a good way to optimize barb is to have 4 gnome barbarians in your party edit: i beat honor mode first try by turning everyone into a barbarian. it was laughably easy
Or just building them for throwing, like he briefly mentioned but then strongly undervalued. TB Berserker's damage output comes online faster than any other damage build (because most of its core gear is frontloaded, you can be dealing 200+ DMG/round before you exit Act 1) - and it remains one of the strongest single class damage dealers throughout the entire game as a result. Fighter doesn't even come close to passing it until Level 11 and Extra Attack II.
@@willdigforfood5065 exactly im not sure what this guy is on but with berserker youre making 3 2H-attacks with +10 damage feat +rage bonus at level 5 per round and all of these attacks have advantage while you have DR against all phys damage + highest hitpoint progression in the game (all of that without external buffs). No other class gets so early and consistent unconditional advantage on attacks and gets as much use out of great weapon master early on as a result. The fact all of the amazing berserker/barb class features are super early make it one of the best dips in the game and best early game martials period. And if you do get enough items and extra attack 2 eventually by lategame you can always respec but thats a huge chunk of the game that fighter is just straight worse. And then theres the whole throwing line which is also item supported super early on with returning pike being available as early as goblin camp.
I play 4 bards all the time, I got use to free short rests so much that everything else seems wasteful and slow :D (all together 6 short rest / 1 long which allows things like getting through complete acts with 1-2 long rest))
Honestly, the hit chance is pretty close to actual tabletop. I cannot tell you how often either A) The DM rolls well. Or B) The player rolls $#!T. And in Tabletop there is NO reload button, just sayin! @@csguak
classes that used charisma for spell casting are either S or A tier. They can fight, support, do everything in combat and talk well outside of combat. This game is very well balanced.
That's more due to convenience than power, really. You can still do a lot of persuading and such so long as you don't dump charisma on your main character, proficiencies and Guidance (either yours or Shadowheart's) go a really long way.
Blame 5e the not very well designed game that BG3 is based off of. They did a lot to make the system better but there's no way to make 5e balanced without just making a new system.
That was my thoughts as a new player ignorant of D&D 5E mechanics, when I finished the game with my bard, warlock, paladin, and cleric I was like "that's it? this game is broken for the charisma classes" you don't want to main anything but a charisma modifier class after playing BG3
Agreed, accidentally turning enemies into dogs and cats and such just makes wild magic auto-S tier. The first time that happened I was like dying with laughter. I think I turned 90% of the battlefield into pets
I did that too and my poor 1hp fighter(Laezel) literally got downed by one of the turned dogs biting it and this was in Act 3 with level 12 charecters so I almost shed tears
Omfg, I love wild magic. My first playthrough as a sorcerer and I turned into a fucking sheep out of nowhere and it stayed in the citscene. Laughed my ass off.
My brother has made an absolutely op pure sorcerer by getting the tadpole power that heals the enemy a little, but makes them vulnerable to every damage type (as a bonus action) -> the amulet that gives you 1 additional magic missile -> quicken spell -> proceeds to shoot 12 magic missiles that do double damage on a chosen target like a freaking one man machine gun and just melts bosses and crowds of enemies alike in 1 or 2 turns. With haste potion he can make the gods cry. EDIT: they patched the mentioned tadpole ability so that it can’t be used on enemies anymore.
Agree with Fighter being S-tier. They get more attacks, more feats, and the meaneuvers are amazing (when chosen correctly). And honestly I'm glad that they made Fighters so awesome. When you add Alert as a Feat they get first strike as well.
Sword Bard is basically: "What if we took a Rogue, and gave them extra attack, battle maneuvers, *and made them a full caster*? Surely not overpowered."
Don't forget that bards can bump their bardic inspiration die to 1d12 for free by playing for the tiefling kids with Alfira at the end of act 2 - something that you'd normally only unlock at level 15 in the tabletop rules.
Playing a lore bard in tabletop I knew the huge potential and it was my first choice in bg3. Wasn’t disappointed! Plus having your main char the driver of conversations and the one to pick locks and disarm traps is just a quality of life improvement. You don’t have to shuffle around who’s doing what.
I picked a bard for my first playthrough because I wanted my character to do most of the talking and have fun dialogue options but turns out the college of lore bard is pretty good in combat, too. Such a versatile class, it fits in any party composition
Bard is in fact the best Tav class if you want to have easier out of combat experience because they have dex and cha as their main stats. Easy dialogue dice rolls and opening locks.
Bard was, other than barb, the only class I have never played in dnd-ish games. For that reason, I knew going in I was going to try the bard main in BG3. At this point, I cant see ever choosing anything but Bard on my main again. The utility and "face", coupled with the ability to be a top-end martial or caster class via colleges, is just too much net value for me to pass up. Similarly, I was shocked how effective, and fun, the battle master is. Another pleasant surprise.
Bard is really good for a party that doesn't spam long rest and save scums. The extra short rest and bardic inspiration are really good when doing a DND like play through.
It’s always funny to see comments about how surprising people find that hard is good. Given that as a table top player, bards are probably the overall “strongest” class because of their versatility
@@q.7556monks are great, it's gm that are shit at creating encounters that diverge from "stand were you are and hit each other until someone falls". And even like that they are the god kings of martial at tier one. And while clunky, 4 elements have always been one of the best monk subclass (more so in the tabletop BTW).
Problem with warlock in 5e is that hexblade warlock exists. It is the reason people multiclass to it. Larian kinda merged hexblade into their version of pact of the blade anyway though. Which is great because it moves what is normally a 1 level dip into an actual investment. Its a healthy change.
I'll throw my hat in for the Necromancy Wizard. Having multiple zombies with Undead Fortitude which create more zombies on kill *devours* the enemy's action economy. Items like Demon's Bane gloves and the circlet you get from Balthazaar make your minions even tankier, as well as the Aid spell which affects all allies in range as opposed to just three in 5e. Plus, they recently changed it so NPCs no longer freak out when they see you wandering around with your horde, so it's less of a pain to keep your minions up all the time. No other character gets your party that much disposable health and action economy, and on top of that you're still a full wizard with all your control, support, and blast spells.
My first Playthru, I played a life domaine cleric, had Gale as a necromancer wizard, halisan as a spore druid, and Astarion, with a few other summons (us, scratch, scrolls etc) Every character that could would cast animate dad at max level. Plus any elemental/woodland summons they had. Like if you’re bringing 25 entities (that you’ve up-casted aid on,) into a battle you’re gonna have the upper hand.
It's good but the main problem is that it is quite annoying to play. By the time my necromancer wizard really came online I was in act 3, and act 3 is mostly tight urban environment, having all of my summons up makes traversal and exploration a nightmare I ended up having to ditch it despite the power
One thing that is very much missing from Druid (at least Moon Druid) is the ability to ACTIVATE your concentration spells while wildshaped. That’s something that is an ability in tabletop 5E, but not in BG3 And on that note, it’s a shame you can’t go into badger form and just stay burrowed underground. You have to just emerge somewhere
I’m so disappointed in moon Druid. I came to this game as a 5e player and I adore moon Druid there, so I figured what could go wrong? I was *appalled* to hear him say other circles can turn into owl bears. That’s moon Druid territory man! We are the combat wild shapers! In 5e, we’re only good because we are the only ones who can turn into something remotely powerful.
@@Mega_Croissantamence to be honest I'm not too surprised by this, part of what makes Moon Druid so meta is due to creativity that you can't easily express in a video game. Then again I've always found the subclass to stifling in normal play (you sacrifice so much by playing any other circle), so I see any excuse for a Druid to not go Moon and never look back a good thing.
No it's the same as in the tabletop: "You can't cast spells, and your ability to speak or take any action that requires hands is limited to the capabilities of your beast form. Transforming doesn't break your concentration on a spell you've already cast, however, or prevent you from taking actions that are part of a spell, such as Call Lightning, that you've already cast." The main thing going for Moon Druids in both the tabletop and the game is the ability by level 2 to have over 100hp per long rest so it's broken in a multiclass with a Barb since you can rage whilst wild shaped
@@GrillsyJthat's what they mean though. Recast concentration spells like moonbeam and call lighting can't be activated even if you are concentrating on them because your situational action table disappears when you wild shape
I had a ton of fun with Rogue. I didn't know you ranked it so low. If anything Arcane Trickster felt really underwhelming. I found Pickpocket and Assassin to be so much stronger and viable. Sneak Attack was a straight killing move once I learned how Advantage worked, and then my fights became all about strategy and placement to maximize damage with my Pickpocket and Assassin Astarion. Ultimately, it was a fun, evasive class that really surprised me.
Maybe you been playing in early game? Because before level 5 rogue is really good. Even after 5 it can be good but I believe it falls off somewhere in mid to late game
@@Zeeros100 I beat the game as a Rogue. I switched my class from Arcane Trickster to Pickpocket in Act 3. The spells for Arcane Trickster are neat and useful sometimes, but they don’t compare to the damage output with melee and Sneak Attack. High crit chances, constant advantage, high evasion, and also lockpicking anything with ease made the game a blast. My only regret is not using Greater Invisibility more.
@@Zeeros100 once you hit level 7 multi class to a ranger. By level 12 youre getting a ridiculous amount of attacks off and there's a number of finesse weapons with great stats
In a multiplayer game I'm in you can really see the power imbalance. My friend is playing an assassin rogue and I'm a gloomstalker ranger In the first round, where we are both at our strongest, I'm getting 4 attacks at level 5 (7 if I'm the one that initiates it, but I usually let him do it because it's kinda the whole point of his build), each dealing about 24ish damage per hit, he's making two attacks, dealing about 30 damage per hit.... After the fight gets going I'm still making 3 attacks per round dealing the same damage and he's making one that deals about 11
Druids get two extra attacks at lvl 10 which is why you're getting 3 per round. Something cool you can do as a druid is take the resilient feat which comes with a +1 to an attribute of your choice which still functions while wildshaped. This way, you can do cool things like bump the bear wildshape from 19 strength to 20. Owlbears have 17 constitution, so maybe if you bump it to 18 with the feat you can get even more durability as an owlbear, which if possible is pretty insane
My biggest disagreement was putting Assassin at the bottom of the rogue options - mostly because the ability to get two powerful strikes in at the beginning of the fight (since your Rogue will usually have high initiative, and you can start the fight from stealth). Getting that refresh at the start of the fight has *taken out* major problem enemies for me before the fight even starts.
One of the big problems I started having with an assassin character on Tactician was that halfway through Act 2 important enemies would frequently have resistance or straight up immunity to slashing/piercing damage which is 99% of what rogues do, and afaik the class doesn't have ANY native way to bypass nonmagical resistances. Assassins also have an awful dichotomy where they tend to curbstomp most fights before they begin, but they really struggle to contribute meaningfully in setpiece fights when the whole team gets pulled into dialogue and you aren't allowed to get that opening shot to kick things off. The lack of extra attacks also makes rogues particularly vulnerable to lowrolls, a single nat 1 on an attack or damage roll can devastate your partiy's momentum in a lategame fight
I think its worth mentioning that for the Shadow Monk, you can take tavern brawler and drink Hill Giant Elixers and get 21 strength, effectively gaining insane hit rate and damage on attacks. Then the Shadow Step it gets allows you to essentially misty step every encounter and delete a target. If you multiclass into thief you can do some bonkers amounts of damage at once
tavern brawler and strength increases applies to all monks, not just to Shadow Monk. A well made striker monk is going to delete most people when they hit them under such circumstances anyway so the advantage from it is a minor boon that is more valuable when your strength isn't pushed that high, and can just use step of the wind dash for the movement without the shadow restriction anyway.
And if you dont want to wast hill giant elixers you can just take the club of hill giant strength to have a permanent strenth of 19. Sure, you wont be able to do an unarmed strike anymore with your main hand, but you can still do flury of blows and with multiclass into thief 4/5 attacks will be unarmed anyway so Its well worth the Investment.
My current favorite build is Open-Hand Monk 8 with Thief Rogue at 4. Pick up Tavern brawler early and use elixirs of giant strength throughout the game to destroy everything. They get super good perception, insight, etc. Sleight of Hand and Stealth from Rogue if you don't already have it and still remain insanely mobile with high damage. You can get 6 unarmed strikes in one turn potentially 8 if you are running the fighter variant, though you sacrifice an ASI with that (so I tend to prefer the 8/4 split for out of combat options). I overall just adore bg3 as I've been going through it.
@@Khagas Works even better multi-classed as ranger or fighter for even more attacks. Add in sharpshooter plus some accuracy and other on-hit damage buffs.
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Druids are the most fun class in bg3 for me. The fact that summon spells dont require concentrations, so you can rock multiple summons (with water myrmidons being absolute goats), and you can concentrate on another damaging spell or haste (from equipment) while being in owlbear or myrmidon form is absolutely amazing and really fun. Water myrmidons with their powerful ranged attacks, stacking wet status, and proning multiple enemies every round is so busted, meanwhile dryad entangling and debilitating every enemy in vicinity while making you immune to lot of CC is sooo good. And yeah, druids gets 3 attacks at level 10, 6 with haste. 6 owlbear attacks with bonus action aoe jump/prone attack is unmatchable. Or just 3 attacks while smashing people back into your wall of force, insect plague and so on... And sure, its still slightly lower damage than fighter, but you can still use the best healing spells in game, cure almost all conditions, make stealth checks trivial for whole party with pass without trace, usefreedom of movement, wall of stone/thorns (these are ridiculous), spike growth and so on. Not to mention on demand flight form and tiny cat form for easiest traversal in game, while being very stealthy and selfreliant. Druid is also usually the last man standing when things go south, nobody else has this much staying power except maybe barb or abjuration wizard
While I don't disagree, my 23 AC Sorcadin in act 2 with shield is incredibly durable and hard to hit. I think with full itemization in Act 3 I could get 26 AC add in shield and crit immunity, well it's a bit silly.
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@@DemonLordSparda no doubt sorcadins are amazing, but they are way more rigid in their playstyle 😊 my karlach got respected into sorcadin, for maximum smite power, I use her for "maximum obliteration", while I use druid for everything else 😁
@ That's a devastating combo. I love making strong builds.
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@@DemonLordSparda and man, does this game really give you a lot of options for that! Now I can't wait to mod my game and add bladesingers, artificers and wildfire druids, that's gonna be amazing... Can't fucking wait 😁
I was waiting with bated breath to see where you put my favorite class of Sorcerer and I am so excited you agree with it being amazing!! It's so much fun to play especially with twinned spell and quickened spell. Tossing three spells in one turn is insane
lol it's not that it's controversial or anything, it's just in all my years of dnd experience no one has ever had any interest in playing a sorcerer besides me, who's the forever dm. My groups tend to lean towards weaponry classes than the magic classes overall. Even now in BG3 I am the only person I know in my friend group that plays a sorcerer. So it's just exciting for me to see love being given to my favorite class! @@exantiuse497
The spore druid is actually amazing, you just need the tunic that let you use differents spores such as aceleration spores that is bassically a potion speed in area. You can get that tunic in act 3 in Philgrave's mansion, you need to talk to the mummy and trade with him, his staff is also very good for the builds since being a spore druid is also being a necromancer.
@@JuanAntonioGarciaHeredia I didn't say in any moment that it was op, not everything is about numbers or killing the bosses in 1 turn...I just say that the spore druid is amazing refering to that is very funny to play and cool.
