I'm a complete noob compared to most here, but I thought I'd give a shot at writing up Chrono-Ranger, since he's fairly straightforward. I tried to format it after flamethrower's guides so it would be familiar.
Character Profile:
- Best Attack: Compounded Bow, The Masadah (situational)
- Best Team Support: "By Any Means"
- Best Personal Support: Jim's Hat, "The Ultimate Target"
- Primary Damage Type: Projectile
- Secondary Damage Types: Melee, Fire, Toxic
- Worst Card: "Just Doin' My Job"
- Nemesis: Plague Rat
Chrono-Ranger is all about attacking. He cares not for ducking, covering, or armoring. His bounties provide out-of-turn triggers, card draw, extra damage, and the ability to 2-for-1 minions. His weaponry can do extra damage, nerf bad guys, and occasionally destroy an ongoing or environment card.
Attack
Chrono-Ranger is always on the offensive. Nearly every one of his one-shot cards does damage in addition to their other effects. Each of his weapons offer something situationally effective:
Neuro-Toxin Dart Thrower reduces damage from bad guys. It's not great against Plague Rat, who deals so much irreducible damage, but against others it tends to mitigate a ton of damage. This tends to be my first gun to get out (Jim's Hat being the first equipment). It's not a great attack, but nerfing damage early helps a lot.
The Masadah does irreducible damage, and it's based on the number of bounties in play. Chrono-Ranger has the ability to put a lot of bounties out during the course of the game, which makes this very good against high-armor villains like Spite. I say it's his "best" attack because his low plinky damage seems to get hurt a lot by armor, but every one of his other weapons is useful in situations that have come up with almost every villain.
Compounded Bow is your go-to weapon for multiple instances of damage, which can be useful against Spite by canceling out his "first damage of turn" defenses. It also allows you to choose the type of the second instance, which can be useful against villains like Omnitron who have or gain immunities to certain damage types. Against unarmored villains, it becomes the weapon of choice over Masadah.
Danny-Boy is his AOE attack, affecting as many targets as you have bounties in play. It only does 2 fire damage, so I tend to ignore it unless there's a bunch of minions on the field. If I can get Hunter and Hunted into play the same turn and there's 3+ bounties in play, this quickly becomes a killing machine, but the extra damage taken from HaH can get very serious very quickly.
Temporal Grenades are one-shot weapons that destroy environment and ongoing cards. You only have two of them, but Displaced Armory can get them back if necessary.
Card Draw
Eye on the Prize allows you to draw and play an extra card. Not terribly impressive, but it gets the job done. I find it most useful for setup, but if you can get 2 or 3 saved in hand for later for a Hunter and Hunted-fueled blaze of glory, Chrono-Ranger will do monstrous damage in a single turn as well as draw some cards.
"Just Doin' My Job" allows you to draw multiple cards, but requires your friends to discard to make it work. It's limited by the number of heroes (remember that you are also a player!), and you may get grumbled at for it, but it can occasionally save your bacon. The major problem with this card is the fact that it hurts the team while nominally helping you. It may be good in very specific situations (horrendous first draw), or in allowing you to trade a bad card in hand for a new card, but most of the time the cards it produces don't seem to be that much better than the cards your teammates have to give up to power it, and you probably won't want to dump a card other than a second copy of this for yourself. If your friends have limited hand options as it is (Expatriette), you won't want them to contribute to the pile, but if you've got some hand-stackers like Visionary or Scholar, you can probably count on a few extra cards. I just don't like the inconsistency of this card. But hey, at least it does another point of damage.
"Dead or Alive" allows you to draw a card when its target is destroyed, while "Kill on Sight" allows you to draw 3. During one game we had the CR player constantly dropping "Kill on Sight" on low HP targets, killing them, then recycling it from the trash. This is probably his best play if he needs cards and doesn't have another hero feeding him.
Utility
Jim's Hat allows you to play an extra card during your play phase. Because his one-shots do damage on their own, Jim's Hat is critical to maximizing CR's damage output. The ability to destroy bounties has never really come up, though I could see it being handy if you need to reassign a bounty after it's been played. Jim's Hat will let you recover from equipment and bounty wipes (especially with Bounty Board), making Chrono-Ranger especially resilient when it comes to these villain tactics.
Sudden Contract allows you to search up a bounty card from your deck, and Displaced Armory allows you to search for equipment. Bounty Board and Ranger's Mark get destroyed bounties out of your trash, usually allowing you to endlessly cycle them onto new targets.
Weaknesses
Chrono-Ranger's primary weakness is that he has zero defenses. None. Any damage coming to him is damage he's going to take, unless someone intercepts it for him. His major self-buff, "Hunter and Hunted", increases his damage by the number of bounties in play, but also increases damage taken by the same amount (think gunfighter wading into a hail of bullets to finish off the bad guy). This is really bad against villains or situations that cause heroes to do damage to themselves, like Plague Rat. His only way to mitigate this on his own is with the "Dead or Alive" bounty, which provides a small amount of healing.
