So, the Hollow Warden Ranger is the big subclass that is getting people to actually consider playing a Ranger again. The subclass' redesign after some criticisms of it in the UA brought to light a new bit of "tech" for Ranger subclasses, which is to use Favored Enemy as a resource akin to Wild Shape charges or Channel Divinity. It's more limited than that, as there's no way to trade spell slots for more uses and no refreshing it on a short rest.
Still, it does allow for a really cool new potential with Rangers, to perhaps wean them off of the Hunter's Mark spell - something that the 5.5 redesign emphasized in ways that the 5.0 version, for all of its flaws, didn't. I still think we might need another "alternate class features" update to fix it like we got in Tasha's for 5.0.
And let's also be clear: I think we're grading on a curve here.
Now, I'm going to do something a bit unconventional: Rangers differ from their d10 brethren by not getting training in Heavy Armor. I think the general assumption, even if you're going with a melee build, is that you'll be focusing on Dexterity as your primary stat. Hollow Wardens are nearly obligated to go melee. But while the Dual Wielder feat enables you decently when it comes to dexterity-focused melee builds (coupled with the Nick mastery, you start getting four attacks per turn by level 5) I still think, generally, that going Great Weapon Master with a Greatsword (or Glaive, if we also get Polearm Master as well) winds up being a bit better damage.
The one trick here is that we will still need at least a 14 in Dexterity, because otherwise we won't get the full benefit of Medium Armor.
Generally, on a thematic level, I'd probably go for a Dex build anyway, even if the damage is a bit lower, simply because there's so much benefit to having high dexterity.
But the fact that Hollow Wardens can get a reaction attack increases the value of hitting with the hardest possible weapon, and unless you have an Antimatter Rifle or other modern/futuristic firearms, that's the Maul and Greatsword. The Maul is probably more interesting with its Topple Mastery, but my math tends to show that Graze is pretty much always the best mastery for damage-dealing (except when fighting extremely low-AC targets).
Now, the only Ranger I ever played was actually a Strength-based dual-wielder (this was pre-Tasha's, and I wanted to play a Minotaur, who got bonuses to Strength and Constitution). He actually did ok in the landscape-traversal part of Tomb of Annihilation, though we didn't really get beyond level 5 (I intended to multiclass into Fighter for the remainder of the adventure, as he was meant to be a kind of 80s action hero-style commando). It does require spreading yourself pretty thin to get decent ability scores. If we start with a 17 in Strength, we're probably not getting more than a +2 to Dex, Con, and Wisdom, and basically have to dump Int and Charisma.
So, let's talk feats and such:
We're of course, taking Great Weapon Master at level 4 (if you're getting sick of this feat, perhaps I'll err on the side of ignoring it for future builds). At level 8, though, I'm tempted to just cap Strength because we probably want to be able to boost Wisdom or Con at levels 12 and 16.
For our weapon, again, we're going Greatsword.
For our fighting style, Great Weapon Fighting is kind of crap, so I'd probably go with something like Defensive (to make up for the fact we're stuck with Medium Armor) or Blindsight (kind of cool on a thematic level). Interception could be good, but we want our reaction free for Prowling Retribution.
As far as spells go, we're only going to have up to 3rd level spell slots. Elemental Weapon is kind of interesting - it adds a d4 of elemental damage and a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls, which actually out-damages Hunter's Mark (the bonus damage is 1d4+1, compared to 1d6, which are both equal to 3.5, but we're also hitting a little more often). It is an action to cast (downside) but lasts an hour, so it's plausible to have it running before we fight our foe. It is a 3rd level spell, so somewhat more precious (we might want to save those for something like Conjure Barrage, which is now a very good spell) but for single-target damage, it's decent. Summon Fey could be great here, but our Wisdom is kind of crap.
If we figure, across 3 attacks, we're getting 3d4+3, that's like 10.5 extra damage if they all hit (which is also more likely if we cast this) while our Fey will hit only once admittedly for like 13. But the Fey will probably have a +6 to hit, while our own attacks with Elemental Weapon would have a +10 to hit.
Well, if we want to be thorough, we can fully calculate both, but I think we're going to stick to Elemental Weapon here.
So:
We'll hope we've pre-cast Elemental Weapon. Thus, our attack bonus is +10 to hit and we deal 2d6+1d4+6 on a hit. That becomes 2d6+1d4+10 if it's part of our attack action. We hit on a 4 or higher, so that's an 85% hit chance.
The only real damage bonus we get from our subclass here, then, is Prowling Retribution from our Wrath of the Wild. Ideally, we'll get this once a turn if we crowd in on our Wyvern target.
So, turn one (again assuming we have Elemental Weapon up already) we activate Wrath of the Wild and then make two Greatsword attacks.
