Which ranger subclasses are best and what are they good at?
There are 4 ranger subclasses in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Each subclass hones in on a different set of ranger skills, or a different influence that has granted unique capabilities. These subclasses are:
- Beast master: Summons a primal companion to fight by their side.
- Fey wanderer: Influenced by the fey, these rangers combine the trickery of the fey with their skills as a ranger.
- Gloom stalker: Altered by the influence of the Shadowfell, these rangers use shadow magic to hide from foes and strike with greater power.
- Hunter: Experts at stalking and killing their prey, hunters are adept at sneaking and striking down even the most fearsome of foes.
Below I’ve taken a deeper dive into each of the ranger subclasses. You can find advice on what they are, who they’re for and I’ve also rated each subclass to give you an idea of how strong they are.
Beast master
What are they?
Rangers that have gained mastery over beasts and can summon a primal companion to aid them.
Key abilities
- Ability to summon a primal companion to work as an ally. 3 types of companions can be summoned (though you can only have one at a time). One can fly, one can swim and one is a land beast that is best at combat.
- As you gain levels, you can enhance your synergy with your primal companion. At level 7, it can use its bonus action to dash, disengage, dodge or help.
- At level 11, the primal companion can attack twice with the attack action and can benefit from hunter’s mark with one of those attacks.
- At level 15, you can cast spells on yourself that will also affect your primal companion.
What are they good at?
Damage dealing and scouting. Primal companions (especially the beast of the land) are pretty good at enhancing your damage, including the ability to knock enemies prone. Rangers are already pretty decent damage dealers, especially at low to mid levels, and this takes them even further.
Beyond that, you can use your primal companion as a scout. Spells like beast sense or speak with animals will let you know what your beast has found. The ability of flight is particularly useful here, but having a beast that can swim can help in aquatic situations.
How effective are they?
Pretty effective. The damage boost is decent, the only challenge you’ve got is your action economy. Your bonus action can easily be occupied with other things. Add into the mix a primal companion to command and you’ve got a lot of demands on your bonus action, including the all important hunter’s mark (which also synergises with your primal companion’s attacks).
If you want to use your primal companion as a scout, you’ll want to invest in beast sense or speak with animals so you know what it’s found. It’s not a big investment but one to be aware of. Otherwise, they’re hugely effective scouts and you don’t need to worry about them getting killed as you can easily just summon a new one.
It’s worth being aware that there is a conflict between dexterity and wisdom with this kind of ranger. You’ll need high dexterity for your own attacks and high wisdom for your primal companion’s attacks. Both are important to a ranger, but how you prioritise these 2 ability scores is important. You could go the route of a more spell focused ranger with a beast master, using spells like entangle or spike growth to control the battlefield while you command your beast to strike and you offer attack support (probably with a bow). However, both dexterity and wisdom are not hard to invest in on a ranger.
Action economy challenges aside, I do think the beast master is a pretty strong subclass that’s effective at the things you want a ranger to be effective at.
Score: 4/5
Fey wanderer
What are they?
Rangers touched by the powers of the fey. Fey wanderers don’t need to be actual fey creatures, but perhaps they have spent time there, have been altered by fey magic or have fey blood running through them.
Key abilities
- Extra damage for each hit you make with a weapon.
- Additional prepared spells that tend to teleport, summon a fey ally or charm.
- Capabilities with charisma checks allowing you to add your wisdom modifier to charisma checks.
- Powers to better resist the charmed and frightened conditions and the ability to throw these conditions back at those that use them.
- A free use of summon fey each day that doesn’t require concentration.
- Free uses of misty step that allows you to bring an ally along as well.
What are they good at?
Dealing a bit more damage, especially when dual wielding. Teleporting around the battlefield. Using face skills (which is rare for a ranger) and handling charmed and frightened, two of the more common conditions in the game.
How effective are they?
They’re pretty good. The extra damage from dreadful strikes combines nicely with hunter’s mark and the damage really adds up when dual wielding! Summon fey becomes a top spell when it doesn’t require concentration. It means you can use your hunter’s mark and have an extra ally dealing damage for many sources of damage.
