@@Observer31 I think optimizers in group with others that don’t optimize should alsways stick to C and lower, even optimized A can cause some balance issues ;-). That’s why I usually play with more difficult subclasses - Elements Monk, Alchemist, Hunter, Conjurer,…
@@Observer31 Yes! That’s exactly what I like the most about optimizing - you can take subclass that is considered weak and build from it respectable and useful party member that can shine in various scenarios without overshadowing others too much.
As a martial main I don't know why I watch these. Super discouraging. Every wizard subclass will be b or higher every barb subclass won't be able to break a c
It's Treantmonk. You know he lurves his spells (and with good reason). You just have to take the Martials separately. I feel like the Bard will be ranked higher than I would rank them, but maybe that is just my own biases showing.
I wouldn't put too much stock in these rankings. Casters are very powerful at higher levels but are also very squishy so they tend to die a lot to balance things out. Barbarians can be beasts even at high level, especially if in a good party and they find a way to capitalize on their strengths and/or shore up their weaknesses with magic items.
I agree Zealot is best, but I could definitely see raising it up a tier or two just because resurrection is pretty darn awesome. After all, you do mention at the start of the video that we are assuming we are in a party of characters and Revivify was added to a lot of classes. Maybe it isn't truly combat relevant. But it is: A huge safety net for the character. Gives you a lot of options outside of combat. Gives access to huge environmental plays by grappling and dragging a difficult NPC into hell.
I agree that zealot is great and one of the most effective frontliners of DnD 5e. However, it is one of the las options I would choose for a long campaign. With this subclass you hit, hit hard, hit again, and again and that's it. Too boring for me.
Only issue, to do any insane rivivify plays you need the Gentle Repose + Mending combo to repair the barb's mangled corpse before rivivify works on it. Works well on later tiers of rez though that don't need an intact body.
By lvl 14 the Zealot is actually unkillable during rage unless he is targeted by a power word kill or disintegrate this in addition to their extra damage means they scale very well into the lategame something most barbarians are not known for.
There is also a background to even bypass this as you would just need to take the dead barbarian to a temple or something and just ask someone there to revive the dead barbarian for free
I think that the Zealot should be rank B, you can deal a pretty big amount of damage, healer won't have to be troubled to use diamonds to revive you, and at 14th level you can literally say fck you to death itself thanks to all the other features the Barbarian gets and with some good feats you can basically be also the damage dealer other than a tank.
I'm guessing that Monk will fall into the D and E categories, tbh. I love the concept of the wandering martial artist, but lets face it, the monk class is quite weak, and the subclasses don't really do anything to raise their status. In my opinion, the fact that Ki points are an extremely limited resource makes the class undesirable to me. I say that while you're conscious you regenerate 1 ki per round as long as you haven't spent a ki point - which with the current set of rules would probably be overpowered. Maybe then raise the KI cost of some abilities to compensate for the influx of KI- to keep people from spamming their KI abilities.
@@k2k4 never tried it but at the top off my head, some investment in Gloomstalker Ranger i think could go a long way with a Way of the Shadow monk both mechanically and thematically. Like this channel preaches, The Best monk goes Less monk.
@@k2k4 they also have the worst level 1 in the game, I created a monk with the fighting initiate feat(d8 unarmed strikes at level 1), and it was still behind a dual wielder fighter who would have more hp, more ac and second wind, besides just as much damage.
@@k2k4 Since he's factoring in how the main class itself performs as a vehicle for the archetype and not just ranking the archetype features itself, I can predict that the only two Monks that have a chance in hell of making it above E tier are Mercy and possibly Open Hand or Shadow. Chris has made his feelings for the monk as a class known loud and clear and that perspective is going to drag down every single monk subclass.
@@kronos1794 The Wizard is challenged by the Sorcerer now thanks to the Tasha's subclasses, but the Bard does not even come close. Bards are decent, especially the better Bards like Eloquence and Lore, but comparing them to the average Wizard or a Clockwork Soul Sorcerer is a joke.
To be honest I would probably rank berserker even lower for being a new player's trap. It looks as if it was designed this way; from the subclass name to potentialy having more attacks than other low level characters - it looks and sounds cool and I've seen plenty of new players wanted to roll one only to be disapointed once they actually used their frenzy. I think this is mostly due to the fact that exhausion mechanics is explained much later in the players guide and most of them did not even read that far
Berserker is a weird one, at high levels Beserker is actually pretty good - the healer can Greater Restoration that exhaustion away, immunity to fear & charm is really nice when you're an unstoppable killing machine - though this isn't necessary if you've got a paladin in the party. But at low levels its pretty bad. Though Polearm Master kind of makes Frenzy obsolete.
@@DaDunge They aren't free, but one feat costs less than a whole subclass. And I'm still astonished to see the "martials have it too good" arguments against the better feats in the game. Sure, wizards can move the group across planes but if a big guy hits people 1 or 2 extra times? Now THAT's ridiculous!
@@DaDunge Martials are already pretty much the same in in that regard, the only difference between weapons is flavor and which one you can make good through feats.
Zealot getting some love, YES! I would love it to be B-tier even, even as the weakest B-tier but let’s be honest, barbs are great but in an optimization standpoint there are a lot more versatile *and* powerful classes and subclasses with minimal access to spells and spell-like effects. If barbs reached B-tier then we would need a lot more higher tiers for 1/3 spellcasters, 1/2 spellcasters, full spellcasters and some really awesome subclasses that expand on an already superior chassis. Nonetheless, go barbs go! Being a big guy with a big stick blocking hits with your bare chest is awesome and while you eventually get outclassed HARD, being literally too angry to die forever until you eat a Banishment spell is still hilarious.
Zealot Barbarian - Fighter multiclass is the highest DPS in the game. I don't really understand why everyone is obsessed with spellcasters. Sure magic can do some whacky things, but once immunities and magic resistance come into play spellcasters are kind of weak.
@@agilemind6241 That's a...pretty dumb take tbh, considering there's plentiful options for Spellcasters to bypass such resistances or features. Clockwork Soul for example, or through abusing Silvery Barbs, or Divination Wizards, etc etc.
I'd put Storm Herald as weaker than Wild Magic. Storm Herald could actually be a nuisance to your team, what with that spooky 2 damage aura targeting alies as well, so it could potentially affect someone dying on the front line. It's not unlikely that this is your aura as well, since desert has the best resistance. At worst the Wild Magic Barbarian can recharge spell slots for your Paladin, or give your Wizard more slots to cast Shield and what not. Other than that, solid rank so far.
Yeah, I agree- even with the WM Barb's lack of scaling and occasional useless wild surges, the subclass doesn't hurt the base chassis, and the spell slot regeneration ability is actually quite good when it comes on-line, though it doesn't scale either. I've never played or had a SH barb at my table, but I watched an experienced player (though not an optimizer) play one on Dimension 20s Crown of Candy, and it really felt like that stupid 2 damage aura was more often a problem to be solved than a helpful, if minor, damage boost. At low levels, that 2 hp isn't always trivial for the party (especially if the 1st round of combat went sideways and PCs near the barb are already hurt or down when the Barb's turn comes up, there is already an enemy in their face, and suddenly they need to try to figure out a way to rage without risking downing or even killing their own allies), but is basically almost always trivial for the enemies.
@@voicetest6019 yeah. They can reroll it frequently at later levels as well. Even the good effects are very minor and don't scale, but they're not bad at all when compared to what most barbarian subclasses give anyway. I think the big one could be the force damage weapon, it could give you something to do against flyers (other than chucking +0 javelins, at least), and the force damage itself could be great against stuff that resists magic physical damage.
@@geckothegreene Aside from the damage causing death if you have anyone concentrating near the barb, paladin and melee ranger most commonly, it is also a nuisance even into the highest levels.
The best aura ability is definitely Tundra IMO. Spamming temp hp on everyone around you can be good in an all-frontline battle. I see it going well in a party with an Ancients Paladin since that decreases the danger of clustering together. That said, even in its ideal circumstance it's a pretty weak use of a bonus action.
The bear totem ability that doubles your lift capacity could be entertaining on a race with powerful build. Pick up an enemy and throw them, or grab a big one by the leg and tip it over.
It was my first character too! I have a soft spot for the subclass, loved being able to mitigate harm to my teammates in addition to the typical axe swinging lunacy
@@TheAdditionalPylons It's one of the few true tank/taunt feature and the fact that you get it by attacking is satisfying and makes you more than a stat stick standing around.
I know a lot of folks who are fans of the Totem Warrior Barbarian, but I'm totally on board with putting Zealot at the top. A level 15+ Zealot Barbarian does very decent damage and is effectively immortal, being Too Angry to Die (TM), save for failing a sleep or charm save that takes them out of Rage after having failed their death saves. Wisdom saves are typically the ones I pay attention to most as a non-caster, and I usually take Resilient Wisdom as a result. That said, Elf, Gnome, Yuan-ti, and Satyr Zealot Barbarians give you advantage (Or Immunity for Elves and Sleep) to the types of effects that take Barbarians out of most fights, and with Tasha's and customizing your origin you aren't penalized on your stat distribution.
I really feel totem should be somewhere between B and S tier, on the basis that the neigh invulnerable barbarian is capable of flying, and seeing up to a mile.
There are feats for that. Honestly I was in a party that went to level 20 and the totem barbarian was amazing the whole time. All of the features ended up being valuable at some point and she never went down even once.
Full disclosure, I am currently running Artificer Armorer, but that's part of why I have so thoroughly theorycrafted the subclass and gotten a good understanding of what it is capable of. With all due respect, having taken a long look at both classes and subclasses, I feel like there is a significant problem with this ranking when Armorer Artificer shares a ranking with Battlerager Barbarian. The Barbarian sacrifices all the flexibility of the Artificer class to do relatively similar damage early on with at best tradeoffs in survivability. At later levels, they can technically do higher raw DPR (especially with criticals), but at steep costs and with even more sacrifices in flexibility and contribution to the party. And if the Artificer is prepared, they do more damage more reliably anyway. Maybe multiclassing capability is weighted far more heavily than I thought, but this seems very out of whack and just leaves me scratching my head.
I think the idea of wild magic barbarian is good. As is the idea of some of the others (stormherald), but the execution leaves much to be desired. If the wild-magic effects did decent damage - then maybe wild magic barbarian would be a lot stronger (for instance, the lightning bolt does 1d6 damage, why so low?). Just like the wild-magic sorcerer, I want a chance that the barbarian simply explodes and kills everyone in the area when they go berserk. That's the level of danger that I want from wild magic. I want the barbarian to have a chance to sprout tree-arms that grasp at enemies, send out thunderous booms that shatter glass, spray acid or fire in all directions when they go into a rage, or just simply rage themselves into being a potted plant. But instead we get minor +1d6 damage to a target of your choice, doesn't scale, doesn't really do anything to affect the fight. It's disappointing.
@@k2k4 I agree with you. One of my favourite ideas ever and I actually love the art. But, yeah, some of the powers are just so, so weak, even at level 3
I think Storm Herald is top 3 for biggest gap between how good the concept sounds at first and actual performance. Higher entries are Purple Dragon Knight and Four Elements Monk.
I’m playing one in the new year and we decided to use a revised version where at the start of each day you to choose your storm so your actually a STORM herald not just a tundra herald. Also ups damage potential with more rolling, and adds nice utility cantrips depending on your chosen storm
I think one thing that could be interesting for this series is rating the base class itself, as sort of a "what letter grade would this class get if it had no subclass features at all?" -- that way we can sort of see how much of these grades come from class and how much from subclass.
@@chrisvelo2595 I did see that one, but I mean it would be good to see where the base classes fall in comparison with subclasses. For example, I want to know if the Wizard (without subclasses) is better than every possible Barbarian subclass; or whether there are any subclasses that are actively worse than having no subclass (because it encourages you to use abilities in bad ways); or other things like that.
@@nathanielsoule8067 oh I understand now. Well to answer the second part in the video he talks about how adding features to very powerful subclasses doesn't make them more powerful so I have a feeling he would say that, losing a subclass is never a good thing.
@@chrisvelo2595 You're definitely correct from a technical / optimal standpoint, but whenever a feature encourages a bad thing that could make it worse. For instance, Bladesingers get an ability to use spell slots to reduce damage, but it's very inefficient and not a great ability. From an optimizer's perspective, having that ability is better than not having it because you can just not use it unless it's extremely important; but from a beginner's perspective, having that ability means you should use that ability any chance you can. That means beginners would actually play more optimally if that ability were straight up removed from the subclass.
I agree with you. I know multiclassing isn’t a considered factor in this list, but there’s a few good “damned if you hit, damned if you don’t” mc builds that bring ancestoral guardians high as a subclass build for me. (If I was playing Treantmonk’s Chuck, I’d 100% add it when the rest of the build plateaus)
I definitely can. Sometimes I wonder what game Treantmonk is playing because it ain't the one I'm playing. The idea of ranking any Barbarian subclass below C is baffling to me, because even stuff like the Battlerager is attached to one of the most effective base classes in 5e. They overshadow the other martial classes pretty hard in my experience, and they make great team mates for casters because of their durability and good-to-great damage output making them excellent tanks. When he said that a GWM Barbarian's damage is only "okay" at early levels, I had to stop the video and show this to my own gaming group, and none of us can figure out what metric he's using as a comparison point. GWM Barbarian is a wrecking ball at early levels and other classes only start to catch up to them later on. It's bad enough that I actually ban that feat because of how abusive it is when paired with the Barbarian class's ability to negate its downside by having advantage on all attacks. Even though other classes start to catch up, none of them can output damage as consistently as a GWM Barbarian. Paladins and casters have to spend high level spell slots, the Barbarian just walks forward and attacks. Warlocks, Rogues and Sharpshooter Fighters might be their only real competitors when it comes to consistent damage on demand for little expenditure of resources, but in the case of Warlock and Rogue, they're MUCH more fragile. Their downside of being easily hit doesn't really matter when very few monsters actually deal damage other than piercing, slashing or bludgeoning except with spells or spell-like effects which don't require a hit roll to begin with. Then you can just be a Bear Totem Barbarian and shrug that off, too. Control effects might be a concern, but that's what the group's support character is for, and 5e by design has very few save-or-die effects to worry about. Barbarian does everything you want a martial character to do. They hit accurately, hard, have loads of HP and resistance to damage to ensure their durability. They're the perfect tank, the catch-22. Do the enemies ignore the Barbarian and get a GWM Greataxe swing to the face, or do they hit the thing with the biggest HP pool of any class in the game that's going to ignore half of the damage they're going to deal?