@@JuanAntonioGarciaHeredia Como dato curioso estamos hablando en inglés pero por tu apellido(Heredia) capaz somos primos lejanos o algo 🤣de hecho te llamas como mi abuelo y todo lol.
Hard disagree on the Moon Druid, I would argue it's straight up the best Druid subclass late game. Once you unlock the ability to become a Myrmidon it becomes an absolute monstrosity of a supportive damage dealer. In particular the Earth Myrmidon is disgustingly useful, with 3 attacks of thunder damage every turn that can knock enemies prone if they fail a save, making the Druid an excellent fight opener to give the other heavy hitters advantage for free.
@IishPotato Disagree. In my experience level cap tends to be hit VERY early in act 3, which is already a hugely long section of the game, so a massive portion of the game is spent capped out
I had a blast playing a bow ranger/rogue with gloomstalker and assassin as my subclasses. The first round damage was insane, if you manage to get a sneak attack in before the combat starts you can potentially score 4 hits (two of them stealth attacks), with a hunters mark and advantage on all of those attacks if you hit enemies that haven’t had a turn yet. Gonna try something else next playthrough but I loved that build Edit: if you manage to make your enemies surprised at the start of combat you get even more insane damage since assassin gives you automatic critical hits on surprised targets
I played a Lore Bard on my first playthrough and it was only on my second playthrough without a Bard that it sunk in just how much they did for the party. Cutting words is wild.
Spore-druid necro is such a good summoner i consider it a must-have. You can bring a small army with you anywhere, soaking up damange and sending dozens of attacks.
@@BrussLSproutsthis is just kinda wrong, I mean obviously every class can complete honor mode, but it’s pretty obvious some classes are just superior to others
One of the best things about sorcerer is that u have proficiency in constitution. War caster is so value. And with the con item from house of hope you WILL NEVER have ur concentration broken.
using NEVER in caps is a bit of a stretch though buddy. There are enemies in Act 3 on Tactician who can slap you for 40+ damage in a hit. Yeah with that necklace does set CON to 22 so that's +6 (and +4 prof) for +10. If you take 40 damage then your DC to maintain Conc is 20, if you roll with Adv then your odds of maintaining Conc are 79%. (96% if they hit for 30 damage) That's high, but that isn't *NEVER* territory by a long stretch. Also getting stunned or knocked prone etc can still break it.
Love the videos, think you might have underrated Druid a bit though - spike growth is incredible damage and control, especially early game (which is the hardest part of the game) more so conjure woodland being (lvl 4 spell) lets you summon a minion that can recast spike growth every single round for just an action and being able to reposition it every round is insane. Especially so if you have more of a spell caster comp
My party beat the githyanki creche abusing spike growth, and doors. We would wipe half the encounter without even touching them. Spike growth and knife tornado in a doorway, with a darkness arrow to cover our barbarian doorman.
I can attest to how good spike growth is. My wild magic surged and caused it to grow under my squad at the start of a fight. Completely fucked us, lol.
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Now imagine that spike growth is even heavily nerfed in this game as people can fucking jump out of it! 😁 And when you push people with eldritch blast into it, they fly above big part of that push back, not taking full damage! And yet, it's still gamechanger spell all the way up to 7th level I feel
Most Druid players have this sentiment. I just got into a massive argument with one of my friends about this exact thing. Gives examples of how Druid can be good in very specific circumstances, which is inarguable, but this is a relative power tier list where classes that are less niche are stronger.
Yeah...after watching countless Tier lists on Baldur's Gate 3 I am convinced. You will now be my go to guy for Baldur's Gate 3 Tier list content. The rest just seem to read off of a list and literally just read off of the description and what is already in the game but you good sir provide quality info.
I think an oversight on druid's strength was the fact that, while their spell list is limited, they also gain acccess to the most powerful and plentiful summoning spells in the game. Summon minor and major elements, summon undead and 4 plus others (with spore subclass) summon dryad who they themselves come with a summon to add to initiative. Combining all of these summons in total meant i was able to on average have 5 or 6 big, tanky allies who took every hit i didnt care too while i locked down areas with aoes. Not kidding, with 3 druids and a single aid, you can amass an army of 30+ minions with some devastating health
Pretty solid list. Was glad to see someone else caught that Eldritch Knight is S-tier. I feel like Eldritch Knight has so many categories where it's "so close yet so far" to being amazing, and that aspect tends to drive people away before they realize the *combination* of having so many "so close yet so far" abilities actually ends up making it busted all the same. It likewise tends to get outshined by Battlemaster - somewhat rightfully so - but I think a lot of people fail to understand that if you want an all-around team support, you pick Battlemaster. If you instead want a juggernaut of a character that can cast Blur on itself so attackers have disadvantage, and then cast Shield as a reaction to *DENY* the few hits that get through on a Heavy armor character with a shield, you pick Eldritch Knight. Also worth mentioning there's a ring that lets you cast Enchantment and Illusion spells as bonus actions, and guess what, the control spells Eldritch Knights have *ARE* all Enchantment and Illusion spells. This means you could - for example - attack once to give your opponent disadvantage against your spells, use Hold Person as a bonus action with advantage, then if they're successfully held in place, you still have two more attacks to spend on them which will automatically be crits now. Two other small caveats in general: *1) Quickened Spell > Heightened spell.* You mentioned Heightened spell and it's good too, but wanted to point out for people with limited choices left for Meta magic who have to decide between the two: Heightened spell imposes disadvantage on saving throws, but Quickened Spell lets you attack twice in the same turn. This means if you tried Hold Person normally and failed, you could Quickened Spell to try again and this is effectively Advantage. This also has the added bonus of potentially saving you 3 Metamagic points, because if the first Hold Person cast succeeds, you see there's no need to spend the points, whereas with Heightened Spell, you just pay upfront. *2) Divination situationally is S-tier.* Without respecc'ing anyone, it is possible to get a squad of 3 Divination Wizards in this game. The more you have, the more their control ability spikes. So while I could understand putting a singular one in A-tier, it's worth mentioning that a *squad* quickly becomes S-tier, because now you have up to 12 pre-determined rolls per fight.
I'm trying to build eldrich knight too. Any equipments you recommened? Also the ring you said that let you cast as a bonus action, do you happened to remember what it is? Thanks!
@@financeorelse First thing to focus on is good defense, because Shield is a whopping +5 reaction block. The harder you are to hit for your regular AC, the less Spell slots you have to commit to Shield for blocking and the more damning it becomes when an enemy finally punches through and you casually swat the attack away with Shield. Pretty much just grab equipment through the game that adds AC (there are gloves, boots and a cape that add +1 AC by Act 2, almost all of them sold by merchants iirc) and you're effectively enjoying a Fighter that's near impossible to hit for most of the game. Some good Feat options are Ability improvement (you have a lot of stats you benefit from: STR, DEX, CON, INT, and to a lesser extent Wisdom just for your own defensive saving throws), Tavern Brawler, Shield Master and potentially something like Defensive Duelist, (a "mini-Shield spell" that demands you use a finesse weapon) Lucky, or Savage Attacker, but these are more preference. Tavern Brawler works because you have Bound Weapon, so this means you can safely throw your primary weapon, have it return to you, and throw it again. Realize that anything with the "Thrown" condition retains it's base damage values when thrown, whilst other weapons instead deal a generic D4 instead of their base weapon damage. (but with your modifiers still added to the D4) For this reason Thrown weapons are better for this, but there's other weapons that can be worth using for this too. (for example, as he highlighted, Eldritch Knight causes disadvantage on applying ANY status effect, so throwing a non-throwable scimitar with a blind effect can still be a reliable method of applying Blind) Shield Master is interesting because it means if you Dex save against a Spell, you take zero damage instead of half, and if you fail the check, you still only take half. This means not only are you a tank vs. physical damage, but spell damage as well. There are even some endgame equipment items that let you use a reaction to AUTOMATICALLY succeed a Dex save, so you can just straight-up delete spellcasters with this. I prefer a shield + thrown weapon because this allows me to both boost my AC up high, negate any enemy spells that use Dexterity saves (the majority of pure damage spells), and you can get ridiculous damage and accuracy by throwing a bound weapon. *For specific endgame gear:* *Nyrulna* - Act 3 Trident that deals ridiculous damage when thrown. Synergizes stupidly well with Tavern Brawler and when wielded with one hand, can deal up to 39 damage when thrown. (non-crit) *This weapon is automatically bound when thrown, meaning you're free to Bound ANOTHER weapon alongside it!* The way the game seems to work is the last weapon you threw automatically becomes your equipped weapon, so for example if you wanted to Bound the Susser Dagger to silence any mages with a throw, the Dagger would become your primary when thrown, and then you simply throw Nyrulna from your inventory if you want it to return to your main hand. This means you are free to effectively have *TWO* main weapons you can cycle through without having to waste an action to equip the other: you merely throw the one you want to become your main hand weapon. *Viconia's Walking Fortress* - Act 3 shield that gives you +3 AC to make you harder to hit, gives you *ADVANTAGE* on Saving throws against spells so you're even more of a menace for casters. *Helldusk Boots* - If you fail a Saving Throw, you can spend a reaction to automatically succeed instead. This means you basically cannot be damaged by Spells, if combined with Viconia's Walking Fortress and Shield Master. *Band of the Mystic Scoundrel* - This is the ring that lets you cast Enchantment or Illusion spells as a bonus action. For Eldritch Knights, this is Tasha's Hideous Laughter and Hold Person as your debuffs you can apply after giving them disadvantage against your spells. You can also use certain gear items that let you cast spells like Confusion, if you like. *Eversight Ring* - By no means a requirement and more preference, but with this you cannot be Blinded, so you're free to cast Darkness, sit in it, and anything attacking you has disadvantage + moves slower through the Darkness itself. You can basically sit in it and throw your weapon or fire arrows safely on enemies outside it, but they can't really fire back. *Armor of Agility/Armor of Persistence* - Again preference: Armor of Agility can provide the highest AC possible. If you get your Dex to 22, then your Armor Class with this armor will be 23, since Armor of Agility has 17 base AC and doesn't cap your Dex modifier. (+6 with 22 Dex) Alternatively, you can take Armor of Persistence, which instead only provides only 20 AC, but halves all physical damage as a constant buff. An important caveat is that if you feel it's important to lower physical damage by half for any specific turn ONLY, you could take Blade Ward as a cantrip, and with War Caster (Eldritch Ability), you can buff yourself with Blade Ward and then still get a free attack in as a Bonus Attack. Blade Ward doesn't stack with Armor of Persistence, so this means either you have the effect permanently on with Armor or Persistence, OR you buff it as necessary with Armor of Agility and sacrifice two of your three attacks every second turn to do so. *For spells:* Generally you avoid damage spells and focus on utility since your Intelligence might not be so high. The only spells on this list that require any degree of intelligence to optimize would be the CC ones like Hold Person. Otherwise, you're fairly free to neglect Intelligence and not level it. Either works: High intelligence means you're a spellcaster where your enemies have disadvantage against your control spells, low intelligence means you still have great utility spells with "meh" ability to use CC spells. Shield is a must because a +5 to your AC *as a reaction* to deny the hits that get through is sick. Magic Missile can be nice as a guarantee method of getting off damage if you're facing a strong opponent with like 9 HP left that's difficult to hit. Blur is a self buff concentration spell that makes all incoming attacks have disadvantage against you. This means you could make someone have disadvantage and then on the off-chance they still land an attack, you block it with Shield. Darkness, as outlined above, can be an alternative to Blur, or you can easily use both situationally. Darkness for example can be defensive for your team if you need damage to stop hitting your team period at the cost of your team also being Blinded while you yourself are not with the Eversight Ring, whereas Blur buffs you without affecting anyone else. Mirror Image, but I consider this "meh." The problem is it's a nice +9 to AC, but each time you're attacked and the opponent misses, you lose 3 AC. I feel like Eldritch Knight can already deny loads of attacks with Shield and Blur, so this might be wasteful overkill as opposed to just saving a spell slot for one of those. Hold Person. As outlined above, with that ring, you can cast this as a Bonus action after a normal weapon attack, and this means you could theoretically cast Hold Person whilst your target has disadvantage, and then get GUARANTEED CRITS off hold person twice before your turn even ends. Tasha's Hideous Laughter. Just a good alternative to if Hold Person won't work on a target. Misty Step. Just good utility in general. Crown of Madness or Enlarge. More alternatives to Hold Person or Blur. Crown just makes an enemy frenzy and attack the nearest living thing, Enlarge I believe is a D4 buff to your damage, if you just want more of that. Magic Weapon. +1 to attack roll and damage. Simple enough, and luckily NOT a concentration spell so you can combine it with these others.
Apparently, you have fully mastered the Eldritch Knight subclass. I'm just about to start the first game, on balanced difficulty, and I can't choose a class. I would like a melee warrior who can cast a couple of spells, much like the witcher Herald. I don’t want to be a paladin because of oaths and a tavern brawler. Everyone writes that Battlemaster is stronger and more fun than EK and he can compensate for the lack of movement spells with shoes. In addition, the undesirability of using attack spells by a warrior also reduces his potential. Tell me, will initially high intelligence help the EC? Is it possible to allocate a couple of points to charisma for the sake of dialogue? Are the spells Disguise Self, Detect Thoughts and Charm Person useful for EC? Or can't they be used because the slots will be filled by the shield and arrow? Is it true that war magic is trash? Is it true that without a special ring and helmet, EK is weak and boring? I don't like two-handed swords, can I equip the EK with a one-handed weapon and a shield (a real shield), or is the shield not needed if there is a shield spell? Tell me, if I just spend an action on an offensive spell, will that reduce my weapon damage to the level of a war cleric or warlock?
Respecing Lae'Zel as a ranged CC battlemaster has been cool so far. Get sharpshooter for -5/+10 attacks, then start disarming and goading enemies or dropping them prone for Karlach to slam with great weapon master, or anything else really. Goading attack gets a boost at range because opponents will get disadvantage to attack anyone but Lae'zel, and she's not even around.
That's because you did some things (maybe killed the refugees at the Druid Grove) that prevented her from joining your party. She absolutely is a companion.@@palsoltesz9967
@@pilidod i actually went for HELPING the tieflings, picked up the quest, i killed the druid boss girl, as the guy asked and thought its all good and they ll make peace now.. still seems they were killing the tieflings somehow so the girl is out of reach now :/ so funny that she says fok off when i was helping them or at least trying.. dunno if its worth restarting as im already in underdark end guess its act 2 - dunno.
I've just started a playthrough with a Rogue - Assassin Sub Class... As soon as I get sneak attack, my party comp would wipe a fight before the enemies even had a turn. Combination of splitting the group, sneaking and using that advantage damage. The other party members are: Wyll - Warlock, Karlach - Respec to Paladin, and my wife's character Aelin - Sorcerer. I've never experienced such high amount of burst damage from this party comp. Sneak Attack rogue, level 5 in the Underdark dealt 80 damage to the beholder within it's initial sneak attack, then bonus suprised round sneak attack. Sorcerer dealt 40 damage from 2 Fireball's using source points. It's just nuts. But I feel the rogue definitely gets overlooked
Maybe I'm bias but a lvl 12 circle of the moon druid is extremely powerful (manly because of the myrimidon's). Being able to summon a myrimidon then becoming a myrimidon and being able to bonus action teleport as much as you want has been massive.
