If you really just want to go first you can just suprise them which is better. The only thing about is i dont think it works on most bosses. Well i could be wrong because i cant help not talking to bosses before their evil plan.
Overall strategy is more important and alert is just a small piece to that puzzle. Alert is not a mandatory pick on most chara, and infact going last for a tank paladin might actually be beneficial to the entire team. (Aura coverage, protection etc). While alpha strike is a simple and straightforward tactic, others have more sophisticated ways of engaging combat. Hence solid A tier.
If you take away the permanent bonus to Strength or Constitution and the damage bonus. Tavern Brawler would still be S Tier for its attack bonus alone.
It's even funnier with elixir of cloud giant strength. +8 to attack and damage rolls. I made astarion into a monk and I didn't even need to put a single point into strength if I didn't want to, because the game provides enough elixirs of hill/cloud giant strength to last pretty much all your long rest cycles, because he became so overpowered that I hardly had TO long rest. As monk with 3 points into rogue for thief I was getting ludicrous amounts of attacks per turn. A single flurry of blows, oh look that boss on tactician lost half its health!
@@Hirotoro4692i hope larian never rebalances this because being allowed to just *_dump_* on a boss by only being one feat deep into a class feels amazing and truly makes you feel like a powerful adventurer
Some things I want to note. I definitely feel like Alert should be S tier, with how consistent it makes your party especially with not getting surprised on some of your slower characters I.E. spellcasters for their concentration spells can definitely turn the entire battle heavily in your favor. From twin casting haste to Hunger of Hadar a whole group before they get anywhere near you. But not only that, it also lets you more consistently get shared initiative in parties. Being able to almost always use all four of your characters right after one another before the enemy can even sneeze is so powerful in multiple scenarios that it can't be left out of consideration. Second thing, Crossbow Expert should be noted to very well enable quite possibly the strongest solo run build in the game right now just due to the Bhaalist Armor and a specific sword Bard build. Letting you just roll every encounter in the game if played right. I know super niche, but it is notable (It is up on the BG3_Builds subreddit and was uploaded 2 days ago)
I would be open to raising Alert, at least for non-dexterity characters. I gave it to three of my party in my first honour mode run, and although it's hard to quantify the difference it made, by the end I had almost my whole party going first in combat and generally denying at least a few enemies their turns. That's a fair point about the crossbow expert build. I generally record my video 1-3 weeks ahead of release and as such I do miss out some of the most recent points. As I said during the video, just about every feat does have a niche use, but in all honesty it would make it much more difficult if I was to take every use of a feat into account.
@@barcster2003 Exactly, it’s crucial to go first with an Assassin Rogue, and since the subclass doesn’t get any features that boost it’s initiative like Dread Ambusher does, Alert pretty much becomes a necessary feat for Assassins.
Savage attacker is really good if you have a characters that roll several dices, i.e paladin smites including elemental damage from weapon. The deva mace gets really strong with this feat The downside is that this feat only works with melee weapons, so range and unarmed are unaffected and it’s a bit unfortunate
A little "cheat" you can do with Alert feat is to dump Dex and wear heavy armor. Heavy armor ignores both Dex AC bonus and penalty (from having only 8 dex), and the +5 initiative from the feat helps offset the low dex
Lucky is actually a lot stronger- it doesn' give you advantage on attacks, it gives you a RE-ROLL WITH ADVANTAGE- meaning that even if you already have advantage on an attack and fail, you can still re-rol;- you're basically getting to roll up to 4D20 and pick the highest result, with a crit build this one feat can basically guarantee 3 crits per long rest (4, with illithid power, 5 with a ring from gauntlet of shar)
I have personal beef with Heavy Armor Master just because its +1 to Str doesnt work like an ASI, it works as a floating buff that buffs your strength to a maximum of 20 and calculates after other boosts to strength, meaning if you make your strength higher than 20, using the act 2 potion or other means, its a wasted boost (at least last I've checked). As far as I know its the only partial feat that works this way
Thank you for that explanation! I was trying to get Karlach to 22 Strength with ASI+Potion+Heavy Armor Master (had respecced to Paladin) Was wondering why my Strength was capping at 21
This really needs to be fixed. The quick fix larian could do ; would be to give that little plus icon that you click to add strength. Because I think all other feats that use the little plus or minus allows you to use the potion to go over 20 strength
You don't get heavy armor prof from multiclassing into a class that has it. You'd have to change your class into it with withers, then multiclass into whatever else you want. Ranger knight is the exception, I think.
Life, War, and Tempest domain clerics are the exception as well. Basically, if you're getting the proficiency as part of a subclass feature, you'll get it even if you multiclass into it instead of starting out with it.
Was surprised that Alert, which I have on all of my party members, isn't "S" tier. The other surprise was Actor @ "S" tier, which I'd never even looked at. As a non-D&D player, these tier lists have been very useful. Did notice that Wyll as a Warlock/Paladin is back to only 2 extra attacks. Thought that that was only for Honor Mode, which I can't imagine even attempting, so congrats on achieving your gold die.
I had recorded this video just before or around the time honour mode came out. I would say that for honour mode alert is S tier, I ended up taking it on 3 out of 4 characters, but my team didn't have my high dexterity characters. I haven't actually checked the warlock/paladin multiattack on tactician , but one thing I used to do is forget to actually bind Wyll's weapon at the start of the day! This meant he only got two attacks for the first battle of the day until I bound his weapon.
The Thing about Initiative is, that Dex buffs it. So put high Dex on everyone plus some bonus to initiative here and there and all your team will start early in every combat, even in honour mode. So Alert isnt that good. If it would be harder to get a bonus to initiative, then yes Alert would be a good choice.
@@CasualVeteranGamer Meant 2 attacks, not 2 extra attacks, and didn't take Alert on Astarion given his Gloomstalker/Thief build. Don't use Wyll that much, but did for Ansur, and did bind his Deva Mace. Planning on a Lore Bard for my next playthrough. Am considering a 2 Tempest Cleric/10 Lore build, but being able to twin Haste is a real plus. How did your Bard build perform?
@@alexh2717I usually go 16 Dex, 14 Con on most of my builds, which is good enough for Act 1, but not being surprised, especially in Act 2, is a major advantage.
@@alexh2717 that only works for dex primary builds like rouge. For anything else it won't work into acts 2 and 3, not to mention you've seriously nerfed some classes if you put that much into dex. A paladin shouldn't have that much dex or they are a very sub optimal paladin. But,it's true that for some classes, alert isn't a great feat. I still think for most classes it's S tier though.
Great use for the Mobile feat: Wildheart Barbarian with Tiger and Wolverine. Go in, hit 3 guys, get away without getting hit, and they can't even run after you
You've definitely made a mistake with Crossbow Expert. It's a big part of one of the stronger damage setups for lategame. The reason for this is the Bhaalist Armor in act 3 - crossbows do piercing, and Bhaalist armor massively increases your piercing damage by giving everyone within 2m Piercing vulnerability. On top of that, since a crossbow is a ranged weapon, Sword Bard can use Ranged Slashing Flourish instead of Melee Slashing Flourish, so each action is actually two hits with its inspiration - adding advantage (which you would not be able to get without crossbow expert negating the melee disadvantage) from one of the many sources + sharpshooter, all in all this is a very powerful build that can oneshot bosses in Act 3.
That is a very specific use case at a very late part of the game. I'd hardly feel that it should change it's overall placement, but it means that it has it's use case with that specific set of circumstances.
@@PowerSenpai I'm not arguing that it's the best feat in the game or anything, but the point is that there is a scenario where it's good, which is imo at least better than critical miss tier. There's more reason to take it than most of the things in the tier above, though idk if I'd bump it above C tier. More importantly, it's not about the final placement, it's about the discussion of where it's useful so people know about options like this. It's not a useless feat, just a hyper specific one.
Gotta give you a hats off for being one of the best simplifier of how to approach the game. Only thing I would say is ASI should go Mid A as a measuring stick, not S. I found alert, TB, and most half-feats better than it, with a few that are better albeit not getting that +1 to the ability's mod. I found Magic initiate Cleric for Sanctuary is great for assassins. Free turns when you don't build it to break the game and you actually miss. Also, I took Spell Sniper for a sorc 7 / assassin 5 ( or 5/5 with tempest cleric 2, it's actually ongoing on 5/5 now) with attack roll spells and the usual assassin tools. I know these are one ofs, but they may incite other ideas I don't have.
Since I find myself taking ASI with every character at least once I thought is deserved to be S tier. Perhaps I have placed it a bit higher than it deserves, but it's such a common pick and I want to give it recognition for that. That's a good use for magic initiate cleric since you really want all those levels for multiclassing.
I have found that with high dexterity characters alert isn't as necessary, but as I've said to others, I did take it on 3 out of 4 characters during my first honour mode run and I'm sure it made a big difference.
Not sure about Actor as S tier… performance is a pretty underwhelming skill, since you can still play an instrument to distract people without it, and deception is generally only useful for your Tav. In most cases you’re probably better off having 16 CHA to start, using the 1-2 points you’ve saved to bump another ability, and then taking ASI for the feat (or go 17 CHA and just take Ethel’s hair). OTOH, Alert and Dual Wielding are amazing, I’d absolutely have them S tier. Dual wielding is almost compulsory on your primary caster(s)!
