Yeah - the choice to let them do ranged flourishes is an odd one from the beginning, and the flourish just being a double attack is honestly complete nonsense
I didn’t understand any of these mechanics on my first BG3 run. I picked bard because I wanted to use as many skills as possible and discover a ton of the world. Then I tried the ranged flourishes and I was like… wait what Then I found that ring in the jungle and I was like… WAIT WHAT
🤓 Technically Sorcerer (tempest for that matter) is the cannon class because Durge was intended to be the cannon PC and he starts as a storm sorcerer. It's still a CHR heavy class though.
@@TheAzorg true 😂 english isn’t my first language, sometimes I still get confused with some stuff However he does have a subclass tier list nowdays and it’s a pretty good one
Also, for paladins, I think the only reason why they aren’t S tier is actually the risk of breaking your oath lol no other class is forced to change their playstyle bc you picked the wrong dialogue. That being said, it’s actually pretty easy to keep a Vengeance oath so it’s probably not a big concern for most people. Just don’t attack people randomly, I guess
Oathbreaker isn't exactly bad, though you might need to change your build for it, an Oathbreaker/Warlock is exceptionally strong melee combatant that has some useful tools alongside it (fear, advantage, etc) even if you don't make use of summoning undead. It's not exactly going to fit in the same build as Devotion or Ancients, but a Vengeance and Oathbreaker Paladin aren't massively disparate in their effectiveness. It's also a roleplaying game, if you choose a certain action in dialogue, that should effect you, here it totally changes your subclass, and you should roll with that somehow.
Oh my honor mode that I did I was a warlock paladin (mostly paladin) oath of ancients. The oath was annoying as times but it was super strong and my aura really weakened some bosses that use spells as their main damage source
@@kalecraft8906 yep, witch to be fair is a punishment for oath breaking. Oh my honor run I fully changed classes before one boss as I know the choice I was going to do would break my oath
Sorcerers I would wanna note are also amazingly good for action economy, if you decide to go for Storm sorcs. - You get the flight to be able to reposition, so it's almost like a free Misty Step, and it doesn't eat up your movement speed. And Call Lightning is absolutely disgusting 'cuz yeah, it takes up your Concentration, but you basically get to cast several instances of that spell for only one level 3 or above spell slot. So after level 6, you can just put Haste on your storm sorc, or have them chug haste potions, when you want a blaster to deal some insane damage. - Chromatic orb lightning to put a puddle of electrified water under an enemy, then you can dump Call Lightning casts on their head, and if you drink a Haste pot before battle, you can immediately dump three spell casts in one turn for 3 sorc points for quickened spell, and two actions casting and re-casting Call Lightning. And with how much gear you got in the game that makes you accumulate lightning charges, you really get to dish out damage. - You get to cast three Call Lightnings per turn in the same level range where warlocks get two beams of Eldritch Blast, and you still have that on a Charisma class that can be the face of your party to do all your dialogues, and who can take all utility spells outside of Chromatic Orb and the spells they get for free from their subclass. Dragon subclass is also great if you want a tanky sorcerer that gets to really make a chosen element shine, ideally Frost in that case, and if you go for a White Dragon sorcerer you get to make GREAT use of the ice staff you get in act 1. And wild magic is wild magic. - Randomness and fun if you're bored of predictable playthroughs.
The flight uses a bonus action, so in that sense it's worse than misty step imo. You can get loads of misty step scrolls so if you really want to reposition, just use misty step. You can just chug Icarus potion before a fight and now you have way better movement
Don't know what you are talking abaut then you say "reposition". Take alert and ALWAYS get a first turn and set the battle field how you want it. I'm nearing the end of my Wild magic sorc playtrough and most of the time my first turn is - cold spell (lvl 5 spell that does damage in huge area and leaves that area frozen) and then quicken and use blink and step back abit. That's how pretty much every single first turn goes with that sorc. Unless there's only 1 boss then I try to hold person and misty step. But either way you getting first turn as sorc dictates how the fight will go 9 times of the 10.
@@TheEstafista When you're playing on the higher difficulties, Tactician and Honor, and you're not modding to have overpowered skills or be ahead of the levelling curve, you do often enough encounter fights that take more than one turn cycle to finish. - And in those fights, enemies move, you know? No denying that Alert is a great feat, but given that you only get three feats, you might wanna use that feat for something else. "Reposition" is exactly what it sounds like, enemy got close to you and might attack you next turn? Or you're close to your allies and could have 2 folks targeted by an AOE spell? Just move. - Move to some place you can't access by just walking there, even, like in the goblin camp, just smash the ladders and when the fight starts, have your storm sorc fly up on the rafters. Also, if you get an enemy in melee range, you can fly away without issuing an attack of opportunity.
As for the rogue, you can clear many encounters solo by using cunning action hide. If they can't find you they burn their turn. I cleared the entire spider cave up to the boss with just the rogue and didn't take a single hit. I feel like if you have a rogue in your group and you are using group mode you are just using rogue wrong. Rogue is the strongest class in my opinion outside of boss fights.
Yeah, but that's the thing. Ultimately you do play the game to simulate a dnd group, not "rogue + three random guys". If there's one thing I hate about encounters with rogue, it's having to constantly sneak someone into combat, starting the combat, switching to the next, getting them into combat, switching to the next... By the time I'm done setting everyone up, I spent more time switching and moving characters, than actually fighting. And all that for one sneak attack. Just gimme gloomstalker, who gets to wear heavy armor, go invis for free and get way more attacks. It's still a game. I'd rather play the game, than micromanage and move, just to get a crit with one guy, while the rest of the team has to wait for their nonsense to be done.
Agreed My rogue almost never takes any damage + with the right gear you can make them super mobile My rogue + Astarion cleared the entire goblin camp together, taking almost no dmg
Aura of protection could raise Paladins to S tier on honour mode, given how helpful it is on very important dialogue saving throws, specially the ones at the creche, which is in an area you can't usually get inspiration in.
Paladins are *definitely* S-tier in terms of raw power level - the only reason I didn't put them there is just that they're greedy for items and require a little more party support than the 3 S tier classes. You could throw a sword bard blindfolded at a dartboard to replace any character and it would make the party stronger, but I think there are some setups where that wouldn't be true for paladin
@@Cephalopocalypse Haha, very unfair to compare any single class with sword bards. I agree with the item dependency argument, it's just that to me, Paladin is the class every other greedy class is comparing themselves against, so I'd put them in S tier.
@@Myth0l0gic Most are, but sometimes you get saving throw options, and some of those are very important. Stuff like reading the Dark tome, drinking beer with the undead bartender, using the zaithisk, etc
Rangers are wisdom based if monks are wisdom based. It's a split stat at best. Like how a Barbarian would have dexterity as a secondary (really a tertiary because of constitutiom). Wisdom isn't the stat you're pumping with ASIs, it's dexerity with wisdom being almost exclusively for spell save DCs. The ranger feels like an arcane trickster rogue but for an entire class instead of a single subclass. They're a half caster who's magic is supplementary to their martial prowess.
@@SkyNinja759 The point is that Druid is going to have a uniquely high perception check compared to other classes because they have access to perception as a skill AND wisdom is going to be their highest ability score, so their perception check will inherently be higher than other classes right out of the box.
Monk is S tier. Not a fan of monk per se, but what they do, they do like no other class, even withouth support. Early to mid game they make combat ridiculously easy. They delete everything.
@@SoI_Badguywhat else really matter than doing big damage and getting enemies off the battlefield. I mean cc is good as is healing but that only helps you last in a fight it does not end it. Damage does.
@@Rj-wy8nk most of the fights in act 2 can be skipped with skill checks, plus there are things like Ethel's hair that require checks to get, the Awakened buff, etc. Combat is only part of the game, and frankly it's the most riggable/cheesable/breakable bit. You can solo honour mode with scrolls, throables, barrels and stealth. So you could actually argue that combat is the *least* relevant part of the game for a class to be good at. And even then as mentioned the best "combat" class in the game is probably some variant of sword bard with ring of the mystic scoundrel and the helmet of arcane acuity. You can cast multitarget commands, irresistible hold monster or tasha's hideous laughter, and you don't even need to do damage. Heck I didn't even realize that Tasha's doesn't actually break on taking damage, just offers a save, until I did Raphael on honour mode and knocked him down giggling turn 1 and he was never able to get back up, even when he started taking 5+ attacks per turn because his save bonus was +3 and the DC was 25. Monks are great, but even just in terms of dealing damage there are stronger options out there. Plus without Thief rogue for the second flurry they fall off *bigtime* going from 6 hits to 4 hits per turn. losing a solid 1/3rd or more of their damage.
Hitting enemies for 50-80dmg per flurry of blows on lvl12 open hand monk will never not be the best feeling I got out of BG3. It's probably not optimal but it's so satisfying to just assblast half of Ansur's hp in a single turn with only my monk. God that pack of bones is sturdy in honour mode.
Mate OH monks can quite comfortably solo honor mode. Not at all sure what hes put them in B tier. "They are short rest reliant", at the point of the game where that actually matters you are short resting after every serious encounter, so i dont at all get that.
@@ZeroStyIe perfectly summarized my thoughts if you make astarion a monk thief in honor mode and you give him a cloud giant elixer in act 3 he does 103 damage every punch with ascension from his quest you can self haste yourself with gontr mael and you can get off about 10 punches a round doing well over 1000 damage if the target is held person or paralyzed insanely broken for base game and makes nightmare modlist endgame playable almost single handedly besides sorcerer which is the most busted class in the game no contest
@@firebank this is a single class tier list, so there wouldnt be any thief levels. for that reason monk is significantly worse without multiclassing. furthermore if you are counting guaranteed crits due to paralysis paladin just does more damage due to smites being able to crit, on top of being tankier and having more utility than a monk.
@Thoth728 Does paladin actually deal more damage though? Not even including Tavern Brawler, OH monk gets 2 attacks and 1 flurry baseline, augmented to 2 flurries under serenity which you'll either use as a heal or in preparation to obliterate a target. You also get ki deflagration for another 10ish dmg per resonance target, in this case that would be 20ish force dmg. Paladin gets 2 third level smites and a bonus action. Obviously monk is going to have more variance with the amount of hits he has to land but I'm pretty confident his dmg ceiling is higher. And of course, that doesn't mean I value monk more than paladin, Pal is always going to be better overall, and the comparison is unfair in the first place since I'm evaluating the open hand subclass specifically which is blatantly the hardest hitting of the 3... against an entire class. But still, I don't see paladins doing more dmg unless you factor in haste for 1-2 additional 2nd level smites depending on difficulty settings.
"Rogues basically dont get anything after level 3" A lot of people seem to disregard Reliable Talent. Literally never failing a single skill check for the rest of the game on Honor mode while also never failing a hide check even in combat is really good.
haven’t played a druid, but in me and my friends co-op run the extra hitbar of the animal transformation was huge so many times. meant heals could go elsewhere and the survivability of the druid class is suprisingly good
Druids get almost everything you could possibly want - Great tanking and melee damage through wild shapes - Powerful area control spells - Powerful damage spells - Lots of good summons The only thing I think they really struggle with is providing direct support and saving party members, but when most of your enemies are slowed to a crawl or prone that's usually not something you'd need to do anyway.
People always pigeonhole the Cleric as a healbot with nothing else, but Cleric can actually do it all - Life clerics heal a ton, War clerics have massive melee damage and high AC, Light and Tempest clerics are high damage casters. And outside BG3, in normal D&D, there's even more domains for even more options. Arcana for groups without a Wizard, Trickery for groups without a Rogue (excluding this from the BG3 section because it's awful in BG3), Order and Peace for groups without a Bard, Nature for groups without a Druid, Forge for another heavy melee, Grave for a cleric that has a _30 yd range bonus action Spare The Dying that doesn't take a cantrip slot_
@@LadyTsunade777 I made a point of proving a while ago how even the worst combat subclass of trickery cleric could easily solo the game, and boy was it a blast. There is really nothing to complain about with cleric they are straight up powerhouses like wizards but with even more going for them in melee, armor and weapon choices
I would love a long form video of you and ItalianSpartacus discussing classes. I think you both have good insight and also good differences of opinions. Doing a tier list like this and multiple multi class videos would be extremely interesting, partially due to your differences and also due to your similarities. I also think there is a lot of potential for you both to working together. As a side note I think that a full tactician or honor mode playthrough from you both in co-op would be highly entertaining. I think you two would have great synergy and a high quality of entertainment and information.
That sounds very fun! I haven't watched his baldur's gate videos myself, but I used to watch his total war videos all the time! To be honest, I don't actually know how people go about setting up that kind of collaboration - I'm still pretty new to modern youtube and it works pretty differently than it did in 2011 :P
You can go a lot longer between rest if you just send people to camp when they are at low health and out of resources after a battle just keep your whole party on a rotation until you really need the short rest then do it all again after that rest. You can last so much longer.
@@NerdGlassGamingPA Seems like the kind of thing OP said would defeat the point. The whole reason someone would go without long resting is to challenge themselves to make do with limited resources (spell slots namely), instead of just using their strongest stuff constantly and then long resting. However if they just put people on a rotation to remove that limitation...then they might as well just long rest!
My current honor mode run is with a wizard, ranger rogue, throw barbarian and light cleric. Ive tried all the classes, these are the most fun for me personally.
Other than echoing that subclasses should be tiered instead of the main class due to how wildly different their leves of power are (Wild Magic Sorc is D, and Storm is S). I think a good way to rate classes is based on item economy. For example, a huge strength of the Monk is that their items are almost universally unique to them. On the other hand, fighters, barbarians, and paladins all compete for the same weapons.
@@SleepyGC, fun doesn't mean strong. The only scenario the class is actually useful in is a multilcass with warlock, but this is mono-classing, and it doesn't offer anything very useful, with Wild Magic being a total coin flip on whether or not it's helpful. Then it gets worse when you stack it against Draconic and Storm Sorcerer, which are two of the strongest subclasses in the entire game.
@@Logank192 I mean fair. I find it to be incredibly strong when I accidentally turn a boss into a cat. I meant no hostility with my message just curious about what others think about my favorite subclass
Storm sorcerer is not S tier imo. Most of the skills the subclass has are pretty lackluster and aren't really useful. Pretty much everything this subclass does can be done better by a draconic bloodline sorcerer. Wild sorcerer on the other hand is pretty good, both tides of chaos and bend luck are really useful tools. The only thing holding this subclass back is the randomness which I will admit can be pretty annoying and could potentially kill your run if you're very unlucky.
@@mopp5297, lackluster? The ability to fly at level 1 is not lackluster at all and gives the class a lot of mobility to keep it safe. Then at level 6 you can add extra lightning and thunder damage to any leveled spell that uses those elements, and get lightning and thunder resistance for free. So, if you play a Tiefling or a Dragonborn, you can passively have 3 resistances to elemental damage. You also get some insanely powerful spells always at the ready like Create Water, Call Lightning, and Sleet Storm. Storm's fury at level 11, while nothing crazy, is still useful for repelling melee threats that get through. Storm does less single target damage, but better AOE than Fire Draconic while having MUCH better utility throughout the game, and being resisted less. Again, Wild Magic is fine as a subclass, but as a mono-class, it's one of the worst in the game, it probably is the worst caster subclass in the game.
I don't see why barbarian would be competing for the medium armors without a DEX cap. That feature makes a big difference on someone with, say, 20 dexterity. Not such a big difference on someone with only like 16. And I can't imagine a barbarian build that would go for maxing out dexterity. You don't need it as much for initiative (thanks to feral instinct). You don't rely so much on it for your AC (with reckless attack, you're often going to be effectively lowering your AC anyway, and with rage's resistance, you care less about being hit). A barbarian probably wants to focus on their strength and constitution, and keep dexterity at a healthy 14, where any medium armor is taking full advantage of your dexterity bonus, anyway. Just put the barbarian in some adamantine scale, or +2 half-plate or breastplate, or whatever, and leave the capless medium armor for the characters who'll really get a boost from it.
