Alright, I admit I was 100% wrong with Wall of Fire, I hear you all, I should have put it higher! Thanks for the feedback not only on Wall of Fire, but all the other spells, it's really useful and helpful for everyone.
You tier videos are awesome i mostly agree with you opinions. But all and all i think you over value these spells. I thinks ALL spells in 4th level spells are DISAPPOINTMENT to not l 3th lv but to 2nd lv, summon woodlands is not outstanding, for the res i agree where you put them in spektrum but all S or A Tier shooed go don to B tier as the best these spells deserve. This will sound brutal but i think Fantom killer an also B tier spell in my opinion is the BEST of these spells for its a boss hunter, and if you polimorf somesting you can stack it before its turn with you other wizads in the party :D so when the sheep turns back it is hit with 3 Fantom killers the same time :D 4 level 4 spells vs 1 boss that i if Fantom killer can be multi cast-ed on one opponent by different wizards :D May ice storm is outstanding IDK to me 5 spell actually : Fantom killer Polimorf Ice storm, the summons are B tier, everything is C or lass because lass crud control version of polimorf. This is just sad. Lightning bolt, Call lightning, hold person are JUST WAY better than any of these !
Loving the tier lists! A cheap thing that can be done with polymorph (I think): You can polymorph larger enemies into a small sheep, so that characters with enough strength can throw them. Potentially into an abyss, so it could be an insta kill
If you do this search up what loot the character has, and do not do this to characters with netherstrones there’s a bug people like to do this to Orin and they break their game losing the last netherstrone
Also with polymorph, if you turn non lethal damage on, you can kill the sheep and knock out whatever entity you cast it on. i.e. if you cast it on a goblin and hit the sheep, the goblin will be knocked out regardless of hit points
Another fun thing about banishment. If you or your allies don't have enough movement to exit the steel watchers self destruct range, it'll actually explode in the other dimension and not deal any damage
One thing worth mentioning about the Dryad is that she can't jump, fly or teleport, which means she has no way to cross a gap or any obstacle like that. Pretty annoying in practice. It doesn't make the spell any less useful in battle, but it leads me to use it less often than the minor elemental conjuration. /edit: Aparently, other characters can push her across gaps. It's still annoying and doesn't help when you want to jump up somewhere, but there is that.
yeah i modded a jump for her as soon as it appeared on the nexus. It's just a convenience thing. And of course, as soon as you have 2 level 4 slots (or is a land druid) you can have both the minor elementals and the dryad for 4 summons.
@@rm2569 Ironically, I didn't test out the Druid until my third playthrough where I had the 5e spells installed, and I was convinced the Dryad must be a spell added by the mod because surely, Larian would have noticed the isuue and fixed it, right? Surely they would have noticed how annoying it is. Welp.
@@Zettern96 I've been pushing 8 Strength characters over gaps with 22 strength characters in the past, yet I never thought about this. Damn, you're a genius.
I really appreciate how you explain the spells, show them off, and use reason to explain your rankings. Even to the point of saying which classes they would go well with while being bad on others. Some people who make these just say: "spell bad cuz bad, fight me". Spells have different uses and purposes, but knowing which spells to use versus others has really helped me in my playthroughs. There are so many in this game that seem good on paper but only have very niche uses. It helps to know which ones fit my characters and playstyle before I have to spend money and respec a lot with Withers trying to figure it out.
Blight is very good with epic staff you get from the zombie questline, it give a free necromancy spell everytime you kill a target, thats mean a free level 6 Blight, which is enough to one shot a mob
I love the ice melphits, they synergize so well with ghuls, they make enemies prone, and the ghuls then can use 'devour', especially the flying ghuls, basically 2 save aoe crowd control units for an entire day, would put it at A at least (like, id rather have 2 ice melphits for almost a day than 1 guardian of faith for half of a battle)
I would like to say thank you for making these videos. There is plenty of Spell ranking videos out there but most people just sit on the tiermaker website and don't show off the spells or niche uses of it in game. I hope people will find your videos more often.
I might put Ice Storm in A tier, as it has good range, is a nice sized area of effect and could be pretty deadly to wet targets. Shame about the Dex save, but its still A tier to me. Love your spell rankings. When these are done it might be nice to see a comparison piece about status effects and builds that are built around that. They would need to include items, as often it is an item that gives the status effect, so there would be an element of spoilery-ness. Shocked/Electrocuted (lightning charges or spells) is a good example, you can find many electric-themed items early in the game. Obviously, it works better when used on wet targets and better still if cast by a Tempest Domain cleric who selects this casting for dealing max spell damage. This is an early example, but over time, especially in act 2, you can get Chilled/Frostbite items that are helped by thematic items like the Snowburst ring and Mourning Frost staff, Icebite robe and the spell elemental weapon (cold version), plus cold spells of course. There are Heat/Burning themed items that benefit from wielding the Hellfire hand crossbow and the Firestoker hand crossbow and wearing the Obsidian Robe for fire resistance. There are Reverberation items, items dealing Radiating Orb to enemies, even items that emphasise damage to bleeding targets. Which are the best choices for builds - I don't know yet. I am partway through a run with a Tempest cleric with the clothing, ring and staff, but it will take lots of time to try them all with the various pieces of equipment available, along with the right choices of armour, weapons - and complementary spells.
I have 550 hours in BG3 and I have used Dimension door once, but it was good in that instance so C tier seems perfect. Wall of Fire is also insanely good in a few hard fights (when you defend Halsins portal in act 2) and is decent everywhere else so I would put it in A tier.
Great video! Again, I agree with the vast majority of your rankings. I do have a quibble with your placement of Wall of Fire. It is the rare evocation spell that does respectful damage, is AOE, has a control aspect, and (if school of evocation) is party friendly. Honestly, what other spell is an evocation wizard going to use their concentration (other than Haste). I completely agree with you observation that the level 4 spells suffer from the same flaw as the level 2 spells, with very few exceptions (basically the summoning spells & wall of fire), the level 4 spells pale in comparison to the preceding level's spells, so it is more adventitious to upcast a level 3 spell. Great effort. Cheers
Thanks! Wall of fire is great for evocation wizards for sure. I've probably suffered from poor placement of it as well! The level 3 spell list is just so good, it's hard to choose a single concentration to be used.
I think that fire wall is one of the best spells in the game. If you put it on choke points, it pretty much forces enemies to always take the damage. Super great for large groups of enemies.
and it is worth mentioning if you throw at an enemy that is after you in the initiative, they basically take double damage as they take the damage of the cast and at the start of their turn
The minor elementals have use in late game too once you have lvl 5 conjure elements to apply chilled, then it basically have double the damage output. Very respectable for a single lvl4 spell slot. The woodland being is good, but it sucks to use since both creatures don’t have jump, so often they just get left behind it’s very annoying
26:28 Improved Invisibility is actually a huge proponent for the efficacy of scroll magic. It's something you can have your Rogues carry around and use essentially for free if you're RPing a rogue (you steal them), and you're invisible most the entire fight. It's concentration, but since you're invisible and you're the caster, you're much less likely to be the target of an attack. The downside to that is if you're catching an AoE you might lose concentration, as you've likely not specced into Con saves with Resilient or War Caster. This is dampened due to the fact you get Evasion, but not all AoE is a dex save.
So my fav archtype is the summoner. Love Conjure Woodland Being. The Fallen Lover is an excellent tank and the Dryad's Buff saved me so many times! It's one of the Reasons Druids is Top of my Summoner Tier List
Thanks a lot for making these tier lists :D As somebody that didn't play D&D before and has avoided watching BG3 videos until finishing the game, it is pretty fun to see how good or bad my judgement on these spells was when compared to a more informed opinion. Also your presentation is on point. Looking forward to the other spell levels.
I agree with this list. However, I will make a small arguement regarding Dimension Door and Ice Storm. One of the most common scrolls I have found looting is Dimension Door (granted, I understand RNG is often at play...at least I think it is??), and because of that, I use the scrolls often with any companion or MC who doesn't have Misty Step (since MS scrolls I generally have to buy). It is also extremely useful in two particular quest areas (e.g. Iron Throne), and can be useful in exploration. Ice Storm, I often use to start combat if I can get the jump on a group. It does some damage, might put some prone, and when it turns to water (and with proper positioning), it is ready to be turned into an electric field with Lightning spells (or refrozen, as you showed). The other thing I use it for is "clutch" situations. They may not come up often, but it can be helpful. So a very good opener, and might be good when other options just aren't a better choice. Now having said all of that, I still think the ratings for the level 4 spells are nicely done. Thanks for the content! :)
On my two plays so far Wall of Fire has been a life saver. I've had it on either Gale+druid Tav or Gale+Wyll, and it trivializes a lot of huge encounters, like the defend the gate moment in act 2 or the big boss in Astarion's quest, where I fought on a ledge and had enemies running through a Wall of Fire placed along the ledge. Usually it just wipes out the lesser adds so you can focus on whatever makes it through. Like any AOE spell it's dangerous to use with allies though since they'll rush into it just as blindly. Even when not blocking a choke point it's also useful to just wipe out a line of enemies.