As usual, we'll separate out the guaranteed Strength modifier damage here, so we get two attacks that add 2d6+1d4+5, or 14.5 on a hit, and an additional 2d6+1d4, or 9.5 on a crit. 14.5x85% is 12.325, and 9.5x5% is .475, giving us 12.8 average damage on each of these attacks. Then, we add back in the 5 guaranteed Strength damage from Graze, bringing those to 17.8 each, so we're looking at 35.6 damage. That's promising, honestly, because we're not finished.
On turn 2 onward, if we crit on either attack, we can make a bonus action attack. There's a 9.75% chance of that (the same as rolling a nat 20 with advantage). The damage here is a little lower, as we don't get the proficiency bonus. So, we're talking 2d6+1d4+6, though we save the 5 from Strength to add in later, meaning that a hit "adds" 2d6+1d4+1 to our damage, which is 10.5 on average. 10.5x85% is 8.925, and then the crit bonus is just as much as before, or .475, so if we get our Hew, that's 9.4, but we then add the Strength back in, giving us 14.4. However, this only happens if we got that crit (or if we downed another foe, but we're imagining this as pure single-target situations) so it's 14.4x9.75%, or about 1.4 damage on average. This brings us up to 37 damage per round.
Now, the last piece of the puzzle is our Prowling Retribution, which allows us to make a weapon attack as a reaction if we or a nearby ally is dealt damage by our target. That's not guaranteed - the Wyvern might miss with both of its attacks. With Half Plate, the Defensive Fighting Style, and Wrath of Nature, we'll have an AC of 19 at this point. A Wyvern has a +7 to hit. So, they need to roll a 12 or higher, meaning a 45% chance to hit. But across its two attacks, they'll get at least one hit roughly 70% of the time. We can use that as the chance we get to use this reaction attack.
Then, it's actually just like our Hew attack - it should do an average of 14.4 damage. That can happen 70% of the time, so it adds roughly 10.1 damage per round.
Thus, we're now looking at 47.1 damage per round, which looks pretty good to me.
That being said, getting hit is going to make it very likely we'll lose concentration. Thanks to Hungering Might, we get to add Wisdom to our Con saves (meaning we might aim to get a +3 to Wisdom, though this might wind up dropping our Con modifier by 1, which would even these out). We probably only have a +4 to Con saves, which will often help against the Bite attack, but the Sting is going to make it a lot harder to concentrate.
Some adjustments to consider:
We calculated this against a Death Knight with a dual-wield build (which is honestly more likely what I'd actually play). We would probably consider going Hunter's Mark rather than Elemental Weapon. While we only really have to make a single Nick weapon attack (once we weave in a Scimitar or Dagger for our "light weapon property" attack, that will let us attack with our Shortsword for our bonus action attack, because we did actually make an attack as part of the action with a different weapon in a different hand). Though, now that I think of it, while we wouldn't be able to boost the damage on the Nice weapon, we'd get overall more damage from the spell because we're still making four attacks with the Shortsword per round compared with three with the Greatsword. But I think Hunter's Mark still might be the right call, because I don't think +1 to hit with 4/5 attacks will give us more than an extra d6 of damage we'd be getting by boosting the damage of our Scimitar.
I still don't think the dual-wield build will do as well, because we'd be losing 8 damage from the hits of our Attack damage, as well as the little bit of extra damage from our Hew attacks. But it probably does decently.
For the record, if we had a 3rd level Summon Fey, they would have a +6 to hit (or +7 if we got Wisdom to +3 ). They deal 2d6+6 Force damage on a hit. So, if we do have a +7 to hit, they're hitting on a 7 or higher, so 70% of the time. It's 14 damage on a hit and 7 more on a crit. 14x70% is 9.8 and 5%x7 is .35, so it's an average of 10.15 extra damage, or 10.2 rounded off.
But then we need to adjust our own damage.
We now only have a +9 to hit with our own attacks, so we hit 80% of the time. Our attacks deal 5 guaranteed damage and then add 2d6+4 on a hit and 2d6 on a crit, so 11 and 7. 11x80% is 8.8, and 7x5% is .35, so we're looking at 9.15, then adding that guaranteed 5 for 14.15 per attack, or 28.3 with both attacks.
Now, our Hew attack will be 5 guaranteed, and then 2d6 on a hit and an extra 2d6 on a crit, so we can combine our probabilities for 85% of 7, or 5.95, giving us 10.95 damage per hew attack. That's 9.75% of the time, so we've got basically 1 extra damage per round.
Then, 70% of the time, we get our reaction attack, also doing 10.95 on average, so about 7.7.
Thus, if we go Summon Fey, we get 10.2+28.3+1+7.7, or 47.2.
Wow. That's actually slightly better - literally by 0.1 - than the Elemental Weapon version. Actually, given that the Fey has some additional utility (and can soak damage for us) I might prefer it.
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