There are some ability checks that use performance in conversations as well. I think it would have been better if I added that it's probable that Actor doesn't need to be taken more than once in a party. Personally I like being able to take a half-feat at level 4 to even out an ability score and get another bonus, but that's just down to preference in the end. During my first honour mode run I will admit that I took Alert on 3 out of 4 characters and really allowed me to make each fight easier. It meant my characters often took turns together, which allowed me to plan and set up combos more easily.
Alert is S tier because of just how good +5 is, my characters almost always went first after getting this feat. Keep in mind if you lose initiative but surprise the enemy it is the same as if you don’t surprise but win initiative. Also, if all your characters go first, their turns will connect and you can play them in any order you need
Tavern brawler also applies to the primal stampede of an elk heart barbarian. If you’ve got the tiger aspect you would get three times your strength bonus on attack rolls against bleeding or poisoned enemies.
@@CasualVeteranGamer TB works for attack and damage rolls on standard and tactician difficulty and only for attack rolls in honour mode difficulty. It's probably a must for moon druids until level 10, where you can either MC fighter or take "Weapon Master" to get the proficiencies of the weapon attacks of all the elementals. Alternatively, you can use exclusively the fire guy because he uses a scimitar which is the only weapon the druid is proficient in by default (and the summons use YOUR weapon proficiency for attack rolls)
Polearm Master combined with Sentinel is pretty strong. When an enemy comes at Tav he/she can attack before they get into melee and stop enemy movement before they can melee attack you. I think polearm master got a lower score than it deserves, it should be A tier. I think it is better than moderately armored and athlete.
Agree that Polearm Master can be used against you as a bug when you approach enemies but you can avoid it by refusing the reaction. Took me awhile to figure that out. It shouldn’t proc at all when you are advancing.
I agree with most people that Alert is a must, esp on low dex characters. You want your AOE casters ontop of the enemies before they've moved towards you.
I have tested it, and heavy armor master does actually work with magical damage, and it is applied after warding bond. So with a heavy armor with damage reduction, you can get an effective -12 damage reduction. Also, it is applied to each damage type individually. So an enemy doing 10 piercing and 10 slashing would do 0 (10-12) piercing and 0 (10-12) slashing, not 8. It is really strong!
Actor is really not S. Even in honour mode if you want the expertise in performance and deception maybe. But I haven't found that particularly useful over just using guidance. There are also items which give you bonuses to that and in some cases enhance ability and even friends(even with the drawback) will be better for most the game. Really, its C tier. Maybe if you really like it its B, but no higher. Polearm master works as intended except for the bug. You were kinda messing up with it, your tav was often in range of the enemies so it wouldn't trigger or the weapons they were using was outside your reach. This is best used with something like Enlarge. The reaction attack allows you to cover a large area. I'm using it on my paladin and its been great there. I don't think its higher because the bonus action attack doesn't benefit from great weapon master like it does in 5e. I haven't touched savage attacker. I'll have to try it. The wiki says it works with the rider damages so sounds like its better than I thought.
I'll admit the performance expertise isn't so useful, but deception is quite common and is far better than guidance and it stacks with guidance, enhance ability etc. Also it's a half-feat for Charisma, and while we can use the hag's hair, there is only one hag's hair available. I guess I need more practice with polearm master!
For heavy armor master, it really gets to shine in act 3 with the armor of persistence, which has both magical plate (-2 damage) and permanent Blade Ward (physcial damage resistance). That means you take half damage and reduce it by 5, so attacks doing 11 or less physical damage would literally do no damage to you.
I can't agree with the Actor S tier, since Performance is rarely needed. I understand your arguments, but it's not worth it with enough characters to be S tier in my opinion. Also, Mage Slayer is surprisingly useful, I would put it in B tier at least. Killing an enemy in their turn, cancelking their spell is very good.
I will say that I would only take actor on a single character in a party, one that has an odd number in charisma and I would respec them to not have proficiency in deception or performance. Expertise is very good, by the end game it's a +8 in the relevant skill checks and deception comes up fairly often. Like you said though, performance isn't so common. I love the idea of mage slayer, and perhaps I didn't use the character with it correctly, but when I took it I didn't get many chances to actually use the reaction. I'll try to give it another go.
I like how you approach these feats; it's quite a different list from the ones I made. Everything A-S is well justified; I personally veer away from ModArm because of how absurdly powerful Surprise rounds are with Stealth advantage cheese and how I manipulate hit chances, statuses, and my characters' AC values (usually in the mid-20s). I can see why you rank it highly, though. Great video, my friend!
kinda late to the party, but: 1. Magic initiate can be good for specific builds, and if you need the stuff it's better than multiclassing so you can keep level 12 stuff like a level 6 spell slot. I'd make that B tier if only for the versatility without losing progression on your main class. 2. Elemental adept allows you to play a single element and not worry about immunities. I'm playing a thematic lightning dragon sorc with only lightning spells and every enemy takes either normal damage, or double when wet. Many enemies have access to lightning immunities either from natural defenses or auras from other crap, in my case I can double cast chain lightning and clear a whole room and never worry that the other dude will resist. Still would rate it as B tier 3. I'd say martial adept is also B, because it's easily A tier for a fighter but not good for other classes. 4. Having musical instruments (other than doing Alfira) you can draw all people's attention for your thief to steal, I wouldn't say it's crap tier, just C. Other than that, I agree with the whole tier list. This is the one I agree with the most. EDIT: One more thing about dual wield, it allows you to have 2 weapons and still gain 1 DC, which is not far off from the usual shield's 2 DC. So you lose 1 DC and gain the option of an offhand attack as well as taking any 2 weapons. This enables setups like Lathander's mace and Selune's spear so you can carry a bunch of 1-off spells, blind zombies, resurrection, etc. all in 1 package.
Perform is an extremely underrated ability, you can use it to get up to all sorts of shenanigans by getting everyone in an area to bunch up and/or look in the direction you want them to. For example, go to the goblin camp with a bard and an evocation wizard, start performing, then drop an AoE spell on em. Boom, you just killed like 15 gobbos in one go. Trying to steal the idol of silva us? Get all the druids to watch the flashmob concert while someone else yoinks it. Want to rob a merchant that's always standing in someone else's line of sight? Have someone talk to them while your performer lures the other people away. Boom, you're now free to do crimes.
I agree that perform is good in that regard, however I have a couple of things against the feat. Firstly the action can be learnt from Alfira in the Druid Grove, and secondly minor illusion can do a similar enough job that I don't want to use a feat to be able to perform. With regards to merchants I'm fairly sure fog cloud or darkness can do a similar job in hiding five fingered discounts, as can disguise self.
Sentinel and Polearm Master is one of the best feat combos as it allows you to stop enemies in their tracks if they go near you, and if they don't have a polearm on their own they can't attack as they are not close to a target. The protection from Sentinel for allies which get attacked now also applies in a wider radius. On their own the feats are decent, together they are great.
The polearm master feat is bugged rn where the bonus action extra attack doesn’t add any of your damage numbers like it’s supposed to so you have to keep that in mind when taking it over like great weapon master for instance
Polearm master is fine on its own, getting more reaction attacks is good and there is at least one good halberd in the game, although this falls off in act 3 because Balduran's giantslayer is the best weapon in the game and doesn't work with polearm master Adding sentinel doesn't add much because of how fights work in this game. There are two types of fights in the game, fights where you fight one big guy and ones where you fight a lot of small guys. The big guys are almost always large sized and have larger attack radius than you, or have spells or other ranged abilities and don't try to approach you. If there are many enemies pinning one of them every round is of minor importance. There aren't a lot of fights where there's one human-sized melee enemy that you can kite with polearm mastery+sentinel Overall the "combo" is a two feat investment that limits your build and doesn't add much value. It's a gimmic, not one of the best strategies in the game
Testing polearm master against a team entirely composed of other polearm users was a mistake. They can attack at the same distance, so they don't actually need to enter your attack range, just come next to it.
Crossbow expert deserves B or A tier because it’s very powerful with sharpshooter on a Thief Rogue. Late game you can start barrel stuffing with the aura of murder with no disadvantage for an extra +60 damage from the clothing and two feats plus three hand cross bow attacks. If you hit all three hits then you’re getting over 100 damage even on piercing resistant enemies.
"BG3 uses a d4 instead of a d20 for initiative rolls. Given the lesser random range, bonuses to initiative are that much more important." alert is actually so fking good its pretty much broken good if you dont want to have to use potions for the whole game i would just take alert on literally everyone it just means you get an extra round on each encounter since you will always be going first.
A d6 with "advantage" deals an average of around one more damage while a d12 deals an average of around two more damage, so whether you're using a 2d6 or a 1d12 weapon, that's roughly 2 damage per hit, which I don't think qualifies Savage Attacker for S-Tier
What really makes savage attacker good is the fact that this advantage on damage also applies on each rider that you have on your melee attacks. So if you have a d4 fire damage on the weapon as a base, that gets the effect, if you sneak attack, all of your sneak attack die get the effect, if you divine smite, all of your smite die get the effect. Pair this with the fact that you are attacking multiple times per turn and your damage increase from savage attacker can easily be +8-25, and that's without the hit penalty of GWM.
