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I've been scratch building Rangers and I'm having a lot of fun with them, but now the trick is fitting them into a game. My first couple attempts at testing the army build (by proxy) went ok, but not great. I've been running a Farseer, a countercharge unit and 2x BL wraithlords, and then 50-60% pathfinders of the remaining points. Of the countercharge units it came down between spiders and Shining Spears.

Now I'm looking for advice, any I can get. I've looked through all the Eldar tacticas and people say "Pathfinder=amazing unit". Despite this, it is never suggested to do a pathfinder list. Am I going down a dark path here?

How about using Harlequins for the countercharge unit? They hit harder than both Spears and Spiders.

All ranger/pathfinder lists are not usually recommended because they do not offer much flexibility. Granted that almost all Eldar units are highly specialized for one role or another. Pathfinders are going to have to stay still to be effective and the general sense of a good list with Eldar involves lots of mobility. As a result, basing the army around Pathfinders is counterproductive towards maintaining an advantage in mobility.

A couple of small units to camp on home objectives or infiltrate objectives in the middle of nowhere can be a great idea though. Pathfinders can get 2+ cover saves which is mighty hard to shoot thruogh with any kind of effectiveness.

Well, Pathfinders can pin enemy units in place. But the enemy often gets a cover save so that they lost an edge in the new ed.
I'd take at most three small Pathfinder units since its hard to find good cover (decent fire angles, far away from the enemy).
A Farseer with doom is good add-on. Two WL's with brightlances and eml's are decent anti-tank, while three Warwalkers with scatterlasers can take on hordes.
Finally, some counterstrike units are necessary. Shining Spear units are a bit small. I'd take Harlies or even your mentioned Warp Spiders.

Pathfinders are good because they do moderate damage from long range. The whole squad can shoot from 36" away and they end up having 2+ cover saves. All of these things make them good. However, they are not mobile and die in droves to flamers and hand to hand.

With all of that being said, I think an army built around pathfinders is going to struggle in 5th edition. The reason being the fact that you have to go out and control objectives in most games. And while the pathfinders are great units for holding rear objectives, they will never be able to get ones that are mid field or in the enemy deployment zone. Any army you make is going to have to have a way to at least contest these objectives and better yet, control 1 or 2 of them.

Too heavy on them and Pathfinders will be easy pickings. But I think you could work with this concept...

Use operational mobility (outflanking) to overcome the stationary nature of the army.

Something like:

Eldrad w 6 Warlocks

2 x 10 Striking Scorpions

4 x 6 Pathfinders
1 x 7 Rangers

3 x Walkers w 2 SL
2 x WL w BL/EML

Eldrad and retinue with the two WL form the protection part of for your 4 pathfinder squads. The 2 Scorpions and 3 walkers outflank your opponent to drive to objectives or apply a vise on his attacking troops. The ranger unit goes along with them as this gives you a flanking troop choice to take objectives. (Also since this squad will be moving, why pay for another unit of pathfinders.)

The list is weak on some things but your outflanking force should be able to put your opponent with tough decisions on where to go and what to do when you drop your flanking bomb.

Also - assuming not DoW scenario you will only deploy Eldrad, warlocks and 2 WL as the rest is either reserve outflanking or deploys using infiltration rules so you always have the ability to place the pathfinders where they are needed most. Add in Eldrad's redeployment special rule and you can even cause your opponent to largely be aiming at a ghost. (e.g. Eldrad and wraithlords deploy in the far right side... opponent deploys in strength directly opposite you. You deploy your infiltrators in the far left side and then depending on your rolls, you could lift Eldrad and the WL and redeploy them to the left too.)

Harlies for Counter-charge.
Where are the Reapers?

Reapers? Why would I take reapers here? I like the suggestion about the walkers. I've played my proxy setup a couple times and did ok, but felt out of place with the rest of the army comp. The pathfinders with doom on the target dish out about a dozen dead each round, and the WL's kept everything at bay. But the walkers sound good. I hadn't thought about using scorpions either. Harlies had too high a chance of dying the turn they went in, which made them unpredictable. The spiders looked the best until the scorpions. I'm a big fan of withdraw when using pathfinders.

If you want some point capturing utility, a lone 66pt 3man jetbiker guardain team whom stay in reserves for hopefully as long as possibly and just keep turbo-boosting around the back of the board or/and staying completely hidded.. Come turn 4ish, start zooming them towards a CP.. also those pathfinders are really surpringly nippy when you can move & run them 7-12" through terrain as they ignore difficult terrain!

A good amount of counter-strike could come in the form of a 5-6man warlock team footslogging with a farseer to fortune themselves (a 2+ rerollable is just silly ands begs focousing of anti-cover save things) and doom required targets.. Keep them roughly infront of a pathfinder squad around the centre of your lines AND have a few smaller 6-8man sqauds of scorpains (chain sabres worth it? or just keep the claw?) infiltrating with a few of the infiltrating pathfinders. Sit one infront of the other. Ideally the PF'ers sit in the middle story of a building as to avoid giving cover saves to anything they shoot at.

Shoot at things like whirl-winds, other crack-shot dark reapers, basically anything thats got long-range anti-cover ap5 stuff. Airburst from a thunderfire is still bad but just not as dire.

Id say 3-4 units of 5-6 pathfinders & employ the whole MSU with 2+ cover saves! That leaves you with 2 squads of scorps & a warlock team as counter charge.