteors. The area that it hits is relatively tight. The first meteor hits from the left and the rest sweeps towards the right while all bosses typically move from right to left. The only times I think it might be possible for the boss to get hit by all 5 meteors are: (1) you are insanely good at timing tornado such that the boss gets swept back at the same rate as the Meteors dropping, or (2) Boss health is close to half when meteors #1, 2 and 3 hit, then they are hit by meteor #4 and 5 because of the knock back to the right. I haven't ever successfully done the latter, but I guess theoretically it is possible (for bosses that get knocked back a great distance like the crawling worm in Altar of Flame).

Conversely, never time your item usage such that your Meteor will completely miss. I have done this by accident before. If while tornado is blowing everyone back (on a long pathway stage) then you hit meteor, the hot rocks will start to drop where there are no targets because the enemies are all swept back to their tower already. Positioning matters with this item, unlike Ice Shot which freezes absolutely everything on the path. 

Damage

I tested with a number of different stages and I've concluded that Meteor hits for a percentage of the total health of boss enemies. So if the boss is at 100% health, you release Meteor and 3 meteors hit it, then the boss will be left with approximately 70% of their health. Each meteor hits and burns for a total of approximately 10% the boss enemy's total health. It's a visual "guess-timate" so take it as you will! By the way, it is not 10% of the boss's current health. If it were dealing 10% of its current health in damage, then we would see that the meteors never actually kill any enemies but just bring it down in health and never actually reach 0 HP, which is untrue. [Side note: Percentage damage does not appear to apply to non-boss enemies. Meteor seems capable of one-shot killing low health little enemies outright, like the little UFO in my first picture above.]

So on average, you can expect that the Meteor item will deal 30% damage to bosses close to the front of the enemy line. Since it is a percentage, that can mean that it lopped off a lot of boss health, multiplied by however many bosses you are facing at the time. The potential damage is huge. Knowing this now, I think I feel that the 700 coins they charge me for the use of this item is justified. 30% can be crucial to timing, or help push through a Hurry Up phase where everything is already reduced to 50% health. 

I tested these items to the best of my knowledge. If anyone has other ideas or methods on how to figure out a more accurate damage meter, do share. 

Rangers to Keep, Rangers to Eat

A friend suggested that I write a description for each ranger and at first I hesitated because I knew it would be a big opinion post. But as I combed through some different Line Rangers communities online, I realized that the question, "should I keep it or should I eat it" comes up quite often. There is nothing more devastating than finding out later that you ate a powerful ranger because you didn't know any better at the time. So if you have found your way here with this question, I hope this post is helpful to you.

Below is my description of rangers that are worth having and my reasons for keeping them or selling/combining ("synthesizing") them. Keep in mind that these descriptions are applicable for normal single-player mode.

Caveat: When deciding which rangers to put on your team, you should always consider the kind of enemies you are facing, the length of the path in the stage and how many minerals they cost to deploy. It is also important to understand what the ranger's attack stats are.

As always, the full list of rangers is here.

[This post was last updated on July 10, 2014.]