I think some of the popular builds are Thief Berserks that rely on finesse weapons and sneak attack while abusing the greater number of bonus actions. But for a pure Barbarian, yeah, there's no real reason given that strength and constitution are largely your focus with maybe middling dexterity for AC purposes. Even beyond Adamantine Scalemail, there are plenty of medium armors that are decent and benefit them somewhat more than it would other classes (because your Frontline martial are going to be in heavy armor, and you can get a Cleric into this as well for maximum protection, then if you go with traditional party setup your remaining two are going to be light armor and zero armor depending on composition) so not sure why it would be a factor. Especially as there are enough Medium Armors with uncapped dex by the end of Act 2 to have two of your party in them all the time (which should be sufficient unless your entire party is medium proficiency for whatever reason).
A bit late to the party, I agree with your point and I would add that high AC for a barbarian, in my opinion, defeats the entire purpose of the class if you're playing the character as I think was intended, namely a damage sponge dealing very healthy amounts of damage that gets into enemies faces remarkably quickly. They rely on damage mitigation for their survivability rather than relying on avoiding it altogether, in other words they don't want an overly high AC because they are the class that wants to draw as much attention and damage to them in tougher fights. If you agree with the previous statement then you understand that you can perfectly rely on their unarmored defense for a low to middling AC (15-16), if you aren't going for reckless attacks mind you, especially with some gloves that can be found early in act 1 that gives you +2 to AC if you aren't wearing armor (I forgot their name). Meaning that a barbarian doesn't need to compete for gear in order to function properly and I would even argue that giving them the shiniest armor would be a waste relative to how others characters in the party would benefit from said item. In the case you are sticking to the unarmored defense route you can get them items that pretty much nobody else uses except for monks and MAYBE spell casters. The only strain item wise I can see happening with a barbarian in the party are elixirs, healing potions and other consumables ? The second point I disagree with in the video is how they supposedly put a strain in the long rest cycle of the party because they need to get their rage points back. But depending on the difficulty of the fight you are getting into you decide to rage or not, you don't need to rage every fight, like a spell caster would decide if it's worth using that high level spell or keep it for later, same concept, and that's precisely where having a not too horrible AC comes in handy. Also in fights in which you need to rage it's rare, if relatively well managed, you would need to rage a second time, that's where a high mobility comes in handy as well (and why I dislike barbarian dwarfs), in order to keep hitting enemies every turn. The third rage point comes rather quickly and I heavily doubt you will get into more than 3 rage worthy fights per long rest. I don't think I have ever had to long rest because I had no rage points lefts while the party's spell casters had their relevant spells up, in fact I find myself resource managing the fuck out of wizards and sorcerers far more often than my barbarian, which is normal but not what the video is implying. I wouldn't classify Barbarians as an S tier because I agree they are pretty one dimensional in the role they play, but A tier seems way more fitting to me at least. Anyway rant over, sorry for the long answer, I didn't expect it to be that long when I started writing the comment.
I just finished my first playthough BG3 and I was a single class Rogue the whole way. I have been avoiding videos and web sites like this because I didn't want to be influenced by others' thinking or see spoilers, but now that I have finished my first run, it's interesting to see your videos and other people's experiences. I totally see the points you make about Rogue. I picked Rogue because it appealed to my RPG desires more than any other class, and for the first half the game I felt my rogue was super powerful -- high damage with sneak attacks, good stealth, great thief skills, and great as face of the party for persuasion. That said, I really started to notice in the 2nd half of the game that my Rogue wasn't keeping up with the other classes in my party. That said, I loved every minute of it and would definitely do it again if I had unlimited time. But for my 2nd run, I am starting out as a Bard. It just goes to show how great this game is that even the "worst" class is still incredibly fun to play!
I started an MP playthrough with 2 people who are very new to the game and one guy picked a rogue, experiencing something similar to you. Dude was very hyped about sneak attacks and he's super into trying to hide and get a shot off (even if it's pointless 99% of the time, since I'm standing right next to the enemy for his sneak strikes). He likes to unlock stuff and disarm traps etc. But very recently he's running into the issue of not being able to hit at times, his charisma isn't good enough even with some proficiencies, only being able to attack once per turn (and having that shot miss) is awful etc. I do agree that you kinda have to experiment yourself to get a feel, rather than immediately follow a guide, but I'd also say go all-in with experimenting and try out multiclassing.
@@dowfreak7 I'm well into my 2nd playthrough now, and I'm playing as a Swords Bard Archer, based on Ceph's "Best Character" build. This gives me almost everything I wanted from a rogue -- good party face, stealth and thief skills, etc. -- but the damage I am doing in INSANE! Still having tons of fun even though I have been playing the game since December 2023. If anything, the biggest problem I have now is wanting to respec characters too often so I can try out different classes and subclasses, which takes a lot of time! 😄😄
I chose gith because of how the game started storywise. I chose wizard because I usually want to try all the spells in a game. I ended up in medium armor almost invincible, doing 80-100 dmg per turn just shooting ray of frost. Abjuration ward is just overpowered. With it, I'm also the best healer in the party, I just transfuse health to my entire party and absorb the side effect, and then just drink a potion. I didn't exploit anything or did any mim-maxing. Just going along with what the game offered. I'm into act 3 now and can't wait to find those secret spells.
Another nice thing about Berserker Barbarian is that Enraged Throw knocks enemies with Legendary Resistance prone. There’s no saving throw; if you hit them, and if they are capable of falling prone, they fall prone. I’ve nuked so many bosses by just throwing their own minions at them and knocking them flat on their ass every turn, resulting in the entire party getting Advantage on their arrogant asses.
Clerics are so good, that I'm actually annoyed by how often I feel like I have to have one in my party to fill holes I have. Like, there's soooo many other interesting classes I could pick, but cleric just fits everywhere. Even when I tried making a Lore Bard as a support character, instead of Cleric, I gave them one Cleric level, because I felt like I was missing the stuff that Cleric gets on level 1. Not to mention that they are simply the best healing and party protection class in the game, while also shining offensively in specific scenarios with guarding spirits that are just incredible all around. It's by far the class I have the most experience with and it's always a secondary class to my main build. Even Trickery, as bad as it is in relation to all other paths, is pretty good and very playable.
@@creepsus24 In my experience, Life and Light are mostly the same in regards to power level, though Life is more often what fits my party more. But, yeah, Light is very good.
@@yvaskhmir life cleric is good. I find the buffs from The Whispering Promise Ring and The Hellrider's Pride are not needed on a minmaxed party. I had both equiped on my Light Cleric and I switched to the Radiating Orb/Reverberation gear as healing buffs are not needed when your party isn't taking a lot of damage.
Rogue doesn't do sneak attack once per ROUND, which is what you said first, you corrected yourself to turn later, which is correct. What you may not have put together is that with sentinel and moderately armored, you can get an opportunity attack in most rounds because the AI won't want to attack you because of high AC. Also with a certain dagger in your off hand in very late game, you can get an unlimited riposte feature!
You don't need moderately armored with the right race. Saves you from taking a mid tier feat. Also don't take medium armor master as a rogue cuz it locks your medium armor with exotic material to +3 even though it should be uncapped
Berserker Barbarians have become brutally fun to play once I figured out that frenzied throw/improvised weapon bonus attack _doesn't_ give you frenzied strain, and how useful thrown weapons are with the frenzied throw especially. I basically only play Berserker now when I do Barbarian - used to really, really like the Eagle Wildheart Barbarian, but unfortunately the setup doesn't always work and it eats into bonus action economy so badly that 99% of the time you won't be able to do your cool eagle dive maneuver, as awesome as it feels to get it, both because of how awesome it looks and the +2 you get in melee from high ground bonus, technically.
Enraged throw also doesn’t give the target a save roll against falling prone. Bosses on Tactician difficulty and up get Legendary Resistance, so they pretty much only lose saves if they roll a 1 or if you Baned or Reverbed the hell out of them first. Enraged throw doesn’t care. If you have a STR of 20+ you can throw pretty much any medium creature you want. Larian might have patched it now, but nothing gave me a bigger dopamine rush than watching Karlach overhead throw a Necromite into Ketheric Thorm and knock him flat on his ass.
@@mitchellsidebottom9271 Extremely true. My mouth was was kinda agape when I found out it just doesn't give you a save, you just have to hit, and it doesn't even matter what you hit with. And prone is so overpowered in this game too - I don't know what they were thinking. Ends your turn immediately when you get prone during it, IMMEDIATELY breaks concentration, and you don't even get disadvantage attacking a prone target at range.
Paladin has another plus. If you pick the Vengeance discipline, your pretty much a medieval Punisher. If an npc is evil, or a bad person, your pretty much honor bound to remove them from reality...sorry Asterian, but Frank Castle had no choice 😢
Warlock used to be my favorite class but the fact that i can only cast 2 spells per fight is annoying i don't wanna just spam eldritch blast all fight they have other cool spells as well. I stopped playing warlock because of this drawback
Barbarians do have intense ranged potential with one of the returning thrown weapons, like the spear from goblin camp early game and the legendary djinni trident from the jackpot jungle (idr the name). Similarly, if you prefer a hybrid of ranged and melee, you can just stack up regular knives to throw at people. You can even cheese the Grym fight by stacking torches and throwing three of them at the golem each turn, while one of the characters just sits by the lava valve, making sure its superheated buff remains. This entire build is powered by the Tavern Brawler feat. It activates at level 4 and remains a top tier option to the end of the game.
When grading the classes, don't forget the difference between characters that are best at burst damage but not as good at sustained damage, and characters that are more geared to sustained damage but cannot manage the big burst damage spike. The other thing that really makes a big difference is specific items that can combine on a character to make it strong. For example add the Holy Lance helm to the Luminous Armour and Luminous Gloves..............or add the Luminous Armour to to the Blood of Lathander mace (sheds light when wielded) and the Coruscation Ring which inflicts Radiating Orb on an enemy when you do spell damage while you are illuminated. These can make a cleric build significantly stronger, as can running around with the Spirit Guardians spell up (does, at your choice, Radiant damage). You can make a very strong class by boosting movement speed for max running around with Spirit Guardians up and with these items adding to the damage and debuffing enemies. Since we are talking clerics, In terms of spells a Tempest cleric is strong, because in BG3 wet enemies take double cold and electrical damage. All of this factors into a class when you consider how they stack up to each other in terms of damage. Imagine a character (Astarion for example) as a thief with the Broodmothers Revenge amulet, the Ring of Regeneration, the Derivation Cloak and the Poisoners Gloves for an enemy poisoning, self healing, combo. The same sorts of things apply to many classes and raise them a tier higher or possibly more, than they would otherwise be.
Aye. Any class can be finessed to be ridiculously good. Asterion can be specced as the 'classic vampire' arcane trickster with a bunch of help spells for his stealth antics, making him a one-man spec-ops team. Wyll can become an Eldritch Blast spammer with the occasional massive crowd control spell. Hint: Cloud of Darkness. You explained Lightshow Shadowheart. Lae'zel, the game spells out for you: 2hander Tactician swordmaster. All these things work perfectly well, even if they're not supremely optimized.
Some of the most fun I’ve had clearing groups of weak enemies is to drink an elixir of bloodlust on a tempest cleric and casting call lightning twice per turn. Especially in long combats, if you can manage to take down at least one enemy with your first call lightning, you’re basically getting double the value out of the spell as a concentration spell that you can recast with no cost. SO strong, and so fun. It’s gotten to the point where I use my paladin and Astarion’s actions to throw water bottles at enemies lmAO (though I guess it’s a reasonable way to action economy once my Paladin runs out of smites or can’t reach an enemy, since I have Gale built around ice and lightning damage as well).
after you finish this series, would also love for you to provide an analysis / tier list of common four member party combinations or maybe a video talking more generally about building an optimized group. again, really loving this content, but I think one of the failures inherent in videos like this one is that it's easy to think of each of these classes in isolation. (you do a good job of generally avoiding that) would love to generally just see some party analysis
I can't shake the feeling that I'm making my character weaker when I cast a spell as a wizard or a sorcerer especially in the early game. I end up using my cantrips a lot and the total damage I do with them is a lot lower than everyone else on the team.
Wizards and sorcerers are definitely weaker early on, but as you get better damage and control spells (Cloud of Daggers, Haste, Slow, Wall of Fire, etc), your value snowballs like crazy. Basically, don't be too discouraged early on as a wiz/sorc. Keep at it! EDIT: Also, don't be afraid to use your spell slots if it generates value in the current encounter. You can always long rest afterwards if you're out.
Early game cantrips are inferior to crossbow attack if you have half-decent dex. Also casters are for casting (duh), if you don't use leveled spell slots, they will not carry their weight
Wizards and sorcerers, in general, aren't made for big single target damage. Area control via grease and web and utility from darkness is where they tend to shine most earlier on. But, they do get significantly stronger as they level. Level 5 is a big boost in power for 3rd level spells, for example
So true, I always feel like I’m better off just throwing stuff at enemies between lvl 1-3 when playing a with full spellcaster in the party (missing witch bolt is a popular meme for a reason I guess 😭)
@@beakdd Dont listen to any of the comments here. Sorc or wiz are beasts early, but very long rest dependent, which is fine, because there's enough food/gold in the game to cover you. I've solo'd honor with both classes and honestly, the best advice is just to rush level 4 mono class (Theres a video on how to get lvl 4 in 30 minutes ish, if you search it). Grab yourself dual wield, phalar aluve, spell sparkler and the magic missle neck from the dude in the underdark and keep firing those missle till you get to more fun spells. If your not keen on the MM approach, pick up the the staff of arcane blessing for your OH (If solo, or no one else is using it) instead of PA and then never miss with one of your spells again :) Hope this helps!
Pretty good tier list overall. The only ones I really disagree with are monk and ranger, with monks being towards the top of A tier personally, and rogues being mid B tier. I'd also bump Druid to S tier personally. Among the melee brawler type units, Druids are actually the best in my experience, courtesy of the fact that TB works in wildshape for attack rolls (and damage rolls but not in honor mode), and that Str elixirs work in wildshape as well. An earth Myrmiadon's normal attack does 5 + str mod bludgeoning + 3d10 thunder damage and can knock enemies prone. At 27 str, that's 39 + 9d10 damage a turn with a +20 to hit (an average of 89 damage/turn, which is comparable to any martial with double attack and GWM). While being as tanky as an average raging barbarian (18-20 AC, 127 HP, resistance to physical damage). And besides the Myrmiadon, you get to use your spell slots for summons that last all day that can do a lot for your team comp. (Air myrmiadon can stun and does area denial, Water Myrmiadon can do mass healing and also combos into wet blasting comps, Water Elemental can make things brittle which inflicts bludgeoning and thunder vulnerability, doubling the damage output of your earth myrmiadon form or GWM fighter using a maul, Dryad + Wood Wood, and Ice Mephits).
Another good list! I would probably swap Barbarian & Warlock. Barbarians, even monoclassed, can with Berserker turn bonus actions into attacks (slightly nerfed by losing their first bonus action to rage and get it started), are great for throwing with Tavern Brawler, and basically get a bunch of useful half feats as they level up. Wild Hearts make top tier tanks or controllers. They rank a bit behind well designed monoclass fighters, but they are very reliable in their specialties. I like Warlocks, and they are solid in any role other than healer if you build them that way. But Bards or Clerics are much better Swiss army knives, and pretty much any specialist out performs them. Darkness plus Devil’s Sight is excellent, but it leaves you spending your first round setting up your perfect defense instead of attacking. Hunger of Hadar & Devil’s Sight does genuinely let you hold back a small army. So, that combo is excellent. But there is a helmet and a ring to protect you from blindness, and there are Darkness arrows, so any caster or archer has a way to duplicate part of that combo. That all feels B tier to me. Not bad, just not my first choice.