I love that intro that you put in nearly all (if not all) of your videos. The book opens to reveal a train, a fantasy castle and magic. Magic, steam trains and castles sounds like an epic setting.
Currently playing as an Ancestral Guardian and I gotta say, the level 3 ability rarely comes up. I can clearly remember the last time it made a difference about 20 sessions ago. Granted, we dont often fight single big creatures, which is where I imagine the feature might shine a lot more.
With good tactics, I'd say the ancestral guardian is a standout. I'm currently playing an ancestral guardian with shield master, and I'm able to knock enemies prone, hit them at advantage without using reckless (DM does not follow the dumb sage advice forbidding shield bash followed by attacks), and run away. Single targets without magic have no good options left to them in this scenario. My character was even eaten by a shambling mound, and tanked remarkably effectively from inside!
So you are basically saying the subclass is a standout because your DM ignored the rules? Not sure that is a good criteria to use. As that can be applied to the others as well. Oh frenzy, nah you don't take exhaustion or max 1 point per combat/day. Tada great subclass.
@@Hyde_Hill I kindve agree with you. Although Jeremy Crawford did make 2 sage advices on the subject. The first was saying that you can use the bonus action shove before the attacks and the one later said it must be after you attack once.
I went the route of taking Crusher so I can push them back 5' and run. Though honestly, if you just stack a few good defensive items on yourself, you don't even need to run. I have managed a way to get upcast Armor of Agathys on myself but the Artificer's Radiant Weapon works great... or just any item that boosts your defense or punishes people for attacking you.
Totem warrior last of the C tier?? Resistant to everything but psychic (unless Kalashtar) is pretty incredible. I'd put that up same level as Zealot and both end up in B.
I dunno. "Double HP" isn't that great, especially when most foes are attacking you at Advantage. A Fighter with Defense Style and a Shield likely outlasts a Barb in a similar fight.
Your biases are statiscally true. That's exactly what an optimizer would consider. Specially considering limited rests, this is like the base of every consideration.
I'd love for you to just drop everything you are doing and just do this for every subclass of every class, say, within the next 10 days, because that's when my next 5e game is starting! lol Love what you do, Chris, and I thank you for it!
Well, he has done best/worst subclasses series with 5 level increments (best between lvl 1-5, 6-10 etc). Those videos don't include Tasha's since the book wasn't out yet, but you could watch those and his reviews for Tasha's subclasses and compare. Or just play a paladin or a wizard :D
Hey Chris, I love your videos, thank you so much for providing a reasonable forum for these discussions. I would like to provide a further case for the Wild Magic Barbarian to raise it higher on the list. I will attempt to present the case in a manner which highlights the elements in gameplay which you believe are the strongest. First, the level 3 feature. Not being able to pick the option is definitely a weaker element of the feature. However, 6 out of the 8 are pretty decent and provide unique opportunities in combat that other barbarians just won’t get. I will also provide the case that even the other 2 out of 8 are at the very least, salvageable. 1. This is a great option, extra temporary hit points which don’t go away once the rage ends. Temporary hit points serve double duty on the barbarian because of their rage mechanic. Add on an Area of Affect ability and that gives you a very unique possibility over the other barbarians who have almost no Area of Effect options. 2. Free misty steps every turn. Starting at level 3. That’s a 2nd level spell as many times as you want. Teleport in, teleport out, teleport to aid an ally. Obviously good. I’d like to add that anything that makes the barbarian less likely to throw a javelin for their turn because they couldn't get next to something is incredibly valuable. Again, no other barbarian class gives this level of mobility to the class. 3. Now this one is a lame duck. The lack of scaling is a huge issue here and the damage is just under par. In the damage category this competes with a bonus action attack, which gives us polearm mastery or a GWM follow up attack. A polearm mastery bonus action would be 1d4+str, so 5.5 at the lower brackets and 7.5 if you take strength to 20. Which is unlikely if you’re taking all these feats. If this is combined with Great Weapon master, we’re looking at 15.5 damage, assuming no STR increases because you need to take both these feats, and this would be at level 4 the earliest, level 8 usually. So then the pixie at 3.5 damage needs to hit 2 people to out damage without GWM and 5 to out damage GWM by itself. However, this doesn’t require a feat, and as you say feats aren’t free. Giving the barbarian a ranged AOE bonus action attack option is great when they are swinging a great axe and don’t proc GWM bonus action attack. So, I would say for this line of thinking, this option is salvageable. 4. The other lame duck. Make your weapon light, and thrown and deal force damage. The force damage is the standout part here for overcoming resistance, and that is a strong feature for those magic weapon light campaigns, however it isn’t reliable to get this while you can. But In the attempt to salvage this situation, this still gives you access to 20 more ft. of range, making it less likely you’re just throwing a javelin for your turn or even worse, losing rage from being out of the fight since you can hail Mary your axe 60 ft. if needed. For extra attacks, this is something I’ll admit I’m not sure about the rules. I believe that if you throw your axe which is already being wielded, you still have a free action to draw and throw a javelin, this then makes those turns where a level 5 barbarian would just be able to throw one javelin to not lose their rage turn into an opportunity to actually deal some damage. A huge leg up over the other barbarian subclasses. So, I would consider this situational, but not a total lame duck. 5. We will be getting hit a lot, this option gives us damage outside of the action economy. Great possibility. 6. Extra AC aura is not bad. Also as good as some spells. Concentration free. Would love to have seen it scale, but this can be anywhere from 2 to 4 extra AC for your party. Pretty Good. 7. Becoming a sandpit on the battlefield lets you position yourself in a great way to prevent enemies from rushing down your back line. Great option. No friendly fire either. Another good possibility. 8. Lastly, a bonus action blind on every turn. My favorite part about this one is using it before you use your action attack to potentially gain advantage and not have to reckless attack. Great possibility. So, after a deeper analysis of these features, even when you don’t get to pick something, each time you’re adding a unique function to the class which is hard for the other subclasses to replicate without feats. 75% of the time you’re getting a good or better feature, and the other 25% of the time you’re getting a decent or salvageable feature. Overall I think that places this feature as good. The 6th level feature is the main mechanical reason you would want to use this. If you are in a group with 3 spell casters that is 3 more spells your party gets in a day. Spells. If you think about this feature as a barbarian getting access to 3 spells a day ranging from level 1 to 3, this feature is amazing and something no other barbarian can accomplish. When your wizard casts hallucinatory terrain again on that day because of this feature, that is your barbarian casting hallucinatory terrain with their modifiers. Revivify? Spiritual Weapon? Web? Bless? All of the spells of your party at your disposal. When you look at this feature like this, it’s simply the best barbarian feature in the game for the most played levels. Compare this to say, Zealot who gets a one time use to reroll a saving throw. Just pick a satyr or a gnome to shore up those magical saves from charms and the like which plague the class as a whole. Lastly, the 10th level feature which gives you your wild magic features as a reaction, which I think is a reaction you would take almost every time you could. Allowing you to use your bonus action and reaction to make these effects twice as often is really strong. However since there isn’t any way to pick which one and you could get a duplicate that essentially does nothing, I’d consider this good. So, we have two good features, and an amazing feature. With some good choices in race selection, looking for the right magical items, and picking smart feats, the Wild Magic Barbarian can definitely stand out in the party. Therefore, for the reasons stated above, I believe the Wild Magic Barbarian would be appropriately placed in the C tier. Giving Zealot barbarian a good run for its money as the top barbarian subclass. Thank you for your time reading this analysis. Curious to hear your thoughts. Much Love for your channel!
My fix for Berserker has been to have Frenzy cause damage equal to the number of Barbarian levels when the Frenzy ends, as the character begins to feel what they've done to themselves. I used to have it cause damage when you enter the Frenzy, but I found reversing that led to some nice dramatic moments.
@@The_Yukki I'll point out that there is a mechanic for dying when the combat is over after fighting with mortal wounds for the Zealot, and there's also Relentless Rage. Of course if you want a truly epic Logan style death scene, then exhaustion has to play its part. ;-)
Treantmonk will most likely have more than the Twilight and Peace domains, I think we all know that they are getting put in S-tier no question. I'm wondering what else will be S-tier.
A tier list that doesn't feel the need to give every class at least one or two S tier subclasses? Pinch my arm I think I'm dreaming! LOVE this tier list so far as I have high confidence that it can actually be a good resource for DMs to decide if the powerlevel of the party justifies a little bump in power level or not, or can be used for players to avoid clear trap-picks or accidentally pick something so powerful that the rest of the party feels useless.
Honestly, this video just made me not really want to play a campaign with you. A bit of caster elitism is fine but you have questionable judgement when it comes to how useful Barbarians are
Surprised you didn't comment a bit more on wolf totem, with the right party composition it can be incredibly powerful. Even if there are other ways to get advantage, every melee character getting it for free whenever you're in combat is going to make a big difference in a melee heavy party, even if it is only freeing up the rogue's bonus action so they can disengage. I do definitely think that Zealot fits your criteria of B tier though, even if it is just low B tier. Free extra (radiant) damage when raging, rerolled saving throws and free resurrection allows for a decently effective martial character at low to mid levels without much optimisation really being needed.
My biggest D&D hot take is that realistically, Barbarians are overpowered. Yeah, they simply can't keep up with casters during mid to high levels in even remotely optimized games but 99% of people don't play at mid to high levels OR in remotely optimized games. At a normal table, the Barbarian can smack things all day while dealing enough damage and taking enough hits to get the job done. It probably has the best effort to output ratio of any class at most tables. But its a highly unsatisfying way to play for most people, it really cant keep up outside of the most casual of tables, has no utility, and gets shut down when it cant physically reach its target. But I don't think it gets enough credit.
Idk about smacking things all day. -In my experience they kinda suck if you can’t afford to rage (limited to 2-4 uses/long rest in most cases),”. Most of your subclass and a lot of class features shut off turning you into a martial with essentially dead levels.
@@elliotbryant3459 You can still smack things when you aren't raging. You don't need to be an unstoppable wall of death, you just need to be tough enough to make it to the next long rest. But you're right, Fighter and Paladin are still probably better in this regard.
I think you could fix up the battle rager by giving them: - Smithing tool or armorer's tools prof. and the ability to convert any normal or magic armor made with at least some metal into spiked armor. (Spiked armor attacks get a +1/2/3 attack if made using +1/2/3 armor) - Let them choose to count heavy armor as medium armor for purposes of ability restrictions. Now they can dump dex invest more in str and con. Not to mention getting a good blend of ac and mobility, plus the ability to scale their armor. Other abilities could be reworked if you wanted to make them feel more unique.
I love this series! my only comment for this one would be that I think you are perhaps underestimating the Bolstering Magic feature of wild magic but the limited uses does make it too limited to be consistently strong especially if you have lots of casters. But I can see 3 person parties with only one main caster being much better with the support of a wild barb compared to any other.
I played a one shot with an 11th level wild magic barb. DM was going nuts when he saw me.using bolstering magic round after round with great weapon master or to grapple. An at will +1d3 in every attack and check was surprisingly effective. I'd not play on in a long campaign, but it was fun for a few.hours game
So I did a bit of research on the battlerager. I agree that it's kind of weak, however there is one good way to play it. Dwarven fortitude, (when you take the dodge action you can spend a hit die to heal 1d12+con) as a battlerager you don't need to take the attack action to get the bonus action attack, and enemies will have disadvantage attacking you. so it could be viable, just not a really high dps. another option is to multiclass into rune knight fighter to be a grappling god. Take the unarmed fighting style so you can deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage at the start of each turn you are grappled. It would require a magic item to make your unarmed strikes deal magic damage (eldritch claw tattoo) but it can be done. You would get higher damage from a zeolite barbarian/Scourge Aasimar with 2 levels into fighter so you can activate your rage, and Aasimar Radiant Consumption ability, action surge and still attack. But the listed above are still viable options, make sure you have plenty of RP to enjoy the battlerager, it's not that great in combat though.
Can't wait to see all the wizards at either S or A smh treantmonk obvious bias. Memes aside I'm so glad you've done all this I've actually used your wizard guide for help with my necromancer. Hoping you update it soon!
Srorm herald feels so close to being good. Maybe some stuff like making the aura difficult terrain for designated targets and mixing the 2 middle features together and adding something new to really drive home the use case of each aura. Stuff to make the aura feel more like a avenue to truly unique and good abilities like you get at 14th lv, or letting you swap storms on long rest. Also the resistance feature has a redundancy since resistance to fire makes you immune to extreme heat and cold damage to extreme cold by default. If it was stuff like not being effected by strong winds/currents for sea, food and water lasting longer in the dessert, moving without penalty through deep snow and ice plus not breaking thin ice under you for tundra it would actually have potential benefits for travel in extreme weather like it's trying to imply. Storm herald just makes me sad because it's so close to being really nice but just kinda falls short in execution, all the while having some AMAZING flavor.
