Another great thing about Magic Missile is that it doesn't care about Line of Sight. If they're in range, they're getting hit, even if it has to go past 2 corners and up a floor. And on top of that because it's multiple hits, you can use it to pretty reliably knock off concentration effects. It's truly an incredible spell. One of the few things I knew about D&D before playing BG3 (which was my first D&D style game ever) is that you always take magic missile if you can, and discovering why in real time was a real highlight of my first playthrough.
*When a caster is concentrating on a spell and takes damage, they attempt a Constitution save against a DC equal to half the damage taken, or 10, whichever is higher. If the save fails, concentration ends.* Using magic missile as a concentration breaker will make them do very easy saves, I'm just saying this because I was also using it for that purpose and was honestly confused by them saving 8 saves in a row.
@@DearValentina i havent tested but i use callous glow+corruscation rings for wyll to spam magic missiles. would additional damage like that increase the dc, or is it just another set of easy saves do you think
@@DearValentina It didn't used to work like this, incidentally. In 3x if you got hit multiple times in one attack then the concentration check DC increased as a result. Made Multishot absolutely devastating for shutting down spellcasters
Tasha's Hidious Laughter is one of the best early game control spells for a Bard due to it having no restrictions on enemy type. You can cast it on any boss and take them out of the fight for a few turns on average while removing their underlings. Until you get Holld Monster, it's one of the best reliable options for Bard
Magic Missile is insane spell. It works with lightning charges staff you can get in act1 - it gives EACH MISSILE minimum 1 extra lightning damage, potentially more. AND there is an amulet that gives you one more magic missile. AND you can upcast for even MORE magic missiles. My Gale is MM machine gun. SS+ tier spell. One day im gonna make an 8(17) int half orc wizard that does nothing but casts mm. And when out of spell slots - throws daggers with 20 strength while screaming "MAGIC MISSILE!".
I find Hellish rebuke to be a better option than the ranking suggested here because warlocks prior to level 5 seldom have a good use for reaction AND the usual suspects, Hex and Armour of Agathys, often stay active through short rests - making bonus Action (Reapply Hex), Action (EB), movement (AoA) and reaction (Hellish Rebuke) pop off in the same turn - potentially. When all of these go off according to plan you'll do quite a lot of burst damage in a single turn.
But you have so few spell slots ... especially early in the game. And, if you're getting hit to put hellish rebuke to work ... do you still have your hex up? Aren't you going to want to make sure you have a spell slot to keep hex up?
If Warlocks had just ONE more Spell Slot I can see this being legitimately useful, because the damage scaling is not nothing but only having 2 for so long and then only getting a maximum of 3 is brutal and puts a lot of scrutiny on each Spell you would potentially Cast. Is addition, is this REACTION, not Spell Slot, worth using up for that Turn when Warlocks are potentially the best users of Counterspell in the Game? Probably not.
Relevant to discussions of magic missle are how AMAZINGLY it pairs with "Cull the Weak". Auto kill on anything under, say 20 hp makes magic missle AMAZING at cleaning up crowds! Also, a level 10 evoker getting int to damage on each missle is incredible
I really wish this game would warn you about breaking your own concentration. Just a little bit of text similar to provoking a reaction attack when you walk next to an enemy. (It would be nice if that text was easier to notice too)
It _does_ do that, but only with the expanded tooltip (if you press the Examine button when hovering over the spell). IMO it should be displayed in the simple tooltip as well, not sure why it isn't like that in the first place.
You forgot to mention in your analysis of Thunderwave its falling damage potential. In the early stages there are so many areas to get falling damage. EG, spider boss. You can send that bitch flying about 50% of the time, making her take around 40 fall damage, which for a lv 1 spell is pretty good chances. I think for the early stages it is S tier, but falls down to around B later, as eldritch blast starts to fill its fall damage niche better, which also dealing better, more consistent damage.
Thunderwave is one of those Spells Ceph talks about where it's not breaking the bank with power level, but when you need it, it's SO useful. Against the Bhaalists, it's awesome. You can use it to "Attack Check" Invisible Enemies. Great for killing Scrying Eyes. You can get lucky and push enemies off high places, great range. You won't need it every combat, but it comes in clutch.
I don't quite agree with Tasha's Hideous Laughter assessment. It does not have a limit on the type of creatures unlike Hold person spell and practically equivalent to level 4 Polymorph spell. If your caster has high enough spell DC, you can keep the boss under control throughout the fight. In my playthrough, Sarevok just lay on the floor laughing until he was finished off. :)
It also persists on Raphael between turns in Honor Mode even though he's supposed to escape CC every turn via Inevitable Resolve. Tasha's is incredibly strong.
The biggest downside to tasha’s is that it competes for your concentration with a lot of other, imo better spells. In most of the fights where you’re up against something dangerous enough for you to actually want it removed from combat, you probably won’t mind expending a high level soell slot. In those situations you’re better off using a hold spell, because of the auto-crits feature, or otto’s, because that doesn’t have a save at all. It’s really good in the early to mid game, and it helped me out in the fights against ketheric and balthazaar, but it is strictly outclassed by hold monster and situationally outclassed by hold person.
In my tier list here's what I'd move Hellish Rebuke D -> B Tasha's Hideous Laughter C -> B Hex S -> A Hunter's Mark S-> A or maybe even B Shield of Faith D->C Colour Spray C->D Mostly i think you nailed this tier list. Hellish rebuke not costing an action is a big deal especially if the build wants to use most of their actions and bonus actions on attacks. Hex and hunters mark can often be less useful than a bonus action attack for some builds. Thanks for all you viedos.
Not sure I agree with hunters mark. it adds free dmg and can be carried through multiple fights. Also bm pets trigger the extra dmg as well. So a dw bm can trigger the dmg three times at early levels.
I could easily be persuaded that Hunters mark deserves to be in A, but not S as many rangers will do mare damage with a minor action attack than moving the hunter's mark. It gets better and better the more attacks it will take to down the enemy, but it's not a must have. (I haven't played a beastmaster ranger yet)@@TheSorrowWithinMe
Agreed Hellish Rebuke is under valued (especially at lower levels) it not only is a reaction spell, but seems to be coded as a ritual spell as well. Plus as a warlock you are mostly using eldritch blast as your attack.
My problem with hex is that requires concentration which makes it fight with a spot with arguibly the most strong warlock combo being devil's sight + darkness. That shit is just plainly broken. The enemy brain simply implodes when they can't target you. so you can just step away from darkness, shoot and come back in and if they are stupid enough to step in and get blinded, well is gg.
I AM LOVING THIS TIER LIST SO MUCH!!!! And so happy if you're planning on going through level 2-6 spells as well... Would you also go through the Eldritch Invocations? I apologize for the super long comment, but I had to ramble about some of those spells. Please ignore everything that comes below this if you're not in the mood for reading a monster of a comment. Slight note for Hex (from a D&D warlock fangirl): If you have a party member under Greater Invisibility, giving the boss enemy disadvantage on Wisdom for Perception means your Greater Invis ally can maintain invisibility longer. Not amazing when there's a group of enemies, but at least that's an option when choosing the Stat to give disadvantage. Fun little extra use for Hunter's Mark, if you're a Beast Master, your animal companion's attacks ALSO get the extra 1d6 of damage from their "Prey's Scent" passive feature. So at just 3rd level, a Beast Master could technically get up to an extra 3d6 of damage, if they have an off hand attack, and their animal companion lands their attack as well. I'm not sure if it stays valuable at higher levels of Ranger, but at 11th level, with the Bear Companion giving you an extra bear, and the main bear having extra attack, you could deal up to 6d6 extra damage from it. But that's if your 2 bears attacks land, and if you don't have to move the mark after an enemy died. Would Ice Knife be S tier on a Druid, since they don't have access to Chromatic Orb? For Mage Armor: For most of Act 2, I usually have Astarion (or any Rogue character) in the Graceful Cloth and wearing no armor pieces at all, as a pure Rogue, and with his really good Dex, making his base AC 13 instead of 10 boosts him up to sometimes 21 AC depending on the other pieces of equipment. It's useful to remember that you can cast Mage Armor on someone else! For Thunderous Smite, I LOVE knocking enemies prone when my turn is right AFTER theirs, and all my allies go before them. Because that means any melee allies just gets an easy advantage on all their attacks. At 5th level or higher, I would probably Thunderous Smite on my 1st attack, and not on the Extra attack. Extra Witchbolt Suck: If you don't spend your action on the following turns re-zapping the target, the spell drops. Also, even when upcast, the damage on subsequent turns always stays at 1d12, and does not scale like the initial damage. 😑 For a "retaliation build" using Hellish Rebuke and Armor of Agathys, I feel like you would HAVE to grab Elemental Adept Fire, in order to overcome the Fire resistance caused by the Wet condition.
Ice Knife is definitely S tier on sorcerers because it's Twinned Spell eligible area of effect damage, with a good damage type. But really it's just better than Chromatic Orb for everyone. If you cast Chromatic Orb let's be real you're either casting its Cold or Acid form; Fire, Lightning and Poison are bad. Ice Knife is just a better Chromatic Orb Cold, so really Chromatic Orb should be ranked according to the Acid version, which is solid but in no way S tier.
The smite spells can be cast, and you can use your reaction if the attack lands to stack divine smite as well. The smite spells and divine smite are also amplified by crit as well. 2h sword using lvl1 spell slot(s): 2d6 + str mod + 2d8 divine smite + 2d6 thunderous smite.
Good tier list! I don't normally comment on RUclips too much, but your videos have been really helpful. Thanks. I will say that Tasha's Hideous Laughter has a special place in my heart since it's a good spell if you really want to take one particular enemy out of the fight for many turns. Not to damage them, but to make sure they stay down until I'm ready to face them. That's especially helpful with some bosses. It was a great help in the Raphael fight. It took him down for like four or five turns during which time I killed all of his mobs, destroyed the soul pillars and repositioned my party all over the room so that they wouldn't all be one-shot by his super strong aoe attack. Oh, and I also evacuated Hope. That was a big problem for me since he always kills her right away. It's helpful with other bosses as well, like the cursed toll collector lady in Ketheric's town. Are there any other spell that just take an enemy down for as long as I need without them having to fail a saving throw each turn?
@@hangglidingmontana6134 Hmm... yeah, they all are useful spells. But Hold Person has a downside in that the person has to fail a saving throw each turn. Sleep is awesome in the first few levels, but then enemies just have too many hitpoints for it to work. But yes, polymorph is great, but it does consume a lvl 4 spell slot.
@@zorlix130 thats not exactly a downside for hold person cause they take guarantee crit for the entire time they are hold. Most of the time, the one im holding ain't gonna live for more than 2 turns cause guarantee paladin smite crit just makes them a joke. You can literally 1 shot raphael with Hold Monster and Fighter level 11 + Paladin 11 or any variant of melee fighters if you have good gears
Really loving this. Especially for player like me whos new to dnd and bg3 i dont have to blindly follow a guide and choose which skill is useful for me
my fav use of good berries is in a poisoner barb rogue build, which allows to nom one and proc the amulet that coats ur weapon for 1d6 poison as a baseline
It's a nice list. I agree with most. I would put "SLEEP" higher. It has no saves if the enemy is low enough. Sometimes it's better to just finish someone off, but some fights, especially on Honor mode, you need to kill and not risk a wipeout. If there is a chance to miss, putting them to sleep instead is more safe as they will be unable to act. Giving you time to either focus on someone else or kill them off when you have fresh set of actions. Would also have Tasha Hidious laugher one higher up thanks to it versatillity and Thunderwave as it can be so useful as last resort in so many places. AOE push can be massive game changer. And just for a level 1 spell. Just insane.
