In EQ2, I was one of the top rangers on the server, and I am still ranked #1 on my server for quests completed- I stopped playing on Feb 28 this year, but I will #1 be until their next expansion comes out since it is impossible for anyone to pass me.
You don't get to be #1 in any ranking without having something of a clue, though I will admit that this clue hasn't seemed to translate over for me into Warhammer.
In EQ2, from the start of the game until their current combat developer took over, Rangers and Assassins were top tier DPS. The gear that drop didn't ensure that (and with the current dev, only Assassins are top tier if they rely on gear instead of skills), it required timing, the ability to kite well, and finding "sweet spots" where it was possible to maximize damage. I could do all those things. Kiting 2-3, even over rough terrain, was easy (4 was where it got hard, if not impossible, since it depended on the luck of poisons triggering). I was never top tier geared because I wasn't in a guild that could do play all the right notes at the right times, but personally I hit hard and I hit fast and few people would be disappointed to have me around when I was on my game.
Here, SWs don't have the damage output I would have expected, and they certainly don't have any meaningful survivability once they lose the ability to stay ranged. What I haven't done is played with my masterys, and I think that is going to be a requiment for me to do better. I am currently just throwing every point into scout line, but for soloing and scenarios, I would probably be far better served with skirmisher. Scout-line seems to be where it is at for sieging and defending keeps, but everything "special" about that line requires standing still for long periods to get the shots off and in scenarios in particular standing still is death.
The other thing I miss from EQ2 is that I had 3 different ways (4 if you counted poisons) of stopping an opponent in their tracks (or at least slowing them down more than they could slow me down) and I also had a higher native run speed then any other class (if properly spec'ed). Here, I only have one root/slow that is meaningful, and while it is very useful in questing, it never seems to land (or at least stick) in scenarios, which means being down a mastery line that requires me to stop for max damage is just another dead Beele.
So, my personal problems are: 1) I am still trying to play this game like EQ2, and obviously it is not. 2) I think SWs are going to need additional ways of rooting/slowing opponents if they are using scout line, or scout line becomes useless outside of sieging where that 10% additional distance makes for a nice sweet spot (watching a mage fall off of a keep because they know just that one tap further will put them in range, since you have range on them.... waaaaaaghhhh). 3) I am going to try not to worry about it too much until I am at least high 30s- until then, there is too much gear to be played around with, different builds to try out. I will just keep cursing up a storm when one-on-one flinging arrows against a mage/shaman they will always kill me (in spite of my having good resists), and don't even get me started about those witch elves.
If nothing else, this will be my toon that I use for questing and getting unlocks. I have a bright wizard standing in the wings for dishing out real damage, particularly in PQs where doing rapid AoEs seems to be the only way to ensure you have a shot at a top quality reward (if you are DPS, from what I experienced in the last two days of running through Gunbad).