Thanks! Warlocks get the nod here for 2 reasons: one is sustainability, which I think I care about more than most player, so I suspect that's a big part of the difference in my list compared to a lot of guides, and the second is just that as a charisma character they let you grab dialogue skills, which gives them a leg up on other classes while also filling their combat role. I think the margin is very thin though! Barbarians are somewhat artificially held back by the mono-classed restriction; other than rogue, they're the class that benefits most from multiclassing
Monoclass warlocks get 3 spells per short rest not 2. This drastically increases their endgame power. 9 level five spells per day and one cast of a level 6 is plenty. You also fail to mention hex blades, which use CHA for everything and when equipped properly they get CHA x3 to all melee attacks. That level of damage is pretty on par with the melee classes above them, without the burst. You mention the things they get instead of burst, control, mobility and a few battle winning strats like HoH, darkness + devil sight. But there’s others. They are great counter spell users because they always counter at level 5 and some builds focus so much on EB they don’t need the extra slots. Also they get (almost) all the best control spells in the game hold person, HoH, hypnotic pattern, hold monster, banishment, and fear. Depending on the pact they can also get: command , plant growth and wall of fire. Really only missing access to sleet storm. Unlike other classes I feel like they are great right away as well. Levels 4-6 can be tricky on HM and warlocks have great power at those levels. Then in the end game 10-12, they get their 3rd spell per short rest, and their single per day 6th level spells. Also there’s a warlock specific item to regain a spell slot is it’s really +1 since no other class can use it like the other spell slot recharges. I’m not fretting about the tier lost placement, for me it’s about the discussion not the ranking, I just feel like you missed a lot when speaking about pure mono class warlocks. Thanks as always for the videos!
It's unfortunate because a ranger with whirlwind attack and a certain sword in act 3 literally becomes an unkillable demon, but the problem is you have to get to 11 with a pure ranger 👺
@@Avenged7xJunkie it's not that bad, ranger dishes out the most consistent dmg out of all the class with hunter's mark, crit gear, ranged attack, colossus slayer and on hit gear. Even beastmaster is pretty decent for utility and dmg.
I think the ranger class was originally designed (in D&D) as “I want to play Aragon.” So it’s a schizophrenic mix of shit from fighter cleric and Druid. It got further muddled by a purple eyed black elf with dual scimitars and a magical cat friend, so it’s sorta cursed. Rangers shouldn’t be martial Druids that guard a forest or whatever. Rangers should be the preeminent explorers and adventurers, and while Fighters can do all fighting styles, rangers should do archery *Better* than fighters, (like how barbarians should do great weapon fighting better than fighters and rogues should do two weapon fighting better than fighters)
Your videos have been extremely valuable. Thank you a ton, also I see that league pfp feels like forever since I've seen that icon lmao. I wanted to ask your thoughts on a very workshopped build of 2 levels fighter, 6 monk shadow, 4 levels rogue thief. I realize itd be better with open hand but i wanna do a stealth character with halfling lightfoot and such. Anywho have a good day/night
I think you might be wrong about druid melee damage falling off in the late game, if you pick Tavern Brawler your accuracy will be super high, often you only miss on a nat 1. Druid getting 3 attacks at lvl 10 really carries them hard, especially if you go into Earth Myrmidon form, the damage tooltip is wrong it says 1d10+Str Bludgeoning + 1d10 Thunder but its actually 3d10 Thunder, i find that Druid keeps up with most martials pretty well they probably deal more damage then a barbarian While im playing a Druid I'll adapt my role/playstyle according to my resources, for example if im out of Wild Shapes i'll just focus on dealing damage with a concentration spell like Moon Beam or try to control the battlefield with some CC and if im running low on spell slots i'll just use Wild Shape and go into the frontline or just leap on top of any enemy caster in the backline, so i think Druid can do good in both a short rest dependent comp or a long rest dependent comp, although i prefer having a lot of short rests
It's not that druids do *bad* damage in the lategame - in fact, they do amazing damage (though I think the myrmidon thing is a DRS bug, so I prefer not to count it). It's just that compared to dedicated melee damage dealers they can't reach the same level of burst that you get from an action surge fighter or high level paladin smite, meaning they're more likely to take more than one turn to kill an important target. Just as good or even better for sustained damage over a long fight, but honour mode especially and D&D in general rewards burst damage heavily
hey cephalo, in addition to your lists, which i think are great btw, i think analysing them in 3 ways like this is brilliant, i wanted to add, maybe you could do a separate list for builds that use ilythids the best? Maybe not all possible combinations, but just a little spitball of the pure classes/ multiclass setups that can abuse them the best could be cool cheers!
My first choice was bard because i loved the idea of a musician with a taste of the fine arts fighting. So happens that even evil creatures can't say no to good music and a good story. Don't regret it one bit and i have the feeling even before trying another class, that this will be my favourite of them all.
One thing about rogue, his sneak attack, there is a way to get every round a sneak attack. I used astarion with an amulet or ring that gives him the ability of casting fog cloud and another ring which lets him get immunity to being blind, which means he has the highest initiative, he ALWAYS starts his turn first, he casts fog cloud at the best place there can be for the upcoming fight, where he can target EVERYONE, then he walks there and uses his bonus action to hide. His first round that way is gone, before casting fog cloud, check for mages who are close to him, they might be able to counterspell his fog cloud, but then you can let gale cast another one, which is okay, but not optimal since gale should be concentrating on haste, anyhow. Once the first round is done, astarion from the fog cloud will NEVER be seen. He can make every single round a devastating sneak attack with his bow, you can also lower his chance to crit during hiding down to 18, 19, and 20. You can give him lucky reroll, in case he misses, you can use his luck to hit again, but he barely misses and his crits alone do almost like 100 dmg per shot. Without crit its like 50. Its incredible op. You dont even have to care about his armor or heal him, since he will never be targeted once he is hidden in the fog cloud. Putting him on C isnt the right thing to do. He should be A or B.
Love the list, made me re-evaluate cleric a lot as it is a class I was always fast to dismiss after my first run. I still think my favorite class for honor mode is druid, I just love how versatile they are, and the ability to use the strong summons with a moon druid and be able to basically have no real gear requirements while using a decent tavern brawler wild form set up or just using the Air elemental form for stuns feels so powerful.
There is ONE use for Thieves' Cant, and that if you have a Rogue speak with Roah Moonglow in Moonrise tower, they can get a small discount. What I'm curious about is how you'll be doing the tier list for Multiclass, because the Dungeon Dudes made a Tabletop D&D series where they looked at every single class and their synergy with multiclassing with all the other classes, and compared to staying single class... And that seems like a BIG time investment! Also, I love grabbing a Rogue as my main character, especially if I'm tired of playing a Bard or Paladin, because, especially for Thief or Assassin, you can get pretty good charisma, and thanks to expertise you can get some really good rolls for those checks. Plus, expertise in Persuasion means great discounts at vendors. And the Reliable Talent feature at 11th level, while rather late, does mean that all the skill checks you need to roll will never get a Nat1, since any roll lower than a 10 becomes a 10.
Oh cool! I don't think I'd ever done that - good to know! For the multiclass tier list the plan is to rate them as core classes (6 or more levels) and separately as dips (5 or fewer levels), though I'm open to suggestions!
@@Cephalopocalypse i would like a ranking on core identity. my minthara for example is a bardadin with 2 lvls paladin and 10 lvls swords bard but i dont consider her a bard since all the bard levels only serve to amplify her strength as a paladin.
halsin utterly demolished my first House Of Hope encounter and Ansur fight!!! People always joke that his role in act 3 is to be orin bait (or be a romance option that sits in camp and takes scratch for walks) but i've had a blast taking him to rob banks, kill dragons, free Hope, and destroy Raphael lol. I think that run I gave him war caster, lucky, and tavern brawler feats? Plus got the druid armor and headgear that work for wild shape, and that one ring that the ox ooze drops.
Very nice video! One thing I would say is, it would have been nice to have a picture of each of the spells/traits etc on screen while you were talking about them.
I agree with most of your list but Barbarian should definetly be A tier, being the best tank class by far in the game is just way too strong, specially in HM where enemies deals so much dmg and land attacks fairly often unless you use some hard strategies like hidden your squishies in darkness. I also don't know why you punish barb for competing for medium armor when in reality you can just not use any armor and still be absolutly fine, in fact I always use my barbs with no armor to keep him as my char with the lowest amount of AC so most enemies always go for him instead of my wizard/druid that are concetrating on a spell and are usually using medium or heavy armor plus a shield. I still remmember my first playthrough making using figther to be my tank with a bunch of AC but at the end all the enemies just ignored him and went for my casters bc how high AC he had, and then on my second run I tried barb, out of curiosity, and I fell in love with it bc how easy it is to manipulate the AI with the AC difference.
Barbarians are somewhat artificially held back by the mono-classed restriction; other than rogue, they're the class that benefits most from multiclassing
to be honest from my experience barbarian should just be S tier, even if you go 12 barbarian. You basically get an alert feat, you get savage critical (which is doubly important because you're almost always attacking with advantage), you can go tiger to add your strength modifier twice to bleeding or poisoned targets (which again is ridiculous combined with something like a cloud giant elixir), and I agree completely about the armor aspect. The only armor I would use on a barbarian would be the Bhaalist armor, if you bring a life cleric you have a perma-blessed blade warded poison dipped AoE cleaving monster that can also maim targets when you take your extra animal aspect.
The best tank in the game is not made by the pj class, is made by the items. Radiant orb medium armor + sumatory reductions and halved reductions make almost every char esentially inmortal to normal atacks.
My party of 4 Munks are literally unstoppable, I get at least two actions each round without resting, or sleeping, or not telling the full truth. 4 unarmed Munks are stupid powerful, if your munk needs healing, you aren't doing it right..
There are quite a few items that buff weapons, give some to your rogue and they can do as much damage as any martial. Those murder knives from the Baal cult don't look like much but dual wield and buff them. Astarion in my game is doing more damage than martials and he almost never gets hit because of high dex.
It is also woth mentioning that Warlocks can also get access to summonings (lvl 5 and 6 elementals) through their pact upgrade and I personally think that's pretty sweet.
Thank you, I was looking for a reliable source of such a list, and when I see that someone gives a druid, which has the most HP and probably gains the most, thanks to a short rest in B, and in S or A gives a Wizard, which you only need to level up once in a multiclass to get all its benefits, I know that someone has no idea what they're talking about. The biggest difference between S and A will be whether they are charisma-based characters because that is what allows you to influence the world in the best way. So wizard? You can multiclass Sorceser with him and you have all his spells available to Sorceser which has much better "DPS". Likewise, a ranger who isn't at least an A, really? I understand that the class is boring, but you have two players in one character. Thank you, finally a decent list and not a copy from someone who played every class in the first act (and probably didn't even finish it).
Have to disagree with druids not bumping a lot of damage late game, they are not warlocks ofc but with the tabern brawler fix for druids moon druids are thriving, 3 hits per turn + bonus actions, the subclass specialy gets a massive upgrade with that and the powerspike it's lvl 6 once you get the owlber which is AMAZING
But it’s a comparative tier and they just don’t output as well as other options late game but luckily it doesn’t really matter and a bg3 tier list doesn’t really matter because they are all good, party structure above all else
Luv you Ceph you’re so cool! Too sadge about Rogue, my fav class. For mono life the additional feat at level 10 is rad af and I love the fantasy of the gnarly, sneaky nuke once per/turn to hit the vital organs. But agree: as things progress. You will certainly observe the DPS falling off compared to other strikers, even with the nuke. Alongside oftentimes being locked into dual-wielding, also as you note, cuz it feels so damn bad if you miss. I know you mention the margin between tiers is razor thin, but do you think, say, increasing sneak attack to 1d7 could be an answer as a homebrew to keep hope alive for the DPS?
1d7 or 1d8? Xd I homebrewed something to rogues. What I did was empowering sneak attack to 1d8 lv5 and 1d10 at lvl10 when it was dealt from shadows, hide or backstab
One thing about Bards being skill monkeys that is a little overlooked is that you cannot cast bardic inspiration on yourself. There's an argument for having the bard as a companion and not the party face. Other than that, Lore Bard is 10/10 for inexperienced players. Cutting words, Hunger of Hadar, Counterspell and the occasional Heat Metal will 'solve' basically every encounter until Act 3.
I'd struggle to put wizard in anything but S tier. A pure caster grabbing those level 6 spells with scribe and arcane recovery is already very good, but then you toss on divinations party wide garunteed control spells, transmutation making the already broken item syetem 2x as crazy and transmuter stones, or abjuration letting your team not have to worry about building around the wizard while still having project ward for team play and counterspell bolstering (and arcane ward being its own strong offensive playstyle that does funny things to action economy with oppertunity attacks and enemy attacks), necromancer in general, ect ect ect.. they really elevate wizard to absurd. No sorcerer in damage output, but in sheer problem solving and game altering effects they're hard to argue with.
@@davidhujik3422This is a monoclass list but yeah with multiclassing 1 level dip in wizard is always nice, or dips in warlock/sorcerer/cleric for abjuration, or rogue/bard for transmutation all work really well.
Agreed. And in damage output an evocation wizard with magic missile and 2 or 3 items and an illithid ability on bonus action, they can one shot some beefy enemies or reduce boss hp to half in one turn ( and sorcerers don't have the lvl 10 evocation ability on magic missile which literally doubles the damage of that spell. )
Wizards are bad early game, OK by mid game, and busted by late game. However, I would argue you need to be good the whole game to justify an S Tier ranking and Wizards aren't great early imo.
For every playthrough i tell myself im going to use new classes and it always end up being rougue, fighter, wizzard, cleric. Sometimes ill throw in a bard or paladin but thats it
I have to contend against the C tier rogue. Arcane trickster rogue is the best version of the mono class character. Every level is impactful, and the versatility of the class is insane. It is single handedly the best item usage class. You gain a familiar and mage hand, adding to the party two different sources of very powerful action economy. Mage hand can shove/push or throw items from a stockpile. (With some preplanning, it can just throw healing potions and buff potions wherever you need them in a fight) The familiars are all pretty useful, but the raven can blind enemies, giving them a disadvantage on attacks and an advantage on attacks on them. Also, either of them being near the enemy will give you sneak attack for the rogue. Its a great ranged class for item utilization too. I seriously gave astarion the blessing staff and the headband of intellect so that his dex and con were super high since i dumped int. His other weapon was a long bow, and while i had the familiars get into place for sneak attack. My main character was a socrerer who would twin cast haste on astarion and karlach and they would fuck shit up. Now every class gets better with haste, but the arcane blessing staff is stupid broken with a ranged rogue. Also having a stealth caster that you can just give any staff to and know they'll be able to get into position and open any combat with a cone of cold or fireball giving them enemies all disadvantage is huge. Seriously underated here.
One thing you neglected to mention on Rogues is that , due to being DEX dependent, you are most likely to go first in combat unless you have another DEX-based character in the party, which mean, Turn 1, you can, more often than not, not even be able to use Sneak Attack at all, which gimps their power output even further.
BG3 actually has a clever solution to this in the shared initiative system - as long as at least two of your characters go before the enemy, you can choose the order they act in (and even mix and match actions from each of them within the turn). That way you can have your melee character set up a sneak attack even if the rogue has higher initiative!
Monk being B is kinda crazy. I've done 4 playthroughs and the one I did with Monk was by far the easiest because of their insane power and builds. Taking tavern brawler feat and then drinking hill giant strength potions with extra attacks and flurry of blows lets you do reliably 80 damage per turn and you almost never miss.
S tier for damage, C tier for versatility as you are pretty much forced to do a certain gameplay style or two with Monks that you cannot steer away from. It evens out as a B+ tier class for me in the bigger picture but I love them. Completed my very first honor mode run ever with Tav as a monk.
I’m currently doing a monoclass-only run, and in that party is a rogue…I’ll try to make it work but I’m gonna need the gloves of balanced hands and a prayer!
rogue isn't even really a full class, it's just something you "dip" into for other classes. barbarian in particular while low on this tier list becomes S tier when dipping into rogue's thief subclass which turns the extra bonus action into an extra attack.
Same with fighter, but it stands a bit more on it's own two feet than rogue. It's primarily a multi-class dip class for the weapon/armour proficiencies and action surge. Anything else is just unique flavouring and is probably better to just rank up your primary class.