His other weakness is that, while he's doing damage ALL. THE. TIME, his damage is typically a single point. Against armored or damage-reducing foes, he can devolve into uselessness without The Masadah. A single global -1 damage card can similarly cause him immeasurable pain.
Strategy
The first goal of Chrono-Ranger should almost always be to get Jim's Hat into play, usually with Displaced Armory. Those weapons are tasty, but he can do damage without them, and that extra play every turn is immensely helpful.
Chrono-Ranger's second goal is to hit the boss with "The Ultimate Target". Not only does this increase CR's damage against the boss, but the first time the boss does damage during a turn, Jim gets to use an out-of-turn power. We usually try to follow this up with "By Any Means", allowing CR to get +2 on damage vs. the boss, and buffing all other heroes' damage against it.
After that, Chrono-Ranger needs to adapt to the needs of the situation, using his armory and bounties. "No Executions" can be used against targets that nuke on death (Sonic Mines), "The Whole Gang" helps with crowd control, and Hunter and Hunted is there for when the time comes to go all-out on damage.
If you can pull it off, Hunter and Hunted + Danny-Boy, with 3 or 4 bounties in play, is an incredible combination against villains/environments with lots of targets. Just try not to die to the swingback. "Ultimate Target" will allow a power use which might be necessary for destroying Hunter and Hunted if the villain is rolling up his sleeves for a beatdown.
In our games, Chrono-Ranger tends to be on boss duty while the rest of us worry about minions and environment targets. His abilities tend to suffer when he's got a lot of stuff to shoot at/play bounties on, and he seems to be much more useful stacking damage on a single target. With damage buffs and bounties in place, he can burn through hit points like nobody's business.
Teamups
Everybody's buddy Legacy is an obvious choice, as is any hero who can boost CR's damage. Heroes who redirect or prevent team damage will be very handy for Chrono-Ranger due to his lack of defenses, and keep him rolling with Hunter and Hunted out.
ETA: At Spiff's suggestion, tried to flesh out the commentary more. Put the bow up front on preferred weapons.
At the top of the post you mention the cards you think are the best, worst, and best support, but I don't see in the body of the post where it says why you chose those cards. The guide mostly seems to be listing the cards and describing what each does?
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Ah, true. Sorry, I kind of lost focus while writing it up. I'll see about adding some comments.
As a point of contention, I find that I almost always choose Compunded Bow over Masadah when I play.
Barring any damage reduction, Masadah requires 4 bounties to be out (two of which must be Ultimate Target and By Any Means) to equal the overall net damage of Compounded Bow with only Ultimate Target and By Any Means. Considering that The Whole Gang and Kill On Sight hinge on the bounty leaving play, it's going to be late in the game by the time that Masadah actually becomes worth using over Compounded Bow.
This discrepancy becomes exacerbated if CR is buffed even once, as the Bow deals separate instances of damage. If Ra, Legacy or Argent Adept are in play, I can't see a situation in which I wouldn't choose the Bow over Masadah.
Mind you, this logic flies out the window slightly when damage reduction is involved, though that's a rare enough case as to be situational, and is still marginal if that DR can be negated through a party buff. I'm not saying Masadah is bad....just not as good as Compounded Bow in most cases.
That's fair. We were having trouble with Spite and Apostate (though the bow works great on Spite), so I tend to overfocus on getting past armor. And since CR finds it pretty easy to cycle bounties back onto the board, getting 3 or 4 back in play never seemed like a huge obstacle.
And as I said, I'm a noob. At this point I don't think I've played more than maybe 15 games, but CR has impressed me with his offense, so I thought I'd take a stab at this.
"The Whole Gang" paired with the Masadah and any kind of damage buffs (as a bonus) works very well at kicking Apostate's arse. He has both the Effigy and the Runes out? All the relics have +2 soak? Just get one of them down to 4hp or fewer, make sure it's got the Whole Gang bounty on it, then destroy the other of the two relics (Masadah burns straight through the soak, naturally) and the bountied one gets insta-killed as a bonus ;).
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Both Spite and Apostate can get pretty heafty DR on the board. That happens to just shut Chrono down because of his style of pinging quickly for small amounts. But with compound Bow against Spite is great, because the first instance of projectile damage is soaked up, but the second where you pick the type hits for full strength. Runes with Appstate just plain suck for Chrono, so staying on the boss will usually be the best course of action.
An alternative, for Spite at least, would be to simply ensure that each turn, you manage to throw down a card that has a "Deal 1 Projectile Damage" rider. That instance would be soaked, leaving you free to blast away with Compounded Bow at full damage.