Resilient is definetly not S tier, you can basically circumvent most saving throws by being immune to them via items or by simply not allowing the enemies to hit you. In my playthrough (and mind you i am heavy on dealing damage) I am lvl 2 cleric, lvl 2 warlock and abjuration wizard, with 20~DC spells and arcane acutity, basically an immortal(for most part) caster with concentration holding up. I had taken war caster over resilient for a VERY simple reason... Advantage. No matter what you do, a nat1 is a nat1. If you have advantage it means you roll twice basically making a 5% chance into 5% of a 5% chance if you have 95%. Which is REALLY low.(tho for some reason i sometimes still roll that for ability checks, but that's another point) Basically it's rare you need resilient. Bonus: it only makes sense if you don't already have proficiency too, which for example sorcerers get. So if you multiclass and dip into it(which most sane builds do) it is useless. For me that is F tier because of that.
Athlete + high strenght + enhanced leap is soooo cool. You can fly from one side of the battle to other with just a bonus action. Nothing is ever beyond reach.
Crossbow expert is better than you give it credit for. First, a martial character won't want to switch between melee weapons and ranged because of sharpshooter, you lose a lot of damage not being able to hit with your ranged weapons when enemies are close. Also, the Bhaalist Armor doubles crossbow damage, but requires you to be in melee range. Normally that would hurt your chance to hit a ton, especially with sharpshooter already reducing hit chance. Crossbow Expert solves that. It might not be gamebreaking, but for certain builds it makes you a far more well rounded character by removing ranged build's weakness of having to flee from enemies.
I used Performer on Wyll to even out his charisma while giving a Sorclock the ability to conveniently distract npcs. I guess I could have had him as the face during the Alfira cutscene. That seems like a pretty easily missable opportunity in order to justify F-tiering something that comes with an ability score. The musical instrument lure is more useful than the proficiency bonus on a toon who isn't the face of the party.
Great vid as always! I want to share some love for Crossbow Expert - it can be a godsend for DEX-based crossbow builds. It's shockingly easy to get a mid-20's AC if you go all in on DEX, which puts you in the weird position of being the best frontliner in the party and also an archer. Crossbow Expert makes this viable, especially when your melee options are underwhelming in comparison. It's not objectively as good as Sharpshooter, but in the right situation I think it can certainly be B-tier.
On magic initiate The issue is in baldurs gate 3 its probably better to just multiclass because it doesnt use your modifier. There are some classes that get bonuses for higher levels. A good example is abjuration wizard where the ward depends on the wizard level. So for something like abjuration wizard it could be worth it for the free cast of the 1st level spell.
I mean, I agree that Crossbow Expert is mid, but if Im playing a full archer build with Sharshooter and bonus from combat style, than using my meelee weapon isnt necessarily going to be better. Not to mention that one of the benefits of playing a fully dedicated archer is that you get to equip one of the melee weapons with bad statistics but powerful passive bonuses
Additional complexity that leads me to sometimes go against multiclass cleric for spell slot progression, illithid powers and some other effects like shillelagh use the casting ability of your most recently added class. So if im sorc 11 and want shield and armor prof, picking cleric will change things like mind blast damage and saving throw to wis instead of cha... Just dealt with this yesterday, mind blast dmg went from +5 from cha to -1 from wis Not certain if martial classes also change it... Worth testing. Either way i think this is a corner case where the proficiency traits have value...
Only one I really disagree with is Tough in D tier. I don't know if you just don't use the feat or what, but tough is not equivalent to 2 point in constitution, it's equivalent to 4 points in constitution, as it's "2 points of health per level". Constitution only adds +1 once it goes up, and if you just want/need one point of health, you're better off taking a half-feat. The extra health is MASSIVELY important for certain character archetypes, like life priests which can become nigh unkillable self-healing tanks. (Tough, Heavy Armor Master, Haste equipment, Adamantine, you get the point) The extra health is important for making sure SUPER high damage moves from some bosses don't just insta gib you and give you enough time to heal back up.
This is better guide actually I am familiar with feats mostly by now (not all of them) but I usually go with ASI first for everyone, then whatever class there is... I found recently (dumbass me) that you can only get LIGHT weapons as dual wield and that Feat improves it to Versitile and other weapons.
Putting Shield master in D-tier is bonkers to me. The function of the feat is easily S-tier. This is like the only way to reduce incoming spell damage reliably on a character. The only reason to drop it lower is that yes, you probably only encounter a relevant spellcaster every...4 boss fights or so? Still, it comes up *big* in those fights and sometimes enables plays you couldn't otherwise do. I could understand dropping it to B or A tier due to the frequency issue, but D-tier...? Also wanna add that "put more into Dex" is a mixed bag as an alternative. You need 4 Dex, not 2, in order to get a comparable saving throw bonus to it. This means that if you wanted the same Dex save benefit, you'd have to take Ability Improvement twice (most characters only have 3 Feats total, so say goodbye to 66% of your feat slots) and dump every single point into Dex.
Regarding Crossbow Expert: Builds using the Bhaalist armour* could make use of it. I use it with the Titanstring, can't think of a crossbow that can compete with that sepcifc purpose in mind, but it could have some solid niche uses. Although its mid/late Act 3... *Bhaalist armour: Enemies within 2 m become Vulnerable to Piercing damage, unless they are Resistant/Immune
10:50 this is useful for pact weapon (warlock) and warning: you are being attacked by foes with polearms (reach, opportunity attack/shielded -> polearm master/sentinel combo) 11:11 (move it higher by 1 rank) 16:00 only for fire/thunder spell types (create water does better for lit/cold) 26:00 mageslayer is good (counterspell, infernal rebuke are better) for melee mage chasers. (Polearm master/sentinel) or ranger -> possibly "b" 27:00 feat (4)> class dip for 1 lvl (fighter 4,6,8,12 or rogue 4,8,10,12) this is a waste. Imo. 34:40 only rogue, warlock, sorcerer, wizard, monk don't/can't start with it. Monks don't want it. 37:0044:00 with sentinel, this is awesome, so choose wisely, READ 38:30 (movement of foes is required), and plan. "A" + sentinel or "b" solo 39:00 free with sorcerer (& some gear) (54:25) Gr.wpn.mast.> sharp shoot.> spell sniper (eld. bl.) are all great. "S-a" Shield master is not useful for great wpn. master (or heavy xbow) people. "b-c" awesome for cleric/bard (healer/support who concentrate inside sanctuary) 48:30 githyanki has Astral knowledge (almost same), also rogue/bard get many skills as an option. 55:00 fighter,paladin,Barbarian,ranger get this for FREE. Rogue,bard,druid,*cleric* (almost)
I thought crossbow master just made you immune to the threatened debuff while firing a crossbow. I don’t see that as helping shoot a person point blank. That’s so I can attack my intended target without disadvantage.
Your polearm master feat didn't work because the opponents all had spears, which are reach weapons, allowing them to stay just outside of the range of your reaction trigger
19:59 when I was hearing you ramble about the heavenly armored feet you dropped going paladin or fighter. The only way that you can achieve heavy armor with these two classes is by taking it at level one, otherwise they will just be medium armor provisionancy. Ranger Knight is guaranteed heavy armor and certain clerics will give you the heavy armor as well.
Just starting, but I can't agree with puting Ability Score Improvement in S tier. This is important, because Ability Score improvoment is the baseline from which all other feats are judged. If it's S tier, then you have pretty much defined all other feats as at best sidegrades to the default, and mostly never worth picking. Because it's the baseline, I would want to put it in B tier, and then judge every other feat based on what it does better or worse than Ability Score Improvement. Tavern Brawler for example is an S tier, because it's equivalent to somewhere between +6 (if you have 17 strength baseline) and +16 (if you have storm giant strength) extra strength when calculating relevant attacks. Compared to Ability Score Improvement adding +2 strength, putting that in S tier is a no-brainer. Of course it's only good for certain characters (throwing or unarmed specifically), but I also believe that things like Feats should be judged by their strongest application. A feat that's pretty good for everyone but not the best for anyone will never be chosen by anyone.
I believe that bringing the main stat of your class up to 18 or 20 is first priority because it's a very strong thing to do, hence the S tier. I would not take an ASI for every feat choice. I don't think picking tavern brawler is a fair choice in your example since it's well known to be one of, if not the strongest feat. Conversely to that I would say that if Dungeon Delver is D tier then it's not right that ASI is only 2 tiers above, especially if we're using an ASI in the main stat of a class i.e. its strongest application. As I said in the video, ASI makes your character stronger, whereas (most) feats give a character more versatility, like the depth vs. breadth idea I mentioned. I personally wouldn't consider the feats at C or lower worth taking most of the time for someone who is trying to play without RP in mind, B worth taking for certain classes/builds and most of the time I would take A or S tier feats. Putting ASI at B is too much of a disservice to it in my opinion since it's a choice I take on all characters at some point. I cannot say the same for any other feat and that's why I mention opportunity cost for the lower tiered feats. My guess is that most people take an ASI at least once on their characters, but without data from larian I obviously cannot back that claim with any evidence. If that's the case then I don't see why it shouldn't be S tier, but we'll have to wait and see if Larian will release that data to be sure. In the end I am agreeing with the fact that most feats are not worth taking over an ASI. We usually have 3 feats per character, although multiclassing can lower that number, so there will be at least one time that an ASI isn't taken, sometimes 2. If I want my character to be better at what they already do, there isn't much better than an ASI, and that's why most of the so called "half-feats" are also ranked highly because they can make an ability score be even as well.
