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...

Team Battle Mode: Basics

Team Battle Mode can be a lot of fun and challenging but it can also be a real pain sometimes. If you are new to the game or new to the latest update which introduced Team Battle Mode, please read the basic premise of it on my first post.

This post will strictly be about the goings on of the battlefield itself. The objective of this post is to give some guidance to players who are just starting out in Team Battle (or Friend Battle), so I will make a lot of generalizations. It will most likely be irrelevant to players who have already pounded their way into the top 1000 global ranking. The very nature of going head-to-head against other player teams is dynamic so there is no way to lay out flawless game plans. The only thing I can do is call attention to some general guidelines and ideas to help you formulate your own battle strategy.

By the way, for the people who are copying/translating my content (this post or any other post) for view somewhere else: I don't mind that you're sharing the knowledge to a wider community, but do me the courtesy of linking the info back to my page, please. I spend a lot of time writing this stuff and would appreciate the link back for acknowledgment. Thanks.

Rank

When the global ladder is reset, you will not have a rank and it will just show you as --. Your first battle game will determine your rank and your score (which always starts at 1000). If you started playing team battles very late after the ladder reset, you may be "--" rank for a long time before you fight your way into the top 50,000 ranks. You only get a number rank if you're in the top 50,000.

Ranks update about once every 5 minutes so if you don't see your rank change right away, wait a few minutes and check again. Your rank will reset every Monday at 06:00 Japan Standard Time. You can see both the global rank on this screen and how you stack up against everyone on your Friends list. Your badge type/icon will change according to how many points you gain throughout the week (click on the ? button to see the ranking badges). Ranking matters a lot as it affects the opponent you will be up against.

The Opponent AI 

The opponent player that you face is determined in part by your global ranking and in part by your score, though the exact algorithm I cannot say for sure. If you are just starting the week's ladder unranked, the server may put you up against some opponents of variable difficulty because they don't exactly know where you stack up yet. It's still very early in the game so I don't have any solid details to confirm this but in my own game play this appears to be the case.

From what I can tell so far, the difficulty of your opponent relies on 2 things: (1) the ranger team and the ranger's stats, which is obvious, and (2) the opponent's AI, or artificial intelligence. At low ranks, when you are going up against other low ranking players, the AI will be quite easy, simple and predictable. They'll use fewer items, upgrade slowly, and deploy rather slowly as well. I'll update when I know more definitively, but for now I will generalize that as you gain points and break through to new badge levels, the AI steps up its game. The AI seems to tune higher and sharper in terms of its decision making. You'll find that at higher ranks, the computer will make marked determinations on how to open the game based on the layout of the path and what you are doing. When it decides to upgrade minerals and when it determines is the time to rush in to attack you are active decisions, not predetermined steps. One of the things that will make or break the game is timing of item usage. At very high ranks, the AI will accurately determine when to unleash items on you to maximize utility and ruin your day. At lower ranks, the AI uses items pretty poorly, and you can turn that into an advantage.

As dinky as the game may seem at times, I must applaud the developers on their tuning of the AI for Team Battle Mode. It's really well done and it plays impressively. So far, I haven't noticed any glaringly obvious robot moves like "if this happens then the computer always does this."

Path Length

The battlefield length varies from battle to battle and the one you get is selected at random. The length of the path affects your entire strategy. In the long paths you will most likely be able to safely upgrade minerals 2 or 3 times before you have to deal with any serious onslaught of enemy units. In the short path, it's much more of a gamble. If you get units out first, you might be able to snipe the enemy tower before the opponent AI has a chance to react. If the enemy immediately deploys units but you are upgrading minerals, you could be dead before you know what's happened. 

The long paths favor faster moving rangers as well as rangers with a very long attack range. You have the opportunity to spread out your team over a lot more space so that your back row units are less vulnerable to enemy splash damage.

On the other hand, short paths tends to allow slower moving power hitters to shine more. Long range units are still valuable, but the slow, hard hitting rangers get a chance to do some serious damage in the short path. It is important to keep this in mind because for short paths you'll most likely want to apply a lot of offensive pressure on the opponent so that they are forced to spend their minerals defending rather than building up a lot of minerals to deploy big hitters like KSM. By the way, you should always be wary of enemy splash rangers on ultra short paths. The splash radius can be bigger than you thought and your tower may be taking damage even if you're not standing right outside of it.

