I practice archery IRL and one thing that has always bugged the crap out of me in RPGs is how you can be an archer and take strength as your dump stat. You need to be quite strong to use upper tier bows. Not just to draw it but also to hold the bow at full draw long enough to aim and loose. There's really not much dexterity involved at all.
That said bows being DEX is so core to the DnD experience that I don't know if it'd be appropriate to change it, even if I agree bows should be strength based. Plus it'd throw off a lot of iconic races and their bonuses. Wood elves wouldn't be as good at using longbows as dwarves or half-orcs, which would be a bit weird.
As someone who adores the ranger archetype I strongly, strongly disagree that it should be made a fighter sub-class, though. Ranger is absolutely a strong enough fantasy staple to warrant its own class with its own unique class mechanics. At the very least it is as deserving of beings its own class as barbarian (angry lightly armored fighter) or paladin (religious fighter with cleric spells).
That said while I do like the direction Larian went with the options some of them are... Thematically misplaced. Beast Tamer as a Natural Terrain is just weirdly phrased and so different from the other Natural Terrains that it feels like it doesn't belong. I also feel Sanctified Stalker needs to give you access to one or two Druid cantrips rather than giving Sacred Flame, which is honestly the worst damage cantrip I've used in BG3.
Granted, druid cantrips aren't in the game yet probably. Maybe they'll redo Sanctified Stalker once druid is released.
Over all though I really like how Favored Enemy seems to be about broad ranges of a type of enemy and gives you free skill proficiencies that make you better at tracking and dealing with those enemies but are also valuable in other situations as well. That is what a ranger should function like, in my opinion. Someone who is exceptionally good at bringing down a specific range of enemies and uses that experience and their knowledge of woodcraft to aid the party.