Tasha's is 10 turns, not 1. If it was 1 turn then Tasha's is D tier. But there's no save if you don't attack them, and that enemy just stays on ice for 10 turns. That's huge.
@@Mike-r4h It's both. The description of the effect states "at the end of its turn or when it takes damage, the entity can try to shake off the effect." Just to be sure, I tested on the tutorial imps, who shook off the effect on their own after 3 turns (with a saving throw in the combat log after each turn)
Great fun listening to this! Thanks. Note that Thunderwave can one shot enemies standing next to a pit, and is great for at least one build (low level Tempest clerics can max Thunderwave and get decent damage out of it).
I used all of the places I can speak with animals in a thorough playthrough, while not having the spell, ended up having three extra speak with animals potions and I stopped buying them at some point. It only saves you the money. And because you always roll credits while having positive money balance, i.e. unused money, it's like nothing. You can pickpocket Volo at your camp for five of those, and probably even more that once. Having said all that, it's like saying strength is useless because elixirs. Consumables devaluate quite a lot of stuff in the game. You have enough scrolls of protection from good and evil to cover all the needs for them without even buying, and all the sources of that easily happen before said encounters. Just mentioning it because speak with animals is an extreme example. Also, just as a note about Thunderous Smite: you say you most want to knock prone melee fighters, but remember that being knocked prone is a guaranteed concentration loss. So it can be a move to break enemy concentration. Of course a paladin will break enemy caster's concentration by just applying “dead” condition to them, but it worth mentioning.
Hex also can force enemies to have disadvantage resisting being shoved. Given the amount of verticality in the game, this will present opportunities to weaponize the bonus action of even low strength characters like Shadowheart. Even if there aren't precipices to make use of, it can help give your non-rogue characters a pseudo disengage with their bonus action.
13:30, hellish isn't the best but it being a reaction means you can kill something with your reaction thus making it kind of like the battlemasters' riposte, it being a warlock spell isn't even that bad because eldritch blast is the main thing you're even casting. also, you can get it from oathbreaker but it's pretty garbage unless you think it can kill something.
Great list thanks for all the explanation and reasoning. Funny enough, I found Tasha’s Hideous Laughter to be pretty underwhelming at level one, but in later levels it’s been great. So kinda the opposite of Sleep. Low resource cost being a level one spell, it also has much higher success as you gain stats and gear. Find I’m using it most when there’s an enemy I want to lock down in an encounter, so I can deal with the rest first. Also on some animals (they need to have 5 or more INT) you can make them laugh and well experiencing that is just priceless. Laughing dogs…Larfing? Baughing?
14:27 I think its worth noting that while hellish rebuke is not a great spell, it is an S tier racial feature, since when whatever tiefling subrace gets it, it doesn’t cost a spell slot.
Inflict Wounds is insane if you take multiclass into sorcerer the ranges cast or the double cast if up close. It’s a niche build, but you don’t need much else outside of enemies that resist or are immune.
The important thing (and the big benefit) of carrying 'Inflict Wounds' as a spell, IS that it is a melee spell. Almost all spells you cast in melee are at disadvantage and clerics are a semi-martial class, capable of going toe to toe with enemies at least some of the time. So, it has big damage (for a L1 spell) and no disadvantage when used in melee. You do NOT want to take EITHER Guiding Bolt OR Inflict Wounds........you want both of them for the versatility it provides. Don't leave home without it, it is a valuable option at level 1. Well done for mentioning how many Speak With Animals potions you get. It pretty much negates the value of this as a spell. Because of that, I would rate it a C or even D tier spell. Tasha's Hideous Laughter is very useful as it targets a lot more creature types than the 2nd level Hold Person. I'd put it a B/A tier rather than C/B. Several others in the comments here have mentioned this. Thunderwave. A bad save (Con), but the most irritating part of this spell (as Ceph described) is the box shaped area of effect, that all too often will include allies.. A nice spell if you can yeet an enemy off of high ground or into a surface, or into a spell like Cloud of Daggers. It's value is slightly reduced because there are other options to knock an enemy back. Mage Armour. This is most useful at low levels and is long lasting.............BUT, at low level you have hardly any spell slots and you will miss the one you used for Mage Armour. At normal difficulty I didn't really feel the loss of not having the armour buff. I will say that I don't tend to play Tactician or Honour Mode, so players that do, may have a different experience here. Be careful about saying a spell lasts a turn. That phrasing wouldn't trouble younger players, but in older versions of D&D a turn is 10 minutes. Perhaps describing it as a round instead of a turn, is better ? Note how light level 1 'S' tier spells are, for druids. They need help with at least one more good L1 spell and ideally, two. Entangle, Faerie Fire and Fog Cloud are nice enough spells, but they do no damage. I actually created a druid spell with my D&D group (I called it Gilded Splinters) that acted in a similar way to 'Melf's Minute Meteors' and it was a very popular addition that scaled nicely with level - it wasn't overpowered, but it filled a niche that was lacking in alternatives.
"That phrasing wouldn't trouble younger players, but in older versions of D&D a turn is 10 minutes." Or people can just accept the current context of the discussion, which is BG3 and not older versions of D&D.
one thing i like about protection from good/evil is getting scrolls of it - and then on given encounters with harder fey (Ethel), or undead (all of act 2) or fiends (act 3) etc, i'll have my entire party each cast prot good/evil on themselves before going in. It just gives those first few rounds (or possibly the whole fight) extra advantage for those alpha strikes from baddies. While not everyone will keep concentration, if it can even completely bypass some of those first round of charms and attacks, it means I can get 2 or 3 rounds total before they get to do anything useful (1 surprise maybe, 2a winning init, 2b they go but don't do anyhting useful, 3 back to me and fight is likely over)
The biggest annoyance I have with mage armor is how much of the gear that is essential to almost every caster build is considered armor, you have the helmet of grit for almost any build that includes sorcerer for quickened spell, seravok's helm for crits on eldritch blast builds, helm of the baldurian on tanky casters, boots of striding are nice for concentration casters in the mid game, speedy lihghtfeet are used on some lighting charge builds, reviving hands for healers and once you get to even act 2 it's just impossible to find a character that doesn't sacrifice more than they gain by using mage armor when they could've so easily taken a certain race or a 1 level dip and had more AC and unrestricted access to potentially build defining gear So yeah mage armor D tier, any char who would want to use it is better of just getting light armor and shield
not really . You can just take Hood of the weave/Arcane acunity hat of your element if you play Sorcerer(ideally the fire one cause its the best one). You can make use of it, but its marginal, especially cause Sorcerer strongest subclass is Draconic(I don't think Storm sorcerer is that good, its not bad but not as strong as just spamming Ray of fire and bonus action fly is something i seldomly use). Wizard makes decent use of this though. Gale at the very least can in act 3. Agree on it being shit in the early game though. Light armor is almost always better than cloth at that stage and you don't want to waste your valuable spell slot early on for it
@tranducquang5912 I find early game is when light armor you can get isn't as good as Mage Armor. There's not really any good light armors until act 2. It's better to just have a camp follower cast mage armor on your rogues and warlocks.
The Hex disadvantage on checks can actually be used to give disadvantage to enemy casters who might try to Counterspell your 4th+ level spells. Bit of a niche case and a bit hard to make it work, but if it ends up being the difference between say, hold monster landing or not landing, it can be fight changing. The only spell I strongly disagree with is Mage armour, which is absolutely useful for a pure wizard, sorc or warlock (who are incidentally the 3 full casters with access to the spell) because you generally aren’t going to want them to wear armour. The potent robe and the robe of the weave (as examples) are just too good not to wear if you can get them. I always had mage armour on Gale and Wyll through Act 3. A tier for me!
@@AirLancer I know that, but the same goes for those items. Most gloves, hoods and boots a wizard etc would want aren’t classed as armour. Some are, so you just need to work out what you want
Guiding bolt gets a fascinating position. Its cleric's only reliable single target range spell, i use it through the end game most playthroughs. Its a great little bost in a nuke round with a gloomstalker or monk
In my opinion the best level 1 spells are magic missile and longstrider because they never let you down! And I love command just because the idea of bossing around a scary enemy is cool. Unfortunately it doesn't always work out.
Guiding bolt should be a or s because advantage helps front liners does good damage and is level 1 all for that tbh it's great, and combo that with sneak attacks then you get high damage done to the target also the items that radiant orbs or even lower the number for a crit is great but smites also want this advantage because the risk of smites is missing almost taking that away is ridiculous
I only found this video during my 4th playthrough, I wish I had seen it earlier! Love that it confirms some of my suspicions- summons are OP, bane is ass- and wakes me up to new spells and uses. When I finally found out about water surfaces+lightning…😅
Another nice thing about Ice Knife is that since there's an AoE for the cold damage part of the spell, using a sorcery point to twin it is pretty useful against clumped up enemies. Even worth it for a single wet enemy since unlike Chromatic Orb which needs to hit a target to do damage, you can shoot the Ice Knife at an enemy and then aim the second one at the ground near it.
You are missing use cases for Warlock multiclasses. Hellish rebuke is a solid choice when you dip 1-3 on warlock and you aren’t expecting a lot out of the spells, specifically for martial classes. Plus, it’s a reaction, so only use it when it kills your attacker, that can be huge. Hex is also great on a MC martial when you hex strength. Now you can have advantage on shove, which is way better for a horde breaker hunter than hunters mark is. Oh and searing smite has a use case when you are MC with a flame blade Druid and have the feat to ignore elemental resistance. It can also proc divine smite and they double up, and it scales per spell slot versus wrathful and thunderous who should only be cast at level 1.
typically for paladin, i use thundering smite over searing smite, since it does more up front damage, has a better effect and doesnt require concentration (which can otherwise be used to apply almost permanent SoF/Magic weapon/hunters mark)
My argument against your ranking of Guiding Bolt is that it is a OK first-level spell that competes with other valuable uses for your level one spells that dont scale with level (like you said), but it is a great third or fourth level spell. When you get it, sure it's B tier. But after you level up a couple more times, it gets better and better as it goes. Especially if you're applying Radiating Orb. A Tier in my book and only ever not prepared on Shadowheart when she's fighting enemies that are imune or do radiant retaliation.
Laughter is better at early level as you can hit bigger enemies that have more HP. Taking down the bigger guy so you can deal with minions first is very helpful. Then you can go back to the laughing enemy with concentrated attacks.
Just want to say that I think that ice knife and chromatic orb don’t occupy the same niche. It’s your only aoe damage spell as a wizard before fire ball, making it great for early game.
The paladin smite spells do have a narrow use case; against enemies that have radiant retort, and who therefore completely prevent divine smites from being useful. Also, they can allow you to burn two spell slots in one turn to do some serious burst damage. I agree they are generally terrible though.