Short paths lend themselves to really fast tower sniping. If you are quick and your team runs fast, you can also do it with long paths, but short makes this obviously easier. You can strategically plan to use your items in quick succession to overwhelm and obliterate your opponent on a short path.

Like in single player mode, in every PvP team battle you must make a decision on whether you want to battle near your tower, in the middle of near their tower. The length of the path and the composition of your team's rangers will help you determine that.

Item Usage

Supposing all rangers, treasures, upgrades, and friends are equal, only 2 things set you apart from the opponent AI: the timing of your deployments and the timing of your items. Items can give you an upper hand if you use them carefully. If you have not read the quirks I found out about Ice shot and Meteor, check them out here. The kicker about items in team battle is that the opponent can use them, too, and now we will have to consider how they can be used both offensively and defensively.

Ice Shot 

If you thought ice shot was strategically important in normal single player mode, it is even more critical in team battle mode. While the opponent is frozen, gauge your team's status. At its current state, will your forces be able to overtake their front line? When the thaw happens, will your front line be safe? Should you upgrade your minerals to prepare for a huge push after the thaw? Or do you want to continually deploy more units to directly push your way through? This is likely to be the only few seconds you have to reconsider your strategy and make big changes if necessary.

Offensive: 

  - Combine tornado with ice shot to freeze the opponent right at their tower to maximize on splash damage. This is a very strong combination to use when both teams are equally matched to push things in your favor. This is also a "rush" tactic you can try to use at the beginning of a match to stunt the opponent's army and try to snipe the tower. After you tornado and ice shot, your rangers will camp outside the foot of the enemy tower. Splash rangers will splash the tower down if you can hold that position. 

  - Used alone, you can optimize by deploying a lot of splash rangers to quickly clean out the opponent's front line defenses. Ice shot is great when the opponent has a lot of rangers sitting clumped up at the front, less ideal when their army is all spread out.

Defensive:
  - If the opponent has slaughtered your front line and you need to regroup, you can use ice shot to buy you a few seconds, but only do this if your back row attackers are healthy and plentiful so you don't waste this precious item without doing any damage on the opponent.
  - If you are desperate to get back in the game, you can use ice shot to try to tear down the opponent's tanking rangers, then when ice shot wears off, follow up with invincibility to buy yourself even more time to keep building up your army.
  - When your opponent uses invincibility, you may want to consider using ice shot if your team is not looking healthy enough to survive through it. It will prevent the opponent from scoring kills while they're unkillable but it will also mean that you cannot maximize on damage. Use this time to rally more forces or upgrade your minerals to face them again once invincibility wears off. This is a sort of desperate measure, though.

Reactive:
  - If the opponent uses ice shot on you, in most cases the appropriate response is to use invincibility. In fact, I personally use invincibility when the ice shot duration reaches about half (few seconds in). Your tanking rangers likely won't die just a couple of seconds into an ice shot, and then you gain the advantage of using the last few seconds of invincibility once you thaw. This way your rangers don't die and they will stick around to help return fire while reinforcements arrive after the thaw. Remember, a front line ranger even with 1 HP + invincibility is still unkillable for the duration of the item, so why waste it being frozen and unable to attack? In fact, you need those rangers post-thaw more than ever because the enemy army is bigger after the ice shot.
  - When your opponent uses ice shot on you, should you use ice shot back on them? This makes for a few frozen seconds when no one is attacking anyone, and the only viable things you can do while you wait are deploy more units for later use, upgrade minerals, deploy friends, or use meteor. My opinion is that ice shot is better strategically used when you can deal damage. There are other ways to defend against being frozen, like tornado (for long paths) and invincibility. Or if you're feeling confident, just let them have at your front line for the few seconds and keep doing what you are doing without wasting any items to defend.

Meteor
Meteor does damage to all enemy units in an area-of-effect, so be sure that the enemy is in a position where the meteors will land on them. By the way, from max distance, meteor will completely miss Dancer King Boss, so that's pretty cool.