The disresepct on Monk here. Easy S tier. Monk has fantastic potential, literally hits everytime, can stun, can push, stagger, prone. Not to mention movement is insane. I've played Monk pretty consistantly after trying and I find it more fun then Fighter and Barb. Barb is just go in and hit hard but lacks any utility. Fighter has utility no doubt, but only has the same type of playstyle no matter the subclass. The best thing about fighter is mixing it with Paladin or Ranger to get Action Surge. I can accept the A ranking for monk. But I would recommend to people not to dismiss it. As a DM in normal DnD, the hardest class I've ever had to deal with from players is a Monk. It can turn a hard boss fight that you spend hours prepping for them to fight, into nothing.
I love monks so much. If Larian ever adds more subclasses I hope Drunken Master is one of them. Not the strongest but, in my experience, the most satisfying by far.
16:21 Actually, I think all druids in wild shape get 3 attacks by the end of the game. I noticed it when I turned Halsin into an earth myrmidon and was able to do somewhere around 50-80 damage in a turn, while also knocking people over. Very helpful for killing the pillars in the Raphael fight.
For Monk, I would say Open Hand is higher tier than the other two, possibly S. The reason is that if you dip Thief 3, you get an extra bonus action. Each bonus action can get you 2 unarmed attacks with extra effect (Topple for knockdown for advantages for other party members). And you can get your unarmed attacks to do 20-40 each on Open Hand (Cloud Giant + Tavern Brawler = 16 + Manifestation of Body + if you use items adding unarmed damage, though it's late game for Raph's gloves). On bosses you can keep them out of fight with stuns too or you can stack harmonized on mobs to do extra 6d6 AOE each round (each harmonized enemy deals damage separately) which can also cause a wipe of a group of enemies if you stack up Cull the Weak). Or if you want to conserve Ki, you can harmonize 4 enemies and then do additional AOE 12d6 for one Ki (if you hit everyone) per turn (there is a Dex save for half on those though). I ended up doing more damage on Tav Open Hand than Lae'Zel Tactician most of the time and kept bosses stunned for the fight, but I used Cloud Giant Elixirs for myself rather than Lae'Zel and had all the tadpoles, so this could make it uneven. Also fun fact, if you don't dip and get immunity to diseases you can just finish the diseased ship easily (Throw) xD
Tavern brawler way of the open hand monks are squishy, but is both way more interesting than a fighter and much more powerful offensively. Between supporting gear, doubling up to +7 strength modifier, flurry of blows (particularly with 3 thief for an extra bonus action), manifestation of body and resonant punch, monks do way more damage than fighters. Their resource pool is very plentiful, to the point where it is fine to both spam flurry of blows and stunning strike on harder fights, particularly when using wholeness of body. Forcing an enemy to save or be stunned for twice per action and once per bonus action makes them exceptionally good at locking down 1 or 2 targets. Or with flurry of blow spam and haste, 8-10 attacks per round (depending on use of wholeness of body) with endgame builds doing over 30 per hit on a non crit, they can take out the great majority of enemies in a single round on their own, and sustain this for multiple rounds per fight. Their AB with +14 bonus from strength is very high, and between stun or knocking enemies prone, have an easy time getting advantage, so very rarely miss. And resonant punch is situational but devastating against clustered enemies. If you have 3 enemies clustered, for example, its an extra 9d6 damage per round against each of them at no cost other than 1 point of ki, not even a bonus action. Against 4 clustered enemies, its 12d6 per round. When hasted, its possible to apply resonant touch to 6 (or 7 with wholeness of body) enemies per round, dealing an extra 18d6 or 21d6 respectively per enemy, though you will very seldom encounter so many tightly packed enemies with a non trivial number of hit points. But 3-4 is fairly common and its like having a virtually free fireball per round (1 Ki point is a very low cost). Even single target, its 3d6 extra per round.
I forget about resonant punch. it's the only reason that I would put open hand over 4 elements for full capability. 4 elements has a couple of styles but resonant does edge things out. otherwise I would consider them kind of equal. Open Hand does Pushing, proning, and Sturnning for a bit less cost and a little easier. But 4 elements puts in a different kind of stun that is potentially multi-turn with their ability to hold person, they can add on fire damage from very early on, and they can have a pull to use as well. Most of these things they can be had from level 3 like the open hand monk. Resonant punch is a bit easier to use than fireball is for 4 elements monk though.
I do think you're looking at a lot of these classes in a vacuum and not so much in specific team comps or in a way where the "bad" things they do are perfect for the teams they're in... not every class has to kill every enemy/disable them all in one turn and perform every out of combat skill check. Ranger beastmaster is great in plenty of team comps, so is druid, and rogue especially too.
I’m new to the whole DND/baldurs gate scene. My first character was a human fighter and at first I wasn’t sure about it. Then once I hit level 5 I believe, I was amazed by how OP it is. Opening up and engagement on a strong melee enemy with disarming attack can go absolutely nuts. This game is so fire and it’s so hard for me to put it down.
Okay, for someone who’s just recently started playing this game l can honestly say I’m a bit overwhelmed. I’m currently just taking the time to familiarize myself with the mechanics of the game and then start learning all these different classes. I love the variety, but goodness is it a lot. 😅
Hire Sir Fuzzalump from whithers, and make him a transmutation wizard, leave him at camp and send ingredients to him. It takes time to switch to him and make potions, but he can also cast Long Strider on the party if you don't have it. If your headed somewhere dark and someone doesn't have dark vision, he can cast Light on their weapon to improve their hits =)
Wild Shape has a lot of interesting interactions that make it a bit unintuitive - The three attacks at level 10 is intentional, it's really funny that a Druid gets more swings per turn than a Fighter of the same level but as far as I can tell this is how it is supposed to function - The reason why Moon Druid is doing better this patch is because up to now they literally did not have a level 6 feature, so Wild Shapes got BONKED by resistances left and right, it's truly a huge difference and way more imo than just "Wild Shape with a Bonus Action" if you intend on using Wild Shapes in Combat. Few feelings felt as bad as my Halsin's damage getting completely cucked in Act 2 because everything has B/P/S resistances despite him having Moon Druid 6, no more! - Myrmidon Wild Shape (minus Earth which benefits half from Tavern Brawler) actually benefit from YOUR weapon proficiencies, which by default, Druids only get the Scimitar the Fire guy wields, so for a Moon Druid base it could be worth taking a FIghter level beyond 10 just to get a sweet sweet +4 to your other two Myrmidon Wild Shapes, or by picking a race that can give you the other proficiencies. Similarly, Owlbear feels a lot better when given the +4 to +5 to hit (but not damage, unsure if this is intentional) with Tavern Brawler. - From my testing, item passives STILL get completely disabled after exiting Wild Shape until you re-equip all of your items. Especially annoying when using the item that gives you an extra wild shape charge and not getting the extra charge when you short rest because you forgot to unequip and equip it again. It also makes exiting Wild Shape in combat feel particularly punishing since you have to spend your action to equip the item again if you really need the passive from it.
Thank you for your take Aestus! Im nearing the end of my first playthrough and ive been thinking of what to play as my second playthrough. You helped me to narrow my choices down.
As someone who’s been playing 5e since it’s pretty much come out , I’m definitely very impressed when BG3 as a whole but especially with how the handled the classes . You’re right with that they are pretty well balanced .. where as in actual d&d there’s certain classes that are almost always avoided . But most importantly, Bard being top tier in both BG3 and D&D, which is the proper order of the universe . As a dm I’ve never let my players overlap and have two of the same class in a party … unless it’s bards . They’re so versatile you could legitimately play an entire campaign with a party of just bards
I played a ton of illusion wizard and it's really good for enabling rogues in combat because you can change where enemies are looking at with the bonus action Minor illusion cantrip. If you multiclass into thief you can cast fireball or another leveled spell, cast minor illusion, then hide to stay out of agro. Because the sightlines are changed, rogues and shadow monks can use their bonus action hide for sneak attack or advantage. You're also really slippery with Illusory Self in addition to shield.
I do disagree with warlocks not being great with control, Arms of Hadar is one of the best control abilities in the game. Enemies who start in it take damage, it blinds, it's difficult terrain, and if you end in it you take more damage. Also Great Old One giving a frighten AoE on crits is pretty damn good for control. A Pact of the Blade warlock can use Hold Person or Killer's Sweetheart or any other paralyzing effect to guarantee crits to proc the class effect. You can also use the fixed Spell Sniper feat to try a crit fishing Eldritch Blast build to some effect.
Hunger of Hadar is great control against trash mobs, but trash mob fights tend to be easy to clear anyways, so I prefer single target spells like Hold Monster. Of course that is too simple a generalization, but hopefully you get what I am trying to say.
Awesome list. I absolutely love starting the game as a Ranger, but still, I 100% agree with your ranking. Once I figured out multi-classing, Gloomstalker was my choice for killing stuff from stealth. The first round for a Gloomstalker is brutal. I think the one thing that you didn't mention is the most important part of the build. Initiative. I rarely go second in a fight.
Stacking crit chance on an orc champion can make the bonus attack from great weapon master easily obtainable in the three hits, fighter bonus feat means you can grab savage attacks for consistently higher damage as well. When you fight with the reckles attack ring it's more like fishing with dynamite when every second attack is a crit.
Vengeance is just a giant wrecking ball of a spec for pally, especially 2H. It finds the biggest, toughest or most dangerous enemy out there and WHAM just deletes it from existence.
Circle of moon druid allows you to become mermidon, which if you choose Earth, it can be paired with tavern Brawler, and you can attack 3 times in wild shape
Way of the Four Elements monk is pretty terrible, especially compared to the other 2 subclasses. It still gets the monk base abilities so it’s not RP tier but I’d say it’s B or C tier.
I'm trying to role play as Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat with Way of the Four Elements. I have to admit that my main doesn't do the most dmg in my team (in Tactician fyi).
The only thing good about it is that the elemental abilities are not "spells" so a Barbarian can cast them while raging and use Flurry of Blows in the same turn. You can have a Wild Elemental Bonk.
Great list and I agree with a lot of your rankings, I think you underestimate Druids though or maybe you just have not had them in the right party, for me they are part of an S tier party. I particularly like Druid of the Land which can get haste, misty step, kill cloud amongst others. The base druid spell list is also stacked with conjure woodland beings getting you a dryad, immune to prone, that can cast spike growth, and summon a wood woad. Also Moonbeam which can do up to 600pts radiant damage over 10 turns and still be recast while in wildshape, same with call lightning. It's also stacked with utility spells like pass without trace, jump, long strider, daylight, create water etc. And at a high level they get heroes feast, wind walker and planar binding. Anyway, i know it is a lot of personal preference but for me Druids are only second to Bards :) And yes they do get 3 attacks while wildshaped and the owlbear attacks may not be incredible you should look at their jump attack they get on a bonus action that scales with weight and distance, with potion of the colossus I did one shot Grym of the grym forge with 8k damage :) ua-cam.com/video/hvSkLKCxx6E/v-deo.html
Monks are very item dependent but I think are S tier if we allow them the same flexibility to have item combinations like eldtritch knight did on the tier list. Once they get strength gaunlets they can often one round most bosses in the game, and their resource pools are absurd to have fighter output for multiple turns of 6 strikes. They are also one of the only classes that can take advantage of thief multiclass to have their bonus actions deal more than action points via flurry of blows. I found on open hand breaking through chapter bosses legendary cc resistance very easy not to mention their mobility to hop around the map one tapping every enemy is absurd step of wind for one bonus action lets you have unlimited jumps i think at one point i had 180m of movement in a single turn off of jumps alone and no actions spent Overrall I agree with most else, and discovered some new builds i gotta try now like eldritch knight on hit, thanks!
I'm playing a open hand monk/thief right now and just completely owning the game. The dmg output and reliability far exceeds anything else in the game.
Bard, paladin, sorcerer, and Fighter was the composition I used most of my play through (with some multi-classing dips). Maybe the reason charisma classes are more popular is not for speech checks, but just because they are the objectively strongest classes. Bard does everything a rogue does skill wise, everything a wizard does spell utility wise, healing word duty of a cleric, great as a PC leading dialogue, and also a full striker with blade subclass. Covers all non-combat roles and great at combat. Number one class in my opinion. One or two level dip in avenger paladin (after level 6) for the great synergizing 1 channel divinity and another level for smite option if using melee (can just stick with one level is focused on ranged attacks instead) Sorcerer is insane for twin haste and, due to itemization, also keeps up well as a strike with cantrips and quicken for burst. Paladin is good regardless of itemizations or multi-classing. Strong in 5e and strong here. Fighter is only class with 3 attacks per action (without using bugs or resource use). Simple and powerful. Also insane with throwing weapons because of tavern brawler and bugs and itemization.
For my second full playthrough, first time tacitcian, I decided to try what I considered to be the strongest classes and I ended up going with a main party consisting of Paladin Sorcerer, Warlock Bard, a Fighter and a Cleric. Sometimes switching the Cleric for a Wizard. I guess I mostly agree you with you then, with my more limited experience. Also, thanks for the tip about Eldritch Strike, I had no idea. I will definitely play around with it.
Try a thief rogue build focusing on dual wielding. If you get the gloves or feat that let you add bonuses to your off hand attacks, you end up getting 3 attacks per turn. This works with melee or hand cross bows. I think it is by far the best rogue build. You can also use it to jump into a fight, get a sneak attack stab and off hand stab in there, and then use the second bonus action to disengage and get out of there increasing your survivability.
Gloomstalker Assasin, College of Swords Thief, Light Cleric, Palalock (Vengeance+Fient) and Spore Druid...Have been the strongest builds i've played so far!
I had a lot of fun on my spore druid so i was surprised to see it so low. however I very much abused a 1 level wizard dip to make up for some of the spell shortcomings with learned scrolls. also I like GOO over Fiend as the temp HP is overshadowed by the CC lategame, but either way the Deepend Pact (Blade) is busted.
I'm really interested to see how this list would change if it was nade for mid-game. For example, 5th level Warlocks with Pact of the tome get Call Lightning, Animate Dead and Haste on top of their pact magic and that's bonkers, specially if you are running many of them with a bard.
Its funny that you have rogue as the worst class in the game. In my first playthrough Astarion has been my most reliable character in combat and arguably my best character outside of combat as well. I love that people can have entirely different opinions on classes based on playstyle.
one of the cool things about pact of the blade is that, at the time of typing this comment, is that the deepened pact feature which grants you an additional attack, stacks with extra attack.
Sleeping on Druid with War Caster and spamming Call Lightning or Moonbeam upcast for 10 turns of spell damage for 1 spell slot. With haste you can recast twice per turn. Without haste Moonbeam can be better since you leave it on the enemy and it takes damage right away and more on that enemy's turn Edit: Did some quick maths, and starting from level 3 you can get 80d10 single target damage with your 2 casts of moonbeam. But more realistically, assuming a fight lasts 3 rounds on average, a single cast of moonbeam in said fight is going to let you deal up to 12d10 at spell level 2, and an additional 6d10 per upcast level. With haste it's 18d10 at level 2 +9d10 per upcast level. Call Lightning has the same damage without haste but only on wet targets, though the AoE is much bigger. Just the limited rests restriction with these 2 spells should make Druid S tier in my opinion. P.S. For reference a basic Fireball deals 8-48 damage for 1 level 3 spell slot, a single cast of Moonbeam upcast as a level 3 spell deals 6-60 damage in one round
My first play through was Druid. Man dropping a fire wall on a group, or moonbeam, or growth and then wildhshape to move the board ready to attack was great. I used bear til I got sabertooth tiger I think it was. Then wildhsape into the elementals when needed. Had so much versatility. I enjoyed it a lot.