I think thunderwave deserves a higher placement, despite the con save you can still end up throwing enemies into a pit or even off a ledge to take a lot of fall damage and make them have to spend their turn dashing back to your party. It's very terrain dependent but it's still a worthwhile spell to have Additionally: the smite spells have an additional use in that it's not always either a regular smite or a spell smite, but you can stack them. Sometimes getting a first turn burst with that much extra damage can get rid of a strong foe better than if you chose one or the other. Less longevity, but the best effect to inflict on an enemy is dead, which paladins are very adept at doing so. Basically thunderous smite could be rated higher, but the other smites shouldnt because it's just worse
How about a tier list for weapon types? You could discuss all the ins and outs that come with them. There's a hundred of these specific spell tier lists out there.
Mage Armor is D-tier (even in Tabletop) In Tabletop you can take 1 level in Artificer. Artificer multiclass spell progression is half your class rounded 'down' instead of the normal rounded up that other classes do. So a 1 level dip doesn't slow down your spell progression. You also gain access to other 1st level spells and cantrips. you get medium armor and shield proficiency. So let's do some math mage armor: 13 + 2 (dex) = 15 AC Breastplate: 14 +2 (dex) + 2 (shield) = 18 AC + access to more magical gear options than before, like sentinel shield and zephyr armor or just +1 variants which gives you 20 AC.
A minor thing is that the it's not a choice between the elemental smites and divine smite, with the reaction you can divine smite on top of the other ones. I still think that there's usually other things to use your bonus action on as a paladin, but i still use them sometimes.
As someone who also very much enjoys the utility of Grease in tabletop D&D, I'm curious as to how regularly it trips up enemies in BG3. Are save DCs tied to character casting statistics, and does that make single-use items (like Grease bottles) less effective? I've only done a little experimentation in game thus far, with disappointing results. Gnolls were utterly unfazed by standing at the epicenter of a thrown Grease bottle. And a certain bugbear and ogre were tripped by the initial casting of Grease, only to ignore it as soon as their turn arrived. It's possible that I just had a bad run of luck, but as I said... I'm curious.
Yes, you're right! The DC of the bottles will always be 12, whereas the spell will use your character's DC - that's why bottles aren't really a good replacement
Great list, agree with most of it. Mage Armour maybe deserves a bump up, it combines with other gear and spells to give wizards obscene AC. Magic Missle is S+ for me, you can combine with psychic spark, coruscation and callous glow rings, the spell sparkler, reverb gloves and boots... at high levels it deletes enemeies, or at least debuffs them for filth.
and all these buffs to MM apply to Curriculum of Strategy - good for ~160 dmg a cast. But even only upcasting MM can produce similar results - wizard with high Int and Evocation dmg buff required obvs.
I think the only clothes that really stand the test of time are the Graceful Cloth. Things like Robe of the Weave seem really good when you're at an intermediate level of theorycrafting, but at some point you take the Initiative pill and realize that Yuan-Ti Scale Mail is just better. That said, you probably want Mage Armour on your Graceful Cloth user if they're not a Sorcerer.
@williamking7800 a monk with graceful cloth is pretty good, since it's a feat towards your stunning strike saving throws instead of attack damage that is overshadowed by giant potions. And each wisdom bump increases your unarmored ac too.
I always take hellish rebuke on Fiend Warlock level 1, so if an enemy ranged decides to hit the backline they usually get oneshot in return, then level 3-5 i replace it because it definetly looses against 2nd and 3rd level spells
I've commented on your last two, so I'm here to do it again! I just find this fun, it's not that I think you have bad reasoning. Anyway. First things first: You said fire damage is the worst damage type. That's just flat wrong. Poison damage is. Fire hits some vulnerabilities, and is mostly just resisted. Poison is much worse. Fire has plenty of good uses and options. Necrotic is also arguably worse due to the variety of constructs and undead in the game, which outnumber things like devils. As always if I don't comment on a spell, I have no notes to add: Hunter's Mark is better than Hex; Warlock gets two slots per short rest, 6 slots per day. Rangers get some level 1 spells they don't use often. You yourself said that Rangers often don't have a better option than ensnaring strike, which I disagree with a little, but the point being that Hunter's Mark is their premier level 1 option. 1d6 extra damage is always nice for bonus actions, and Rangers spend less on it than Warlocks. Magic Missile does have 1 question asked, as you mentioned: Does the enemy have shield? This does not change the fact that it's an S tier spell due to various builds (lightning charge, psychic spark, and more, especially for evo wizards). You forgot the most important sanctuary use: protecting NPCs. Various allied NPCs are incredibly vulnerable in the fights they are meant to help with, and sanctuary turns them from a liability into an asset more often than not. Searing smite being in F is reasonable, but that you would put it there before cure wounds and animal friendship is wild to me. In absence of an F tier, Shield of Faith should be "Marginal", it's better then many other spells in D tier for specific builds. Sleep should be in F tier for BG3. It's quite reasonable in 5e, but the encounters and planning in BG3, as well as health thresholds, make it effectively useless. other enemies can also simply shove them to wake them up, and any damage wakes them up. You are often better off just using a cantrip for damage. Speak with Animals goes in B tier; a potion duplicates it but it's still very useful. It would be S tier for it's various usages on bypassing skill checks as a ritual, but the potion abundance brings it down. Thunderwave is an A tier spell due to the verticality of BG3. It has plenty of instant-death cases, and even more cases where you can delay an enemy by knocking them down a few levels. even on Tactician+, it's a coinflip of success very often, and hitting 2 or 3 targets at once is pretty common. I'd put witchbolt in D tier, even in absence of an F tier. the build it's good for is hyper specific, and not exactly intuitive. This is more of a personal opinion of mine, however. Wrathful smite, and even searing smite, should be up a tier because you *can* use them alongside a regular smite. This makes a nova-din who fishes (or forces) a crit would use those extra smites to up their damage even more for hilariously high damage numbers. Interestingly compared to the last video and the cantrips, I disagree with your reasoning more than your placements on this one. Only a few changes I'd make to the actual placements this time.
I disagree regarding Speak with Animals. The potion that duplicates it is plentiful enough to use one on every possible opportunity and still have some left over. All the spell does is gain gold from selling those potions. I think party composition is also a factor here. The more your team recharges abilities on Short Rest and the more Bards you have for Song of Rest, the less Long Rests you need, which means that Elixirs and certain potions (like for Speak with Animals) last you for significantly more encounters. I personally think that Elixirs are too powerful not to fully exploit and that any party without a Bard is just wrong, and that ideally you want two Bards. Under those circumstances you really don't need Speak with Animals (but you'll probably have it anyway). I imagine that as you run fewer Bards then the cost of using consumables effectively goes up and dedicating spells known to save on resources becomes slightly more attractive.
Ice knife definitely belongs in A tier, not a tier lower just because it is a very powerful, cheap, and useful twin cast on a sorcerer for the entire game. A twin cast level 1 Ice Knife can be a 1d10+4d6, and that 4d6 can be doubled by the wet condition which makes a level 1 spell slot + 1 sorcery point a little more powerful than a fireball on a single target. At least on sorcerers, Ice Knife is a better source of cold damage than chromatic orb.
Ice Knife is just better than Chromatic Orb. Let's be honest if you don't have Ice Knife then Chromatic Orb is pretty much always cold and if you do have Ice Knife then you're very rarely casting Chromatic Orb. Chromatic Orb's Acid and Thunder forms still have some utility but Chromatic Orb simply isn't S tier in a world with Ice Knife.
Sleep can be up cast for more hp usage as well as at the end of a fight or after a large aoe damage spell when there are lots of enemies with low hp. Or flocks of low hp birds or rats which come up in act 2-3. Don’t sleep on sleep I say. 🤷♂️
I liked using compelled to duel with my ancients paladin with the holy lance helm (1d4 radiant dmg on enemy miss), hellrider's pride gauntlets (blade ward on heal), the whispering promise ring (bless on heal), and the amulet of restoration (mass healing word). Then divine smiting away with the luminous chest (radiant orb on radiant dmg) and boots of stormy clamor (reverb on condition aka radiant orb). This has been a fun way to use compelled to duel for me.
Theres so much context to all this bc of how this works vs dnd. Bc we get certain spells at certain story points and those story points can be weak or strong against those spells lol. Like i think necrotic dmg takes a big ass hit bc of act 2 lol. Hold person is nasty, but it loses just a bit bc non humanoids. Then honestly a lot of times the big halmark fights dictate my spells when im going act one im thinking gith and tyr lol. I know this is that meta gaming we arent supposed to do but you mentioned necrotic was p good and i was just playing act 2 like 👀 lmao
I love your videos, watched all of bg3 builds related ones. I really have to ask if you would be willing to add at the end of the video, what equipment to choose for that build? So the charachter building process makes more sense. Like example of equipment for that build.
Not related but i like using sleet storm and hunger of hadar on top of eachother and its soo hilarious seeing enemies constantly slip and fall in the hadar while trying to get out of it and taking random explosion damage at the end of each turn 😂. then my ranger constantly having advantage and picking them all off little by little. When it works it works and its fun
Tasha's one of the best spell for the Bard in the Nautiloid. The cambions have terrible WIS save, and you can put them on the ground for several turns (I got 2 on one of my games, wich means that cambion died due to critical hits from everyone ganging up on him XD ). The Spider Matriarch is also a very easy encounter using Tasha's (I got her down for up to 5 turns, too bad I had to deal with her babies, but taking that boss out of the game for 5 turns is incredibly useful). :) In that regard, I think Tasha is a better spell than command, because Command only works for that particular turn, while Tasha can last up to 10 turns (and if you haven't finished the encounter by that time, you better be running). :D Also, is better than Dissonant Whispers since psychic damage is meh, and that one only stops them from reacting and moving for a couple of turns (if they fail their save, which is the same with Tasha's so I'm not counting it as a factor). I think that for "boss level" melee fights, Tasha is better as a disabler than any other level 1 spell, while DW is better to deal with minions, and command is better used as a multi enemy dissabler (as upcasted) or for weapon removal (thanks Commander Zhalk, I promise to give your flamming sword a propper use as soon as I don't crash this ship). :D
I don’t get putting grease and create water so high on the list of you can just use water and grease bottles to get this effect without spending spell slots
mage armor in 5e is useless even in tabletop. there are racial armor profs in tabletop too. or you can just dip for proficiency. dipping twilight cleric is quite nice. Hell even if you didn't want to do that, dragon bloodine sorc gives you mage armor always active for free with their inherent 13 base ac.
I kind of disagree with you on your analysis of Hellish Rebuke for one reason: Range If you're multiclassing warlock with say fighter and most of your damage output is melee, hellish rebuke is a great answer to archers or ranged spellcasters.