@@chrisdin4109 I mean I'd put them to the left of battle rager -but still E tier [to the right of berserker]. -Also reckless abandon is ok and might reduce more damage and allow you to deal more damage over the average adventuring day than one elemental resistance. edit: reckless abandon would probably still be worse than tundra aura paired with cold resistance.
Very nice videos, these ones. Concise, but thourough enough; format is spot on. As with everything, I have my disagreements with your evaluations, but I can always understand your point of view. Looking forward to see the list completed.
Love the battlerager’s idea, but it’s clearly not strong enough to stack up. This is why I have developed the arcane battlerager in the lore of my dwarven abjurers and clockwork souls. Keeps the concept but embraces magic like armor of agathys to make it as strong as the dwarves deserve
It's interesting the discrepancy of effectiviness/power from each subclass. WotC slipped a little on balancing somethings but, to be fair, it's hard to balance non-spellcasting classes and spellcasters, since magic can provide such a wide range of possibilities. Although some martial/half-caster suclasses are top notch (like gloomstalker or rune knight), i feel like spellcasters always come out ahead (not always at damage, but still). Despite all that, the most optimized character anyone can make, is the character you enjoy playing the most. Keep up this video quality treantmonk, very nice.
So are you assuming the recommended 6 to 8 encounters per long rest or even more? As I would at least assume what the DMG recommends to be closest to the average of how people play, not so much your own way of playing. Which I seem to remember is 9-10. Also 6-8 seems excessive to me and not sure if most people play like that. Is there any idea on the average?
I absolutely love Zealot Barbarians. It’s a shame the Barbarian base class stops rewarding you for leveling up past 7. I’d love to play a single class Barbarian for flavor but I just can’t justify doing that to myself.
Ya brutal critical is the worst... why does it pop up three times? The could of gave barbarians extra carrying capacity and the ability to grapple/shove bigger creatures while compacting brutal critical to level 9 with it improving based on barbarian level
While it doesn't resolve the issue of limited rages, the Ancestral Guardian is nifty with a reach weapon (perhaps even a whip and shield as backup), or the goblin's bonus action disengage. Once you give an enemy disadvantage and half damage against anyone other than you, no one says you need to stick around with your fast movement. Barbs hit things pretty consistently, so you're likely to succeed in debilitating an important enemy every turn, while staying relatively safe and moving on to hit someone else with your extra attack, set up a Sentinel AOO and similar. Mobile works for the setup too, if you have space for it (I heard somewhere that feats are not free)
When Treantmonk says Elk gives two skill proficiencies but the video shows Tiger as doing that. Mistakes happens as we are all human, love the videos keep up the the solid work 👍
Few thing to point out. Though ignore this if you're actually comparing other subclasses to the bararian since he would be absolutely right. Wild barbarian : The features makes it MUCH better then berserker and battlerager. Mainly that the features of the wild table tend to aid the barbarian's goal of making them the threat to be deal with first. Their first roll makes them more tanky, Second ones gives them mobility in a class that normally doesn't have it, third is an aoe that barbarians usually don't get and some range, the fourth is the weakest but it makes dual wielding a viable style with a ranged weapon, fifth makes it so that creatures who hit you take damage and since your so tanky, you'll do a lot of damage that's FREE because it doesn't take reaction, sixth is honestly a confusing one since it's a decent bonus but a weak effect since it doesn't give you use for bonus action and no one is capable of getting in the same danger the barbarian usually ends up in the first place, seventh makes it harder to get away from you and keeps enemies within your preferred range and if they want to get out, they usually have to use a dash action wasting their turn, and 8th is damage, range and an effect that you can capitalize on before you attack. Most of these are really good, give you use and can still function with greatweapon master. Making them at least C Totem warrior : The strongest subclass among barbarians. Group with lots of attack? Free pack tactics with the wolf or if you need to be the tank, bear to have resistance to all damage types (excluding the psychic). That first subclass feature makes up for the disappointing 2 others, last being where you finally get a bonus action out of tiger. Their one of the stronger classes mainly because if the enemy doesn't concentrate on you, you're the one who will outlast them or simply keep giving your allies advantage on their attacks. And since you're a barbarian you're going to endure a lot of damage before going down. At least B since that first subclass feature is powerful. Ancestral guardian : A weaker class then the others since obviously the first target you hit is probably going to concentrate on you first and foremost. Which makes it Highly effective in forcing combat on your enemies and shutting down high priority targets the purpose of doing that in the first place. Second feature makes them capable of even stopping a lot of damage since you'll be taking the high priority ones while the weaker enemies damage get's denied by your spirit shield. Though it is annoying that the only to deal with them comes later (14th level) and since you don't have a bonus action. It's still powerful since you just, kite enemies as well, picking up the fighter initiate feat and picking up thrown weapon fighting, you can hit your enemies from a distance, apply the effect of your subclass, use your bonus action with a light knife to deal 1d4 damage to yourself and then just running 30 feet away from your allies. Forcing enemies to fight with disadvantage on attack and having your shield reduce the damage that happens whenever it happens on a blue moon. At least B since their good at what their supposed to be good at.
Barbarians are a fantastic class... for dipping into. I agree, Barbarians are too front loaded with their class features and the value you get falls off hard past 7th level. Echo knight + Ancestral guardian with slasher feat is always a combo I've wanted to try in game for a defender playstyle that can effect multiple opponents and still deal out good single target burst with unleash incarnation, reckless attack, and action surge.
If I'm remembering correctly, Wild magic Barb had some powerful wild magic effects before it became official content. Some of them were a little strong, but they were unreliable! The nerfed version we have now just isn't terribly appealing. Making unreliable features comparable in power to reliable features is a mistake. They don't need to be "Oh look, I got lucky and now we cant fail this encounter!" good, but they do need to be better than low level spells that can be thrown around by casters at will several times per day.
Beast getting a bonus attack _as part of the same action as the normal attack_ is so rude! Especially compared to monk who does worse damage and has to spend a bonus action for their extra attack, and choose between that or _two_ bonus action extra attacks.
There's another important point to make here. Who else but a Barbarian would you give one of the Many Names of David Ryder to? Flint Ironstag! Bolt Vanderhuge!
i gotta disagree with you on some of these. making enemies attack you is actually great when youre the biggest dammage sponge in the game so id say ancestral guardian is atleast b and totem warrior being the worst of c? insane. resistance to all dammage effectively doubles your hitpoints(unnless the enemy deal phcycic dmg, which dosent really happen often). if thats c then the rest of barbarian subclasses are d and e. i agree somewhat with the higest 4 though best is probably the worst of that bunch.
Battle Rager should have been based around grappling and the spiked armor should have been introduced outside of the class as something any class who gets access to both martial weapons and medium armor can use with maybe a few variants. I've played a bear totem barbarian in one campaign and levels 5-7 are amazing, but level 8 there's definitely a drop-off compared to paladins. In that game, it wasn't uncommon to have like 8 fights in a day and we didn't have anyone with healing spells (except a paladin who'd use 1 pt of lay on hands to keep people from dying), so it was interesting. I picked up a Halberd as soon as possible and ended up having some days where we'd start with a big fight, I'd be at 1 HP the entire day taking advantage of the extra mobility and reach from the halberd to reckless attack and run away. And as a Bear Totem barbarian, losing initiative is ROUGH (why I LOVE level 7), so a multi-class that gives access to Absorb Elements and Shield actually wouldn't be a horrible option if you can swing the stats for it. I'd actually like to play a Zealot Path barbarian, but I think only if I was in a party with a Cleric who had the same affiliation. I do overall like the risk/reward aspect of the class. It kind of requires thinking about when you want to be at the front lines and when you want to play it safer.
I would personally rank Zealot as a B at least. "Free" resurrection and reliable bonus damage every turn are pretty great, the mid level features are nothing to scoff at - and Rage Beyond Death is simply stupidly powerful. I'm well aware that not every campaign will reach that level range and that a simple Sleep spell could still kill a raging Zealot, but I have personally tanked several 100 points of damage after reaching 0 HP multiple times with my high level Zealot in Adventurers League - and it made all the difference !
Note: Spirit Shield applies to all creatures, not just the marked enemy, effectively doubling the amount of protection you provide your party. I would assume you are comparing the Barbarian subclasses against all other classes and not just Barbarian, is that right? Cuz that a pretty unfair apples to oranges comparison man.
Battlerager is better with a 1h weapon and a shield I think. It allows you to do a bonus action attack amd increase strength instead of taking feats, while wielding a shield. Multiclass for duelling at some point and your damage is good and your barb has higher AC.
What about Ancestal Gurdian with reach or ranged attacks? Enemy cannot attack you if he cannot reach you. The same works with Mobile feat. And all this is in synergy with barbarians' fast movement!
Id really like some elaboration on the universal standings. Not a huge amount, but general thoughts at the end of each video that brings these into context. Unless you plan on doing a full overview, the interclass ranks feel as important as the sub class rankings.
I mostly stick to PHB stuff so I'm really familiar with that. And I have to say I disagree with your reasoning about the berserker and the totem warrior. You say that one of the best 3rd level Totem Warrior feature is the bear and I disagree with that. It SEEMS powerful but compare it to the wolf option. As a bear you get to apply your resistance against (almost) any damage. True. But how often is your character really targetet with special damage ? Most of the damage you take in most fights is "normal" damage (piercing, bludgeoning, slashing) that you halve anyways. Every now and then enemies will have other effects. And if they attack you with these AND hit you this feature will come in handy. Compare this to the Wolf totem at level 3. Your other party members get advantage on weapon attacks against enemies within 5ft of you. That is something that will happen every single battle and (depending on group composition) 2+ party members will gain advantage through this. In my opinion this is more powerful then the bear feature. Just less loved because it helps others and not yourself. About the Berserker: I completely agree that exhaustion is a hefty price to pay. I look at this from a different perspective however: You don't have to activate it every battle. Again compare it to the bear totem. This feature (while always on) will ONLY help you if enemies have special attacks, are targeting you AND actually hit you. Even in the "Descent to Avernus" campaign (which plays in hell) this does only happen every few battles. The "frenzy" ability by comparison can be used safely once per day when you really need it (like in a boss battle) and gives your character one extra attack from levels 3 to 10 compared to the standard fighter. Again I think that on average this will be at least as useful (if not more so) then the lvl 3 Bear Totem. Oh, and if you really need it, you can use Frenzy more often (but this will effect you badly in the long term of course).
Gonna have to hard disagree with the ancestral barbarian, it’s the single best tank in the entire game(in fact basically the only decent tank in the entire game) Barbarian is essentially useless because unless it’s the zealot they simply do not do enough damage to beat fighters and other good martials, and everything a barbarian can do a caster can essentially do better
I have to speak up for the Battlerager. IMO it's very underrated in the community. First off, any decent DM with a battlerager in their party is going to include magic spiked armor and/or the ability to make spiked half-plate at some point. I don't think that's an issue in real play. As for the effectiveness, it's a great blend of offense and defense that's particularly good when you focus on grappling enemies. The free damage when you grapple isn't all that important. The key is that grappling doesn't work well with 2 handed focused feats (GWM, and polearm master to a lesser extent) that most other barbarian builds rely on to pump up damage. The battlerager can grapple an enemy and still have full damage effectiveness WITHOUT spending a feat. IMO take 6 levels of battlerager, 3 levels of rune knight (enlarge + other great features), then spend the rest in scout rogue. Scout is interesting for a grappler because you can use your reaction to drag an opponent & move them around the battlefield when they end their turn still grappled. I'm playing this build now, and it's very effective.
Biggest surprise to me is how high the Beast barbarian ranked. The claws get a lot of hype, but bottom line it's tricky to make a bonus action attack if you attack with your claws. Polearm master requires you to only attack with your polearm. Two weapon fighting doesn't mechanically work either cause you need a weapon in both hands and thus can't claw attack. The only thing that does work RAW to get a bonus action attack while still using claws is multiclassing monk, but that comes with its own problems. Any damage gain from this feature is going to fade as magic weapons come into play. So I think the level 3 ability ends up being briefly a damage gain, but mostly a defensive gain at higher levels (using the tail to deflect only one attack). The level 6 ability is fine, you can walk upside down on ceilings, but not really standing out next to the totem. The level 10 ability is solid, the level 14 ability is...about the same as what Totem gets at 14 (Totem has some solid options at 14). So Totem's ahead, I think for most of level 3 to level 9. Maybe they're about tied at level 10-20. Really feels like Beast should be behind Totem Warrior. Probably not so far behind that they're D-tier (I'm at least interested in fiddling around with beast despite the mechanical issues with the claws, I don't have much interest in Storm Herald).
I think two weapon fighting should work with the dual wielder feat if using the claws. The natural weapons count as a simple melee weapon and you can use your main action to attack with claws [or use the battleaxe for one of the 3] and then bonus action attack with the battle axe. Unless you have the RAWEST of DM's the claws sticking out of your hand [that are stated to count as a simple melee weapon] should qualify as a weapon wielded by that hand.