Way of Shadows monk is crazy. On a solo playthrough, if you don’t get surprised, you can kill an enemy in the 2 turns you get by attacking from invisibility (and if it’s a duel, stunning strike chains are really good), use cloak of shadows and reset encounters. Really gives you the feel of being a ninja assassin lol.
Ahh finally ! This guy gets it ! I literaly can't even fathom that he said monks are more boring than fighters. Of all the things to compare the two classes between one another he chose the worst. Monks are undeniably less boring.
Not tryna be “that guy”, but this is one of the best tier lists I’ve ever seen for anything. Your knowledge and passion shines through, excellent work Sir!
Druid can be incredibly powerful if you summon elementals - Summons aren't concentration spells, you can summon multiple summons (so long as they don't come from the same spell), and the action economy is such a large part of the game. I don't play druid myself, but Jaheira in the late game was amazing. Massive amounts of healing plus massive summons plus wild shape. S tier for me. I was playing on Tactician too.
About eldritch knight, "It gives it quite a bit more survivability... But that's all you need, because in one or two turns, fighters can just kill everything on the map". I agree survivability is good but fighters are not killing everything on the map lol. They've got comparable dps to barbarians, minus a bit from rage bonuses to damage. The biggest bonus fighters have is utility, usually in the form of damage... Which can be really good, but pretending they're carrying the game is strange to me. Seems like he might have some weird biases based on his rp preferences, idk.
Rogues also can be surprisingly powerful. I understand and agree that they aren't exactly team players, no support, and they miss out on some action economy, but especially thief can solo entire encounters. I think you're undervaluing stealth - Stealth is massively powerful, in D&D and in BG3. Using a rogue to test an encounter, entering first and doing their best to clear as much as possible while the rest of the party stays back, is incredibly powerful. Often times you end up clearing half the encounter if you're able to use your stealth correctly. This is incredibly easy with the thief subclass too. Currently doing an honor mode playthrough and Asterion specced into thief has solod *most* encounters, and then the others are made incredibly easy. You mentioned not liking builds that push for crits. That may be the reason you didn't find success with rogue. Crits on rogue are far more powerful than any other class, rolling double the sneak attack dice in addition to the usual ones. There are a number of different items that lower your crit roll substantially, very worth using.
I know you already put light cleric into S-tier but I want to share a build that I’ve been using for a light cleric solo tactician run that absolutely dominates rooms of mobs. Minmaxed starting stats are: 8/16/15/8/17/8 But you can drop dex back to 14 if you want to bring another skill up to 12, or two skills back to 10. I prefer 16 dex just because of the extra +1 to initiative. First feat is Resilient: Con for the obvious concentration requirements of spirit guardians. Use the hag’s hair to get wisdom to 18. And then either warcaster at lvl 8 for more concentration saves or just WIS to 20 (which i think is better). You rarely drop concentration with just resilient and the following item build. The item build is what makes this build monumentally silly. Head: Holy Lance Helm Cloak: Thunderskin for more silliness or Protection if you want more AC and better saves. Body: Luminous Armour Gloves: Gloves of Belligerent Skies Boots: Boots of Stormy Clamour Neck: Periapt of Wound Closure is a good all around necklace for improving survivability. Rings: Coruscation Ring + Callous Glow Ring Weapon: Phalar Aluve Shield: Adamantine Shield Ranged: Dual Crossbows with Ne’er Misser in off hand. Now that the reverberation status is working, the interactions are absolutely mental. Ideally you start your fights with spirit guardians up as well as Phalar Aluve:Shriek Then when you walk into spirit guardian range, you inflict spirit guardian radiant damage, which procs your ring, and shriek damage, and applies stacks of reverberation, but also applies radiant shockwave, which applies more stacks of reverberation. With your relatively high AC and the stacks of radiant orb you just applied, you should be very hard to hit. So the mobs attack you, and miss. Well because they miss the holy lance helm has a chance to deal 1d4 radiant, which again procs shriek and radiant orb. Which procs reverberation. At this point the reverberation has gone off or will go off and inflicts thunder damage with a chance to knock prone, which also procs shriek damage. But a miss also procs reeling from your adamantine shield. Which lowers the chance that they hit even further and because reeling is a condition, that’s two more reverberation stacks. You basically just walk into groups of mobs, and they all fall over and take a million damage. Next turn comes around and you can walk away to trigger attacks of opportunity, which will likely deal damage to your opponent, because reverberated targets have lower dex saves, meaning that when they miss (because of 7+ stacks of radiant orb and 3 stacks of reeling) the holy lance helm is likely to hit, which procs more reverberation and radiant orbs and phalar aluve damage. Then you can run up to more folk with spirit guardians and then use your divinity to hit a bunch of people with more radiance orbs in a bigger AOE, which may again knock more people prone. This build is absolutely ridiculous. You can knock people prone and deal 3d4+2 (i think?) damage just by triggering your opponents attacks of opportunity against you. Absolutely busted and makes a solo or duo tactician run entirely reasonable without abusing stealth mechanics or even multiclassing. If you are vsing shar enemies with radiant retort, you swap the holy lance helm with the hat of fire acuity, and then you can use burning hands, scorching ray, and fireball to stack your acuity, making it way harder for enemies to avoid your necrotic spirit guardians and even makes spamming sacred flame an option (constant reverberation also makes sacred flame way better). Finally I use ne’er misser because of how its level 3 magic missile ability interacts with the all the on hit effects you are running, making it great for bursting or just doing a lot of damage to a lot of mobs if they are inside your shriek radius. It’s also a good way to spend your bonus action if you have nothing better to do for that little bit extra damage with an offhand range attack. Seriously, would love to see you try this and showcase the build, because it is hilarious. Edit: not sure if this is the best optimisation or not, and haven’t taken it into act 3 yet, but wanted to share because while I have been using it, it has been properly silly.
Barbarian/Monk. S tier. Your overlooking mixing throw with martial dps plus losing a tiny bit of movement by adding in the "cant be crit shield". Now add in bear heart barb and your easily sitting at 22AC while constantly dealing hundred of poubts of damage per round while getting to stand/do anything they want.
I played as a nature cleric. It’s more useful for dialogue options in the early game due to speak with animals but I have never used the charm animal or plants channel divinity. I ended up multiclassing into Bard and Sorcerer.
Yeah, Nature Cleric just doesn't get much use of their features and is missing their level 6 feature. Really terrible oversight from Larian, but not as bad as missing Trickery's level 6 feature. Shadowheart is one of the primary companions! Knowledge is also missing this, its bizarre that the 3 weakest Cleric domains are also all missing the same feature. Its too big of a coincidence imo, someone at Larian seems to have snubbed these domains hard.
Great video. I think you underrated the Monk a bit. I think its easily one of the highest damage per turn melee builds with the most movement. I solo'd the whole Gortash fight with my monk in 3 turns. 210-440 damage every turn for 3 turns once a long rest. Sorc haste support enabled this and deserves S tier like you said
My first playthrough was with a Ranger and had to combine it with Rogue Assasin to be extremedly powerful. I could get sometimes like 4 attacks before the fight even begins. Both classes are awful on their own but multiclassed are great. Now im making another playthrough combining 5 levels of fighter and 3 levels of thief and im using hand crossbows and its real powerful
Sounds like a potent build, Gloomstalker Ranger + Assassin Rogue for the ultimate first-move killer. I will disagree on the idea that Ranger and Rogue are inherently bad classes alone though. Lots of good items for Rogue's in BG3, and Assassin shines early game while Thief shines later, (Fast Hands gives you two Bonus Actions, very overpowered with dual Hand crossbows.) I would agree that Rogue's true potential is reached via multiclassing- but a pure Ranger is actually very powerful in BG3. The Beastmaster summons scale surprisingly well.
Add two levels of fighter and now you can use action surge to make first round even better. That's my Astarian build and I am taking multiple enimies out before anyone else gets a turn, My tev is a Druid/Barbarian and I am always debating if I should rage or not because by the time it comes to their turn, it's clear the combat is gonna be over in a couple of rounds max :D
@@OsamaZahid308 I don't like the fighter dip, since you can also go Ranger 8/ Rogue 4 for two entire feats more. Yes this hurts your nova, but you can then cast better spells, hit more often by getting Dex to 20 etc.
I'm gonna come to bat for barbarian, partially because it's always been one of my favorite classes and partially because I'm just having an absolute blast with the Wild Heart. I took the Tiger heart and in combination with some boots I found that extend my jumps and even some elixirs I can just yeet myself practically anywhere on the map. Jumping up to enemies who thought they were out or range is super satisfying and allows the rest of my party some breathing room in big encounters. Alternatively, jumping into more advantageous positions like high ground or across the map to force a big enemy to engage with you rather than the squishies more than makes up for slightly lower damage imo. I've also heard good things about combining the Eagle Heart's ability to dash as a bonus action with the Stallion feature of giving health every time you dash - that also essentially becomes unkillable.
Yes! Finally, someone who knows how the Bard works. I was really surprised that people thought that this was the worst class but I guess most people don't really utilize the class as much.
Did my man just give barbarian TWO A ranked subclasses and still had the balls to put it in B tier? My man, your tier list died not even a quarter of a way in, that's impressive
Dude, druids are summoners and field control. In the same battle you can summon a minor elemental, a dryad that can summom a treefolk AND an elemental. You can cast plant growth that compleatly waste enemies movement, sleet storm, THEN you cast your concentration damage spell... and if you don't want to spend a spell slot or if you are dying turn into a beast...
Not disagreeing with your placement based on your definition, but do think druid gets a bad rep. Based on how the AI seems to prioritize targets the control concentrations, with the bodies it generates make spore druid feel like the most effective "tank" in the game. 9/10 times mobs run right past my barb or my abjuration wizard tank to gun for a backline, but they seem to prioritize the summons more commonly. That with being able to do okish damage through hand crossbows or sheleliegh and a temp hitpoint pool makes them feel worth a slot in many comps.
I love rogues man. That shit is awesome, especially with hand crossbows. The only problem for me is that the only subclass worth getting is theif. Assassin is too niche, and trickster can probably be better simulated through thief multiclassed with wizard
Druids definitely deserve S tier. As soon as Jaheira joined my party, my performance in battles improved so drastically! I used to have to redo basically every fight multiple times but now with Jaheira, I’m winning almost every fight first try But I definitely agree with all the other rankings, good choices! Only other thing is that I might argue that trickery domain is rp, but I see your argument
Warlock is my favourite, I go pact of the blade, and play as an all around fighting menace. However, you really notice only having 2 spells per short rest, which forces your hand more than you would like
I think Warlocks make up for only 3 spell slots by recovering them on a short rest, automatically upcasting, and having the single best damaging cantrip in the game
a good way to optimize barb is to have 4 gnome barbarians in your party
edit: i beat honor mode first try by turning everyone into a barbarian. it was laughably easy
Halflings?
4 halfling barbarians or nothin
Or just building them for throwing, like he briefly mentioned but then strongly undervalued. TB Berserker's damage output comes online faster than any other damage build (because most of its core gear is frontloaded, you can be dealing 200+ DMG/round before you exit Act 1) - and it remains one of the strongest single class damage dealers throughout the entire game as a result.
Fighter doesn't even come close to passing it until Level 11 and Extra Attack II.
Okoii get out of here we're trying to have a rational discussion
@@willdigforfood5065 exactly
im not sure what this guy is on but with berserker youre making 3 2H-attacks with +10 damage feat +rage bonus at level 5 per round and all of these attacks have advantage while you have DR against all phys damage + highest hitpoint progression in the game (all of that without external buffs). No other class gets so early and consistent unconditional advantage on attacks and gets as much use out of great weapon master early on as a result.
The fact all of the amazing berserker/barb class features are super early make it one of the best dips in the game and best early game martials period. And if you do get enough items and extra attack 2 eventually by lategame you can always respec but thats a huge chunk of the game that fighter is just straight worse.
And then theres the whole throwing line which is also item supported super early on with returning pike being available as early as goblin camp.
Step 1: Get a group of 4 Bards.
Step 2: Call your group "The Bardians of the Galaxy"
That's my next run.
Oh damn. Pitching this idea to my buddies for multi-player campaign.
We got a group of 5 (with mods) all Bards and our group name is the "Absolute Bangers"
I play 4 bards all the time, I got use to free short rests so much that everything else seems wasteful and slow :D (all together 6 short rest / 1 long which allows things like getting through complete acts with 1-2 long rest))
but why wouldn't you long rest and trigger some cutscenes...there's plenty resources and fun roleplayin stuff to think about it@@CraftyF0X
Larian Studios made a buff to wildshape; all druid's wildshape have extra attack at level 5 and triple attack at level 10
Yep. I didn't realize this when I got to lvl 5 and it was a nice little surprise seeing I could do an extra attack in my wildshape.
It was long overdue considering the hit chance is Xcom
Add tavern brawler for amazing hit chances in wild shape
Honestly, the hit chance is pretty close to actual tabletop. I cannot tell you how often either A) The DM rolls well. Or B) The player rolls $#!T. And in Tabletop there is NO reload button, just sayin! @@csguak
@@Lankyjam1988 Seriously?! Well, I know what I have to change one of my characters into.
classes that used charisma for spell casting are either S or A tier. They can fight, support, do everything in combat and talk well outside of combat. This game is very well balanced.
Thats just D&D my gamer
Speech and persuasion always dominate in crpg.
That's more due to convenience than power, really. You can still do a lot of persuading and such so long as you don't dump charisma on your main character, proficiencies and Guidance (either yours or Shadowheart's) go a really long way.
Blame 5e the not very well designed game that BG3 is based off of. They did a lot to make the system better but there's no way to make 5e balanced without just making a new system.
That was my thoughts as a new player ignorant of D&D 5E mechanics, when I finished the game with my bard, warlock, paladin, and cleric I was like "that's it? this game is broken for the charisma classes" you don't want to main anything but a charisma modifier class after playing BG3
Agreed, accidentally turning enemies into dogs and cats and such just makes wild magic auto-S tier. The first time that happened I was like dying with laughter. I think I turned 90% of the battlefield into pets
I did that too and my poor 1hp fighter(Laezel) literally got downed by one of the turned dogs biting it and this was in Act 3 with level 12 charecters so I almost shed tears
Omfg, I love wild magic. My first playthrough as a sorcerer and I turned into a fucking sheep out of nowhere and it stayed in the citscene. Laughed my ass off.
then the spore zombies too! ohhh and also turn to stone. someone mouths off to me in lower city and i'll just go invis real quick and petrif them xD
If only it ever actually happened
@jamesdeer3129what?
My brother has made an absolutely op pure sorcerer by getting the tadpole power that heals the enemy a little, but makes them vulnerable to every damage type (as a bonus action) -> the amulet that gives you 1 additional magic missile -> quicken spell -> proceeds to shoot 12 magic missiles that do double damage on a chosen target like a freaking one man machine gun and just melts bosses and crowds of enemies alike in 1 or 2 turns. With haste potion he can make the gods cry.
EDIT: they patched the mentioned tadpole ability so that it can’t be used on enemies anymore.
Edlvocation wizard to add 4 damage per magic missile hit
add spellsparkler to that with reverbation gloves and callous ring
And Hex to add 1d6 to every missile
add Phalar Aluve shrieking bonus
@@vince4503 bruh your tip just made my sorc fucking unstoppable. Sending a W for you
Agree with Fighter being S-tier. They get more attacks, more feats, and the meaneuvers are amazing (when chosen correctly). And honestly I'm glad that they made Fighters so awesome. When you add Alert as a Feat they get first strike as well.
if you can stand how boring it is.
