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Jib
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.

Wasps is nothing without the edge. You will kill maybe once out of 20 times you land it, and it is a REAL BITCH to land.
Bears don't even bother practicing. SK is very nice even if the effects are random, it still kicks ass (think about why).
Wolf is the kickass beastmaster ability at hero and predator's stance is the icing on the cake.
Foresters don't get sure footing and can be lagged easy if not careful. The bonus with this is that you get bearcharge
that works well (enlarged for max benefits). Not my 1st choice but solid.

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Jib
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 =).

I don't really like this combo. Call lightning without the edge is crap and even with the edge i don't really like it. Scrolls and entangle are the major reasons to play survivalist, entangle alone can destroy low levels. I don't think it does as well at hero as other combos. Fighting outside the wilds if you don't have a solid understanding of the class and your enemies is a recipe for disaster no matter how many protections you throw on top.

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jib
Cloud giant mountaineer. Bearcharge.

Best combo for PK even for new players with limited experience. My no1 choice.

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jib
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.

I don't bother gearing in dex, wildfam takes care of that. +dmg first, +str later, for saves you can take the edge and not bother. There should be no ranger gearing
for defense and long drawn-out fights imo. You should strive to unload HUGE damage in the shortest amount of time possible and leave them wondering what
hit them. If you lose the element of surprise and try to go toe to toe with ppl who can seriously maledict you (like dagger specs) you will get destroyed.
You need to bring them into your game, not try and play theirs. And at hero, you WILL drop your spear against any serious maledicting class no matter how much +str you have unless you really go overboard with it and neglect dmg. Then you're simply a tool. If you plan it right, dropping the spear is not the end of the world, and by the time it happens your opponent should be nearly dead and the fight in your hands.

Also, as i've said in another post in the past, after wildfam i never bother with weight considerations. I even take edge so i can haul more stuff around.
It works fine for me.

For killing mobs in civilized there are usually things you can do like have them track you into the wilds or get help from others. You won't be able to solo a lot of hero mobs in civilized no matter how many protections you have but it's irrelevant as you don't need to do it for PK.

Also, i'd say that felar and w-elf are not for the new player. They require experience and solid understanding of the class and tactics to get kills (it gets harder at hero even with snare). So if you want to PK and you're new to rangers play cloud giant.