Wow Crossbow Expert was nerfed to the ground. In 5e it's one of the best feats in the game, because with it every ranged attack doesn't have disadvantage within melee range, including spells.
Magic Initiate Bard is pretty nice to have a BA Cantrip when using the Band of Mystic Scoundrel in early Act 3. I like using the Wyll Rapier for a full CHA scaling Paladin using that. Also, unfortunately, ritual spells from that feat can’t even be cast as rituals, so you’re better off with ritual caster for that
I've noticed spells from Ritual Caster don't cost Spell Slots. Though I did pick them on a class without Spell Slots so maybe that's why? You can basically just cast Longstrider on everyone after long rest for no cost.
I would say Dual Wielder is also especially good on the Thief subclass. Combine that with a class like Fighter, Ranger or College of Swords Bard for Two-Weapon Figting and it's pretty nice. As for Heavily Armored, I'm pretty sure you can't get Heavy Armor Proficiency from multiclassing, unless they changed it (except of course the Ranger one). Edit: Accidentally hit the send button.
You can also get heavy armor proficiency from some of the cleric domains, as the proficiency comes from the subclass and not the class itself. But as you said multiclassing to Fighter or Paladin won't work, in that case you'd need to respec and take them as your first level. This will also affect your saving throw and skill proficiencies which you might not want.
Why is Moderately Armoured so high up? You can just multiclass to get medium armor and shield proficiency just like all the other equipment proficiency feats that you placed low.
May I make a suggestion? While recording, turn off the in-game music, and then add it over in post. It gets odd and choppy when you edit out pauses. :)
One interesting combination I know from 5e dnd (not sure if it works that way in bg3) is having both Sentinel and Polearm Master. It lets you make an opportunity attack when someone comes into your increased range, but before they are in range to hit you if they aren't using a reach weapon, then Sentinel makes them lose their movement. In essence, a Sentinel/Polearm Master character will be unable to be hit by any melee opponent without reach. Also, one thing I feel like you didn't touch on enough is the opportunity cost of multiclassing as opposed to taking a feat. By the numbers, you're right that there are many feats that are just worse than taking a level in another class, like the armor proficiency ones. However, by taking a level in another class you are both delaying your next level in your main class as well as capping how high you will ever be in that class. Sometimes that opportunity cost is just too great to consider multiclassing.
The movement system of the game broke Sentinel and Polearm Master. If the game had a grid like the TTRPG 5e is most commonly played, those two feats would be great on their own, and monstrous when combined.
What’s the difference? Combo worked well when I tried it a month ago, people would step closer and get hit with the reaction and then stopped out of range and I could back up on the next turn. Multiple enemies could get around it tho
Medium Armor and Shield Master are great on Life Shadowheart with Adamantine Medium Armor and Sentinel Shield. With Warding Bond Rings for her and a Vengeance Paladin makes them almost an unkillable due, short of resistance bypassing spells and super high damage.
Some feats that are generally not that great can be pretty good on a specific character. Two weapon fighting on a college of swords bard that has the two weapon fighting style synergies pretty well. Also, I'd usually never go for any of the initiate feats but a college of lore bard with magic initiate sorcerer is quite nice, you can have some of the more offensive cantrips which the bards typically lack, ray of frost + the ring that amplifies frost effects is great and take magic missile without having to sacrifice a magical secret to get it which combined with phalar aluve shriek can hit hard. And you get all of that without having to sacrifice a feat from multi-classing.
I feel MI:Warlock is substantially better than the others as it gives access to Eldritch Blast and Hex. Maybe it's just me not seeing the benefit to the others.
I don't see the point in going MI warlock when you could be taking a two level dip into warlock for agonizing blast + repelling blast/devil sight and hex a lot more frequently than just once/long rest.
Severely overrating savage attacker imo, bulk of our damage usually comes from static modifiers so any potential gain from sa is just negligible and the opportunity cost of getting some other feat or just boosting our maim stat is way too big
Agree to disagree about great weapon master. Which you are way smarter in this game then me, so I am probably just wrong. However, (big breath) 1. Hitting with a crit or killing to use a bonus action attack is nice, but that ignores that you often (not always) already have a use for your bonus action, so its likely opportunity cost. 2. The -5 to hit is quite devastating on difficult fights, which is where you would want that bonus damage the most ironically. Yes, you can off set this via other bonuses, but those bonuses might be needed to hit base, causing you to miss all the same. 3. Where this feet is the most effective is against alot of squishy targets, which is where I have found least impactful oddly enough. Yes, you may be able to smash through alot of goblins quickly at the end game with this feat, but you likely could do that already, so its just win harder. The best use I have tried for this personally in bg3 was with a hunter ranger, where I typically could hit up to three targets in a single whirlwind, effectively attacking up to six times a turn. Yet, I found that the amount of misses led to longer fights despite the extra damage rather than if I had just used a normal whirlwind, hitting all my targets for already large damage. Plus I had to decide if wanted to hunters mark the most important target before I swung or hope to crit with the whirlwinds to bonus action attack after I swung. All that said, Great Weapon Master is a long beloved feat in 5e and I believe it is in BG3 as well, not to mention that the math has already proven it a must have feat for martials in 5e to keep up with spell casters (which I admit that I hate it for being a tax). Maybe I have been unlucky, but I have always just seen it barely do better than leaving it off. I would drop GWM all the way down to a C, a D even if there werent already some feats that are sadly just misses and playing on honor mode has only reinforced my belief in that. Also, love your vids and all of that written above was just to add a comment on the video, so I am not trying to give you a headache boss.
I'm at the beggining but it's obvious you know what you're talking about. I saw a different feats tier list video and the guy there put ASI at B-tier. That's when I knew that it will be garbage, and I've stopped watching. Here it's automatically at the S-tier with a great example from Shadowheart DC and spellslot improvement. Night and day difference.
Alert is S tier for sure. Best status in the game is dead and easiest way to afflict it is to move before the enemies
This 100% there is no world where alert isn't top 5 feats lol.
If you really just want to go first you can just suprise them which is better. The only thing about is i dont think it works on most bosses. Well i could be wrong because i cant help not talking to bosses before their evil plan.
Overall strategy is more important and alert is just a small piece to that puzzle.
Alert is not a mandatory pick on most chara, and infact going last for a tank paladin might actually be beneficial to the entire team. (Aura coverage, protection etc).
While alpha strike is a simple and straightforward tactic, others have more sophisticated ways of engaging combat.
Hence solid A tier.
If you take away the permanent bonus to Strength or Constitution and the damage bonus. Tavern Brawler would still be S Tier for its attack bonus alone.
Having used it with a Monk I found it very rare that the hit chance was less than 95%, usually because I hadn't taken a potion of hill giant strength!
Hit chance bonus is what makes Tb so op. Because it breaks dice rolls
It's even funnier with elixir of cloud giant strength. +8 to attack and damage rolls. I made astarion into a monk and I didn't even need to put a single point into strength if I didn't want to, because the game provides enough elixirs of hill/cloud giant strength to last pretty much all your long rest cycles, because he became so overpowered that I hardly had TO long rest.
As monk with 3 points into rogue for thief I was getting ludicrous amounts of attacks per turn. A single flurry of blows, oh look that boss on tactician lost half its health!
@@Hirotoro4692i hope larian never rebalances this because being allowed to just *_dump_* on a boss by only being one feat deep into a class feels amazing and truly makes you feel like a powerful adventurer
i like your tier lists so much more because you show the actual in game footage of the spells and stuff, and not just read descriptions from wiki
Some things I want to note.
I definitely feel like Alert should be S tier, with how consistent it makes your party especially with not getting surprised on some of your slower characters I.E. spellcasters for their concentration spells can definitely turn the entire battle heavily in your favor. From twin casting haste to Hunger of Hadar a whole group before they get anywhere near you. But not only that, it also lets you more consistently get shared initiative in parties. Being able to almost always use all four of your characters right after one another before the enemy can even sneeze is so powerful in multiple scenarios that it can't be left out of consideration.
Second thing, Crossbow Expert should be noted to very well enable quite possibly the strongest solo run build in the game right now just due to the Bhaalist Armor and a specific sword Bard build. Letting you just roll every encounter in the game if played right. I know super niche, but it is notable (It is up on the BG3_Builds subreddit and was uploaded 2 days ago)
I would be open to raising Alert, at least for non-dexterity characters. I gave it to three of my party in my first honour mode run, and although it's hard to quantify the difference it made, by the end I had almost my whole party going first in combat and generally denying at least a few enemies their turns.
