I think Foe Slayer is good the way it is except for the level, you should get it at 3rd to 5th level in my opinion.

For years, I always thought Drizzt was a Rogue\ Ranger, before I really had much interest in D&D. All the other things I've ever heard about rangers gave me the idea that combat wise they would be good with all archery weapons, dual wielding agile weapons like daggers a smaller 1 handed swords, employ hit and run tactics, prefer hide and leather for mobility and stealth.

 I never saw them as high hp, high strength, heavy armor wearing characters going toe to toe with tank style characters. That's just my opinion and personal experience. I wouldn't see anything wrong with rangers getting a new signature ability that could be used with range or melee attacks.

Everyone new to D&D considers an elf ranger that dual weilds, this is my experience supporting school D&D clubs in my area. This is of course because they are iconic, but also because the ranger invokes a free and adventurous spirit. and please, let's give a nod to the word ranger; a real life job descriptor that focuses on mobility and survival. examples being US army ranger, Canadian ranger, park ranger, Walker Texas Ranger, and I hear space rangers can travel to infinity... and beyond!

all this to say rangers are supremely attractive, at first, to a proportionally large part of the community. Ranger needs to be "not necessarily the best class" because if the ranger were to be improved in anyway their popularity would grow and imbalance the game.

that being said a melee ranger is very plausable but you would have to approach it in a completely different way than say paladin or fighter.

Quote from Gigaflop >>

Everyone new to D&D considers an elf ranger that dual weilds, this is my experience supporting school D&D clubs in my area. This is of course because they are iconic, but also because the ranger invokes a free and adventurous spirit. and please, let's give a nod to the word ranger; a real life job descriptor that focuses on mobility and survival. examples being US army ranger, Canadian ranger, park ranger, Walker Texas Ranger, and I hear space rangers can travel to infinity... and beyond!

all this to say rangers are supremely attractive, at first, to a proportionally large part of the community. Ranger needs to be "not necessarily the best class" because if the ranger were to be improved in anyway their popularity would grow and imbalance the game.

that being said a melee ranger is very plausable but you would have to approach it in a completely different way than say paladin or fighter.

   Oh, i agree that it is a different class from Paladin or Fighter.  Or, at least, it has become very different.   Many people believe that the Scout sub-class for Rogues was the dev answer to people wanting a spell-less melee Ranger, and I think it mostly works for the people who want to play that way.  It doesn't fix the base Ranger class, though.

  I think it's obvious that Ranger is the runt of the litter.  It popped out last and fits a peculiar design space that the devs didn't know how to work with, so just piled on a bunch of wilderness exploration abilities (many of them nigh-useless in most campaigns) and called it a day b/c they did not want to step on the toes of their favored children.

Yup I agree. On a related point- When anyone ever tells me the UA-RR is overpowered, I refer them to the PHB Paladin, with special attention to their smites, the auras and spells like Find Steed. The power gap (in terms of both combat and utility) btwn PHB Ranger and Paladin is wide enough for a well-fed Ancient Red Dragon to walk through. Sideways.