@@elliotbryant3459 Mmm...Two weapon fighting I believe has this wording: "When you take the Attack Action and Attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a Bonus Action to Attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus Attack, unless that modifier is negative." It quite explicitly calls out weapons held in a hand. Weapons held in a claw should count, so you should be able to dualweild shortswords in each of your claws. But I don't think the claws themselves count for triggering two weapon fighting. (Same way Dhampirs can't trigger two weapon fighting by using their bite, even though they've attacked with a simple melee weapon). RAW I don't think there's a way to trigger two weapon fighting with specifically the claw attacks. They aren't held weapons. There might be some tricks with attacking with the claw twice, then attacking with a light weapon held in the other claw, and then finally using free object interaction to draw an off-hand weapon, maybe that sequence allows dual-weilding to work? Only works if you start with one weapon sheathed, though, I think? And not until you have Extra Attack. Even if the DM is nice and does allow it to work it still has a lot of problems (the claws are definitely not light, so you would need the Dual Weilder feat. Barb doesn't get a fighting style, so no adding STR to the bonus action attack unless you dip for that. And if you do the investment, after all this getting feats and picking up fighting styles from dips, the barb could just find a cool magic weapon that they'd rather attack with).
These rankings aren't taking into account how absolutely necessary it is to have a front line. Ancestral Barbarians, Totem Warrior and battle master on the same Tier as Arcane Archer? Just perplexing.
I totally dig your criteria for your ranking system. Very relevant. As it far as your Barb ranking I don't disagree with it, but I will say the Totem Barb should be ranked a higher C maybe next to the Zealot. Only because I played a 5th level Totem Barb and found it quite good. Thanks as always. One idea after you do these rankings, it would be cool if you did a video ranking what races would wok well with each type of the highest ranking subclasses.
I have a soft spot in my heart for totem barb, particularly as a multiclass option, but I completely agree with Treantmonk's assessment on this one. Barbs are fun to RP IMO, but they don't really compete too well with many of the better classes in the game, regardless of subclass, in combat. They are pretty beast at low level though, the resistance from rage counts for a lot from levels 1-6ish. my predictions for bard: Eloquence- High A to low S, Lore- A, Valor- B, I'd have to think more regarding the others.
I'd put eloquence at S personally. Auto pass Charisma checks for Persuasion/deception at level 5, and you can overcome magic resistance the best out of all spellcasters thanks to adding a possible 12 to your spell save DC. Yeah legendary resistance is a thing, but you burn one of those a round no issue most of the time, and once those are gone, a single hold monster or true poly or something is a won fight against even Tiamat.
@@archmagemc3561 Fair enough, I do agree with you. Their inspirations also practically never go to waste which is super nice. Im just thinking about eloquence in relation to other arcane casters, namely (several) wizards and clockwork soul/aberrant mind sorcerers, which have better spell lists. But bard's spell list is good in it's own right, so I could definitely see an S here, not to mention magical secrets. I played a lore bard as my first character in DND 5e and absolutely adored him, possibly my favorite character to date.
@@mikeroberts817 He might, I could see that. Valor has better proficiencies at 3 (though 3 skill proficiencies for lore is a big deal) and cutting words vs combat inspiration is about a wash, I prefer combat inspiration a tiny bit more perhaps? Where I personally think Lore rather strongly outperforms Valor is at lvl 6 and 14. Extra attack is nice for a while, it does make you capable of a nonzero amount of damage from round to round with your action for 0 resources invested. And battle magic, well...it sucks? Additional magical secrets on the other hand lets you get counterspell and another spell of your choice (fireball, haste, spirit guardians, and many others...even eldritch blast isn't a horrible choice if you don't want to multi, take eldritch adept at 8 for agonizing blast) 4 levels before any other bard has access to any magical secrets. Peerless skill turns your inspirations into essentially: win initiative, practically guarantee a counterspell with a 3rd level slot, *almost* guarantee a crucial persuasion check at least goes well, etc. bonus AC is nice, but you can also get that with a feat (which isn't free) or a 1 level dip into hexblade, if you really want it. Having played both subclasses, I feel pretty confident that Lore is the vastly superior subclass from lvl 6 on TBH. Valor is definitely better in low tier play though. Basically Lore takes what a bard already does well and turns it up (to 10, only eloquence turns it up to 11 IMO), whereas Valor makes you a bit more durable and gives you non-zero DPR in the mid levels.
@@sharkforce8147 oh wow, I guess I must have missed that! I'm not sure how I missed it TBH, it's not like Eldritch adept has much text to it. Thank you for pointing that out.
i love the flavor of the beast. i love the mechanics of ancestral guardians. i saw an ancestral guardians in a dragon fight save the entire party as the dragon wailed on the druid/cleric for turn after turn at half damage. (it was "Ambition and Avarice" on arcadum's channel, 10 lvl 12 characters vs 1 dragon)
Battlerager is better than you went over. It’s not temp hitpoints when you rage, it’s refilling temp hitpoints when you reckless attack while you rage. The temporary hitpoints is a small amount because it equals your CON mod, but that’s probably between 3-7 temp hitpoints. The temporary hitpoints partially offset the increased likelihood of receiving a critical from reckless attack. The mileage may also be increased by your resistance since your rage would reduce the damage the temp hitpoints takes too. Theres a case to be made regarding a battlerager using a shield and a one handed weapon since they have a bonus action attack available to them from the armor that also benefits from rage bonus. I find it interesting that none of the battleragers you played with were given any magic items centered around their armor feature. Seems like more of a DM issue rather than a class failure. Adamantine armor seems like a basic upgrade for any barbarian.
Funny enough, when making a homebrew slime race, I use Battlerager's 3 damage during grapple as a balancing point for the slime's auto grapple damage. I've had no one complain about con (min 1) acid damage while grappling when I point out that the idea came from SCAG, even from DMs who hate homebrew. xD.
In my opinion, Berserker Barbarian should be F tier, here’s why. The third level ability is almost more of a detriment, and the sixth level ability is ok. The worst part of the third level ability is that it scales inversely to your level. You can essentially frenzy once per long rest with no huge downsides. As you gain levels, you can rage more, but frenzying more is risky. Once you get extra attack you go from 100% more attacks while frenzying to 50% more. The 10th level ability is terrible. It requires you to use your action for the frightened effect and the DC is based on your charisma modifier. It only targets one creature, many creatures at this level are immune to fear, and the DC is going to be around 14 with a good charisma. The 14th level ability is solid, but does little to fulfill the role of a tank as you get the opportunity attack when someone hits you. If someone hits another party member, nothing happens.
I actually homebrewed a version of berserker such that you could frenzy only once per day with no downsides, followed by adding a level of exhaustion for each frenzy past the first. I think it makes the subclass a lot more playable in practice, while keeping the spirit of the original design intact.
The fact that I completely agree with this post is making me sad ... because Berserker is one of my favourite character archetypes in terms of flavor and personal preferences (thanks to Logen Ninefingers from First Law Trilogy). And I feel really bad that 5e designers made it so, so terrible mechanically that it's almost unplayable. This subclass needs redemtpion so much. This exhaustion nonsense should be changed to something less penalazing
Mmm, so in your opinion the Totem Warrior is not better than both the Beast and The Ancestral Guardian? Or did you just forget to put it more on the left of the tier?
It is certainly good that you note that rage is a finite resource that comes back on a long rest, but in my (limited) experience you can expect to rage most or all battles once you gain 3 uses and you can expect to rage (almost) all battle during an adventuring day once you hit 4 rages. I understand your standard metric is 8 encounters per day, but I do think in practice the barbarian can be sure to rage most of the time. But of course I agree that they fall of in higher level play...
Having Ancestral Guardian and Peace Cleric at the same party can be nasty. Protective Bond would allow any party member to take the hit for Ancestral Guardian and then the Ancestral Guardian can use Spirit Shield to mitigate that damage. At level 17, Peace Cleric would then get Expansive Bond that adds resistance for tanking that damage while Spirit Shield would already be 4d6 by that time. It's ashamed that Spirit Shield stopped scaling at level 14 instead of going further to 5d6 which I think would be at level 18. Also, a Leonin Ancestral Guardian can use Daunting Roar as a panic button when overwhelm.
Dude, you'r harsh. I got it, Barbarian's not op class. But, take a deep breath man, that was a haymaker punch on all of then. And I kinda felt this way at the Artificer too. I don't know if its a little missing in your arguments, but I don't take it as bad as you make then sound. Your judment sounded way to much class related and not really into the subclass.
I kinda feel you underestimate Barbarians. At least in my Games after Level 5, with 4 Rages per Rest, usually the Barbarian can Rage every Fight (unless you do a Dungeon Crawl). That beeing out of the Way, I think that "pure" Barbarians with high HP totals are absolutly okay with getting beat up in a fight, since you will longrest eventually. (Doesnt matter that you are at 4 Hp, if you Longrest) Exspcially in Higher Levels since there is a Big Catch you overlooked: AC is only useful until your enemies have double digit To-hit modifier. If you are Fighting an Ancient Dragon, that Dragon will land every Hit...it doesnt matter that you are wearing Fullplate + Defense a Shield and a Cloak of Protection.....a 24 AC means the Dragon hits on an 8. Same goes with high Level Spells like Desintegrate. Your AC boosts dont matter. HP do. And thats why i rank the following: Totem and Zealot are B Tier, Together with the Berserker. Just beeing Immun is insane, and having a reliable 3rd Attack is better than crit fishing with GWM. (Given that you only use it once a Day, as long you do you are finde) Disadvantage on Ability Checks is okay, since you are probably only needed for Athletics anyway.
Facts ac tanking becomes pointless real face and the point of the barbarian is that they are the ones that should be taking the damage not your allies as you got enough hp to tank the hit better while the squisher party members deal with things
I'm really surprised that Path of the Beast isnt getting more love here. The 3rd level Zealot feature is not inherently better than the 3rd level Beast feature. I'd say they're even because the Beast provides more options. The 6th and 10th level features are definitely better for the Beast than the Zealot because of versatility and number of uses. The 14th level Zealot feature is the only clear standout that is better than the Beast.
7:43
S - Stupidly overpowered
A - Amazing
B - Brilliant
C - Cool
D - Disappointing but still good
E - Effort required to be good
F - Fail
Oh, I like that.
@@Observer31 I think optimizers in group with others that don’t optimize should alsways stick to C and lower, even optimized A can cause some balance issues ;-).
That’s why I usually play with more difficult subclasses - Elements Monk, Alchemist, Hunter, Conjurer,…
@@Observer31 Yes! That’s exactly what I like the most about optimizing - you can take subclass that is considered weak and build from it respectable and useful party member that can shine in various scenarios without overshadowing others too much.
As a martial main I don't know why I watch these. Super discouraging. Every wizard subclass will be b or higher every barb subclass won't be able to break a c
The worst thing about about barbarians is that they can't cast spells using magic items while raging either.
It's Treantmonk. You know he lurves his spells (and with good reason). You just have to take the Martials separately.
I feel like the Bard will be ranked higher than I would rank them, but maybe that is just my own biases showing.
Why is it discouraging? He says C can be quite effective.
Dont feel discouraged, power is not every thing. C rank characters are not frustrating to play with
I wouldn't put too much stock in these rankings. Casters are very powerful at higher levels but are also very squishy so they tend to die a lot to balance things out. Barbarians can be beasts even at high level, especially if in a good party and they find a way to capitalize on their strengths and/or shore up their weaknesses with magic items.
I agree Zealot is best, but I could definitely see raising it up a tier or two just because resurrection is pretty darn awesome. After all, you do mention at the start of the video that we are assuming we are in a party of characters and Revivify was added to a lot of classes. Maybe it isn't truly combat relevant. But it is: A huge safety net for the character. Gives you a lot of options outside of combat. Gives access to huge environmental plays by grappling and dragging a difficult NPC into hell.
I agree that zealot is great and one of the most effective frontliners of DnD 5e. However, it is one of the las options I would choose for a long campaign. With this subclass you hit, hit hard, hit again, and again and that's it. Too boring for me.
Only issue, to do any insane rivivify plays you need the Gentle Repose + Mending combo to repair the barb's mangled corpse before rivivify works on it. Works well on later tiers of rez though that don't need an intact body.
By lvl 14 the Zealot is actually unkillable during rage unless he is targeted by a power word kill or disintegrate this in addition to their extra damage means they scale very well into the lategame something most barbarians are not known for.
There is also a background to even bypass this as you would just need to take the dead barbarian to a temple or something and just ask someone there to revive the dead barbarian for free
@@sinthariasinestra9777 the acolyte background i believe
I think that the Zealot should be rank B, you can deal a pretty big amount of damage, healer won't have to be troubled to use diamonds to revive you, and at 14th level you can literally say fck you to death itself thanks to all the other features the Barbarian gets and with some good feats you can basically be also the damage dealer other than a tank.
Agree 100%
The only problem is: how do we recover the corpse of the Zelote we send in the hole to test if it was dangerous?
Can't wait for monk. That could reaaally be "a breakdown".
I'm guessing that Monk will fall into the D and E categories, tbh. I love the concept of the wandering martial artist, but lets face it, the monk class is quite weak, and the subclasses don't really do anything to raise their status.
In my opinion, the fact that Ki points are an extremely limited resource makes the class undesirable to me. I say that while you're conscious you regenerate 1 ki per round as long as you haven't spent a ki point - which with the current set of rules would probably be overpowered. Maybe then raise the KI cost of some abilities to compensate for the influx of KI- to keep people from spamming their KI abilities.
@@k2k4 never tried it but at the top off my head, some investment in Gloomstalker Ranger i think could go a long way with a Way of the Shadow monk both mechanically and thematically. Like this channel preaches, The Best monk goes Less monk.