Wall of Fire is insanely good, it's been a lifesaver for me many times, too. Easy A tier, possibly low S-tier for me. Because it *can* be a bit conditional depending on the map.
With confusion in my personal experience enemies either save in the first round and process as normal, fail their save and then save against it right away or everyone instantly start bullying my mage. I dont like this spell 😂
Its actually one of the most powerful spells in the game. On my Durge Tactician run it trivializes the game. It needs setup but that's not hard. Just have a high spell save DC (super easy in Act 3). If you position right and have another caster use any mobility debuff enemies will only be able to attack each other due to less movement. If you get the Illithid power at the end of Act 2 and use the Blackhole ability in combination with confusion, you can confuse an entire encounter in one cast. If you have other items you can make enemies wisdom saves worse with a certain item debuff making them almost always fail the save. The first thing I did in Act 3 was fight Raphael and I insta confused him with something like a 65-75% chance and the fight was totally over instantly. tldr - Confusion is an S++ tier spell that ends fights instantly but is harder to profit off of without experimentation and setup.
One neat thing I found out about polymorph is that when you cast it on someone who has temp HP that temp HP carries over into the sheep form. I did that to a boss in Act 2 and was able to safely take out their temp HP while they couldn't do anything.
I made a build that uses Fire Shield (ice) + Armor of Agathys + that frost staff + heavy armor with good flat damage mitigation + that similar effect from the heavy armor feat. It did pretty good in all my tests with it. Just slap a bunch of resists on it and melee attackers will int themselves long before your AoA goes down. I didn't even do it on an Abjuration Wizard either because I hadn't thought to, but if I did it'd probably be impossible for any melee to kill. The staff really helps a ton, every time they melee you they have 2 chances to become vulnerable to frost. Neither spell is concentration, so on follow up turns you can use whatever other frost spells you have available to pile on the damage, and because you're so tanky you can afford to wait for them to get the frost weakness if they don't already have it. The only encounter I tried it on that made it really work for it was fighting against Ninefingers and her posse, and that's mostly because of her throwing knives. Everyone else in the room just offed themselves trying to kill that character, lmao. It's definitely not a build for killing quickly, but it's very effective once you have all the parts together. Thinking about it now, I could've tried intentionally setting off opportunity attacks and doing things to keep my AC low to make it go by faster, a lot of what made it so slow was them missing so often and me just sitting there passing my turn while enjoying the carnage. It also definitely wasn't using optimal items in most of its slots, I just threw whatever I had in my inventory together while I was testing it.
Freedom of Movement and Death Ward for camp casters is S tier for me. Fire Shield with abjuration build is insane. Banishment also helps the abjuration build. The build is so fun I don't see too many people using it: 1 Sorc for Agathys, 1 Cleric for heavy armor, 10 abjuration wizard. Upcast Agathys and there ya go: wizard tank sort of.
Using camp casters boosts all the non concentration buffs up to S tier since it's just free buffs. I made a similar build, but without the cleric level, for the wizard tank type of build. We can also use the heavy armour available late in the game from the house of hope since it doesn't require proficiency.
I used Fireshield from scrolls on Karlach because she was basically a meatshield designed to take damage and heal it with the shattered flail its kinda funny watching people die from damaging the Barb
Wall of Fire is really good on the very end of the Hendricks fight. When he transforms into the aspect of Myrkl, he doesn’t move and he makes a huge target. Dropped Wall of fire on him first turn, then paired it with fireballs on subsequent turns, plus Shadowheart’s upcasted Spirit Guardians- went down in 4 turns.
i like ice storm, partially because it's often been on-theme for my characters, but also because of the utility you can get with the area denial aspect of it. it's made so much better because of the fact that falling prone ends your turn. one scenario where it was so good was in the fight where halsin is trying to save thaniel, i hasted and dropped two ice storms between the portal and the enemies so they all had to run through a massive field of ice and most of them slipped over and missed 2-3 turns.
I will admit that I didn't show enough appreciation to ice storm in this video! It's really one of the best AoE control spells, especially when we compare it to the other level 4 spells.
Just want to say that I really like these videos, and I really appreciate that you put in timestamps for the individual spells. Exactly right. Well done.
Ice Storm led to the ignominious death of Sarevok in my first playthrough as he proceeded to slip over then get curbstomped by my melee characters who couldn't fall prone themselves. In that situation it was S-tier.
I'm loving these tierlist videos!! One tiny note that I am unsure if anyone else has mentioned: Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is also available to Knowledge domain clerics.
Great list, very informative! It might just be me but I’ve always found guardian of faith to be quite underwhelming. 60 total damage and it is stuck in a given spot. It’s good it doesn’t use concentration, but seeing how spirit guardians is almost the default concentration spell for clerics, simply upcasting it had always felt like a better use of the slot for me. And of course for light clerics, there aren’t too many cases where an upcast fireball won’t do much more damage than the guardian will. Even an upcast spiritual weapon seems more useful since it can move around and has no cap on it’s total damage over time, and it also doesn’t use concentration.
Mud mephits are insanely good! Their mud breath can make multiple enemies muddy, which halves movement speed, gives their attacks disadvantage and attacks advantage against them have advantage.
Oh, one other thought regarding your tier lists (and someone else may have already mentioned this); have you thought about ranking the potions/elixirs/oils/grenades? I am a fan of crafting, and I use a lot of these, but it would be nice to see where some of them fall on a tier list. Not to mention, I admit that I haven't tried out all of them - I start to find my favorites, and just grab them without thinking. Would love to see some of these demonstrated or explained, since there are some that just never seemed that good based on their description. (Or I am confused as to what they are really good for. HA!)
imo confusion levels up to S tier in 2 situations; 1. you're playing solo or all your party members are very far away. the AI wont dash under confusion. meaning if it "rolls" to attack a nearby enemy, if all the targets nearby are enemies, they will be more prone to attacking each other. 2. with a 3 round duration, it seems costly for a level 4 slot. as a sorc who can spend 1 sorc point to extend it to 6 rounds, this becomes a lengthy source of crowd control.
I think what’s neat about Banishment and Sphere is that it can save allies from being focused entirely. The use case is very limited but without spoiling too much, for some scripted fights where you need to protect someone it can become very handy.
Your tier list videos are becoming an insta-watch for me! I absolutely adore confusion on my swords bard. For me it’s one of the best uses of concentration in the game because it can absolutely trivialise fights. I cast it in the Sarevok fight and it worked on him and 2 of his 3 minions (one of them has 20 WIS). Between them they only got 2 attacks off in 2 rounds before they died, and my party didn’t take a single point of damage. Once you get the Band of the Mystic Scoundrel in the jungle, it’s even better! As a general rule though, I do think the 4th level spells are a bit of a letdown after 3rd level. There are really on my a few of them that can decide fights. Ice Storm is basically the cold version of fireball, so it makes no sense to me that it requires a 4th level spell slot. (I feel a bit the same about 5th level too.)
You can get a staff in act3 that lets you cast necro spells without a spell slot if you kill an enemy, so upcasting lvl6 Blights for free is pretty decent. Currently(?) it is bugged so it doesnt consume those free cast on kill charges either (unless it was fixed in the latest patch)
Lvl 4 is for upcasting the best lvl 2-3 spells. And utility. Ice elementals are the most useful minor elementals - they're useful even when none will be hitting due to ice knockdowns.
I actually found dimension door very useful in my first playthrough; specifically in three instances (spoilers ahead): 1. Getting through the underwater prison. Shadowheart used DD to get to the Duke, then freed and put sanctuary on him. 2. That obnoxious fight with the Bhaal cultitst where you have to kill the guy before he casts power word kill on everyone. DD helps cover the distance. 3. The final boss. Teleported my mind flayer most of the way across the brain for an easy start to opening the portal.
What's crazy to me is that Fire Shield is outclassed by a Level 1 Spell that Warlock gets, so it's completely pointless for Fiend Warlocks to use it over Armor of Agathys, ESPECIALLY since it can be upcasted At the same level, it does 20 cold damage to anyone that hits you AND gives you 20 temporary health, which is so much better. The only difference is that it doesn't have the option to do fire damage, and that it is the only option for Wizards to use without multiclassing or taking the magic initiate feat. And then Bard can learn Armor of Agathys too through magical secrets, so there's no point in them picking it up as well.