CONY  long-range speed/splash

• Lucifer Cony, Best Couple Cony, Witch Cony, Elf Cony, and Magician Cony are all speed class rangers. You can deploy Cony very rapidly back to back at very little mineral cost. Particularly Witch Cony, Best Couple Cony and Lucifer Cony at max level, if you manage to get a lot of them out, they lay waste to enemies fast. Consider using Cony for stages that have a lot of low-health enemy targets and stages that have a very long pathway. 
• Elf Cony is a 3-star ranger gift for sending invitations to friends. She was also obtainable during an event in August 2014. During this event, players could finally max their Elf Cony to level 60.
• In early stages, Magician Cony can be very helpful because she's long-range, fast, and low cost but once you get Manager, you will find that he hits much harder.
• Sorcerer Cony, Songster Cony and Summer Cony are splash rangers. They hit multiple targets with every attack they shoot out. Sorcerer and Songster are both fantastic to have on your team. They also move relatively quickly but unlike their speed class lookalikes, they have a longer cooldown (time between deployment) and they cost more minerals to deploy. Summer Cony is somewhat less desirable only because she is a 3-star ranger. But she does have advantages. She's inexpensive to deploy and for a 3-star ranger, she's really quite powerful. She trails Songster's damage by a significant amount, but she's still not bad for how cheap she is.
• Sorcerer Cony (who I lovingly call SoCo) is one of the highest damage rangers in the game. Songster doesn't do as much DPS as her big sister, but Songster is not bad still. I like Songster better than Clara because she costs less, moves & attacks faster, and hits from further away. However, if you only have one Songster, don't throw away Clara since you can easily get a level 70 Clara. A level 70 Clara is does more DPS than a level 50 Songster.
• All Conys have relatively low health so you need to protect them with rangers at the front of your army.
• End Game: Keep Lucifer, Witch, Best Couple, Sorcerer and Songster Cony

BROWN   melee (mostly)

• Thunder Brown, Best Couple Brown, Frog Brown, Underwear Brown, Summer Brown, Super Brown and Brownie are health rangers. I like the Brown series of health rangers quite a lot because they move at a decent speed and their cooldown are all about 5 seconds, which is acceptable for most stages. Thunder Brown costs the most minerals of the bunch and you may find him useful if you encounter stages that need a lot of big-HP tanks (he has over 1 million HP at max). There are more affordable alternatives like Macho Moon who can tank for less cost. Summer Brown is an interesting option as a health ranger because for a 4-star ranger, he has more HP than his 5-star lookalikes, while costing quite a bit less. Summer Brown has 1.5 million HP at level 70, but does peewee damage. For a health ranger though, the health is mostly what matters.
• Frog Brown can be obtained by inviting friends to play the game or now you also have a chance to get him from Gacha. He makes a fantastic tank for your team until about stages in the mid 80's. At that point, you may be better off with Xan. 
• General Brown is one of my favorite balance rangers. He is meaty enough to take a lot of hits and deals a very decent amount of damage. He is also pretty cheap to deploy as he is a 4-star ranger. I have often used General Brown instead of a health ranger.
• Hip Hop Brown is a speed ranger but he can dual purpose as a health ranger as well. Hip Hop Brown gains a lot of health as he levels up. He costs only 210 minerals and his cooldown is a mere 3 seconds so you can deploy him over and over to keep the front of your army safe. He can easily double as your team's primary health ranger. 
• Red Brown is also a speed ranger, but he doesn't have the kind of HP that his big brother Hip Hop does. He was available as a limited edition ranger on two occasions. He is not available in Gacha or stages anymore. He is an interesting option as a super-lowbie because of his speed and cost. At level 60 he has 153K health so he's really not a bad choice as a filler if you need someone to quickly rush to the front and take a few hits. Red Brown is a keeper because he's both a collector's item and he's quite useful as a mini-tank/lowbie hybrid. 
• Ola Brown is the first of the Brown series to break out of the melee status. He's not just any ranged distance ranger, he's the longest range splash unit in the game currently. He's a delicate guy, only 104K health at level 80, but he can throw almost 49K DPS at a cost of only 350 mineral, which makes him more attack-to-cost effective than Sorcerer Cony. His low health but long range will keep him safe from most things, but be aware that enemies like the Convini (onigiri enemy), Creamy (ice cream enemy) and Richard (green dino/lizard enemy) will definitely kill Ola Brown in seconds. One last thing: He's limited edition, only available in the GACHA mix for the month of June 2014, so you must get him while you can and then keep him forever!
• End Game: Keep Thunder, Best Couple, Summer Brown, General, Hip Hop, Red and Ola Brown.

