Some good "standard" combos:
felar beastmaster/forester: wasps is just that good (read annoying to others) and can make people think twice about attacking you. Bears meh. Serpentkinship is niche but nice maledicts when you get lucky. Felar for spear/staff+claws.
felar survivalist/forester. Full use of scrolls/talismans makes it easy to have access to aura/shield. This can be an answer to "out of wilderness" fighting. Throw on protection/stoneskin and you can stand toe to toe with the beefiest of warriors. I know because I've killed some much better warrior pkers than myself like this out of the wilderness while sleeping at the keyboard =).
Cloud giant mountaineer. Bearcharge.
Nerfed ranger: plainsrunner. Lose snare == too bad; bramble pit too niche. There's just nothing in the plainsrunner kit that is good. Snare > pursuit by FAR.
I have two schools of thoughts on gearing a ranger. Most of my experience is with felar, but:
School 1: Offense-- Gear for +damage and try and win with ambush + burst damage.
School 2: Defense: Gear for +str, +dex, + saves (in that order) and try and whittle your opponents down. You should rarely die in 1 on 1 PvP fights, but it'll be more difficult to seal kills. But. You can easily regear with enough +str at hero to be able to take all dagger maledicts or boneshatter+impale, etc without worrying about dropping your heavy ass ranger spear, which is nice.
Wood elfs are also very nice but neutral just isn't my bag.
Of course, you can tinker around with diferent combos, but keep in mind certain combos lose snare/call lightning/scrolls which are some standard old-school ranger skills that are replaced with more "niche" skills in some new kits.
As far as exploring/fighting mobs in the wilderness is concerned, wilderness familiarity will let you tank long enough to be viable against the toughest mobs with virtually any terrain/specialty ranger combo. Gear for saves against mage mobs, str/dex against spec mobs; throw on aura/shield/stone skin and you're golden. YMMV.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2010 04:43PM by Jib.