Loved the tier list pt 1 and 2 Funny that I would place wrathful smite in the same place but the comments of it triggered a conversation in my head and it's just regarding bardadin can also get insanely high DCs not that it matters for the use of the spell... Just wanted to point out that DCs on swords bard Mc character can trivialize missing the effect as you will never miss it ever with just arcane acuity
Is there any reason to use the grease spell instead of just throwing a grease bottle? Seems to me like the space in your spellcasting set would be more useful than getting grease without throwing unless there’s a difference I’m not aware of
Yes - the spell has a larger aoe and uses your character's save DC, where the bottle will always have DC 12, so the spell is much more likely to knock enemies over most of the time
When you called hex’s disadvantage effect something that didn’t matter, I thought you were gonna also rate it poorly. I’m glad you got the ranking right (A tier is probably a more universal view but I’m a lock main in tabletop and in Bg3 so my bias runs deep). But I think you’re missing the importance in at least the early game of disadvantage on skill checks. I usually do strength or dex (depending on offensive or defensive play) but someone mentioned wis to prevent losing invis and that’s another fantastic mention. I also think you severely miss the mark on shield of faith. It’s an additional 10% miss chance on someone. And on someone that is wielding a big 2 hander and swinging recklessly (karlach) it almost negates the bonus (~+3) the enemy receives. It’s probably better placed in a low b high c tier spot.
Shield of Faith really suffers from opportunity cost. There's never a fight you'd rather cast it than Bless, and if you want to use it all day long that means not only giving up on Bless in fights but also losing Guidance. Just hurts your character too much to have their concentration tied up.
And even the Sword of Justice is of limited value because you have to keep the sword equipped or the spell ends, and barbarians can't use it while raging. Its basically a short term buff for battlemaster fighters for a couple of levels.@@Cephalopocalypse
@@Cephalopocalypse guidance comes from a necklace worn by your face/rogue. Never cast it from your cleric. And while I love bless I didn’t make the argument that it competes with that. It is just undervalued on your list.
They should make charm work the way it used to, I fight for you now. To balance it the target can save with Int, Wis or Cha, whichever is highest. If it's still OP let them save with all three and they only need to save once. How would you rate a truely broken effect that rarely works?
i still think mage armor should be in A or S tier because gale, one of the more popular companions, doesnt get any armor proficiencies and warlocks will more often than not be wearing the potent robe meaning most people will still be casting mage armor quite a lot in their playthroughs
Agreed on most, again. Tasha's is definitely not c tier. One enemy out of the fight for 10 turns is incredibly valuable at every stage in the game,and worth concentrating on. It can be cast as a bonus action with a certain popular ring. It costs a lvl1 spell slot. It's a no brainer, the only reason you should drop it is that you can get it from a quest on act 3. Speak with Animals' effect is A tier, but the spell itself is useless. Volo alone sells 5 potions of animal speaking a day, for a very low price. You literally don't have to leave camp to get the effect.
I won’t lie, heroism feels like a better cure wounds/healing word. A guaranteed +5 hit points rather than the janky die rolls for healing word and cure wounds make it my go to initially. I like the spell a lot
Healing word's primary utility is to pick up downed allies. Really, spells aren't any good for mid-fight healing because they just aren't worth it compared to how much damage enemies will be dealing. I've never once taken Cure Wounds since it's basically just worse than chucking a potion at someone.
nah you exaggerated how fast sleep gets outdated. its still quite strong at level 3. level 4 is when it begins to take the plunge. very early game fights are also imo some of the hardest because of how limited and weak your characters are. i thought that was something everyone agreed upon
So I have a mage armor question since I'm about to start a Gale origin run. So from the get go is it just better for me to get light armor ASAP versus casting mage armor on myself?
Tasha's hideous laughter is criminally underrated here, it goes in A-tier. it effects any enemy in the game, even bosses that are all but immune to almost all other forms of incapacitation. only downside is being single target. it's a poor man's Otto's Irresistible Dance for a level 1 spell slot. Hellish rebuke is useful, any time you can attack an enemy out of turn order is powerful. a warlock who is already concentrating on hex for example should use this spell. it's basically riposte. obviously is doesn't last past the early game but the early game is the most important part of higher difficulty runs. so that goes in B-tier. mage armor is also an absolute necessity on any caster that uses robes. 13 base AC outclasses all but the strongest light armors in the game, and many of the robes in the game have much better enchantments for casters than light armors do. it also stacks with shields. A-tier. other than those wide misses, I think this list is pretty excellent!
have you done a tier list for illithid powers? im in my first playthrough of bg3 and i didn't unlock most of it bc i think it might affect the story and i dont know which one to choose 😂
This tier list is more of a "should you take it or not", so here's my opinion. Sorry for the typos, I don't care to re-read this more than I already have. Also, the list isn't strictly ordered, but it mostly goes from tier S to D Create water at lvl 1 - just throw a bottle of water, they are everywhere Fog - just shoot an arrow of darkness Grease - same as others above, just throw the bottle of grease or even better, make your mage hand throw it Hex and Hunter's Mark - only work with the damage dealt by the caster, which is a little disappointing, and don't count spells like magic missile or fireball, only spells that need an attack roll Ice knife - the target can throw a save and take 0 damage if you don't hit it directly, but even if you do, you can still miss, so double rng Guiding Bolt - very good for act 2, if you don't have the "beyblade" yet or need to tace care of one enemy that ran away Armor of Agathis - if an enemy got in melee range with your caster, you're doing something wrong. Also, can be destroyed by any range attack at lower lvls, Mage Armor - works best in the beginning of the game if you use a monk or a barbarian, but can also benefit a stealthy rogue, depending on a build Sleep - if you have quite a few enemies that are a hit away from death, but you don't have any actions to take care of them all, put them to sleep, there's no check to put them to sleep, and they fail Str and Dex saving throws automatically Speak with animal - there's a very cheap potion, so don't waste your time and available spells learning it, plus it usually comes as a part of a package for some other hot characters Compelled duel - can get you out of a hairy situation, and since it uses a bonus action, all the better Arms of Hadar and Burning Hands - at the beginning of the game, if you manage to group up the enemie with a minor illusion, these two can deal good damage Feather Falling - more than useful, since it affects your entire team and you can cast it before the battle for free. Without it, you can fall prone when jumping, and when exploring, you can cast it to jump off of high places to save yourself a lot of walking Expeditious retreat - things went poorly and all your other allies can leave the combat by jumping or already have a dash as a bonus action, but you're stuck with a horde of monsters and need just another 15 feet to escape? There you go Disguise self - available on a helmet in the camp chest if you have the delux edition (I have it for some reason, even though I don't have the delux edition). If you do too, there's no need to learn it Protection from Evil and Good - by the time it gets a use, you have other better concentration spells Color Spray - can blind, but that's useless, since sleep can do the same, but better Hellish Rebuke - say someone got past your firsr line of defense and got to your caster with a few hp left after triggering opportunity attacks, you can finish them off wotgout wasting movement speed or attacks of your other characters Shield of Faith - if you're going for 40 AC, it's indispensable
it seems Larian patched the method people were using to steal the Idol of Silvanus without a civil war in the grove, tried it in a couple new characters and even at camp after placing it in a bag, the druids freak out... RIP Ring of Protection in a good run.
I think Guiding Bolt is one if very few cleric spells you can twin spell if you are multi with Sorceror. It’s the only single target damage spell and it upcasts Does that matter?
I don't quite get how Chromatic Orb does the same thing as Ice Knife "but better". Doesn't Ice Knife do the same thing as Chromatic Orb, but better. Chromatic Orb has some additional utility in getting to choose your damage type, but the thing you're going to use Chromatic Orb for most often, Ice Knife does better.
With hex, I would bump it down a tier to great. As you said, it is very good at low levels, but it doesn't scale with warlock spell level, so it will quickly drop off. I just can't see it alongside other S tier spells that you will want for the entire game. As you said in your outro, the S tier if for spells you want for the entire game and hex doesn't fit that build and in hex drops off after level 4.
The extra beams of Eldritch blast you get at 5th and 10th character levels are how the spell "scales", but I do agree that spending a higher level spell slot on it isn't great.
@@Princess_Salami Otoh if you multiclass Warlock with another caster, then you can just use one of their level 1 slots to cast it instead (once the Warlock slots get to level 2).
I personally disagree with Shield of faith ranking, for paladins specifically. Paladins are not gonna concentrate on anything in particular, and having a +2 ac on a melee character is always relevant. Plus you can use it for free thanks to the greatsword you gain from the paladin on Tyr in act 1 (when a lvl 1 slot matters most on a paladin), and later a lvl 1 slot for a day long benefit is not that big of a deal. It also allows you to be immune to ice surfaces combined with Minthara boots and sinergises with the ring for a +1d4 psychic damage. Playing a paladin recently, I personally find it is a great spell to use concentration on, glue together all the benefits listed above, and also gain an advantage in melee combat
the thing I don't untderstand. why would I want to wear light armour on my wizard or sorcerer. The best "armours" for them in the game are robes. Even for Warlock is the best armour in the game a Robe. So I really don't understand that thinking. Why would I wear a useless light armour just to get my AC high, when I can use a robe to make more damage?! I don't get it.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Another great thing about Magic Missile is that it doesn't care about Line of Sight. If they're in range, they're getting hit, even if it has to go past 2 corners and up a floor. And on top of that because it's multiple hits, you can use it to pretty reliably knock off concentration effects.
It's truly an incredible spell. One of the few things I knew about D&D before playing BG3 (which was my first D&D style game ever) is that you always take magic missile if you can, and discovering why in real time was a real highlight of my first playthrough.
*When a caster is concentrating on a spell and takes damage, they attempt a Constitution save against a DC equal to half the damage taken, or 10, whichever is higher. If the save fails, concentration ends.*
Using magic missile as a concentration breaker will make them do very easy saves, I'm just saying this because I was also using it for that purpose and was honestly confused by them saving 8 saves in a row.
@@DearValentina i havent tested but i use callous glow+corruscation rings for wyll to spam magic missiles. would additional damage like that increase the dc, or is it just another set of easy saves do you think
I wasn't aware of that, thanks.@@DearValentina
@@DearValentina It didn't used to work like this, incidentally. In 3x if you got hit multiple times in one attack then the concentration check DC increased as a result. Made Multishot absolutely devastating for shutting down spellcasters
With the right gear u can also use magic missile to knock down a enemy
Tasha's Hidious Laughter is one of the best early game control spells for a Bard due to it having no restrictions on enemy type. You can cast it on any boss and take them out of the fight for a few turns on average while removing their underlings. Until you get Holld Monster, it's one of the best reliable options for Bard
Magic Missile is insane spell. It works with lightning charges staff you can get in act1 - it gives EACH MISSILE minimum 1 extra lightning damage, potentially more. AND there is an amulet that gives you one more magic missile. AND you can upcast for even MORE magic missiles. My Gale is MM machine gun. SS+ tier spell.
One day im gonna make an 8(17) int half orc wizard that does nothing but casts mm. And when out of spell slots - throws daggers with 20 strength while screaming "MAGIC MISSILE!".
My imagination is running wild xD love it
I find Hellish rebuke to be a better option than the ranking suggested here because warlocks prior to level 5 seldom have a good use for reaction AND the usual suspects, Hex and Armour of Agathys, often stay active through short rests - making bonus Action (Reapply Hex), Action (EB), movement (AoA) and reaction (Hellish Rebuke) pop off in the same turn - potentially. When all of these go off according to plan you'll do quite a lot of burst damage in a single turn.
But you have so few spell slots ... especially early in the game. And, if you're getting hit to put hellish rebuke to work ... do you still have your hex up? Aren't you going to want to make sure you have a spell slot to keep hex up?