@@messitupyou belong in the RP-tier lol
@@messitup I agree fighter is kinda vanilla by itself but it's no denying fighter is stronk. I always build multiclass around them though
and you belong to the tierwhore tier.@@candyhandsjf7288
@@messitupexcept in this game it really isn't
Sword Bard is basically: "What if we took a Rogue, and gave them extra attack, battle maneuvers, *and made them a full caster*? Surely not overpowered."
Also astarion ascended, have fun with the numbers 😂
Lmfao i gotta try that out
And then add a few levels of pact of the blade warlock and you go from overpowered to God-like.
ok im making my astarion into a sword bard!
@@blackbox8697 Literally my first build. Plus make you pact weapon with shadow blade and you're doing a ton of psychic damage.
Don't forget that bards can bump their bardic inspiration die to 1d12 for free by playing for the tiefling kids with Alfira at the end of act 2 - something that you'd normally only unlock at level 15 in the tabletop rules.
I didn't even know about that!
This game has so much content I think I've gotten everything and I miss something! My bard will need to do this next time
I did that, and never knew that's what it was for!
DUrge Spoilers, do you know if this still happen if Alfira is killed?
@@imnotfitz Alfira must be alive. There's a janky way to keep her alive in the Durge run, though.
Playing a lore bard in tabletop I knew the huge potential and it was my first choice in bg3. Wasn’t disappointed! Plus having your main char the driver of conversations and the one to pick locks and disarm traps is just a quality of life improvement. You don’t have to shuffle around who’s doing what.
I picked a bard for my first playthrough because I wanted my character to do most of the talking and have fun dialogue options but turns out the college of lore bard is pretty good in combat, too. Such a versatile class, it fits in any party composition
Bard is in fact the best Tav class if you want to have easier out of combat experience because they have dex and cha as their main stats. Easy dialogue dice rolls and opening locks.
Bard was, other than barb, the only class I have never played in dnd-ish games. For that reason, I knew going in I was going to try the bard main in BG3. At this point, I cant see ever choosing anything but Bard on my main again. The utility and "face", coupled with the ability to be a top-end martial or caster class via colleges, is just too much net value for me to pass up.
Similarly, I was shocked how effective, and fun, the battle master is. Another pleasant surprise.
Bard is really good for a party that doesn't spam long rest and save scums. The extra short rest and bardic inspiration are really good when doing a DND like play through.
It’s always funny to see comments about how surprising people find that hard is good. Given that as a table top player, bards are probably the overall “strongest” class because of their versatility
@@kylevanderwolf4446 Bard in 5e is pretty busted. They can do everything.
Its interesting to see the changes from tabletop to game, like monk not being garbage and warlock not mixing with literally everything
I always found monks to be bonkers good in tabletop but that might have just been the builds I used
@@q.7556monks are great, it's gm that are shit at creating encounters that diverge from "stand were you are and hit each other until someone falls". And even like that they are the god kings of martial at tier one. And while clunky, 4 elements have always been one of the best monk subclass (more so in the tabletop BTW).
Problem with warlock in 5e is that hexblade warlock exists. It is the reason people multiclass to it.
Larian kinda merged hexblade into their version of pact of the blade anyway though.
Which is great because it moves what is normally a 1 level dip into an actual investment.
Its a healthy change.
@@chronic6428The copium to say that 4 elements is the best monk subclass dude
@@condimentking3395 In bg3? No. In 5e? It's up there with way of mercy.
I'll throw my hat in for the Necromancy Wizard. Having multiple zombies with Undead Fortitude which create more zombies on kill *devours* the enemy's action economy. Items like Demon's Bane gloves and the circlet you get from Balthazaar make your minions even tankier, as well as the Aid spell which affects all allies in range as opposed to just three in 5e. Plus, they recently changed it so NPCs no longer freak out when they see you wandering around with your horde, so it's less of a pain to keep your minions up all the time. No other character gets your party that much disposable health and action economy, and on top of that you're still a full wizard with all your control, support, and blast spells.
I can't wait to play as a wizard
My first Playthru, I played a life domaine cleric, had Gale as a necromancer wizard, halisan as a spore druid, and Astarion, with a few other summons (us, scratch, scrolls etc)
Every character that could would cast animate dad at max level. Plus any elemental/woodland summons they had.
Like if you’re bringing 25 entities (that you’ve up-casted aid on,) into a battle you’re gonna have the upper hand.
It's good but the main problem is that it is quite annoying to play. By the time my necromancer wizard really came online I was in act 3, and act 3 is mostly tight urban environment, having all of my summons up makes traversal and exploration a nightmare I ended up having to ditch it despite the power
One thing that is very much missing from Druid (at least Moon Druid) is the ability to ACTIVATE your concentration spells while wildshaped. That’s something that is an ability in tabletop 5E, but not in BG3
And on that note, it’s a shame you can’t go into badger form and just stay burrowed underground. You have to just emerge somewhere
I’m so disappointed in moon Druid. I came to this game as a 5e player and I adore moon Druid there, so I figured what could go wrong? I was *appalled* to hear him say other circles can turn into owl bears. That’s moon Druid territory man! We are the combat wild shapers! In 5e, we’re only good because we are the only ones who can turn into something remotely powerful.
@@Mega_CroissantamenceI see your point but in DND owlbears are monstrosity not beast so you can't even wildshape into a owlbear
@@Mega_Croissantamence to be honest I'm not too surprised by this, part of what makes Moon Druid so meta is due to creativity that you can't easily express in a video game. Then again I've always found the subclass to stifling in normal play (you sacrifice so much by playing any other circle), so I see any excuse for a Druid to not go Moon and never look back a good thing.
No it's the same as in the tabletop:
"You can't cast spells, and your ability to speak or take any action that requires hands is limited to the capabilities of your beast form. Transforming doesn't break your concentration on a spell you've already cast, however, or prevent you from taking actions that are part of a spell, such as Call Lightning, that you've already cast."
The main thing going for Moon Druids in both the tabletop and the game is the ability by level 2 to have over 100hp per long rest so it's broken in a multiclass with a Barb since you can rage whilst wild shaped
@@GrillsyJthat's what they mean though. Recast concentration spells like moonbeam and call lighting can't be activated even if you are concentrating on them because your situational action table disappears when you wild shape
I had a ton of fun with Rogue. I didn't know you ranked it so low. If anything Arcane Trickster felt really underwhelming. I found Pickpocket and Assassin to be so much stronger and viable. Sneak Attack was a straight killing move once I learned how Advantage worked, and then my fights became all about strategy and placement to maximize damage with my Pickpocket and Assassin Astarion. Ultimately, it was a fun, evasive class that really surprised me.
Maybe you been playing in early game? Because before level 5 rogue is really good. Even after 5 it can be good but I believe it falls off somewhere in mid to late game
@@Zeeros100 I beat the game as a Rogue. I switched my class from Arcane Trickster to Pickpocket in Act 3. The spells for Arcane Trickster are neat and useful sometimes, but they don’t compare to the damage output with melee and Sneak Attack. High crit chances, constant advantage, high evasion, and also lockpicking anything with ease made the game a blast. My only regret is not using Greater Invisibility more.
@@Zeeros100 I think it falls off from levels 6-10 a bit but reliable talent is just such a nice quality of life improvement
@@Zeeros100 once you hit level 7 multi class to a ranger. By level 12 youre getting a ridiculous amount of attacks off and there's a number of finesse weapons with great stats
In a multiplayer game I'm in you can really see the power imbalance. My friend is playing an assassin rogue and I'm a gloomstalker ranger
In the first round, where we are both at our strongest, I'm getting 4 attacks at level 5 (7 if I'm the one that initiates it, but I usually let him do it because it's kinda the whole point of his build), each dealing about 24ish damage per hit, he's making two attacks, dealing about 30 damage per hit.... After the fight gets going I'm still making 3 attacks per round dealing the same damage and he's making one that deals about 11
Druids get two extra attacks at lvl 10 which is why you're getting 3 per round.
Something cool you can do as a druid is take the resilient feat which comes with a +1 to an attribute of your choice which still functions while wildshaped. This way, you can do cool things like bump the bear wildshape from 19 strength to 20. Owlbears have 17 constitution, so maybe if you bump it to 18 with the feat you can get even more durability as an owlbear, which if possible is pretty insane
That's awesome! I usually take resilient con on my casters anyways. Big fan of starting with 15 in constitution for that reason.
Great find!
Problem is that illithid powers are useless in shifted form.
@@spellandshieldyeah I hope they update wild shape, also being able to move moonbeam.
@@Sheamu5 You can always use mods.
Druid is also just one of the strongest classes in the game. Like, Actually top 3 possibly top 2. Anyone who says they're lower is off their rocker.
We finally got here. A class tier list that isn't the result of someone just trying to get it out as fast as possible!
My biggest disagreement was putting Assassin at the bottom of the rogue options - mostly because the ability to get two powerful strikes in at the beginning of the fight (since your Rogue will usually have high initiative, and you can start the fight from stealth). Getting that refresh at the start of the fight has *taken out* major problem enemies for me before the fight even starts.
Multiclassed with Gloomstalker you just kill everything before they can ever get their first turn
As a thief you can use 2 parasite powers in 1 turn as a bonus action, assassinstion just cant beat that
Arcane trickster definitely should've been below it.
One of the big problems I started having with an assassin character on Tactician was that halfway through Act 2 important enemies would frequently have resistance or straight up immunity to slashing/piercing damage which is 99% of what rogues do, and afaik the class doesn't have ANY native way to bypass nonmagical resistances. Assassins also have an awful dichotomy where they tend to curbstomp most fights before they begin, but they really struggle to contribute meaningfully in setpiece fights when the whole team gets pulled into dialogue and you aren't allowed to get that opening shot to kick things off. The lack of extra attacks also makes rogues particularly vulnerable to lowrolls, a single nat 1 on an attack or damage roll can devastate your partiy's momentum in a lategame fight
@@Legacy0901 use Diluted oil of sharpness
I think its worth mentioning that for the Shadow Monk, you can take tavern brawler and drink Hill Giant Elixers and get 21 strength, effectively gaining insane hit rate and damage on attacks. Then the Shadow Step it gets allows you to essentially misty step every encounter and delete a target. If you multiclass into thief you can do some bonkers amounts of damage at once
Don't forget cloud giant potion which gives 27 str
tavern brawler and strength increases applies to all monks, not just to Shadow Monk. A well made striker monk is going to delete most people when they hit them under such circumstances anyway so the advantage from it is a minor boon that is more valuable when your strength isn't pushed that high, and can just use step of the wind dash for the movement without the shadow restriction anyway.
And if you dont want to wast hill giant elixers you can just take the club of hill giant strength to have a permanent strenth of 19.
Sure, you wont be able to do an unarmed strike anymore with your main hand, but you can still do flury of blows and with multiclass into thief 4/5 attacks will be unarmed anyway so Its well worth the Investment.
My current favorite build is Open-Hand Monk 8 with Thief Rogue at 4. Pick up Tavern brawler early and use elixirs of giant strength throughout the game to destroy everything. They get super good perception, insight, etc. Sleight of Hand and Stealth from Rogue if you don't already have it and still remain insanely mobile with high damage. You can get 6 unarmed strikes in one turn potentially 8 if you are running the fighter variant, though you sacrifice an ASI with that (so I tend to prefer the 8/4 split for out of combat options). I overall just adore bg3 as I've been going through it.
This was like one of the first classes I thought of and it deals insane damage. Like 150 damage every turn consistently
As a Thief rogue you can use 2 illithid powers as a bonus action in one turn, its very handy in tactician
If you complete the subquest in the creche and unlock it's buff*
@@niklasmitfussl2639don't forget you have to use the thing that extracts the tadpole and not lae zel
Dual wield thief attacks 3+ times a turn. anyone who says rogue is bad is just ignorant
@@Khagasa thief with access to hand crossbows and sharpshooter is godly
@@Khagas Works even better multi-classed as ranger or fighter for even more attacks. Add in sharpshooter plus some accuracy and other on-hit damage buffs.
Druids are the most fun class in bg3 for me. The fact that summon spells dont require concentrations, so you can rock multiple summons (with water myrmidons being absolute goats), and you can concentrate on another damaging spell or haste (from equipment) while being in owlbear or myrmidon form is absolutely amazing and really fun. Water myrmidons with their powerful ranged attacks, stacking wet status, and proning multiple enemies every round is so busted, meanwhile dryad entangling and debilitating every enemy in vicinity while making you immune to lot of CC is sooo good.
And yeah, druids gets 3 attacks at level 10, 6 with haste. 6 owlbear attacks with bonus action aoe jump/prone attack is unmatchable. Or just 3 attacks while smashing people back into your wall of force, insect plague and so on...
And sure, its still slightly lower damage than fighter, but you can still use the best healing spells in game, cure almost all conditions, make stealth checks trivial for whole party with pass without trace, usefreedom of movement, wall of stone/thorns (these are ridiculous), spike growth and so on. Not to mention on demand flight form and tiny cat form for easiest traversal in game, while being very stealthy and selfreliant.
Druid is also usually the last man standing when things go south, nobody else has this much staying power except maybe barb or abjuration wizard
While I don't disagree, my 23 AC Sorcadin in act 2 with shield is incredibly durable and hard to hit. I think with full itemization in Act 3 I could get 26 AC add in shield and crit immunity, well it's a bit silly.
@@DemonLordSparda no doubt sorcadins are amazing, but they are way more rigid in their playstyle 😊 my karlach got respected into sorcadin, for maximum smite power, I use her for "maximum obliteration", while I use druid for everything else 😁
@ That's a devastating combo. I love making strong builds.
@@DemonLordSparda and man, does this game really give you a lot of options for that! Now I can't wait to mod my game and add bladesingers, artificers and wildfire druids, that's gonna be amazing... Can't fucking wait 😁
Spore druid can be insane if done right
I was waiting with bated breath to see where you put my favorite class of Sorcerer and I am so excited you agree with it being amazing!! It's so much fun to play especially with twinned spell and quickened spell. Tossing three spells in one turn is insane
Best class in terms of power and fun!
Saying sorcerer is good is not all that controversial, hah. Is there any DnD crpg where sorc is bad?
lol it's not that it's controversial or anything, it's just in all my years of dnd experience no one has ever had any interest in playing a sorcerer besides me, who's the forever dm. My groups tend to lean towards weaponry classes than the magic classes overall. Even now in BG3 I am the only person I know in my friend group that plays a sorcerer. So it's just exciting for me to see love being given to my favorite class! @@exantiuse497
Sorry, but I think Sorc is only good for twinning haste on the real classes then hiding away
@@jakob3044 get war caster and don't be a pansy
The spore druid is actually amazing, you just need the tunic that let you use differents spores such as aceleration spores that is bassically a potion speed in area. You can get that tunic in act 3 in Philgrave's mansion, you need to talk to the mummy and trade with him, his staff is also very good for the builds since being a spore druid is also being a necromancer.
I had a playthrough where my spore druid was the tank, with only 1 dip into war cleric.
I have Jaheira as a spore druid, that chest piece has let her do some awesome stuff. Being able to haste a group every turn as a bonus action is nuts
"Spore druids is op, you just need an item you get when you have already completed 85% of the game" Amazing. Redditor. Take. Here is your updoots
@@JuanAntonioGarciaHeredia I didn't say in any moment that it was op, not everything is about numbers or killing the bosses in 1 turn...I just say that the spore druid is amazing refering to that is very funny to play and cool.
