I will just post my opinions from a raid perspective because thats all I really do. Rangers need a good bow (Sarnak and LBOC) and tier 8 Ammo to really shine. An Assassin can still do good DPS without the best weapons in the game. A good Ranger can parse well (read good)they just need to know where to stand and what order to do things. Rangers it seems are also more dependant of group setup but get them a decent group and they can make me work to stay ahead. Granted the Assassin will usually win unless its an AE target or my stealth attacks arent back up from the last trash mob but Rangers are far from the gimped class they are made out to be. To wrap it all up a Ranger seems to be more group dependant and needs a good bow and Ammo to shine.