If Warlocks had just ONE more Spell Slot I can see this being legitimately useful, because the damage scaling is not nothing but only having 2 for so long and then only getting a maximum of 3 is brutal and puts a lot of scrutiny on each Spell you would potentially Cast. Is addition, is this REACTION, not Spell Slot, worth using up for that Turn when Warlocks are potentially the best users of Counterspell in the Game? Probably not.
I'm a relatively new BG3 player and your guides are impeccable if a little long winded. An immense help, thank you!
Relevant to discussions of magic missle are how AMAZINGLY it pairs with "Cull the Weak". Auto kill on anything under, say 20 hp makes magic missle AMAZING at cleaning up crowds! Also, a level 10 evoker getting int to damage on each missle is incredible
All very true! Tons of awesome combos with the spell on top of its already incredible base effect
I really wish this game would warn you about breaking your own concentration.
Just a little bit of text similar to provoking a reaction attack when you walk next to an enemy. (It would be nice if that text was easier to notice too)
Yess! I have accidentally broken Haste and lost a turn so many times.
It _does_ do that, but only with the expanded tooltip (if you press the Examine button when hovering over the spell). IMO it should be displayed in the simple tooltip as well, not sure why it isn't like that in the first place.
O don't know if I'll ever learn to not do that 😅
My partner plays with a sticky note on her monitor that says "REMEMBER HASTE IS CONCENTRATION"
@@Cephalopocalypse smart. I play on Xbox but still doable. Just have to write bigger 🤣
You forgot to mention in your analysis of Thunderwave its falling damage potential. In the early stages there are so many areas to get falling damage. EG, spider boss. You can send that bitch flying about 50% of the time, making her take around 40 fall damage, which for a lv 1 spell is pretty good chances. I think for the early stages it is S tier, but falls down to around B later, as eldritch blast starts to fill its fall damage niche better, which also dealing better, more consistent damage.
Thunderwave is one of those Spells Ceph talks about where it's not breaking the bank with power level, but when you need it, it's SO useful. Against the Bhaalists, it's awesome. You can use it to "Attack Check" Invisible Enemies. Great for killing Scrying Eyes. You can get lucky and push enemies off high places, great range. You won't need it every combat, but it comes in clutch.
I don't quite agree with Tasha's Hideous Laughter assessment. It does not have a limit on the type of creatures unlike Hold person spell and practically equivalent to level 4 Polymorph spell. If your caster has high enough spell DC, you can keep the boss under control throughout the fight. In my playthrough, Sarevok just lay on the floor laughing until he was finished off. :)
It also persists on Raphael between turns in Honor Mode even though he's supposed to escape CC every turn via Inevitable Resolve. Tasha's is incredibly strong.
The biggest downside to tasha’s is that it competes for your concentration with a lot of other, imo better spells. In most of the fights where you’re up against something dangerous enough for you to actually want it removed from combat, you probably won’t mind expending a high level soell slot. In those situations you’re better off using a hold spell, because of the auto-crits feature, or otto’s, because that doesn’t have a save at all. It’s really good in the early to mid game, and it helped me out in the fights against ketheric and balthazaar, but it is strictly outclassed by hold monster and situationally outclassed by hold person.
In my tier list here's what I'd move
Hellish Rebuke D -> B
Tasha's Hideous Laughter C -> B
Hex S -> A
Hunter's Mark S-> A or maybe even B
Shield of Faith D->C
Colour Spray C->D
Mostly i think you nailed this tier list. Hellish rebuke not costing an action is a big deal especially if the build wants to use most of their actions and bonus actions on attacks.
Hex and hunters mark can often be less useful than a bonus action attack for some builds.
Thanks for all you viedos.
Not sure I agree with hunters mark. it adds free dmg and can be carried through multiple fights. Also bm pets trigger the extra dmg as well. So a dw bm can trigger the dmg three times at early levels.
I could easily be persuaded that Hunters mark deserves to be in A, but not S as many rangers will do mare damage with a minor action attack than moving the hunter's mark. It gets better and better the more attacks it will take to down the enemy, but it's not a must have. (I haven't played a beastmaster ranger yet)@@TheSorrowWithinMe
If you're saying HB is good as a level 1 spell, sure, but I've never felt good using a level 5 spell slot on it.
Agreed Hellish Rebuke is under valued (especially at lower levels) it not only is a reaction spell, but seems to be coded as a ritual spell as well. Plus as a warlock you are mostly using eldritch blast as your attack.
My problem with hex is that requires concentration which makes it fight with a spot with arguibly the most strong warlock combo being devil's sight + darkness. That shit is just plainly broken.
The enemy brain simply implodes when they can't target you. so you can just step away from darkness, shoot and come back in and if they are stupid enough to step in and get blinded, well is gg.
I AM LOVING THIS TIER LIST SO MUCH!!!! And so happy if you're planning on going through level 2-6 spells as well... Would you also go through the Eldritch Invocations?
I apologize for the super long comment, but I had to ramble about some of those spells. Please ignore everything that comes below this if you're not in the mood for reading a monster of a comment.
Slight note for Hex (from a D&D warlock fangirl):
If you have a party member under Greater Invisibility, giving the boss enemy disadvantage on Wisdom for Perception means your Greater Invis ally can maintain invisibility longer. Not amazing when there's a group of enemies, but at least that's an option when choosing the Stat to give disadvantage.
Fun little extra use for Hunter's Mark, if you're a Beast Master, your animal companion's attacks ALSO get the extra 1d6 of damage from their "Prey's Scent" passive feature. So at just 3rd level, a Beast Master could technically get up to an extra 3d6 of damage, if they have an off hand attack, and their animal companion lands their attack as well. I'm not sure if it stays valuable at higher levels of Ranger, but at 11th level, with the Bear Companion giving you an extra bear, and the main bear having extra attack, you could deal up to 6d6 extra damage from it. But that's if your 2 bears attacks land, and if you don't have to move the mark after an enemy died.
Would Ice Knife be S tier on a Druid, since they don't have access to Chromatic Orb?
For Mage Armor: For most of Act 2, I usually have Astarion (or any Rogue character) in the Graceful Cloth and wearing no armor pieces at all, as a pure Rogue, and with his really good Dex, making his base AC 13 instead of 10 boosts him up to sometimes 21 AC depending on the other pieces of equipment. It's useful to remember that you can cast Mage Armor on someone else!
For Thunderous Smite, I LOVE knocking enemies prone when my turn is right AFTER theirs, and all my allies go before them. Because that means any melee allies just gets an easy advantage on all their attacks. At 5th level or higher, I would probably Thunderous Smite on my 1st attack, and not on the Extra attack.
Extra Witchbolt Suck: If you don't spend your action on the following turns re-zapping the target, the spell drops. Also, even when upcast, the damage on subsequent turns always stays at 1d12, and does not scale like the initial damage. 😑
For a "retaliation build" using Hellish Rebuke and Armor of Agathys, I feel like you would HAVE to grab Elemental Adept Fire, in order to overcome the Fire resistance caused by the Wet condition.
I also think he underrates the disadvantage on skill/ability checks. I usually do strength (to make pushing easier) but I’m gonna yoink the wis strat.
Ice Knife is definitely S tier on sorcerers because it's Twinned Spell eligible area of effect damage, with a good damage type. But really it's just better than Chromatic Orb for everyone. If you cast Chromatic Orb let's be real you're either casting its Cold or Acid form; Fire, Lightning and Poison are bad. Ice Knife is just a better Chromatic Orb Cold, so really Chromatic Orb should be ranked according to the Acid version, which is solid but in no way S tier.
@@williamking7800 thunder is decent. Taking out the eye to help you knock out Minthara is pretty neat
The smite spells can be cast, and you can use your reaction if the attack lands to stack divine smite as well. The smite spells and divine smite are also amplified by crit as well.
2h sword using lvl1 spell slot(s): 2d6 + str mod + 2d8 divine smite + 2d6 thunderous smite.
Came here to say this. Sometimes thunderous smite is handy when you need to burst down a target in one turn with thunderous smite plus divine smite.
Good tier list! I don't normally comment on RUclips too much, but your videos have been really helpful. Thanks. I will say that Tasha's Hideous Laughter has a special place in my heart since it's a good spell if you really want to take one particular enemy out of the fight for many turns. Not to damage them, but to make sure they stay down until I'm ready to face them. That's especially helpful with some bosses. It was a great help in the Raphael fight. It took him down for like four or five turns during which time I killed all of his mobs, destroyed the soul pillars and repositioned my party all over the room so that they wouldn't all be one-shot by his super strong aoe attack. Oh, and I also evacuated Hope. That was a big problem for me since he always kills her right away. It's helpful with other bosses as well, like the cursed toll collector lady in Ketheric's town. Are there any other spell that just take an enemy down for as long as I need without them having to fail a saving throw each turn?
Hold person maybe? I agree, Tasha's laughter and sleep are clutch to make boss fights trivial. Like polymorph.
@@hangglidingmontana6134 Hmm... yeah, they all are useful spells. But Hold Person has a downside in that the person has to fail a saving throw each turn. Sleep is awesome in the first few levels, but then enemies just have too many hitpoints for it to work. But yes, polymorph is great, but it does consume a lvl 4 spell slot.
@@zorlix130 thats not exactly a downside for hold person cause they take guarantee crit for the entire time they are hold. Most of the time, the one im holding ain't gonna live for more than 2 turns cause guarantee paladin smite crit just makes them a joke. You can literally 1 shot raphael with Hold Monster and Fighter level 11 + Paladin 11 or any variant of melee fighters if you have good gears
3:53 The only hit point that matters on an enemy is the last one - I think it perfectly rounds up BG3 interpretation of combat.
Thanks for all those tier lists! Now I'm finally not totally clueless what spell to take even without preset builds.
Really loving this. Especially for player like me whos new to dnd and bg3 i dont have to blindly follow a guide and choose which skill is useful for me
my fav use of good berries is in a poisoner barb rogue build, which allows to nom one and proc the amulet that coats ur weapon for 1d6 poison as a baseline
Add Whispering Promise to Bless yourself at the same time
It's a nice list. I agree with most. I would put "SLEEP" higher. It has no saves if the enemy is low enough. Sometimes it's better to just finish someone off, but some fights, especially on Honor mode, you need to kill and not risk a wipeout. If there is a chance to miss, putting them to sleep instead is more safe as they will be unable to act. Giving you time to either focus on someone else or kill them off when you have fresh set of actions.
Would also have Tasha Hidious laugher one higher up thanks to it versatillity and Thunderwave as it can be so useful as last resort in so many places. AOE push can be massive game changer. And just for a level 1 spell. Just insane.
Tasha's is 10 turns, not 1. If it was 1 turn then Tasha's is D tier. But there's no save if you don't attack them, and that enemy just stays on ice for 10 turns. That's huge.
Tasha's has a save at the end of the enemy's turn and every time they take damage.
Not per turn . Only on damage received.
@@Mike-r4h It's both. The description of the effect states "at the end of its turn or when it takes damage, the entity can try to shake off the effect." Just to be sure, I tested on the tutorial imps, who shook off the effect on their own after 3 turns (with a saving throw in the combat log after each turn)
Weird. I always use the spell, and not once has that happened to me. It's basically cast and forget.
As stated its every turn AND when they take damage. So a theoretical 20 chances to shake the effect.
Great fun listening to this! Thanks.
