So we all know ranger is basically dead, but you still need to beat him if you want to get that maat cap, which is something I'm working towards. After a few failed attempts at levels 66 and 68, I managed to succeed as a 69 RNG and just wanted to post my strategy if its of use to anyone. This was the only challenging maat fight out of any job on nasomi, and it's not even close (only one I failed, and failed 3 times before barely winning at 69), so hopefully this can help some other people. Most maat jobs you can easily handle him at level 66... ranger is not one of those jobs. I would recommend at least 68. I'm also assuming the fight is much more trivial if you want to get ranger all the way to 75 before trying it, but who wants to level ranger all the way to 75?

I used Musketeer gun +1 with silver bullets, since it is slow enough to gain 100% tp from one barrage after the first weaponskill. This wouldn't work with E. bow. The key to winning this fight I found was earth staff for the -20% physical damage. It's the only way I could survive his eagle eye shot, which still did 677 damage and dropped me to ~100hp. If you are a Taru... good luck. Hp is the biggest issue since you can drop him in a matter of seconds so long as you survive EES. I think you could sacrifice ranged accuracy gear for more +hp gear and hope to get lucky. Earth staff might be mandatory though because I think his EES would more or less one shot me (as a mithra) otherwise. Other gear is pretty standard ranger setup, with pot-au-feu of course. If you can find someone to make you a blink band to hopefully absorb his EES that would be a huge plus.

The strategy involves getting max tp outside of the arena using meditate, but sleep potions + opo-opo necklace should work too if you don't have samurai at level 30.

The key of course is that you need to keep him at that perfect ~8-10 yalm distance, or you will miss/do terrible damage. My strategy was: open the fight with sharpshot followed by /ra; as soon as the shot lands, use slug shot > shadowbind > barrage > /ra > slug shot > ees. If you manage to live, and you don't miss any shots, he will be dead.

You should be able to land that barrage shot, your ws and EES within a second or two, before he can move. If you allow him to move any closer, your ws/EES will likely miss or at the very least not do enough damage to kill him. If he managed to get one more attack in I would have likely died. If he got within melee range and used a ws I definitely would have died. So you can't afford any miss steps.



Good luck, especially to those taru out there!

also FYI: I tried to cheese him with sleep bolts on one of my failed attempts after he survived my attacks, but it seems he is able to get in attacks between getting hit by the bolts and getting the sleep affect applied, so that doesn't look like it would work unfortunately.

I see you use a reraise, but didnt mention it?

you can just eat the EES, reraise and rest up (just make sure to die with 1ktp). The fight is much easier then ?

blink bands are also a thing

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Honestly I didn't know how reraise works in these fights, that was the first time I thought to bring it. I kind of assumed he would kill me as soon as I raised, but maybe that's not how it works? I also don't know whether he would regain his hp back or not after killing you. If you can safely reraise, rest until weakness wears, and reengage him while he is still at low hp, that would be one way to do it.

I did mention that blink band, if you can get lucky and absorb EES the fight would be much easier as well.

The easiest way to beat him as RNG was just get the machine crossbow or repeating or whatever its called. The one that shoots fast. Just spam Sleep bolts. I killed him with 3/4 health, didnt even need to use a potion.