JStone610

I'll try to answer the Dungeon Questions.

1) Shouts are good even without Altruistic Healing. At low levels AH healing is barely noticeable anyway so it's okay to put in points for Shouts, which actually helps increasing Survival with the Vitality Bonus. The benefits of Meditations (which have long recharge) can be covered by Shouts.

Spirit Weapons will perform well enough but you won't have enough points to have all the improvements you may to try and see which among them you really need. (Eternal Spirit, Spirit Weapon Mastery, or Improved Spirit Weapon Duration) It is possible to run with one of the Spirit Weapons while running with a Shout Build. You don't have to trait Consecrations just yet, they are useful but you don't need to buff them. You can swap them in or out when the need comes for them. The most you would use is Wall of Reflection during the Spider Section of AC (which all paths have to encounter)

2) Yeah for the moment I would suggest something that does increase your health pool.

I would probably do something like this. The weapon set is quite defensive without losing any offensive control. Second set could be a GS or a Hammer to provide more punch. Keep a Scepter in your bags if you find that you need to stay out of range. You can swap one of your Shouts for a second Spirit Weapon. I just felt that the Sword will be quite enough to have constant damage will you play defensively.

PS: There are parties that do kick low levels but there are those who are nice enough to have you with them regardless.

Who would've thought out of 10,000+ members on guru two of them might have opposing views.

I suppose I could link tons of pages where Blizzard's Devs are in the forums addressing issues, or how they continually update patch notes as time goes on.  Most of the reason a lot of people are miffed is because we had nothing but what little was said in the forums by the devs.  Leaving messages like "lots of rangers utilities will be looked and made more attractive.  Expect to see lots of ranger changes" and then as the fever gets built up for the patch, people are left hugely disappointed because their excitement and speculation was left unchecked.  Could you imagine if Blizzard did their patches like Anet does?  Millions of players logging in to find all kinds of stuff screwed up and moved around, this nerfed or that buffed. But I think ANet's mindset is that since we dont pay a sub fee, they can do as they please and to hell with us.