D&D 5e Ranger Subclasses Ranked Worst to Best
by Prince Phantom
The base Ranger is already a pretty great class (especially after the revisions in Tasha’s), but the subclasses still add a lot in terms of combat strategy and identity. Some add pets, some add a ton of extra damage, and others add very little at all.
8: Monster Slayer
Let’s take a feature that isn’t worth using at base, and then build an entire subclass off of it! Slayer’s Prey is massively outclassed by any bonus action attack, and that’s really all we get at 3rd level. The spells aren’t that great besides Banishment, and the other 3rd level feature is nearly pointless in almost all encounters, not to mention that it costs an entire action.
Level 7 only does anything if the target of our mark forces a saving throw on us, which will only happen occasionally, and even then only adds a d6, making it unlikely to make any real difference when it does come up. Level 11 at least doesn’t depend on Slayer’s Prey, and giving a martial a Counterspell-like feature is novel, even if this is quite weak as most casters have good Wisdom saves.
Level 15 again relies on Slayer’s Prey, and again only functions if they force a saving throw. It’s redundant with our 7th level feature, and not in a good way. Having two features that are this situational both refer to the same situation is really bad, even worse that they both require you to play suboptimally to even use them. This is a trap subclass, and not in the way it wants to be.
7: Horizon Walker
Having to use a bonus action to set up the extra damage completely kills our first feature, as it is completely outclassed by any bonus action attack, and there are many ways to get one of those. Misty Step and Banishment are decent spells, but Haste is a trap and a terrible spell for a Ranger to be casting.
Detect Portal is likely completely useless as your DM likely didn’t even know planar portals were a thing until you mentioned this ability. Ethereal Step is the only thing I’m truly excited about. Getting to cast a 7th level spell as a 7th level martial character is a design space that I’d like to see more often. Distant Strike asks you to spread your damage out amongst targets, which is bad as focus fire is almost always the optimal way to engage in a fight.
Our capstone is just the Rogue’s Uncanny Dodge but with fancier language and visuals. Rogue got that at level 5, we had to wait an extra 10 levels. You can still play a fun and strong character with this thanks to how good the base Ranger is, but Horizon Walker won’t be adding much.
6: Hunter
Hunter is one of those subclasses that gives you a bunch of fairly generic and underpowered choices at each level. No matter what you pick, you’re always left with a very generic Ranger build without much interesting or flashy to do.
Colossus Slayer does give us a reliable damage bump, and Volley can potentially lead to a lot of attacks, so you can definitely squeeze some power out of this one. It’s definitely possible to get good DPR numbers from this subclass, but that’s all you’ll be doing, and you won’t be the best at it by a long shot.
Still, all of the features here are usable and fairly competitive with each other, so you have some fairly interesting choices to make here. That being said, I had a Hunter in my game just automatically get every option when they reached the appropriate level instead of choosing, and it wasn’t overpowered in the slightest. The lack of extra spells also stings a bit.
5: Drakewarden
For ranking 5 through 2, I think all of these are fairly comparable and you could swap their order around and I’d have trouble arguing with you. Drakewarden comes in at lowest of the good subclasses mostly because it takes awhile to get good, whereas the other subclasses get their best features right at level 3.
Our Drake companion compares slightly unfavorably to the Beast Master’s Land Beast, at least until it starts blasting breath attacks and flying around with us on its back. Still, this is a really cool subclass and if you are starting at a mid to high level I would highly recommend it.
4: Beast Master
Those of you who have had your head in the sand for the past half a decade or so will be surprised to see the once maligned “worst subclass in 5e” this high on the list, but the base Ranger wasn’t the only thing that Tasha’s fixed.
The new Primal Companion is nearly a strict upgrade over our previous beast options, with three templates that you can flavor as any beast you like. This is now one of the best “pet” subclasses in the game, with fantastic flexibility in combat paired with good scaling of your beast companion. If you want to play a straight Ranger and forgo multiclassing, Beast Master is a great option that will give you tangible benefits at every level up.
3: Fey Wanderer
Misty Step, Dispel Magic, and Dimension Door are great spells to add to our list, and we get a free damage bump that doesn’t require any actions to use. We can also do Charisma skills fairly well, which can be useful depending on your playstyle and party makeup.
The 7th level feature is my favorite of the features Fey Wanderer offers, allowing us to throw around charm and fear effects all over the battlefield. Note that this triggers when friends or foes succeed a save against those effects. The easiest way I can see to force this is a one level dip into Undead Warlock for Form of Dread’s ability to force a save or have the target be frightened once per turn on a hit.
Level 11 isn’t as great as it seems, as a level 3 casting of Summon Fey will go down very quickly at this tier of play, but having it plus something like a Spike Growth could still be useful. The capstone is just a bunch of Misty Steps, which I’ve noticed is the capstone for a surprisingly high number of subclasses, and it’s fine here just like it is everywhere else.
2: Swarmkeeper
I must admit a bit of personal bias here. I really tried to find a reason to keep this out of the top two, but every time I read Swarmkeeper I love it more. The ability to shove creatures around the battlefield just works with so much of what the Ranger already wants to do, and we took full advantage of it in a build on this site!
Even if we can’t shove, we can always fall back on a bit of extra damage, or a free disengage if that’s necessary. The extra spell list is also full of amazing options, such as Web, Faerie Fire, and Mage Hand. Getting a flying speed, even one as low as 10ft, is amazing for a character that can and should stay at range at all times, allowing them to completely avoid melee locked enemies.
The 11th level feature is an upgrade to our 3rd, and the capstone is Misty Step and Uncanny Dodge slapped together proficiency times per day. The flavor of this subclass is off the charts, and the power level isn’t far behind.
1: Gloom Stalker
Was there ever any doubt? Even with my massive bias in favor of Swarmkeeper, simply nothing compares to the might of the Gloom Stalker. No other Ranger subclass (or any martial subclass for that matter) can pump out damage numbers like this can, completely deleting high value targets from off the battlefield before they even get a chance to act.
It does this thanks to an initiative bonus, extra movement on turn one, an additional attack with boosted damage on turn one, complete invisibility to creatures that rely on darkvision to see in darkness (aka most creatures that you will encounter in dark places), and an extended darkvision for ourselves. All of that plus additional spells like Fear and Greater Invisibility, and I’ve only talked about our level 3 feature.
It drops off slightly (thank goodness), but proficiency in Wisdom saves is still amazing, likely an additional attack every turn at level 11 (especially if you are using Sharpshooter, which you definitely should be doing), and an admittedly weak capstone, but who cares? You get everything you need at level 3, and it is super easy to multiclass out at level 5 with Extra Attack or level 7 to grab Wisdom saves. I’ve seen level 8 builds using this subclass that can pump out over 200 damage on turn one with no setup. This thing is a monster.
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