Which is exactly why they are useless in groups other than bolas. They can do anything on their own, but when it comes to a clan, where there is many of each class which excel in the mix rangers have, rangers don't shine at all. It's basically a solo class and like I said before they shouldn't force a build on a class. AND since this game is so clan/cooperation based for gear and bossing, rangers are useless other than leveling. And whats the point of leveling if you won't be as useful as other classes on bosses?
This is completely inaccurate.
In my own experience in Seed, I think that Crom would be weeks behind where it is today without rangers cooperating with their clan: When the carrow/fingals/sewers first came out, and our clan was struggling to defeat the 150 wyrm boss. After quite a few failed attemps, I told the clan, "Can I just bolas him and have the tank run?"*. Of course the clan was reluctant as we only had 2 rangers at the time, including me. Eventually we got tired of failure and tried bolasing... and it worked. From there every boss was killed by bolasing it.
And that's how one skill on rangers have impacted boss fights.
*I don't claim to be the first person to come up with the idea of bolasing bosses, I was just the first person to suggest the idea on Crom
Furthermore: I don't know how many rangers use entangle, but let me spell out exactly how much it helps on a raid boss.
Take Mordis for example, she does about 1.5k damage a hit to our tanks. And she attacks fast. I haven't counted how many hits she does in 30 seconds, but its at least 1 hit a second, maybe more. That's 30*1500, 45000 damage. Entangle cuts that in half: 27500 damage that Mordis does not inflict on the tank.
Looking again at the paragraph above, I'm thinking the damage is probably a little unrealistic, I'm probably making a bad guess at the attack speed. But, my point remains, it still cuts the raid boss's damage in half, giving the druids some respite.
Further, Furthermore: Sharpen Weapons
Someone mentioned earlier that Sharpen Weapons pales in comparison to poison weapon. They are somewhat right, and also outrageously wrong.
Solo, sharpen weapons sucks. For me, it adds 102 damage to my attacks. It isn't really even worth casting in battle, as in the time it takes to cast, I could do a single auto hit for more damage than it would give me. However, if a group is attuned to how sharpen weapons works, you can increase the groups damage overall by about 800 a hit, and that is increased even more by a hate potion.
To show what I mean:
1 group, 1 ranger, sharpen weapons adds 100, each player attacks approximately every 2 seconds. (the attack speed is just a middle number, rouges would be hitting much closer to every 1 second, along with rangers, so the number below would really be much higher.)
Take sharpen weapon damage addition: 100, multiply by 8 for people in group: 800, and 800 every 2 seconds for 2 minutes = 48000 damage added by sharpen weapons per cast... Which leads me to continue comparing it to poison weaps. Poison has to recast per person to use it on, it might add 2 times, maybe up to 3 times the actual damage done by sharpen on a mob, but it has to be cast 8 times if it were to be used by everyone in a group, every time a rouge wants to cast poison weaps, it costs them an auto attack, or 2 or 3 on haste, on the mob they are attacking. With rangers, its cast once, then cast again in 2 minutes, where rouges would lose a great deal of their damage if they were poisoning everyone's weaps.
Further, Further, Furthermore: Someone said that rangers are just a debuff of all classes thrown in a blender.... again, highly inaccurate (and hurtful).
Rangers don't need to heal as much as druids, because they won't be healing the tank, they would be healing themselves or other dps.
Rangers don't need lures as they can simply buff the damage done by everyone through their person, not the add.
Rangers don't need armor since the mobs don't even get close. (Bolas/Camo)
But Rangers do deal tons of damage. It is highly dependent on who exactly you are comparing to who, and how well geared they are, but rangers on Crom can easily hold their own.
All classes have their disadvantages, and advantages, but you really can't say that any class would not be missed if it were taken out. Every class plays a role in Celtic Heroes, and they all must play their role, otherwise- everything would be much, much tougher on the other classes, probably even impossible.