Note that Thunderwave can one shot enemies standing next to a pit, and is great for at least one build (low level Tempest clerics can max Thunderwave and get decent damage out of it).
If you're planning on doing that you're better off grabbing a level of Wizard so you can nab Chromatic Orb which does disgusting maxed damage
I used all of the places I can speak with animals in a thorough playthrough, while not having the spell, ended up having three extra speak with animals potions and I stopped buying them at some point.
It only saves you the money. And because you always roll credits while having positive money balance, i.e. unused money, it's like nothing. You can pickpocket Volo at your camp for five of those, and probably even more that once.
Having said all that, it's like saying strength is useless because elixirs. Consumables devaluate quite a lot of stuff in the game. You have enough scrolls of protection from good and evil to cover all the needs for them without even buying, and all the sources of that easily happen before said encounters.
Just mentioning it because speak with animals is an extreme example.
Also, just as a note about Thunderous Smite: you say you most want to knock prone melee fighters, but remember that being knocked prone is a guaranteed concentration loss. So it can be a move to break enemy concentration. Of course a paladin will break enemy caster's concentration by just applying “dead” condition to them, but it worth mentioning.
Strength is useless because Elixirs.
Hex also can force enemies to have disadvantage resisting being shoved. Given the amount of verticality in the game, this will present opportunities to weaponize the bonus action of even low strength characters like Shadowheart. Even if there aren't precipices to make use of, it can help give your non-rogue characters a pseudo disengage with their bonus action.
13:30, hellish isn't the best but it being a reaction means you can kill something with your reaction thus making it kind of like the battlemasters' riposte, it being a warlock spell isn't even that bad because eldritch blast is the main thing you're even casting.
also, you can get it from oathbreaker but it's pretty garbage unless you think it can kill something.
Great list thanks for all the explanation and reasoning. Funny enough, I found Tasha’s Hideous Laughter to be pretty underwhelming at level one, but in later levels it’s been great. So kinda the opposite of Sleep. Low resource cost being a level one spell, it also has much higher success as you gain stats and gear. Find I’m using it most when there’s an enemy I want to lock down in an encounter, so I can deal with the rest first. Also on some animals (they need to have 5 or more INT) you can make them laugh and well experiencing that is just priceless. Laughing dogs…Larfing? Baughing?
I'm still experimenting with Arcane Trickster options, and using it to lock down a Mimic was one of the funniest things I've done in-game.
14:27 I think its worth noting that while hellish rebuke is not a great spell, it is an S tier racial feature, since when whatever tiefling subrace gets it, it doesn’t cost a spell slot.
Inflict Wounds is insane if you take multiclass into sorcerer the ranges cast or the double cast if up close. It’s a niche build, but you don’t need much else outside of enemies that resist or are immune.
The important thing (and the big benefit) of carrying 'Inflict Wounds' as a spell, IS that it is a melee spell. Almost all spells you cast in melee are at disadvantage and clerics are a semi-martial class, capable of going toe to toe with enemies at least some of the time. So, it has big damage (for a L1 spell) and no disadvantage when used in melee. You do NOT want to take EITHER Guiding Bolt OR Inflict Wounds........you want both of them for the versatility it provides. Don't leave home without it, it is a valuable option at level 1.
Well done for mentioning how many Speak With Animals potions you get. It pretty much negates the value of this as a spell. Because of that, I would rate it a C or even D tier spell.
Tasha's Hideous Laughter is very useful as it targets a lot more creature types than the 2nd level Hold Person. I'd put it a B/A tier rather than C/B. Several others in the comments here have mentioned this.
Thunderwave. A bad save (Con), but the most irritating part of this spell (as Ceph described) is the box shaped area of effect, that all too often will include allies.. A nice spell if you can yeet an enemy off of high ground or into a surface, or into a spell like Cloud of Daggers. It's value is slightly reduced because there are other options to knock an enemy back.
Mage Armour. This is most useful at low levels and is long lasting.............BUT, at low level you have hardly any spell slots and you will miss the one you used for Mage Armour. At normal difficulty I didn't really feel the loss of not having the armour buff. I will say that I don't tend to play Tactician or Honour Mode, so players that do, may have a different experience here.
Be careful about saying a spell lasts a turn. That phrasing wouldn't trouble younger players, but in older versions of D&D a turn is 10 minutes. Perhaps describing it as a round instead of a turn, is better ?
Note how light level 1 'S' tier spells are, for druids. They need help with at least one more good L1 spell and ideally, two. Entangle, Faerie Fire and Fog Cloud are nice enough spells, but they do no damage. I actually created a druid spell with my D&D group (I called it Gilded Splinters) that acted in a similar way to 'Melf's Minute Meteors' and it was a very popular addition that scaled nicely with level - it wasn't overpowered, but it filled a niche that was lacking in alternatives.
"That phrasing wouldn't trouble younger players, but in older versions of D&D a turn is 10 minutes." Or people can just accept the current context of the discussion, which is BG3 and not older versions of D&D.
one thing i like about protection from good/evil is getting scrolls of it - and then on given encounters with harder fey (Ethel), or undead (all of act 2) or fiends (act 3) etc, i'll have my entire party each cast prot good/evil on themselves before going in. It just gives those first few rounds (or possibly the whole fight) extra advantage for those alpha strikes from baddies. While not everyone will keep concentration, if it can even completely bypass some of those first round of charms and attacks, it means I can get 2 or 3 rounds total before they get to do anything useful (1 surprise maybe, 2a winning init, 2b they go but don't do anyhting useful, 3 back to me and fight is likely over)
The biggest annoyance I have with mage armor is how much of the gear that is essential to almost every caster build is considered armor, you have the helmet of grit for almost any build that includes sorcerer for quickened spell, seravok's helm for crits on eldritch blast builds, helm of the baldurian on tanky casters, boots of striding are nice for concentration casters in the mid game, speedy lihghtfeet are used on some lighting charge builds, reviving hands for healers and once you get to even act 2 it's just impossible to find a character that doesn't sacrifice more than they gain by using mage armor when they could've so easily taken a certain race or a 1 level dip and had more AC and unrestricted access to potentially build defining gear
So yeah mage armor D tier, any char who would want to use it is better of just getting light armor and shield
not really . You can just take Hood of the weave/Arcane acunity hat of your element if you play Sorcerer(ideally the fire one cause its the best one). You can make use of it, but its marginal, especially cause Sorcerer strongest subclass is Draconic(I don't think Storm sorcerer is that good, its not bad but not as strong as just spamming Ray of fire and bonus action fly is something i seldomly use). Wizard makes decent use of this though. Gale at the very least can in act 3. Agree on it being shit in the early game though. Light armor is almost always better than cloth at that stage and you don't want to waste your valuable spell slot early on for it
@tranducquang5912 I find early game is when light armor you can get isn't as good as Mage Armor. There's not really any good light armors until act 2. It's better to just have a camp follower cast mage armor on your rogues and warlocks.
The Hex disadvantage on checks can actually be used to give disadvantage to enemy casters who might try to Counterspell your 4th+ level spells. Bit of a niche case and a bit hard to make it work, but if it ends up being the difference between say, hold monster landing or not landing, it can be fight changing.
The only spell I strongly disagree with is Mage armour, which is absolutely useful for a pure wizard, sorc or warlock (who are incidentally the 3 full casters with access to the spell) because you generally aren’t going to want them to wear armour. The potent robe and the robe of the weave (as examples) are just too good not to wear if you can get them. I always had mage armour on Gale and Wyll through Act 3. A tier for me!
Armor doesn't only consist of the torso piece though. Various useful gloves, helmets, and boots can also count as light or medium armor.
@@AirLancer I know that, but the same goes for those items. Most gloves, hoods and boots a wizard etc would want aren’t classed as armour. Some are, so you just need to work out what you want
Guiding bolt gets a fascinating position. Its cleric's only reliable single target range spell, i use it through the end game most playthroughs. Its a great little bost in a nuke round with a gloomstalker or monk
In my opinion the best level 1 spells are magic missile and longstrider because they never let you down! And I love command just because the idea of bossing around a scary enemy is cool. Unfortunately it doesn't always work out.
Guiding bolt should be a or s because advantage helps front liners does good damage and is level 1 all for that tbh it's great, and combo that with sneak attacks then you get high damage done to the target also the items that radiant orbs or even lower the number for a crit is great but smites also want this advantage because the risk of smites is missing almost taking that away is ridiculous
I only found this video during my 4th playthrough, I wish I had seen it earlier! Love that it confirms some of my suspicions- summons are OP, bane is ass- and wakes me up to new spells and uses. When I finally found out about water surfaces+lightning…😅
Another nice thing about Ice Knife is that since there's an AoE for the cold damage part of the spell, using a sorcery point to twin it is pretty useful against clumped up enemies. Even worth it for a single wet enemy since unlike Chromatic Orb which needs to hit a target to do damage, you can shoot the Ice Knife at an enemy and then aim the second one at the ground near it.
You are missing use cases for Warlock multiclasses. Hellish rebuke is a solid choice when you dip 1-3 on warlock and you aren’t expecting a lot out of the spells, specifically for martial classes. Plus, it’s a reaction, so only use it when it kills your attacker, that can be huge.
Hex is also great on a MC martial when you hex strength. Now you can have advantage on shove, which is way better for a horde breaker hunter than hunters mark is.
Oh and searing smite has a use case when you are MC with a flame blade Druid and have the feat to ignore elemental resistance. It can also proc divine smite and they double up, and it scales per spell slot versus wrathful and thunderous who should only be cast at level 1.
typically for paladin, i use thundering smite over searing smite, since it does more up front damage, has a better effect and doesnt require concentration (which can otherwise be used to apply almost permanent SoF/Magic weapon/hunters mark)
My argument against your ranking of Guiding Bolt is that it is a OK first-level spell that competes with other valuable uses for your level one spells that dont scale with level (like you said), but it is a great third or fourth level spell. When you get it, sure it's B tier. But after you level up a couple more times, it gets better and better as it goes. Especially if you're applying Radiating Orb. A Tier in my book and only ever not prepared on Shadowheart when she's fighting enemies that are imune or do radiant retaliation.
Laughter is better at early level as you can hit bigger enemies that have more HP. Taking down the bigger guy so you can deal with minions first is very helpful. Then you can go back to the laughing enemy with concentrated attacks.
Great video! Oddly enough, ive been able to stack mage armor with the AC bonus from shields. It rocks
Fog Cloud Bias was the name of my band in high school.
Just want to say that I think that ice knife and chromatic orb don’t occupy the same niche. It’s your only aoe damage spell as a wizard before fire ball, making it great for early game.
One side note with Hunter's Marks is that the tooltip is misleading. The damage type always matches whatever damage your weapon attack did.
LA GRASA, LA GRASA ESTA EN TIER A!!!
The paladin smite spells do have a narrow use case; against enemies that have radiant retort, and who therefore completely prevent divine smites from being useful. Also, they can allow you to burn two spell slots in one turn to do some serious burst damage. I agree they are generally terrible though.