I didn't mean to make it sound like Masadah is useless--it's not, by any stretch--but its reliance on bounties means that it takes a lot more set-up than the Compounded Bow. That, coupled with the relatively small amount of boss damage reduction out there (at least on Normal mode), make Compounded Bow a better play most times.
Masadah saved our bacon vs Iron Legacy two nights ago. I hadn't appreciated just how good it was until that point. Chrono Ranger ruled the day.
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Even with his lack of defenses, I'd say that DR is Chrono-Ranger's biggest problem to overcome. Teaming him up with someone who can help mitigate DR (Mr. Fixer for low DR only, G.I. Bunker, and Parse all come to mind as being able to remove or help mitigate Chrono-Ranger's most significant weakness directly, while any damage buffs (Visionary, Ra, Legacy, AA) can help indirectly.
Nothing's worse than having a glass cannon that doesn't deal damage :(
It can be annoying playing as Jim and coming up against enemies who have soak, but bear in mind you can get +2 to all your damage without any outside help, and more than that if you have some bounties in play and chuck out Hunter and Hunted, provided you can either avoid or put up with the increased damage dealt to yourself. If it's a target that's granting soak to other targets, The Whole Gang is a good bounty to chuck onto something else so you can get the soak-granter nicely insta-killed as long as it had an appropriate hp total by the time the bountied target goes down :).
Even if Jim is unable to get any damage through himself becuase stuff has loads of soak, he can at least indirectly assist everyone else in killing it (via By Any Means) whilst setting up other stuff or taking out annoying environment/ongoing cards with his grenades :).
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If he doesn't have that kind of team up that's where you target his damage boosting bounties onto targets you are focusing on. Otherwise you focus on using the Masadah and if DR is due to an Ongoing find those Temporal Grenades.
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Ooh yes I forgot the Masadah! I tend to focus more on getting the bow but yes of course - soak doesn't matter as long as he can get out the Masadah and at least one bounty (or a damage buff from elsewhere) :D.
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I'd still say it's rough to deal with the DR if you don't have help -- even if you bypass the DR, you're still losing up to 3 to 4 damage per point or DR from two plays and the Compound Bow. It's not to say that Chrono Ranger doesn't have options that still let him deal damage, just that it extracts a heavier price from him than many other heroes -- Fanatic has other utility and Absolution, for example, while Chrono Ranger doesn't have much else to help his team besides pure damage.
Bringing down ongoing or equipment that provides DR with grenades is pivotal, but having help from Mr. Fixed, Parse, or Legacy really helps improve the character's utility.
It's not entirely true that Jim's only contribution is damage. By Any Means increases the damage dealt to the target by anyone (evne the target themselves, fun for Akash'Bhuta :D). Temporal Grenades can take out annoying ongoing or environment cards. The Whole Gang is an insta-killer if you have a 4hp-or-lower target out when the bountied target goes down.
Even if there is soak, if you have both By Any Means and Ultimate Target on something you're dealing +2 damage to it, meaning it needs at least three points of soak to prevent all of your damage. That's not a very common occurrence so while you might find yourself heavily nerfed, you most often can still get damage through, even if it's a plink at a time which is what you'd be doing with no bounties anyway (assuming you weren't using Danny Boy or something else that has a base damage of more than one).
As mentioned, the Masadah renders all soak completely moot as long as you have a minimum of either one bounty out or a +1 damage buff from somewhere (either yourself or otherwise), since zero plus one equals one :). And don't forget Hunter and Hunted, if you've got some bounties out but no Masadah and are getting desperate ;).
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Suggested addition: Under "Teamups," any hero that lets Jim play multiple cards is his best friend. Argent Adept and Scholar (Don't Dismiss Anything) work well, but I particularly love the Omnitron-X/Chrono-Ranger teamup: OX helps to gets all of Jim's weapons and bounties out quicker (and once Ennervation Ray comes out, keeps Hunter and Hunted from stealing all of Jim's health), and OXs 1- and 2-point components get a boost when Jim puts the +1 damage bounty (By Any Means) on the main bad guy. Moreover, all of these powers work automatically -- OX's components heal and do damage automatically, and The Ultimate Target just keeps pumping out damage automatically.
Cro I ranger does have two forms of defense, one being the dart thrower (more utility) and the other being dead or alive. Dead or alive doesn't look like much on the surface, but CR is hp-wise right in the spot where he can be higher than the low, and lower than the high. Using this and Jims hat to destroy it can keep him right in the middle, never getting touched by many baddies. But mostly, he's all about damage. If you can keep him in that hp middle sweet spot, throwing hunter and hunted on with by any means and ultimate bounty, plus being equipped with the compound bow... All of a sidden you're doing 10 damage alone with your power, and 5 damage for any other card you play that has damage which is most. And then add extra power use from ultimate bounty... This makes him obscenely powerful in my book. He's my favorite glass cannon