@@JuanAntonioGarciaHeredia Como dato curioso estamos hablando en inglés pero por tu apellido(Heredia) capaz somos primos lejanos o algo 🤣de hecho te llamas como mi abuelo y todo lol.
thanks for working so hard on this - I really appreciate it
Hard disagree on the Moon Druid, I would argue it's straight up the best Druid subclass late game. Once you unlock the ability to become a Myrmidon it becomes an absolute monstrosity of a supportive damage dealer. In particular the Earth Myrmidon is disgustingly useful, with 3 attacks of thunder damage every turn that can knock enemies prone if they fail a save, making the Druid an excellent fight opener to give the other heavy hitters advantage for free.
I haven't experimented with it that much, thanks for the heads up!
dude try the air elemental - you stun each turn. you can also cast mass silence, teleport and fly.
I don't think you should count the max level feats like wildshaping into elementals ... most of the game is spent at levels 1-6
@IishPotato Disagree. In my experience level cap tends to be hit VERY early in act 3, which is already a hugely long section of the game, so a massive portion of the game is spent capped out
@@DustdeviIswtf lol. End of act 1 you are level 8
I had a blast playing a bow ranger/rogue with gloomstalker and assassin as my subclasses. The first round damage was insane, if you manage to get a sneak attack in before the combat starts you can potentially score 4 hits (two of them stealth attacks), with a hunters mark and advantage on all of those attacks if you hit enemies that haven’t had a turn yet. Gonna try something else next playthrough but I loved that build
Edit: if you manage to make your enemies surprised at the start of combat you get even more insane damage since assassin gives you automatic critical hits on surprised targets
Ranger is the highest dmg per turn in the game but you need lvl 11 with 1 lvl cleric
@@Soundwave299 I've never seen an 11/1 ranger cleric build, what does it do?
Thats exactly what I did for Asterion!
@@ZeketheZealot yeah my character basically was Astarion 2.0 except for the whole vampire thing
I did the same but I went thief, plus dual hand crossbows
I played a Lore Bard on my first playthrough and it was only on my second playthrough without a Bard that it sunk in just how much they did for the party. Cutting words is wild.
Spore-druid necro is such a good summoner i consider it a must-have. You can bring a small army with you anywhere, soaking up damange and sending dozens of attacks.
This list is just a shitty Reddit list tbh. Nothing is anything under S tier if you can actually play this game effectively.
@@BrussLSproutsthis is just kinda wrong, I mean obviously every class can complete honor mode, but it’s pretty obvious some classes are just superior to others
One of the best things about sorcerer is that u have proficiency in constitution. War caster is so value. And with the con item from house of hope you WILL NEVER have ur concentration broken.
using NEVER in caps is a bit of a stretch though buddy. There are enemies in Act 3 on Tactician who can slap you for 40+ damage in a hit. Yeah with that necklace does set CON to 22 so that's +6 (and +4 prof) for +10. If you take 40 damage then your DC to maintain Conc is 20, if you roll with Adv then your odds of maintaining Conc are 79%. (96% if they hit for 30 damage) That's high, but that isn't *NEVER* territory by a long stretch. Also getting stunned or knocked prone etc can still break it.
After being the superior race, i can finally be of the highest class as well!
UNLIMITED POWER!
Love the videos, think you might have underrated Druid a bit though - spike growth is incredible damage and control, especially early game (which is the hardest part of the game) more so conjure woodland being (lvl 4 spell) lets you summon a minion that can recast spike growth every single round for just an action and being able to reposition it every round is insane. Especially so if you have more of a spell caster comp
My party beat the githyanki creche abusing spike growth, and doors. We would wipe half the encounter without even touching them. Spike growth and knife tornado in a doorway, with a darkness arrow to cover our barbarian doorman.
I can attest to how good spike growth is. My wild magic surged and caused it to grow under my squad at the start of a fight. Completely fucked us, lol.
Now imagine that spike growth is even heavily nerfed in this game as people can fucking jump out of it! 😁 And when you push people with eldritch blast into it, they fly above big part of that push back, not taking full damage! And yet, it's still gamechanger spell all the way up to 7th level I feel
Most Druid players have this sentiment. I just got into a massive argument with one of my friends about this exact thing. Gives examples of how Druid can be good in very specific circumstances, which is inarguable, but this is a relative power tier list where classes that are less niche are stronger.
Yeah...after watching countless Tier lists on Baldur's Gate 3 I am convinced. You will now be my go to guy for Baldur's Gate 3 Tier list content. The rest just seem to read off of a list and literally just read off of the description and what is already in the game but you good sir provide quality info.
I think an oversight on druid's strength was the fact that, while their spell list is limited, they also gain acccess to the most powerful and plentiful summoning spells in the game.
Summon minor and major elements, summon undead and 4 plus others (with spore subclass) summon dryad who they themselves come with a summon to add to initiative. Combining all of these summons in total meant i was able to on average have 5 or 6 big, tanky allies who took every hit i didnt care too while i locked down areas with aoes. Not kidding, with 3 druids and a single aid, you can amass an army of 30+ minions with some devastating health
Pretty solid list. Was glad to see someone else caught that Eldritch Knight is S-tier. I feel like Eldritch Knight has so many categories where it's "so close yet so far" to being amazing, and that aspect tends to drive people away before they realize the *combination* of having so many "so close yet so far" abilities actually ends up making it busted all the same. It likewise tends to get outshined by Battlemaster - somewhat rightfully so - but I think a lot of people fail to understand that if you want an all-around team support, you pick Battlemaster. If you instead want a juggernaut of a character that can cast Blur on itself so attackers have disadvantage, and then cast Shield as a reaction to *DENY* the few hits that get through on a Heavy armor character with a shield, you pick Eldritch Knight.
Also worth mentioning there's a ring that lets you cast Enchantment and Illusion spells as bonus actions, and guess what, the control spells Eldritch Knights have *ARE* all Enchantment and Illusion spells. This means you could - for example - attack once to give your opponent disadvantage against your spells, use Hold Person as a bonus action with advantage, then if they're successfully held in place, you still have two more attacks to spend on them which will automatically be crits now.
Two other small caveats in general:
*1) Quickened Spell > Heightened spell.* You mentioned Heightened spell and it's good too, but wanted to point out for people with limited choices left for Meta magic who have to decide between the two: Heightened spell imposes disadvantage on saving throws, but Quickened Spell lets you attack twice in the same turn. This means if you tried Hold Person normally and failed, you could Quickened Spell to try again and this is effectively Advantage. This also has the added bonus of potentially saving you 3 Metamagic points, because if the first Hold Person cast succeeds, you see there's no need to spend the points, whereas with Heightened Spell, you just pay upfront.
*2) Divination situationally is S-tier.* Without respecc'ing anyone, it is possible to get a squad of 3 Divination Wizards in this game. The more you have, the more their control ability spikes. So while I could understand putting a singular one in A-tier, it's worth mentioning that a *squad* quickly becomes S-tier, because now you have up to 12 pre-determined rolls per fight.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
I'm trying to build eldrich knight too. Any equipments you recommened? Also the ring you said that let you cast as a bonus action, do you happened to remember what it is? Thanks!
@@financeorelse Band of the Mystic Scoundrel. I recommend Helmet of Arcane Acuity as well.
@@financeorelse First thing to focus on is good defense, because Shield is a whopping +5 reaction block. The harder you are to hit for your regular AC, the less Spell slots you have to commit to Shield for blocking and the more damning it becomes when an enemy finally punches through and you casually swat the attack away with Shield. Pretty much just grab equipment through the game that adds AC (there are gloves, boots and a cape that add +1 AC by Act 2, almost all of them sold by merchants iirc) and you're effectively enjoying a Fighter that's near impossible to hit for most of the game.
Some good Feat options are Ability improvement (you have a lot of stats you benefit from: STR, DEX, CON, INT, and to a lesser extent Wisdom just for your own defensive saving throws), Tavern Brawler, Shield Master and potentially something like Defensive Duelist, (a "mini-Shield spell" that demands you use a finesse weapon) Lucky, or Savage Attacker, but these are more preference.
Tavern Brawler works because you have Bound Weapon, so this means you can safely throw your primary weapon, have it return to you, and throw it again. Realize that anything with the "Thrown" condition retains it's base damage values when thrown, whilst other weapons instead deal a generic D4 instead of their base weapon damage. (but with your modifiers still added to the D4) For this reason Thrown weapons are better for this, but there's other weapons that can be worth using for this too. (for example, as he highlighted, Eldritch Knight causes disadvantage on applying ANY status effect, so throwing a non-throwable scimitar with a blind effect can still be a reliable method of applying Blind)
Shield Master is interesting because it means if you Dex save against a Spell, you take zero damage instead of half, and if you fail the check, you still only take half. This means not only are you a tank vs. physical damage, but spell damage as well. There are even some endgame equipment items that let you use a reaction to AUTOMATICALLY succeed a Dex save, so you can just straight-up delete spellcasters with this. I prefer a shield + thrown weapon because this allows me to both boost my AC up high, negate any enemy spells that use Dexterity saves (the majority of pure damage spells), and you can get ridiculous damage and accuracy by throwing a bound weapon.
*For specific endgame gear:*
*Nyrulna* - Act 3 Trident that deals ridiculous damage when thrown. Synergizes stupidly well with Tavern Brawler and when wielded with one hand, can deal up to 39 damage when thrown. (non-crit) *This weapon is automatically bound when thrown, meaning you're free to Bound ANOTHER weapon alongside it!* The way the game seems to work is the last weapon you threw automatically becomes your equipped weapon, so for example if you wanted to Bound the Susser Dagger to silence any mages with a throw, the Dagger would become your primary when thrown, and then you simply throw Nyrulna from your inventory if you want it to return to your main hand. This means you are free to effectively have *TWO* main weapons you can cycle through without having to waste an action to equip the other: you merely throw the one you want to become your main hand weapon.
*Viconia's Walking Fortress* - Act 3 shield that gives you +3 AC to make you harder to hit, gives you *ADVANTAGE* on Saving throws against spells so you're even more of a menace for casters.
*Helldusk Boots* - If you fail a Saving Throw, you can spend a reaction to automatically succeed instead. This means you basically cannot be damaged by Spells, if combined with Viconia's Walking Fortress and Shield Master.
*Band of the Mystic Scoundrel* - This is the ring that lets you cast Enchantment or Illusion spells as a bonus action. For Eldritch Knights, this is Tasha's Hideous Laughter and Hold Person as your debuffs you can apply after giving them disadvantage against your spells. You can also use certain gear items that let you cast spells like Confusion, if you like.
*Eversight Ring* - By no means a requirement and more preference, but with this you cannot be Blinded, so you're free to cast Darkness, sit in it, and anything attacking you has disadvantage + moves slower through the Darkness itself. You can basically sit in it and throw your weapon or fire arrows safely on enemies outside it, but they can't really fire back.
*Armor of Agility/Armor of Persistence* - Again preference: Armor of Agility can provide the highest AC possible. If you get your Dex to 22, then your Armor Class with this armor will be 23, since Armor of Agility has 17 base AC and doesn't cap your Dex modifier. (+6 with 22 Dex) Alternatively, you can take Armor of Persistence, which instead only provides only 20 AC, but halves all physical damage as a constant buff. An important caveat is that if you feel it's important to lower physical damage by half for any specific turn ONLY, you could take Blade Ward as a cantrip, and with War Caster (Eldritch Ability), you can buff yourself with Blade Ward and then still get a free attack in as a Bonus Attack. Blade Ward doesn't stack with Armor of Persistence, so this means either you have the effect permanently on with Armor or Persistence, OR you buff it as necessary with Armor of Agility and sacrifice two of your three attacks every second turn to do so.
*For spells:*
Generally you avoid damage spells and focus on utility since your Intelligence might not be so high. The only spells on this list that require any degree of intelligence to optimize would be the CC ones like Hold Person. Otherwise, you're fairly free to neglect Intelligence and not level it. Either works: High intelligence means you're a spellcaster where your enemies have disadvantage against your control spells, low intelligence means you still have great utility spells with "meh" ability to use CC spells.
Shield is a must because a +5 to your AC *as a reaction* to deny the hits that get through is sick.
Magic Missile can be nice as a guarantee method of getting off damage if you're facing a strong opponent with like 9 HP left that's difficult to hit.
Blur is a self buff concentration spell that makes all incoming attacks have disadvantage against you. This means you could make someone have disadvantage and then on the off-chance they still land an attack, you block it with Shield.
Darkness, as outlined above, can be an alternative to Blur, or you can easily use both situationally. Darkness for example can be defensive for your team if you need damage to stop hitting your team period at the cost of your team also being Blinded while you yourself are not with the Eversight Ring, whereas Blur buffs you without affecting anyone else.
Mirror Image, but I consider this "meh." The problem is it's a nice +9 to AC, but each time you're attacked and the opponent misses, you lose 3 AC. I feel like Eldritch Knight can already deny loads of attacks with Shield and Blur, so this might be wasteful overkill as opposed to just saving a spell slot for one of those.
Hold Person. As outlined above, with that ring, you can cast this as a Bonus action after a normal weapon attack, and this means you could theoretically cast Hold Person whilst your target has disadvantage, and then get GUARANTEED CRITS off hold person twice before your turn even ends.
Tasha's Hideous Laughter. Just a good alternative to if Hold Person won't work on a target.
Misty Step. Just good utility in general.
Crown of Madness or Enlarge. More alternatives to Hold Person or Blur. Crown just makes an enemy frenzy and attack the nearest living thing, Enlarge I believe is a D4 buff to your damage, if you just want more of that.
Magic Weapon. +1 to attack roll and damage. Simple enough, and luckily NOT a concentration spell so you can combine it with these others.
Apparently, you have fully mastered the Eldritch Knight subclass. I'm just about to start the first game, on balanced difficulty, and I can't choose a class. I would like a melee warrior who can cast a couple of spells, much like the witcher Herald. I don’t want to be a paladin because of oaths and a tavern brawler. Everyone writes that Battlemaster is stronger and more fun than EK and he can compensate for the lack of movement spells with shoes. In addition, the undesirability of using attack spells by a warrior also reduces his potential. Tell me, will initially high intelligence help the EC? Is it possible to allocate a couple of points to charisma for the sake of dialogue? Are the spells Disguise Self, Detect Thoughts and Charm Person useful for EC? Or can't they be used because the slots will be filled by the shield and arrow? Is it true that war magic is trash? Is it true that without a special ring and helmet, EK is weak and boring? I don't like two-handed swords, can I equip the EK with a one-handed weapon and a shield (a real shield), or is the shield not needed if there is a shield spell?
Tell me, if I just spend an action on an offensive spell, will that reduce my weapon damage to the level of a war cleric or warlock?
informative and useful, still trying to get my head round what D&D classes actually do and this helped clarify a few things
Moon druids get 3 attacks as a feature, and the myrmidon forms have insane movement and decent abilities
My Moon druid tav carried the whole party on many encounters in my first run.
but then you got to turn your sexy characters into stupid looking animals with 0 customization.
Respecing Lae'Zel as a ranged CC battlemaster has been cool so far. Get sharpshooter for -5/+10 attacks, then start disarming and goading enemies or dropping them prone for Karlach to slam with great weapon master, or anything else really. Goading attack gets a boost at range because opponents will get disadvantage to attack anyone but Lae'zel, and she's not even around.