@@k2k4 they also have the worst level 1 in the game, I created a monk with the fighting initiate feat(d8 unarmed strikes at level 1), and it was still behind a dual wielder fighter who would have more hp, more ac and second wind, besides just as much damage.
He'll put mercy in b
@@k2k4 Since he's factoring in how the main class itself performs as a vehicle for the archetype and not just ranking the archetype features itself, I can predict that the only two Monks that have a chance in hell of making it above E tier are Mercy and possibly Open Hand or Shadow. Chris has made his feelings for the monk as a class known loud and clear and that perspective is going to drag down every single monk subclass.
It's not a coincidence that Wizard starts with W and Chris decided to do this alphabetically.
It's probably going to be the shortest video as well. He'll just say "They're all S except for Necromancy and Graviturgy. Done"
Chronurgist gets its own separate tier S++
@@mattbriddell9246 does he not like graviturgy? I seem to remember him liking it fine just saying many graviturgy spells were underwhelming.
Wizards and Clerics are only challenged by their horny cousin the Bard.
@@kronos1794 The Wizard is challenged by the Sorcerer now thanks to the Tasha's subclasses, but the Bard does not even come close. Bards are decent, especially the better Bards like Eloquence and Lore, but comparing them to the average Wizard or a Clockwork Soul Sorcerer is a joke.
To be honest I would probably rank berserker even lower for being a new player's trap. It looks as if it was designed this way; from the subclass name to potentialy having more attacks than other low level characters - it looks and sounds cool and I've seen plenty of new players wanted to roll one only to be disapointed once they actually used their frenzy. I think this is mostly due to the fact that exhausion mechanics is explained much later in the players guide and most of them did not even read that far
It is an F teir
Berserker is a weird one, at high levels Beserker is actually pretty good - the healer can Greater Restoration that exhaustion away, immunity to fear & charm is really nice when you're an unstoppable killing machine - though this isn't necessary if you've got a paladin in the party. But at low levels its pretty bad. Though Polearm Master kind of makes Frenzy obsolete.
Just skip the exhausted mechanic it sucks
Treantmonk is the good friend keeping us out of abusive relationships.
"But he gives me a bonus action attack!"
"So does polearm master. Move on."
Feat aren't free. Also any decent group has banned that feat.
@@DaDunge They aren't free, but one feat costs less than a whole subclass. And I'm still astonished to see the "martials have it too good" arguments against the better feats in the game.
Sure, wizards can move the group across planes but if a big guy hits people 1 or 2 extra times? Now THAT's ridiculous!
@@kendrajade6688 It's not banned because it's powerful it's banned because it makes all martial characters exactly the same.
@@DaDunge Martials are already pretty much the same in in that regard, the only difference between weapons is flavor and which one you can make good through feats.
@@masuta2.06 There's a visual elements to characters and everyone running around with polearms gets very boring.
The thumbnail gave me a good chuckle because it looks like they are all in F tier. I could imagine Treantmonk snickering to himself making it 😂
Zealot getting some love, YES! I would love it to be B-tier even, even as the weakest B-tier but let’s be honest, barbs are great but in an optimization standpoint there are a lot more versatile *and* powerful classes and subclasses with minimal access to spells and spell-like effects. If barbs reached B-tier then we would need a lot more higher tiers for 1/3 spellcasters, 1/2 spellcasters, full spellcasters and some really awesome subclasses that expand on an already superior chassis.
Nonetheless, go barbs go! Being a big guy with a big stick blocking hits with your bare chest is awesome and while you eventually get outclassed HARD, being literally too angry to die forever until you eat a Banishment spell is still hilarious.
Zealot Barbarian - Fighter multiclass is the highest DPS in the game. I don't really understand why everyone is obsessed with spellcasters. Sure magic can do some whacky things, but once immunities and magic resistance come into play spellcasters are kind of weak.
@@agilemind6241 That's a...pretty dumb take tbh, considering there's plentiful options for Spellcasters to bypass such resistances or features.
Clockwork Soul for example, or through abusing Silvery Barbs, or Divination Wizards, etc etc.
Pack Tactics' "Flavor is Free" vs. Treantmonk's "Feats are not Free"
lol, I did a "flavor is free" video a couple years ago. ua-cam.com/video/1okK0Gbzx7U/v-deo.html
If you ever played Champions, you'd know that "Flavor is _almost_ free" :)
Bards are going to DESTROY Artificers and Barbarians next episode.
Hell yes they are
If you think Bards are going to go high, your mind is going to be blown when it’s time for monks!
Eloquence will be king for 1 episode before being joined by Peace and Twilight.
@@andrewreimann5203 Well considering this is treantmonk when it comes to monks he will have to add a G rank, haha!
Creation may go higher without any sane moderation on its animating performance
I'd put Storm Herald as weaker than Wild Magic. Storm Herald could actually be a nuisance to your team, what with that spooky 2 damage aura targeting alies as well, so it could potentially affect someone dying on the front line. It's not unlikely that this is your aura as well, since desert has the best resistance. At worst the Wild Magic Barbarian can recharge spell slots for your Paladin, or give your Wizard more slots to cast Shield and what not.
Other than that, solid rank so far.
Yeah, I agree- even with the WM Barb's lack of scaling and occasional useless wild surges, the subclass doesn't hurt the base chassis, and the spell slot regeneration ability is actually quite good when it comes on-line, though it doesn't scale either. I've never played or had a SH barb at my table, but I watched an experienced player (though not an optimizer) play one on Dimension 20s Crown of Candy, and it really felt like that stupid 2 damage aura was more often a problem to be solved than a helpful, if minor, damage boost. At low levels, that 2 hp isn't always trivial for the party (especially if the 1st round of combat went sideways and PCs near the barb are already hurt or down when the Barb's turn comes up, there is already an enemy in their face, and suddenly they need to try to figure out a way to rage without risking downing or even killing their own allies), but is basically almost always trivial for the enemies.
Doesn't the WM Barb's later abilities to let them reroll for better effects on the table push it even further past SH?
@@voicetest6019 yeah. They can reroll it frequently at later levels as well. Even the good effects are very minor and don't scale, but they're not bad at all when compared to what most barbarian subclasses give anyway.
I think the big one could be the force damage weapon, it could give you something to do against flyers (other than chucking +0 javelins, at least), and the force damage itself could be great against stuff that resists magic physical damage.
@@geckothegreene Aside from the damage causing death if you have anyone concentrating near the barb, paladin and melee ranger most commonly, it is also a nuisance even into the highest levels.
The best aura ability is definitely Tundra IMO. Spamming temp hp on everyone around you can be good in an all-frontline battle. I see it going well in a party with an Ancients Paladin since that decreases the danger of clustering together.
That said, even in its ideal circumstance it's a pretty weak use of a bonus action.
The bear totem ability that doubles your lift capacity could be entertaining on a race with powerful build. Pick up an enemy and throw them, or grab a big one by the leg and tip it over.
Ancestral guardián was my first D&D character! 🧡 but my DM gave me a ring of spell storing so I had options for when I was not raging 😊
It was my first character too! I have a soft spot for the subclass, loved being able to mitigate harm to my teammates in addition to the typical axe swinging lunacy
@@TheAdditionalPylons It's one of the few true tank/taunt feature and the fact that you get it by attacking is satisfying and makes you more than a stat stick standing around.
I know a lot of folks who are fans of the Totem Warrior Barbarian, but I'm totally on board with putting Zealot at the top.
A level 15+ Zealot Barbarian does very decent damage and is effectively immortal, being Too Angry to Die (TM), save for failing a sleep or charm save that takes them out of Rage after having failed their death saves. Wisdom saves are typically the ones I pay attention to most as a non-caster, and I usually take Resilient Wisdom as a result. That said, Elf, Gnome, Yuan-ti, and Satyr Zealot Barbarians give you advantage (Or Immunity for Elves and Sleep) to the types of effects that take Barbarians out of most fights, and with Tasha's and customizing your origin you aren't penalized on your stat distribution.
I really feel totem should be somewhere between B and S tier, on the basis that the neigh invulnerable barbarian is capable of flying, and seeing up to a mile.
The problem is no taunting means that you essentially end up as just the last person standing in a dead party
There are feats for that. Honestly I was in a party that went to level 20 and the totem barbarian was amazing the whole time. All of the features ended up being valuable at some point and she never went down even once.
Full disclosure, I am currently running Artificer Armorer, but that's part of why I have so thoroughly theorycrafted the subclass and gotten a good understanding of what it is capable of.
With all due respect, having taken a long look at both classes and subclasses, I feel like there is a significant problem with this ranking when Armorer Artificer shares a ranking with Battlerager Barbarian. The Barbarian sacrifices all the flexibility of the Artificer class to do relatively similar damage early on with at best tradeoffs in survivability. At later levels, they can technically do higher raw DPR (especially with criticals), but at steep costs and with even more sacrifices in flexibility and contribution to the party. And if the Artificer is prepared, they do more damage more reliably anyway.
Maybe multiclassing capability is weighted far more heavily than I thought, but this seems very out of whack and just leaves me scratching my head.
What I wish was true/you were going to say : Wild Magic Barbarian is S tier
What I know you are going to say: It is trash
Haha same here. Sounds great in my imagination!
I think the idea of wild magic barbarian is good. As is the idea of some of the others (stormherald), but the execution leaves much to be desired.
If the wild-magic effects did decent damage - then maybe wild magic barbarian would be a lot stronger (for instance, the lightning bolt does 1d6 damage, why so low?). Just like the wild-magic sorcerer, I want a chance that the barbarian simply explodes and kills everyone in the area when they go berserk. That's the level of danger that I want from wild magic. I want the barbarian to have a chance to sprout tree-arms that grasp at enemies, send out thunderous booms that shatter glass, spray acid or fire in all directions when they go into a rage, or just simply rage themselves into being a potted plant. But instead we get minor +1d6 damage to a target of your choice, doesn't scale, doesn't really do anything to affect the fight. It's disappointing.
@@k2k4 I agree with you. One of my favourite ideas ever and I actually love the art. But, yeah, some of the powers are just so, so weak, even at level 3
After seeing things like fey wanderer, i know that wotc has some great designers. Unfortunately they were not assigned to the wild magic barbarian.
Just copy and paste the sorcerer wild magic table to replace the lame barbarian one. This should of been the one barbarian that can cast spells
I think Storm Herald is top 3 for biggest gap between how good the concept sounds at first and actual performance.
Higher entries are Purple Dragon Knight and Four Elements Monk.
I’m playing one in the new year and we decided to use a revised version where at the start of each day you to choose your storm so your actually a STORM herald not just a tundra herald. Also ups damage potential with more rolling, and adds nice utility cantrips depending on your chosen storm
I think one thing that could be interesting for this series is rating the base class itself, as sort of a "what letter grade would this class get if it had no subclass features at all?" -- that way we can sort of see how much of these grades come from class and how much from subclass.
He made a video rating the classes at particular levels and then put them together in the last one
@@chrisvelo2595 I did see that one, but I mean it would be good to see where the base classes fall in comparison with subclasses. For example, I want to know if the Wizard (without subclasses) is better than every possible Barbarian subclass; or whether there are any subclasses that are actively worse than having no subclass (because it encourages you to use abilities in bad ways); or other things like that.
@@nathanielsoule8067 oh I understand now. Well to answer the second part in the video he talks about how adding features to very powerful subclasses doesn't make them more powerful so I have a feeling he would say that, losing a subclass is never a good thing.
@@chrisvelo2595 You're definitely correct from a technical / optimal standpoint, but whenever a feature encourages a bad thing that could make it worse.
For instance, Bladesingers get an ability to use spell slots to reduce damage, but it's very inefficient and not a great ability. From an optimizer's perspective, having that ability is better than not having it because you can just not use it unless it's extremely important; but from a beginner's perspective, having that ability means you should use that ability any chance you can. That means beginners would actually play more optimally if that ability were straight up removed from the subclass.
Ouch, poor barbarian. Zealot and totem would make my B tier but I can't argue too much.
I agree with you. I know multiclassing isn’t a considered factor in this list, but there’s a few good “damned if you hit, damned if you don’t” mc builds that bring ancestoral guardians high as a subclass build for me. (If I was playing Treantmonk’s Chuck, I’d 100% add it when the rest of the build plateaus)
Wolf and Bear have some good stuff, but he's ranking the Subclass as a whole. So a Few Good Totems get dragged down by some stinkers.
@@Joemantler No, because no one takes those stinkers.
Speaking of stinkers... How about a Skunk Totem?
I definitely can. Sometimes I wonder what game Treantmonk is playing because it ain't the one I'm playing. The idea of ranking any Barbarian subclass below C is baffling to me, because even stuff like the Battlerager is attached to one of the most effective base classes in 5e. They overshadow the other martial classes pretty hard in my experience, and they make great team mates for casters because of their durability and good-to-great damage output making them excellent tanks.
When he said that a GWM Barbarian's damage is only "okay" at early levels, I had to stop the video and show this to my own gaming group, and none of us can figure out what metric he's using as a comparison point. GWM Barbarian is a wrecking ball at early levels and other classes only start to catch up to them later on. It's bad enough that I actually ban that feat because of how abusive it is when paired with the Barbarian class's ability to negate its downside by having advantage on all attacks.
Even though other classes start to catch up, none of them can output damage as consistently as a GWM Barbarian. Paladins and casters have to spend high level spell slots, the Barbarian just walks forward and attacks. Warlocks, Rogues and Sharpshooter Fighters might be their only real competitors when it comes to consistent damage on demand for little expenditure of resources, but in the case of Warlock and Rogue, they're MUCH more fragile.
