#revised ranger

HD, proficiencies, and Fighting Style options remain the same between both classes. So do the higher level abilities Vanish, Feral Senses, and Foe Slayer.

Favored Enemy: The original ranger allows you to pick anything and pick two more as you level up. However, the revised ranger gets more bonuses than just to tracking and knowledge checks and gaining a language. In addition, they gain a +2 bonus to damage, which feels a lot better than non-numerical bonuses to what is essentially roleplay except in niche situtations. The downside is only getting to choose Beasts/Fey/Humanoids/Monstrosities/Undead at first.

Later with Greater Favored Enemy you get to choose the bigger monsters like Aberrations/Celestials/Constructs/Dragons/Elementals/Fiends/Giants and the damage bonus increases to +4. You also now have advantage on saving throws against your greater favored enemy. I like this progression as it feels like you gain experience as you level up, tackling more deadly enemies more efficiently. The damage increase isn't that bad if you consider its marginal use (only on those two favored enemies) and the fact that it never alters your attack roll, so its still just as difficult to hit such creatures.

Natural Explorer: Both versions of the ranger give various survival and overland movement bonuses, but the ranger-as-written only gives it in your favored terrains; more things to keep track of and completely useless when the campaign setting brings you to the wrong terrain. The UA ranger has these benefits all the time, and additionally gains advantage on initiative checks, ignores nonmagical difficult terrain in combat, and gains advantage on attacks against creatures who haven't taken a turn yet. I feel like the advantage on initiative and unwary creatures should be separated into another class feature and called Ambuscade or something. Otherwise it gets lost in all the exploration-themed abilities. The bonuses are a dramatic increase from the original ranger but very necessary as this ability did close to nothing before.

Primeval Awareness: The original ranger needed to spend a spell slot and only detected favored enemies in 1 mile. The revised ranger's version feels more like a ritual (not taking up a spell slot) and detects in a wider radius of 5 miles. The revised ranger also gains the benefit of being able to communicate simple ideas to animals and read cues from animals to see their mood and such. It's a neat ability that doesn't step on the toes of the Druid while still providing useful information.

Land's Stride -> Fleet of Foot: The PHB ranger could ignore difficult terrain (much later than the revised ranger) and has "advantage on saves against animated plants meant to impede movement." Ugh. This feels like an awful and highly marginal thing to gain at 8th level. Thankfully, the revised ranger instead gains "Fleet of Foot" which lets the ranger dash as a bonus action. This gives the ranger a few more things to think about to use their bonus action for and gives them much needed mobility when compared to other fighting classes like the Barbarian, Monk, and Rogue.

Hide in Plain Sight: It's a very minor difference, but the book's ranger gains +10 to Stealth while the updated one imposes a -10 penalty on all others trying to detect you. They both require you to stand still, so there's not too much in terms of numerical difference. It's hard to see mechanically why this choice was made but it barely affects anything.

Subclasses:

Beastmaster/Beast Conclave: This is the biggest change to the subclasses that the revised ranger presents. Before the revised version, the beastmaster ranger had to use their Extra Attack to make their companion attack. So for two levels between 3 and 5 the ranger had to just pick whether THEY wanted to attack or their COMPANION wanted to attack. This feels far from good. One was usually objectively better than the other and in most cases was just a flanking-monkey. Moreover the other abilities were lackluster and just felt awful to play with. I myself had a ranger and I homebrewed it so they could attack separately and it still didn't get them close to the same power level as the other players.

The revised ranger's companion progresses with the player gaining ability scores, skills, HP, and proficiency bonuses with you in addition to gaining your favored enemy bonus damage. The old ranger had a bonus to AC, Attack, and damage based on your proficiency and had a set amount of HP that scaled with you. The revised one feels like its own character and this point is emphasized with the concept of your companion having traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws like you.

In contrast, the revised companion loses multiattack. This is of course to balance out the companions to prevent one from being obviously better than the others. This is later negated completely by gaining a situational bonus attack at 5th level. This makes up for the ranger's natural lack of the Extra Attack feature and stands in for the Extra Attack granted by the Hunter and Deep Stalker conclave subclasses. It also gains a whirlwind attack at 11th level that makes it a perfect foil to an archery ranger or an able partner for a duel-wielder ranger and makes the class feel almost monk-like with the number of attacks they get each round. At 7th level and 15th level, we get features that can protect our slightly fragile companion and prevent potential sadness of needing to get a new companion later.

Overall, it's a vast improvement from the original and the only thing I can see being problematic is the whirlwind attack if it proves to be too powerful. Hopefully it will serve its intended purpose of making the companion feel powerful as it tears through minions and preventing it from getting overwhelmed by a horde.

Hunter Conclave: It's the same thing for the old and revised classes. The ranger’s Extra Attack is located here instead of in their main class table because the Beast Conclave subclass gains their own “extra attacks” in the form of their animal companion.