I'd also argue for the spell casters; a detriment is you have to pay attention to what the spells do. You also need to know which spells are actually good/best to take. So that can be a lot of research that you don't necessarily need to do with the melee characters. You can fuck up a spellcaster a lot more easily than a melee build.
40:30 Counter argument - Radiating orb builds. The luminous gloves exist, so does unarmed monk. Not taking Tavern Brawler, but stacking radiating orb through luminous gloves or the gloves of the belligerent skies, or just things that modify the amount of damage dealt like the callous glow ring. Attacking so many times a round makes stacking rider effects super easy
Honestly, I think removing Smite from paladins would make them much more interesting. Or at least make Smite use a different ressource than spell slots. Because as fun as Smite is, at least to me, it always feels like I am missing out on doing a Smite, if I use my spell slots on anything else than Smites. But if I only use Smites, I also feel like I am missing out on the many other cool spells that Paladins can get. Last time I played Paladin, I didn't even look at my spell slots as "spell slots", but rather as "Smite slots".
I think I get what you mean with the paladins though, people just see them as vehicles for smiting and the devs made breaking your oath like getting a speeding ticket rather than a life altering event. The best case for what you’re suggesting is to just multiclass with with a warlock, they refresh 2 slots every short rest, and that means you can make significantly more powerful and intentional attacks
Did you forget Warlocks get a 3rd spell slot in late game? Feels weird to mention powerful late game features like Rangers then not mention them getting 9 lvl5 slots per long rest (or 12 if you have a bard in your party)
The only thing I REALLY disagree with in this list is the Rogue. I think people get so hung up on how strong the Rogue-dip is for thief and assassin in terms of enhancing OTHER builds and playstyles, that how well the single class actually plays really gets overlooked because idk, it looks pretty straightforward? People really don't seem to get how crazily good uncanny dodge, evasion and reliable talent actually are ALL TOGETHER in practice. So they won't do as much damage as a fighter, paladin or sorcerer, but they'll consistently outlast them in tough battles due to the significantly reduced damage they take. They're still almost as versatile as a Bard, they can easily act as the party face bc unlike Bards they're S A D, get the same number of skills and expertise and ALSO get 4 feats. They fit just as well into basically any party composition but come with a more distinct playstyle. In any case, all I'm saying is there is just NO WAY that Rogue is below Barbarian and Monk 😂 Rogue's do great damage, they're WAY more versatile than either a Barb or Monk, and way more survivable than a Monk. There's just no way ya'll are putting the only class that gets 4 feats, 4 expertise, evasion, uncanny dodge & reliable talent, a 6d6 attack per turn (at lvl 11), up to 3 attacks per turn AND the most versatile action economy in the game, in the bottom rung. As well as being THE single most S A D class of them all. You have more wiggle room with your feats on a Rogue than with any other class. There's just no way. 😂 Imo Rogue is A tier, I'd put it below Fighter (S tier for me personally) & Paladin and on par with everything else in the A tier. And that's without even going into the races lol, on a Duergar, Githyanki or Gnome, the Rogue is an easy S tier. (I'll make the caveat that they're obviously not S A D if you go Arcane Trickster and you definitely don't have the same kind of wiggle room with feats if you want them to be a good AT, but imo the AT only shines on a Duergar anyway). A nice list otherwise though. ☺
Having done honor I'm quite confident in Swords bard archer Eldritch Knight Thrower Abjuration wizard Light cleric as practically unbeatable even as single classes
monk in B tier is kind of ridiculous. Let's not forget we're playing BG3, a game where auntie ethel immediately sells you all the elixirs of giant strength you could ever want. As you say it's a specific build with constraints, but tbh it's by far the strongest thing in the game. Nothing else comes close. Stun and prone bosses and deal ridiculous damage, yep it trivialises honor mode.
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention spell scrolls when you discussed the Warlock class. While it's true that anybody can utilise them, they offset pretty much every downside of the class.
I was completly on board untill you gave Monk "B" and Figher "A". I feel like for most of the game Monk is just stronger than a Figher. Maybe on lvl 11+ Figher is better, but untill that point Monk is better.
I think Warlocks should be positioned at the top of A-tier. All warlocks can gain permanent access to shovel as a familiar starting in Act I. He basically guarantees a surprise attack and offers you the majority of utility offered by Pact of Chain. At Level 10 you can grab life drinker or additional summons from eldritch invocations. I always choose the pact of blades so I can make use of any weapon and function as both a martial and ranged damage dealer. For a true hybrid warlock I tend to pick up mage armor from invocations and wear the potent robe for extremely powerful eldritch blasts. I think the real power comes from the fact Warlocks only rely on Charisma. Mirror of loss and birthright can easily bring Charisma to 20 or higher, freeing you up to grab feats like war caster, spell sniper, alert, or Resilient Constitution/Dex. Diadem of Arcane synergy and Hat of arcane acuity are both strong options to vastly improve melee damage or spell success.
I keep seeing Monk listed pretty low on most lists and I wanna ask how? you make some valid point but I do gotta disagree with most of them 1. From what I have noticed, you almost never finish your KI Points before a Spell user runs out of Spells Slots even if you spam them for the most part 2. You mention Tavern Brawler but don't mention that once Monk get that feat and max out STR, they quite literally never will miss again and if you add Risky Ring to the mix, you will never EVER see your hit chance under 90% no matter the enemy because your chance to hit is just completely nuts and all it takes to do this is a single feat and a single ring to never miss again 3. While squishy, they also unlock Patient Defense, Step of the Wind: Dash and Step of the Wind: Disengage at Lv2 which they can use at any time at the cost of a bonus action to get out of any sticky situation they find themselves in. Not even including just equipping Misty Step through means of equipment like Amulet of Misty Step 4. Balancing the ability points isn't too bad once you find equipment like the Gloves of Dexterity and The Mighty Cloth A min/max'd monk is easily the scariest enemy in this game, they can basically solo give how overpowered Tavern Brawler is so I don't really get how they are usually listed so low besides players just not liking the punching and kicking fighting styles
@@direraven7768 Monk as a class is kind of basic (you punch shit lol) but combined with the absolutely broken Tavern Brawler feat, it easily becomes a top 5 in terms of damage If we take Tavern Brawler out of the question, it does become a LOT worse with no real way to do anything magic related
I think people sell rogue short. They are hugely dependent on items this is no doubt true. But with aura of murder their sneak attack alone is a 12d6. That's an insanely high single damage nuke in, and you get it every round, with 0 resources used. Yes they are item dependendant, its not like a fighter where you just pick up whatever through a playthrough. They have a big mid game slump that other martials dont but late game their damage is on par or higher than any other martial with that 12d6, plus your 2d6 and 2d4 from each of your legendary daggers. Not even factoring in flat damage boosts. A fighter by comparison will get 6d6 with their 3 attacks. They get better flat damage boosts with gwm but that hurts your chance to hit, but does boost your damage but even then, its not going to come out as high as 13d6 and 2d4
Rogue Thief should be higher. 1) Dovetails with any other Class in a Party. 2) Easy to play, not micro management intensive. 3) With various Dual Wield options, has potential 3 Attacks per round 4) Not resource dependent. 5) Self Sufficient. 6) In game Crit Chance gear stacks, made for Rogue = Massive Damage 7) Haste on Rogue is no brainer for 4 Strong Attacks 8) Advantage on every Attack easy to achieve. 9) Scouting/Exploring/Thieving - best in game, and is 80% of game play. 10) S.A.D. Easy spec into CHA for Party Leader. 11) Ranged or Melee is permanent option. Honestly... I think it's S Tier, because it is the best "Hub" of any Party Construction from beginning to end. My first playthrough was Rogue-Thief. Second Playthrough, Astarion is a permanent fixture... he just slays the most powerful foes on the board each turn. The rest of the Party just mops up.
I think of Rogue Thief as an Assault Rifle that has loads of Swap Out attachments... Grenade Launcher, Laser Sight, various Scopes, Extended Mags, Silencer, Muzzle Breaks, Mag Sizes, Utility Ammo etc... Keep the Thief, swap out Party Members depending on the Mission.
Warlock should be high A in my opinion; great damage, control and, most importantly, super powerful linguistic skill checks particularly in act 2 - with regards to the amount of boss battles one can literally skip entirely due to high CHA and skills like "dark one's own luck". Obv Warlock is much much more powerful with multiclassing which isn't the point of this vid, but still as a pure lock they're quite strong.
My last playthrough was with a monk and it’s easily my favorite class. The damage I deal is devastating, plus I have access to great spells, but since they’re not technically spells, they’re immune to some of the most annoying counterattacks in the games like Counterspell and Silence.
I very much disagree putting Rogue on the bottom of the tier list. In almost every honour mode run I've done, I hire Brinna the Halfling and respec her as a rogue to be my dedicated thief. You said there are only 2 reasons to have a rogue yet failed to mention THE most important reason to have one in the party: Lockpicking/Pickpocketing. Once you reach higher levels, sub-10 rolls get modified to 10 (with exception to critical failure, which is why the Halfling Luck trait is so important). I played one Honour mode run where I opted not to pickpocket/steal/use a rogue: It was painful and detrimental for my run. Since you chose to dedicate this tier list with the limited scope of a "Single class build", I will counter what you said about rogues being limited by not having an "extra attack": That's because two of the subclasses basically do get an extra attack function already. The thief subclass is the most obvious one by combining the bonus action with dual wield setups which allows thief to achieve more attacks early game than a fighter does. Only at level 5 does the fighter start to keep up/exceed the thief since it gets action surge as a means for more attacks. Though I would note that is a one per battle "overcharge" vs thief, whereas the thief can be attacking 3x a turn every turn. The assassin is the other if played correctly. Assassins recover their spent action/bonus action upon entering combat, which means if you get the drop on the enemy you get an additional attack on the first turn where they are likely already surprised (akin to the Gloomstalker, but in my view better). The fact that all hits will be automatic crits makes the damage output potential of Assassins higher than one might suspect. By limiting the scope to a pure rogue Assassin as opposed to multiclassing, that STILL means you get 2x Sneak attack criticals (which will add 6d6 then doubled since we're assuming it's a level 12 Assassin) while the enemies are still surprised. Damage output capped? Yeah... Capped higher than many other classes. If rogues got built in extra attack they'd be even more juiced than they already are. If the counterargument to this is that you're looking at the base class and not any of the subclasses, then this whole tier list is worthless since the arbitrary constraint of single-classing guarantees that each class will have to pick a subclass after level 3.
What does having a rogue have to do with pickpocketing? Every class needs dex, and the game gives you guidance(1d4), shapeshifter ring(1d4), that other ring(+2) and advantage on sleight of hand checks all basically for free in act 1. Pickpocketing is going to be trivial no matter what you do. And very quickly gold becomes a limitless resource even if you don't pickpocket
Monk in B tier? Highest damage class in the game without even adding thief in. Hmmm. Sword bard's utility isn't enough to cdompete with the fact that a well made monk can one round any boss (other than ones with Unstoppable and the flying lad beneath the city). Ranger in B tier? We are playing very different games.
It's funny that monk and barb are B tier when their builds are easily some of the strongest in the game. They may lack versatility but that's just the nature of how they're played. You can't stack a party with full casters since you'll probably be missing out on items to optimize them well enough, and in terms of consistent damage, monk is one of the best in the game. You talk about things like the tempest storm sorcerer, and while it deals a shitload of dmg, you can only use it 3 times per fight before you have to rest. Whereas monk will do consistently, anywhere from 150-200 dmg per turn for a good 12 turns. Easy. Same goes for the Barb with the throw build. Yes they both need tavern brawler but it's a super strong feat. Great tier list but yeah just because you're a versatile class doesn't mean you're better than a mono class in the combat. Outside of combat (i.e., persuasion checks etc.), absolutely.
Agree with all except Ranger. I can't justify ranger as an A tier class. They do their jobs and they do it competently but fall behind classes like paladin and fighter in their role while being less versatile, IMO. I'd move them to B but other than that think you nailed it.
Okay, barbarian is S Tier or AT LEAST A Tier. Totem of the bear gives resistance to basically all damage to the beefiest class. Not to mention that means all healing whether by magic or potions is effectively doubled in its effectiveness. Also, great weapon master, enough said. Also, there is an Eagle totem build with the athlete feat that can jump across any battle map, essentially always has advantage without using reckless, and knocks 1-2 enemies prone every turn. Barbarians are insane if you build them correctly
Whoever balanced Sword Bard was like "lets slap 4 attacks per round on full caster, what bad can happen?"
Yeah - the choice to let them do ranged flourishes is an odd one from the beginning, and the flourish just being a double attack is honestly complete nonsense
And you know what, we'll make a ring that makes them cast control spells on a bonus action, because why not
@@nathanmoreau7077 and you know you know, we'll also make a helmet that gives you +2 to Spell DC per attack (cap +10) as well!
As my main character is a swords bard that utilize everything mentioned here.... I see nothing wrong here 😂
I didn’t understand any of these mechanics on my first BG3 run. I picked bard because I wanted to use as many skills as possible and discover a ton of the world. Then I tried the ranged flourishes and I was like… wait what
Then I found that ring in the jungle and I was like… WAIT WHAT
19:01 Filling the holes in a party. How on brand for bards.
Turns out in BG3, anyone can fill all the holes in the party!
@@garyco766 Fnarr Fnarr!!
@@garyco766Even shape shifters deserve love, bro
🤓
Technically Sorcerer (tempest for that matter) is the cannon class because Durge was intended to be the cannon PC and he starts as a storm sorcerer. It's still a CHR heavy class though.
_... in future You Can't Just Stick Your Hand In EVERY Strange Hole You Come Across_
DND Community: It must be hard to find a class that’s better at everything then every other class.
Larian: Super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Oh Really!?!
Being better at everything is tight
Wowowowowow...wow
Never forget CoDzilla.
Or his bigger, meaner cousin... the gestalt CaDzilla
Larian: oh no, we accidentally created a class that can do anything!
Woops!
Woopsie!
Please do the subclass video before the multiclass video, it would help to fully understand classes before seeing their interactions with each other
I second subclass video
@@lolimmunewhat u mean, does he already have a subclass video?
@@FelipeArthurferpa he probably ment he wants it too, since you're first to ask and he's second to ask
@@TheAzorg true 😂 english isn’t my first language, sometimes I still get confused with some stuff
However he does have a subclass tier list nowdays and it’s a pretty good one
@@FelipeArthurferpa me too mate, had to read it trice xD
Also, for paladins, I think the only reason why they aren’t S tier is actually the risk of breaking your oath lol no other class is forced to change their playstyle bc you picked the wrong dialogue. That being said, it’s actually pretty easy to keep a Vengeance oath so it’s probably not a big concern for most people. Just don’t attack people randomly, I guess
Save scum, or paying money, problem solved. The roleplay is S tier, easily (especially durge paladins)
Oathbreaker isn't exactly bad, though you might need to change your build for it, an Oathbreaker/Warlock is exceptionally strong melee combatant that has some useful tools alongside it (fear, advantage, etc) even if you don't make use of summoning undead. It's not exactly going to fit in the same build as Devotion or Ancients, but a Vengeance and Oathbreaker Paladin aren't massively disparate in their effectiveness.
It's also a roleplaying game, if you choose a certain action in dialogue, that should effect you, here it totally changes your subclass, and you should roll with that somehow.
Oh my honor mode that I did I was a warlock paladin (mostly paladin) oath of ancients. The oath was annoying as times but it was super strong and my aura really weakened some bosses that use spells as their main damage source
The most annoying part of Oath breaking is that you can't respec your character anymore unless you pay the knight
@@kalecraft8906 yep, witch to be fair is a punishment for oath breaking. Oh my honor run I fully changed classes before one boss as I know the choice I was going to do would break my oath
Sorcerers I would wanna note are also amazingly good for action economy, if you decide to go for Storm sorcs. - You get the flight to be able to reposition, so it's almost like a free Misty Step, and it doesn't eat up your movement speed. And Call Lightning is absolutely disgusting 'cuz yeah, it takes up your Concentration, but you basically get to cast several instances of that spell for only one level 3 or above spell slot.
