The best Ranger guides and strategies are available at Skryer.

The Ranger is the ultimate ranged physical damage profession, able to inflict pain from a great distance. Most see the ranger as being the profession which is most in tune with nature and a bit sneaky; and they would be dead on. Although, contrary to popular belief, the ranger is a better support class than anything else as the character is unable to use extremely powerful skills but rather aid others with nifty bow skills and quite effective nature rituals (lore). To best use this profession, the character should remain at quite a distance from the battle, as there is usually no point in being near the frontlines as 1) The character is very effective from a distance and 2) Melee foes can chew up Rangers.

I tend to believe that the ranger is especially useful when selected as the secondary profession rather than the primary, as the ranged abilities are usually beneficial to those which do not necessarily have much armor nor that great of offensive skills (Mesmer, Necromancer). Even a Warrior as primary and Ranger as secondary is a rather useful combination, attack from afar and engage the enemy with melee attacks as soon as they become troublesome.

Although, Rangers should keep in mind that using Nature Rituals has a steep penalty linked it. A 5% death penalty to be exact. That is to say, for every Nature Ritual used, the character will stack upon himself a 5% energy and health deficiency for the duration of the mission, with a maximum of –60% (the death penalty can be reduced by defeating other players or creatures).