D&D 5E Classes Rated By Tier

[Captain Panda]

Turning into an air elemental is still a form of closing with the enemy. And it leads to bad things when the dragon knocks you out of wildshape.

Hrm, fair point! Alright, instead of punching it in the nose... use polymorph to turn into a giant ape and start throwing rocks.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hrm, fair point! Alright, instead of punching it in the nose... use polymorph to turn into a giant ape and start throwing rocks.

Range on thrown rocks from a Giant Ape is 50'/100'. And in a campaign full of dragons, like as not, you'll be lucky to get off a single attack at disadvantage before some dragon strafes you and knocks you out of Giant Ape form--even a young blue dragon does 55 points of damage (save for half, which you fail 65% of the time) resulting in a DC 27 Concentration check (which you fail 100% of the time). At best you're buying time for the Sharpshooter to pepper the young blue dragon with more arrows.

A Moon Druid can still find a way to contribute in that campaign (e.g. Pass Without Trace, or summon flying meat shields who are large enough to block dragon movement and threaten opportunity attacks), but it's not as powerful of a pick as it would be in a normal campaign.

 

[Zardnaar]

Turning into an air elemental is still a form of closing with the enemy. And it leads to bad things when the dragon knocks you out of wildshape.

You're right that druids do have some short-ranged spells like Call Lightning (120' IIRC), Produce Flame (30' range), Thorn Whip (30' IIRC), etc. But past that point they're reduced to plinking away with one attack per round on a longbow or crossbow--and they're not even proficient in crossbows/longbows!

In a campaign full of dragons in flight, Moon Druids will be relatively unhappy compared to e.g. Sharpshooter fighters. That doesn't make Moon Druids in any way a bad or weak class--in fact, the narrowness of the conditions ("a campaign full of dragons in flight") highlights the strength of the class. A DM has to go pretty far out of his way to make Moon Druids anything but a powerful pick.



Level 14 Moon Druids useless? Hahahahaha. Regenerate (one nigh-unkillable PC for an hour), Reverse Gravity (large AoE crowd control + damage against anything without flight, targeting a weak save), Conjure Fey/Elemental + Planar Binding (e.g. Invisible Stalker for 1000 gp each, or a nice coven of invisible Green Hags for Lightning/Polymorph/Counterspell/etc. for 3000 gp), or just summon a nice flock of 24 Giant Owls/etc. (if you can't think of a way to use 24 Giant Owls, you're not trying hard enough. E.g. 98.5% chance of successfully grappling an adult red dragon and causing 20d6 falling damage to it).

And it's not like you don't still have good old lower-level fallbacks such as Polymorph, Pass Without Trace, and even Faerie Fire (targets a weak save + gives advantage to allies = solid).

Unlike a wizard, I don't even have to guess whether your level 14 Moon Druid had access to these spells. Because he's a druid, I know he had these options. Semi-useless? No way. If your level 14 Moon Druid was semi-useless, either your campaign is atypical (lots of highly-mobile spellcasters and solo monsters maybe?) or your Moon Druid player was playing badly.

RE: elemental form, Mobile feat + (Earth Elemental Earth Glide or Air Elemental flight) never goes out of style. CR 5 forms like Hulking Crab and Giant Crocodile/Brontosaurus are also good.

I meant the wildshape part of the class. She had the sentinel feat and used the air eleme tal alot.

 

[Yunru]

So make with the 'splainy. How can you in your right mind rate the Oathbreaker lower than the Vengeance Paladin?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I meant the wildshape part of the class. She had the sentinel feat and used the air eleme tal alot.

Okay, but the wildshape is only the subclass. If her Sentinel tanking + wildshape buys time for the rest of the party to accomplish its objectives, she's getting as much mileage out of that as the Champion gets out of its extra crits or the Enchanter gets out of his Instinctive Charm/Split Spell or the Bladesinger gets out of his spellsinging. Then she's got all of her full base druid chassis (full spellcasting) to do the rest of the job.

If you want to be a full-time shapeshifter with minimal spellcasting you really have to go into multiclassing. E.g. Berserker 5/Moon Druid 15 while Recklessly Frenzying in Brontosaurus form has three attacks per round at reach 20' for +11 to hit at advantage for 6d8+7 damage, for 102 points of damage potential (93.58 DPR vs. AC 20). If you blow all of your spell points/slots on wildshape HP (generally a bad use of them but here you're trying to be a full-time shapeshifter) they become 279 HP on top of your Brontosaurus-based 121 HP (twice per short rest), and of course you have resistance to physical damage on top of that. It's significantly weaker than a Moon Druid played as a hybrid shapeshifter/spellcaster, but it's still quite strong compared to a regular melee fighter.

 

[Zardnaar]

Okay, but the wildshape is only the subclass. If her Sentinel tanking + wildshape buys time for the rest of the party to accomplish its objectives, she's getting as much mileage out of that as the Champion gets out of its extra crits or the Enchanter gets out of his Instinctive Charm/Split Spell or the Bladesinger gets out of his spellsinging. Then she's got all of her full base druid chassis (full spellcasting) to do the rest of the job.