So after level 6, you can just put Haste on your storm sorc, or have them chug haste potions, when you want a blaster to deal some insane damage. - Chromatic orb lightning to put a puddle of electrified water under an enemy, then you can dump Call Lightning casts on their head, and if you drink a Haste pot before battle, you can immediately dump three spell casts in one turn for 3 sorc points for quickened spell, and two actions casting and re-casting Call Lightning.
And with how much gear you got in the game that makes you accumulate lightning charges, you really get to dish out damage. - You get to cast three Call Lightnings per turn in the same level range where warlocks get two beams of Eldritch Blast, and you still have that on a Charisma class that can be the face of your party to do all your dialogues, and who can take all utility spells outside of Chromatic Orb and the spells they get for free from their subclass.
Dragon subclass is also great if you want a tanky sorcerer that gets to really make a chosen element shine, ideally Frost in that case, and if you go for a White Dragon sorcerer you get to make GREAT use of the ice staff you get in act 1.
And wild magic is wild magic. - Randomness and fun if you're bored of predictable playthroughs.
The flight uses a bonus action, so in that sense it's worse than misty step imo. You can get loads of misty step scrolls so if you really want to reposition, just use misty step. You can just chug Icarus potion before a fight and now you have way better movement
Don't know what you are talking abaut then you say "reposition". Take alert and ALWAYS get a first turn and set the battle field how you want it.
I'm nearing the end of my Wild magic sorc playtrough and most of the time my first turn is - cold spell (lvl 5 spell that does damage in huge area and leaves that area frozen) and then quicken and use blink and step back abit. That's how pretty much every single first turn goes with that sorc. Unless there's only 1 boss then I try to hold person and misty step. But either way you getting first turn as sorc dictates how the fight will go 9 times of the 10.
Storm sorc is def the most fun class I’ve played thus far.
@@TheEstafista alert is easy mode feat. It's totally broken
@@TheEstafista When you're playing on the higher difficulties, Tactician and Honor, and you're not modding to have overpowered skills or be ahead of the levelling curve, you do often enough encounter fights that take more than one turn cycle to finish. - And in those fights, enemies move, you know?
No denying that Alert is a great feat, but given that you only get three feats, you might wanna use that feat for something else.
"Reposition" is exactly what it sounds like, enemy got close to you and might attack you next turn? Or you're close to your allies and could have 2 folks targeted by an AOE spell? Just move. - Move to some place you can't access by just walking there, even, like in the goblin camp, just smash the ladders and when the fight starts, have your storm sorc fly up on the rafters.
Also, if you get an enemy in melee range, you can fly away without issuing an attack of opportunity.
As for the rogue, you can clear many encounters solo by using cunning action hide. If they can't find you they burn their turn. I cleared the entire spider cave up to the boss with just the rogue and didn't take a single hit. I feel like if you have a rogue in your group and you are using group mode you are just using rogue wrong. Rogue is the strongest class in my opinion outside of boss fights.
Yeah, but that's the thing. Ultimately you do play the game to simulate a dnd group, not "rogue + three random guys".
If there's one thing I hate about encounters with rogue, it's having to constantly sneak someone into combat, starting the combat, switching to the next, getting them into combat, switching to the next...
By the time I'm done setting everyone up, I spent more time switching and moving characters, than actually fighting. And all that for one sneak attack. Just gimme gloomstalker, who gets to wear heavy armor, go invis for free and get way more attacks.
It's still a game. I'd rather play the game, than micromanage and move, just to get a crit with one guy, while the rest of the team has to wait for their nonsense to be done.
@@dowfreak7 It's really that. The rogue playstyle is really cool but it's a lot of set up. :')
I used one rogue to eliminate the entire goblin camp using that.
At that time my rogue has 3 attacks per turn
Agreed
My rogue almost never takes any damage
+ with the right gear you can make them super mobile
My rogue + Astarion cleared the entire goblin camp together, taking almost no dmg
Really looking forward to the sub-class and multi-class videos!
Aura of protection could raise Paladins to S tier on honour mode, given how helpful it is on very important dialogue saving throws, specially the ones at the creche, which is in an area you can't usually get inspiration in.
Paladins are *definitely* S-tier in terms of raw power level - the only reason I didn't put them there is just that they're greedy for items and require a little more party support than the 3 S tier classes. You could throw a sword bard blindfolded at a dartboard to replace any character and it would make the party stronger, but I think there are some setups where that wouldn't be true for paladin
@@Cephalopocalypse Haha, very unfair to compare any single class with sword bards.
I agree with the item dependency argument, it's just that to me, Paladin is the class every other greedy class is comparing themselves against, so I'd put them in S tier.
Uh... I thought dialogues were straight ability + skill checks, not saving throws?
@@Myth0l0gic Most are, but sometimes you get saving throw options, and some of those are very important. Stuff like reading the Dark tome, drinking beer with the undead bartender, using the zaithisk, etc
"[Druid is] the only wisdom-based character that actually gets perception as a skill" - Ranger has access to Perception as a class skill.
rangers cast with wisdom, but it's not their primary stat - rangers are dex-based.
@@CephalopocalypseSo by "only wisdom-based character", you were basically just saying clerics don't have access to Perception?
sure!
Rangers are wisdom based if monks are wisdom based.
It's a split stat at best. Like how a Barbarian would have dexterity as a secondary (really a tertiary because of constitutiom).
Wisdom isn't the stat you're pumping with ASIs, it's dexerity with wisdom being almost exclusively for spell save DCs.
The ranger feels like an arcane trickster rogue but for an entire class instead of a single subclass. They're a half caster who's magic is supplementary to their martial prowess.
@@SkyNinja759 The point is that Druid is going to have a uniquely high perception check compared to other classes because they have access to perception as a skill AND wisdom is going to be their highest ability score, so their perception check will inherently be higher than other classes right out of the box.
Monk is S tier. Not a fan of monk per se, but what they do, they do like no other class, even withouth support. Early to mid game they make combat ridiculously easy. They delete everything.
Open hand just fists the Absolute
I mean by definition of the things he listed they would be A tier. They do sustained damage better than anyone else. But that's all they do.
@@SoI_Badguywhat else really matter than doing big damage and getting enemies off the battlefield. I mean cc is good as is healing but that only helps you last in a fight it does not end it. Damage does.
Karlach monk + soul coin ❤
@@Rj-wy8nk most of the fights in act 2 can be skipped with skill checks, plus there are things like Ethel's hair that require checks to get, the Awakened buff, etc.
Combat is only part of the game, and frankly it's the most riggable/cheesable/breakable bit. You can solo honour mode with scrolls, throables, barrels and stealth. So you could actually argue that combat is the *least* relevant part of the game for a class to be good at.
And even then as mentioned the best "combat" class in the game is probably some variant of sword bard with ring of the mystic scoundrel and the helmet of arcane acuity. You can cast multitarget commands, irresistible hold monster or tasha's hideous laughter, and you don't even need to do damage. Heck I didn't even realize that Tasha's doesn't actually break on taking damage, just offers a save, until I did Raphael on honour mode and knocked him down giggling turn 1 and he was never able to get back up, even when he started taking 5+ attacks per turn because his save bonus was +3 and the DC was 25.
Monks are great, but even just in terms of dealing damage there are stronger options out there. Plus without Thief rogue for the second flurry they fall off *bigtime* going from 6 hits to 4 hits per turn. losing a solid 1/3rd or more of their damage.
Hitting enemies for 50-80dmg per flurry of blows on lvl12 open hand monk will never not be the best feeling I got out of BG3. It's probably not optimal but it's so satisfying to just assblast half of Ansur's hp in a single turn with only my monk. God that pack of bones is sturdy in honour mode.
Mate OH monks can quite comfortably solo honor mode. Not at all sure what hes put them in B tier. "They are short rest reliant", at the point of the game where that actually matters you are short resting after every serious encounter, so i dont at all get that.
@@ZeroStyIe perfectly summarized my thoughts if you make astarion a monk thief in honor mode and you give him a cloud giant elixer in act 3 he does 103 damage every punch with ascension from his quest you can self haste yourself with gontr mael and you can get off about 10 punches a round doing well over 1000 damage if the target is held person or paralyzed insanely broken for base game and makes nightmare modlist endgame playable almost single handedly besides sorcerer which is the most busted class in the game no contest
@@firebank this is a single class tier list, so there wouldnt be any thief levels. for that reason monk is significantly worse without multiclassing. furthermore if you are counting guaranteed crits due to paralysis paladin just does more damage due to smites being able to crit, on top of being tankier and having more utility than a monk.
Radiant monk is nutty with luminous gear and reverb gloves/boots.
@Thoth728 Does paladin actually deal more damage though? Not even including Tavern Brawler, OH monk gets 2 attacks and 1 flurry baseline, augmented to 2 flurries under serenity which you'll either use as a heal or in preparation to obliterate a target. You also get ki deflagration for another 10ish dmg per resonance target, in this case that would be 20ish force dmg.
Paladin gets 2 third level smites and a bonus action.
Obviously monk is going to have more variance with the amount of hits he has to land but I'm pretty confident his dmg ceiling is higher.
And of course, that doesn't mean I value monk more than paladin, Pal is always going to be better overall, and the comparison is unfair in the first place since I'm evaluating the open hand subclass specifically which is blatantly the hardest hitting of the 3... against an entire class. But still, I don't see paladins doing more dmg unless you factor in haste for 1-2 additional 2nd level smites depending on difficulty settings.
"Rogues basically dont get anything after level 3"
A lot of people seem to disregard Reliable Talent. Literally never failing a single skill check for the rest of the game on Honor mode while also never failing a hide check even in combat is really good.
My personal favorite is Druid just because it does it all. Tanking, casting, melee, ranged. You can’t go wrong!
haven’t played a druid, but in me and my friends co-op run the extra hitbar of the animal transformation was huge so many times. meant heals could go elsewhere and the survivability of the druid class is suprisingly good
Druids get almost everything you could possibly want
- Great tanking and melee damage through wild shapes
- Powerful area control spells
- Powerful damage spells
- Lots of good summons
The only thing I think they really struggle with is providing direct support and saving party members, but when most of your enemies are slowed to a crawl or prone that's usually not something you'd need to do anyway.
People always pigeonhole the Cleric as a healbot with nothing else, but Cleric can actually do it all - Life clerics heal a ton, War clerics have massive melee damage and high AC, Light and Tempest clerics are high damage casters.
And outside BG3, in normal D&D, there's even more domains for even more options. Arcana for groups without a Wizard, Trickery for groups without a Rogue (excluding this from the BG3 section because it's awful in BG3), Order and Peace for groups without a Bard, Nature for groups without a Druid, Forge for another heavy melee, Grave for a cleric that has a _30 yd range bonus action Spare The Dying that doesn't take a cantrip slot_
@@LadyTsunade777 not to mention you literally can't crit around a grave cleric, and it can give anything vulnerability to damage for a turn
@@LadyTsunade777 I made a point of proving a while ago how even the worst combat subclass of trickery cleric could easily solo the game, and boy was it a blast. There is really nothing to complain about with cleric they are straight up powerhouses like wizards but with even more going for them in melee, armor and weapon choices
I would love a long form video of you and ItalianSpartacus discussing classes. I think you both have good insight and also good differences of opinions. Doing a tier list like this and multiple multi class videos would be extremely interesting, partially due to your differences and also due to your similarities. I also think there is a lot of potential for you both to working together.
As a side note I think that a full tactician or honor mode playthrough from you both in co-op would be highly entertaining. I think you two would have great synergy and a high quality of entertainment and information.
That sounds very fun! I haven't watched his baldur's gate videos myself, but I used to watch his total war videos all the time!
To be honest, I don't actually know how people go about setting up that kind of collaboration - I'm still pretty new to modern youtube and it works pretty differently than it did in 2011 :P
@@Cephalopocalypseprobably just gotta reach out to him via DM/Email/Twitch if he has it
if he has a Discord that might be the most guaranteed way
You can go a lot longer between rest if you just send people to camp when they are at low health and out of resources after a battle just keep your whole party on a rotation until you really need the short rest then do it all again after that rest. You can last so much longer.
why ?_
@@NerdGlassGamingPA Seems like the kind of thing OP said would defeat the point. The whole reason someone would go without long resting is to challenge themselves to make do with limited resources (spell slots namely), instead of just using their strongest stuff constantly and then long resting. However if they just put people on a rotation to remove that limitation...then they might as well just long rest!
My current honor mode run is with a wizard, ranger rogue, throw barbarian and light cleric. Ive tried all the classes, these are the most fun for me personally.
Whoa, talk about unconventional! Save some originality for the rest of us, pal.
Mine was a tempest-sorcerer, open hand thief monk, life cleric and battle master fighter. It was AMAZING!
Currently doing sword bard, temp cleric, warlock, and throw barb
My current one is open hand tawern brawler monk, swords bard, draconic sorcerer, life cleric
Other than echoing that subclasses should be tiered instead of the main class due to how wildly different their leves of power are (Wild Magic Sorc is D, and Storm is S). I think a good way to rate classes is based on item economy. For example, a huge strength of the Monk is that their items are almost universally unique to them. On the other hand, fighters, barbarians, and paladins all compete for the same weapons.
Curious as to why you’d say Wild Magic Sorcerer is D tier? I think it’s a ridiculously fun and strong subclass, I’d like to hear your thoughts.
@@SleepyGC, fun doesn't mean strong. The only scenario the class is actually useful in is a multilcass with warlock, but this is mono-classing, and it doesn't offer anything very useful, with Wild Magic being a total coin flip on whether or not it's helpful. Then it gets worse when you stack it against Draconic and Storm Sorcerer, which are two of the strongest subclasses in the entire game.
@@Logank192 I mean fair. I find it to be incredibly strong when I accidentally turn a boss into a cat. I meant no hostility with my message just curious about what others think about my favorite subclass
Storm sorcerer is not S tier imo. Most of the skills the subclass has are pretty lackluster and aren't really useful. Pretty much everything this subclass does can be done better by a draconic bloodline sorcerer.
Wild sorcerer on the other hand is pretty good, both tides of chaos and bend luck are really useful tools. The only thing holding this subclass back is the randomness which I will admit can be pretty annoying and could potentially kill your run if you're very unlucky.
@@mopp5297, lackluster? The ability to fly at level 1 is not lackluster at all and gives the class a lot of mobility to keep it safe. Then at level 6 you can add extra lightning and thunder damage to any leveled spell that uses those elements, and get lightning and thunder resistance for free. So, if you play a Tiefling or a Dragonborn, you can passively have 3 resistances to elemental damage. You also get some insanely powerful spells always at the ready like Create Water, Call Lightning, and Sleet Storm. Storm's fury at level 11, while nothing crazy, is still useful for repelling melee threats that get through. Storm does less single target damage, but better AOE than Fire Draconic while having MUCH better utility throughout the game, and being resisted less. Again, Wild Magic is fine as a subclass, but as a mono-class, it's one of the worst in the game, it probably is the worst caster subclass in the game.
I don't see why barbarian would be competing for the medium armors without a DEX cap. That feature makes a big difference on someone with, say, 20 dexterity. Not such a big difference on someone with only like 16. And I can't imagine a barbarian build that would go for maxing out dexterity. You don't need it as much for initiative (thanks to feral instinct). You don't rely so much on it for your AC (with reckless attack, you're often going to be effectively lowering your AC anyway, and with rage's resistance, you care less about being hit). A barbarian probably wants to focus on their strength and constitution, and keep dexterity at a healthy 14, where any medium armor is taking full advantage of your dexterity bonus, anyway. Just put the barbarian in some adamantine scale, or +2 half-plate or breastplate, or whatever, and leave the capless medium armor for the characters who'll really get a boost from it.
I think some of the popular builds are Thief Berserks that rely on finesse weapons and sneak attack while abusing the greater number of bonus actions. But for a pure Barbarian, yeah, there's no real reason given that strength and constitution are largely your focus with maybe middling dexterity for AC purposes.