Offensive:
  - Try and avoid using meteor early in the game because with fewer units on the field, you're kind of wasting the potential damage that meteor can do. Later on in the game when there are tons of enemies on the screen, meteor can really do enormous damage.
  - About a second after the opponent uses tornado on you, meteor is performs amazingly as all 5 of the meteors that come screaming down are guaranteed to hit some of the enemy rangers passing by. After you are swept backward, the opponent's rangers will start to move forward and that's when you should unleash meteor to hit all of them.
  - Don't use tornado on the opponent then unleash meteor. Doing so will likely result in the enemy only getting hit by 2 out of 5 meteors, wasting 3. If you hit tornado and then immediately hit meteor, your meteors will hit 0 units. :(
  - Combining meteor with invincibility can make a very successful push because it would have weakened the opponent and make them ripe for taking with your unkillable army. If you are having a standoff in the middle of the road, a move like this can be decisive.

Defensive:
  - Meteor isn't the most helpful for defensive plays, but if you combine it with a well-placed ice shot, you could weaken the opponent's rangers.

Reactive: 
  - When the opponent uses meteor on you, you have a split second to decide whether you want to use invincibility or not. If you do, you can save low health rangers in the back of your team. This is particularly helpful to players who use rangers like any of the Cony series (except maybe maxed SoCo), Opera James, Sindy, Ola Brown, etc. They're too scrawny to survive 1-2 meteor hits. If the bulk of your attackers are low HP and long range, you really should try to protect them with invincibility before the last couple meteors descend on them.

Tornado
Offensive:
  - To truly use tornado offensively, you will likely use it in combination with another item. However, you can use tornado to "re-stack" the enemy rangers to maximize your offensive splash damage. This is particularly useful against opponents with a bunch of KSM, Abdula or Sol (heavy hitting, slow attack speed, short range). If your rangers are fast moving or the path is short, after you tornado they'll all be stacked up and you have the opportunity to hit them. If the enemy front line rangers are fast moving (like Hip Hop Brown) and it's a long path, then their front line will burst to the middle of the path with no backup support so you'll have the opportunity to snipe their front rangers and then deal with the heavy hitting back row alone. You must time it appropriately!
  - As mentioned above, when the opponent uses tornado on you, it's a very good time to use meteor to hit the most number of enemy units. Resist the urge to tornado the opponent when they use it on you unless it is really absolutely necessary to survive.
  - Using tornado and following up with invincibility right as the teams are about to meet again is a strong move that will take advantage of "re-stacking" the opponent team.
  - You can do funny things that are a little bit offensive and defensive by timing it so that the tornado will blow them back at the same time as a big hit landing. If you're lucky, you'll hit them at half health and maybe buy another second of knock back.

Defensive:
   - Used alone, tornado by itself is a stall tactic. You buy yourself a little bit of time while the enemy walks back over to you, but if they have you cornered at your tower and splash is hitting the tower, blowing them back is a good option.

Reactive:
  - When the opponent uses tornado on you, should you use tornado on them? Maybe; it depends. If the opponent did it because you're getting close to their tower, you might be better off using tornado because you have the better army and you are pushing forward at that time. You don't have to, but it is a viable option if you think you can finish them off by doing so. If you are fighting a losing battle and the opponent pushes you back, then tornado against the opponent might save you. Whatever you do, don't tornado as soon as they use it unless you are purposely doing so for a reason. Especially if you are doing it to stall -- tornado the enemy when they are about to reach your front line to give yourself maximum time. If you both use tornado at the same time, all you have achieved is equalized both your positions to meet in the middle, which doesn't really gain you any advantage.

Invincibility
Offensive:
  - The benefits are obvious for offensive moves. The few seconds that your troops are invincible can make it very easy to push through a tough front. The added bonus of invincibility besides retaining your army for a few seconds is that you will likely kill quite a few enemy rangers and you'll acquire a lot of minerals for the kills, which enables you to deploy more rangers :D
  - Used at the beginning of a stage, you can quickly overwhelm and snipe the enemy tower
  - Used near the end of the game when you have amassed a huge army, you can use it to attempt to overwhelm the opponent. The only thing I must urge players is to practice keeping track of which items the opponent has already used. If you are using invincibility as an overwhelming offensive tactic, make sure that the opponent has already used their ice shot and their invincibility otherwise you may shoot yourself in the foot by using yours early.