Edward melee splash 

• Edward is a brand new limited-time ranger that is only obtainable for the month of August 2014. He's very, very strong splash ranger with well over 1 million HP. Edward's splash range is quite large, hitting a huge area in front of him where his acorn mobile zips through. 
• The cons of Edward are that he costs a huge amount of minerals to deploy. If you're not high enough level, you cannot even deploy him right away. Edward's cooldown is also very, very long - 38 seconds normally, 19 seconds at master level. At high levels, though, Edward is a great ranger to have on your team for long levels that require big sustained damage. He's definitely a keeper if you are lucky enough to have him.

COBE  melee splash 

• Cobe is really adorable and if you happen to have one in the lower stages, he (she?) is fantastic to use. He has a relatively high health pool and attacks multiple targets with his lollipop which makes him a good alternative to a traditional health ranger. 
• At level 50, Cobe starts to become less useful in the Ancient Temple area. But if you manage to get Cobe to level 70, he is still a very viable splash ranger to use throughout. The only thing I don't like about Cobe is his long cooldown period, but pair him with another melee ranger like Moon, Brown or Jessica, and he will be fine. 
• End Game: Keep Cobe if you can get him to level 70. 

MOON   melee

• Masked Moon, Fighter Moon, Champion Moon and Popeye Moon are balance rangers. Moon does a decent job being a backup tank for your team while doing more damage than a health ranger. Fighter and Masked Moon are obtainable from later stages and it's a good idea to max them out. They rush to the front and can help hold the front line if your health rangers die before you get another one up. 
• Macho Moon is a great health ranger to have because he runs faster than Brown, and costs less than Thunder Brown while packing a lot more health than Frog Brown. He is cheaper to deploy and  has a lower cooldown than Xan, so if you get your hands on Macho Moon, keep him.
• End Game: Keep Masked, Fighter, Macho Moon.

BOSS  mid-to-long-range attack

• Legend Boss, Rapper Boss, Gangster Boss and Dancer Boss all attack from mid-range so be careful using him if you have dangerous enemies that can hit past the front line. Boss does not have a lot of health so you really must try to protect him. He attacks very slowly but each hit packs a punch. His attack power is quite good when compared to other single target ranged hitters. He also moves quicker than most other single target ranged hitters. I like using Boss if I don't have access to any splash rangers. Rapper Boss versus Ellin or Sindy, I would choose either Ellin or Sindy over Rapper because of hit range advantage. 
• Gangster Boss is the only one who is pretty useless. He isn't obtainable from stages until stage 93 and by that time he won't be helpful at all. If you randomly get him from Gacha in the early stages, you can certainly use him. 
• Dancer King Boss is currently the second-longest range attacker in the game. He's so far in the distance and his attack power is so high that he's basically a cannon. If you get your hands on him, train him up and he won't let you down.
• End Game: Keep Dancer King and Legend Boss. 

JAMES  mid-to-long range single/splash

• Gentleman James, Biker James, Sexy James and Ballerino James are balance rangers who hit from a short distance away from the enemy, and they have a decent amount of health. James can take a couple of hits if your health ranger happens to die, but he is not as meaty as Moon as a balance ranger. James' DPS is nothing very special because he is not as good as Boss series rangers for attack but he sort of makes up for it with more health. I really don't find James to be very effective and I haven't ever found a reason to use him over someone else. Gentleman James has decent damage and a lot of health but he's too far away from the front line to be a tank. If you get a 5 or 4 star James, maybe just keep him around in case the game developers buff him up one day to be actually useful. You can eat him up otherwise.
• Opera James is the only splash ranger of the James series a very good one. He attacks multiple targets from a distance and at max level he hits very hard. Opera James is a solid addition to any team. At max level he costs less and hits harder than Clara but has a slightly longer cooldown. 
• Prince James is one of the newest rangers in the game and is currently the longest range attacker (longer than Dancer King Boss by a little). He does incredible single target damage (more than Dancer King), has really decent amount of HP, so he's definitely a good asset to the team.
• End Game: Keep Opera James, Prince James. 

