ALIEN- TIER 3
Ravager	Evolves From: Lurker Evolves To: N/A Role: Bring death to all that face you. Use charge to close the gap between you and a marine, and finish them off with powerful blows capable of chopping limbs clean off. Hit and run and frontal assaults are your bread and butter, get used to tanking damage and dealing it. You don't need to hide any more. Guides: Art of the Ravager

Playing a Ravager

The huge red unfriendly Barney with the power slash the sh*t out of anyone alive. The Ravager's current incarnation is designed around being a tough, front-line combatant that will either spearhead a push or be a strong flanking force.

I won't say you're wrong, but that sort of mentality also leads to bad Ravager plays. Though you are very tanky, don't rely on it as much. Your frontline prowess of dealing and taking damage is as good as your competency. Keep an eye on your health and armor when tearing up marines into swiss cheese. The Ravager also has access to temporary shields with most of the existing strains, which further enhance your ability to tank damage.

Overview

The Ravager is a tier three Alien of the ambush caste. It means you'll have to evolve three times to become one. From larva, to Runner, to Lurker, to finally Ravager. Your best chances of becoming Ravager lie with being a round-start Alien. Until you can evolve fully, do the standard early-round cycle of looking for monkeys and survivors.

Runners are more likely to evolve if they fear their mortality, and I can't stress that enough. Don't take unnecessary risks, don't get cornered, and you'll be fine. Stick your neck out too far, and some bumbling Marine is bound to come around and blow it off with a point blank buckshot blast.

The Ravager is, the slowest of the tier threes, perhaps only slower than a 100% healthy and fed Marine with heavy armor or a walking Crusher. The Ravager is a very offensive Alien that excels at dealing damage to enemies. Her claws are extremely sharp. She's fire-proof, explosion-resistant, and armored. Ravagers can tank a lot of damage, and deal a lot of damage. Ravagers can shred through tables and slice them into metal. As the ultimate killing machine, she's designed to eliminate tough foes. But always be aware that while Ravagers have quite large health pools, their armor is only slightly above average in most instances, and AP ammo is particularly deadly against them. Direct hits from rockets and Close Air Support will still deal significant damage as well.

Understanding Your Limits

A lot of people tend to think of Ravagers as pretty much behaving in the same way as a Runner. Here's how most runners live and die:

Evolve from a Larva
Find a Marine
Attack
Find out that the marine wasn't alone
Get surrounded
Scream at the queen for "HEALS MOM"
Escape with 10% of your health around the corner and rest up while the marines complain about you being too tanky

They are not necessarily wrong, in this regard. A lot of Ravagers end up going into combat alone and wind up dying in some far-flung southern end of the map. Such behavior earns the vitriol they receive from their comrades. As a Ravager, it is vital to know when it's high time to back the hell off and charge away to safety. The yellowish-green meter on the side of your HUD is your health indicator. Trust it and don't trust it. It's a little finicky and doesn't give an accurate representation of your actual health, but it's still a good indicator. Use the 'Stats' tab to get an exact value for your health and armor, as well as your damage and shields.

Perhaps tend to retreat when at half health or below. Technically, the tanking capabilities of a Ravager mean you'll always be frontlining, but truly stop fighting at half health or below. Leg it back to the Hive for health or find a safe spot with a recovery node, a drone, or a Warden Praetorian to top your health pool off. The Ravager works best when assisted by faster aliens such as Runners, Spitters, or in flanking maneuvers where the marines will be unable to fight back effectively.

Much like all tier 3 aliens, you must be VERY careful to avoid getting surrounded by marines on all sides, as they will box you in and point blank you with shotguns until you are dead. Your large sprite only makes it easier to pull off point blank shots, as the Ravager's sprite is on par with the Queen, Carrier, and Praetorian in terms of sheer size.