Defensive: 
  - As mentioned above, invincibility is fantastic to use when you are in trouble, or when meteor is going to rain on your scrawny back row, or when ice shot is used on you. Of the three situations, I think using it during ice shot is the best defense because the potential to break you is highest during ice shot.

Reactive:
  - When the opponent uses invincibility, should you also use invincibility? I generally dislike using invincibility when they use it because I like to use invincibility to my advantage whenever possible. I also don't like to use ice shot as a defensive item because ice shot is also such a fantastic offensive item. When the opponent uses invincibility, I try to do one of two things instead: (1) use tornado if it's a very long path as a stall tactic. (2) Spam deployment of tanking rangers to hold the front. All invincibility means is that the opponent is unkillable for a few seconds. If you reinforce your front line, then there's nothing to fear. Once their invincibility is over, you can even retaliate with some items of your own to hit even harder.

Other Considerations

Should I upgrade minerals during a Team Battle? 

    This greatly depends on your production upgrade status. At level 80 and above, you can surely get by without upgrading minerals for many, many of the matches. For most of the lower AI matches, the computer is busy upgrading minerals and deploys nothing at the start. You can easily gain an advantage by deploying first. In the higher AI matches, the computer does not upgrade minerals and goes straight to deployment 9 out of 10 times in my experience. You are forced to defend if you upgrade minerals. 

    I found much higher success in not upgrading minerals at the start, and instead doing it when it is safe and I have minerals to spare during the match. Just don't forget to upgrade because the longer the battle drags on, the more advantageous having faster minerals will be.

Should I mimic the opponent's actions?

    No, you really shouldn't. By doing so you are doing everything it does except slower, and thus are at a disadvantage. Besides, the AI does not have to show you all 5 of its rangers. It is possible that (and I have personally seen) the AI deploys 4 rangers for most of the game, then later in the game suddenly deploy a 5th ranger to surprise you. You should go in with your own game plan, not follow the computer.

How is the opponent able to deploy so many rangers so fast? 

   If the computer does not upgrade minerals at the start, they will spend the initial set of minerals on 2-3 rangers right from the start. In addition, if they kill any of your units, they will gain minerals for the kills. And finally, the mineral max limit of the opponent player may be higher than yours and they might have started with more. The opponent may also have their rangers mastered, which means the ranger's cooldown is halved.

Ola Brown is killing everything. What can I do? 

   Ola Brown is very good and he tends to pop out super early in the fight because he's so cheap to deploy. But luckily, he's so scrawny that if the wind blows, he dies. You must take to the offense early against a team with Ola to prevent the opponent from forming a good defense for him. Tornado is also a great way to "re-stack" the enemy units so you can splash him to death. Also, from max distance, you can hit Ola Brown with the meteor item, so if you are planning on a big push, use meteor to weaken the Ola Brown troupe first, then push in. Not gonna lie, Ola Brown in any team makes things tougher. Ola Brown together with Hip-Hop Brown is a very rough combination to break, too. There's no silver bullet, I can only offer you strategy advice.

KSM is killing everything. What can I do? 

   KSM costs a lot of mineral to deploy and his cooldown is long, so the best defense against a team with KSM is a fast offense. Keep the opponent from deploying him at all by forcing it to defend as early as possible. If you let them deploy a whole stack of KSMs, then you're in trouble. If you have to fight your way through to him, remember that KSM has a rather wide hit radius but it's up in the front where your tanking rangers are. His hits will not be able to touch longer range units like Opera James, Sindy, Cony and Boss. If you must abandon your strongest short range attackers (like Dwight and Dumpy) in favor of long range attackers (like Cony, Opera, Alice, Lia, Boss, especially Dancer King) midway through the fight just to deal with KSM, do it. Strip your deployment down to only your tank ranger and your long range attackers and you will not have to fear KSM's frontal assault. Just like in single player mode, you can also stall with a couple of lowbies if you deploy them in a continuous steady stream while your long range attackers have a killing spree. Need to review which rangers have a long range? Check this post for details.

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This text-filled post has gone on long enough. I may add more as it comes to me, but as far as basics, I think that covers it! 

Gacha Probabilities - June 2014

The results are in from the June 19 - June 21 Double 5-star Chance Gacha Event! If you participated, thank you for contributing to the survey (created by 小為) to provide the Line Rangers player community with helpful information.

