One thing I've been curious about lately is the "prime stat" notion in the helpfile for rangers being strength. Obviously that's been around forever, but does it still really apply? In the top ten highest pk-count rangers, the first four are felar and the rest are dex-based with the exception of Tjok and two humans from back in 2004.

How much role does strength play in the skills of rangers these days, and could you maybe break it down by expertise? For instance, I would imagine hunter as a dex-based expertise, but do storm giants get more damage from skills like aimed shot (though they'd be less accurate) or the secondary part of serpent strike? I could see savage being strength-based, but their bonus to ambush seems to heavily favor just being naked (and wood-elf) than strength in particular.

Much thanks for the clarification.

The short answer to your question is that neither make a huge difference.

As a range of any terrain/specialty you are most likely going to be killing people through ambush, melee, and a direct damage skill. The variety of direct damage skills available to rangers is very limited and aside from edge options or specialy ambushes str/dex don't play a big role in your damage.

As for specialy skills the savage ones are pretty much str oriented and the hunter ones are dex oriented.

Personally if I want to do a pk ranger as a human I take str over dex just for the simple fact that it expands my pool of weapon choices significantly, the extra dex isn't that big of a deal if you are fighting in places where you can take advantage ofwilderness familiarity.

You see felar at the top of the pk pile for rangers because theyare a very very popular race choice due to their ability to use a ranger staff/spear without giving up dual wield.

If, for example, you're a caverndweller in the caves, dex makes a very big difference to the damage you do against melee classes, because you have a ridiculously effective riposte-like skill that fires off dodge.