I wasn’t that excited by this class, for some reason. Crawford clearly loves it, but the description he gave here didn’t grab me. It seems to lack interesting story potential (unlike the Zealot or Ancestral Spirits Barbarians, for example), open up new and exciting options (like the Samurai or College of Whispers), and instead just kind of does some mechanically decent things. I can see what a Gloom Stalker would do in a game, and I do find the darkvision invisibility fun and interesting, I just don’t find this class all that exciting sounding.
Somewhat inevitably, this subclass sparks thoughts of the Ranger class itself. I’ve got a pair of them playing in my different games, and they’re, you know, fine. I think that the open fluff potential of the Fighter class just calls to me more than the enforced fluff of the Ranger does. The Horizon Walker is better, since I like the plane-walking-expert vibe on offer there.
The name’s great, though. I wish we had a Gloom Sorcerer, for when you want dank and depressed as a class theme!