JESSICA  melee 

• Charismatic Jessica, Warrior Jessica, and Hero Jessica are all great splash rangers. Max level Jessicas are very versatile. You can use her in lieu of a backup tank ranger like Moon. Jessica's high speed and high HP make her the perfect alternative to a health ranger altogether if you are looking for ways to increase your total damage output. Once you get to the stages where you can get Warrior Jessica, it is a good idea to farm 5 and max her out. 
• Lightning Jessica is unlike the others in her series. She is a speed ranger, moves lightning-fast and can be deployed again and again very quickly. She has more HP at max level than Warrior, but since her attack is single target, her damage will generally be much lower. For her cost, speed, and cooldown, Lightning Jessica may be an interesting option as a backup tank, similar to Hip-Hop Brown in this respect, but with lower stats. One thing to be cautious about is that Lightning Jessica's range is a bit farther back than her splash lookalikes. She leaves room between her hit range and the enemy's hit range, which may result in allowing the enemy some extra forward marching space.
• End Game: Keep Charismatic, Warrior and Lightning Jessica

There sure are a lot of humanoids.

• KSM is a splash ranger, and one of the highest DPS ones at that. He costs a lot to deploy and has a very long cooldown, but he makes up for it with his insane attack power. He is worth deploying in almost every stage and situation. You don't even have to worry whether you will waste your minerals deploying him while fighting a boss stage because he has a lot of health. He is slow, but he will survive even if he gets hit a few times on the way to the fight. Make no mistake, he is one of the most sought-after ranger in the game at the moment, so if you got him, congratulations!
• Lia is a balance ranger who packs a caffeinated punch. She is small but she actually is a very high damage single target ranger. Her cooldown is so low that you can amass an army of little girls very quickly. I had reservations about using her when she was low level because of her cost but actually at high levels she's pretty useful.
• Alice is the highest single target dps ranger that you can get from stage clears. She hits like a truck and sports a lot of health. The only downside to Alice is that she is very slow in every way (cooldown, move & attack speed). But if you manage to get her into range of the fight, she does tear up the place with her shoe. If you don't have Lia, Alice isn't a bad alternative.
• Clara is a solid splash ranger and the first splash ranger you can obtain from stage clears who can attack from a good distance away. Once you can safely farm stage 40 to get her, I would highly recommend doing so. Clara will make life a lot easier as you progress through the mid-level stages. 
• Dwight is a very powerful balance ranger to have on your team because he comes with very high attack stats as well as extremely high health, like Bernard. He costs quite a lot to deploy, but he is well worth the mineral cost because you almost never have to worry that he will die quickly. As far as single target damage, Dwight is one of the best.
• Xan is the highest HP health ranger you can obtain from stage clears. He costs quite a lot and his cooldown is longer than most other health rangers but he makes up for it by flying to the front of the fight very quickly. If you get Xan, keep him as he may very useful for stages where you need a big meaty tank. 
