To veterans of DND I just wanted to know have you ever played a Ranger and prove your party wrong with your skills? I’m asking because I see a lot of people make fun of the Ranger a lot and while I understand the jokes and everything I think it’s underestimated. I have you ever proven a party wrong before or have you had bad luck with the Ranger yourself?

Rangers (other than the Gloomstalker) are not noted for nova damage and their in lies their “joke” quality. The reality is that rangers are highly effective characters but they are tactical PCs not one trick ponies. Even worse how you play them generally evolves significantly over the tiers. That gives many folk fits as they have trouble evolving their play to match. That leads them to play their PC improperly and poorly so they blame the character class not themselves. A well played Ranger is a power character capable of doing significant damage to even the most powerful foes, controlling the battle field in numerous ways and functioning in and out of combat in numerous useful ways depending on how your campaign and ranger are structured. I play mostly rangers and ranger based multiclasses and I’ve never had anyone complain that my rangers were underpowered. If anything it’s the reverse - I let the others do their thing then step in where they are deficient and go from there.

I have had dms put extra restrictions on all my beastmaster poison harvesting builds for fear of breaking the game.

Even when not harvesting ..... a flying snake beastmaster will risk the feelings of other martials for early game. The 3d4+1+prof gives very reliable damage. Because it has flyby and 60' movement I can cover the field very easily.

I DM'd an owlin sharpshooter ranger.  Just a monster for damage and the ability to fly was just rude.  Even in a cave encounter he was annoyingly effective.

I played a strength based PAM gloom stalker that destroyed combats, and made wilderness exploration a breeze.  He was regularly outperforming the BM GW fighter.

Much like barbarian the real question is how to handle levels 11 and up.  The secret seems to be spells.  You have them and the fighter doesn't.  The paladin also has them.  The barbarian does not.

In all my years of playing, I've never actually played with anyone who poo-poo'd the ranger class, they all seemed to understand that it's a combination of careful build and more active up-front coordination with a DM. But my current Aarakocra Monster Hunter Ranger is one of the two top damage dealers in the party (the other being a gunslinger who just invented fragmentation grenades), along with being our more mobile healer and very useful out of combat.

My wife had never played before and rolled up a level 3 Swarmkeeper to start this homebrew we've been in for 8 months.  With her 18 Dex, she's essentially a killing machine and has carried most of our fights (with a barbarian, paladin, bard, rogue, and warlock as other party members).  With her pixie swarm, hunter's mark, and longbow, she's had many rounds of 20+ damage. Her max damage with the longbow was 24 at level 3.  She just picked up sharpshooter at level 4, so her max longbow damage is now 34 and is now running an AVERAGE damage of 25.5 on any round where hunter's mark and sharpshooter are both effective.  She can obliterate enemies from up to 600 ft away without disadvantage. 

On top of all that, she also rolled near perfect for HP, so she can also tank.  Her dual-wielded shortswords can max 32.

Damage has never really been a problem for rangers, their biggest problem has to do with their core as wilderness experts and that wasn’t really a problem until Xanthers introduced the scout rogue. Up til then the advantage on a couple of selected terrains and foes was far better than anyone else (even Druids surprisingly). But the scout rogue got automatic expertise in nature and survival (for all terrains and foes) leaving the ranger way behind as a wilderness expert. Adding to that is D&D’s shift away from wilderness exploration & off road travel rendering the ranger even weaker as their (now emasculated) focus essential worthless. This is when the idea of the urban ranger started becoming popular as it gave the ranger a possible new identity. Tasha’s helped but didn’t really solve the problem as it only gave a single skill (your choice) expertise with Deft explorer rather than the two or three needed. Favored foe certainly helped with damage especially after L6 but it didn’t really replace and improve on favored enemy. I had high hopes fore the 2024 version of the ranger when UA2 came out as it simply granted the ranger 2 initial and 2 later expertises that could be used for nature, survival, perception and stealth keeping the ranger even with the rogue scout. Then UA6 came along and we were back to to basically the Tasha’s ranger - good damage, spells but again known  not prepared and no cantrips. I’m hoping for a third iteration before the final version that goes back towards the UA2 version but to be more that just Gish Chassis that can be given some wilderness skills (or not)  they are going to have to do something to support the exploration overland travel leg of the game. Basically the weakness isn’t with the ranger but with the game.

The ranger in my Icewind Dale campaign is a pretty effective character, especially during exploration and combat.

As I said Rangers have always been effective in combat and exploration. The problem isn’t really that they aren’t but that they generally aren’t nova damage types so all the nova nuts look down their noses at them despite the fact that they can often actual do more damage overall especially in an extended combat. The other problem is that while they were supposed to be the premiere wilderness class (and because of a few spells still can be) they are now the second best after the scout rogue. The hunter ranger and the champion fighter may well be the top 2 classes for damage production round after round after round for an entire day simply because they have so few limited resources so they can just keep churning out damage  if the day was really 2-3 combats of 3-4 rounds then a short rest done three times with the third ending in a long rest then your looking at consistent production over 18 to 36 rounds very few other classes could keep up. 

I remember, now lost, articles about  "rangers are too powerful/ruining dms plans now that dnd next was out of playtest." (Real early 5e)

Then common thought became use strict interpretation of the features  to control the game or discouraging specific playstyles. (Ranger planed ambushes to use hips, using downtime/travel sequences, primeval awarenes used for planning)

This started a bad pendulum swing on a lot of opinions about  ranger features. And wotc's errata to help the beastmaster actually made it worse. (Besides giving beasts magic attacks)

Wotc then stepped out on any type of feature clarification for rangers. Functionally they allowed the bullys and the memes to run the conversation. (Rather than RAI). They were stuck between a vaguely powerful and a vaguely weak ruling.  

Hence the weirdness that was the revised ranger as an attempt to bypass it all together.

More meme wars and wotc silence insued.

Eventually we got tasha's which really gave almost every side something to use and we were in a decent place because we could mix and match to suit our tables tastes.

Ye rangers could be incredibly powerful in all editions. I had a L16 1e ranger with dual wielding, 2 longswords including a Giant slayer and a haste spell on him take out a room full of hill giants by himself. As you point out one of the biggest problems the ranger has faced is that WOtC has never been willing to take stand on any ranger issue.leaving it upto the bullies and memers to try to destroy its rep.  The ranger is probably the best Gish class out there ( I don’t consider the Paladin a Gish as they typically smite not cast) my complaint with the scout rogue is that they gave it expertise in nature and survival rather than just proficiency (and didn’t upgrade the ranger to expertise). Advantage is typically considered about equal to a +4 on a roll, that means that the 2014 ranger get the same bonus on 1 terrain/ 1 - 2 foe types (and the UA6 ranger just gets proficiency making it even worse) as the rogue scout gets with all, yes, the ranger still has spells but only hunters mark really helps here. UA2 finally brought the ranger upto par with the scout rogue on nature and survival checks, if they really wanted to put the ranger back on top of the wilderness game they would need to give them both (access to) expertise with nature and survival but also advantage. Damage wise rangers don’t need anything special as long as they have the extra attack and anything that all other martials get (like the new weapon abilities).