Banishment just seems bad to me. The only saving grace is the cha save. Hold person/hold monster does exactly the same thing. But they can still be targeted and even get automatically critically hit.
Hold person is amazing, one of the best control spells in the game. Like you said, the charisma saving throw helps out with banishment, although I wish it lasted longer.
It's so good that you show how those spells work in real gameplay - with all the hiccups. Thanks! Lvl 4 spells are very uneven in their power level. Woodland being + elemental allows you to be a 1-man-party. Greater invisibility with the right setup outright breaks the game. Confusion... while extremely random is at least fun - a natural pick for any wild mage. And there are spells that wold probably not see play even at lvl 1 spellslot. May be they are better irl, when DM can construct puzzles around them, or when players find out-of-box usage of them. But in BG3 things like Stoneskin just don't have any use.
I feel like dimension door should be rated higher for its out of combat uses rather than in combat, being able to cheese puzzles or the timed sections (a certain underwater area in act 3 comes to mind) can be very useful
Can't argue with most. Nice list. I might quibble a bit with confusion at A tier due to the randomness of the result, but your reasoning is consistent. Dimension door and dominate beast probably go to B tier for those that get them as domain type spells, but you've got them right. Good very situationally, and you wouldn't want to use them as a prepared slot unless you have a unique fight in mind. DD probably has fun uses out of combat, but there are cheaper movement options for exploration. I'd say fire shield is just fine when itemized, but D tier for a spell slot.
I really enjoyed dimension door. I used it in the last fight while hasted to double dimension door across the map. Then used the second person to banish some enemies and give my Tav a chance to activate the item. Did not have to fight any of the mobs, really useful!
Great list as always. I'd make a case for guardian of faith being S tier, I love that thing because it is a cleric spell. It can block movement speed and is great for action economy (even has it's own action economy, because it reacts to enemy attacks) and once you have an enemy in this and also in the area of spiritual weapon you create quite a nice kill zone. On the other hand, I agree with your statement that it shines less later on - but hey, it's still a damaging road block that can use that lv 4 spell slot that usually are the last to be expended, so unless I'm using a tempest or light Cleric (whose upscalled damaging spells are really nice) I usually just cast this in every non trivial fight.
My best memory of guardian of faith is using thunderwave to move my guardian of faith into the range of an enemy guardian of faith in the moonrise towers assault. I lovely spell for sure.
The Azer is awesome. Been using him over the dryad on my druid for one simple reason: Jump. Nothing more wack than blowing your 4th level spell slot and realizing you cant take your minions to the next fight.
I think ice storm could go up to A-rank it is less damage than fire ball but the aoe size is significantly bigger. I frequently found i could hit 2 to 3 time the amount of enemies with. The damage is surprisingly solid and the ice will frequently trip any one who survives. The ice can get in your own way so it does need some caution but I frequently found there just wasn’t a better opening spell than ice storm in almost any engagement.
Hi CVG. Thanks for the video. Just started and you mentioned non full casters. The only comment I would make is scrolls..I have so many scrolls. And certain scrolls used by the martial classes can be very effective and fun.
Dimension Door is S-tier for me. The second half of the game has so many encounters that are about closing some seriously long distances (often with timers too), and one cast of DD can get half your party straight to the other side. Not to mention rescue missions where it's truly invaluable.
the only place it ever really shines is in the iron throne tbh, with the abundance of misty steps whether from classes or items or races, it just doesn't seem worth it to learn DD unless you're a wizard
I think blight should be a tier higher simply because of the staff of cherished necromancy, which makes enemies have disadvantage on saving throws against your Necromancy spells, so that damage get more reliable, as well as giving you life essence until a long rest when you kill an enemy with a spell. What life essence does is makes all of your necromancy spells free. So you can always maxcast blight for free with it, and enemies have disadvantage on the saving throw.
Bit of a niche thing, but heroes feast and aid work on summons including undead. This makes spells with more than one summon (woodland being, minor elemental, some necromancy spells) really strong as they essentially benifit twice giving mephits a bonus 40 hp each if you upcast aid. Between the health buff and the ability to cause prone I've had ice mephits soak up several turns of steel watchers with the optional demon spirit aura gloves to give them resistance. Additionally, a short rest heals half the buffed health so with their base health they can have 61 health, 2 short rests of 30 so effectively 120 health each if you get lucky and if you use the demon spirit aura gloves resistance which makes for a grand total of soaking up a potential 480 damage between the two of them in a given day. In practice it is hard to hit that number but soaking up to 480 damage and causing prone is bonkers for a level 4 slot if you consider aid/heroes feast worth it to cast for your party/other summons.
I still remember when I went into the necrotic laboratory at the end of act 2 and felt pretty overwhelmed by how many enemies were in there, then I just got Wyll to cast wall of fire and watched half of the enemies kill themselves in the first 3 turns. Such a situational spell but so good when it's the right time.
I will say with blight, the shadow cursed shambling mound is resistant to fire, ice and immune to electricity as well. So it's useful against that one specific enemy. However the lesser shadow cursed plants only have necrotic resistance, so it's only useful against the shadow cursed shambling mound, for say a wizard. By far it's biggest use is with the staff of cherished necromancy, which allows you to cast any necromancy spell (including upcasting it) without using a spell slot. So you use that with blight to deal 10d8 damage without consuming any resources, which is pretty good against single targets. Also, personally, since conjured creatures stack they're all S tier to me. More bodies is more action economy and that's great. For dominate beast, my favorite use is against certain displacer beasts since it actually works against them. And in the first time you fight one you actually see it coming before the fight starts so that's nice. Greater invis is real bullshit. Totally different to 5e.
Ice Storm is one of my personal favorite spells. It carried my butt in some of the more enemy dense encounters in act 2 on my first playthrough, offering both decent damage and CC. Later I realized I can combine the ice surface with Hunger of Hadar to prevent enemies from both moving out and seeing anything, while also dealing damage in the process. Against bosses it obviously isn't as good, because there are more powerful single target damage and CC spells.
I was waiting on this video... I thought I was missing some key information to make blight worth taking at all especially when on a warlock with limited slots anyways... I find it so useless as a whole, if there were plants in act 3 maybe but as it is... absolutely not
I'm in love with moon druid recently and for wildshape... conjure minor elemental, woodland being and fire wall are as OP as it gets. summon as army, make a devastating wall and throw enemies into the fire with owlbear claws. for me S tier. other than that I would add an "outplay" idea for polymorph. displacing a sheep is way easier than displacing a dragon... you can turn a big hostile being into a sheep and take it for a journey into the abyss
Huh, that might explain how I once killed sarevok after polymorphing him. I couldn't replicate it after but I'll definitely be trying out that combo from now on.
@@CasualVeteranGamerit is a good combo in dnd in general since it allows to kill even high level enemies pretty easily in case they fail a saving throw
Dimension door is one I'd put a bit higher because it can be quite helpful for situations where you can't jump to a location or just dash to it. So if you have a ranger, barbarian or someone else who needs to get up close but can't get there its really helpful to bring them there. There are a few fights in act 3 which I think its premium such as the Iron throne you can rescue some of the allies a lot easier, its really helpful at saving Ravenguard. I do think its B. I think its got a lot more utility than you're giving it credit for. I'm also not as big on Banishment, Polymorph or confusion personally. I think Hypnotic pattern, Slow and fear are just far superior to those spells. And I do think these spells are directly competing with those 3 and are doing similar things. I do think Resilient sphere has some niche utility over the others such as protecting the concentration of another caster or that caster using an AoE buff around themselves such as with Phalar Aluve, but I haven't really tested that so.. idk. But we play slightly differently so what you find more useful and what I find more useful is a bit different and that's okay. As always, good list. Love t see it. I do think your videos are some of the best and most informative!
Wall of Fire single-handedly won me some of the fights when I was doing cleric solo tactician. The fact that it can deal damage on the cast and on the enemy's turn means its damage potential is doubled. I would definitely put it in A or even S.