The Results

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 have concluded their survey once the event finished and they were able to collect 349 sets of data from participants, a total of 5782 results (raw data is here) from Gacha. Results were:

• 3★%: 30.56%
• 4★%: 21.55%
• 5★%: 47.89%

This 5 star result is over twice what the previous results were from their May study which were:

• 3★%: 49.22%
• 4★%: 30.17%
• 5★%: 20.60%

The Analysis

Authors 小為 and 楊濟安 of LINE Rangers 台灣社團 posted this new article about their findings with some more information and analysis on the numbers. Contained within this box is their article interpreted in English. Note: The numbers on the article were as of late hours of June 19 when the data up to that point was reflecting an average of 43.85%.

If you played the 5+1 Gacha with 47.89% odds of receiving a 5-star ranger, this translated to about 2.88 5★ rangers out of 6 balls for every 100 rubies played. They went on to answer some really good questions based on the 43.85% result that they got at the time of the writing of their post. Wherever possible I'll use their math and adapt it with the end-result number of 47.89%.

1. How many times do you need to play to receive one super ranger? 

  - They defined super ranger as one of the eight 5-star rangers that everyone typically wants to get: KSM, Dancer King Boss (DKB), Sorcerer Cony (SoCo), Bernard, Hip Hop Brown, Dumpy, Dwight, Ola Brown. There are a total of 20 5-star rangers on the roster so the chances of you receiving one of these shiny 8 rangers is actually 19.16% during the event. 100/19.16=5.22 spins of the Gacha on average before you can expect to receive one of the 8 super desirable rangers. 

2. How much do I need to spend on average to get a level 80 Ola Brown?

  - For this question, we're going to have to assume that the chances to receive each of the 5-star rangers are equal (side note from Panic: we know this to be untrue because Line Game Support has directly told me that the odds for each of the rangers is preset, and they have said that "rarer" rangers have a lesser chance. I understood this means in reality some rangers are really preset to be less likely to pop out). 

   So, anyway, Ola Brown is 1 out of 20 of the available 5★ rangers. Multiply this by our 47.89% and you'll get a 2.39% to receive Ola Brown, which will take approximately 42 Gacha spins for 1 Ola Brown. You need 5 Ola Browns to max out so that means you actually need about 210 spins.

    Well, 210 spins means you have to play the 5+1 35 times (3500 rubies). I don't know how much they charge all the other regions in the world but in US Dollars on the Android Google Play market during the Ruby Event we can get 494 rubies for roughly $49. In order to get 3500 rubies, we'd have to buy just over 7 packs, which costs $343 USD! Unfortunately, it sounds about right... And if you happen to be unlucky, you'll spend more. 

    That said, I sincerely hope that if you were aiming to get Ola Brown that you did all your Gachas during this past event because if you don't do it during the double chance event, chances are you'll end up spending a great deal more money. But then again, these are averages based on some reality, some assumption, so take it all with a grain of salt.

3. Should I spin with 20 rubies or 100 rubies? 

   - This question involves a concept that we've touched on before when I shared the May event's results on this blog, which is whether or not the 6 results you get from spending 100 rubies are independent events. This means that one spin of the Gacha has no bearing on the result of the next spin of the Gacha. The authors believe that the 6 results from 100 rubies Gacha are independent events because a lot of people reported getting four 4-stars and one 5-star, or three 5-stars and three 4-stars. This kind of result would not be possible if the game developer had set the 100 rubies Gacha to be dependent events. For instance, if we believe the Gacha is set up to predetermined dependent results, then we should often get results of three 3-stars, two 4-stars and one 5-star, with some variability but not to the extreme of some people getting four or five 4-star rangers in one shot of 100 rubies. So we assume they are independent events and we can use the June results of 47.89% to do some calculations.

For this example we'll just assume that the chance of you receiving the ranger you want is 1 out of 100 for sake of illustration. 

    - If you used 20 rubies x5, the chance of you getting the ranger is 5%. 

    - If you used 100 rubies, the chance of  you getting the ranger is 6%. 

Based on 47.89% chance to get a 5-star ranger, we have a 19.16% of getting one of the desirable super rangers. 

