Options for a Wildshape Ranger

[Tvtyrant]

Looking for feats and ACFs that make a Wildshape Ranger better without multiclassing. The one that I noticed right off the bat was the Dragon wildshape, which has the same medium size issue as Wildshape Ranger, but is more worth it then it is for a Druid.

[Greenish]

Mystic Ranger, of course!

[FMArthur]

Ranger is a shockingly customizable class, that's for sure. Here's a quick list of good to decent trades:

Mystic Ranger: give up Animal Companion, delay Combat Styles by 1 level and get Favored Enemy at 2nd level and every 6 levels afterward, gain casting from 0 to 5 early and at rapid pace. Best Ranger variant out there. Gets overpowered with SotAO, though. (Dragon 336)
Sword of the Arcane Order: 6th level feat, cast Wizard spells from Ranger slots. WHAT. (Champions of Valor)
Arcane Hunter: trade any Favored Enemy for Favored Enemy: Arcanists. This may as well be Favored Enemy: Significant Targets. There is also the Magebane weapon property that mirrors the Bane property in this exact same way, if you want to go all-out on this. (Complete Mage)
Trapfinding: give up Track and Swift Tracker, gain Trapfinding and Disable Device as a Rogue. Come on, you like replicating a whole party with various compatible ACFs. Admit it. (Dungeonscape)
Spell Reflection: give up Evasion, reflect spells and SLAs that miss you with attack rolls back at their source. Always take this; buy a Ring of Evasion if you want Evasion. (Complete Mage)
Solitary Hunting: Give up Animal Companion, gain Favored Enemy bonuses on attack rolls against Favored Enemies. Not compatible with Mystic Ranger, which is better; maybe there's a feat that does this, though. (Dragon 347)
Urban Ranger: Give up a slew of useless spells, regular tracking and woodland movement-related abilities, gain urban tracking, some good spells, unconditional Hide in Plain Sight, and the ability to choose favored organizations instead of favored enemies if you want (possibly better than normal if you know where the campaign's going, but useless after you pursue that plotline and wipe them out or the campaign takes you somewhere else). It's not bad, and surprisingly compatible with the best options, considering the fundamental changes. (UA)

As well as your Wild Shape option from UA and the five variant Ranger combat styles from Dragon 326 which you will obviously not be interested in.

There's a Wild Defender variant in Dragon 324 that gives you Smite Evil 1 per five levels, Rebuke Nature (animals, vermin, plants, fey, oozes then elementals) and starts your casting at 1st level, but is lacking FE and Combat Style, so it's not very Ranger anymore - more like a nature-ey Paladin. There are other variants, like racial substitution levels that emphasize stupid racial grudges, and planar ranger, but they don't seem very interesting. Some of the online Cityscape ACFs seem like nice trades for minor features, but it's coppers for coppers (ie barely significant). In CW you can trade spellcasting for 1/day effects which you could literally be replicating 100% with single spells on the Ranger list at earlier levels, and in CC you can replace spellcasting with a selection from the standard slew of bad combat feats that WotC thinks normal melee should be taking.

[Greenish]

like racial substitution levels that emphasize stupid racial grudgesShifter ranger 1 is pure profit. The effect is minor, yeah, but still.

Elf ranger 1 gets 8+int skills, balance on the list, and you can swap the "elf favoured enemies" to Arcane Hunter.

[Keld Denar]

Don't forget about Frozen Wildshape, Aberrant Wildshape, and Exalted Wildshape from Frostburn, Lords of Madness, and Book of Exalted Cheeze respectively. Those 3 feats DRAMATICALLY increase the number of critters you can WS into. Of them, Frozen WS is probably the strongest because you get awesome Magical Beasts. Aberrant WS is a little disappointing, since most aberrations have crappy physical abilities, relying on their SUs to get the job done. Since you don't get the SUs without burning another feat...wah wah wah...Exalted WS is really really really good, but comes at an aweful, terrible price which might not be worth it...

[FMArthur]

Shifter ranger 1 is pure profit. The effect is minor, yeah, but still.

Elf ranger 1 gets 8+int skills, balance on the list, and you can swap the "elf favoured enemies" to Arcane Hunter.

You're right, I overlooked the Shifter Ranger's decent features.

Elf ranger is still not worth bothering with, though. You get d6 hit dice, a preselected Animal Companion, and a variation on Favored Enemy against uncommon targets that is no longer called the same thing and is probably no longer swappable because of that... I don't think I would even take it if I were an elf ranger, let alone choose an elf for this feature. Just taking Mystic Ranger eliminates the features anyway due to lack of Animal Companion and different-levelled FE. Rangers have a million ACFs, everywhere. I feel like it's a waste of time to talk about the totally unremarkable ones, to spare the poor OP the need for hip waders in his thread if nothing else.

[Greenish]

Elf ranger is still not worth bothering with, though. You get d6 hit dice, a preselected Animal Companion, and a variation on Favored Enemy against uncommon targets that is no longer called the same thing and is probably no longer swappable because of that...You don't have to take the 4th sub level, and I feel 8 skillpoints (and balance as class skill) is worth 2 hp.

Though if you can't trade Elf Favoured Enemy for something useful, yeah, I'd skip it too.

[Tvtyrant]

Wow, they do have a lot of customizablility!

[Coidzor]

Shifter ranger 1 is pure profit. The effect is minor, yeah, but still.

You have to be a Shifter though. Never really saw any profit in that unless one wanted to devote feats to being a Shifter. :smallconfused:

Keld Denar: Wait. Frozen Wildshape has things that are good other than Cryohydra which rangers can't get anyway due to being limited to medium creatures? :smallconfused: Like what?

[Cog]

You have to be a Shifter though. Never really saw any profit in that unless one wanted to devote feats to being a Shifter. :smallconfused:
It becomes better of an option when you can get extra uses from another source besides feats. For a similar theme to this build, there's OA's Shapeshifter class, for example.