• Styne is pretty much the default health ranger at mid-lower stages. He's fine to use if you have no other viable alternatives available. Once you get 5 Stynes combined, he has a lot of health and remains useful until around stage 70. Styne pairs really well with Moon on a team because Moon moves fast and can be Styne's backup. If you get your hands on General Brown, Macho Moon or Xan, you might want to try them over Styne. 
• Bob is a health ranger who really has a ton of health but he moves very, very slowly. You have to plan ahead when you use Bob and learn to anticipate when he is going to die because you will need either a backup tank to help take the hit when he dies or time the arrival of another Bob to waddle his way there. If you don't have Frog Brown, Macho Moon, Styne or Xan, Bob is ok to use. Since Styne is obtainable from stage clears, I would dump Bob as soon as I got 2 or 3 Stynes combined. If you have several Bobs combined, the difference between Styne is slight and you'll have to judge for yourself which one has more of a health or speed advantage for your needs. At max, I would pick Styne still. While he has a little less HP, he costs a great deal less. If you have Macho Moon, then there is no contest. 
• Manager is probably one of the best ranged attackers you can get very early on in the game. Combine 5 of them together and you should have pretty decent outgoing damage in the lower stages. When you can trade up for Clara, Sindy or Ellin, do so. 
• Abdula's pure splash damage stats outperform every other 4-star splash ranger currently. Looking at damage alone, he even tops Sorcerer Cony at max level. However, when you compare how much he costs (which is a lot for a 4-star ranger) then actually SoCo pulls ahead by a little bit. The difference is that Abdula has nearly double the health, and therefore will generally live much longer than SoCo which under certain battle conditions will make him a much better choice. He's a keeper.
• Shu is a splash ranger whose range is almost the same as Ola Brown. His survivability makes him an excellent ranger to have. His damage is better than Clara's and he has much more health than her. He's a solid splash ranger, but he is limited edition so unfortunately, not everyone will have him. 
• Susu is part of the same promotion as Shu, but you can only randomly get him from Premium Gacha for a limited time. Susu is the highest DPS splash ranger by a mile, and he over 4 million health (at master level) which makes him perfect for standing in melee range and crushing enemies. The pros are that he's really meaty and destroys things in no time. The cons are that he's very rare to obtain, costs quite a lot to deploy and has the 2nd longest cooldown of any ranger on the roster. If you get him, by all means, you should keep him. 
• Hitman is quite similar to KSM and Abdula, but actually he is worth more damage per cost, which makes him even more worth it to deploy than KSM. He attacks from a really nice distance away, and his high-DPS is very impressive. 
• Luis, for all intents and purposes, is more cost-efficient Dwight. His damage to cost ratio is better than Dwight's, but per unit he does less damage. There are a few tradeoffs, but all in all still a solid damage dealer for a balance class.
• Chichi is the new better, faster Dwight! She's so expensive to deploy but she's worth every penny. She moves fast and she has more health than any other ranger at the moment. Her half million damage at level 80 is quite scary for a little girl.
• End Game: Keep KSM, Lia, Alice, Clara, Dwight, Xan, Abdula, Hitman, Luis, Chichi