I somehow can’t picture it. Doesn’t feel right when she eventually acquires her Githyanki weapons
@@robbcabaian y not to mention karlach is not possible to get as a companion.. she just says f.. off.
That's because you did some things (maybe killed the refugees at the Druid Grove) that prevented her from joining your party. She absolutely is a companion.@@palsoltesz9967
@@palsoltesz9967I mean... If you helped kill the tieflings in the grove she says that, yeah. It is quite easy to get her as a companion otherwise.
@@pilidod i actually went for HELPING the tieflings, picked up the quest, i killed the druid boss girl, as the guy asked and thought its all good and they ll make peace now.. still seems they were killing the tieflings somehow so the girl is out of reach now :/ so funny that she says fok off when i was helping them or at least trying.. dunno if its worth restarting as im already in underdark end guess its act 2 - dunno.
I've just started a playthrough with a Rogue - Assassin Sub Class... As soon as I get sneak attack, my party comp would wipe a fight before the enemies even had a turn. Combination of splitting the group, sneaking and using that advantage damage. The other party members are: Wyll - Warlock, Karlach - Respec to Paladin, and my wife's character Aelin - Sorcerer. I've never experienced such high amount of burst damage from this party comp. Sneak Attack rogue, level 5 in the Underdark dealt 80 damage to the beholder within it's initial sneak attack, then bonus suprised round sneak attack. Sorcerer dealt 40 damage from 2 Fireball's using source points. It's just nuts. But I feel the rogue definitely gets overlooked
Maybe I'm bias but a lvl 12 circle of the moon druid is extremely powerful (manly because of the myrimidon's). Being able to summon a myrimidon then becoming a myrimidon and being able to bonus action teleport as much as you want has been massive.
The disresepct on Monk here. Easy S tier. Monk has fantastic potential, literally hits everytime, can stun, can push, stagger, prone. Not to mention movement is insane.
I've played Monk pretty consistantly after trying and I find it more fun then Fighter and Barb. Barb is just go in and hit hard but lacks any utility. Fighter has utility no doubt, but only has the same type of playstyle no matter the subclass.
The best thing about fighter is mixing it with Paladin or Ranger to get Action Surge.
I can accept the A ranking for monk.
But I would recommend to people not to dismiss it. As a DM in normal DnD, the hardest class I've ever had to deal with from players is a Monk. It can turn a hard boss fight that you spend hours prepping for them to fight, into nothing.
I love monks so much. If Larian ever adds more subclasses I hope Drunken Master is one of them. Not the strongest but, in my experience, the most satisfying by far.
16:21 Actually, I think all druids in wild shape get 3 attacks by the end of the game. I noticed it when I turned Halsin into an earth myrmidon and was able to do somewhere around 50-80 damage in a turn, while also knocking people over. Very helpful for killing the pillars in the Raphael fight.
For Monk, I would say Open Hand is higher tier than the other two, possibly S. The reason is that if you dip Thief 3, you get an extra bonus action. Each bonus action can get you 2 unarmed attacks with extra effect (Topple for knockdown for advantages for other party members). And you can get your unarmed attacks to do 20-40 each on Open Hand (Cloud Giant + Tavern Brawler = 16 + Manifestation of Body + if you use items adding unarmed damage, though it's late game for Raph's gloves). On bosses you can keep them out of fight with stuns too or you can stack harmonized on mobs to do extra 6d6 AOE each round (each harmonized enemy deals damage separately) which can also cause a wipe of a group of enemies if you stack up Cull the Weak). Or if you want to conserve Ki, you can harmonize 4 enemies and then do additional AOE 12d6 for one Ki (if you hit everyone) per turn (there is a Dex save for half on those though).
I ended up doing more damage on Tav Open Hand than Lae'Zel Tactician most of the time and kept bosses stunned for the fight, but I used Cloud Giant Elixirs for myself rather than Lae'Zel and had all the tadpoles, so this could make it uneven. Also fun fact, if you don't dip and get immunity to diseases you can just finish the diseased ship easily (Throw) xD
Tavern brawler way of the open hand monks are squishy, but is both way more interesting than a fighter and much more powerful offensively. Between supporting gear, doubling up to +7 strength modifier, flurry of blows (particularly with 3 thief for an extra bonus action), manifestation of body and resonant punch, monks do way more damage than fighters. Their resource pool is very plentiful, to the point where it is fine to both spam flurry of blows and stunning strike on harder fights, particularly when using wholeness of body. Forcing an enemy to save or be stunned for twice per action and once per bonus action makes them exceptionally good at locking down 1 or 2 targets. Or with flurry of blow spam and haste, 8-10 attacks per round (depending on use of wholeness of body) with endgame builds doing over 30 per hit on a non crit, they can take out the great majority of enemies in a single round on their own, and sustain this for multiple rounds per fight. Their AB with +14 bonus from strength is very high, and between stun or knocking enemies prone, have an easy time getting advantage, so very rarely miss.
And resonant punch is situational but devastating against clustered enemies. If you have 3 enemies clustered, for example, its an extra 9d6 damage per round against each of them at no cost other than 1 point of ki, not even a bonus action. Against 4 clustered enemies, its 12d6 per round. When hasted, its possible to apply resonant touch to 6 (or 7 with wholeness of body) enemies per round, dealing an extra 18d6 or 21d6 respectively per enemy, though you will very seldom encounter so many tightly packed enemies with a non trivial number of hit points. But 3-4 is fairly common and its like having a virtually free fireball per round (1 Ki point is a very low cost). Even single target, its 3d6 extra per round.
I forget about resonant punch. it's the only reason that I would put open hand over 4 elements for full capability. 4 elements has a couple of styles but resonant does edge things out. otherwise I would consider them kind of equal. Open Hand does Pushing, proning, and Sturnning for a bit less cost and a little easier. But 4 elements puts in a different kind of stun that is potentially multi-turn with their ability to hold person, they can add on fire damage from very early on, and they can have a pull to use as well. Most of these things they can be had from level 3 like the open hand monk. Resonant punch is a bit easier to use than fireball is for 4 elements monk though.
I do think you're looking at a lot of these classes in a vacuum and not so much in specific team comps or in a way where the "bad" things they do are perfect for the teams they're in... not every class has to kill every enemy/disable them all in one turn and perform every out of combat skill check. Ranger beastmaster is great in plenty of team comps, so is druid, and rogue especially too.
Why don’t you go and film a tier list then?
I’m new to the whole DND/baldurs gate scene. My first character was a human fighter and at first I wasn’t sure about it. Then once I hit level 5 I believe, I was amazed by how OP it is. Opening up and engagement on a strong melee enemy with disarming attack can go absolutely nuts. This game is so fire and it’s so hard for me to put it down.
Human fighter! There's a meme for people just like you lmao.
While I don't agree with a few of your top tier decisions, I respect you putting out the choices.
Based. You shouldn't agree with all my choices, because I am almost certainly wrong about some of them.
Okay, for someone who’s just recently started playing this game l can honestly say I’m a bit overwhelmed. I’m currently just taking the time to familiarize myself with the mechanics of the game and then start learning all these different classes. I love the variety, but goodness is it a lot. 😅
thank you my man, this insight is much appreciated, one love
Hope you get better Aestus keep up the great content here and on patreon! 🙏🔥
Hire Sir Fuzzalump from whithers, and make him a transmutation wizard, leave him at camp and send ingredients to him. It takes time to switch to him and make potions, but he can also cast Long Strider on the party if you don't have it. If your headed somewhere dark and someone doesn't have dark vision, he can cast Light on their weapon to improve their hits =)
Wild Shape has a lot of interesting interactions that make it a bit unintuitive
- The three attacks at level 10 is intentional, it's really funny that a Druid gets more swings per turn than a Fighter of the same level but as far as I can tell this is how it is supposed to function
- The reason why Moon Druid is doing better this patch is because up to now they literally did not have a level 6 feature, so Wild Shapes got BONKED by resistances left and right, it's truly a huge difference and way more imo than just "Wild Shape with a Bonus Action" if you intend on using Wild Shapes in Combat. Few feelings felt as bad as my Halsin's damage getting completely cucked in Act 2 because everything has B/P/S resistances despite him having Moon Druid 6, no more!
- Myrmidon Wild Shape (minus Earth which benefits half from Tavern Brawler) actually benefit from YOUR weapon proficiencies, which by default, Druids only get the Scimitar the Fire guy wields, so for a Moon Druid base it could be worth taking a FIghter level beyond 10 just to get a sweet sweet +4 to your other two Myrmidon Wild Shapes, or by picking a race that can give you the other proficiencies. Similarly, Owlbear feels a lot better when given the +4 to +5 to hit (but not damage, unsure if this is intentional) with Tavern Brawler.
- From my testing, item passives STILL get completely disabled after exiting Wild Shape until you re-equip all of your items. Especially annoying when using the item that gives you an extra wild shape charge and not getting the extra charge when you short rest because you forgot to unequip and equip it again. It also makes exiting Wild Shape in combat feel particularly punishing since you have to spend your action to equip the item again if you really need the passive from it.
Thank you for your take Aestus! Im nearing the end of my first playthrough and ive been thinking of what to play as my second playthrough. You helped me to narrow my choices down.
Same and I’ve decided on a drow fighter
As someone who’s been playing 5e since it’s pretty much come out , I’m definitely very impressed when BG3 as a whole but especially with how the handled the classes . You’re right with that they are pretty well balanced .. where as in actual d&d there’s certain classes that are almost always avoided . But most importantly, Bard being top tier in both BG3 and D&D, which is the proper order of the universe . As a dm I’ve never let my players overlap and have two of the same class in a party … unless it’s bards . They’re so versatile you could legitimately play an entire campaign with a party of just bards
I played a ton of illusion wizard and it's really good for enabling rogues in combat because you can change where enemies are looking at with the bonus action Minor illusion cantrip. If you multiclass into thief you can cast fireball or another leveled spell, cast minor illusion, then hide to stay out of agro. Because the sightlines are changed, rogues and shadow monks can use their bonus action hide for sneak attack or advantage. You're also really slippery with Illusory Self in addition to shield.
Shadowmonk can be really busted for solo runs because it can hit and dissapear making everyone waist their turns until you can hit them again
Not rly fun gameplay tbh, i prefer playing barb and throw ppl into the chasm or into another npc
I do disagree with warlocks not being great with control, Arms of Hadar is one of the best control abilities in the game. Enemies who start in it take damage, it blinds, it's difficult terrain, and if you end in it you take more damage.
Also Great Old One giving a frighten AoE on crits is pretty damn good for control. A Pact of the Blade warlock can use Hold Person or Killer's Sweetheart or any other paralyzing effect to guarantee crits to proc the class effect. You can also use the fixed Spell Sniper feat to try a crit fishing Eldritch Blast build to some effect.
Hunger of Hadar is great control against trash mobs, but trash mob fights tend to be easy to clear anyways, so I prefer single target spells like Hold Monster. Of course that is too simple a generalization, but hopefully you get what I am trying to say.
@@Aestus_RPG lol, thats the whole point of cc, to cc trash, bosses die in turn 1 basically.
9:23 druids get extra attack as well
Awesome list. I absolutely love starting the game as a Ranger, but still, I 100% agree with your ranking. Once I figured out multi-classing, Gloomstalker was my choice for killing stuff from stealth. The first round for a Gloomstalker is brutal. I think the one thing that you didn't mention is the most important part of the build. Initiative. I rarely go second in a fight.
Stacking crit chance on an orc champion can make the bonus attack from great weapon master easily obtainable in the three hits, fighter bonus feat means you can grab savage attacks for consistently higher damage as well.
When you fight with the reckles attack ring it's more like fishing with dynamite when every second attack is a crit.
Um, actually, the spore druid can wild shape. All druids have wild shape, the spore druid just has other abilities that can use that wild shape slot.
@@RafaelNoriaki he said it as though it was literally not an option, saying that not having wildshape made it worse.
Vengeance is just a giant wrecking ball of a spec for pally, especially 2H. It finds the biggest, toughest or most dangerous enemy out there and WHAM just deletes it from existence.
Yeah that’s exactly what I’m doing rn and it’s great. I’ll very occasionally use a support spell but 99% of the time I’m just going for a smite.
Circle of moon druid allows you to become mermidon, which if you choose Earth, it can be paired with tavern Brawler, and you can attack 3 times in wild shape
Sadly that doesn't work in Honour Mode.
leaving a comment cause i appreciate you leaving the rankings in the desc despite not watching the entire vid! thanks!
Way of the Four Elements monk is pretty terrible, especially compared to the other 2 subclasses. It still gets the monk base abilities so it’s not RP tier but I’d say it’s B or C tier.
I'm trying to role play as Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat with Way of the Four Elements. I have to admit that my main doesn't do the most dmg in my team (in Tactician fyi).
Basically Worst of both Caster and Martial class.
What would be a good alternative fighter-eld?
The only thing good about it is that the elemental abilities are not "spells" so a Barbarian can cast them while raging and use Flurry of Blows in the same turn. You can have a Wild Elemental Bonk.
@@ThanhLai5 Throw in some Barbarian Levels for your Liu Kang. The Elemental abilities aren't "spells" so you can cast them while raging.
Great list and I agree with a lot of your rankings, I think you underestimate Druids though or maybe you just have not had them in the right party, for me they are part of an S tier party. I particularly like Druid of the Land which can get haste, misty step, kill cloud amongst others. The base druid spell list is also stacked with conjure woodland beings getting you a dryad, immune to prone, that can cast spike growth, and summon a wood woad. Also Moonbeam which can do up to 600pts radiant damage over 10 turns and still be recast while in wildshape, same with call lightning. It's also stacked with utility spells like pass without trace, jump, long strider, daylight, create water etc. And at a high level they get heroes feast, wind walker and planar binding. Anyway, i know it is a lot of personal preference but for me Druids are only second to Bards :) And yes they do get 3 attacks while wildshaped and the owlbear attacks may not be incredible you should look at their jump attack they get on a bonus action that scales with weight and distance, with potion of the colossus I did one shot Grym of the grym forge with 8k damage :) ua-cam.com/video/hvSkLKCxx6E/v-deo.html
You may be right, it seems a lot of folks agree with you!
What do you mean you don't save after every action and reload till you get a crit on every attack?
100% agree with storm cleric. It's super fun to wade into combat with heavy armor, spam call lightening, and laughing as no one can hit me.
Monks are very item dependent but I think are S tier if we allow them the same flexibility to have item combinations like eldtritch knight did on the tier list.
Once they get strength gaunlets they can often one round most bosses in the game, and their resource pools are absurd to have fighter output for multiple turns of 6 strikes. They are also one of the only classes that can take advantage of thief multiclass to have their bonus actions deal more than action points via flurry of blows. I found on open hand breaking through chapter bosses legendary cc resistance very easy
not to mention their mobility to hop around the map one tapping every enemy is absurd step of wind for one bonus action lets you have unlimited jumps i think at one point i had 180m of movement in a single turn off of jumps alone and no actions spent
Overrall I agree with most else, and discovered some new builds i gotta try now like eldritch knight on hit, thanks!
I'm playing a open hand monk/thief right now and just completely owning the game. The dmg output and reliability far exceeds anything else in the game.
Bard, paladin, sorcerer, and Fighter was the composition I used most of my play through (with some multi-classing dips). Maybe the reason charisma classes are more popular is not for speech checks, but just because they are the objectively strongest classes.
