Torpid wrote:They're 20 power for a reason.
And they offer far more than detection with kb on demand at long range. The longest sight range of any unit in the game and the addition of an extra capping squad.
In every high level 1v1 with eldar that I play in atm I see them except vs non-IQ IG.
I know that the knee-jerk response to hearing a unit is terrible is to disprove it, but trying to say that Rangers are a vital staple of Eldar play isn't really true at all. Just to offer a differing viewpoint:
They are far more expensive with their upgrade, which is kind of mandatory if you want them to be able to infiltrate things and not sit around doing very little.
Farseer also has longer sight range. You never hear anyone talking about what a huge boon that is. On a unit such as Rangers which require a huge micro-tax just to keep them alive (being as squishy as Scouts without the melee resist or any of the survivability upgrades) a bit of farther vision is a pretty low trade-off.
Getting "an extra capping squad" isn't really an argument. You could literally say the same thing about every infantry unit in the game aside from Rippers. Either way, having an extra capping squad which is designed to shoot from very far away isn't all that useful since you don't want them sitting around on a point at the front of your formation. But this is a moot point overall since, had you not bought Rangers, you'd still have another capping squad in the form of the unit you'd get instead. They might have a lessened cost, but they're not free, and you can still get a Shuri or Dire Avenger for just a tad more than you need to invest in Rangers.
In my purely subjective experience, that last statement is a lie. I know that everyone has a different view of things, and while I don't watch too many pro 1v1s anymore since I'm not much into spectating, I can count the number of times I've seen Rangers come up in high level play in the most recent patch on the fingers of one hand. That might not be a fully accurate statement, but I'm VERY skeptical of anyone who says that they appear "in every high level 1v1".
Overall, they are very much a weak unit to my eyes. They do pretty much only offer detection and knockback every now and then (which neither does damage without the upgrade nor suppresses for those comparing it to a long-range shotgun blast) with the gimmick of Holo-Field if you upgrade them. In my opinion, that really doesn't justify any of the cost in resources (even if they are cheaper) or micro since they basically have zero impact on the field themselves. You're free to disagree of course, but there's a reason that people have been consistently saying that Rangers need some kind of love since waaaaaaaay back.