DRAGONS  splash 

• Sol is currently the highest damage splash ranger that you can obtain from stage clears. At max level, he does about 36000 DPS, which is quite powerful. And unlike Opera James, Clara and Sorcerer/Songster Cony, Sol can actually take a lot of damage before he dies. This is his biggest advantage in the later stages over other splash rangers. He is, as many people will agree, a poor man's KSM. Definitely keep Sol and level him up. 
• Luke is some kind of a dinosaur in a suit, I guess. He is a melee splash ranger so his large health pool will help him survive in the front line. Luke does less damage than Sol but if you have Luke and you don't have any other better splash ranger alternatives, he will do just fine. But otherwise, I think Warrior Jessica, who is obtainable from stage clears, is a more versatile alternative. Keep him around if you have 5 Lukes combined as a fill-in splash ranger.
• Dickey is one of the first splash rangers you can get and he is pretty useful up to about stage 30. He's very slow getting to the front of the fight, but if you manage to get him to the enemy tower, he can help shorten the battle by splashing down the tower. He's nice to keep around until you have a better option like Vlad or Clara. Don't get me wrong - I'm only saying he's fine for the very early stages! 

• Bernard (roasted peanut? sweet potato?) is a very healthy ranger with a lot of HP. He has well over 3,000,000 HP at max level, but he is very costly and his cooldown is very, very long. He is definitely worth keeping, but more as a back pocket tank. I wouldn't use him as the only tanking unit at higher stages because he walks so slowly and takes so long to produce. But if you time it right, Bernard can be very useful indeed.
• Honey the Sally doppelganger bee is a speed ranger with formidable attack power when you get her to max level. Even at level 60 her attack is not to be dismissed lightly. Because she costs very little, move speed is very fast and her cooldown is merely 3 seconds, you can spam many Honeys out and the sheer quantity of her attacks going out can be overwhelming. Another way to use Honey is as a halfway lowbie. She's spammable, but her relatively high attack gives you a little bit of extra damage on tough enemies. Honey has helped me win several stages where the tiniest increase in damage was crucial. Obtainable from Gacha or 100 friend invitations, she's really quite worth getting and keeping around.
• Dumpy is the highest single target attack ranger currently. He has more DPS than he has HP! He rolls on his steamer to the front line very quickly and can easily get himself killed as a result. He doesn't have a lot of HP so if you use him you must make sure he is protected at all times, or he will quickly become enemy appetizer. At level 80 he does the equivalent of 477K damage per second! Seriously, make sure he lives! 
• Sindy (a tanuki) & Ellin (cloud elemental) are both fantastic rangers to have on your team in the mid-stages (~52 through 87). They are both obtainable from stage clears so anyone can get a max level Sindy and Ellin. Before getting Alice, Sindy and Ellin are almost indispensable as high DPS rangers to have on your team. Sindy does a bit more damage and attacks faster, but costs more. Ellin is a little more affordable which may be helpful in some stages. They are both very useful to have in the mid and near-end game. If you are using freely obtainable rangers only, they're practically indispensable. If you play the Premium Gacha a lot, Sindy and Ellin will be old news for you.
• Cherina is one of the newest splash rangers and she looks like a cherry bomb because she is. She rockets her way to the front line and deals an astonishing amount of splash damage. She's costs very little to deploy, has an incredibly short cooldown and sports enough health to tank (at max level). I can't begin to tell you how powerful she really is so you have to see her in action yourself. A half dozen pack of Cherinas at your front line and your enemies will be in a lot of trouble.
• Mully... I don't even know what kind of creature Mully is. But he is a fantastic attack ranger with high attack, high health, and very fast move speed. At moderate cost, Mully is great for pushing forward against clumps of difficult enemies because he can withstand a lot of damage while dealing lots of pain. He's a great ranger to have on the team.
• Elle is a new 3-star splash ranger. She's a top tier 3-star ranger and can contend with some 4-star rangers as well. Her damage is really good for the amount of minerals she costs. Elle's best feature is her long range. She can fire from a huge distance and safely stay out of the enemy fire. Not a bad ranger for 3 stars!
• End Game: Keep all of them!

LOWBIES

Little guys Scott, Bella, Crush and Glenn are speed rangers that I think everyone should keep around. There are many stages in the game where lowbies like these can be very, very useful. They are speed rangers so their mineral cost will never change even if they level up to max.

JUST MAYBE

• Dane is a 3-star health ranger obtainable very early on and I think he is useful only in the very early stages of the game. Though as soon as you can get Styne, there's really no reason to continue using Dane. 
• Pew and Vlad are 3-star splash rangers but are so slow and have so little health that half the time they don't make it to the battle before dying. If you happen to get them very, very early on, they might be useful to you. But once you can get Clara, I would not bother with either of them.
• Hunt the pirate fowl is a pretty interesting option. He is similar to Cony in that he is a speed ranger. At max level 60, he actually does damage that is not bad and he costs very little. I don't think he is worthwhile having in your main team but he is a nice option to keep in your back pocket for some specific stages that need a fast, low cost long range attacker. It's a very niche spot. 
• The single target James series (not including Prince James though) got buffed recently but I would still put them in the maybe category. There's just no clear reason to use them unless you don't have a better alternative for single target attack.

DON'T BOTHER

Alex, Frankie, Duncan, Jason, Lucas, Toti, Ryan, Walter, Becky, Clark, Jack, Jacob, Mike, Mummy, Rei, Ben, Simon, Ham, Jill, Joe, Merry, Ned, Puff, Sisi, Zac, Ron
These rangers are either so low stat or appear in the game out of sequence for their usefulness period that there are better options for your team. They are pretty much food for other rangers.

That about covers the rangers that I think are worth mentioning. If you are reading this and passionately disagree, comment and let me know why you do.

Which rangers did you keep on your team longest? Which rangers will you never eat/sell because they did so much for you?