Free uses of misty step are great though they come a little late in the game. It does mean you can fight where you need to be or get out of dangerous situations easily.
Advantage against charmed and frightened is decent and being able to throw it back at an enemy is handy, but it’s also quite situational. But these conditions are common enough for this to come up fairly often.
Overall, it’s a pretty solid subclass that lets rangers enjoy being a party face and makes you that bit more deadly.
Score: 4/5
Gloom stalker
What are they?
Rangers enhanced by the magic of the Shadowfell. They are adept at ambushing and striking their enemies with ferocity.
Key abilities
- An enhanced first turn in combat that increases your movement speed and grants a bonus to your initiative roll.
- You get a few uses of a dreadful strike each day that causes an attack to have greater damage and, eventually, another effect like allowing another attack or causing fear.
- Additional prepared spells that centre around stealth and frightening enemies.
- Darkvision and the ability to become invisible in darkness, even to those with darkvision.
- Proficiency in wisdom saving throws.
- At level 15, you become hard to pin down, able to use your reaction to cause disadvantage on an attack against you and to teleport away from your aggressor.
What are they good at?
Stealth, causing damage and scaring foes. At later levels, gloom stalkers also become very evasive.
How effective are they?
They’re a decent subclass, but some of their better features are not as good as similar features available to the fey wanderer. Other features can be a bit situational too.
For example, the extra damage from dreadful ambusher is similar or worse than the extra damage a dual wielding fey wanderer gets from dreadful strikes. But while dreadful strikes applies to every attack, dreadful ambusher is limited in uses by your wisdom modifier. It’s still a decent damage boost, just inferior to the fey wanderer, especially for longer adventuring days.
Invisibility in darkness is decent, but a bit situational and easily overcome or foiled with something like a torch. Still, the features are decent and it’s not a bad subclass, just not as good as the fey wanderer.
Score: 3/5
Hunter
What are they?
Stealthy stalker’s of prey capable of hunting and killing creatures that would threaten the natural world. This includes the likes of monsters, poachers and many other threats.
Key abilities
- Know about resistances, immunities and vulnerabilities of a creature marked by hunter’s mark.
- Deal extra damage once per turn to either hurt a single target more, or spread damage across multiple enemies.
- Gain defensive abilities against attacks that either cause disadvantage to opportunity attacks or disadvantage on subsequent attacks from the same enemy.
- Enhance hunter’s mark by dealing its extra damage to another enemy once per turn.
- Use your reaction to become resistant to a damage type that you’re hit with for a turn.
What are they good at?
Being a bit more resilient than other rangers and, like other ranger subclasses, dealing more damage to enemies. They are also less dependent on wisdom than other rangers subclasses.
Most rangers tend to be best against a single enemy. Hunters remain this way, but you can choose to take features that make you better at tackling a large number of foes as well.
How effective are they?
Hunter’s are a pretty decent subclass. Their extra damage tends to be better against multiple foes (especially if you’re wielding a two handed weapon). To some extent, a beast master and a fey wanderer have more flexibility in tackling multiple enemies, while both these subclasses can also do more damage to a single target.
If you want a more resilient ranger though, hunters are your best option. It’s a decent enough subclass, but a little less effective than the beast master or fey wanderer.
Score: 3/5
Which ranger subclass is best?
Ultimately, some ranger subclasses work better than others. For me, the beast master and the fey wanderer both work better than a gloom stalker and a hunter. They tend to average more damage and their features tend to be more flexible and useful in a wider range of situations.
While it’s pretty close, I’d say the beast master edges things, mainly because of their primal companion’s flexibility. While it remains a little harder to manage their action economy, this is because they have so many great things to do with their bonus action in particular.
However, none of the 2024 ranger subclasses feel particularly overpowered or underpowered. Whichever subclass you go for, you can feel pretty confident that it’ll work fairly well.
Which ranger subclass do you think is the best? Let me know which one and why in the comments below.
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