The PHB? Are you joking? I actually played a ranger when 5e came out. I lasted 2 months and suicided my character in disgust.
Firstly the beastmaster class is atrocious, justly reviled. Hunter has a few useful things but they're not great and the later stuff really peters off. Favoured enemy and natural explorer were situational at best and basically relied on your dm throwing you a bone. At least here the animal companion acts on its own initiative, though they have nerfed most of them now. The dire raven is still very useful though. I think it got a buff.
Favoured enemy isn't great as said above - except if you play a strength based ranger. Getting heavy armour proficiency for free is pretty big, although you won't see the benefits of it in act 1. Otherwise the selection is pretty bad. Natural explorer, however, does have a few decent options. Proficiency in thieves tools lets you take on the rogue role if you want without wasting your background to get it. This leaves you with the option for picking persuasion for the times you can't rely on companions (or if you don't want to keep switching to them). Poison and fire resistance are both very useful both in this act and likely in the rest of the game. Fire probably more so.
They did muck up the spells a bit, definitely. But having played a ranger in TT and here I find you are usually casting hunter's mark then attacking. Rarely would you want to be casting anything else since they all cost an action, plus they waste a spell slot which might be needed for hunter's mark if you lose concentration. It would be nice to have them properly implemented though.
The stuff about advantage basically applies to every class so it has no real relevance to rangers per se.
Absolutely agree that the later variants are 100% better though. It's highly unlikely we'll get to see these. It's not great, but it will more or less keep up with the fighter excluding action surge till lvl 11 and as long as they buff the animal companion as you gain levels should be playable till the end of the game.
Like most of the things in the game, could have been done better, yes definitely, but absolutely not as bad as some people make it out to be. Until I played the druid it was the strongest class I tried.