Their downside of being easily hit doesn't really matter when very few monsters actually deal damage other than piercing, slashing or bludgeoning except with spells or spell-like effects which don't require a hit roll to begin with. Then you can just be a Bear Totem Barbarian and shrug that off, too. Control effects might be a concern, but that's what the group's support character is for, and 5e by design has very few save-or-die effects to worry about.
Barbarian does everything you want a martial character to do. They hit accurately, hard, have loads of HP and resistance to damage to ensure their durability. They're the perfect tank, the catch-22. Do the enemies ignore the Barbarian and get a GWM Greataxe swing to the face, or do they hit the thing with the biggest HP pool of any class in the game that's going to ignore half of the damage they're going to deal?
I love that intro that you put in nearly all (if not all) of your videos. The book opens to reveal a train, a fantasy castle and magic. Magic, steam trains and castles sounds like an epic setting.
So... Harry potter? I'm joking of course but technically that's what you described
@@CanisMythson Huh. I didn't think of that. Neat.
Have a look at the Eberron setting, it might be exactly what floats your boat.
@@mrfreddorenton Thanks. That does sound awesome.
We all know the way of the duck totem would be S tier for sure if it wasn’t third party
Currently playing as an Ancestral Guardian and I gotta say, the level 3 ability rarely comes up. I can clearly remember the last time it made a difference about 20 sessions ago. Granted, we dont often fight single big creatures, which is where I imagine the feature might shine a lot more.
Realises its alphabetical
Realises that means Bard and Cleric are next
Gets very excited for some S's
Not gonna be surprised if Twilight and Peace gets placed into S+ tier tbh
So glad to see you continuing this series
With good tactics, I'd say the ancestral guardian is a standout. I'm currently playing an ancestral guardian with shield master, and I'm able to knock enemies prone, hit them at advantage without using reckless (DM does not follow the dumb sage advice forbidding shield bash followed by attacks), and run away. Single targets without magic have no good options left to them in this scenario.
My character was even eaten by a shambling mound, and tanked remarkably effectively from inside!
Agree our party have lot of heals and with ag barb we are so tanky that is insane. The taunt effect is so good vs bbeg
So you are basically saying the subclass is a standout because your DM ignored the rules? Not sure that is a good criteria to use. As that can be applied to the others as well. Oh frenzy, nah you don't take exhaustion or max 1 point per combat/day. Tada great subclass.
@@Hyde_Hill that's harsh and misguided - a DM does not have to follow sage advice. To say his DM "ignored the rules" is going too far.
@@Hyde_Hill I kindve agree with you. Although Jeremy Crawford did make 2 sage advices on the subject. The first was saying that you can use the bonus action shove before the attacks and the one later said it must be after you attack once.
I went the route of taking Crusher so I can push them back 5' and run.
Though honestly, if you just stack a few good defensive items on yourself, you don't even need to run. I have managed a way to get upcast Armor of Agathys on myself but the Artificer's Radiant Weapon works great... or just any item that boosts your defense or punishes people for attacking you.
Totem warrior last of the C tier?? Resistant to everything but psychic (unless Kalashtar) is pretty incredible. I'd put that up same level as Zealot and both end up in B.
I dunno. "Double HP" isn't that great, especially when most foes are attacking you at Advantage. A Fighter with Defense Style and a Shield likely outlasts a Barb in a similar fight.
Your biases are statiscally true. That's exactly what an optimizer would consider. Specially considering limited rests, this is like the base of every consideration.
I'd love for you to just drop everything you are doing and just do this for every subclass of every class, say, within the next 10 days, because that's when my next 5e game is starting! lol
Love what you do, Chris, and I thank you for it!
Well, he has done best/worst subclasses series with 5 level increments (best between lvl 1-5, 6-10 etc). Those videos don't include Tasha's since the book wasn't out yet, but you could watch those and his reviews for Tasha's subclasses and compare. Or just play a paladin or a wizard :D
I'm surprised you put the Totem Barbarian below anything but the Zealot. Personally, I think the Zealot and Totem belong in low B-Tier.
I miss old school barbs that hated magic, and gained exp for destroying magic items. Brought about an interesting group dynamic.
Hey Chris,
I love your videos, thank you so much for providing a reasonable forum for these discussions.
I would like to provide a further case for the Wild Magic Barbarian to raise it higher on the list. I will attempt to present the case in a manner which highlights the elements in gameplay which you believe are the strongest.
First, the level 3 feature. Not being able to pick the option is definitely a weaker element of the feature. However, 6 out of the 8 are pretty decent and provide unique opportunities in combat that other barbarians just won’t get. I will also provide the case that even the other 2 out of 8 are at the very least, salvageable.
1.
This is a great option, extra temporary hit points which don’t go away once the rage ends. Temporary hit points serve double duty on the barbarian because of their rage mechanic. Add on an Area of Affect ability and that gives you a very unique possibility over the other barbarians who have almost no Area of Effect options.
2.
Free misty steps every turn. Starting at level 3. That’s a 2nd level spell as many times as you want. Teleport in, teleport out, teleport to aid an ally. Obviously good. I’d like to add that anything that makes the barbarian less likely to throw a javelin for their turn because they couldn't get next to something is incredibly valuable. Again, no other barbarian class gives this level of mobility to the class.
3.
Now this one is a lame duck. The lack of scaling is a huge issue here and the damage is just under par. In the damage category this competes with a bonus action attack, which gives us polearm mastery or a GWM follow up attack. A polearm mastery bonus action would be 1d4+str, so 5.5 at the lower brackets and 7.5 if you take strength to 20. Which is unlikely if you’re taking all these feats. If this is combined with Great Weapon master, we’re looking at 15.5 damage, assuming no STR increases because you need to take both these feats, and this would be at level 4 the earliest, level 8 usually. So then the pixie at 3.5 damage needs to hit 2 people to out damage without GWM and 5 to out damage GWM by itself. However, this doesn’t require a feat, and as you say feats aren’t free. Giving the barbarian a ranged AOE bonus action attack option is great when they are swinging a great axe and don’t proc GWM bonus action attack. So, I would say for this line of thinking, this option is salvageable.
4.
The other lame duck. Make your weapon light, and thrown and deal force damage. The force damage is the standout part here for overcoming resistance, and that is a strong feature for those magic weapon light campaigns, however it isn’t reliable to get this while you can. But In the attempt to salvage this situation, this still gives you access to 20 more ft. of range, making it less likely you’re just throwing a javelin for your turn or even worse, losing rage from being out of the fight since you can hail Mary your axe 60 ft. if needed. For extra attacks, this is something I’ll admit I’m not sure about the rules. I believe that if you throw your axe which is already being wielded, you still have a free action to draw and throw a javelin, this then makes those turns where a level 5 barbarian would just be able to throw one javelin to not lose their rage turn into an opportunity to actually deal some damage. A huge leg up over the other barbarian subclasses. So, I would consider this situational, but not a total lame duck.
5.
We will be getting hit a lot, this option gives us damage outside of the action economy. Great possibility.
6.
Extra AC aura is not bad. Also as good as some spells. Concentration free. Would love to have seen it scale, but this can be anywhere from 2 to 4 extra AC for your party. Pretty Good.
7.
Becoming a sandpit on the battlefield lets you position yourself in a great way to prevent enemies from rushing down your back line. Great option. No friendly fire either. Another good possibility.
8.
Lastly, a bonus action blind on every turn. My favorite part about this one is using it before you use your action attack to potentially gain advantage and not have to reckless attack. Great possibility.
So, after a deeper analysis of these features, even when you don’t get to pick something, each time you’re adding a unique function to the class which is hard for the other subclasses to replicate without feats. 75% of the time you’re getting a good or better feature, and the other 25% of the time you’re getting a decent or salvageable feature. Overall I think that places this feature as good.
The 6th level feature is the main mechanical reason you would want to use this. If you are in a group with 3 spell casters that is 3 more spells your party gets in a day. Spells. If you think about this feature as a barbarian getting access to 3 spells a day ranging from level 1 to 3, this feature is amazing and something no other barbarian can accomplish. When your wizard casts hallucinatory terrain again on that day because of this feature, that is your barbarian casting hallucinatory terrain with their modifiers. Revivify? Spiritual Weapon? Web? Bless? All of the spells of your party at your disposal. When you look at this feature like this, it’s simply the best barbarian feature in the game for the most played levels.
Compare this to say, Zealot who gets a one time use to reroll a saving throw. Just pick a satyr or a gnome to shore up those magical saves from charms and the like which plague the class as a whole.
Lastly, the 10th level feature which gives you your wild magic features as a reaction, which I think is a reaction you would take almost every time you could. Allowing you to use your bonus action and reaction to make these effects twice as often is really strong. However since there isn’t any way to pick which one and you could get a duplicate that essentially does nothing, I’d consider this good.
So, we have two good features, and an amazing feature. With some good choices in race selection, looking for the right magical items, and picking smart feats, the Wild Magic Barbarian can definitely stand out in the party. Therefore, for the reasons stated above, I believe the Wild Magic Barbarian would be appropriately placed in the C tier. Giving Zealot barbarian a good run for its money as the top barbarian subclass.
Thank you for your time reading this analysis. Curious to hear your thoughts.
Much Love for your channel!
"I like to make my saving throws."
What I hear is: "Why would I play ANY class but paladin!?"
I think the totem warrior is b tier. Just for the lvl3 ability alone
At least it should be the first or second of the C tier not the last on the C tier.
As I just commented elsewhere, he's ranking the Subclass as a whole. So a Few Good Totems get dragged down by some stinkers.
Speaking of stinkers... how about a Skunk totem??
My fix for Berserker has been to have Frenzy cause damage equal to the number of Barbarian levels when the Frenzy ends, as the character begins to feel what they've done to themselves. I used to have it cause damage when you enter the Frenzy, but I found reversing that led to some nice dramatic moments.
@@The_Yukki I'll point out that there is a mechanic for dying when the combat is over after fighting with mortal wounds for the Zealot, and there's also Relentless Rage. Of course if you want a truly epic Logan style death scene, then exhaustion has to play its part. ;-)
Or just make the Berserker able to Frenzy every single time he rages? I mean none of the other barbarians abilities cost extra.
We all know you created S tier exclusively for new Cleric subclasses :D Or are we getting S+ for those?
Those and Echo Knight probably
Chronurgy magic too
Treantmonk will most likely have more than the Twilight and Peace domains, I think we all know that they are getting put in S-tier no question. I'm wondering what else will be S-tier.
@@theshadowyparasite9448 we know how he feels about the trickery cleric.
S+? You mean UA?
I was just now wondering when the next tier list video would get uploaded! Must be that barbarian Feral Instinct
A tier list that doesn't feel the need to give every class at least one or two S tier subclasses? Pinch my arm I think I'm dreaming!
LOVE this tier list so far as I have high confidence that it can actually be a good resource for DMs to decide if the powerlevel of the party justifies a little bump in power level or not, or can be used for players to avoid clear trap-picks or accidentally pick something so powerful that the rest of the party feels useless.
Excited for the next in this series with my favorite D&D class that I've never actually played in 5e
Solid ranking and I love how you explain your thought process.
Honestly, this video just made me not really want to play a campaign with you. A bit of caster elitism is fine but you have questionable judgement when it comes to how useful Barbarians are
Surprised you didn't comment a bit more on wolf totem, with the right party composition it can be incredibly powerful. Even if there are other ways to get advantage, every melee character getting it for free whenever you're in combat is going to make a big difference in a melee heavy party, even if it is only freeing up the rogue's bonus action so they can disengage.
I do definitely think that Zealot fits your criteria of B tier though, even if it is just low B tier. Free extra (radiant) damage when raging, rerolled saving throws and free resurrection allows for a decently effective martial character at low to mid levels without much optimisation really being needed.
My biggest D&D hot take is that realistically, Barbarians are overpowered. Yeah, they simply can't keep up with casters during mid to high levels in even remotely optimized games but 99% of people don't play at mid to high levels OR in remotely optimized games. At a normal table, the Barbarian can smack things all day while dealing enough damage and taking enough hits to get the job done. It probably has the best effort to output ratio of any class at most tables. But its a highly unsatisfying way to play for most people, it really cant keep up outside of the most casual of tables, has no utility, and gets shut down when it cant physically reach its target. But I don't think it gets enough credit.
Power to effort is probably pretty true.
And also true that games are generally lower level...
Pretty fair
Idk about smacking things all day. -In my experience they kinda suck if you can’t afford to rage (limited to 2-4 uses/long rest in most cases),”. Most of your subclass and a lot of class features shut off turning you into a martial with essentially dead levels.
@@elliotbryant3459 You can still smack things when you aren't raging. You don't need to be an unstoppable wall of death, you just need to be tough enough to make it to the next long rest. But you're right, Fighter and Paladin are still probably better in this regard.
Barbarians also do the best damage up until tier 3 with gwm and pam which is actually good as most campaigns don't go that high anyways
I think you could fix up the battle rager by giving them:
- Smithing tool or armorer's tools prof. and the ability to convert any normal or magic armor made with at least some metal into spiked armor.
(Spiked armor attacks get a +1/2/3 attack if made using +1/2/3 armor)
- Let them choose to count heavy armor as medium armor for purposes of ability restrictions.
Now they can dump dex invest more in str and con. Not to mention getting a good blend of ac and mobility, plus the ability to scale their armor. Other abilities could be reworked if you wanted to make them feel more unique.
