Rangers don't have, you know, the best reputation. While they're half-casters like Paladins, they don't have super-powerful abilities like Aura of Protection or Divine Smite (though as we've seen, the latter there is getting a pretty substantial nerf,) and as martial characters, often a Dexterity-based Fighter can out-damage them thanks to the Fighter's many attacks and other features.
Therefore, I think the Ranger really needs to carve out its own identity. Do the changes in 2024 allow them to do that?
In a sense, this is really the third version of the Ranger that we've gotten, after Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced a ton of new optional features for the class. Unlike the additional features most classes got, the Ranger ones fully replaced core base features.
To a certain extent, many of these changes have simply become the baseline features in the 2024 Ranger. For example, Deft Explorer, which replaced your Natural Explorer feature (aka Favored Terrain) has now fully replaced it as the base class feature. Deft Explorer, of course, had various additional benefits at various points to match the Natural Explorer Improvement features, but without a need to do so anymore, things like Roving have now been made into their own independent feature.
Favored Foe has also changed, now automatically giving the Ranger Hunter's Mark as well as giving you a number of free castings of the spell per long rest.
Hunter's Mark is now going to interact with some additional Ranger features, and at higher levels you'll no longer be able to lose concentration on the spell from taking damage.
I will say that I'm skeptical about this. With the Ranger building some high-level features around Hunter's Mark and the Warlock (at least the GOO-lock) getting some high-level features built around Hex, the design is pushing players to continue casting these spells and using their concentration even when it would probably be better for them to start concentrating on something else. Granted, I think the intent is more to make these low-level spells a more attractive option at higher levels, but if these features don't prove strong enough to warrant using the spells, they become dead features.
Hunter's Mark also gets some additional bonuses, like increased damage (a rather pathetic level 20 capstone, to be honest) and, much more enticingly, advantage on attacks against the marked target.
Rangers are also going to get more instances of Expertise - they get one at level 1 with the Deft Explorer feature (as they did in Tasha's) but they'll get additional expertise choices at higher levels (I think they cap out at three). I think this is going to be a big part of giving the Ranger something to really set them apart - ideally, no class will be better at navigating and exploration.
Like Paladins, Rangers will now be getting spellcasting at 1st level, and while they will get access to all the Fighting Style feats, they'll also, like the Paladin, get the option to instead learn some cantrips (in the Ranger's case, from the Druid spell list) in case they really want to focus on spellcasting. (I will say that I think this could make sense for the Beast Master, given that the Beast's attack bonus is based on your spell attack modifier, so if you wanted to really just push Wisdom you could be casting Thorn Whip or Starry Wisp instead of shooting a bow).
Let's talk subclasses:
The Beast Master is getting a lot of the features from Tasha's baked into the class, including using three scaling stat blocks for Beasts of the Air, Sea, and Land, rather than picking something out of the Monster Manual. You'll be able to command the beast with a bonus action, too, and presumably if it's like the Tasha's version, it will be relatively trivial to revive a fallen beast companion (solving "the Trinket problem").
I think most of the Tasha's-era changes will remain largely as they are, which I believe (though this is through very second-hand online discourse) more or less fixed the subclass back when that book came out.
The Fey Wanderer is coming in from Tasha's, and as far as I can tell is not particularly different - it'll just be benefiting from the changes to the base class.
The Gloomstalker from Xanathar's is also being added, but this time with some more serious revisions. The first-round burst of damage is being nerfed in exchange for a reusable ability to deal extra psychic damage and potentially frighten the targets you hit, but on any round of combat you choose.
Changing Dread Ambusher will invariably feel like a nerf - Gloomstalker was perhaps the most potent Nova feature in the game, especially if you multiclassed with Fighter to get Action Surge and thus double-dip on it. Unless you have many combat in a day, I suspect that even a limited uses of these psychic attacks will still occur more than your Dread Ambusher, but we'll see.
A few other things changed for the class, including the ability to at some point cause an AoE fear, which is potentially very potent.
Finally, the Hunter has gotten some very nice changes - some of the less powerful options for their abilities have been removed, but the change I think everyone will really like is that you can swap out abilities like Colossus Slayer or Hordebreaker on a short or long rest - giving you the ability to really set yourself up for the kind of combat you're expecting (this of course being dependent on how much your DM telegraphs a fight).
Hunters also inherit something that feels akin to the Monster Slayer's abilities, where you can discover a monster's vulnerabilities, immunities, and resistances when you put your Hunter's Mark on them. I'm a big fan of giving players a way to discover these and prepare for a fight (I tried to hint to my party before they fought a Wasteland Dragon that she would be immune to Force damage, and I hoped the Artillerist would, for the first time in a 4+ year campaign, use the Shielding option for their eldritch cannons, but they instead just didn't use the cannons at all in the fight).
Anyway, I don't know if all these changes are going to suddenly make the Ranger super-powerful. And I don't know if it will be enough to let them shed the sense of underpoweredness that they've had since 2014. More recent subclasses have, of course, boosted the Ranger's power, and I think they're trying to get the base subclass options in line with the newer ones (in part by making one of the newest ones into a base option) even while reigning in some of the excesses of a particularly overpowered subclass.
So! This leaves us with only a few classes left. I think they have yet to tackle the Cleric, the Monk, and the Sorcerer... and is that it?
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