I think thunderwave deserves a higher placement, despite the con save you can still end up throwing enemies into a pit or even off a ledge to take a lot of fall damage and make them have to spend their turn dashing back to your party. It's very terrain dependent but it's still a worthwhile spell to have
Additionally: the smite spells have an additional use in that it's not always either a regular smite or a spell smite, but you can stack them. Sometimes getting a first turn burst with that much extra damage can get rid of a strong foe better than if you chose one or the other. Less longevity, but the best effect to inflict on an enemy is dead, which paladins are very adept at doing so. Basically thunderous smite could be rated higher, but the other smites shouldnt because it's just worse
How about a tier list for weapon types? You could discuss all the ins and outs that come with them. There's a hundred of these specific spell tier lists out there.
'It depends' can be a very answer as long as it's explained why it depends and how to choose correctly.
Mage Armor is D-tier (even in Tabletop)
In Tabletop you can take 1 level in Artificer. Artificer multiclass spell progression is half your class rounded 'down' instead of the normal rounded up that other classes do. So a 1 level dip doesn't slow down your spell progression. You also gain access to other 1st level spells and cantrips. you get medium armor and shield proficiency.
So let's do some math
mage armor: 13 + 2 (dex) = 15 AC
Breastplate: 14 +2 (dex) + 2 (shield) = 18 AC + access to more magical gear options than before, like sentinel shield and zephyr armor or just +1 variants which gives you 20 AC.
Shield of faith is often useful. It has some strategic value. Definitely not D tier.
A minor thing is that the it's not a choice between the elemental smites and divine smite, with the reaction you can divine smite on top of the other ones. I still think that there's usually other things to use your bonus action on as a paladin, but i still use them sometimes.
As someone who also very much enjoys the utility of Grease in tabletop D&D, I'm curious as to how regularly it trips up enemies in BG3. Are save DCs tied to character casting statistics, and does that make single-use items (like Grease bottles) less effective?
I've only done a little experimentation in game thus far, with disappointing results. Gnolls were utterly unfazed by standing at the epicenter of a thrown Grease bottle. And a certain bugbear and ogre were tripped by the initial casting of Grease, only to ignore it as soon as their turn arrived. It's possible that I just had a bad run of luck, but as I said... I'm curious.
Yes, you're right! The DC of the bottles will always be 12, whereas the spell will use your character's DC - that's why bottles aren't really a good replacement
Great list, agree with most of it. Mage Armour maybe deserves a bump up, it combines with other gear and spells to give wizards obscene AC. Magic Missle is S+ for me, you can combine with psychic spark, coruscation and callous glow rings, the spell sparkler, reverb gloves and boots... at high levels it deletes enemeies, or at least debuffs them for filth.
and all these buffs to MM apply to Curriculum of Strategy - good for ~160 dmg a cast. But even only upcasting MM can produce similar results - wizard with high Int and Evocation dmg buff required obvs.
I think the only clothes that really stand the test of time are the Graceful Cloth. Things like Robe of the Weave seem really good when you're at an intermediate level of theorycrafting, but at some point you take the Initiative pill and realize that Yuan-Ti Scale Mail is just better.
That said, you probably want Mage Armour on your Graceful Cloth user if they're not a Sorcerer.
@williamking7800 a monk with graceful cloth is pretty good, since it's a feat towards your stunning strike saving throws instead of attack damage that is overshadowed by giant potions. And each wisdom bump increases your unarmored ac too.
I always take hellish rebuke on Fiend Warlock level 1, so if an enemy ranged decides to hit the backline they usually get oneshot in return, then level 3-5 i replace it because it definetly looses against 2nd and 3rd level spells
I've commented on your last two, so I'm here to do it again! I just find this fun, it's not that I think you have bad reasoning. Anyway.
First things first: You said fire damage is the worst damage type. That's just flat wrong. Poison damage is. Fire hits some vulnerabilities, and is mostly just resisted. Poison is much worse. Fire has plenty of good uses and options. Necrotic is also arguably worse due to the variety of constructs and undead in the game, which outnumber things like devils.
As always if I don't comment on a spell, I have no notes to add:
Hunter's Mark is better than Hex; Warlock gets two slots per short rest, 6 slots per day. Rangers get some level 1 spells they don't use often. You yourself said that Rangers often don't have a better option than ensnaring strike, which I disagree with a little, but the point being that Hunter's Mark is their premier level 1 option. 1d6 extra damage is always nice for bonus actions, and Rangers spend less on it than Warlocks.
Magic Missile does have 1 question asked, as you mentioned: Does the enemy have shield? This does not change the fact that it's an S tier spell due to various builds (lightning charge, psychic spark, and more, especially for evo wizards).
You forgot the most important sanctuary use: protecting NPCs. Various allied NPCs are incredibly vulnerable in the fights they are meant to help with, and sanctuary turns them from a liability into an asset more often than not.
Searing smite being in F is reasonable, but that you would put it there before cure wounds and animal friendship is wild to me.
In absence of an F tier, Shield of Faith should be "Marginal", it's better then many other spells in D tier for specific builds.
Sleep should be in F tier for BG3. It's quite reasonable in 5e, but the encounters and planning in BG3, as well as health thresholds, make it effectively useless. other enemies can also simply shove them to wake them up, and any damage wakes them up. You are often better off just using a cantrip for damage.
Speak with Animals goes in B tier; a potion duplicates it but it's still very useful. It would be S tier for it's various usages on bypassing skill checks as a ritual, but the potion abundance brings it down.
Thunderwave is an A tier spell due to the verticality of BG3. It has plenty of instant-death cases, and even more cases where you can delay an enemy by knocking them down a few levels. even on Tactician+, it's a coinflip of success very often, and hitting 2 or 3 targets at once is pretty common.
I'd put witchbolt in D tier, even in absence of an F tier. the build it's good for is hyper specific, and not exactly intuitive. This is more of a personal opinion of mine, however.
Wrathful smite, and even searing smite, should be up a tier because you *can* use them alongside a regular smite. This makes a nova-din who fishes (or forces) a crit would use those extra smites to up their damage even more for hilariously high damage numbers.
Interestingly compared to the last video and the cantrips, I disagree with your reasoning more than your placements on this one. Only a few changes I'd make to the actual placements this time.
I disagree regarding Speak with Animals. The potion that duplicates it is plentiful enough to use one on every possible opportunity and still have some left over. All the spell does is gain gold from selling those potions.
I think party composition is also a factor here. The more your team recharges abilities on Short Rest and the more Bards you have for Song of Rest, the less Long Rests you need, which means that Elixirs and certain potions (like for Speak with Animals) last you for significantly more encounters. I personally think that Elixirs are too powerful not to fully exploit and that any party without a Bard is just wrong, and that ideally you want two Bards. Under those circumstances you really don't need Speak with Animals (but you'll probably have it anyway). I imagine that as you run fewer Bards then the cost of using consumables effectively goes up and dedicating spells known to save on resources becomes slightly more attractive.
Ice knife definitely belongs in A tier, not a tier lower just because it is a very powerful, cheap, and useful twin cast on a sorcerer for the entire game. A twin cast level 1 Ice Knife can be a 1d10+4d6, and that 4d6 can be doubled by the wet condition which makes a level 1 spell slot + 1 sorcery point a little more powerful than a fireball on a single target.
At least on sorcerers, Ice Knife is a better source of cold damage than chromatic orb.
Ice Knife is just better than Chromatic Orb. Let's be honest if you don't have Ice Knife then Chromatic Orb is pretty much always cold and if you do have Ice Knife then you're very rarely casting Chromatic Orb.
Chromatic Orb's Acid and Thunder forms still have some utility but Chromatic Orb simply isn't S tier in a world with Ice Knife.
Sleep can be up cast for more hp usage as well as at the end of a fight or after a large aoe damage spell when there are lots of enemies with low hp. Or flocks of low hp birds or rats which come up in act 2-3. Don’t sleep on sleep I say. 🤷♂️
Unless you know that kind of situation is coming, you're probably better off preparing other spells.
shield of faith is great for paladins since they dont use too many concentration spells, saving most of their spell slots for smites
Man... I love the idea of compelled to duel. We need a taunt in this game.
I liked using compelled to duel with my ancients paladin with the holy lance helm (1d4 radiant dmg on enemy miss), hellrider's pride gauntlets (blade ward on heal), the whispering promise ring (bless on heal), and the amulet of restoration (mass healing word). Then divine smiting away with the luminous chest (radiant orb on radiant dmg) and boots of stormy clamor (reverb on condition aka radiant orb). This has been a fun way to use compelled to duel for me.
Theres so much context to all this bc of how this works vs dnd. Bc we get certain spells at certain story points and those story points can be weak or strong against those spells lol. Like i think necrotic dmg takes a big ass hit bc of act 2 lol. Hold person is nasty, but it loses just a bit bc non humanoids. Then honestly a lot of times the big halmark fights dictate my spells when im going act one im thinking gith and tyr lol. I know this is that meta gaming we arent supposed to do but you mentioned necrotic was p good and i was just playing act 2 like 👀 lmao
I love your videos, watched all of bg3 builds related ones. I really have to ask if you would be willing to add at the end of the video, what equipment to choose for that build? So the charachter building process makes more sense. Like example of equipment for that build.
Could you do spore druid guide? How it compares against necromancer wizard?
Ice Knife is an S tier spell with the twin spell meta magic, especially if you can get the AOE components to overlap.
Not related but i like using sleet storm and hunger of hadar on top of eachother and its soo hilarious seeing enemies constantly slip and fall in the hadar while trying to get out of it and taking random explosion damage at the end of each turn 😂. then my ranger constantly having advantage and picking them all off little by little. When it works it works and its fun
Yep! An excellent combo - try layering Plant Growth or Spike Growth in for even more brutal lockdown!
Tasha's one of the best spell for the Bard in the Nautiloid. The cambions have terrible WIS save, and you can put them on the ground for several turns (I got 2 on one of my games, wich means that cambion died due to critical hits from everyone ganging up on him XD ). The Spider Matriarch is also a very easy encounter using Tasha's (I got her down for up to 5 turns, too bad I had to deal with her babies, but taking that boss out of the game for 5 turns is incredibly useful). :)
In that regard, I think Tasha is a better spell than command, because Command only works for that particular turn, while Tasha can last up to 10 turns (and if you haven't finished the encounter by that time, you better be running). :D
Also, is better than Dissonant Whispers since psychic damage is meh, and that one only stops them from reacting and moving for a couple of turns (if they fail their save, which is the same with Tasha's so I'm not counting it as a factor).
I think that for "boss level" melee fights, Tasha is better as a disabler than any other level 1 spell, while DW is better to deal with minions, and command is better used as a multi enemy dissabler (as upcasted) or for weapon removal (thanks Commander Zhalk, I promise to give your flamming sword a propper use as soon as I don't crash this ship). :D
I don’t get putting grease and create water so high on the list of you can just use water and grease bottles to get this effect without spending spell slots
mage armor in 5e is useless even in tabletop. there are racial armor profs in tabletop too. or you can just dip for proficiency. dipping twilight cleric is quite nice. Hell even if you didn't want to do that, dragon bloodine sorc gives you mage armor always active for free with their inherent 13 base ac.
Doesn’t guiding bolt also give advantage on attack rolls after hitting an enemy? Thought that and the damage would put it on A tier
I kind of disagree with you on your analysis of Hellish Rebuke for one reason:
Range
If you're multiclassing warlock with say fighter and most of your damage output is melee, hellish rebuke is a great answer to archers or ranged spellcasters.
