So, I took a 10th level hunter out for a spin in my regular d&d campaign this weekend, subbing the char in for the ranger I've been playing.
It was a strange experience.
My build was AoO-centric, going with paired opportunitist and broken wing gambit, with myself going with dervish dance, weapon finesse, and power attack.
When the combo worked, it was pretty great. My hunter and his tiger managed to take apart a giant pretty quick with it.
The more cunning opponents could easily avoid our tactics with 5' steps, though, leaving them to take advantage of a free +2/+2, which they did in the combats that followed.
My combat style was this, with few deviations:
0: Cast buffs on me and my tiger pre-combat, in the two cases we were given prior warning.
1: Activate animal foci,
2:Tiger charges,
3:I move up and cast a buff, or whack an enemy.
4: If the enemy is stupid, we take an AoO when he attacks. The giant died at this point.
5:repeat.
Overall, the character felt plenty powerful, but also plenty bland.
If you're familiar with the tier system, I'd probably put it in tier 3.
I had some nice beastmaster RP going, but the various class features, well, let's just say I felt way overshadowed by the party druid.
He likes to wildshape and beat stuff up together with his animal companion. He likes to throw down some CC spells beforehand.
I suffered a little from MAD, although I had enough animal foci to have one up in every combat.
I had less skills than I'd like though, it got a little hard to use the great list. 6sp/level would be appreciated, although maybe not neccesary.
The discount free money from not buying STR or Dex gear more or less went into getting magical attacks and protection for my tiger. (Con belt, armor, NoMF+2.)
Overall, meh.
The class is powerful enough. But it lacks the feel, the distinction.
As it stands, it is just a testament to the fact that druids can still function just fine if you take away some of their toys.
When played alongside a druid, like I did last night, it just feels bad.
You'll note I haven't talked much about spells. That's because I focused mostly on buff spells, as I couldn't afford the wisdom to cast them offensively effectively.
Also, I didn't feel like competing with the druid on this point as well, as he'd be obviously superior to me instead of vaguely superior, as was the case when we both set out to do close combat.