Still most.
The only spells on the base ranger better than HM are
- Spike Growth
- Summon Beasts
- Conjure Animals
- Summon Fey
- Conjure Woodland Beings
- Summon Elemental
Ensnaring Strike is iffy. It's a strong debuff that synergyizes with Hunter's Mark
very well.
That's it.
It's mostly summons and summon Emanations.
Everything else is super niche or out of combat.
Ridiculous.
Ensaring Strike is a very good spell. Restraining something and dealing extra damage on top off one attack is great.
Other spells I’d rather cast in combat than Hunter’s Mark;
Guardian of Nature (Great Tree, gain THP, extra damage, area around you is difficult terrain, advantage on Dex attacks and con saves. Vastly better use of concentration, and obviously better use of a 4th level slot than making HM last all day.
Elemental Weapon is barely less damage, can exploit damage vulnerabilities (and few critters resist every element so the damage type has no downside), and a +1 to attack. It’s a hybrid of bless and of Hunter’s mark in one spell.
Healing and support spells, from restoration to healing spirit.
Hail of Thorns. Having the added versatility of a decent AoE that triggers off a successful attack is a better use of a prepared spell and of a spell slot than beating able to deal 2 to 4 extra d6s of damage to one target at a time at the added cost of multiple bonus actions.
Lightning Arrow. Solid damage, AoE, used only when you either hit or when you missed and don’t want to have that action/attack be wasted.
Not to mention all the spells that aren’t necessarily better than HM but are good enough to be worth casting but you can’t because the class expects you to always have HM up instead.
It is very strong if you have tons of spare slots to spam it via an archer PC.
My old DM removed HM concentration and our ranger spammed and pincushioned enemies.
A hunter pincushions enemies regardless, and without HM eating concentration they can also use
combat utility spells as well as other directly offensive spells and have a decent combat toolkit, and vastly improved
gameplay.
Not really.
Look at the list again. Most of the nonconventratiom buffs are tertiary combat buffs or out of combat.
You can't really before fight buff stack like older editions.
False Life, Mirror Image, and Shadowblade, is all I need on a Bladesinger wizard. I can drop Shadowblade and use a summon instead, and still be a dangerous enemy via weapon cantrips. Doesn’t stand up to a proper meathead, because low HP, and it’s burning a lot of slots, but the point is exactly that other classes get to burn through slots in order to hit rally hard when they need to, or whatever, and the Ranger can’t. That makes for worse gameplay, and lower power level in real play.
Not to mention that the most efficient use of HM is to keep it up between fights so you don’t have to burn a use or slot in the next fight, which can make it hard for a lot of players to even use spells like Pass Without Trace without being frustrated by their class features in play.