Bard does everything a rogue does skill wise, everything a wizard does spell utility wise, healing word duty of a cleric, great as a PC leading dialogue, and also a full striker with blade subclass. Covers all non-combat roles and great at combat. Number one class in my opinion. One or two level dip in avenger paladin (after level 6) for the great synergizing 1 channel divinity and another level for smite option if using melee (can just stick with one level is focused on ranged attacks instead)
Sorcerer is insane for twin haste and, due to itemization, also keeps up well as a strike with cantrips and quicken for burst.
Paladin is good regardless of itemizations or multi-classing. Strong in 5e and strong here.
Fighter is only class with 3 attacks per action (without using bugs or resource use). Simple and powerful. Also insane with throwing weapons because of tavern brawler and bugs and itemization.
For my second full playthrough, first time tacitcian, I decided to try what I considered to be the strongest classes and I ended up going with a main party consisting of Paladin Sorcerer, Warlock Bard, a Fighter and a Cleric. Sometimes switching the Cleric for a Wizard. I guess I mostly agree you with you then, with my more limited experience.
Also, thanks for the tip about Eldritch Strike, I had no idea. I will definitely play around with it.
Try a thief rogue build focusing on dual wielding. If you get the gloves or feat that let you add bonuses to your off hand attacks, you end up getting 3 attacks per turn. This works with melee or hand cross bows. I think it is by far the best rogue build. You can also use it to jump into a fight, get a sneak attack stab and off hand stab in there, and then use the second bonus action to disengage and get out of there increasing your survivability.
"don't treat me like a scrub" "I haven't played half of these personally"
choose one buddy
I said I've played every class.
I’m doing a throw build in Honor Mode and it is honestly so fun. Throwing enemies at each other is so funny.
Gloomstalker Assasin, College of Swords Thief, Light Cleric, Palalock (Vengeance+Fient) and Spore Druid...Have been the strongest builds i've played so far!
I had a lot of fun on my spore druid so i was surprised to see it so low. however I very much abused a 1 level wizard dip to make up for some of the spell shortcomings with learned scrolls. also I like GOO over Fiend as the temp HP is overshadowed by the CC lategame, but either way the Deepend Pact (Blade) is busted.
I'm really interested to see how this list would change if it was nade for mid-game. For example, 5th level Warlocks with Pact of the tome get Call Lightning, Animate Dead and Haste on top of their pact magic and that's bonkers, specially if you are running many of them with a bard.
Its funny that you have rogue as the worst class in the game. In my first playthrough Astarion has been my most reliable character in combat and arguably my best character outside of combat as well.
I love that people can have entirely different opinions on classes based on playstyle.
one of the cool things about pact of the blade is that, at the time of typing this comment, is that the deepened pact feature which grants you an additional attack, stacks with extra attack.
My first video of yours. Good explanations and easy to listen to. Good vid😘
Sleeping on Druid with War Caster and spamming Call Lightning or Moonbeam upcast for 10 turns of spell damage for 1 spell slot. With haste you can recast twice per turn. Without haste Moonbeam can be better since you leave it on the enemy and it takes damage right away and more on that enemy's turn
Edit: Did some quick maths, and starting from level 3 you can get 80d10 single target damage with your 2 casts of moonbeam. But more realistically, assuming a fight lasts 3 rounds on average, a single cast of moonbeam in said fight is going to let you deal up to 12d10 at spell level 2, and an additional 6d10 per upcast level. With haste it's 18d10 at level 2 +9d10 per upcast level. Call Lightning has the same damage without haste but only on wet targets, though the AoE is much bigger. Just the limited rests restriction with these 2 spells should make Druid S tier in my opinion.
P.S. For reference a basic Fireball deals 8-48 damage for 1 level 3 spell slot, a single cast of Moonbeam upcast as a level 3 spell deals 6-60 damage in one round
My first play through was Druid. Man dropping a fire wall on a group, or moonbeam, or growth and then wildhshape to move the board ready to attack was great. I used bear til I got sabertooth tiger I think it was. Then wildhsape into the elementals when needed. Had so much versatility. I enjoyed it a lot.
Way of Shadows monk is crazy. On a solo playthrough, if you don’t get surprised, you can kill an enemy in the 2 turns you get by attacking from invisibility (and if it’s a duel, stunning strike chains are really good), use cloak of shadows and reset encounters. Really gives you the feel of being a ninja assassin lol.
Ahh finally ! This guy gets it !
I literaly can't even fathom that he said monks are more boring than fighters. Of all the things to compare the two classes between one another he chose the worst. Monks are undeniably less boring.
Openhand Taverbrawler most OP specc in the game IMO. If you stack STR to 24 in the lategame the dmg is just unreal.
Not tryna be “that guy”, but this is one of the best tier lists I’ve ever seen for anything. Your knowledge and passion shines through, excellent work Sir!
Druid can be incredibly powerful if you summon elementals - Summons aren't concentration spells, you can summon multiple summons (so long as they don't come from the same spell), and the action economy is such a large part of the game.
I don't play druid myself, but Jaheira in the late game was amazing. Massive amounts of healing plus massive summons plus wild shape. S tier for me. I was playing on Tactician too.
About eldritch knight, "It gives it quite a bit more survivability... But that's all you need, because in one or two turns, fighters can just kill everything on the map". I agree survivability is good but fighters are not killing everything on the map lol. They've got comparable dps to barbarians, minus a bit from rage bonuses to damage. The biggest bonus fighters have is utility, usually in the form of damage... Which can be really good, but pretending they're carrying the game is strange to me.
Seems like he might have some weird biases based on his rp preferences, idk.
Rogues also can be surprisingly powerful. I understand and agree that they aren't exactly team players, no support, and they miss out on some action economy, but especially thief can solo entire encounters. I think you're undervaluing stealth - Stealth is massively powerful, in D&D and in BG3. Using a rogue to test an encounter, entering first and doing their best to clear as much as possible while the rest of the party stays back, is incredibly powerful. Often times you end up clearing half the encounter if you're able to use your stealth correctly. This is incredibly easy with the thief subclass too. Currently doing an honor mode playthrough and Asterion specced into thief has solod *most* encounters, and then the others are made incredibly easy.
You mentioned not liking builds that push for crits. That may be the reason you didn't find success with rogue. Crits on rogue are far more powerful than any other class, rolling double the sneak attack dice in addition to the usual ones. There are a number of different items that lower your crit roll substantially, very worth using.
I feel like the existence of Tavern Brawler + Hill/Cloud giant strength bumps monk to S tier.
I know you already put light cleric into S-tier but I want to share a build that I’ve been using for a light cleric solo tactician run that absolutely dominates rooms of mobs.
Minmaxed starting stats are: 8/16/15/8/17/8
But you can drop dex back to 14 if you want to bring another skill up to 12, or two skills back to 10. I prefer 16 dex just because of the extra +1 to initiative.
First feat is Resilient: Con for the obvious concentration requirements of spirit guardians.
Use the hag’s hair to get wisdom to 18. And then either warcaster at lvl 8 for more concentration saves or just WIS to 20 (which i think is better). You rarely drop concentration with just resilient and the following item build.
The item build is what makes this build monumentally silly.
Head: Holy Lance Helm
Cloak: Thunderskin for more silliness or Protection if you want more AC and better saves.
Body: Luminous Armour
Gloves: Gloves of Belligerent Skies
Boots: Boots of Stormy Clamour
Neck: Periapt of Wound Closure is a good all around necklace for improving survivability.
Rings: Coruscation Ring + Callous Glow Ring
Weapon: Phalar Aluve
Shield: Adamantine Shield
Ranged: Dual Crossbows with Ne’er Misser in off hand.
Now that the reverberation status is working, the interactions are absolutely mental.
Ideally you start your fights with spirit guardians up as well as Phalar Aluve:Shriek
Then when you walk into spirit guardian range, you inflict spirit guardian radiant damage, which procs your ring, and shriek damage, and applies stacks of reverberation, but also applies radiant shockwave, which applies more stacks of reverberation.
With your relatively high AC and the stacks of radiant orb you just applied, you should be very hard to hit.
So the mobs attack you, and miss. Well because they miss the holy lance helm has a chance to deal 1d4 radiant, which again procs shriek and radiant orb. Which procs reverberation. At this point the reverberation has gone off or will go off and inflicts thunder damage with a chance to knock prone, which also procs shriek damage. But a miss also procs reeling from your adamantine shield. Which lowers the chance that they hit even further and because reeling is a condition, that’s two more reverberation stacks.
You basically just walk into groups of mobs, and they all fall over and take a million damage. Next turn comes around and you can walk away to trigger attacks of opportunity, which will likely deal damage to your opponent, because reverberated targets have lower dex saves, meaning that when they miss (because of 7+ stacks of radiant orb and 3 stacks of reeling) the holy lance helm is likely to hit, which procs more reverberation and radiant orbs and phalar aluve damage. Then you can run up to more folk with spirit guardians and then use your divinity to hit a bunch of people with more radiance orbs in a bigger AOE, which may again knock more people prone.
This build is absolutely ridiculous.
You can knock people prone and deal 3d4+2 (i think?) damage just by triggering your opponents attacks of opportunity against you.
Absolutely busted and makes a solo or duo tactician run entirely reasonable without abusing stealth mechanics or even multiclassing.
If you are vsing shar enemies with radiant retort, you swap the holy lance helm with the hat of fire acuity, and then you can use burning hands, scorching ray, and fireball to stack your acuity, making it way harder for enemies to avoid your necrotic spirit guardians and even makes spamming sacred flame an option (constant reverberation also makes sacred flame way better).
Finally I use ne’er misser because of how its level 3 magic missile ability interacts with the all the on hit effects you are running, making it great for bursting or just doing a lot of damage to a lot of mobs if they are inside your shriek radius. It’s also a good way to spend your bonus action if you have nothing better to do for that little bit extra damage with an offhand range attack.
Seriously, would love to see you try this and showcase the build, because it is hilarious.
Edit: not sure if this is the best optimisation or not, and haven’t taken it into act 3 yet, but wanted to share because while I have been using it, it has been properly silly.
Barbarian/Monk. S tier.
Your overlooking mixing throw with martial dps plus losing a tiny bit of movement by adding in the "cant be crit shield".
Now add in bear heart barb and your easily sitting at 22AC while constantly dealing hundred of poubts of damage per round while getting to stand/do anything they want.
I played as a nature cleric. It’s more useful for dialogue options in the early game due to speak with animals but I have never used the charm animal or plants channel divinity. I ended up multiclassing into Bard and Sorcerer.
Yeah, Nature Cleric just doesn't get much use of their features and is missing their level 6 feature. Really terrible oversight from Larian, but not as bad as missing Trickery's level 6 feature. Shadowheart is one of the primary companions! Knowledge is also missing this, its bizarre that the 3 weakest Cleric domains are also all missing the same feature. Its too big of a coincidence imo, someone at Larian seems to have snubbed these domains hard.
Great video. I think you underrated the Monk a bit. I think its easily one of the highest damage per turn melee builds with the most movement. I solo'd the whole Gortash fight with my monk in 3 turns. 210-440 damage every turn for 3 turns once a long rest. Sorc haste support enabled this and deserves S tier like you said
Monk being S-tier is a valid opinion.
haste and act 3 gear makes everything s tier.
Trickery Cleric on Shadowheart in full Dark Justiciar armor is actually so much fun, you get to be a stealthy brawly healer and controller.
My first playthrough was with a Ranger and had to combine it with Rogue Assasin to be extremedly powerful. I could get sometimes like 4 attacks before the fight even begins. Both classes are awful on their own but multiclassed are great. Now im making another playthrough combining 5 levels of fighter and 3 levels of thief and im using hand crossbows and its real powerful
Sounds like a potent build, Gloomstalker Ranger + Assassin Rogue for the ultimate first-move killer.
I will disagree on the idea that Ranger and Rogue are inherently bad classes alone though. Lots of good items for Rogue's in BG3, and Assassin shines early game while Thief shines later, (Fast Hands gives you two Bonus Actions, very overpowered with dual Hand crossbows.)
I would agree that Rogue's true potential is reached via multiclassing- but a pure Ranger is actually very powerful in BG3. The Beastmaster summons scale surprisingly well.
Add two levels of fighter and now you can use action surge to make first round even better. That's my Astarian build and I am taking multiple enimies out before anyone else gets a turn, My tev is a Druid/Barbarian and I am always debating if I should rage or not because by the time it comes to their turn, it's clear the combat is gonna be over in a couple of rounds max :D
I played a Beast Master Ranger 8/Thief Rogue 4 in my first playthrough. I had 4 attacks at level 8
@@OsamaZahid308 I don't like the fighter dip, since you can also go Ranger 8/ Rogue 4 for two entire feats more. Yes this hurts your nova, but you can then cast better spells, hit more often by getting Dex to 20 etc.
I did the same on my first playthrough which I just finished. Gloomstalker + assassin is super fun
I'm gonna come to bat for barbarian, partially because it's always been one of my favorite classes and partially because I'm just having an absolute blast with the Wild Heart. I took the Tiger heart and in combination with some boots I found that extend my jumps and even some elixirs I can just yeet myself practically anywhere on the map. Jumping up to enemies who thought they were out or range is super satisfying and allows the rest of my party some breathing room in big encounters. Alternatively, jumping into more advantageous positions like high ground or across the map to force a big enemy to engage with you rather than the squishies more than makes up for slightly lower damage imo. I've also heard good things about combining the Eagle Heart's ability to dash as a bonus action with the Stallion feature of giving health every time you dash - that also essentially becomes unkillable.
Yes! Finally, someone who knows how the Bard works. I was really surprised that people thought that this was the worst class but I guess most people don't really utilize the class as much.
Did my man just give barbarian TWO A ranked subclasses and still had the balls to put it in B tier? My man, your tier list died not even a quarter of a way in, that's impressive
Dude, druids are summoners and field control. In the same battle you can summon a minor elemental, a dryad that can summom a treefolk AND an elemental. You can cast plant growth that compleatly waste enemies movement, sleet storm, THEN you cast your concentration damage spell... and if you don't want to spend a spell slot or if you are dying turn into a beast...
Not disagreeing with your placement based on your definition, but do think druid gets a bad rep. Based on how the AI seems to prioritize targets the control concentrations, with the bodies it generates make spore druid feel like the most effective "tank" in the game. 9/10 times mobs run right past my barb or my abjuration wizard tank to gun for a backline, but they seem to prioritize the summons more commonly. That with being able to do okish damage through hand crossbows or sheleliegh and a temp hitpoint pool makes them feel worth a slot in many comps.
Valid opinion! I'd bee fine giving Druid a higher ranking, but my top tiers were getting crowded.
it's finally here 😢
yes!
I love rogues man. That shit is awesome, especially with hand crossbows. The only problem for me is that the only subclass worth getting is theif. Assassin is too niche, and trickster can probably be better simulated through thief multiclassed with wizard
Don’t forget the necklace that adds charisma modifier to cantrips at the Githyanki crèche, that’s when sorc begins to really feel “online”
Druids definitely deserve S tier. As soon as Jaheira joined my party, my performance in battles improved so drastically! I used to have to redo basically every fight multiple times but now with Jaheira, I’m winning almost every fight first try
But I definitely agree with all the other rankings, good choices!
Only other thing is that I might argue that trickery domain is rp, but I see your argument
Warlock is my favourite, I go pact of the blade, and play as an all around fighting menace.
However, you really notice only having 2 spells per short rest, which forces your hand more than you would like
I think Warlocks make up for only 3 spell slots by recovering them on a short rest, automatically upcasting, and having the single best damaging cantrip in the game