A hunter ranger is widely considered the 2nd least effective class-subclass in 5e. Beastmaster ranger being the bottom of the totem pole.
I think this is exactly the point in which the community decides DPR isn't the complete picture
for some reason.
If I were to pull up an optimal Beastmaster Ranger's DPR, it would fair just fine.
Gloom 11 is head and sholders above hunter or beast 11, but still sucks compared to fighter 11. Monks 11 same. Rogues get a non-combat boost at 11.
Again, from a pure DPS standpoint, the beastmaster does very well at this tier.
Let's go through the motions.
A beastmaster Ranger that chooses a Giant Poisonous Snake as the companion can have a +8 to-hit and does 1d4+6+3d6= 19 damage in one turn. That's 20 damage in a single round, no setup. If the target saves, the damage is 10.75 which is practically par for the course DPR with a higher to-hit.
At level 3, the gloomstalker (assuming archery) has a +7 to-hit that does 2d8+6+2d6 = 22 if all attacks connect. The problem is that every round afterward does 1d8+1d6+3 = 11 damage on average. The .25 difference is probably made better by the fact that it does 19 on a failed save, even if the saving throw is low. The beastmaster can also use their bonus action spells for something else like setting up a snaring strike on their next turn.
At level 4, the gloomstalker gets stronger with their initial to-hit of +8 and damage of 2d8+2d6+8 = 24 if all attacks connect. They then do 1d8+1d6+4=12 damage on average.
The thing with the 4th-level beastmaster is that after the initial turn, they too can do the same damage as the gloomstalker, 1d8+1d6+4=12. Or they could keep going with the snake companion for the chance to do 19 damage at any given turn.
5th-level gets pretty crazy for the Beastmaster. Not sure if you notice, but the beastmaster is actually the only ranger subclass that DPR benefits directly from level 5 feature.
At 5th-level, the Gloomstalker's damage is 3d8+3d6+15= 39 with +9 to-hit on all attacks for the first round, going to 2d8+2d6+10=26 for the rest of the time.
At 5th-level, the beastmaster does 1d4+4d6+1d8+11=32 damage on a failed save and does 1d4+1d6+(3d6÷2)+1d8+11=26.75 damage on a failure, with +9 to-hit for both the snake and ranger. So now the consistent damage of the beastmaster has surpassed the consistent damage of the gloomstalker.
Another big boost to DPR at level 11, where the beastmaster does 2d4+26+2d8+2d6+6d6 =68 damage (if 2 saves are failed). With a +11 to-hit with your bow and +10 with the snake. If they fail 1 save, the damage is 2d4+26+2d8+2d6+(3d6÷2)+3d6=62.75. If they fail both saves, the damage is 57.5
Meanwhile, the gloomstalker's initial damage at 11th level is 3d8+15+3d6 = 39. The gloomstalker's continuous damage afterwards is only 2d8+10+2d6=26 damage for the rest of the rounds. (Disclaimer: the gloomstalker gets a re-roll on a miss, bringing their effective to-hit every round higher. It's harder to calculate without a given target, though. I will if requested.
Damage for beastmaster also gets a massive boost at level 15, due to share spell (and heightened prof bonus). They now do 2d4+28+2d8+4d6+6d6=79 if they fail 2 saves, does 2d4+28+2d8+4d6+(3d6÷2)+3d6=71.75 if they fail 1 save and now doing 2d4+28+2d8+4d6+(6d6÷2)=66.5 damage per round.
The gloomstalker still does exactly the same damage as level 11 with a bump to to-hit from the proficiency up.
So past level 11, beastmaster is far-and-away better than the gloomstalker in terms of pure DPS. The main force of damage is also magical, so there's no worries about that, either. Even if the enemies fail their saves (which they're likely to do), they still take far more damage than the gloomstalker. Much, much more.
Of course, it depends on the enemies's resistances and immunities for poison, but DPR doesn't account for that, does it? Besides, it could be that humanoids are the most common enemy, so poison resistances might just be rare enough to ignore, even at these higher levels.
Use DPR with increasing fidelity as one measure. The issue is that Monks don't measure up in DPR, falling 33% or more behind stronger classes, and don't seem to bring enough other stuff to the table to make up for that gap.
Yet the beastmaster past level 11 is pumping some extreme numbers, yet seen as the punching bag of the class options. Wonder why? Their DPR is so high, what could possibly go wrong?