That's a fair point about the crossbow expert build. I generally record my video 1-3 weeks ahead of release and as such I do miss out some of the most recent points. As I said during the video, just about every feat does have a niche use, but in all honesty it would make it much more difficult if I was to take every use of a feat into account.
There's some value in knowing you'd likely go first in combat particularly for Assassin rouge
Can you tell me the build? I want to try it
@@barcster2003 Exactly, it’s crucial to go first with an Assassin Rogue, and since the subclass doesn’t get any features that boost it’s initiative like Dread Ambusher does, Alert pretty much becomes a necessary feat for Assassins.
Alert alone lets you win every battle with 3 or less enemies. It's definitely S tier.
Savage attacker is really good if you have a characters that roll several dices, i.e paladin smites including elemental damage from weapon. The deva mace gets really strong with this feat
The downside is that this feat only works with melee weapons, so range and unarmed are unaffected and it’s a bit unfortunate
A little "cheat" you can do with Alert feat is to dump Dex and wear heavy armor. Heavy armor ignores both Dex AC bonus and penalty (from having only 8 dex), and the +5 initiative from the feat helps offset the low dex
Lucky is actually a lot stronger- it doesn' give you advantage on attacks, it gives you a RE-ROLL WITH ADVANTAGE- meaning that even if you already have advantage on an attack and fail, you can still re-rol;- you're basically getting to roll up to 4D20 and pick the highest result, with a crit build this one feat can basically guarantee 3 crits per long rest (4, with illithid power, 5 with a ring from gauntlet of shar)
I have personal beef with Heavy Armor Master just because its +1 to Str doesnt work like an ASI, it works as a floating buff that buffs your strength to a maximum of 20 and calculates after other boosts to strength, meaning if you make your strength higher than 20, using the act 2 potion or other means, its a wasted boost (at least last I've checked). As far as I know its the only partial feat that works this way
Huh, I never knew that! Thanks for sharing.
Heavy armor master is actually good for reducing damage.
@@barcster2003 sure but that's not the part I have an issue with, thats the reason I found about about the weird stat boost in the first place
Thank you for that explanation!
I was trying to get Karlach to 22 Strength with ASI+Potion+Heavy Armor Master (had respecced to Paladin)
Was wondering why my Strength was capping at 21
This really needs to be fixed. The quick fix larian could do ; would be to give that little plus icon that you click to add strength. Because I think all other feats that use the little plus or minus allows you to use the potion to go over 20 strength
You don't get heavy armor prof from multiclassing into a class that has it. You'd have to change your class into it with withers, then multiclass into whatever else you want. Ranger knight is the exception, I think.
Life, War, and Tempest domain clerics are the exception as well. Basically, if you're getting the proficiency as part of a subclass feature, you'll get it even if you multiclass into it instead of starting out with it.
@@common_undead Good to know!
@@common_undead Same with ranger with the urban choice, because it comes to an ability and not the base class.
Was surprised that Alert, which I have on all of my party members, isn't "S" tier. The other surprise was Actor @ "S" tier, which I'd never even looked at. As a non-D&D player, these tier lists have been very useful. Did notice that Wyll as a Warlock/Paladin is back to only 2 extra attacks. Thought that that was only for Honor Mode, which I can't imagine even attempting, so congrats on achieving your gold die.
I had recorded this video just before or around the time honour mode came out. I would say that for honour mode alert is S tier, I ended up taking it on 3 out of 4 characters, but my team didn't have my high dexterity characters.
I haven't actually checked the warlock/paladin multiattack on tactician , but one thing I used to do is forget to actually bind Wyll's weapon at the start of the day! This meant he only got two attacks for the first battle of the day until I bound his weapon.
The Thing about Initiative is, that Dex buffs it. So put high Dex on everyone plus some bonus to initiative here and there and all your team will start early in every combat, even in honour mode. So Alert isnt that good. If it would be harder to get a bonus to initiative, then yes Alert would be a good choice.
@@CasualVeteranGamer Meant 2 attacks, not 2 extra attacks, and didn't take Alert on Astarion given his Gloomstalker/Thief build. Don't use Wyll that much, but did for Ansur, and did bind his Deva Mace. Planning on a Lore Bard for my next playthrough. Am considering a 2 Tempest Cleric/10 Lore build, but being able to twin Haste is a real plus. How did your Bard build perform?
@@alexh2717I usually go 16 Dex, 14 Con on most of my builds, which is good enough for Act 1, but not being surprised, especially in Act 2, is a major advantage.
@@alexh2717 that only works for dex primary builds like rouge. For anything else it won't work into acts 2 and 3, not to mention you've seriously nerfed some classes if you put that much into dex. A paladin shouldn't have that much dex or they are a very sub optimal paladin.
But,it's true that for some classes, alert isn't a great feat. I still think for most classes it's S tier though.
Great use for the Mobile feat:
Wildheart Barbarian with Tiger and Wolverine. Go in, hit 3 guys, get away without getting hit, and they can't even run after you
OH MY GOSH MY WISHES FOR CHRISTMAS GRANTED 🥳😭👏🏾 Very excited that this happened hahaha
I'm happy to hear that!
dude, i was in no way expecting demonstrations. you rock.
Hah, thanks!
always pick atleast one foot
Gottah make a Tav-ern Brawler. You probably already did CVG. Much needed guide and explanations!
I used one during my first honour mode run!
Alert is definitely S tier, especially for Assassin. With Arrow of Many Targets, every new hit will crit. It bonkers.
You've definitely made a mistake with Crossbow Expert. It's a big part of one of the stronger damage setups for lategame.
The reason for this is the Bhaalist Armor in act 3 - crossbows do piercing, and Bhaalist armor massively increases your piercing damage by giving everyone within 2m Piercing vulnerability. On top of that, since a crossbow is a ranged weapon, Sword Bard can use Ranged Slashing Flourish instead of Melee Slashing Flourish, so each action is actually two hits with its inspiration - adding advantage (which you would not be able to get without crossbow expert negating the melee disadvantage) from one of the many sources + sharpshooter, all in all this is a very powerful build that can oneshot bosses in Act 3.
That is a very specific use case at a very late part of the game. I'd hardly feel that it should change it's overall placement, but it means that it has it's use case with that specific set of circumstances.
@@PowerSenpai I'm not arguing that it's the best feat in the game or anything, but the point is that there is a scenario where it's good, which is imo at least better than critical miss tier. There's more reason to take it than most of the things in the tier above, though idk if I'd bump it above C tier.
More importantly, it's not about the final placement, it's about the discussion of where it's useful so people know about options like this. It's not a useless feat, just a hyper specific one.
Gotta give you a hats off for being one of the best simplifier of how to approach the game. Only thing I would say is ASI should go Mid A as a measuring stick, not S. I found alert, TB, and most half-feats better than it, with a few that are better albeit not getting that +1 to the ability's mod.
I found Magic initiate Cleric for Sanctuary is great for assassins. Free turns when you don't build it to break the game and you actually miss. Also, I took Spell Sniper for a sorc 7 / assassin 5 ( or 5/5 with tempest cleric 2, it's actually ongoing on 5/5 now) with attack roll spells and the usual assassin tools. I know these are one ofs, but they may incite other ideas I don't have.
Since I find myself taking ASI with every character at least once I thought is deserved to be S tier. Perhaps I have placed it a bit higher than it deserves, but it's such a common pick and I want to give it recognition for that.
That's a good use for magic initiate cleric since you really want all those levels for multiclassing.
Actor is great feat but very specific. Alert should be S+ because it's broken in bg3.
I have found that with high dexterity characters alert isn't as necessary, but as I've said to others, I did take it on 3 out of 4 characters during my first honour mode run and I'm sure it made a big difference.
@@CasualVeteranGamer you are right, with high dex or barbarian it isnt really a must have but still strong
Actor is great for my sorcerer/warlock who really wants to be a bard, since he keeps talking his way out of almost every situation
Not sure about Actor as S tier… performance is a pretty underwhelming skill, since you can still play an instrument to distract people without it, and deception is generally only useful for your Tav. In most cases you’re probably better off having 16 CHA to start, using the 1-2 points you’ve saved to bump another ability, and then taking ASI for the feat (or go 17 CHA and just take Ethel’s hair).
OTOH, Alert and Dual Wielding are amazing, I’d absolutely have them S tier. Dual wielding is almost compulsory on your primary caster(s)!
There are some ability checks that use performance in conversations as well. I think it would have been better if I added that it's probable that Actor doesn't need to be taken more than once in a party. Personally I like being able to take a half-feat at level 4 to even out an ability score and get another bonus, but that's just down to preference in the end.
During my first honour mode run I will admit that I took Alert on 3 out of 4 characters and really allowed me to make each fight easier. It meant my characters often took turns together, which allowed me to plan and set up combos more easily.
Actor works wonders for my sorcerer/warlock who really wants to be a bard, since he talks his way out of almost every situation he finds himself in.
@@TheOnyxSpy haha sure but that’s a very specific build!
