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In your honest opinions, what would it take to make these guys a viable option for a troop choice?
I don't mean over powered, I mean re-designed to be viable and not just a cool looking model

They are, aside from being overshadowed.

Spamming them won't work, but one or two on a backfield objectives is cheap, and takes a little more than a stiff wind to remove.

Their guns are incidental. Occasionally you'll kill that special weapon or heavy weapon, and they can put a wound or two on an MC. But mostly they are just a cheap, small obsec unit.

I don't think they are awful now, but bikers and DA outclass them pretty well.

Probably some edits to how snipers work are required. Snipers in general are just pretty bad for their points...I like the idea of them being expensive but they need to do more.

Probably give them the following;
Splitfire, Ignores cover on a 4+ to hit, rends on a 6+ (stackable with ignores cover) to hit, re-rolls to hit. Wounds on a 4+. Heavy 1.

It'll never happen but that would make snipers better. you could weaken them a bit from that and give them precision or something similar, but that would make them excellent against some armies (marines, guard, sisters, de, chaos, orks) and awful against others (tau, eldar, necrons).

Bharring wrote:

Occasionally you'll kill that special weapon or heavy weapon,.

I just want to clarify the rules then: can I chose to target a specific character in a squad with a specific weapon even if they are in the middle of the squad?
Can my opponents "look out sir" and take the hit with another model with just a basic weapon?

Sorry I'm just getting back into 40k and every where I look people always bash rangers for not being very effective.

On a 6 to hit, you may select the model hit.

The model may still LoS as normal. Which makes it terrible vs ICs and not great vs Sarges.

You can snipe a weapons guy from time to time, but really they just aren't scary.

That's really the problem they have. Snipers should be a unit that is scary for many armies because they can put wounds on support staff, leaders, psykers, and special weapon troopers. Obviously massed infantry, GMCs, and tanks should be a weakness.

Maybe not MCs.

Currently the rules make them okay versus MCs and such and pretty awful against their more fluffy targets.

They need the Pathfinder rules from the previous codex given to them by Illic Nightspear where EVERY shot is a precision shot. While the rest of the codex got a huge buff that people will complain about, the Rangers were nerfed to oblivion. They used to be okay enough choices to work with, but now they are almost completely worthless. Return the Pathfinder upgrades and we're golden, but until then, my Eldar are all Corsairs again.

Special weapons back to 1 per 3 on the jetbikes would probably fix most of the issues they currently have.

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
They need the Pathfinder rules from the previous codex given to them by Illic Nightspear where EVERY shot is a precision shot. While the rest of the codex got a huge buff that people will complain about, the Rangers were nerfed to oblivion. They used to be okay enough choices to work with, but now they are almost completely worthless. Return the Pathfinder upgrades and we're golden, but until then, my Eldar are all Corsairs again.

From what I understand, they still have the Pathfinder rules.

Just not available to every single Ranger unit like Illic allowed you to do.

It's not that rangers are bad it's more that they are over shadowed by the other eldar troop units which are among the best in the game. A unit in the back field sitting in cover gets a great cover save and as happened to me one time, if painted right your opponent might forget they are even there.

 Kanluwen wrote:

From what I understand, they still have the Pathfinder rules.

Just not available to every single Ranger unit like Illic allowed you to do.

It went from being a 125pt unit and any number of them to being a single unit with a 140pt tax character that MUST stay with them. Having Illic in a unit of Dark Reapers made the tax worth while. And saturating the Troop section with Pathfinders was the only way to make them worth taking. It's enough of a change to make it an awful choice.

Better sniper rifles and/or cheaper cost, return of Pathfinder upgrade, and a return of the Pathfinder's reserve-derping rules.

Bharring wrote:
They are, aside from being overshadowed.

Spamming them won't work, but one or two on a backfield objectives is cheap, and takes a little more than a stiff wind to remove.

Their guns are incidental. Occasionally you'll kill that special weapon or heavy weapon, and they can put a wound or two on an MC. But mostly they are just a cheap, small obsec unit.

Took the words right out of my mouth, Bharring. Rangers aren't very killy, but they're pretty cheap for a 2+ cover save with a gun that can reach across the board. You can spend about half as many points on a small ranger squad as you would on a single guardian defender squad with a warlock, and you don't have to cast conceal to get your 2+ cover. They won't drop units by themselves, but their guns are decent for sprinkling wounds on MCs or above-average toughness models like bikes and T-Cav. Any damage they do is mostly just a bonus for me, and any precision shots that find their marks are a bonus on top of a bonus.

Ignores cover weaponry ruins their days, but you can always consider outflanking them for an annoying line breaker/objective snatcher unit.

