Agreed, and it doesn’t make sense their signature spell is essentially an optional Warlock spell (it’s either a slightly better or slightly worse Hex depending on circumstances.)
Advantage on tracking and attacks would have set it apart.
Tbf, Feral Senses is also pretty much an optional Warlock feature, arguably Warlock's one is better and at a lower level. Truesight is better than Blindsight unless you us the Fog Cloud spell or get Blinded often.
Half-caster Warlock is a scale model of the martial-caster divide. They could put almost any level 18 or below feature as an Invocation and people would probably say it's worse than Mystic Arcanum at that level.
I think the changes to the Paladin smites do present a neat way to change hunter's mark for the better, as there are a tremendous number of other attack-rider spells that should be able to be looped in to the typical ranger round, in addition to hunter's mark.
In my own playtest with the ranger, I was absolutely floored with how much damage it can do, so I hesitate to make damage output even easier. It's not a bad idea to have rangers be the absolute Kings of ranged damage, but only if we're okay with them having a strictly ranged damage dealer class identity.
However to your point, I think making each attack-rider spell into some permutation of hunter's mark is the way to go. Perhaps hunter's mark should be something that is automatically applied if you use any of the primal shots, but only for rangers (or maybe a particular ranger subclass)?
Oh, my idea is to make their bonus action "You are my prey" feature be the Search action, with a special thing where a successful check lets you add a flat bonus to your attack rolls against the target. Consistency over damage, and then have the smite-like spells be the main damage boost option, but with the downside of using up resources.
That's a fne thought, I was just wondering if there was a way to explicitly link hunter's mark to the other various spells that improves how they should interact.
I could even see something like being able to move your hunter's mark to a target you hit with any of the other strike/arrow/shot spells.
I played a monk with Hunter's Mark provided as a once a day racial feature, and it was an absolute blast except when I lost concentration. ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
I was only 3rd level though, so I don't know if the balance gets wonky later on.
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