Most Over/Underrated Class?

[Petrocorus]

You do realize that Ranger can easily and greatly overshadow Fighter in nova damage right?

Could you elaborate on this?
Because the Ranger don't have a lot of Nova abilities besides level 5 spells, AFAIK.

And that it can overall get comparable level of damage up to level 20 for several encounters a day (of course if you spend all day fighting, obviously Ranger is gonna be left in the dust eventually)?

Maybe, but one of the good thing about the Ranger is that his non-spell damage features have no limit of uses per day/rest. Only a limit per round.
I believe the Ranger will run out of resources less quickly than a Fighter in a day-long battle.

The fact that Ranger has slightly less mundane damage than a Fighter without spending resources is not a bug, it's a feature. A game-balancing feature to counter the fact that Ranger has several ways to save party's hide whereas Fighter would be nigh useless because unless heavy multiclass or extremely specific build (including EK options), Fighter is overall just about "dealing damage", or tanking/holding one or two enemies at a time at most.

This is my main contention with the Ranger. His damage are fine. But he's not good at his other jobs.
The Fighter is explicitly a class overspecialized in combat. The Ranger is supposed to be versatile, and he's not, not really.
His skill are barely better than the Fighter, his utility features are badly written and situational so not that efficient when needed, and he cannot make good use of his utility spells because of this very low spell known limit (for which i still don't know the justification).

Also, I don't see where there are dead levels:

I believe people are using the expression "dead level" for the levels where the only features are not good or situational, even if there is a feature. And some of them don't advance spellcasting. Notably level 6, 10, 14.

Sorry Petrocorus, I missed your reply. ;)

No worries.

Overall I agree with you. My point was more about AOE in general for an EK. .....When you decided well, you really enjoy it. ^^

I would agree with this. If i was to play an EK, i would reserve one spell known slot for a AoE spell.
Thunderwave or Burning Hands, then Shatter, then Fireball. I'll kept Fireball even at highest level because it is as good as a level 4 spell, for the cost of a level 3 slot.

But i will have only one of those spell. Plus 3 to 5 Abj spell i want. Then i will hit my head against the wall trying to figure how i can fit all what i want into this 4 any school spell known.