The Beastmaster seems to have some inconsistencies in the pet usefulness. For example the Spider companion has 32hp - all the other pets (wolf bear etc) have 12hp. Since you cannot recast the pets in combat and 12hp goes down quickly you're kind of obligated to use the spider - which also has a MASSIVE (like more than 1 screen) leap range and poison.
Yes, I think we can't really know how it will turn out seeing how those pets are all over the place.
I, personally, think that Hunter has easy upper hand because that extra 1d8 passive with no strings attached is just too good and at level 5 they also get 1 more attack, which is big considering Sharpshooter feat and even without that. Though in Larian games burying AI under a mountain of pets was always a good tactic (though depended on you replacing them asap in-combat), so who knows.
As a whole, I expect that Ranger will be different down the road too, for example they did scrap the whole favored enemy/terrain thing, so I imagine instead of greater favored enemy at 6 Rangers will get something else too.