Alert is S tier because of just how good +5 is, my characters almost always went first after getting this feat. Keep in mind if you lose initiative but surprise the enemy it is the same as if you don’t surprise but win initiative. Also, if all your characters go first, their turns will connect and you can play them in any order you need
Tavern brawler also applies to the primal stampede of an elk heart barbarian. If you’ve got the tiger aspect you would get three times your strength bonus on attack rolls against bleeding or poisoned enemies.
Tavern Brawler is also a must pick for Moon druids, right? Makes your wildshapes alot stronger.
I haven't tested it recently, but in theory it's supposed to work like that, yes.
I'm playing a Moon Druid in my current playthrough and I can confirm it does work that way!
It also breaks the game totally if you go with a throwing build.
@@CasualVeteranGamer TB works for attack and damage rolls on standard and tactician difficulty and only for attack rolls in honour mode difficulty. It's probably a must for moon druids until level 10, where you can either MC fighter or take "Weapon Master" to get the proficiencies of the weapon attacks of all the elementals. Alternatively, you can use exclusively the fire guy because he uses a scimitar which is the only weapon the druid is proficient in by default (and the summons use YOUR weapon proficiency for attack rolls)
Polearm Master combined with Sentinel is pretty strong. When an enemy comes at Tav he/she can attack before they get into melee and stop enemy movement before they can melee attack you. I think polearm master got a lower score than it deserves, it should be A tier. I think it is better than moderately armored and athlete.
bro please do a subclass tier list your tier lists are the only bg3 tier list that i trust on youtube
Feet tier list
FEETS!
Minthara at S+
Agree that Polearm Master can be used against you as a bug when you approach enemies but you can avoid it by refusing the reaction. Took me awhile to figure that out. It shouldn’t proc at all when you are advancing.
At some point are you going to make a warlock invocation teir list?
At some point, however I will cover more general things first before moving onto more specific parts of the game.
I agree with most people that Alert is a must, esp on low dex characters. You want your AOE casters ontop of the enemies before they've moved towards you.
I have tested it, and heavy armor master does actually work with magical damage, and it is applied after warding bond. So with a heavy armor with damage reduction, you can get an effective -12 damage reduction. Also, it is applied to each damage type individually. So an enemy doing 10 piercing and 10 slashing would do 0 (10-12) piercing and 0 (10-12) slashing, not 8. It is really strong!
Thanks for this video 👌👍
I’ve always thought the “actor” feat was really good. Glad we agree haha
Actor is really not S. Even in honour mode if you want the expertise in performance and deception maybe. But I haven't found that particularly useful over just using guidance. There are also items which give you bonuses to that and in some cases enhance ability and even friends(even with the drawback) will be better for most the game. Really, its C tier. Maybe if you really like it its B, but no higher.
Polearm master works as intended except for the bug. You were kinda messing up with it, your tav was often in range of the enemies so it wouldn't trigger or the weapons they were using was outside your reach. This is best used with something like Enlarge. The reaction attack allows you to cover a large area. I'm using it on my paladin and its been great there. I don't think its higher because the bonus action attack doesn't benefit from great weapon master like it does in 5e.
I haven't touched savage attacker. I'll have to try it. The wiki says it works with the rider damages so sounds like its better than I thought.
I'll admit the performance expertise isn't so useful, but deception is quite common and is far better than guidance and it stacks with guidance, enhance ability etc. Also it's a half-feat for Charisma, and while we can use the hag's hair, there is only one hag's hair available.
I guess I need more practice with polearm master!
For heavy armor master, it really gets to shine in act 3 with the armor of persistence, which has both magical plate (-2 damage) and permanent Blade Ward (physcial damage resistance). That means you take half damage and reduce it by 5, so attacks doing 11 or less physical damage would literally do no damage to you.
I can't agree with the Actor S tier, since Performance is rarely needed. I understand your arguments, but it's not worth it with enough characters to be S tier in my opinion. Also, Mage Slayer is surprisingly useful, I would put it in B tier at least. Killing an enemy in their turn, cancelking their spell is very good.
I will say that I would only take actor on a single character in a party, one that has an odd number in charisma and I would respec them to not have proficiency in deception or performance. Expertise is very good, by the end game it's a +8 in the relevant skill checks and deception comes up fairly often. Like you said though, performance isn't so common.
I love the idea of mage slayer, and perhaps I didn't use the character with it correctly, but when I took it I didn't get many chances to actually use the reaction. I'll try to give it another go.
I like how you approach these feats; it's quite a different list from the ones I made. Everything A-S is well justified; I personally veer away from ModArm because of how absurdly powerful Surprise rounds are with Stealth advantage cheese and how I manipulate hit chances, statuses, and my characters' AC values (usually in the mid-20s). I can see why you rank it highly, though.
Great video, my friend!
kinda late to the party, but:
1. Magic initiate can be good for specific builds, and if you need the stuff it's better than multiclassing so you can keep level 12 stuff like a level 6 spell slot. I'd make that B tier if only for the versatility without losing progression on your main class.
2. Elemental adept allows you to play a single element and not worry about immunities. I'm playing a thematic lightning dragon sorc with only lightning spells and every enemy takes either normal damage, or double when wet. Many enemies have access to lightning immunities either from natural defenses or auras from other crap, in my case I can double cast chain lightning and clear a whole room and never worry that the other dude will resist. Still would rate it as B tier
3. I'd say martial adept is also B, because it's easily A tier for a fighter but not good for other classes.
4. Having musical instruments (other than doing Alfira) you can draw all people's attention for your thief to steal, I wouldn't say it's crap tier, just C.
Other than that, I agree with the whole tier list. This is the one I agree with the most.
EDIT: One more thing about dual wield, it allows you to have 2 weapons and still gain 1 DC, which is not far off from the usual shield's 2 DC. So you lose 1 DC and gain the option of an offhand attack as well as taking any 2 weapons. This enables setups like Lathander's mace and Selune's spear so you can carry a bunch of 1-off spells, blind zombies, resurrection, etc. all in 1 package.
Please do classes, and subclasses next! Love the content
Perform is an extremely underrated ability, you can use it to get up to all sorts of shenanigans by getting everyone in an area to bunch up and/or look in the direction you want them to. For example, go to the goblin camp with a bard and an evocation wizard, start performing, then drop an AoE spell on em. Boom, you just killed like 15 gobbos in one go. Trying to steal the idol of silva us? Get all the druids to watch the flashmob concert while someone else yoinks it. Want to rob a merchant that's always standing in someone else's line of sight? Have someone talk to them while your performer lures the other people away. Boom, you're now free to do crimes.
I agree that perform is good in that regard, however I have a couple of things against the feat. Firstly the action can be learnt from Alfira in the Druid Grove, and secondly minor illusion can do a similar enough job that I don't want to use a feat to be able to perform.
With regards to merchants I'm fairly sure fog cloud or darkness can do a similar job in hiding five fingered discounts, as can disguise self.
Sentinel and Polearm Master is one of the best feat combos as it allows you to stop enemies in their tracks if they go near you, and if they don't have a polearm on their own they can't attack as they are not close to a target. The protection from Sentinel for allies which get attacked now also applies in a wider radius. On their own the feats are decent, together they are great.
The polearm master feat is bugged rn where the bonus action extra attack doesn’t add any of your damage numbers like it’s supposed to so you have to keep that in mind when taking it over like great weapon master for instance
Polearm master is fine on its own, getting more reaction attacks is good and there is at least one good halberd in the game, although this falls off in act 3 because Balduran's giantslayer is the best weapon in the game and doesn't work with polearm master
Adding sentinel doesn't add much because of how fights work in this game. There are two types of fights in the game, fights where you fight one big guy and ones where you fight a lot of small guys. The big guys are almost always large sized and have larger attack radius than you, or have spells or other ranged abilities and don't try to approach you. If there are many enemies pinning one of them every round is of minor importance. There aren't a lot of fights where there's one human-sized melee enemy that you can kite with polearm mastery+sentinel
Overall the "combo" is a two feat investment that limits your build and doesn't add much value. It's a gimmic, not one of the best strategies in the game
@@exantiuse497totally correct
Thank you very much for this video! It was very helpful, I now understand those feats so much better! ❤🎉😊
This video is exactly what I needed! I always have trouble planning character builds
Alert feels like it’s mandatory to have because of how valuable initiative is. You can get absolutely dumpstered on if your initiative is low.
How are you and aestus come up with the same video ideas at the exact same timing? XD
We've both made Spell Tierlists and the next most asked for tierlist was feats, and so it's the natural progression!
Agree with everything except actor being S tier and tavern brawler really deserves a whole rank above S.
I've been tryin to use the same tiers for each video, but I do understand that Tavern Brawler should be in a tier of its own.
Testing polearm master against a team entirely composed of other polearm users was a mistake. They can attack at the same distance, so they don't actually need to enter your attack range, just come next to it.
Crossbow expert deserves B or A tier because it’s very powerful with sharpshooter on a Thief Rogue. Late game you can start barrel stuffing with the aura of murder with no disadvantage for an extra +60 damage from the clothing and two feats plus three hand cross bow attacks. If you hit all three hits then you’re getting over 100 damage even on piercing resistant enemies.
"BG3 uses a d4 instead of a d20 for initiative rolls. Given the lesser random range, bonuses to initiative are that much more important." alert is actually so fking good its pretty much broken good if you dont want to have to use potions for the whole game i would just take alert on literally everyone it just means you get an extra round on each encounter since you will always be going first.
