2000 Ford Ranger EGR Bad?

2000 Ford Ranger with 3.0 V-6 with 79K miles. Vehicle pings when using regular unleaded gas but disappears when using mid-level octane.
I am betting the EGR valve is either bad or clogged up with carbon. I have not pulled the EGR Valve. Any comments

Is your CEL on? If the EGR had a problem it would turn on the CEL. Pinging is a very common problem with a 3.0. There are a few things you can do to improve it (resistor on IAT sensor wire to advance timing/ different spark plugs). I'm not sure but recent year models also had a knock sensor that was supposed to help, but not sure when they started.Also if your getting bad gas milage your 02 sensors can be bad causing it to ping more. Good Luck I hope this helped some.