    - If you use 20 rubies five times to spin 5 times you will average only 0.958 desirable rangers (which is to say playing 5 times can possibly yield you zero desirable rangers). 

    - If you use 100 rubies once to spin 6 times, you will average 1.14 desirable rangers (which is to say you'll get at least 1 desirable ranger on average in the bundle of 6).

    The difference is slight, but it lies in the fact that 100 rubies gives you that one extra spin. Remember the answer we got to question 1 above: you need to spin 5.22 times on average before you can expect to get a desirable super ranger. Playing 100 rubies puts you inside the chance to get one since you are spinning 6 times. In this light, playing the 100 rubies game is relatively better. This was deduced based on the information that was collected from the data set.Of course, your personal experience may deviate from this because this is the "average."

4. Should I spin while there is no double chance event?

The short answer is no, of course not. Here's why:

   - Since we have a 47.89% to get a 5★ ranger during the double chance event, then it goes to reason that without the event, our chances are roughly 23.95%. 

Our chances to get a desirable super ranger: 

   - With double chance event is 19.16%, averaging 5.22 spins to get 1 ranger

   - Without double chance event is 9.58%, averaging 10.44 spins to get 1 ranger

This makes it pretty obvious that during the double chance event your odds of getting something good are much higher. The authors recommend, as I also do, please resist the urge to scratch the itch while there is no double chance event going on! For if you do, you're very likely going to spend some time with this guy.

Go away, Pew. We do not love you.

Concluding Thoughts

I've stated this before and I think it is important to repeat this: The 47.89% number was an average from a vast pool of results. It is possible that you played and rolled on some very different results than the average. And surely you have seen on the internet instances where people have rolled insanely good results. But this is why this is the average. 

The other consideration that often makes players sad after playing Gacha is the fact that your personal set of "desirable" rangers may be a lot smaller than than 19.16%. Maybe all you want are Ola Brown, KSM and Dwight. In that case, you're rolling on much smaller chance and the chances of you getting something you don't want are much, much higher. 

Now, the last thing that is bothering me is the fact that this event's results differed greatly from last month's. June's double chance event was seriously more than twice more lucrative (and from my personal experience, I tend to agree with the results). Such a large difference cannot be a mistake on the survey because they had over 5700 samples. May's results were done with over 2000 samples, which should still be quite accurate. So I don't think the numbers are wrong. I think this was a deliberate change in the presets by the game developers. With the release of Team Battle Mode and Endless Mode, I believe they really want people to participate and they want people to feel competitive. Nobody likes losing over and over and that can make a PvP battle fizzle out very quickly. I'm guessing that's why they've more than doubled the odds to get 5 star rangers, so people will be more likely to jump into the new modes.

So in the end, I do apologize that I did not get this post out sooner because perhaps it would have swayed some players to take more advantage of the event while it was still possible to get the best odds at Ola Brown. However, now that the "new" non-event probability for 5-star rangers is roughly 23.95%, I wonder if it will stay that way until some other significant event happens (like new area release or new ranger release). Did they increase the non-event chance from 10% to 23.95% when the "major update" came out on June 19? Nobody knows for sure when the change in the odds was made. LINE has no obligation to tell us. We can only try to figure it out with our collective effort. Hopefully this provided some deeper understanding of the gamble that is Gacha. Special thanks to 小為 for pooling all this information for us to share.

Fists of Fury: Attack Speed and Damage

Following on the heels of the attack range article, LINE Rangers台灣社團 members have created more great reference tables on attack speed to aid us in ranger comparisons. We have had this discussion before when we explored the Attack Speed & DPS differences and the treasure effects of Castle in the Sky. If you followed me through those posts, the math below will look familiar. The text below is a translated interpretation of the article, Attack Speed Measured: 40 Team Members.

    
    The article comes from: LINE Rangers台灣社團
    Authors: 小為, 楊濟安
    Revision: 小為
    Testing Team: 黃郁弘，楊濟安，小為，鈺

Contained within the box below is their article interpreted in English. 

The team at LINE Rangers台灣社團 worked to get the exact damage numbers for each ranger and was able to calculate the precise attack speed. If numbers are not your thing, then check out the link to the article for a pictorial representation of the rangers' attack speed. (From left to right, the ranger attack speed goes from slower to faster.) For more detail, read on.