Abilities

Abilities:	Description:
Rest	Used to rest and get up. Xenos heal faster when resting on weeds.
Regurgitate	To devour, grab a host with Ctrl + Click or `Grab` intent (3 in hotkey mode) then click yourself, standstill. To stop the host from getting up and running away, you can switch to an empty hand (X in hotkey mode) and keep tackling them using `Disarm` intent (2 in hotkey mode) when you are devouring them. Xenos with devoured humans inside them can not vent crawl but Xenos with devoured monkeys can. Hosts with boot knives can injure the Xenomorph they are inside if they are conscious. Using this ability with a host devoured will regurgitate them back up, giving a moderate stun. (Edit this template)
Cruelty	PASSIVE: Your slash damage increases by up to 10 based on the amount of targets you are currently empowering from.
Empower	On first activation, grants you 75 shield points. On second activation for every enemy in your line of sight (up to 5) and within a range of 3 tiles gain an extra 80 shield. If you empowered from 3 or more enemies you become super empowered for 5 seconds, gaining vastly strengthened effects for your other two abilities. Shield gained lasts 15 seconds. Cost 50 Plasma, cooldown: 22 seconds.
Charge	Lunge 5 tiles in the direction you selected. If you are super empowered and charged into an enemy they will be knocked down for 2 seconds, slashed and flung 3 tiles away. Slashing a target will reduce this ability's cooldown by 4 seconds. Costs 25 Plasma, cooldown: 14 seconds.
Scissor Cut	Slash a 1x4 line on the tile you click on damaging anyone from you to the end of the line for 45 damage. If you are super empowered whoever hit will be super slowed for 3 seconds as well. Costs 25 plasma, cooldown: 10 seconds.

Attainable Strains

Strains:
Berserker	Hedgehog

Strain Abilities

Berserker

Health: 590
Armor: 30

Abilities:

Description:

Bloodrage

PASSIVE: You gain a level of rage whenever you slash a target. Each stack of rage increases your armor, movement speed, and attack speed. Rage decays while out of combat. When you reach max rage, you are 'locked' at max rage for 6 seconds. Your rage also stacks with your Apprehend speed buff.

Life Steal

PASSIVE: You will now heal for (50 + 5 x rage)% from your slash damage whenever you slash tall hosts. Effectively healing you every time you attack a tall host.

Apprehend

Select any tall host within 6 tiles of you and start a 2.5 second count down. If the tall host is still within the visual 6 tile range, you will be pulled right next to them. If the tall host has move outside of range or you were incapacitated, you'll use up the ability without pulling yourself towards the target. The target will be slowed down upon a successful apprehend.

Cooldown: 20 seconds.

Clothesline

Expend a stack of rage to deal 20 damage to a target next to you as well as applying a daze on to the target for 2 sec. This will also heal you by 150. If you use the ability without any rage to expend, you won't heal from the attack.

1 Rage Level, cooldown: 14 seconds.

Eviscerate

Root yourself in place, immobilising yourself and start a wind up. Depending on your rage level, unleash a devastating strike against foes all around you. You will also heal yourself, for every marine within 1 tile of the eviscerate. The heal is 50 for a single marine, growing to a maximum of 250 for more marines within the tiles around you.

**Rage Levels:**
Rage Levels:	Damage	Activation Delay	Range
Level 1	5 Brute Damage	2.0 seconds	1 tile range
Level 2	10 Brute Damage	1.8 seconds	1 tile range
Level 3	25 Brute Damage	1.6 seconds	1 tile range
Level 4	45 Brute Damage	1.4 seconds	2 tile range
Level 5	70 Brute Damage	1.0 seconds	2 tile range

Expends all of your rage level(s), minimum 1 rage, cooldown: 23 seconds.

Hedgehog

Health: 650
Resistance to minor explosions.

Abilities:	Description:
Bone Shards	PASSIVE: Your abilities now cost shards instead of plasma to use. For each 50 shards you have stored, gain 2.5 additional armor. You gain shards upon taking damage and they will grow over time. You may only store a maximum of 300 shards.
Spike Shield	Expend shards to gain a temporary shield that lasts for a short amount of time. Whenever the shield is damaged, spray bone shards around you in a 3x3 AoE centered on yourself. Shield lasts for 2 seconds. Costs 150 Shards, cooldown: 11 seconds.
Fire Spikes	Launch 8 small shards of spikes in the direction you click embedding shrapnel into tall hosts slowing them down. Though the spikes themselves don't do much damage, it causes brute damage to the host when they move. Costs 75 Shards, cooldown: 10 seconds.
Spike Shed	Shred all of your shards to launch them all in all directions around yourself. Lose the bonus armor in the process while also gaining a speed boost. This will disable you from gaining any shards for 30 seconds. All shards, minimum of 50 to activate, cooldown: 30 seconds.

Ravager Maturity

Ravagers can not Evolve any further, as they are a Tier 3 Caste.

Sources and Reading

Art of the Ravager by Bath Salts Addict - Where the wiki page is based upon. (Most of the evolution explained in that guide are outdated. The actual gameplay of the Ravager can somewhat apply).