Even beyond Adamantine Scalemail, there are plenty of medium armors that are decent and benefit them somewhat more than it would other classes (because your Frontline martial are going to be in heavy armor, and you can get a Cleric into this as well for maximum protection, then if you go with traditional party setup your remaining two are going to be light armor and zero armor depending on composition) so not sure why it would be a factor. Especially as there are enough Medium Armors with uncapped dex by the end of Act 2 to have two of your party in them all the time (which should be sufficient unless your entire party is medium proficiency for whatever reason).
A bit late to the party, I agree with your point and I would add that high AC for a barbarian, in my opinion, defeats the entire purpose of the class if you're playing the character as I think was intended, namely a damage sponge dealing very healthy amounts of damage that gets into enemies faces remarkably quickly. They rely on damage mitigation for their survivability rather than relying on avoiding it altogether, in other words they don't want an overly high AC because they are the class that wants to draw as much attention and damage to them in tougher fights.
If you agree with the previous statement then you understand that you can perfectly rely on their unarmored defense for a low to middling AC (15-16), if you aren't going for reckless attacks mind you, especially with some gloves that can be found early in act 1 that gives you +2 to AC if you aren't wearing armor (I forgot their name).
Meaning that a barbarian doesn't need to compete for gear in order to function properly and I would even argue that giving them the shiniest armor would be a waste relative to how others characters in the party would benefit from said item.
In the case you are sticking to the unarmored defense route you can get them items that pretty much nobody else uses except for monks and MAYBE spell casters.
The only strain item wise I can see happening with a barbarian in the party are elixirs, healing potions and other consumables ?
The second point I disagree with in the video is how they supposedly put a strain in the long rest cycle of the party because they need to get their rage points back. But depending on the difficulty of the fight you are getting into you decide to rage or not, you don't need to rage every fight, like a spell caster would decide if it's worth using that high level spell or keep it for later, same concept, and that's precisely where having a not too horrible AC comes in handy.
Also in fights in which you need to rage it's rare, if relatively well managed, you would need to rage a second time, that's where a high mobility comes in handy as well (and why I dislike barbarian dwarfs), in order to keep hitting enemies every turn. The third rage point comes rather quickly and I heavily doubt you will get into more than 3 rage worthy fights per long rest.
I don't think I have ever had to long rest because I had no rage points lefts while the party's spell casters had their relevant spells up, in fact I find myself resource managing the fuck out of wizards and sorcerers far more often than my barbarian, which is normal but not what the video is implying.
I wouldn't classify Barbarians as an S tier because I agree they are pretty one dimensional in the role they play, but A tier seems way more fitting to me at least.
Anyway rant over, sorry for the long answer, I didn't expect it to be that long when I started writing the comment.
I just finished my first playthough BG3 and I was a single class Rogue the whole way. I have been avoiding videos and web sites like this because I didn't want to be influenced by others' thinking or see spoilers, but now that I have finished my first run, it's interesting to see your videos and other people's experiences. I totally see the points you make about Rogue. I picked Rogue because it appealed to my RPG desires more than any other class, and for the first half the game I felt my rogue was super powerful -- high damage with sneak attacks, good stealth, great thief skills, and great as face of the party for persuasion. That said, I really started to notice in the 2nd half of the game that my Rogue wasn't keeping up with the other classes in my party. That said, I loved every minute of it and would definitely do it again if I had unlimited time. But for my 2nd run, I am starting out as a Bard. It just goes to show how great this game is that even the "worst" class is still incredibly fun to play!
I started an MP playthrough with 2 people who are very new to the game and one guy picked a rogue, experiencing something similar to you.
Dude was very hyped about sneak attacks and he's super into trying to hide and get a shot off (even if it's pointless 99% of the time, since I'm standing right next to the enemy for his sneak strikes). He likes to unlock stuff and disarm traps etc.
But very recently he's running into the issue of not being able to hit at times, his charisma isn't good enough even with some proficiencies, only being able to attack once per turn (and having that shot miss) is awful etc.
I do agree that you kinda have to experiment yourself to get a feel, rather than immediately follow a guide, but I'd also say go all-in with experimenting and try out multiclassing.
@@dowfreak7 I'm well into my 2nd playthrough now, and I'm playing as a Swords Bard Archer, based on Ceph's "Best Character" build. This gives me almost everything I wanted from a rogue -- good party face, stealth and thief skills, etc. -- but the damage I am doing in INSANE! Still having tons of fun even though I have been playing the game since December 2023. If anything, the biggest problem I have now is wanting to respec characters too often so I can try out different classes and subclasses, which takes a lot of time! 😄😄
I chose gith because of how the game started storywise. I chose wizard because I usually want to try all the spells in a game. I ended up in medium armor almost invincible, doing 80-100 dmg per turn just shooting ray of frost.
Abjuration ward is just overpowered. With it, I'm also the best healer in the party, I just transfuse health to my entire party and absorb the side effect, and then just drink a potion.
I didn't exploit anything or did any mim-maxing. Just going along with what the game offered. I'm into act 3 now and can't wait to find those secret spells.
Another nice thing about Berserker Barbarian is that Enraged Throw knocks enemies with Legendary Resistance prone.
There’s no saving throw; if you hit them, and if they are capable of falling prone, they fall prone.
I’ve nuked so many bosses by just throwing their own minions at them and knocking them flat on their ass every turn, resulting in the entire party getting Advantage on their arrogant asses.
Clerics are so good, that I'm actually annoyed by how often I feel like I have to have one in my party to fill holes I have. Like, there's soooo many other interesting classes I could pick, but cleric just fits everywhere. Even when I tried making a Lore Bard as a support character, instead of Cleric, I gave them one Cleric level, because I felt like I was missing the stuff that Cleric gets on level 1. Not to mention that they are simply the best healing and party protection class in the game, while also shining offensively in specific scenarios with guarding spirits that are just incredible all around. It's by far the class I have the most experience with and it's always a secondary class to my main build.
Even Trickery, as bad as it is in relation to all other paths, is pretty good and very playable.
light domain is broken, the others are pretty good but not that good still.
@@creepsus24 In my experience, Life and Light are mostly the same in regards to power level, though Life is more often what fits my party more. But, yeah, Light is very good.
@@yvaskhmir life cleric is good. I find the buffs from The Whispering Promise Ring and The Hellrider's Pride are not needed on a minmaxed party. I had both equiped on my Light Cleric and I switched to the Radiating Orb/Reverberation gear as healing buffs are not needed when your party isn't taking a lot of damage.
Rogue doesn't do sneak attack once per ROUND, which is what you said first, you corrected yourself to turn later, which is correct. What you may not have put together is that with sentinel and moderately armored, you can get an opportunity attack in most rounds because the AI won't want to attack you because of high AC. Also with a certain dagger in your off hand in very late game, you can get an unlimited riposte feature!
You don't need moderately armored with the right race. Saves you from taking a mid tier feat. Also don't take medium armor master as a rogue cuz it locks your medium armor with exotic material to +3 even though it should be uncapped
Berserker Barbarians have become brutally fun to play once I figured out that frenzied throw/improvised weapon bonus attack _doesn't_ give you frenzied strain, and how useful thrown weapons are with the frenzied throw especially. I basically only play Berserker now when I do Barbarian - used to really, really like the Eagle Wildheart Barbarian, but unfortunately the setup doesn't always work and it eats into bonus action economy so badly that 99% of the time you won't be able to do your cool eagle dive maneuver, as awesome as it feels to get it, both because of how awesome it looks and the +2 you get in melee from high ground bonus, technically.
Enraged throw also doesn’t give the target a save roll against falling prone.
Bosses on Tactician difficulty and up get Legendary Resistance, so they pretty much only lose saves if they roll a 1 or if you Baned or Reverbed the hell out of them first.
Enraged throw doesn’t care. If you have a STR of 20+ you can throw pretty much any medium creature you want.
Larian might have patched it now, but nothing gave me a bigger dopamine rush than watching Karlach overhead throw a Necromite into Ketheric Thorm and knock him flat on his ass.
@@mitchellsidebottom9271 Extremely true. My mouth was was kinda agape when I found out it just doesn't give you a save, you just have to hit, and it doesn't even matter what you hit with. And prone is so overpowered in this game too - I don't know what they were thinking. Ends your turn immediately when you get prone during it, IMMEDIATELY breaks concentration, and you don't even get disadvantage attacking a prone target at range.
I was thinking the same then i played a dex half elf elk heart barb with 2 short swords. You can run martathons
Dude way of the open hand monk with tavern brawler is CRAZY good
It's ok in my opinion but I'm more of a paladin warlock kinda guy
My open hand monk has fly and honestly I feel like goku going around cause I'm also battlemaster fighter.
the only problem is you are single-target guy and sometimes you want to do a AOE or multi-target
@@elbirri you get ki blast for aoe, though i understand that its not that strong
would love to see a full honour mode playthrough from you
Paladin has another plus. If you pick the Vengeance discipline, your pretty much a medieval Punisher. If an npc is evil, or a bad person, your pretty much honor bound to remove them from reality...sorry Asterian, but Frank Castle had no choice 😢
Warlocks do eventually get 3 spell slots per short rest 😅
but that is at 11 so fair.
Warlock used to be my favorite class but the fact that i can only cast 2 spells per fight is annoying i don't wanna just spam eldritch blast all fight they have other cool spells as well. I stopped playing warlock because of this drawback
Barbarians do have intense ranged potential with one of the returning thrown weapons, like the spear from goblin camp early game and the legendary djinni trident from the jackpot jungle (idr the name). Similarly, if you prefer a hybrid of ranged and melee, you can just stack up regular knives to throw at people. You can even cheese the Grym fight by stacking torches and throwing three of them at the golem each turn, while one of the characters just sits by the lava valve, making sure its superheated buff remains. This entire build is powered by the Tavern Brawler feat. It activates at level 4 and remains a top tier option to the end of the game.
When grading the classes, don't forget the difference between characters that are best at burst damage but not as good at sustained damage, and characters that are more geared to sustained damage but cannot manage the big burst damage spike. The other thing that really makes a big difference is specific items that can combine on a character to make it strong.
For example add the Holy Lance helm to the Luminous Armour and Luminous Gloves..............or add the Luminous Armour to to the Blood of Lathander mace (sheds light when wielded) and the Coruscation Ring which inflicts Radiating Orb on an enemy when you do spell damage while you are illuminated. These can make a cleric build significantly stronger, as can running around with the Spirit Guardians spell up (does, at your choice, Radiant damage). You can make a very strong class by boosting movement speed for max running around with Spirit Guardians up and with these items adding to the damage and debuffing enemies. Since we are talking clerics, In terms of spells a Tempest cleric is strong, because in BG3 wet enemies take double cold and electrical damage. All of this factors into a class when you consider how they stack up to each other in terms of damage.
Imagine a character (Astarion for example) as a thief with the Broodmothers Revenge amulet, the Ring of Regeneration, the Derivation Cloak and the Poisoners Gloves for an enemy poisoning, self healing, combo. The same sorts of things apply to many classes and raise them a tier higher or possibly more, than they would otherwise be.
Aye. Any class can be finessed to be ridiculously good.
Asterion can be specced as the 'classic vampire' arcane trickster with a bunch of help spells for his stealth antics, making him a one-man spec-ops team.
Wyll can become an Eldritch Blast spammer with the occasional massive crowd control spell. Hint: Cloud of Darkness.
You explained Lightshow Shadowheart.
Lae'zel, the game spells out for you: 2hander Tactician swordmaster.
All these things work perfectly well, even if they're not supremely optimized.
ITEM DEPENDENCY !
Some of the most fun I’ve had clearing groups of weak enemies is to drink an elixir of bloodlust on a tempest cleric and casting call lightning twice per turn. Especially in long combats, if you can manage to take down at least one enemy with your first call lightning, you’re basically getting double the value out of the spell as a concentration spell that you can recast with no cost. SO strong, and so fun. It’s gotten to the point where I use my paladin and Astarion’s actions to throw water bottles at enemies lmAO (though I guess it’s a reasonable way to action economy once my Paladin runs out of smites or can’t reach an enemy, since I have Gale built around ice and lightning damage as well).
The is is great - and I am thrilled that this is the first part of a series
after you finish this series, would also love for you to provide an analysis / tier list of common four member party combinations or maybe a video talking more generally about building an optimized group.
again, really loving this content, but I think one of the failures inherent in videos like this one is that it's easy to think of each of these classes in isolation. (you do a good job of generally avoiding that) would love to generally just see some party analysis
I can't shake the feeling that I'm making my character weaker when I cast a spell as a wizard or a sorcerer especially in the early game. I end up using my cantrips a lot and the total damage I do with them is a lot lower than everyone else on the team.
Wizards and sorcerers are definitely weaker early on, but as you get better damage and control spells (Cloud of Daggers, Haste, Slow, Wall of Fire, etc), your value snowballs like crazy.
Basically, don't be too discouraged early on as a wiz/sorc. Keep at it!
EDIT: Also, don't be afraid to use your spell slots if it generates value in the current encounter. You can always long rest afterwards if you're out.
Early game cantrips are inferior to crossbow attack if you have half-decent dex. Also casters are for casting (duh), if you don't use leveled spell slots, they will not carry their weight
Wizards and sorcerers, in general, aren't made for big single target damage. Area control via grease and web and utility from darkness is where they tend to shine most earlier on.
But, they do get significantly stronger as they level. Level 5 is a big boost in power for 3rd level spells, for example
So true, I always feel like I’m better off just throwing stuff at enemies between lvl 1-3 when playing a with full spellcaster in the party (missing witch bolt is a popular meme for a reason I guess 😭)
@@beakdd Dont listen to any of the comments here. Sorc or wiz are beasts early, but very long rest dependent, which is fine, because there's enough food/gold in the game to cover you. I've solo'd honor with both classes and honestly, the best advice is just to rush level 4 mono class (Theres a video on how to get lvl 4 in 30 minutes ish, if you search it). Grab yourself dual wield, phalar aluve, spell sparkler and the magic missle neck from the dude in the underdark and keep firing those missle till you get to more fun spells. If your not keen on the MM approach, pick up the the staff of arcane blessing for your OH (If solo, or no one else is using it) instead of PA and then never miss with one of your spells again :) Hope this helps!
I'm ok with Bards in BG3 being S+ tier when they spent decades as D tier.
Pretty good tier list overall. The only ones I really disagree with are monk and ranger, with monks being towards the top of A tier personally, and rogues being mid B tier.
I'd also bump Druid to S tier personally. Among the melee brawler type units, Druids are actually the best in my experience, courtesy of the fact that TB works in wildshape for attack rolls (and damage rolls but not in honor mode), and that Str elixirs work in wildshape as well. An earth Myrmiadon's normal attack does 5 + str mod bludgeoning + 3d10 thunder damage and can knock enemies prone. At 27 str, that's 39 + 9d10 damage a turn with a +20 to hit (an average of 89 damage/turn, which is comparable to any martial with double attack and GWM). While being as tanky as an average raging barbarian (18-20 AC, 127 HP, resistance to physical damage).
And besides the Myrmiadon, you get to use your spell slots for summons that last all day that can do a lot for your team comp. (Air myrmiadon can stun and does area denial, Water Myrmiadon can do mass healing and also combos into wet blasting comps, Water Elemental can make things brittle which inflicts bludgeoning and thunder vulnerability, doubling the damage output of your earth myrmiadon form or GWM fighter using a maul, Dryad + Wood Wood, and Ice Mephits).
New to D&D and Baldur's Gate. Really like your video on this game over even my regular subscriptions. Thanks and you've earned my subscription.
Another good list! I would probably swap Barbarian & Warlock. Barbarians, even monoclassed, can with Berserker turn bonus actions into attacks (slightly nerfed by losing their first bonus action to rage and get it started), are great for throwing with Tavern Brawler, and basically get a bunch of useful half feats as they level up. Wild Hearts make top tier tanks or controllers. They rank a bit behind well designed monoclass fighters, but they are very reliable in their specialties.
