I have a first life Ranger, 20 Ranger 1 Epic level that I had shelved for about 3 years now. I have been TR'ing a different toon in the meantime, now on its 6th life, Bladeforged, currently, also 20 Pal 1 Epic.

I dusted off the Ranger with the intent to get her to L30 and park her at a short quest to do some daily seed farming. I am now struck by how much squishier she is than my Paladin.

My first quests with her are KotB, and these quests are definitely not kiting friendly, so not really amenable to an effective bow Ranger play style. She does fine if there is room to roam and kite.

I can basically sleep-walk through KotB on Epic with my L21 Bladeforged Pal, and if I don't mind dying a few times and re-entering if I get too many Reapers, I can even do some of them on R1.

I can only complete them on Hard with the Ranger and then only if I am careful. I haven't finished any on Epic, I just get killed when the mobs come into melee range. The Ranger has no crowd control or multi-target clearing attacks and can't survive much melee.

So, my Ranger has her Lesser Reincarnate +5 stone in her bag still. I am thinking about multi-classing, but only if it will make her better able to stand toe-to-toe in quests that are too cramped for effective kiting.

Pal - 5 levels of Pal doesn't do much, LoH is gimped, and as soon as I get the Ranger to 23 she can take LoH that is not gimped anyway. Taking the Pal levels would let me get more LoH charges, though. That is the only advantage I could think of. The Pal heals at L5 are not as good as the Ranger heals at L15. So its sort of like taking 5 fighter levels but without the weapon feats.
Cleric - sort of same story as Pal, L15 Ranger still out-heals and I can't get the big Cleric feat without 6 levels of Cleric
Fighter - I think this would be the way to go, and I can get some more +'s for the bow to make up for what I lose with the 5 Ranger levels. I don't get the Ranger capstone. I lose some cool-down bow attacks, but I have so **** many of them right now that I can't use them all. I think + to dmg and hit serve me better than another 3 or 4 nuke buttons. I can use Heavy Armor.

My question is - should I bother? I can level her to 30 doing quests on Hard / Normal and just dealing with no toe-to-toe ability. I wonder if taking 5 fighter levels would really make her more survivable. If I still can only complete KotB at Hard, then I haven't really made a dent and will end up feeling like I should have kept a full Ranger with capstone.