The best use for mage armor is casting it from a camp hireling to buff the AC of your minions.
Loved the tier list pt 1 and 2
Funny that I would place wrathful smite in the same place but the comments of it triggered a conversation in my head and it's just regarding bardadin can also get insanely high DCs not that it matters for the use of the spell... Just wanted to point out that DCs on swords bard Mc character can trivialize missing the effect as you will never miss it ever with just arcane acuity
Is there any reason to use the grease spell instead of just throwing a grease bottle? Seems to me like the space in your spellcasting set would be more useful than getting grease without throwing unless there’s a difference I’m not aware of
Yes - the spell has a larger aoe and uses your character's save DC, where the bottle will always have DC 12, so the spell is much more likely to knock enemies over most of the time
Ohh yeah! Here we go! ❤
When you called hex’s disadvantage effect something that didn’t matter, I thought you were gonna also rate it poorly. I’m glad you got the ranking right (A tier is probably a more universal view but I’m a lock main in tabletop and in Bg3 so my bias runs deep). But I think you’re missing the importance in at least the early game of disadvantage on skill checks. I usually do strength or dex (depending on offensive or defensive play) but someone mentioned wis to prevent losing invis and that’s another fantastic mention.
I also think you severely miss the mark on shield of faith. It’s an additional 10% miss chance on someone. And on someone that is wielding a big 2 hander and swinging recklessly (karlach) it almost negates the bonus (~+3) the enemy receives. It’s probably better placed in a low b high c tier spot.
Shield of Faith really suffers from opportunity cost. There's never a fight you'd rather cast it than Bless, and if you want to use it all day long that means not only giving up on Bless in fights but also losing Guidance. Just hurts your character too much to have their concentration tied up.
And even the Sword of Justice is of limited value because you have to keep the sword equipped or the spell ends, and barbarians can't use it while raging. Its basically a short term buff for battlemaster fighters for a couple of levels.@@Cephalopocalypse
@@Cephalopocalypse guidance comes from a necklace worn by your face/rogue. Never cast it from your cleric. And while I love bless I didn’t make the argument that it competes with that. It is just undervalued on your list.
Magic missle is amazing if you have cull the weak a level 1 magic missle cam take out 3 enemies with 20. Health each
You missed out that Ice Knife procs damage riders twice (Hex, Lightning Charges, etc).
Mage Armor works with a shield equipped. I'm certain about that.
Shield counts as armor.
@@AirLancer No, it doesn't. There are 3 types of armor, and shields belong to none of 'em.
@@niedomyty00 Oh wait, I'm thinking about monk stuff where you can't use their abilities with armor or shields.
thunderwave is like... one of the best lv 1 spells, and certainly one of the most used.
Once I fought Gortash during the coronation, and managed to thunderwave him off of Wyrm's Rock.
They should make charm work the way it used to, I fight for you now. To balance it the target can save with Int, Wis or Cha, whichever is highest. If it's still OP let them save with all three and they only need to save once. How would you rate a truely broken effect that rarely works?
i still think mage armor should be in A or S tier because gale, one of the more popular companions, doesnt get any armor proficiencies and warlocks will more often than not be wearing the potent robe meaning most people will still be casting mage armor quite a lot in their playthroughs
Agreed on most, again.
Tasha's is definitely not c tier. One enemy out of the fight for 10 turns is incredibly valuable at every stage in the game,and worth concentrating on. It can be cast as a bonus action with a certain popular ring. It costs a lvl1 spell slot. It's a no brainer, the only reason you should drop it is that you can get it from a quest on act 3.
Speak with Animals' effect is A tier, but the spell itself is useless. Volo alone sells 5 potions of animal speaking a day, for a very low price. You literally don't have to leave camp to get the effect.
The effect is S tier. But you're right about the spell.
I won’t lie, heroism feels like a better cure wounds/healing word. A guaranteed +5 hit points rather than the janky die rolls for healing word and cure wounds make it my go to initially. I like the spell a lot
Healing word's primary utility is to pick up downed allies. Really, spells aren't any good for mid-fight healing because they just aren't worth it compared to how much damage enemies will be dealing. I've never once taken Cure Wounds since it's basically just worse than chucking a potion at someone.
nah you exaggerated how fast sleep gets outdated. its still quite strong at level 3. level 4 is when it begins to take the plunge. very early game fights are also imo some of the hardest because of how limited and weak your characters are. i thought that was something everyone agreed upon
So I have a mage armor question since I'm about to start a Gale origin run. So from the get go is it just better for me to get light armor ASAP versus casting mage armor on myself?
Usually, yes! Gale has light armor and shield proficiency, which will be as good or better than mage armor right from the start of the game
Tasha's hideous laughter is criminally underrated here, it goes in A-tier. it effects any enemy in the game, even bosses that are all but immune to almost all other forms of incapacitation. only downside is being single target. it's a poor man's Otto's Irresistible Dance for a level 1 spell slot. Hellish rebuke is useful, any time you can attack an enemy out of turn order is powerful. a warlock who is already concentrating on hex for example should use this spell. it's basically riposte. obviously is doesn't last past the early game but the early game is the most important part of higher difficulty runs. so that goes in B-tier. mage armor is also an absolute necessity on any caster that uses robes. 13 base AC outclasses all but the strongest light armors in the game, and many of the robes in the game have much better enchantments for casters than light armors do. it also stacks with shields. A-tier. other than those wide misses, I think this list is pretty excellent!
Yep, if I did this list again I would move Tasha's higher
I’d rather cast Sacred Flame over Guiding Bolt because every time Shadowheart misses, I’m happy it cost me an action and I didn’t waste a spell slot
18 dex, Graceful cloth, shield, gloves that give +2 ac if unarmored, and magic armor gives 22 AC
have you done a tier list for illithid powers? im in my first playthrough of bg3 and i didn't unlock most of it bc i think it might affect the story and i dont know which one to choose 😂
I haven't, but that's a good idea!
@@Cephalopocalypse I'm definitely looking forward to it if ever you make a video of one, really enjoy watching your bg3 guides!!! 🫶
This tier list is more of a "should you take it or not", so here's my opinion. Sorry for the typos, I don't care to re-read this more than I already have. Also, the list isn't strictly ordered, but it mostly goes from tier S to D
Create water at lvl 1 - just throw a bottle of water, they are everywhere
Fog - just shoot an arrow of darkness
Grease - same as others above, just throw the bottle of grease or even better, make your mage hand throw it
Hex and Hunter's Mark - only work with the damage dealt by the caster, which is a little disappointing, and don't count spells like magic missile or fireball, only spells that need an attack roll
Ice knife - the target can throw a save and take 0 damage if you don't hit it directly, but even if you do, you can still miss, so double rng
Guiding Bolt - very good for act 2, if you don't have the "beyblade" yet or need to tace care of one enemy that ran away
Armor of Agathis - if an enemy got in melee range with your caster, you're doing something wrong. Also, can be destroyed by any range attack at lower lvls,
Mage Armor - works best in the beginning of the game if you use a monk or a barbarian, but can also benefit a stealthy rogue, depending on a build
Sleep - if you have quite a few enemies that are a hit away from death, but you don't have any actions to take care of them all, put them to sleep, there's no check to put them to sleep, and they fail Str and Dex saving throws automatically
Speak with animal - there's a very cheap potion, so don't waste your time and available spells learning it, plus it usually comes as a part of a package for some other hot characters
Compelled duel - can get you out of a hairy situation, and since it uses a bonus action, all the better
Arms of Hadar and Burning Hands - at the beginning of the game, if you manage to group up the enemie with a minor illusion, these two can deal good damage
Feather Falling - more than useful, since it affects your entire team and you can cast it before the battle for free. Without it, you can fall prone when jumping, and when exploring, you can cast it to jump off of high places to save yourself a lot of walking
Expeditious retreat - things went poorly and all your other allies can leave the combat by jumping or already have a dash as a bonus action, but you're stuck with a horde of monsters and need just another 15 feet to escape? There you go
Disguise self - available on a helmet in the camp chest if you have the delux edition (I have it for some reason, even though I don't have the delux edition). If you do too, there's no need to learn it
Protection from Evil and Good - by the time it gets a use, you have other better concentration spells
Color Spray - can blind, but that's useless, since sleep can do the same, but better
Hellish Rebuke - say someone got past your firsr line of defense and got to your caster with a few hp left after triggering opportunity attacks, you can finish them off wotgout wasting movement speed or attacks of your other characters
Shield of Faith - if you're going for 40 AC, it's indispensable
I killed the final boss with my Tiefling racial Hellish Rebuke. S tier for sure.
Inflict wounds placement hurt lmao
it seems Larian patched the method people were using to steal the Idol of Silvanus without a civil war in the grove, tried it in a couple new characters and even at camp after placing it in a bag, the druids freak out...
RIP Ring of Protection in a good run.
You can just steal it once Kagha's been dealt with anyway.
I think Guiding Bolt is one if very few cleric spells you can twin spell if you are multi with Sorceror. It’s the only single target damage spell and it upcasts Does that matter?
I don't quite get how Chromatic Orb does the same thing as Ice Knife "but better". Doesn't Ice Knife do the same thing as Chromatic Orb, but better. Chromatic Orb has some additional utility in getting to choose your damage type, but the thing you're going to use Chromatic Orb for most often, Ice Knife does better.
With hex, I would bump it down a tier to great. As you said, it is very good at low levels, but it doesn't scale with warlock spell level, so it will quickly drop off. I just can't see it alongside other S tier spells that you will want for the entire game. As you said in your outro, the S tier if for spells you want for the entire game and hex doesn't fit that build and in hex drops off after level 4.
The extra beams of Eldritch blast you get at 5th and 10th character levels are how the spell "scales", but I do agree that spending a higher level spell slot on it isn't great.
@@Princess_Salami Otoh if you multiclass Warlock with another caster, then you can just use one of their level 1 slots to cast it instead (once the Warlock slots get to level 2).
I personally disagree with Shield of faith ranking, for paladins specifically.
Paladins are not gonna concentrate on anything in particular, and having a +2 ac on a melee character is always relevant. Plus you can use it for free thanks to the greatsword you gain from the paladin on Tyr in act 1 (when a lvl 1 slot matters most on a paladin), and later a lvl 1 slot for a day long benefit is not that big of a deal. It also allows you to be immune to ice surfaces combined with Minthara boots and sinergises with the ring for a +1d4 psychic damage.
Playing a paladin recently, I personally find it is a great spell to use concentration on, glue together all the benefits listed above, and also gain an advantage in melee combat
the thing I don't untderstand. why would I want to wear light armour on my wizard or sorcerer. The best "armours" for them in the game are robes. Even for Warlock is the best armour in the game a Robe. So I really don't understand that thinking. Why would I wear a useless light armour just to get my AC high, when I can use a robe to make more damage?! I don't get it.
My guy lol how can you praise guiding bolt’s damage and healing words’ action economy, then immediately disrespect hellish rebuke haha
Magic missle is great for your illithid power user.
Entangle only A tier, even though enemies have disadvantage on it, nature's wrath, flesh to stone/hold wearing the sharpened snare cuirass.
I'd say searing smite has uses for karlach, just not for a paladin
Fair!