Just as someone who uses both conjure minor elemental and ice storm, I'm going to provide some arguments for why the former should be in S tier and the latter in A tier. For the minor elementals, firstly I think the mephits are always the better options over the fire guy, sure they're a little weaker but you get two and, notably, they can fly! Flying is a huge deal for summons. It lets them avoid all the effects of difficult terrain, which they tend to feel more strongly than PCs due to lower saves, it allows them to more easily maneuver in ways that hinder enemy movement and actions, which is the main purpose of summons. For the mephits in particular this is very good because their own skills create small areas of difficult terrain, and if enemies are forced to fight and kill them, they explode for extra damage. They provide a lot of utility that lasts potentially through multiple combats, especially if you're raising their hp with aid or the lvl 6 feast spell, all for one lvl 4 spell slot. And what's great about all conjure summon spells is that, for wizards, you can swap out the spell and prepare a different one after creating your summons and they will stick around, so it doesn't even clog up your prepared spells after use. Easy S tier for me. As for Ice storm, you compared it to fireball, which is fair they're both elemental evocation aoe spells so they seem like they should be comparable, but in actual use it's an aoe cc spell that happens to also do a decent amount of damage on the side. Firstly it's got a large aoe good for catching a lot of enemies. Then it does two types of damage, which is really good for breaking enemy concentration since they have to save against each instance of damage, the damage can also help weaken all enemies at the start of the fight so your allies can more easily pick up kills or it can pick off low hp enemies later in a fight while still having a cc support effect on the more healthy baddies. After the damage the spell then creates a large field of ice that lasts for two turns creating difficult terrain and potentially knocking enemies prone. Because of all this I see it as an equivalent CC spell to confusion or evard's black tentacles, but with shorter duration with the advantage of not taking concentration. Actually I think it's even more of a step up from evard's tentacle kink because it's an evocation spell meaning an evocation wizard can cast it on top of allies without damaging them whereas tentacle kink is conjuration and will always damage everyone inside it and it can take advantage of wetness to make it's damage more respectable, though that's really more of a bonus than the main goal imo. I do still agree that it's not the most crazy spell out there, but I think it should be pushed up to A to match up with the other CC spells
miss on Wall of Fire. that spell is OP. does fair damage alone, has a huge area of effect, is really easy to lock down areas with (forcing enemies to walk through), deals damage on cast AND damage on enemy turn for huge damage for the spell level. that spell has single handedly ended large combat encounters for me.
Wall of Fire is awesome if you position yourself in a choke point so that you can strip a straight line to you with fire, basically cleared me an entire room of high hp undead without lifting finger
Confusion is one of the best spells in the game, S worthy if you invest heavily in CC. Yes its effect is random but in general it will net you huge gains in action economy or straight up make enemies hit each other. Hyponotic pattern is a harder CC but AI is very good at freeing their allies from its effect and you cant aoe them.
Another great video. I fully disagree with the Wall of Fire placement, lol. It's just too good in so many fights. My only problem surrounding its use is how the friendly AI treats it. Dang fools.
One gripe I have with Conjure Woodland Being is that, unfortunately, the dryad cannot jump or teleport. So, the Dryad will get stuck behind if you have to jump somewhere it can't! Otherwise, phenomenal spell!
I skipped to the end to see how it got, and was about to come talking about how absurd it was that I saw Wall of Fire on B, but with your explanation about how it can even be S tier, I have then to agree. It's such a powerful spell that can even be your main source of damage and it will carry almost every encounter from you, tremendous DPS over the cost of a single Lv4 spell with concentration, that can be upscaled and that has absurd synergy with many things. Evocation Wizard? Now you can literally fight INSIDE the fire provided you have a few ways to mitigate the burning surface damage, or you don't mind taking 2 or 3 damage per turn while your enemies take 50. Black Hole? Now you can constantly refresh the damage of everyone, every turn on top of making it hard for them to go far from the fire thanks to the slow. Really, it's just such a powerful spell, with such a wide area of effect, it made any large fight a piece of cake. Overall though, nice to see Otiluke's Sphere and Tentacles receiving a high spot, because I thought they weren't very known to people, the 1st because of not being direct damage while the 2nd because it used to be bugged and super weak. A cast of Tentacles with someone else casting Darkness on whoever gets stuck is all you need to literally nulify entirely almost every boss in this game. No idea why Confusion is so high though, maybe it's just bugged for me, but it never really works properly, let me go see your opinions about it.
I perhaps haven't been placing wall of fire as well as I could have been, however without an evocation wizard it can be used against us, so I'm a tad wary of it. Using blackhole is a great idea, and void bulbs should work well too. Thunderwave as well for that matter...or in fact any ability to move people into it! I will admit that I had used Otiluke's very rarely but while preparing for the video I finally saw how useful it could be. I would reserve confusion for times where there are many enemies around. I recently used it to good effect in the foundry, or at least until I forgot to turn off one of the collar activator things...but that's on me, not confusion!
Confusion has been very strong on my playthrough. maybe I’m just lucky? more often than not it tends to consume the enemies turn or make them attack allies
Let me put my 5 cents, 1) Greater invisibility, i belive it must be in S or at least higher A tier. This spell gives A tonn of variants what to do out if combat, to sneak somewhere, to steal smth, etc. And in combat with twinspell and 2nd level spell aura +10 stealth it becomes really cool buff. 2) Phantasm killer, this spell excelent to combine with aura wfrom psychic stone from illithid colony. As far as enemy becomes vulnerable to psychic damage this spell at level 4 starts dealing 8d10 damage each turn, OMG and furthermore enemies now have disadvantage on saving throw. That is why i believe this is rank A at least spell.
13:40 I'm glad you don't consider this for your lists. It just makes some stuff broken because its free. Warding bond, darkvision, freedom of movement. So many spells that apply for it.
Ice Storm deserves at least an A tier. Yes, the damage is lower than Fireball and it takes concentration but it's also far more versatile. Very few spells (if any?) deal bludgeoning damage, especially in AoE; it creates an ice surface and makes people prone on hit; it can be melted with fire to create water for double the cold/lightning damage or to be frozen again with cold damage....so much utility. It's a must have for me on any caster that can get it.
Hmmmn, I'd personally put Sphere/Banish/Polymorph at B tier. They're solid, but I find that single target effects, especially CC, often aren't good enough in this game.
Alright, I admit I was 100% wrong with Wall of Fire, I hear you all, I should have put it higher!
Thanks for the feedback not only on Wall of Fire, but all the other spells, it's really useful and helpful for everyone.
You tier videos are awesome i mostly agree with you opinions. But all and all i think you over value these spells.
I thinks ALL spells in 4th level spells are DISAPPOINTMENT to not l 3th lv but to 2nd lv, summon woodlands is not outstanding, for the res i agree where you put them in spektrum but all S or A Tier shooed go don to B tier as the best these spells deserve. This will sound brutal but i think Fantom killer an also B tier spell in my opinion is the BEST of these spells for its a boss hunter, and if you polimorf somesting you can stack it before its turn with you other wizads in the party :D so when the sheep turns back it is hit with 3 Fantom killers the same time :D 4 level 4 spells vs 1 boss that i if Fantom killer can be multi cast-ed on one opponent by different wizards :D May ice storm is outstanding IDK to me 5 spell actually : Fantom killer Polimorf Ice storm, the summons are B tier, everything is C or lass because lass crud control version of polimorf. This is just sad.
Lightning bolt, Call lightning, hold person are JUST WAY better than any of these !
Loving the tier lists! A cheap thing that can be done with polymorph (I think): You can polymorph larger enemies into a small sheep, so that characters with enough strength can throw them. Potentially into an abyss, so it could be an insta kill
Nice! I haven't tested it in patch 4, but you can also send them to sleep with the sleep spell even if they're usually immune!
Also, Polymorph isn't a harmful spell, so you can use it against enemies that have sanctuary up, like a certain drider in act 2.
If you do this search up what loot the character has, and do not do this to characters with netherstrones there’s a bug people like to do this to Orin and they break their game losing the last netherstrone
Also with polymorph, if you turn non lethal damage on, you can kill the sheep and knock out whatever entity you cast it on. i.e. if you cast it on a goblin and hit the sheep, the goblin will be knocked out regardless of hit points
Another fun thing about banishment. If you or your allies don't have enough movement to exit the steel watchers self destruct range, it'll actually explode in the other dimension and not deal any damage
One thing worth mentioning about the Dryad is that she can't jump, fly or teleport, which means she has no way to cross a gap or any obstacle like that. Pretty annoying in practice.
It doesn't make the spell any less useful in battle, but it leads me to use it less often than the minor elemental conjuration.
/edit: Aparently, other characters can push her across gaps. It's still annoying and doesn't help when you want to jump up somewhere, but there is that.
yeah i modded a jump for her as soon as it appeared on the nexus. It's just a convenience thing. And of course, as soon as you have 2 level 4 slots (or is a land druid) you can have both the minor elementals and the dryad for 4 summons.