I love this series! my only comment for this one would be that I think you are perhaps underestimating the Bolstering Magic feature of wild magic but the limited uses does make it too limited to be consistently strong especially if you have lots of casters. But I can see 3 person parties with only one main caster being much better with the support of a wild barb compared to any other.
I played a one shot with an 11th level wild magic barb. DM was going nuts when he saw me.using bolstering magic round after round with great weapon master or to grapple. An at will +1d3 in every attack and check was surprisingly effective. I'd not play on in a long campaign, but it was fun for a few.hours game
So I did a bit of research on the battlerager. I agree that it's kind of weak, however there is one good way to play it. Dwarven fortitude, (when you take the dodge action you can spend a hit die to heal 1d12+con) as a battlerager you don't need to take the attack action to get the bonus action attack, and enemies will have disadvantage attacking you. so it could be viable, just not a really high dps.
another option is to multiclass into rune knight fighter to be a grappling god. Take the unarmed fighting style so you can deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage at the start of each turn you are grappled. It would require a magic item to make your unarmed strikes deal magic damage (eldritch claw tattoo) but it can be done.
You would get higher damage from a zeolite barbarian/Scourge Aasimar with 2 levels into fighter so you can activate your rage, and Aasimar Radiant Consumption ability, action surge and still attack. But the listed above are still viable options, make sure you have plenty of RP to enjoy the battlerager, it's not that great in combat though.
I have a good idea where you're going to be putting each subclass already but I'm still eagerly waiting for the rest of the series.
Can't wait to see all the wizards at either S or A smh treantmonk obvious bias.
Memes aside I'm so glad you've done all this I've actually used your wizard guide for help with my necromancer. Hoping you update it soon!
Srorm herald feels so close to being good. Maybe some stuff like making the aura difficult terrain for designated targets and mixing the 2 middle features together and adding something new to really drive home the use case of each aura.
Stuff to make the aura feel more like a avenue to truly unique and good abilities like you get at 14th lv, or letting you swap storms on long rest.
Also the resistance feature has a redundancy since resistance to fire makes you immune to extreme heat and cold damage to extreme cold by default.
If it was stuff like not being effected by strong winds/currents for sea, food and water lasting longer in the dessert, moving without penalty through deep snow and ice plus not breaking thin ice under you for tundra it would actually have potential benefits for travel in extreme weather like it's trying to imply.
Storm herald just makes me sad because it's so close to being really nice but just kinda falls short in execution, all the while having some AMAZING flavor.
Huh, didn't even know battlerager existed. Or maybe I did but forgot about it immediately...
It's so sad. Dwarves get no love in 5E!
Surprised that storm herald did so well in the rankings. IMO it should be down there with the battle rager.
Gaining resistance to a damage type is better than all of battle rager features.
@@chrisdin4109 I mean I'd put them to the left of battle rager -but still E tier [to the right of berserker]. -Also reckless abandon is ok and might reduce more damage and allow you to deal more damage over the average adventuring day than one elemental resistance.
edit: reckless abandon would probably still be worse than tundra aura paired with cold resistance.
Wow, C-tier Zealot and E-tier Wild Magic?! You're pulling no punches! I'm starting to worry about how impactful that Magic bias is gonna be
Very nice videos, these ones. Concise, but thourough enough; format is spot on.
As with everything, I have my disagreements with your evaluations, but I can always understand your point of view.
Looking forward to see the list completed.
I love every one of these tier lists. Thanks for making them!
Love the battlerager’s idea, but it’s clearly not strong enough to stack up. This is why I have developed the arcane battlerager in the lore of my dwarven abjurers and clockwork souls. Keeps the concept but embraces magic like armor of agathys to make it as strong as the dwarves deserve
It's interesting the discrepancy of effectiviness/power from each subclass. WotC slipped a little on balancing somethings but, to be fair, it's hard to balance non-spellcasting classes and spellcasters, since magic can provide such a wide range of possibilities. Although some martial/half-caster suclasses are top notch (like gloomstalker or rune knight), i feel like spellcasters always come out ahead (not always at damage, but still). Despite all that, the most optimized character anyone can make, is the character you enjoy playing the most.
Keep up this video quality treantmonk, very nice.
PS: I'm pretty sure Eloquence bard (and maybe Lore bard) will make it to S tier, at least they would on my ratings.
So are you assuming the recommended 6 to 8 encounters per long rest or even more? As I would at least assume what the DMG recommends to be closest to the average of how people play, not so much your own way of playing. Which I seem to remember is 9-10. Also 6-8 seems excessive to me and not sure if most people play like that. Is there any idea on the average?
Love what you do!
I absolutely love Zealot Barbarians. It’s a shame the Barbarian base class stops rewarding you for leveling up past 7. I’d love to play a single class Barbarian for flavor but I just can’t justify doing that to myself.
Ya brutal critical is the worst... why does it pop up three times? The could of gave barbarians extra carrying capacity and the ability to grapple/shove bigger creatures while compacting brutal critical to level 9 with it improving based on barbarian level
While it doesn't resolve the issue of limited rages, the Ancestral Guardian is nifty with a reach weapon (perhaps even a whip and shield as backup), or the goblin's bonus action disengage. Once you give an enemy disadvantage and half damage against anyone other than you, no one says you need to stick around with your fast movement.
Barbs hit things pretty consistently, so you're likely to succeed in debilitating an important enemy every turn, while staying relatively safe and moving on to hit someone else with your extra attack, set up a Sentinel AOO and similar. Mobile works for the setup too, if you have space for it (I heard somewhere that feats are not free)
It doesn't specify it needs to be a melee attack either for ancestral guardians either so you could shoot it with a javelin or bow even.
When Treantmonk says Elk gives two skill proficiencies but the video shows Tiger as doing that. Mistakes happens as we are all human, love the videos keep up the the solid work 👍
Few thing to point out.
Though ignore this if you're actually comparing other subclasses to the bararian since he would be absolutely right.
Wild barbarian : The features makes it MUCH better then berserker and battlerager. Mainly that the features of the wild table tend to aid the barbarian's goal of making them the threat to be deal with first. Their first roll makes them more tanky, Second ones gives them mobility in a class that normally doesn't have it, third is an aoe that barbarians usually don't get and some range, the fourth is the weakest but it makes dual wielding a viable style with a ranged weapon, fifth makes it so that creatures who hit you take damage and since your so tanky, you'll do a lot of damage that's FREE because it doesn't take reaction, sixth is honestly a confusing one since it's a decent bonus but a weak effect since it doesn't give you use for bonus action and no one is capable of getting in the same danger the barbarian usually ends up in the first place, seventh makes it harder to get away from you and keeps enemies within your preferred range and if they want to get out, they usually have to use a dash action wasting their turn, and 8th is damage, range and an effect that you can capitalize on before you attack.
Most of these are really good, give you use and can still function with greatweapon master. Making them at least C
Totem warrior : The strongest subclass among barbarians. Group with lots of attack? Free pack tactics with the wolf or if you need to be the tank, bear to have resistance to all damage types (excluding the psychic). That first subclass feature makes up for the disappointing 2 others, last being where you finally get a bonus action out of tiger. Their one of the stronger classes mainly because if the enemy doesn't concentrate on you, you're the one who will outlast them or simply keep giving your allies advantage on their attacks. And since you're a barbarian you're going to endure a lot of damage before going down. At least B since that first subclass feature is powerful.
Ancestral guardian : A weaker class then the others since obviously the first target you hit is probably going to concentrate on you first and foremost. Which makes it Highly effective in forcing combat on your enemies and shutting down high priority targets the purpose of doing that in the first place. Second feature makes them capable of even stopping a lot of damage since you'll be taking the high priority ones while the weaker enemies damage get's denied by your spirit shield. Though it is annoying that the only to deal with them comes later (14th level) and since you don't have a bonus action. It's still powerful since you just, kite enemies as well, picking up the fighter initiate feat and picking up thrown weapon fighting, you can hit your enemies from a distance, apply the effect of your subclass, use your bonus action with a light knife to deal 1d4 damage to yourself and then just running 30 feet away from your allies. Forcing enemies to fight with disadvantage on attack and having your shield reduce the damage that happens whenever it happens on a blue moon. At least B since their good at what their supposed to be good at.
Barbarians are a fantastic class... for dipping into. I agree, Barbarians are too front loaded with their class features and the value you get falls off hard past 7th level. Echo knight + Ancestral guardian with slasher feat is always a combo I've wanted to try in game for a defender playstyle that can effect multiple opponents and still deal out good single target burst with unleash incarnation, reckless attack, and action surge.
If I'm remembering correctly, Wild magic Barb had some powerful wild magic effects before it became official content. Some of them were a little strong, but they were unreliable! The nerfed version we have now just isn't terribly appealing. Making unreliable features comparable in power to reliable features is a mistake. They don't need to be "Oh look, I got lucky and now we cant fail this encounter!" good, but they do need to be better than low level spells that can be thrown around by casters at will several times per day.
Beast getting a bonus attack _as part of the same action as the normal attack_ is so rude! Especially compared to monk who does worse damage and has to spend a bonus action for their extra attack, and choose between that or _two_ bonus action extra attacks.
There's another important point to make here. Who else but a Barbarian would you give one of the Many Names of David Ryder to?
Flint Ironstag!
Bolt Vanderhuge!
I’d suggest rethinking and redoing this one.
i gotta disagree with you on some of these.
making enemies attack you is actually great when youre the biggest dammage sponge in the game so id say ancestral guardian is atleast b
and totem warrior being the worst of c? insane. resistance to all dammage effectively doubles your hitpoints(unnless the enemy deal phcycic dmg, which dosent really happen often). if thats c then the rest of barbarian subclasses are d and e. i agree somewhat with the higest 4 though best is probably the worst of that bunch.
Zelot barbarian should get B rank for reasons of “cooler names for features”
Battle Rager should have been based around grappling and the spiked armor should have been introduced outside of the class as something any class who gets access to both martial weapons and medium armor can use with maybe a few variants.
I've played a bear totem barbarian in one campaign and levels 5-7 are amazing, but level 8 there's definitely a drop-off compared to paladins. In that game, it wasn't uncommon to have like 8 fights in a day and we didn't have anyone with healing spells (except a paladin who'd use 1 pt of lay on hands to keep people from dying), so it was interesting. I picked up a Halberd as soon as possible and ended up having some days where we'd start with a big fight, I'd be at 1 HP the entire day taking advantage of the extra mobility and reach from the halberd to reckless attack and run away. And as a Bear Totem barbarian, losing initiative is ROUGH (why I LOVE level 7), so a multi-class that gives access to Absorb Elements and Shield actually wouldn't be a horrible option if you can swing the stats for it.
I'd actually like to play a Zealot Path barbarian, but I think only if I was in a party with a Cleric who had the same affiliation.
I do overall like the risk/reward aspect of the class. It kind of requires thinking about when you want to be at the front lines and when you want to play it safer.
I would personally rank Zealot as a B at least. "Free" resurrection and reliable bonus damage every turn are pretty great, the mid level features are nothing to scoff at - and Rage Beyond Death is simply stupidly powerful. I'm well aware that not every campaign will reach that level range and that a simple Sleep spell could still kill a raging Zealot, but I have personally tanked several 100 points of damage after reaching 0 HP multiple times with my high level Zealot in Adventurers League - and it made all the difference !
best dnd content out there
i really enjoy your videos! gj!
I appreciate that!
Poisoner feat applying poison to the Battlerager spikes could be fun and effective on a grappler.
Note: Spirit Shield applies to all creatures, not just the marked enemy, effectively doubling the amount of protection you provide your party.
I would assume you are comparing the Barbarian subclasses against all other classes and not just Barbarian, is that right?
Cuz that a pretty unfair apples to oranges comparison man.
Ya but it's once per round, it is one of the only 6 lvl barbarian feature I looked forward to however ^
Battlerager is better with a 1h weapon and a shield I think. It allows you to do a bonus action attack amd increase strength instead of taking feats, while wielding a shield. Multiclass for duelling at some point and your damage is good and your barb has higher AC.
What about Ancestal Gurdian with reach or ranged attacks? Enemy cannot attack you if he cannot reach you. The same works with Mobile feat. And all this is in synergy with barbarians' fast movement!
Pleasantly surprised to see my favorite be number 2. But if they were ranked by cool Beast would easily be S rank for me.
Id really like some elaboration on the universal standings. Not a huge amount, but general thoughts at the end of each video that brings these into context. Unless you plan on doing a full overview, the interclass ranks feel as important as the sub class rankings.
I mostly stick to PHB stuff so I'm really familiar with that. And I have to say I disagree with your reasoning about the berserker and the totem warrior.
You say that one of the best 3rd level Totem Warrior feature is the bear and I disagree with that. It SEEMS powerful but compare it to the wolf option. As a bear you get to apply your resistance against (almost) any damage. True. But how often is your character really targetet with special damage ? Most of the damage you take in most fights is "normal" damage (piercing, bludgeoning, slashing) that you halve anyways. Every now and then enemies will have other effects. And if they attack you with these AND hit you this feature will come in handy.
Compare this to the Wolf totem at level 3. Your other party members get advantage on weapon attacks against enemies within 5ft of you. That is something that will happen every single battle and (depending on group composition) 2+ party members will gain advantage through this. In my opinion this is more powerful then the bear feature. Just less loved because it helps others and not yourself.
