Quote Originally Posted by Craft (Cheese) View Post
The question is, once you take away the (sucky) spells, the animal companion, and the tracking feature... you have a Fighter. How do you define the ranger outside these features?
The 4th edition ranger didn't have those things, except arguably spells in the form of some of its utility powers.

Though moving archery specialization to the fighter and dual wielding specialization to specializations robs the ranger of what gave it an identity in 4th edition as well. So I am also rather curious as to how they intend to give the ranger a unique identity without any of the above.

I'm also slightly miffed about animal companions being moved to modules, as I seem to like them where a lot of people don't, which makes me feel like most Next games will probably have DMs that don't allow them, which means I'll rarely have the option of playing them. But that's sorta meta-speculation at that point so I probably shouldn't dwell on it too much.