Illic is in a similar boat. He's not an awful value for his cost (10 rangers putting their shots wherever they want them can be interesting), but he isn't as generally useful or killy as our other HQ options.

Personally, I think snipers would be fantastic if you couldn't LoSir them, which sort of makes sense. There's a guy 300 feet away with a rifle pointed at your boss, sure, but your attention is probably more focused on the mob of machine gun equivalents that are 30 feet away instead. To me, snipers would be wonderful as a unit disassembler, taking out those lynchpin models in death stars, sniping the special guns out of enemy squads, taking out problematic sargeant equivalents, etc. The ease with which sirs can look out mitigates this potential quite a bit.

Something I started doing with snipers was breaking coherency.
If a squad spreads out to avoid blast templates, there's often a model keeping two parts of the squad together.
Pop that model, which usually cannot usually LOS, and coherency needs to be sorted out on their turn.
So, what with sergeants, heavy and special weapon models, ICs, MCs, and high-T models, there's a lot for a sniper squad to choose from.

They still suffer from the sniper syndrome.. not every shot hits and then only 50% wounds, not to mention the opponents (cover) saves. the output is just bad.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Personally, I think snipers would be fantastic if you couldn't LoSir them, which sort of makes sense. There's a guy 300 feet away with a rifle pointed at your boss, sure, but your attention is probably more focused on the mob of machine gun equivalents that are 30 feet away instead. To me, snipers would be wonderful as a unit disassembler, taking out those lynchpin models in death stars, sniping the special guns out of enemy squads, taking out problematic sargeant equivalents, etc. The ease with which sirs can look out mitigates this potential quite a bit.

I think this would probably be a useful trait for all snipers in the game.

 Shandara wrote:
They still suffer from the sniper syndrome.. not every shot hits and then only 50% wounds, not to mention the opponents (cover) saves. the output is just bad.

Being Eldar though, Farseers can help out there.

Which cannot start the game in a Ranger unit, so is 1 S6 wound away from death.

They aren't bad as objective holders, they just sit next to the best troop choice in the game.

Well, I play my Eldar army as a highly mobile force without static units like Rangers.
My experience is that if you have a mobile army with one or two static elements, they enemy will try to approach your static units. This is not what you want. You want him to move where you want him to.

They are pretty cheap - I can see them being a useful addition if you can't figure out what to do with 55 points. They are far from useless. Spamming at a MC for a few turns holding an objective with 2+ cover saves with objective secured isn't really that bad of value.

Bharring wrote:
Which cannot start the game in a Ranger unit, so is 1 S6 wound away from death.

I meant to use Farseers that are already up the table with another unit, casting powers like Doom on the sniper's target unit.

Ranger unit or min squad of cultists with a flamer.

Which would you choose?

 Konrax wrote:
Ranger unit or min squad of cultists with a flamer.

Which would you choose?

Rangers. They look cooler. And probably do a better job camping an objective, which is what I expect from them.

On the topic of buffs: While some units do get more synergy out of buffs then others, it’s not the best benchmark for balance. Does the farseer have other units who could use his help? Are they going to be even better with a little magic love? Debuffs are a little better, because your one unit of rangers is not monopolizing the attentions of the seer.

 Konrax wrote:
Ranger unit or min squad of cultists with a flamer.

Which would you choose?

Both can serve as point fillers.
A small unit of Cultists will be shot to pieces when targetted.
Rangers are rather durable and are able to occupy an objective.

Rangers also have the chance to hurt something compared to Cultists. That said, Cultists are better simply because they're better than the competition in their own codex. If that makes sense.

Akiasura wrote:
ISnipers in general are just pretty bad for their points.

This...

GW has an over-inflated opinion of snipers and thinks they are better than they really are.

 labmouse42 wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
ISnipers in general are just pretty bad for their points.

This...

GW has an over-inflated opinion of snipers and thinks they are better than they really are.

Is that all that's over inflated?

For the points you can make them viable only to play in the back field and sit on an objective with some cover.

I know it doesn't make sense fluff wise but if the Rangers could take an Exarch and be put into an aspect host for an Alaitoc themed army that would be pretty cool.
But it would never be a competitive list for sure.

 Captain_Control wrote:
I know it doesn't make sense fluff wise but if the Rangers could take an Exarch and be put into an aspect host for an Alaitoc themed army that would be pretty cool.
But it would never be a competitive list for sure.

Rangers by themselves are a choice in the Warhost detachment, along with Illic being a choice in the Command slot.

Illic is the closest thing the Rangers have to an Exarch, given that they're essentially loose gatherings of individuals even when you're talking about an Alaitoc army with tons of them.