I treat a ranger as more of a weaker samurai. I fight with the dagger, for the most part, and only use the bow and the limited arrows on enemies that are particularly strong. Once my dagger skill is trained up enough I start tossing them left and right.

Generally speaking, the ranger isn't all that fun, it's more of a relaxing way to play when I'm not in the mood to use my brain for wiz or healer.

I consider the wizard to be almost like the game's easy mode. Valkyrie is traditionally called the easy-mode, but if you have lots of game knowledge, wizard is it too. Once you get magicbane and the master key, you're overpowered. Throw on some silver dragon scale mail for reflection and get the eye of aethiopica, and you're good to go, ready for ascension. All the rings and scrolls you tend to carry around only makes things easier.

Once you get polymorph for polypiling..it's over. The game is trivial. Every death as a wizard is a YASD.

I adore the sheer difficulty of the healer early game. Of course, once you're able to survive to the point of getting some decent spells and armnour, you then become almost a more fragile wizard and the game can start to take off.