[spoiler]
Yeah, they are supposed to be pretty badass. It probably didn't help that my group had uber minmaxed monsters - attack powers with +5 gnarly and a few levels of wicked - Tom's monster in particular could pretty much wreck anything in one shot. In the playtest notes I got back, I don't remember encountering much in the way of other groups fighting the rangers so I never gave it much thought. Did your players just hated that they killed weird monsters and decided they had to die? [/spoiler]
[spoiler]Kinda. Maze's monster got fucked up by them earlier in the game (after he decided to cause some property damage), so he had a personal vendetta to settle with them. The other kid wasn't such a fan, but didn't care too much either. His monster actually snapped the neck of the gold ranger (though she's basically Rorschach, so it's a fitting end).
In fact, only one kid really liked them, but the kid he was working with threw a car through a building to get their attention and he botched his attempts at diplomacy (and I no matches and all dice under 5 critical failure), so they ended up getting in a life and death struggle.
Only one weapon was destroyed through non-ritual means (the weapon that dominated a player).[/spoiler]