It was really annoying at the end of act 2 battle (really got in the way of making use of my haste spores) thanks for the idea to mod in jump
@@rm2569 Ironically, I didn't test out the Druid until my third playthrough where I had the 5e spells installed, and I was convinced the Dryad must be a spell added by the mod because surely, Larian would have noticed the isuue and fixed it, right? Surely they would have noticed how annoying it is. Welp.
You can push it if it's on the same plane or lower. I did that to get it to the bottom of grymforge. But yes it is annoying.
@@Zettern96 I've been pushing 8 Strength characters over gaps with 22 strength characters in the past, yet I never thought about this. Damn, you're a genius.
Cool thing to note is that Sorcerers can extend the Banishment duration using metamagic sorcery points!
I really appreciate how you explain the spells, show them off, and use reason to explain your rankings. Even to the point of saying which classes they would go well with while being bad on others. Some people who make these just say: "spell bad cuz bad, fight me". Spells have different uses and purposes, but knowing which spells to use versus others has really helped me in my playthroughs. There are so many in this game that seem good on paper but only have very niche uses. It helps to know which ones fit my characters and playstyle before I have to spend money and respec a lot with Withers trying to figure it out.
Dimension Door is great when you have an npc you want to protect. Especially in that certain mission in Act 3
I used a potion of speed and used dimension door on them twice to get them away from..... the spiders
Throw or just carry as an improvised weapon :)
Literally the only time I used it lmao
@@Kairaxwhaaa you can use the little guys as improvised weapon?
@@flakdampler11 No... big guy
Blight is very good with epic staff you get from the zombie questline, it give a free necromancy spell everytime you kill a target, thats mean a free level 6 Blight, which is enough to one shot a mob
Yeah, I know which staff you mean, very useful for a necromancer focused character/build.
So true and so good in that context. Outside of that build however, I don’t think I’ve used blight since other spells are usually a better choice.
It is also twinnable and that's a big plus
I really wish circle of death didn’t hit your allies. It would be amazing to cast it every turn with that staff.
late reply, but you can use hero's feast and you become resistant to it@@flakdampler11
Loving all the tier lists lately, help me with deciding some things but are also just entertaining, thanks for the vids, keep it up :)
Thanks, I am still recording and editing the level 5 and 6 spell lists at the moment.
These spell tier list videos of your are very well presented and clearly researched. Thank you!
Glad you like them, thank you.
I love the ice melphits, they synergize so well with ghuls, they make enemies prone, and the ghuls then can use 'devour', especially the flying ghuls, basically 2 save aoe crowd control units for an entire day, would put it at A at least (like, id rather have 2 ice melphits for almost a day than 1 guardian of faith for half of a battle)
I would like to say thank you for making these videos. There is plenty of Spell ranking videos out there but most people just sit on the tiermaker website and don't show off the spells or niche uses of it in game. I hope people will find your videos more often.
I might put Ice Storm in A tier, as it has good range, is a nice sized area of effect and could be pretty deadly to wet targets. Shame about the Dex save, but its still A tier to me.
Love your spell rankings. When these are done it might be nice to see a comparison piece about status effects and builds that are built around that. They would need to include items, as often it is an item that gives the status effect, so there would be an element of spoilery-ness.
Shocked/Electrocuted (lightning charges or spells) is a good example, you can find many electric-themed items early in the game. Obviously, it works better when used on wet targets and better still if cast by a Tempest Domain cleric who selects this casting for dealing max spell damage.
This is an early example, but over time, especially in act 2, you can get Chilled/Frostbite items that are helped by thematic items like the Snowburst ring and Mourning Frost staff, Icebite robe and the spell elemental weapon (cold version), plus cold spells of course.
There are Heat/Burning themed items that benefit from wielding the Hellfire hand crossbow and the Firestoker hand crossbow and wearing the Obsidian Robe for fire resistance.
There are Reverberation items, items dealing Radiating Orb to enemies, even items that emphasise damage to bleeding targets.
Which are the best choices for builds - I don't know yet. I am partway through a run with a Tempest cleric with the clothing, ring and staff, but it will take lots of time to try them all with the various pieces of equipment available, along with the right choices of armour, weapons - and complementary spells.
I have 550 hours in BG3 and I have used Dimension door once, but it was good in that instance so C tier seems perfect. Wall of Fire is also insanely good in a few hard fights (when you defend Halsins portal in act 2) and is decent everywhere else so I would put it in A tier.
Yes I used Wall of fire in that Halsin portal fight too, and it was so good. All melee foes came and suicided in fire :D
Great video! Again, I agree with the vast majority of your rankings. I do have a quibble with your placement of Wall of Fire. It is the rare evocation spell that does respectful damage, is AOE, has a control aspect, and (if school of evocation) is party friendly. Honestly, what other spell is an evocation wizard going to use their concentration (other than Haste).
I completely agree with you observation that the level 4 spells suffer from the same flaw as the level 2 spells, with very few exceptions (basically the summoning spells & wall of fire), the level 4 spells pale in comparison to the preceding level's spells, so it is more adventitious to upcast a level 3 spell.
Great effort. Cheers
Thanks!
Wall of fire is great for evocation wizards for sure. I've probably suffered from poor placement of it as well!
The level 3 spell list is just so good, it's hard to choose a single concentration to be used.
In shadow cursed lands when defending the portal it is mvp one wall of fire killed over 10 enemies once
I think that fire wall is one of the best spells in the game. If you put it on choke points, it pretty much forces enemies to always take the damage. Super great for large groups of enemies.
and it is worth mentioning if you throw at an enemy that is after you in the initiative, they basically take double damage as they take the damage of the cast and at the start of their turn
The minor elementals have use in late game too once you have lvl 5 conjure elements to apply chilled, then it basically have double the damage output. Very respectable for a single lvl4 spell slot.
The woodland being is good, but it sucks to use since both creatures don’t have jump, so often they just get left behind it’s very annoying
This has been patched, thankfully. They can now jump.
26:28 Improved Invisibility is actually a huge proponent for the efficacy of scroll magic. It's something you can have your Rogues carry around and use essentially for free if you're RPing a rogue (you steal them), and you're invisible most the entire fight. It's concentration, but since you're invisible and you're the caster, you're much less likely to be the target of an attack. The downside to that is if you're catching an AoE you might lose concentration, as you've likely not specced into Con saves with Resilient or War Caster. This is dampened due to the fact you get Evasion, but not all AoE is a dex save.
So my fav archtype is the summoner. Love Conjure Woodland Being. The Fallen Lover is an excellent tank and the Dryad's Buff saved me so many times! It's one of the Reasons Druids is Top of my Summoner Tier List
I was so impressed by conjure woodland being when I first cast it! It's such a cool and unique summon.
Thanks a lot for making these tier lists :D As somebody that didn't play D&D before and has avoided watching BG3 videos until finishing the game, it is pretty fun to see how good or bad my judgement on these spells was when compared to a more informed opinion.
Also your presentation is on point.
Looking forward to the other spell levels.
I agree with this list. However, I will make a small arguement regarding Dimension Door and Ice Storm.
One of the most common scrolls I have found looting is Dimension Door (granted, I understand RNG is often at play...at least I think it is??), and because of that, I use the scrolls often with any companion or MC who doesn't have Misty Step (since MS scrolls I generally have to buy). It is also extremely useful in two particular quest areas (e.g. Iron Throne), and can be useful in exploration.
Ice Storm, I often use to start combat if I can get the jump on a group. It does some damage, might put some prone, and when it turns to water (and with proper positioning), it is ready to be turned into an electric field with Lightning spells (or refrozen, as you showed). The other thing I use it for is "clutch" situations. They may not come up often, but it can be helpful. So a very good opener, and might be good when other options just aren't a better choice.
Now having said all of that, I still think the ratings for the level 4 spells are nicely done. Thanks for the content! :)
On my two plays so far Wall of Fire has been a life saver. I've had it on either Gale+druid Tav or Gale+Wyll, and it trivializes a lot of huge encounters, like the defend the gate moment in act 2 or the big boss in Astarion's quest, where I fought on a ledge and had enemies running through a Wall of Fire placed along the ledge. Usually it just wipes out the lesser adds so you can focus on whatever makes it through. Like any AOE spell it's dangerous to use with allies though since they'll rush into it just as blindly. Even when not blocking a choke point it's also useful to just wipe out a line of enemies.
Wall of Fire is insanely good, it's been a lifesaver for me many times, too.
Easy A tier, possibly low S-tier for me. Because it *can* be a bit conditional depending on the map.
You're really cranking these tier lists out, thanks! I always look forward to the next one
With confusion in my personal experience enemies either save in the first round and process as normal, fail their save and then save against it right away or everyone instantly start bullying my mage.
