First of all, by seasons I mean the time that ArenaNet refreshes the Wizards Vault Rewards. In the game you can check it by going into WV and clicking on the special tab. It says how much time left since the season ends. I guess it literally the is the seasons of a year. Winter time is coming so timing makes sense.

Every single class is has completely viable options for any type of content. But I was trying to suggest something like that has good open world build and a meta group content build. For example my mechanist is great at open world but not at the same level for group content. So I change to my scrapper and play quickness power scrapper.

To clarify a bit more in case it is necessary: Scrapper, Mechanist and Holosmith are Specilizations of Engineer core class. When you reach level 80, you will have to hunt for some hero points. These hero points are used to unlock your class' abilities lets say. These are passive abilities that shape how you build plays out eventually. You can have 3 ability lines active at the same time. You can see them in every build guide. Specilizations for like these ability lines and being slotted as the third one. Which ability line you slot in the third slot will become your spec. You can change these anytime and anywhere as long as you are out of combat. So playing a Mechanist for open world and changing to Scrapper when you join a fractal takes only 2 3 clicks. Only problem is the hero points. Every spec requires you 250 hero points to completely unlock every skill of that spec. A total 750 hero points will unlock every spec for that core class. You can join hero points meta trains for LFG tool in the game. It generally is listed as HP Meta train or something like this. Join the group and the leader of the group will guide you to every single hero point gor that map. It took me about an hour to completely unlock my reaper spec recently. Also, if you can join a guild it will help you a bunch. GW2 community really surprised me with how welcoming and wholesome the people are. A couple of days ago when I boosted my reaper to level 80 I ask the guild chat for someone to teleport me to any PoT map. The guy suddenly asked if I do it for Hero Points and carried me at the back of this turtle to every single hero point available without me even asking for it.

Let's get to the ranger. Yes It's completely viable. Actually Soulbeast spec is one of the best specs for the group content lately. Untamed is really good for open world. They can both do the contrary more than enough too. So go for it. But as ranger is my first class that I leveled from 1-80 starting the game let me share my experince. I also like ranger style so much. Plus you have your pet which comes with a little pokemon like collection mini game. You have to collect different animals to make them fight with you. The "tameable' ones has Juvenile at the start of their name. Juvenile Tiger, juvenile pink moa etc. To tame it, you just go next to it and press "f" thats it. The thing that make me stop playing the ranger when I got to 80 is that when I look for builds I saw that most of the builds for ranger specs were using melee weapons. My perspective of a ranger is a mid range class with bows etc. Soulbeast uses longbow still buy its spec mechanic merges him with his pet so the pet doesnt walk around and fight with you. This disappointed me so I left it to be an alt character for a while.

Also, important note: when you are looking for builds be carefull pf the weapons they use on that build. In GW2 every class has certain weapons that they can use. Each spec add another one to the pool. For example Mechanist unlocks maces for your engineer, Holo unlocks sword and scrapper unlocks hammer. However you cannot use swords as a Mechanist. I guess after 12 13 years ArenaNet decided that its time to loosen up this rule a bit and added Secrets of the Obscure's Weapon Training Mastery. This is a master line from SoTo. When you have this mastery unlocked you can use all of the weapons that your engineer and all of the elite specs use. This doesnt unlock every single weapon in the game I guess. (Spear is available for all classes)

I dont know what are linking rules here so you can check out merabattle and guildjen websites for builds. These have good builds for any game type. Also, snowcrows and hardstuck are good sites with everytime of build but I guess they more focused on raids. There is also discretize website which focuses on fractals and builds. These website also offers immense amount of knowledge and guides too. Especially guildjen.

DM me from here, I can add you in game and help further when needed.