About the Berserker: I completely agree that exhaustion is a hefty price to pay. I look at this from a different perspective however: You don't have to activate it every battle. Again compare it to the bear totem. This feature (while always on) will ONLY help you if enemies have special attacks, are targeting you AND actually hit you. Even in the "Descent to Avernus" campaign (which plays in hell) this does only happen every few battles. The "frenzy" ability by comparison can be used safely once per day when you really need it (like in a boss battle) and gives your character one extra attack from levels 3 to 10 compared to the standard fighter. Again I think that on average this will be at least as useful (if not more so) then the lvl 3 Bear Totem. Oh, and if you really need it, you can use Frenzy more often (but this will effect you badly in the long term of course).
Gonna have to hard disagree with the ancestral barbarian, it’s the single best tank in the entire game(in fact basically the only decent tank in the entire game)
Barbarian is essentially useless because unless it’s the zealot they simply do not do enough damage to beat fighters and other good martials, and everything a barbarian can do a caster can essentially do better
A bit off topic. Can we agree Battlerager is a bad name for a barbarian subclass? Think about it.
I have to speak up for the Battlerager. IMO it's very underrated in the community. First off, any decent DM with a battlerager in their party is going to include magic spiked armor and/or the ability to make spiked half-plate at some point. I don't think that's an issue in real play. As for the effectiveness, it's a great blend of offense and defense that's particularly good when you focus on grappling enemies. The free damage when you grapple isn't all that important. The key is that grappling doesn't work well with 2 handed focused feats (GWM, and polearm master to a lesser extent) that most other barbarian builds rely on to pump up damage. The battlerager can grapple an enemy and still have full damage effectiveness WITHOUT spending a feat.
IMO take 6 levels of battlerager, 3 levels of rune knight (enlarge + other great features), then spend the rest in scout rogue. Scout is interesting for a grappler because you can use your reaction to drag an opponent & move them around the battlefield when they end their turn still grappled. I'm playing this build now, and it's very effective.
Biggest surprise to me is how high the Beast barbarian ranked.
The claws get a lot of hype, but bottom line it's tricky to make a bonus action attack if you attack with your claws. Polearm master requires you to only attack with your polearm. Two weapon fighting doesn't mechanically work either cause you need a weapon in both hands and thus can't claw attack. The only thing that does work RAW to get a bonus action attack while still using claws is multiclassing monk, but that comes with its own problems. Any damage gain from this feature is going to fade as magic weapons come into play. So I think the level 3 ability ends up being briefly a damage gain, but mostly a defensive gain at higher levels (using the tail to deflect only one attack).
The level 6 ability is fine, you can walk upside down on ceilings, but not really standing out next to the totem.
The level 10 ability is solid, the level 14 ability is...about the same as what Totem gets at 14 (Totem has some solid options at 14).
So Totem's ahead, I think for most of level 3 to level 9. Maybe they're about tied at level 10-20. Really feels like Beast should be behind Totem Warrior. Probably not so far behind that they're D-tier (I'm at least interested in fiddling around with beast despite the mechanical issues with the claws, I don't have much interest in Storm Herald).
I think two weapon fighting should work with the dual wielder feat if using the claws. The natural weapons count as a simple melee weapon and you can use your main action to attack with claws [or use the battleaxe for one of the 3] and then bonus action attack with the battle axe. Unless you have the RAWEST of DM's the claws sticking out of your hand [that are stated to count as a simple melee weapon] should qualify as a weapon wielded by that hand.
@@elliotbryant3459 Mmm...Two weapon fighting I believe has this wording:
"When you take the Attack Action and Attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a Bonus Action to Attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus Attack, unless that modifier is negative."
It quite explicitly calls out weapons held in a hand. Weapons held in a claw should count, so you should be able to dualweild shortswords in each of your claws. But I don't think the claws themselves count for triggering two weapon fighting. (Same way Dhampirs can't trigger two weapon fighting by using their bite, even though they've attacked with a simple melee weapon).
RAW I don't think there's a way to trigger two weapon fighting with specifically the claw attacks. They aren't held weapons. There might be some tricks with attacking with the claw twice, then attacking with a light weapon held in the other claw, and then finally using free object interaction to draw an off-hand weapon, maybe that sequence allows dual-weilding to work? Only works if you start with one weapon sheathed, though, I think? And not until you have Extra Attack.
Even if the DM is nice and does allow it to work it still has a lot of problems (the claws are definitely not light, so you would need the Dual Weilder feat. Barb doesn't get a fighting style, so no adding STR to the bonus action attack unless you dip for that. And if you do the investment, after all this getting feats and picking up fighting styles from dips, the barb could just find a cool magic weapon that they'd rather attack with).
These rankings aren't taking into account how absolutely necessary it is to have a front line. Ancestral Barbarians, Totem Warrior and battle master on the same Tier as Arcane Archer? Just perplexing.
I totally dig your criteria for your ranking system. Very relevant. As it far as your Barb ranking I don't disagree with it, but I will say the Totem Barb should be ranked a higher C maybe next to the Zealot. Only because I played a 5th level Totem Barb and found it quite good. Thanks as always. One idea after you do these rankings, it would be cool if you did a video ranking what races would wok well with each type of the highest ranking subclasses.
These are awesome videos, thank you!
I have a soft spot in my heart for totem barb, particularly as a multiclass option, but I completely agree with Treantmonk's assessment on this one. Barbs are fun to RP IMO, but they don't really compete too well with many of the better classes in the game, regardless of subclass, in combat. They are pretty beast at low level though, the resistance from rage counts for a lot from levels 1-6ish.
my predictions for bard: Eloquence- High A to low S, Lore- A, Valor- B, I'd have to think more regarding the others.
I'd put eloquence at S personally. Auto pass Charisma checks for Persuasion/deception at level 5, and you can overcome magic resistance the best out of all spellcasters thanks to adding a possible 12 to your spell save DC. Yeah legendary resistance is a thing, but you burn one of those a round no issue most of the time, and once those are gone, a single hold monster or true poly or something is a won fight against even Tiamat.
@@archmagemc3561 Fair enough, I do agree with you. Their inspirations also practically never go to waste which is super nice. Im just thinking about eloquence in relation to other arcane casters, namely (several) wizards and clockwork soul/aberrant mind sorcerers, which have better spell lists. But bard's spell list is good in it's own right, so I could definitely see an S here, not to mention magical secrets. I played a lore bard as my first character in DND 5e and absolutely adored him, possibly my favorite character to date.
I think Chris will rate Valor above Lore. He really really likes getting armour to offset the lack of defensive spells on a bard.
@@mikeroberts817 He might, I could see that. Valor has better proficiencies at 3 (though 3 skill proficiencies for lore is a big deal) and cutting words vs combat inspiration is about a wash, I prefer combat inspiration a tiny bit more perhaps? Where I personally think Lore rather strongly outperforms Valor is at lvl 6 and 14. Extra attack is nice for a while, it does make you capable of a nonzero amount of damage from round to round with your action for 0 resources invested. And battle magic, well...it sucks?
Additional magical secrets on the other hand lets you get counterspell and another spell of your choice (fireball, haste, spirit guardians, and many others...even eldritch blast isn't a horrible choice if you don't want to multi, take eldritch adept at 8 for agonizing blast) 4 levels before any other bard has access to any magical secrets.
Peerless skill turns your inspirations into essentially: win initiative, practically guarantee a counterspell with a 3rd level slot, *almost* guarantee a crucial persuasion check at least goes well, etc.
bonus AC is nice, but you can also get that with a feat (which isn't free) or a 1 level dip into hexblade, if you really want it. Having played both subclasses, I feel pretty confident that Lore is the vastly superior subclass from lvl 6 on TBH. Valor is definitely better in low tier play though. Basically Lore takes what a bard already does well and turns it up (to 10, only eloquence turns it up to 11 IMO), whereas Valor makes you a bit more durable and gives you non-zero DPR in the mid levels.
@@sharkforce8147 oh wow, I guess I must have missed that! I'm not sure how I missed it TBH, it's not like Eldritch adept has much text to it. Thank you for pointing that out.
i love the flavor of the beast. i love the mechanics of ancestral guardians. i saw an ancestral guardians in a dragon fight save the entire party as the dragon wailed on the druid/cleric for turn after turn at half damage. (it was "Ambition and Avarice" on arcadum's channel, 10 lvl 12 characters vs 1 dragon)
Battlerager is better than you went over.
It’s not temp hitpoints when you rage, it’s refilling temp hitpoints when you reckless attack while you rage.
The temporary hitpoints is a small amount because it equals your CON mod, but that’s probably between 3-7 temp hitpoints.
The temporary hitpoints partially offset the increased likelihood of receiving a critical from reckless attack.
The mileage may also be increased by your resistance since your rage would reduce the damage the temp hitpoints takes too.
Theres a case to be made regarding a battlerager using a shield and a one handed weapon since they have a bonus action attack available to them from the armor that also benefits from rage bonus.
I find it interesting that none of the battleragers you played with were given any magic items centered around their armor feature. Seems like more of a DM issue rather than a class failure. Adamantine armor seems like a basic upgrade for any barbarian.
Funny enough, when making a homebrew slime race, I use Battlerager's 3 damage during grapple as a balancing point for the slime's auto grapple damage. I've had no one complain about con (min 1) acid damage while grappling when I point out that the idea came from SCAG, even from DMs who hate homebrew. xD.
In my opinion, Berserker Barbarian should be F tier, here’s why. The third level ability is almost more of a detriment, and the sixth level ability is ok. The worst part of the third level ability is that it scales inversely to your level. You can essentially frenzy once per long rest with no huge downsides. As you gain levels, you can rage more, but frenzying more is risky. Once you get extra attack you go from 100% more attacks while frenzying to 50% more.
The 10th level ability is terrible. It requires you to use your action for the frightened effect and the DC is based on your charisma modifier. It only targets one creature, many creatures at this level are immune to fear, and the DC is going to be around 14 with a good charisma.
The 14th level ability is solid, but does little to fulfill the role of a tank as you get the opportunity attack when someone hits you. If someone hits another party member, nothing happens.
I actually homebrewed a version of berserker such that you could frenzy only once per day with no downsides, followed by adding a level of exhaustion for each frenzy past the first. I think it makes the subclass a lot more playable in practice, while keeping the spirit of the original design intact.
If you use Frenzy regularly, it probably is F tier.
The fact that I completely agree with this post is making me sad ... because Berserker is one of my favourite character archetypes in terms of flavor and personal preferences (thanks to Logen Ninefingers from First Law Trilogy). And I feel really bad that 5e designers made it so, so terrible mechanically that it's almost unplayable. This subclass needs redemtpion so much. This exhaustion nonsense should be changed to something less penalazing
Mmm, so in your opinion the Totem Warrior is not better than both the Beast and The Ancestral Guardian? Or did you just forget to put it more on the left of the tier?
Nope, I put it where I intended it to go.
It is certainly good that you note that rage is a finite resource that comes back on a long rest, but in my (limited) experience you can expect to rage most or all battles once you gain 3 uses and you can expect to rage (almost) all battle during an adventuring day once you hit 4 rages.
I understand your standard metric is 8 encounters per day, but I do think in practice the barbarian can be sure to rage most of the time.
But of course I agree that they fall of in higher level play...
Having Ancestral Guardian and Peace Cleric at the same party can be nasty. Protective Bond would allow any party member to take the hit for Ancestral Guardian and then the Ancestral Guardian can use Spirit Shield to mitigate that damage. At level 17, Peace Cleric would then get Expansive Bond that adds resistance for tanking that damage while Spirit Shield would already be 4d6 by that time. It's ashamed that Spirit Shield stopped scaling at level 14 instead of going further to 5d6 which I think would be at level 18. Also, a Leonin Ancestral Guardian can use Daunting Roar as a panic button when overwhelm.
Dude, you'r harsh. I got it, Barbarian's not op class. But, take a deep breath man, that was a haymaker punch on all of then. And I kinda felt this way at the Artificer too. I don't know if its a little missing in your arguments, but I don't take it as bad as you make then sound. Your judment sounded way to much class related and not really into the subclass.
I kinda feel you underestimate Barbarians. At least in my Games after Level 5, with 4 Rages per Rest, usually the Barbarian can Rage every Fight (unless you do a Dungeon Crawl).
That beeing out of the Way, I think that "pure" Barbarians with high HP totals are absolutly okay with getting beat up in a fight, since you will longrest eventually. (Doesnt matter that you are at 4 Hp, if you Longrest)
Exspcially in Higher Levels since there is a Big Catch you overlooked:
AC is only useful until your enemies have double digit To-hit modifier. If you are Fighting an Ancient Dragon, that Dragon will land every Hit...it doesnt matter that you are wearing Fullplate + Defense a Shield and a Cloak of Protection.....a 24 AC means the Dragon hits on an 8.
Same goes with high Level Spells like Desintegrate. Your AC boosts dont matter. HP do. And thats why i rank the following:
Totem and Zealot are B Tier, Together with the Berserker.
Just beeing Immun is insane, and having a reliable 3rd Attack is better than crit fishing with GWM. (Given that you only use it once a Day, as long you do you are finde) Disadvantage on Ability Checks is okay, since you are probably only needed for Athletics anyway.
Facts ac tanking becomes pointless real face and the point of the barbarian is that they are the ones that should be taking the damage not your allies as you got enough hp to tank the hit better while the squisher party members deal with things
I really like the idea of barbarians, I wish they were better. I'm looking forward to Ranger.
I'm really surprised that Path of the Beast isnt getting more love here. The 3rd level Zealot feature is not inherently better than the 3rd level Beast feature. I'd say they're even because the Beast provides more options. The 6th and 10th level features are definitely better for the Beast than the Zealot because of versatility and number of uses. The 14th level Zealot feature is the only clear standout that is better than the Beast.