I dont like this spell 😂
You're not the only one by the looks of it! Perhaps I was too kind to it.
Its actually one of the most powerful spells in the game. On my Durge Tactician run it trivializes the game. It needs setup but that's not hard. Just have a high spell save DC (super easy in Act 3). If you position right and have another caster use any mobility debuff enemies will only be able to attack each other due to less movement. If you get the Illithid power at the end of Act 2 and use the Blackhole ability in combination with confusion, you can confuse an entire encounter in one cast. If you have other items you can make enemies wisdom saves worse with a certain item debuff making them almost always fail the save. The first thing I did in Act 3 was fight Raphael and I insta confused him with something like a 65-75% chance and the fight was totally over instantly.
tldr - Confusion is an S++ tier spell that ends fights instantly but is harder to profit off of without experimentation and setup.
Thank you very much for this series, it's sooooooo fucking helpful. And mad consistent.
One neat thing I found out about polymorph is that when you cast it on someone who has temp HP that temp HP carries over into the sheep form. I did that to a boss in Act 2 and was able to safely take out their temp HP while they couldn't do anything.
I made a build that uses Fire Shield (ice) + Armor of Agathys + that frost staff + heavy armor with good flat damage mitigation + that similar effect from the heavy armor feat. It did pretty good in all my tests with it. Just slap a bunch of resists on it and melee attackers will int themselves long before your AoA goes down. I didn't even do it on an Abjuration Wizard either because I hadn't thought to, but if I did it'd probably be impossible for any melee to kill.
The staff really helps a ton, every time they melee you they have 2 chances to become vulnerable to frost. Neither spell is concentration, so on follow up turns you can use whatever other frost spells you have available to pile on the damage, and because you're so tanky you can afford to wait for them to get the frost weakness if they don't already have it. The only encounter I tried it on that made it really work for it was fighting against Ninefingers and her posse, and that's mostly because of her throwing knives. Everyone else in the room just offed themselves trying to kill that character, lmao.
It's definitely not a build for killing quickly, but it's very effective once you have all the parts together. Thinking about it now, I could've tried intentionally setting off opportunity attacks and doing things to keep my AC low to make it go by faster, a lot of what made it so slow was them missing so often and me just sitting there passing my turn while enjoying the carnage. It also definitely wasn't using optimal items in most of its slots, I just threw whatever I had in my inventory together while I was testing it.
Freedom of Movement and Death Ward for camp casters is S tier for me. Fire Shield with abjuration build is insane. Banishment also helps the abjuration build. The build is so fun I don't see too many people using it: 1 Sorc for Agathys, 1 Cleric for heavy armor, 10 abjuration wizard. Upcast Agathys and there ya go: wizard tank sort of.
Using camp casters boosts all the non concentration buffs up to S tier since it's just free buffs.
I made a similar build, but without the cleric level, for the wizard tank type of build. We can also use the heavy armour available late in the game from the house of hope since it doesn't require proficiency.
I used Fireshield from scrolls on Karlach because she was basically a meatshield designed to take damage and heal it with the shattered flail its kinda funny watching people die from damaging the Barb
For surface based movement control I'd rather use thorns or sleet storm instead of a level 4 spell slot for the tentacles
Wall of Fire is really good on the very end of the Hendricks fight. When he transforms into the aspect of Myrkl, he doesn’t move and he makes a huge target. Dropped Wall of fire on him first turn, then paired it with fireballs on subsequent turns, plus Shadowheart’s upcasted Spirit Guardians- went down in 4 turns.
Heh yeah, several Damage per Turn spells do the trick there very well. I used an upcasted Moonbeam on Halsin, very nice too
i like ice storm, partially because it's often been on-theme for my characters, but also because of the utility you can get with the area denial aspect of it. it's made so much better because of the fact that falling prone ends your turn. one scenario where it was so good was in the fight where halsin is trying to save thaniel, i hasted and dropped two ice storms between the portal and the enemies so they all had to run through a massive field of ice and most of them slipped over and missed 2-3 turns.
I will admit that I didn't show enough appreciation to ice storm in this video! It's really one of the best AoE control spells, especially when we compare it to the other level 4 spells.
Just want to say that I really like these videos, and I really appreciate that you put in timestamps for the individual spells. Exactly right. Well done.
Dimension door doesn’t work because you can’t be moved against your will. Never used the item but maybe you can toggle it on and off in passives?
Big off on the conjure woodland creature though because both the dread and wood woad cannot jump!
Ice Storm led to the ignominious death of Sarevok in my first playthrough as he proceeded to slip over then get curbstomped by my melee characters who couldn't fall prone themselves. In that situation it was S-tier.
I'm loving these tierlist videos!! One tiny note that I am unsure if anyone else has mentioned: Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is also available to Knowledge domain clerics.
Great list, very informative!
It might just be me but I’ve always found guardian of faith to be quite underwhelming. 60 total damage and it is stuck in a given spot. It’s good it doesn’t use concentration, but seeing how spirit guardians is almost the default concentration spell for clerics, simply upcasting it had always felt like a better use of the slot for me. And of course for light clerics, there aren’t too many cases where an upcast fireball won’t do much more damage than the guardian will. Even an upcast spiritual weapon seems more useful since it can move around and has no cap on it’s total damage over time, and it also doesn’t use concentration.
Mud mephits are insanely good! Their mud breath can make multiple enemies muddy, which halves movement speed, gives their attacks disadvantage and attacks advantage against them have advantage.
For banishment you didn’t mention that you can banish your teammates so they’re invulnerable for a turn
While that's true, they also cannot do anything else in that turn. However, I should have mentioned it.
So basically, a far worse version of sanctuary except against like… ansur/raphael?
Oh, one other thought regarding your tier lists (and someone else may have already mentioned this); have you thought about ranking the potions/elixirs/oils/grenades? I am a fan of crafting, and I use a lot of these, but it would be nice to see where some of them fall on a tier list. Not to mention, I admit that I haven't tried out all of them - I start to find my favorites, and just grab them without thinking. Would love to see some of these demonstrated or explained, since there are some that just never seemed that good based on their description. (Or I am confused as to what they are really good for. HA!)
imo confusion levels up to S tier in 2 situations;
1. you're playing solo or all your party members are very far away. the AI wont dash under confusion. meaning if it "rolls" to attack a nearby enemy, if all the targets nearby are enemies, they will be more prone to attacking each other.
2. with a 3 round duration, it seems costly for a level 4 slot. as a sorc who can spend 1 sorc point to extend it to 6 rounds, this becomes a lengthy source of crowd control.
I think what’s neat about Banishment and Sphere is that it can save allies from being focused entirely. The use case is very limited but without spoiling too much, for some scripted fights where you need to protect someone it can become very handy.
Your tier list videos are becoming an insta-watch for me!
I absolutely adore confusion on my swords bard. For me it’s one of the best uses of concentration in the game because it can absolutely trivialise fights. I cast it in the Sarevok fight and it worked on him and 2 of his 3 minions (one of them has 20 WIS). Between them they only got 2 attacks off in 2 rounds before they died, and my party didn’t take a single point of damage.
Once you get the Band of the Mystic Scoundrel in the jungle, it’s even better!
As a general rule though, I do think the 4th level spells are a bit of a letdown after 3rd level. There are really on my a few of them that can decide fights. Ice Storm is basically the cold version of fireball, so it makes no sense to me that it requires a 4th level spell slot. (I feel a bit the same about 5th level too.)
Really great commentary , I agree with everything, and thx for sharing some hidden things I didn’t realise :)
You can get a staff in act3 that lets you cast necro spells without a spell slot if you kill an enemy, so upcasting lvl6 Blights for free is pretty decent. Currently(?) it is bugged so it doesnt consume those free cast on kill charges either (unless it was fixed in the latest patch)
Lvl 4 is for upcasting the best lvl 2-3 spells. And utility.
Ice elementals are the most useful minor elementals - they're useful even when none will be hitting due to ice knockdowns.
I actually found dimension door very useful in my first playthrough; specifically in three instances (spoilers ahead):
1. Getting through the underwater prison. Shadowheart used DD to get to the Duke, then freed and put sanctuary on him.
2. That obnoxious fight with the Bhaal cultitst where you have to kill the guy before he casts power word kill on everyone. DD helps cover the distance.
3. The final boss. Teleported my mind flayer most of the way across the brain for an easy start to opening the portal.
What's crazy to me is that Fire Shield is outclassed by a Level 1 Spell that Warlock gets, so it's completely pointless for Fiend Warlocks to use it over Armor of Agathys, ESPECIALLY since it can be upcasted
At the same level, it does 20 cold damage to anyone that hits you AND gives you 20 temporary health, which is so much better. The only difference is that it doesn't have the option to do fire damage, and that it is the only option for Wizards to use without multiclassing or taking the magic initiate feat. And then Bard can learn Armor of Agathys too through magical secrets, so there's no point in them picking it up as well.