If you want to be a full-time shapeshifter with minimal spellcasting you really have to go into multiclassing. E.g. Berserker 5/Moon Druid 15 while Recklessly Frenzying in Brontosaurus form has three attacks per round at reach 20' for +11 to hit at advantage for 6d8+7 damage, for 102 points of damage potential (93.58 DPR vs. AC 20). If you blow all of your spell points/slots on wildshape HP (generally a bad use of them but here you're trying to be a full-time shapeshifter) they become 279 HP on top of your Brontosaurus-based 121 HP (twice per short rest), and of course you have resistance to physical damage on top of that. It's significantly weaker than a Moon Druid played as a hybrid shapeshifter/spellcaster, but it's still quite strong compared to a regular melee fighter.

Brontosaurus is in Volos and it is power creep over the MM options. Its also gargantuan which means it might be hard to use in a a lot of dungeons.

We had issue around level 6-9 about Moon Druids and large and huge sizes. They count as difficult terrain and being huge you can block the rest of your party.

Don't get me wrong I am not saying Moon Druds are bad or Druids in general are bad I just think they are outclassed by some of the CLeric and Wizard options along with the lore bard for example.


A lot of my list was done off gut feeling as say for example a level 11 fighter can out damage the Paladin but the Paladin can nova off and the aura thing is really good. I still think 2 of the Paladin options are very very good even though they are not a full caster.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Brontosaurus is in Volos and it is power creep over the MM options. Its also gargantuan which means it might be hard to use in a a lot of dungeons.

We had issue around level 6-9 about Moon Druids and large and huge sizes. They count as difficult terrain and being huge you can block the rest of your party.

More importantly, you can block the monsters from getting to the rest of your party, which is the tank's job.

Brontosaurus is a 100% legitimate CR 5 monster according to the DMG guidelines. The MM was never supposed to contain a full set of all the monsters in the world, especially not the thousands of real-world "beasts". It just so happens that a number of the MM beasts are over-rated for their CR (e.g. Triceratops damage includes stomp attack even though it usually doesn't apply), but that is a flaw in the MM not the Moon Druid, and nobody should be surprised if other monsters (homebrewed or WotC-created) don't have that same flaw.

Don't get me wrong I am not saying Moon Druds are bad or Druids in general are bad I just think they are outclassed by some of the CLeric and Wizard options along with the lore bard for example.

A lot of my list was done off gut feeling as say for example a level 11 fighter can out damage the Paladin but the Paladin can nova off and the aura thing is really good. I still think 2 of the Paladin options are very very good even though they are not a full caster.

Clerics struggle to outclass anything at all. Conjure Animals + Wildshape >> Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon + Divine Strike. Plus clerics are lame for being fanboys to offscreen NPCs.

Lore bards and wizard all quite decent of course. In some ways better than Moon Druids (especially Bardlocks as opposed to pure Lore Bards), in some ways worse.

I like Paladins up through level 9 or so; past that you're better off multiclassing.

 

[Zardnaar]

Marf Marf.

 

[Zardnaar]

More importantly, you can block the monsters from getting to the rest of your party, which is the tank's job.

Brontosaurus is a 100% legitimate CR 5 monster according to the DMG guidelines. The MM was never supposed to contain a full set of all the monsters in the world, especially not the thousands of real-world "beasts". It just so happens that a number of the MM beasts are over-rated for their CR (e.g. Triceratops damage includes stomp attack even though it usually doesn't apply), but that is a flaw in the MM not the Moon Druid, and nobody should be surprised if other monsters (homebrewed or WotC-created) don't have that same flaw.



Clerics struggle to outclass anything at all. Conjure Animals + Wildshape >> Spirit Guardians + Spiritual Weapon + Divine Strike. Plus clerics are lame for being fanboys to offscreen NPCs.

Lore bards and wizard all quite decent of course. In some ways better than Moon Druids (especially Bardlocks as opposed to pure Lore Bards), in some ways worse.

I like Paladins up through level 9 or so; past that you're better off multiclassing.

The tank thing is good if you have the right PCs with the right feats. Otherwise I found you often end up blocking your own party.

The Brontosaurus is legit but not every group has Volos, not all DMs will allow it and its also Gargantuan at level 15 have you actually seen it in play yet?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The tank thing is good if you have the right PCs with the right feats. Otherwise I found you often end up blocking your own party.

How is that even possible? Even if your party is weak at range (i.e. not built to take advantage of a great tank), a Gargantuan creature doesn't block movement of Medium or Large creatures. Other PCs can get past you if they want to just by paying the extra movement cost for difficult terrain.

The Brontosaurus is legit but not every group has Volos, not all DMs will allow it and its also Gargantuan at level 15 have you actually seen it in play yet?

Of course not--aside from the newness of Volo's Guide, pure shapeshifting isn't even a good use of the Moon Druid's skills, so I'd expect never to see one of those in play unless a player is enjoying goofing around. (And in that case it's probably more likely that I'd see a Shadow Monk/Moon Druid combination first, who teleports above an enemy and then turns into an earth elemental or triceratops in midair to squish the enemy. A player has already tried that one, but the PCs didn't make it high enough for his strategy to come to full fruition. Also, he got distracted by events in play and wound up emphasizing Shadow Monk advancement more than Moon Druid, despite his original plan.)

Despite running what may be an unusually-lethal campaign with high PC turnover, I've only seen maybe 1% of the possible builds/strategies in play yet. There are thousands and thousands of permutations; hundreds of them are even good permutations.