A d6 with "advantage" deals an average of around one more damage while a d12 deals an average of around two more damage, so whether you're using a 2d6 or a 1d12 weapon, that's roughly 2 damage per hit, which I don't think qualifies Savage Attacker for S-Tier
What really makes savage attacker good is the fact that this advantage on damage also applies on each rider that you have on your melee attacks. So if you have a d4 fire damage on the weapon as a base, that gets the effect, if you sneak attack, all of your sneak attack die get the effect, if you divine smite, all of your smite die get the effect. Pair this with the fact that you are attacking multiple times per turn and your damage increase from savage attacker can easily be +8-25, and that's without the hit penalty of GWM.
Doesn't work with Sneak Attack unfortunately :( @@common_undead
Resilient is definetly not S tier, you can basically circumvent most saving throws by being immune to them via items or by simply not allowing the enemies to hit you.
In my playthrough (and mind you i am heavy on dealing damage)
I am lvl 2 cleric, lvl 2 warlock and abjuration wizard, with 20~DC spells and arcane acutity, basically an immortal(for most part) caster with concentration holding up.
I had taken war caster over resilient for a VERY simple reason...
Advantage. No matter what you do, a nat1 is a nat1. If you have advantage it means you roll twice basically making a 5% chance into 5% of a 5% chance if you have 95%. Which is REALLY low.(tho for some reason i sometimes still roll that for ability checks, but that's another point)
Basically it's rare you need resilient.
Bonus: it only makes sense if you don't already have proficiency too, which for example sorcerers get. So if you multiclass and dip into it(which most sane builds do) it is useless. For me that is F tier because of that.
Athlete + high strenght + enhanced leap is soooo cool. You can fly from one side of the battle to other with just a bonus action. Nothing is ever beyond reach.
Performer is really good to give extra charisma to non-face characters so you can have multiple members playing multiple instruments
Oh heck I'm here for the wrong feet. My bad.
PS. Alert is my favorite
Crossbow expert is better than you give it credit for. First, a martial character won't want to switch between melee weapons and ranged because of sharpshooter, you lose a lot of damage not being able to hit with your ranged weapons when enemies are close. Also, the Bhaalist Armor doubles crossbow damage, but requires you to be in melee range. Normally that would hurt your chance to hit a ton, especially with sharpshooter already reducing hit chance. Crossbow Expert solves that. It might not be gamebreaking, but for certain builds it makes you a far more well rounded character by removing ranged build's weakness of having to flee from enemies.
I used Performer on Wyll to even out his charisma while giving a Sorclock the ability to conveniently distract npcs. I guess I could have had him as the face during the Alfira cutscene. That seems like a pretty easily missable opportunity in order to justify F-tiering something that comes with an ability score.
The musical instrument lure is more useful than the proficiency bonus on a toon who isn't the face of the party.
Great vid as always! I want to share some love for Crossbow Expert - it can be a godsend for DEX-based crossbow builds. It's shockingly easy to get a mid-20's AC if you go all in on DEX, which puts you in the weird position of being the best frontliner in the party and also an archer. Crossbow Expert makes this viable, especially when your melee options are underwhelming in comparison. It's not objectively as good as Sharpshooter, but in the right situation I think it can certainly be B-tier.
Charger and xbow expert are very underrated. Charger is great for shield martials (Paladins). Xbow expert is good for shield hand xbow casters (Bards)
On magic initiate The issue is in baldurs gate 3 its probably better to just multiclass because it doesnt use your modifier.
There are some classes that get bonuses for higher levels. A good example is abjuration wizard where the ward depends on the wizard level. So for something like abjuration wizard it could be worth it for the free cast of the 1st level spell.
I mean, I agree that Crossbow Expert is mid, but if Im playing a full archer build with Sharshooter and bonus from combat style, than using my meelee weapon isnt necessarily going to be better.
Not to mention that one of the benefits of playing a fully dedicated archer is that you get to equip one of the melee weapons with bad statistics but powerful passive bonuses
Additional complexity that leads me to sometimes go against multiclass cleric for spell slot progression, illithid powers and some other effects like shillelagh use the casting ability of your most recently added class. So if im sorc 11 and want shield and armor prof, picking cleric will change things like mind blast damage and saving throw to wis instead of cha... Just dealt with this yesterday, mind blast dmg went from +5 from cha to -1 from wis
Not certain if martial classes also change it... Worth testing. Either way i think this is a corner case where the proficiency traits have value...
I like Spell Sniper on Evocation Wizards since they get to add their INT mod to damage after level 10, but it’s definitely a bit niche
Only one I really disagree with is Tough in D tier. I don't know if you just don't use the feat or what, but tough is not equivalent to 2 point in constitution, it's equivalent to 4 points in constitution, as it's "2 points of health per level". Constitution only adds +1 once it goes up, and if you just want/need one point of health, you're better off taking a half-feat. The extra health is MASSIVELY important for certain character archetypes, like life priests which can become nigh unkillable self-healing tanks. (Tough, Heavy Armor Master, Haste equipment, Adamantine, you get the point) The extra health is important for making sure SUPER high damage moves from some bosses don't just insta gib you and give you enough time to heal back up.
This is better guide actually I am familiar with feats mostly by now (not all of them) but I usually go with ASI first for everyone, then whatever class there is... I found recently (dumbass me) that you can only get LIGHT weapons as dual wield and that Feat improves it to Versitile and other weapons.
There’s an OP thrower build that uses Dual Wielder with Bloodthirst dagger to give vulnerability to piercing damage
2 divination wizards, a college of wisdom Bard and a battle master great weapon master fighter all with lucky: I destroyed honor mode.
Putting Shield master in D-tier is bonkers to me.
The function of the feat is easily S-tier. This is like the only way to reduce incoming spell damage reliably on a character.
The only reason to drop it lower is that yes, you probably only encounter a relevant spellcaster every...4 boss fights or so?
Still, it comes up *big* in those fights and sometimes enables plays you couldn't otherwise do. I could understand dropping it to B or A tier due to the frequency issue, but D-tier...?
Also wanna add that "put more into Dex" is a mixed bag as an alternative. You need 4 Dex, not 2, in order to get a comparable saving throw bonus to it. This means that if you wanted the same Dex save benefit, you'd have to take Ability Improvement twice (most characters only have 3 Feats total, so say goodbye to 66% of your feat slots) and dump every single point into Dex.
Regarding Crossbow Expert: Builds using the Bhaalist armour* could make use of it. I use it with the Titanstring, can't think of a crossbow that can compete with that sepcifc purpose in mind, but it could have some solid niche uses. Although its mid/late Act 3...
*Bhaalist armour: Enemies within 2 m become Vulnerable to Piercing damage, unless they are Resistant/Immune
10:50 this is useful for pact weapon (warlock) and warning: you are being attacked by foes with polearms (reach, opportunity attack/shielded -> polearm master/sentinel combo) 11:11 (move it higher by 1 rank)
16:00 only for fire/thunder spell types (create water does better for lit/cold)
26:00 mageslayer is good (counterspell, infernal rebuke are better) for melee mage chasers. (Polearm master/sentinel) or ranger -> possibly "b"
27:00 feat (4)> class dip for 1 lvl (fighter 4,6,8,12 or rogue 4,8,10,12) this is a waste. Imo.
34:40 only rogue, warlock, sorcerer, wizard, monk don't/can't start with it. Monks don't want it.
37:00 44:00 with sentinel, this is awesome, so choose wisely, READ 38:30 (movement of foes is required), and plan. "A" + sentinel or "b" solo
39:00 free with sorcerer (& some gear) (54:25)
Gr.wpn.mast.> sharp shoot.> spell sniper (eld. bl.) are all great. "S-a"
Shield master is not useful for great wpn. master (or heavy xbow) people. "b-c" awesome for cleric/bard (healer/support who concentrate inside sanctuary)
48:30 githyanki has Astral knowledge (almost same), also rogue/bard get many skills as an option.
55:00 fighter,paladin,Barbarian,ranger get this for FREE. Rogue,bard,druid,*cleric* (almost)
I thought crossbow master just made you immune to the threatened debuff while firing a crossbow. I don’t see that as helping shoot a person point blank. That’s so I can attack my intended target without disadvantage.
Your polearm master feat didn't work because the opponents all had spears, which are reach weapons, allowing them to stay just outside of the range of your reaction trigger
crossbow expert is actually pretty good on a dual hand crossbow build
Shadowheart’s are definitely S tier
19:59 when I was hearing you ramble about the heavenly armored feet you dropped going paladin or fighter. The only way that you can achieve heavy armor with these two classes is by taking it at level one, otherwise they will just be medium armor provisionancy. Ranger Knight is guaranteed heavy armor and certain clerics will give you the heavy armor as well.
I'm pretty sure it's a display glitch, and you actually do have the proficiency
Just starting, but I can't agree with puting Ability Score Improvement in S tier. This is important, because Ability Score improvoment is the baseline from which all other feats are judged. If it's S tier, then you have pretty much defined all other feats as at best sidegrades to the default, and mostly never worth picking.