Banishment just seems bad to me. The only saving grace is the cha save.
Hold person/hold monster does exactly the same thing. But they can still be targeted and even get automatically critically hit.
Hold person is amazing, one of the best control spells in the game. Like you said, the charisma saving throw helps out with banishment, although I wish it lasted longer.
It's so good that you show how those spells work in real gameplay - with all the hiccups. Thanks!
Lvl 4 spells are very uneven in their power level. Woodland being + elemental allows you to be a 1-man-party. Greater invisibility with the right setup outright breaks the game. Confusion... while extremely random is at least fun - a natural pick for any wild mage. And there are spells that wold probably not see play even at lvl 1 spellslot. May be they are better irl, when DM can construct puzzles around them, or when players find out-of-box usage of them. But in BG3 things like Stoneskin just don't have any use.
Love these so I can skip to the end, see some spell I've never considered casting in A or S tier, then go back and see why I need to try it.
I'm happy to be able to help people consider new/different spells.
Can we get a moment to appreciate the hard work of the flaming fist for their nobel sacrifice for all these videos?
Level 4 is definitely the spell tier I have the most difficulty in deciding which to take
I find it one of the more disappointing level of spells. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for flashy spells.
@@CasualVeteranGamer
Definitely, I feel the same. Usually I just grab another level 3 or level 2 spell.
Level 4 slots are for upcasting smite, sincerely Paladin/Bards
I feel like dimension door should be rated higher for its out of combat uses rather than in combat, being able to cheese puzzles or the timed sections (a certain underwater area in act 3 comes to mind) can be very useful
Can't argue with most. Nice list.
I might quibble a bit with confusion at A tier due to the randomness of the result, but your reasoning is consistent.
Dimension door and dominate beast probably go to B tier for those that get them as domain type spells, but you've got them right. Good very situationally, and you wouldn't want to use them as a prepared slot unless you have a unique fight in mind. DD probably has fun uses out of combat, but there are cheaper movement options for exploration.
I'd say fire shield is just fine when itemized, but D tier for a spell slot.
I really enjoyed dimension door. I used it in the last fight while hasted to double dimension door across the map. Then used the second person to banish some enemies and give my Tav a chance to activate the item. Did not have to fight any of the mobs, really useful!
Great list as always.
I'd make a case for guardian of faith being S tier, I love that thing because it is a cleric spell. It can block movement speed and is great for action economy (even has it's own action economy, because it reacts to enemy attacks) and once you have an enemy in this and also in the area of spiritual weapon you create quite a nice kill zone. On the other hand, I agree with your statement that it shines less later on - but hey, it's still a damaging road block that can use that lv 4 spell slot that usually are the last to be expended, so unless I'm using a tempest or light Cleric (whose upscalled damaging spells are really nice) I usually just cast this in every non trivial fight.
My best memory of guardian of faith is using thunderwave to move my guardian of faith into the range of an enemy guardian of faith in the moonrise towers assault. I lovely spell for sure.
@@CasualVeteranGamer that's really interesting, it never crossed my mind to push mine around, I just used to throw enemies in range!
@@CasualVeteranGamerThunderwave has such good utility all game long. wish Burning Hands had a little more to it
Wall of fire is ideal in situations, where enemies "keep spawning". Like the Thaniel fight near Last Light Inn.
The Azer is awesome. Been using him over the dryad on my druid for one simple reason: Jump.
Nothing more wack than blowing your 4th level spell slot and realizing you cant take your minions to the next fight.
I think ice storm could go up to A-rank it is less damage than fire ball but the aoe size is significantly bigger. I frequently found i could hit 2 to 3 time the amount of enemies with. The damage is surprisingly solid and the ice will frequently trip any one who survives. The ice can get in your own way so it does need some caution but I frequently found there just wasn’t a better opening spell than ice storm in almost any engagement.
Hi CVG. Thanks for the video. Just started and you mentioned non full casters. The only comment I would make is scrolls..I have so many scrolls. And certain scrolls used by the martial classes can be very effective and fun.
Dimension Door is S-tier for me. The second half of the game has so many encounters that are about closing some seriously long distances (often with timers too), and one cast of DD can get half your party straight to the other side. Not to mention rescue missions where it's truly invaluable.
Fair enough, it really does shine in some places for sure.
the only place it ever really shines is in the iron throne tbh, with the abundance of misty steps whether from classes or items or races, it just doesn't seem worth it to learn DD unless you're a wizard
I fully embraced the tadpole on my game and that made moving so much easier I barely even had to misty step
You're doing god's work here. Love the info and opinions
I think blight should be a tier higher simply because of the staff of cherished necromancy, which makes enemies have disadvantage on saving throws against your Necromancy spells, so that damage get more reliable, as well as giving you life essence until a long rest when you kill an enemy with a spell. What life essence does is makes all of your necromancy spells free. So you can always maxcast blight for free with it, and enemies have disadvantage on the saving throw.
Bit of a niche thing, but heroes feast and aid work on summons including undead. This makes spells with more than one summon (woodland being, minor elemental, some necromancy spells) really strong as they essentially benifit twice giving mephits a bonus 40 hp each if you upcast aid. Between the health buff and the ability to cause prone I've had ice mephits soak up several turns of steel watchers with the optional demon spirit aura gloves to give them resistance. Additionally, a short rest heals half the buffed health so with their base health they can have 61 health, 2 short rests of 30 so effectively 120 health each if you get lucky and if you use the demon spirit aura gloves resistance which makes for a grand total of soaking up a potential 480 damage between the two of them in a given day. In practice it is hard to hit that number but soaking up to 480 damage and causing prone is bonkers for a level 4 slot if you consider aid/heroes feast worth it to cast for your party/other summons.
Best way to start the Saturday morning 😤
Where is that jungle area?
I still remember when I went into the necrotic laboratory at the end of act 2 and felt pretty overwhelmed by how many enemies were in there, then I just got Wyll to cast wall of fire and watched half of the enemies kill themselves in the first 3 turns. Such a situational spell but so good when it's the right time.
I will say with blight, the shadow cursed shambling mound is resistant to fire, ice and immune to electricity as well. So it's useful against that one specific enemy. However the lesser shadow cursed plants only have necrotic resistance, so it's only useful against the shadow cursed shambling mound, for say a wizard.
By far it's biggest use is with the staff of cherished necromancy, which allows you to cast any necromancy spell (including upcasting it) without using a spell slot. So you use that with blight to deal 10d8 damage without consuming any resources, which is pretty good against single targets.
Also, personally, since conjured creatures stack they're all S tier to me. More bodies is more action economy and that's great.
For dominate beast, my favorite use is against certain displacer beasts since it actually works against them. And in the first time you fight one you actually see it coming before the fight starts so that's nice.
Greater invis is real bullshit. Totally different to 5e.
Ice Storm is one of my personal favorite spells. It carried my butt in some of the more enemy dense encounters in act 2 on my first playthrough, offering both decent damage and CC. Later I realized I can combine the ice surface with Hunger of Hadar to prevent enemies from both moving out and seeing anything, while also dealing damage in the process. Against bosses it obviously isn't as good, because there are more powerful single target damage and CC spells.
I was waiting on this video... I thought I was missing some key information to make blight worth taking at all especially when on a warlock with limited slots anyways... I find it so useless as a whole, if there were plants in act 3 maybe but as it is... absolutely not
I haven't found a good use for blight still, it's just a waste of a level 4 spell slot.
i have read from larian post on their social media that the guardian you get from guardian of faith, depends on your deity! :D i find that pretty cool
I'm in love with moon druid recently and for wildshape... conjure minor elemental, woodland being and fire wall are as OP as it gets. summon as army, make a devastating wall and throw enemies into the fire with owlbear claws. for me S tier.
other than that I would add an "outplay" idea for polymorph. displacing a sheep is way easier than displacing a dragon...
you can turn a big hostile being into a sheep and take it for a journey into the abyss
I believe polymorph in combination with incinerate does can prevent an enemy from turning back into normal form
Huh, that might explain how I once killed sarevok after polymorphing him. I couldn't replicate it after but I'll definitely be trying out that combo from now on.