I like Warlocks, and they are solid in any role other than healer if you build them that way. But Bards or Clerics are much better Swiss army knives, and pretty much any specialist out performs them. Darkness plus Devil’s Sight is excellent, but it leaves you spending your first round setting up your perfect defense instead of attacking. Hunger of Hadar & Devil’s Sight does genuinely let you hold back a small army. So, that combo is excellent. But there is a helmet and a ring to protect you from blindness, and there are Darkness arrows, so any caster or archer has a way to duplicate part of that combo. That all feels B tier to me.
Not bad, just not my first choice.
Thanks! Warlocks get the nod here for 2 reasons: one is sustainability, which I think I care about more than most player, so I suspect that's a big part of the difference in my list compared to a lot of guides, and the second is just that as a charisma character they let you grab dialogue skills, which gives them a leg up on other classes while also filling their combat role. I think the margin is very thin though!
Barbarians are somewhat artificially held back by the mono-classed restriction; other than rogue, they're the class that benefits most from multiclassing
Monoclass warlocks get 3 spells per short rest not 2. This drastically increases their endgame power. 9 level five spells per day and one cast of a level 6 is plenty.
You also fail to mention hex blades, which use CHA for everything and when equipped properly they get CHA x3 to all melee attacks. That level of damage is pretty on par with the melee classes above them, without the burst.
You mention the things they get instead of burst, control, mobility and a few battle winning strats like HoH, darkness + devil sight.
But there’s others. They are great counter spell users because they always counter at level 5 and some builds focus so much on EB they don’t need the extra slots.
Also they get (almost) all the best control spells in the game hold person, HoH, hypnotic pattern, hold monster, banishment, and fear.
Depending on the pact they can also get: command , plant growth and wall of fire. Really only missing access to sleet storm.
Unlike other classes I feel like they are great right away as well. Levels 4-6 can be tricky on HM and warlocks have great power at those levels. Then in the end game 10-12, they get their 3rd spell per short rest, and their single per day 6th level spells.
Also there’s a warlock specific item to regain a spell slot is it’s really +1 since no other class can use it like the other spell slot recharges.
I’m not fretting about the tier lost placement, for me it’s about the discussion not the ranking, I just feel like you missed a lot when speaking about pure mono class warlocks.
Thanks as always for the videos!
I completely forgot the ranger existed...
It's unfortunate because a ranger with whirlwind attack and a certain sword in act 3 literally becomes an unkillable demon, but the problem is you have to get to 11 with a pure ranger 👺
Im planning to make a sniper with my ranger class lol
@@Avenged7xJunkie it's not that bad, ranger dishes out the most consistent dmg out of all the class with hunter's mark, crit gear, ranged attack, colossus slayer and on hit gear. Even beastmaster is pretty decent for utility and dmg.
I think the ranger class was originally designed (in D&D) as “I want to play Aragon.” So it’s a schizophrenic mix of shit from fighter cleric and Druid. It got further muddled by a purple eyed black elf with dual scimitars and a magical cat friend, so it’s sorta cursed.
Rangers shouldn’t be martial Druids that guard a forest or whatever. Rangers should be the preeminent explorers and adventurers, and while Fighters can do all fighting styles, rangers should do archery *Better* than fighters, (like how barbarians should do great weapon fighting better than fighters and rogues should do two weapon fighting better than fighters)
Update: I killed the Spectator in act 1 using my sniper alone
edit: with a haste potion and various ranger buffs+bless
it’s always very interesting to listen ur thoughts about classes and spells, thank you for ur job!
Your videos have been extremely valuable. Thank you a ton, also I see that league pfp feels like forever since I've seen that icon lmao. I wanted to ask your thoughts on a very workshopped build of 2 levels fighter, 6 monk shadow, 4 levels rogue thief. I realize itd be better with open hand but i wanna do a stealth character with halfling lightfoot and such. Anywho have a good day/night
I think you might be wrong about druid melee damage falling off in the late game, if you pick Tavern Brawler your accuracy will be super high, often you only miss on a nat 1.
Druid getting 3 attacks at lvl 10 really carries them hard, especially if you go into Earth Myrmidon form, the damage tooltip is wrong it says 1d10+Str Bludgeoning + 1d10 Thunder but its actually 3d10 Thunder, i find that Druid keeps up with most martials pretty well they probably deal more damage then a barbarian
While im playing a Druid I'll adapt my role/playstyle according to my resources, for example if im out of Wild Shapes i'll just focus on dealing damage with a concentration spell like Moon Beam or try to control the battlefield with some CC and if im running low on spell slots i'll just use Wild Shape and go into the frontline or just leap on top of any enemy caster in the backline, so i think Druid can do good in both a short rest dependent comp or a long rest dependent comp, although i prefer having a lot of short rests
It's not that druids do *bad* damage in the lategame - in fact, they do amazing damage (though I think the myrmidon thing is a DRS bug, so I prefer not to count it). It's just that compared to dedicated melee damage dealers they can't reach the same level of burst that you get from an action surge fighter or high level paladin smite, meaning they're more likely to take more than one turn to kill an important target. Just as good or even better for sustained damage over a long fight, but honour mode especially and D&D in general rewards burst damage heavily
real, battle master and paladin are way more efficient@@Cephalopocalypse
hey cephalo, in addition to your lists, which i think are great btw, i think analysing them in 3 ways like this is brilliant, i wanted to add, maybe you could do a separate list for builds that use ilythids the best? Maybe not all possible combinations, but just a little spitball of the pure classes/ multiclass setups that can abuse them the best could be cool
cheers!
Illithid power tier list is definitely on the agenda! I'll talk about which classes use which powers the best in that
I'm happy to see someone give rangers respect.
My first choice was bard because i loved the idea of a musician with a taste of the fine arts fighting. So happens that even evil creatures can't say no to good music and a good story. Don't regret it one bit and i have the feeling even before trying another class, that this will be my favourite of them all.
One thing about rogue, his sneak attack, there is a way to get every round a sneak attack. I used astarion with an amulet or ring that gives him the ability of casting fog cloud and another ring which lets him get immunity to being blind, which means he has the highest initiative, he ALWAYS starts his turn first, he casts fog cloud at the best place there can be for the upcoming fight, where he can target EVERYONE, then he walks there and uses his bonus action to hide. His first round that way is gone, before casting fog cloud, check for mages who are close to him, they might be able to counterspell his fog cloud, but then you can let gale cast another one, which is okay, but not optimal since gale should be concentrating on haste, anyhow. Once the first round is done, astarion from the fog cloud will NEVER be seen. He can make every single round a devastating sneak attack with his bow, you can also lower his chance to crit during hiding down to 18, 19, and 20. You can give him lucky reroll, in case he misses, you can use his luck to hit again, but he barely misses and his crits alone do almost like 100 dmg per shot. Without crit its like 50. Its incredible op. You dont even have to care about his armor or heal him, since he will never be targeted once he is hidden in the fog cloud. Putting him on C isnt the right thing to do. He should be A or B.
Love the list, made me re-evaluate cleric a lot as it is a class I was always fast to dismiss after my first run. I still think my favorite class for honor mode is druid, I just love how versatile they are, and the ability to use the strong summons with a moon druid and be able to basically have no real gear requirements while using a decent tavern brawler wild form set up or just using the Air elemental form for stuns feels so powerful.
And I am in the meanwhile at act 2 with my full rogue (thief) half-drow Tav (and having a blast)
There is ONE use for Thieves' Cant, and that if you have a Rogue speak with Roah Moonglow in Moonrise tower, they can get a small discount.
What I'm curious about is how you'll be doing the tier list for Multiclass, because the Dungeon Dudes made a Tabletop D&D series where they looked at every single class and their synergy with multiclassing with all the other classes, and compared to staying single class... And that seems like a BIG time investment!
Also, I love grabbing a Rogue as my main character, especially if I'm tired of playing a Bard or Paladin, because, especially for Thief or Assassin, you can get pretty good charisma, and thanks to expertise you can get some really good rolls for those checks. Plus, expertise in Persuasion means great discounts at vendors.
And the Reliable Talent feature at 11th level, while rather late, does mean that all the skill checks you need to roll will never get a Nat1, since any roll lower than a 10 becomes a 10.
Oh cool! I don't think I'd ever done that - good to know!
For the multiclass tier list the plan is to rate them as core classes (6 or more levels) and separately as dips (5 or fewer levels), though I'm open to suggestions!
@@Cephalopocalypse i would like a ranking on core identity. my minthara for example is a bardadin with 2 lvls paladin and 10 lvls swords bard but i dont consider her a bard since all the bard levels only serve to amplify her strength as a paladin.
Finally someone doesn't completly sleep on druids. I still think they're S-Tier. Especially Halsin is goated for a moon druid build.
halsin utterly demolished my first House Of Hope encounter and Ansur fight!!! People always joke that his role in act 3 is to be orin bait (or be a romance option that sits in camp and takes scratch for walks) but i've had a blast taking him to rob banks, kill dragons, free Hope, and destroy Raphael lol. I think that run I gave him war caster, lucky, and tavern brawler feats? Plus got the druid armor and headgear that work for wild shape, and that one ring that the ox ooze drops.
Very nice video! One thing I would say is, it would have been nice to have a picture of each of the spells/traits etc on screen while you were talking about them.
I agree with most of your list but Barbarian should definetly be A tier, being the best tank class by far in the game is just way too strong, specially in HM where enemies deals so much dmg and land attacks fairly often unless you use some hard strategies like hidden your squishies in darkness.
I also don't know why you punish barb for competing for medium armor when in reality you can just not use any armor and still be absolutly fine, in fact I always use my barbs with no armor to keep him as my char with the lowest amount of AC so most enemies always go for him instead of my wizard/druid that are concetrating on a spell and are usually using medium or heavy armor plus a shield.
I still remmember my first playthrough making using figther to be my tank with a bunch of AC but at the end all the enemies just ignored him and went for my casters bc how high AC he had, and then on my second run I tried barb, out of curiosity, and I fell in love with it bc how easy it is to manipulate the AI with the AC difference.
Barbarians are somewhat artificially held back by the mono-classed restriction; other than rogue, they're the class that benefits most from multiclassing
to be honest from my experience barbarian should just be S tier, even if you go 12 barbarian. You basically get an alert feat, you get savage critical (which is doubly important because you're almost always attacking with advantage), you can go tiger to add your strength modifier twice to bleeding or poisoned targets (which again is ridiculous combined with something like a cloud giant elixir), and I agree completely about the armor aspect. The only armor I would use on a barbarian would be the Bhaalist armor, if you bring a life cleric you have a perma-blessed blade warded poison dipped AoE cleaving monster that can also maim targets when you take your extra animal aspect.
The best tank in the game is not made by the pj class, is made by the items. Radiant orb medium armor + sumatory reductions and halved reductions make almost every char esentially inmortal to normal atacks.
My party of 4 Munks are literally unstoppable, I get at least two actions each round without resting, or sleeping, or not telling the full truth.
4 unarmed Munks are stupid powerful, if your munk needs healing, you aren't doing it right..
A sorcerer with twinned Haste can do something similar.
Monk*
There are quite a few items that buff weapons, give some to your rogue and they can do as much damage as any martial. Those murder knives from the Baal cult don't look like much but dual wield and buff them. Astarion in my game is doing more damage than martials and he almost never gets hit because of high dex.
It is also woth mentioning that Warlocks can also get access to summonings (lvl 5 and 6 elementals) through their pact upgrade and I personally think that's pretty sweet.
Thank you, I was looking for a reliable source of such a list, and when I see that someone gives a druid, which has the most HP and probably gains the most, thanks to a short rest in B, and in S or A gives a Wizard, which you only need to level up once in a multiclass to get all its benefits, I know that someone has no idea what they're talking about. The biggest difference between S and A will be whether they are charisma-based characters because that is what allows you to influence the world in the best way. So wizard? You can multiclass Sorceser with him and you have all his spells available to Sorceser which has much better "DPS". Likewise, a ranger who isn't at least an A, really? I understand that the class is boring, but you have two players in one character. Thank you, finally a decent list and not a copy from someone who played every class in the first act (and probably didn't even finish it).
Have to disagree with druids not bumping a lot of damage late game, they are not warlocks ofc but with the tabern brawler fix for druids moon druids are thriving, 3 hits per turn + bonus actions, the subclass specialy gets a massive upgrade with that and the powerspike it's lvl 6 once you get the owlber which is AMAZING
But it’s a comparative tier and they just don’t output as well as other options late game but luckily it doesn’t really matter and a bg3 tier list doesn’t really matter because they are all good, party structure above all else
Luv you Ceph you’re so cool!
Too sadge about Rogue, my fav class. For mono life the additional feat at level 10 is rad af and I love the fantasy of the gnarly, sneaky nuke once per/turn to hit the vital organs. But agree: as things progress. You will certainly observe the DPS falling off compared to other strikers, even with the nuke. Alongside oftentimes being locked into dual-wielding, also as you note, cuz it feels so damn bad if you miss. I know you mention the margin between tiers is razor thin, but do you think, say, increasing sneak attack to 1d7 could be an answer as a homebrew to keep hope alive for the DPS?
1d7 or 1d8? Xd
I homebrewed something to rogues. What I did was empowering sneak attack to 1d8 lv5 and 1d10 at lvl10 when it was dealt from shadows, hide or backstab
One thing about Bards being skill monkeys that is a little overlooked is that you cannot cast bardic inspiration on yourself. There's an argument for having the bard as a companion and not the party face. Other than that, Lore Bard is 10/10 for inexperienced players. Cutting words, Hunger of Hadar, Counterspell and the occasional Heat Metal will 'solve' basically every encounter until Act 3.
ah but you forget the obvious solution: MORE bards!
I'd struggle to put wizard in anything but S tier. A pure caster grabbing those level 6 spells with scribe and arcane recovery is already very good, but then you toss on divinations party wide garunteed control spells, transmutation making the already broken item syetem 2x as crazy and transmuter stones, or abjuration letting your team not have to worry about building around the wizard while still having project ward for team play and counterspell bolstering (and arcane ward being its own strong offensive playstyle that does funny things to action economy with oppertunity attacks and enemy attacks), necromancer in general, ect ect ect.. they really elevate wizard to absurd. No sorcerer in damage output, but in sheer problem solving and game altering effects they're hard to argue with.
Few levels of sorcerer for times 2 spells and making spells last longer lol
@@davidhujik3422This is a monoclass list but yeah with multiclassing 1 level dip in wizard is always nice, or dips in warlock/sorcerer/cleric for abjuration, or rogue/bard for transmutation all work really well.
Wizard was hard to rate! I think if only abjuration and divination wizard existed, it would be an S tier class :P
Agreed. And in damage output an evocation wizard with magic missile and 2 or 3 items and an illithid ability on bonus action, they can one shot some beefy enemies or reduce boss hp to half in one turn ( and sorcerers don't have the lvl 10 evocation ability on magic missile which literally doubles the damage of that spell. )
Wizards are bad early game, OK by mid game, and busted by late game.
However, I would argue you need to be good the whole game to justify an S Tier ranking and Wizards aren't great early imo.
For every playthrough i tell myself im going to use new classes and it always end up being rougue, fighter, wizzard, cleric. Sometimes ill throw in a bard or paladin but thats it
I have to contend against the C tier rogue. Arcane trickster rogue is the best version of the mono class character. Every level is impactful, and the versatility of the class is insane. It is single handedly the best item usage class. You gain a familiar and mage hand, adding to the party two different sources of very powerful action economy. Mage hand can shove/push or throw items from a stockpile. (With some preplanning, it can just throw healing potions and buff potions wherever you need them in a fight) The familiars are all pretty useful, but the raven can blind enemies, giving them a disadvantage on attacks and an advantage on attacks on them. Also, either of them being near the enemy will give you sneak attack for the rogue. Its a great ranged class for item utilization too. I seriously gave astarion the blessing staff and the headband of intellect so that his dex and con were super high since i dumped int. His other weapon was a long bow, and while i had the familiars get into place for sneak attack. My main character was a socrerer who would twin cast haste on astarion and karlach and they would fuck shit up. Now every class gets better with haste, but the arcane blessing staff is stupid broken with a ranged rogue.