Because it's the baseline, I would want to put it in B tier, and then judge every other feat based on what it does better or worse than Ability Score Improvement. Tavern Brawler for example is an S tier, because it's equivalent to somewhere between +6 (if you have 17 strength baseline) and +16 (if you have storm giant strength) extra strength when calculating relevant attacks. Compared to Ability Score Improvement adding +2 strength, putting that in S tier is a no-brainer. Of course it's only good for certain characters (throwing or unarmed specifically), but I also believe that things like Feats should be judged by their strongest application. A feat that's pretty good for everyone but not the best for anyone will never be chosen by anyone.
I believe that bringing the main stat of your class up to 18 or 20 is first priority because it's a very strong thing to do, hence the S tier. I would not take an ASI for every feat choice.
I don't think picking tavern brawler is a fair choice in your example since it's well known to be one of, if not the strongest feat. Conversely to that I would say that if Dungeon Delver is D tier then it's not right that ASI is only 2 tiers above, especially if we're using an ASI in the main stat of a class i.e. its strongest application.
As I said in the video, ASI makes your character stronger, whereas (most) feats give a character more versatility, like the depth vs. breadth idea I mentioned.
I personally wouldn't consider the feats at C or lower worth taking most of the time for someone who is trying to play without RP in mind, B worth taking for certain classes/builds and most of the time I would take A or S tier feats.
Putting ASI at B is too much of a disservice to it in my opinion since it's a choice I take on all characters at some point. I cannot say the same for any other feat and that's why I mention opportunity cost for the lower tiered feats. My guess is that most people take an ASI at least once on their characters, but without data from larian I obviously cannot back that claim with any evidence. If that's the case then I don't see why it shouldn't be S tier, but we'll have to wait and see if Larian will release that data to be sure.
In the end I am agreeing with the fact that most feats are not worth taking over an ASI. We usually have 3 feats per character, although multiclassing can lower that number, so there will be at least one time that an ASI isn't taken, sometimes 2. If I want my character to be better at what they already do, there isn't much better than an ASI, and that's why most of the so called "half-feats" are also ranked highly because they can make an ability score be even as well.
Wow Crossbow Expert was nerfed to the ground. In 5e it's one of the best feats in the game, because with it every ranged attack doesn't have disadvantage within melee range, including spells.
Magic Initiate Bard is pretty nice to have a BA Cantrip when using the Band of Mystic Scoundrel in early Act 3. I like using the Wyll Rapier for a full CHA scaling Paladin using that.
Also, unfortunately, ritual spells from that feat can’t even be cast as rituals, so you’re better off with ritual caster for that
I've noticed spells from Ritual Caster don't cost Spell Slots. Though I did pick them on a class without Spell Slots so maybe that's why? You can basically just cast Longstrider on everyone after long rest for no cost.
All “ritual” spells cost no spell slots to use outside of combat, but in combat require spell slots
I would say Dual Wielder is also especially good on the Thief subclass. Combine that with a class like Fighter, Ranger or College of Swords Bard for Two-Weapon Figting and it's pretty nice.
As for Heavily Armored, I'm pretty sure you can't get Heavy Armor Proficiency from multiclassing, unless they changed it (except of course the Ranger one).
Edit: Accidentally hit the send button.
You can also get heavy armor proficiency from some of the cleric domains, as the proficiency comes from the subclass and not the class itself. But as you said multiclassing to Fighter or Paladin won't work, in that case you'd need to respec and take them as your first level. This will also affect your saving throw and skill proficiencies which you might not want.
you can just start as a fighter if you intend to multiclass into it
Why is Moderately Armoured so high up? You can just multiclass to get medium armor and shield proficiency just like all the other equipment proficiency feats that you placed low.
Awesome video. Could you rank only spells that have a save DC? Then a separate one for spells that don't have a spell save DC possibly?
May I make a suggestion? While recording, turn off the in-game music, and then add it over in post. It gets odd and choppy when you edit out pauses. :)
Nice Video. Thanks
One interesting combination I know from 5e dnd (not sure if it works that way in bg3) is having both Sentinel and Polearm Master. It lets you make an opportunity attack when someone comes into your increased range, but before they are in range to hit you if they aren't using a reach weapon, then Sentinel makes them lose their movement. In essence, a Sentinel/Polearm Master character will be unable to be hit by any melee opponent without reach.
Also, one thing I feel like you didn't touch on enough is the opportunity cost of multiclassing as opposed to taking a feat. By the numbers, you're right that there are many feats that are just worse than taking a level in another class, like the armor proficiency ones. However, by taking a level in another class you are both delaying your next level in your main class as well as capping how high you will ever be in that class. Sometimes that opportunity cost is just too great to consider multiclassing.
The movement system of the game broke Sentinel and Polearm Master. If the game had a grid like the TTRPG 5e is most commonly played, those two feats would be great on their own, and monstrous when combined.
What’s the difference? Combo worked well when I tried it a month ago, people would step closer and get hit with the reaction and then stopped out of range and I could back up on the next turn. Multiple enemies could get around it tho
@@muscularclassrepresentativ5663 BG3's movement system is not reliable enough to quarantee your positioning will work as you want it to.
Medium Armor and Shield Master are great on Life Shadowheart with Adamantine Medium Armor and Sentinel Shield. With Warding Bond Rings for her and a Vengeance Paladin makes them almost an unkillable due, short of resistance bypassing spells and super high damage.
Early game ‘Lucky’ is very good because your casters like Shart miss half of their spells.
Thanks!
Sadly polearm master and sentinel doesn't really turn out to be a broken combination like tabletop...
Some feats that are generally not that great can be pretty good on a specific character. Two weapon fighting on a college of swords bard that has the two weapon fighting style synergies pretty well. Also, I'd usually never go for any of the initiate feats but a college of lore bard with magic initiate sorcerer is quite nice, you can have some of the more offensive cantrips which the bards typically lack, ray of frost + the ring that amplifies frost effects is great and take magic missile without having to sacrifice a magical secret to get it which combined with phalar aluve shriek can hit hard. And you get all of that without having to sacrifice a feat from multi-classing.
Wow ritual caster is terrible i guess the saving grace is they are added to your spell list but most of those things are easy to come by.
Does Tavern Brawler works with Druids attacks in wildshape form?
great weapon master does not work with polearm master's bonus attack
You should do a concentration spell tier list
how did you get a 15 spell save dc at level 3. i'm level 4 and have dc's of 13-14
I feel MI:Warlock is substantially better than the others as it gives access to Eldritch Blast and Hex. Maybe it's just me not seeing the benefit to the others.
I don't see the point in going MI warlock when you could be taking a two level dip into warlock for agonizing blast + repelling blast/devil sight and hex a lot more frequently than just once/long rest.
@@common_undead dont encurage it either unless you need lvl 6 spell slots. just mentioning it because i dont feel it's on the same tier as other MI's
in my opinion shado hart feet are the bestch
Severely overrating savage attacker imo, bulk of our damage usually comes from static modifiers so any potential gain from sa is just negligible and the opportunity cost of getting some other feat or just boosting our maim stat is way too big
Agree to disagree about great weapon master. Which you are way smarter in this game then me, so I am probably just wrong. However, (big breath)
1. Hitting with a crit or killing to use a bonus action attack is nice, but that ignores that you often (not always) already have a use for your bonus action, so its likely opportunity cost.
2. The -5 to hit is quite devastating on difficult fights, which is where you would want that bonus damage the most ironically. Yes, you can off set this via other bonuses, but those bonuses might be needed to hit base, causing you to miss all the same.
3. Where this feet is the most effective is against alot of squishy targets, which is where I have found least impactful oddly enough. Yes, you may be able to smash through alot of goblins quickly at the end game with this feat, but you likely could do that already, so its just win harder.
The best use I have tried for this personally in bg3 was with a hunter ranger, where I typically could hit up to three targets in a single whirlwind, effectively attacking up to six times a turn. Yet, I found that the amount of misses led to longer fights despite the extra damage rather than if I had just used a normal whirlwind, hitting all my targets for already large damage. Plus I had to decide if wanted to hunters mark the most important target before I swung or hope to crit with the whirlwinds to bonus action attack after I swung.
All that said, Great Weapon Master is a long beloved feat in 5e and I believe it is in BG3 as well, not to mention that the math has already proven it a must have feat for martials in 5e to keep up with spell casters (which I admit that I hate it for being a tax). Maybe I have been unlucky, but I have always just seen it barely do better than leaving it off. I would drop GWM all the way down to a C, a D even if there werent already some feats that are sadly just misses and playing on honor mode has only reinforced my belief in that.
Also, love your vids and all of that written above was just to add a comment on the video, so I am not trying to give you a headache boss.
swap Alert and Actor, and its golden!
I'm at the beggining but it's obvious you know what you're talking about. I saw a different feats tier list video and the guy there put ASI at B-tier. That's when I knew that it will be garbage, and I've stopped watching. Here it's automatically at the S-tier with a great example from Shadowheart DC and spellslot improvement. Night and day difference.
Yeah I’m banning TB from my runs it’s just too nuts it breaks immersion