Fey Wanderer makes for a great primary spell caster. I've played two Rangers to high level - Lena a 17th level Goblin Ranger16/Rogue1 who had an 8 strength and 16 Dex at games end and Chromescale a 20th level Ranger who had an 8 and 14 respectively.
With a Fey Wanderer subclass and Tasha's Primal ability you get a ton of castings, almost on par with a full caster. Add a bunch of spells through feats and you have a great recipe for a controller. Both of the characters above took Shadow Touched (Cause Fear), Fey Touched (Lena got Hex, Chromsescale got Dissonant Whispers), and Telepathic. Chromescale also took the Dragonfear feat.
So, just so we are clear here. You are calling this a bad design, because they took out an optional feature from a 2020 book. A feature that was not part of the base class design, and didn't even exist until six years after the ranger had been in the 2014 game. A feature which gave you one casting of:
speak with animals; beast sense; speak with plants; locate creature; commune with nature.
I want to be clear on what your complaint is that is causing the ranger to be tied to a specific niche and archetype. Because Fey Wanderer is the same, you can still get spells through feats, Shadow Touched and Fey Touched are in the PHB untouched, Telepathic is in the PHB untouched. Dragonfear is not, but is still a completely legitimate feat to take.
So, literally the only difference, is the lack of the Primal Awareness spells. Which I want to be clear on, because...
At high level they very rarely used weapons. They were all about control with Spike Growth, Dissonant Whispers, upcast Cause Fear and spamming concentration-free Summon Mirthful Fey. Against enemies that could be frightened, these were the best two control builds I have ever played, and I've played Wizards to 20th level. The combination of Summonning multiple Mirthful Fey, Beguiling Twist and Cause Fear (or Dragonfear feat) is freaking awesome.
I don't think Chromescale ever made a weapon attack after 15th level. Lena did, but not often and usually in clean up mode. Once near games end, she did go to town TWF with daggers against an enemy caster in an anti-magic shell and decimated him.
None of this is affected by that change. All of this is 100% repeatable with the Ranger in the PHB as it exists right now.
Lena was actually good in melee. She had a belt of Giant Strength, a Dragon Tooth dagger, 1d6 sneak attack, 1d6 Dreadful Strikes, and 1d8 Favored Foe if she was not concentrating, with advantage almost on demand from Nature's Viel. So her melee damage was not bad if she wanted to go into melee. It is just it was a lot more fun, and usually more effective, for her to control enemies. Lena was the most fun character I ever played bar none. The DM I played with was asked at a party in 2022 who was his favorite PC of the 20+ he had seen in our group until that time, and he named Lena as his favorite too.
Interesting. You likely still have Belts of Giant Strength, sneak attack, dreadful strikes, Nature's Veil.... the only difference between the character you are describing and the one in the 2024 PHB is that you used Favored Foe... which is essentially a weaker Hunter's Mark. See, with Favored Foe you were concentrating to get a +1d8 to damage. With a free casting of Hunter's mark and dual-wielding daggers, your character could get a +3d6 (remember Nick)
So, your complaint here is that a full caster ranger, can't use a non-spell ability that requires concentration to increase their weapon damage by less than the new ranger can? Oh, and this version likely will have advantage on all of those attacks too, without needing Nature's Veil bonus action.
Is it locking them into a niche just because it is so much better than what they had before, it is an actual viable option? Which, the mechanical power didn't matter because you already said the fun part was the rest of it. So.... are you really mourning the loss of a single casting of Speak with PLants that much?
Getting rid of abilities that enable that and making the class more martial focused takes away this kind of creativity.
Part of this too is Hunters Mark is just such a crappy spell both in terms of flavor and mechanics. If they gave us Hex instead I would be much happier.
Well... that's just nonsense. They lost a single optional feature from a splat book. And just because you would be happy with Hex doesn't suddenly mean that they are locking the ranger out of a completely possible playstyle by using Hunter's Mark instead.