@@CasualVeteranGamerit is a good combo in dnd in general since it allows to kill even high level enemies pretty easily in case they fail a saving throw
Dimension door is one I'd put a bit higher because it can be quite helpful for situations where you can't jump to a location or just dash to it. So if you have a ranger, barbarian or someone else who needs to get up close but can't get there its really helpful to bring them there. There are a few fights in act 3 which I think its premium such as the Iron throne you can rescue some of the allies a lot easier, its really helpful at saving Ravenguard. I do think its B. I think its got a lot more utility than you're giving it credit for.
I'm also not as big on Banishment, Polymorph or confusion personally. I think Hypnotic pattern, Slow and fear are just far superior to those spells. And I do think these spells are directly competing with those 3 and are doing similar things. I do think Resilient sphere has some niche utility over the others such as protecting the concentration of another caster or that caster using an AoE buff around themselves such as with Phalar Aluve, but I haven't really tested that so.. idk.
But we play slightly differently so what you find more useful and what I find more useful is a bit different and that's okay. As always, good list. Love t see it. I do think your videos are some of the best and most informative!
There are a ton of encounters that get absolutely hard countered by Wall of Fire, or similar spells.
Wall of Fire single-handedly won me some of the fights when I was doing cleric solo tactician. The fact that it can deal damage on the cast and on the enemy's turn means its damage potential is doubled. I would definitely put it in A or even S.
Just as someone who uses both conjure minor elemental and ice storm, I'm going to provide some arguments for why the former should be in S tier and the latter in A tier.
For the minor elementals, firstly I think the mephits are always the better options over the fire guy, sure they're a little weaker but you get two and, notably, they can fly! Flying is a huge deal for summons. It lets them avoid all the effects of difficult terrain, which they tend to feel more strongly than PCs due to lower saves, it allows them to more easily maneuver in ways that hinder enemy movement and actions, which is the main purpose of summons. For the mephits in particular this is very good because their own skills create small areas of difficult terrain, and if enemies are forced to fight and kill them, they explode for extra damage. They provide a lot of utility that lasts potentially through multiple combats, especially if you're raising their hp with aid or the lvl 6 feast spell, all for one lvl 4 spell slot. And what's great about all conjure summon spells is that, for wizards, you can swap out the spell and prepare a different one after creating your summons and they will stick around, so it doesn't even clog up your prepared spells after use. Easy S tier for me.
As for Ice storm, you compared it to fireball, which is fair they're both elemental evocation aoe spells so they seem like they should be comparable, but in actual use it's an aoe cc spell that happens to also do a decent amount of damage on the side. Firstly it's got a large aoe good for catching a lot of enemies. Then it does two types of damage, which is really good for breaking enemy concentration since they have to save against each instance of damage, the damage can also help weaken all enemies at the start of the fight so your allies can more easily pick up kills or it can pick off low hp enemies later in a fight while still having a cc support effect on the more healthy baddies. After the damage the spell then creates a large field of ice that lasts for two turns creating difficult terrain and potentially knocking enemies prone. Because of all this I see it as an equivalent CC spell to confusion or evard's black tentacles, but with shorter duration with the advantage of not taking concentration. Actually I think it's even more of a step up from evard's tentacle kink because it's an evocation spell meaning an evocation wizard can cast it on top of allies without damaging them whereas tentacle kink is conjuration and will always damage everyone inside it and it can take advantage of wetness to make it's damage more respectable, though that's really more of a bonus than the main goal imo. I do still agree that it's not the most crazy spell out there, but I think it should be pushed up to A to match up with the other CC spells
I find myself using dimensional door a lot. It’s really useful for getting 2 companions into a good spot during a fight.
miss on Wall of Fire. that spell is OP. does fair damage alone, has a huge area of effect, is really easy to lock down areas with (forcing enemies to walk through), deals damage on cast AND damage on enemy turn for huge damage for the spell level.
that spell has single handedly ended large combat encounters for me.
Your greater invis take is bizzare. It was the same as "if a wizard uses a great sword, probably not gonna hit, but a fighter could abuse it."
Polymorph lets you shove an enemy into a pit and kill them instantly.
30:00 I used this in the mind flayer colony for large undead room. Not the best damage but watching everyone slip is great
Wall of Fire is awesome if you position yourself in a choke point so that you can strip a straight line to you with fire, basically cleared me an entire room of high hp undead without lifting finger
Resilience sphere is great to cast on your healer if they’re squishy or dying because they can still heal everyone.
Thanks man, looking forward to lvl 5 spells.
Confusion is one of the best spells in the game, S worthy if you invest heavily in CC. Yes its effect is random but in general it will net you huge gains in action economy or straight up make enemies hit each other. Hyponotic pattern is a harder CC but AI is very good at freeing their allies from its effect and you cant aoe them.
Another great video. I fully disagree with the Wall of Fire placement, lol. It's just too good in so many fights. My only problem surrounding its use is how the friendly AI treats it. Dang fools.
One gripe I have with Conjure Woodland Being is that, unfortunately, the dryad cannot jump or teleport. So, the Dryad will get stuck behind if you have to jump somewhere it can't! Otherwise, phenomenal spell!
I skipped to the end to see how it got, and was about to come talking about how absurd it was that I saw Wall of Fire on B, but with your explanation about how it can even be S tier, I have then to agree. It's such a powerful spell that can even be your main source of damage and it will carry almost every encounter from you, tremendous DPS over the cost of a single Lv4 spell with concentration, that can be upscaled and that has absurd synergy with many things. Evocation Wizard? Now you can literally fight INSIDE the fire provided you have a few ways to mitigate the burning surface damage, or you don't mind taking 2 or 3 damage per turn while your enemies take 50. Black Hole? Now you can constantly refresh the damage of everyone, every turn on top of making it hard for them to go far from the fire thanks to the slow. Really, it's just such a powerful spell, with such a wide area of effect, it made any large fight a piece of cake.
Overall though, nice to see Otiluke's Sphere and Tentacles receiving a high spot, because I thought they weren't very known to people, the 1st because of not being direct damage while the 2nd because it used to be bugged and super weak. A cast of Tentacles with someone else casting Darkness on whoever gets stuck is all you need to literally nulify entirely almost every boss in this game. No idea why Confusion is so high though, maybe it's just bugged for me, but it never really works properly, let me go see your opinions about it.
I perhaps haven't been placing wall of fire as well as I could have been, however without an evocation wizard it can be used against us, so I'm a tad wary of it. Using blackhole is a great idea, and void bulbs should work well too. Thunderwave as well for that matter...or in fact any ability to move people into it!
I will admit that I had used Otiluke's very rarely but while preparing for the video I finally saw how useful it could be.
I would reserve confusion for times where there are many enemies around. I recently used it to good effect in the foundry, or at least until I forgot to turn off one of the collar activator things...but that's on me, not confusion!
Confusion has been very strong on my playthrough. maybe I’m just lucky? more often than not it tends to consume the enemies turn or make them attack allies
Confused is one of the most fun spells in D&D; and fun is what it's all about.
Let me put my 5 cents,
1) Greater invisibility, i belive it must be in S or at least higher A tier. This spell gives A tonn of variants what to do out if combat, to sneak somewhere, to steal smth, etc. And in combat with twinspell and 2nd level spell aura +10 stealth it becomes really cool buff.
2) Phantasm killer, this spell excelent to combine with aura wfrom psychic stone from illithid colony. As far as enemy becomes vulnerable to psychic damage this spell at level 4 starts dealing 8d10 damage each turn, OMG and furthermore enemies now have disadvantage on saving throw. That is why i believe this is rank A at least spell.
13:40 I'm glad you don't consider this for your lists. It just makes some stuff broken because its free. Warding bond, darkvision, freedom of movement. So many spells that apply for it.
Ice Storm deserves at least an A tier. Yes, the damage is lower than Fireball and it takes concentration but it's also far more versatile. Very few spells (if any?) deal bludgeoning damage, especially in AoE; it creates an ice surface and makes people prone on hit; it can be melted with fire to create water for double the cold/lightning damage or to be frozen again with cold damage....so much utility. It's a must have for me on any caster that can get it.
Dimension door is definitely one of those spells you’ll be happy to have a scroll for when you need it, but not to actually take it
good thing lorroakan's shop sells 13 scrolls of this per long rest, the other spells only have 1-2 scrolls each
Awesome videos lately
Freedom of Movement and Death Ward is great when you have hirelings cast it on you. Free buffs everyday.
A word of warning for wall of fire. You can't cast it "through" doorways. The open/close cursor breaks the line.
Fire is awesome in buildings put all your dudes a room and set the hallway on fire nothing can get to you without taking damage
Hmmmn, I'd personally put Sphere/Banish/Polymorph at B tier. They're solid, but I find that single target effects, especially CC, often aren't good enough in this game.