Note: All data below are based on max level rangers and stats as of June 11, 2014.

  Column 1 is the ranger profile listed DPS in game

  Column 2 is the actual DPS once you account for the treasure bonus (Column 1 * 1.454546)

  Column 3 is the actual damage dealt to enemy tower in battle in a single hit

  Column 4 is calculated attack speed, explained below

  Column 5 is the ranger profile listed attack speed

Attack Speed Calculation

To explain how these numbers came about, let's take the example of Masked Moon:

  - Take Masked Moon to an enemy tower and recorded that one hit against the enemy tower produced 162,305 damage. 

  - Masked Moon's listed base damage in his profile (which is his DPS, damage-per-second) is 51,500.

  - Take into account the 45% increase in damage benefit from Castle in the Sky's treasure, which multiples base DPS by 1.454546. His actual DPS is 74,909. 

  ⇨Since we know his one-hit damage is 162,305, then we simply divide: 162305/74909 = Every 2.16 seconds, Masked Moon hits one time. This is the number we achieve in Column 4.

The authors comes to the same conclusion as I did: faster attack speed rangers are a bit more advantageous. The reasoning is as follows: Suppose you had 2 rangers' whose DPS is 100,000. The first one attacks once per 1 second, the other attacks once every 4 seconds. If both were attacking an enemy with only 50,000 HP left, the first ranger would kill it after one second and only waste 50,000 damage. The second ranger would hit it after 4 seconds, cause 400,000 damage but waste 350,000 damage. 

Damage Per Minute

Taking our understanding of DPS a step further, the authors have created a table which displays the accumulation of damage by a ranger over the span of one minute. Bear with us, all will be explained.

  Column 1 is the ranger profile listed DPS in game

  Column 2 is the actual DPS once you account for the treasure bonus (Column 1 * 1.454546)

  Column 3 is the latest cooldown for each ranger, in seconds. Cooldown is the time that must pass before you may deploy another ranger.

  Column 4 is the total number of seconds of damage that can be inflicted per minute. To illustrate, let's take KSM as an example. You can deploy KSM once every 15 seconds. 

     First deployed KSM may attack for a full 60 seconds

     The second deployed KSM may attack for 45 seconds

     The third deployed KSM may attack for 30 seconds

     The fourth deployed KSM may attack for 15 seconds

     ⇨60s + 45s + 30s + 15s = 150 seconds

  Column 5 is total accumulated damage per minute: Column 2*Column 4. For KSM, that's 188,363*150=28,254,450 damage.

  Column 6 is the total cost to deploy possible units per minute. 4 KSMs amounts to 890*4 = 3560 mineral

The objective of these tables is to show us the rangers with the highest continuous damage accumulation. It is now quite obvious that Dumpy wins in this category, inflicting 228.9 million damage per minute. 

To give you an idea of what 228.9 million damage can do, consider this. Stage 108's enemy tower has 15 million HP. In 60 seconds, Dumpys can destroy about 15 of those towers -- assuming that there is no travel time from the point of deployment to the target. 

The reigning splash damage accumulation goes to KSM (28.2 million per minute), followed by Abdula (21.3 million), then Ola Brown (18.2 million). Sorcerer Cony is fourth on this list! 

What's the point of the last column? If mineral regeneration is about 200 mineral per second, then you can generate roughly 12,000 minerals -- take into account some extra, because you recover some minerals every time an enemy unit is killed -- and you can use the last column data to pick out the appropriate team for your needs. 

Deep Breath!

That's a lot of numbers! I found the information contained within the attack speed tables (particularly the actual DPS column) to be really nice. And the amount of time necessary to record the damage per actual hit must have been tremendous. 

The damage done per minute is a really interesting way to apply the DPS concept for a bigger picture. Take it with a grain of salt, because in reality there's no way for short-range rangers to spawn and immediately begin attacking, and most of us won't be able to deploy rangers as soon as they come off cooldown with 100% precision. But the damage per minute exercise gives us some insight into how DPS and cooldown can play into amount of total damage we can be dealing. This is the first and only place I've ever seen this abstracted.

P.S. Why is does attack speed article contain 40 rangers while attack range only 39 rangers? Red Brown was added as a consideration for the attack speed article.

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?