Also having a stealth caster that you can just give any staff to and know they'll be able to get into position and open any combat with a cone of cold or fireball giving them enemies all disadvantage is huge. Seriously underated here.
As soon as I saw the Rogue part I recall how much Rogue is used in multi in BG3 and 5e alike.
In my first playthrough i had no idea you could actually change class when leveling up. So all my characters were single class xD
One thing you neglected to mention on Rogues is that , due to being DEX dependent, you are most likely to go first in combat unless you have another DEX-based character in the party, which mean, Turn 1, you can, more often than not, not even be able to use Sneak Attack at all, which gimps their power output even further.
BG3 actually has a clever solution to this in the shared initiative system - as long as at least two of your characters go before the enemy, you can choose the order they act in (and even mix and match actions from each of them within the turn). That way you can have your melee character set up a sneak attack even if the rogue has higher initiative!
Monk being B is kinda crazy. I've done 4 playthroughs and the one I did with Monk was by far the easiest because of their insane power and builds. Taking tavern brawler feat and then drinking hill giant strength potions with extra attacks and flurry of blows lets you do reliably 80 damage per turn and you almost never miss.
Paladin gives off insane levels of main character energy
S tier for damage, C tier for versatility as you are pretty much forced to do a certain gameplay style or two with Monks that you cannot steer away from. It evens out as a B+ tier class for me in the bigger picture but I love them. Completed my very first honor mode run ever with Tav as a monk.
‘ranger doesnt do quite as much damage as melee’
*casually sips elixir of cloud giant strength* hold my ithbank.
Time to do a Rogue / Barbarian / Monk / Warlock honor run!
I’m currently doing a monoclass-only run, and in that party is a rogue…I’ll try to make it work but I’m gonna need the gloves of balanced hands and a prayer!
rogue isn't even really a full class, it's just something you "dip" into for other classes. barbarian in particular while low on this tier list becomes S tier when dipping into rogue's thief subclass which turns the extra bonus action into an extra attack.
Same with fighter, but it stands a bit more on it's own two feet than rogue. It's primarily a multi-class dip class for the weapon/armour proficiencies and action surge. Anything else is just unique flavouring and is probably better to just rank up your primary class.
I'd also argue for the spell casters; a detriment is you have to pay attention to what the spells do. You also need to know which spells are actually good/best to take. So that can be a lot of research that you don't necessarily need to do with the melee characters. You can fuck up a spellcaster a lot more easily than a melee build.
40:30 Counter argument - Radiating orb builds. The luminous gloves exist, so does unarmed monk. Not taking Tavern Brawler, but stacking radiating orb through luminous gloves or the gloves of the belligerent skies, or just things that modify the amount of damage dealt like the callous glow ring. Attacking so many times a round makes stacking rider effects super easy
Honestly, I think removing Smite from paladins would make them much more interesting. Or at least make Smite use a different ressource than spell slots. Because as fun as Smite is, at least to me, it always feels like I am missing out on doing a Smite, if I use my spell slots on anything else than Smites.
But if I only use Smites, I also feel like I am missing out on the many other cool spells that Paladins can get.
Last time I played Paladin, I didn't even look at my spell slots as "spell slots", but rather as "Smite slots".
I think I get what you mean with the paladins though, people just see them as vehicles for smiting and the devs made breaking your oath like getting a speeding ticket rather than a life altering event.
The best case for what you’re suggesting is to just multiclass with with a warlock, they refresh 2 slots every short rest, and that means you can make significantly more powerful and intentional attacks
Did you forget Warlocks get a 3rd spell slot in late game? Feels weird to mention powerful late game features like Rangers then not mention them getting 9 lvl5 slots per long rest (or 12 if you have a bard in your party)
Beat Honour mode with a Tiefling sorcerer with dragonic bloodline. S tier to me.
The only thing I REALLY disagree with in this list is the Rogue. I think people get so hung up on how strong the Rogue-dip is for thief and assassin in terms of enhancing OTHER builds and playstyles, that how well the single class actually plays really gets overlooked because idk, it looks pretty straightforward? People really don't seem to get how crazily good uncanny dodge, evasion and reliable talent actually are ALL TOGETHER in practice. So they won't do as much damage as a fighter, paladin or sorcerer, but they'll consistently outlast them in tough battles due to the significantly reduced damage they take. They're still almost as versatile as a Bard, they can easily act as the party face bc unlike Bards they're S A D, get the same number of skills and expertise and ALSO get 4 feats. They fit just as well into basically any party composition but come with a more distinct playstyle.
In any case, all I'm saying is there is just NO WAY that Rogue is below Barbarian and Monk 😂 Rogue's do great damage, they're WAY more versatile than either a Barb or Monk, and way more survivable than a Monk. There's just no way ya'll are putting the only class that gets 4 feats, 4 expertise, evasion, uncanny dodge & reliable talent, a 6d6 attack per turn (at lvl 11), up to 3 attacks per turn AND the most versatile action economy in the game, in the bottom rung. As well as being THE single most S A D class of them all. You have more wiggle room with your feats on a Rogue than with any other class. There's just no way. 😂 Imo Rogue is A tier, I'd put it below Fighter (S tier for me personally) & Paladin and on par with everything else in the A tier. And that's without even going into the races lol, on a Duergar, Githyanki or Gnome, the Rogue is an easy S tier. (I'll make the caveat that they're obviously not S A D if you go Arcane Trickster and you definitely don't have the same kind of wiggle room with feats if you want them to be a good AT, but imo the AT only shines on a Duergar anyway).
A nice list otherwise though. ☺
Having done honor I'm quite confident in
Swords bard archer
Eldritch Knight Thrower
Abjuration wizard
Light cleric as practically unbeatable even as single classes
monk in B tier is kind of ridiculous. Let's not forget we're playing BG3, a game where auntie ethel immediately sells you all the elixirs of giant strength you could ever want. As you say it's a specific build with constraints, but tbh it's by far the strongest thing in the game. Nothing else comes close. Stun and prone bosses and deal ridiculous damage, yep it trivialises honor mode.
It’s not the best damage dealer or the best controller, it’s definitely not the strongest class.
Considering the criteria he set at the start of the video, it makes sense.
You could make a case to bump them up to A tier, maybe.
I'm a little surprised you didn't mention spell scrolls when you discussed the Warlock class. While it's true that anybody can utilise them, they offset pretty much every downside of the class.
I was completly on board untill you gave Monk "B" and Figher "A". I feel like for most of the game Monk is just stronger than a Figher. Maybe on lvl 11+ Figher is better, but untill that point Monk is better.
Agreed, I can't see a world where Monk is anything lower than A. Not sure what happened here honestly.
Sorcerer is absolutely unreal in act 3
True!
I think Warlocks should be positioned at the top of A-tier. All warlocks can gain permanent access to shovel as a familiar starting in Act I. He basically guarantees a surprise attack and offers you the majority of utility offered by Pact of Chain. At Level 10 you can grab life drinker or additional summons from eldritch invocations. I always choose the pact of blades so I can make use of any weapon and function as both a martial and ranged damage dealer. For a true hybrid warlock I tend to pick up mage armor from invocations and wear the potent robe for extremely powerful eldritch blasts. I think the real power comes from the fact Warlocks only rely on Charisma. Mirror of loss and birthright can easily bring Charisma to 20 or higher, freeing you up to grab feats like war caster, spell sniper, alert, or Resilient Constitution/Dex. Diadem of Arcane synergy and Hat of arcane acuity are both strong options to vastly improve melee damage or spell success.
18:58 "basically no hole in your party that you cannot fill with a bard" ah yes yes in deed this sounds like almost every bard I've ever came across.
I keep seeing Monk listed pretty low on most lists and I wanna ask how? you make some valid point but I do gotta disagree with most of them
1. From what I have noticed, you almost never finish your KI Points before a Spell user runs out of Spells Slots even if you spam them for the most part
2. You mention Tavern Brawler but don't mention that once Monk get that feat and max out STR, they quite literally never will miss again and if you add Risky Ring to the mix, you will never EVER see your hit chance under 90% no matter the enemy because your chance to hit is just completely nuts and all it takes to do this is a single feat and a single ring to never miss again
3. While squishy, they also unlock Patient Defense, Step of the Wind: Dash and Step of the Wind: Disengage at Lv2 which they can use at any time at the cost of a bonus action to get out of any sticky situation they find themselves in. Not even including just equipping Misty Step through means of equipment like Amulet of Misty Step
4. Balancing the ability points isn't too bad once you find equipment like the Gloves of Dexterity and The Mighty Cloth
A min/max'd monk is easily the scariest enemy in this game, they can basically solo give how overpowered Tavern Brawler is so I don't really get how they are usually listed so low besides players just not liking the punching and kicking fighting styles
0 versatility and squishiness. I do agree tho they should probably be A tier. I’ve never even played one but understand why they shouldn’t be B.
@kingvince7328 thats because as damaging a monk might be it's not that fun to play as one it just feels like a chore to be one
@@direraven7768 Monk as a class is kind of basic (you punch shit lol) but combined with the absolutely broken Tavern Brawler feat, it easily becomes a top 5 in terms of damage
If we take Tavern Brawler out of the question, it does become a LOT worse with no real way to do anything magic related
@@direraven7768 Yup
I think people sell rogue short. They are hugely dependent on items this is no doubt true. But with aura of murder their sneak attack alone is a 12d6. That's an insanely high single damage nuke in, and you get it every round, with 0 resources used. Yes they are item dependendant, its not like a fighter where you just pick up whatever through a playthrough. They have a big mid game slump that other martials dont but late game their damage is on par or higher than any other martial with that 12d6, plus your 2d6 and 2d4 from each of your legendary daggers. Not even factoring in flat damage boosts. A fighter by comparison will get 6d6 with their 3 attacks. They get better flat damage boosts with gwm but that hurts your chance to hit, but does boost your damage but even then, its not going to come out as high as 13d6 and 2d4
Rogue Thief should be higher. 1) Dovetails with any other Class in a Party. 2) Easy to play, not micro management intensive. 3) With various Dual Wield options, has potential 3 Attacks per round 4) Not resource dependent. 5) Self Sufficient. 6) In game Crit Chance gear stacks, made for Rogue = Massive Damage 7) Haste on Rogue is no brainer for 4 Strong Attacks 8) Advantage on every Attack easy to achieve. 9) Scouting/Exploring/Thieving - best in game, and is 80% of game play. 10) S.A.D. Easy spec into CHA for Party Leader. 11) Ranged or Melee is permanent option.
Honestly... I think it's S Tier, because it is the best "Hub" of any Party Construction from beginning to end. My first playthrough was Rogue-Thief. Second Playthrough, Astarion is a permanent fixture... he just slays the most powerful foes on the board each turn. The rest of the Party just mops up.
I think of Rogue Thief as an Assault Rifle that has loads of Swap Out attachments... Grenade Launcher, Laser Sight, various Scopes, Extended Mags, Silencer, Muzzle Breaks, Mag Sizes, Utility Ammo etc...
Keep the Thief, swap out Party Members depending on the Mission.
you missed a close bracket after the 3 and it set off my OCD :(
@doctormarazanvose4373 Read it again. I didn't miss a ")".
@@antonyfaulkner8649 edit ftw
@doctormarazanvose4373 Nah... the "3" you were looking at is the "3 Attacks per Round". No bracket. Your OCD needs some more practice.
Warlock should be high A in my opinion; great damage, control and, most importantly, super powerful linguistic skill checks particularly in act 2 - with regards to the amount of boss battles one can literally skip entirely due to high CHA and skills like "dark one's own luck". Obv Warlock is much much more powerful with multiclassing which isn't the point of this vid, but still as a pure lock they're quite strong.
My last playthrough was with a monk and it’s easily my favorite class. The damage I deal is devastating, plus I have access to great spells, but since they’re not technically spells, they’re immune to some of the most annoying counterattacks in the games like Counterspell and Silence.
I very much disagree putting Rogue on the bottom of the tier list. In almost every honour mode run I've done, I hire Brinna the Halfling and respec her as a rogue to be my dedicated thief. You said there are only 2 reasons to have a rogue yet failed to mention THE most important reason to have one in the party: Lockpicking/Pickpocketing. Once you reach higher levels, sub-10 rolls get modified to 10 (with exception to critical failure, which is why the Halfling Luck trait is so important).
I played one Honour mode run where I opted not to pickpocket/steal/use a rogue: It was painful and detrimental for my run. Since you chose to dedicate this tier list with the limited scope of a "Single class build", I will counter what you said about rogues being limited by not having an "extra attack": That's because two of the subclasses basically do get an extra attack function already. The thief subclass is the most obvious one by combining the bonus action with dual wield setups which allows thief to achieve more attacks early game than a fighter does. Only at level 5 does the fighter start to keep up/exceed the thief since it gets action surge as a means for more attacks. Though I would note that is a one per battle "overcharge" vs thief, whereas the thief can be attacking 3x a turn every turn.
The assassin is the other if played correctly. Assassins recover their spent action/bonus action upon entering combat, which means if you get the drop on the enemy you get an additional attack on the first turn where they are likely already surprised (akin to the Gloomstalker, but in my view better). The fact that all hits will be automatic crits makes the damage output potential of Assassins higher than one might suspect. By limiting the scope to a pure rogue Assassin as opposed to multiclassing, that STILL means you get 2x Sneak attack criticals (which will add 6d6 then doubled since we're assuming it's a level 12 Assassin) while the enemies are still surprised. Damage output capped? Yeah... Capped higher than many other classes. If rogues got built in extra attack they'd be even more juiced than they already are.
If the counterargument to this is that you're looking at the base class and not any of the subclasses, then this whole tier list is worthless since the arbitrary constraint of single-classing guarantees that each class will have to pick a subclass after level 3.
What does having a rogue have to do with pickpocketing? Every class needs dex, and the game gives you guidance(1d4), shapeshifter ring(1d4), that other ring(+2) and advantage on sleight of hand checks all basically for free in act 1. Pickpocketing is going to be trivial no matter what you do. And very quickly gold becomes a limitless resource even if you don't pickpocket
Warlock, Paladin and Barbarian are my fav.
Same here. If I had to choose between the three I’m going Paladin.
Thank you for this. It is very helpful.
Monk in B tier? Highest damage class in the game without even adding thief in. Hmmm. Sword bard's utility isn't enough to cdompete with the fact that a well made monk can one round any boss (other than ones with Unstoppable and the flying lad beneath the city).
Ranger in B tier? We are playing very different games.
It's funny that monk and barb are B tier when their builds are easily some of the strongest in the game. They may lack versatility but that's just the nature of how they're played. You can't stack a party with full casters since you'll probably be missing out on items to optimize them well enough, and in terms of consistent damage, monk is one of the best in the game. You talk about things like the tempest storm sorcerer, and while it deals a shitload of dmg, you can only use it 3 times per fight before you have to rest. Whereas monk will do consistently, anywhere from 150-200 dmg per turn for a good 12 turns. Easy.
Same goes for the Barb with the throw build. Yes they both need tavern brawler but it's a super strong feat.
Great tier list but yeah just because you're a versatile class doesn't mean you're better than a mono class in the combat. Outside of combat (i.e., persuasion checks etc.), absolutely.
Agree with all except Ranger. I can't justify ranger as an A tier class. They do their jobs and they do it competently but fall behind classes like paladin and fighter in their role while being less versatile, IMO. I'd move them to B but other than that think you nailed it.
Okay, barbarian is S Tier or AT LEAST A Tier. Totem of the bear gives resistance to basically all damage to the beefiest class. Not to mention that means all healing whether by magic or potions is effectively doubled in its effectiveness. Also, great weapon master, enough said. Also, there is an Eagle totem build with the athlete feat that can jump across any battle map, essentially always has advantage without using reckless, and knocks 1-2 enemies prone every turn. Barbarians are insane if you build them correctly
Throwzerker is a powerful thing for honour mode. Maybe one of the best.
ik this is just single class, but hexblade warlock/paladin multiclass will always be the best combo