D&D 5E Classes Rated By Tier

[KarinsDad]

Avatar of Battle is a level 17 ability. You're arguing the merits of a class based on an ability that most people will never use? I agree it's awesome and makes the War Cleric awesome... but at level 17. I'm purposely ignoring it for this very reason.

This from the guy who used as an example a Fighter 10 / Sorcerer 7 with a Haste spell, a Bless spell cast on him, and a 9th level Foresight spell cast on him in the other thread as an example of how Bounded Accuracy can broken?


You seemed to be arguing the merits of a class with two spells cast on him from other PCs and a 17th level PC to boot.

 

[KarinsDad]

Moon Druid power tends to drop off drastically after level 6. Level 2 is the high point of the Moon Druids career, level 9 is a low point it gets a little bit better at 10 and then it is all downhill. At level 14 you almost suck in animal form and the elemental forms do not really do that much damage.

Form the DM PoV you just ignore the moon Druid as beating on them is kind of what they want. Their accuracy in animal form trails off and so does the damage and all they have left is really a bag of hit points. THe land Druid will likely out damage them and be useful casting spells while moon druids tend to use their as spell slots to heal themselves which I am not convinced is the best thing to do with them.

Except at higher levels, a Moon Druid can pull in conjured animals (or an even more powerful conjured creature like an elemental or fey who might have spells and such) in every single encounter. Just because their Wild Shape ability starts falling a bit behind does not mean that the class gets weaker. The class evolves.

From an action economy POV (even if the NPCs ignore the conjured creatures and provoke OAs from them in order to get to the PCs), a Moon Druid can be doing many attacks per round via conjured creatures and can definitely control a battlefield. Granted, some things like resistance can weaken the damage of conjured creatures, but this is not something that NPCs can always just ignore.

Alternatively, they have a lot of other spell options. Confusion, Wall of Fire, Polymorph, Insect Plague, Reverse Gravity. Planar Binding (especially in higher level slots).

Take Tsunami for example. In many cases, that could be an encounter ending spell. Not primarily because of the damage it does, but because of the battlefield control. Not many 8th level spells have this level of action economy shift.

Or Transport Via Plants. Sure, it's a spell level (i.e. two actual levels) after the Wizard can get (but probably won't get) Teleportation Circle, but it's tons more versatile (large finite number of destinations vs. 2 starting destinations).

Druids seem extremely versatile to me. Healing, battlefield control, debuff, buff, damage dealing, damage sponge, scouting (eventually with flying), stealth. I'd much rather have a PC Druid shape change into a Hawk instead of relying on a Hawk familiar from a PC wizard. The former is much more capable of scouting and making good decisions while doing so.


I also find it interesting that some people seem to think that Moon Druids mostly shapechange and Land Druids mostly cast spells. Not the case.

 

[DaveDash]

This from the guy who used as an example a Fighter 10 / Sorcerer 7 with a Haste spell, a Bless spell cast on him, and a 9th level Foresight spell cast on him in the other thread as an example of how Bounded Accuracy can broken?


You seemed to be arguing the merits of a class with two spells cast on him from other PCs and a 17th level PC to boot.

.....which was in response to a guy who claimed at level 20, those feats weren't that good. And I never claimed that it was broken in general, and I also stated in one post the balance is pretty good overall
Context is everything.

I'm arguing that there's basically nothing the War Cleric can do, that other classes or cleric subclasses can do better. I'm yet to be convinced otherwise, in fact, seeing examples come to light of how other people are playing the War Cleric only reinforces my point of view.

 

[KarinsDad]

.....which was in response to a guy who claimed at level 20, those feats weren't that good. And I never claimed that it was broken in general, and I also stated in one post the balance is pretty good overall
Context is everything.

Yes it is.

I'm arguing that there's basically nothing the War Cleric can do, that other classes or cleric subclasses can do better. I'm yet to be convinced otherwise, in fact, seeing examples come to light of how other people are playing the War Cleric only reinforces my point of view.

I don't disagree. I just found it amusing that you were using high level character examples to prove your point and dismissed someone who did the same thing.

 

[DaveDash]

I don't disagree. I just found it amusing that you were using high level character examples to prove your point and dismissed someone who did the same thing.

Yeah fair enough then. Welcome to the interwebs.

 

[Celtavian]

I completely disagree.

The skill options available among the beasts is an improvement that brings them closer to other skill classes, hunter's mark isn't necessarily maintainable or better than using the same slot on another spell, total hit points between the ranger and the companion is significantly more than just a hunter and would need to be dealt with, and some appropriate beasts have decent combat in exchange for the lost ranger attack.

It's just like the blade pact warlock in that it needs to be built appropriately.

I want to try a Beastmaster ranger. I was looking it over. It doesn't look as bad as it is made out to be. I was looking at some of the combinations, you could make a very interesting wolf companion. Some of the mechanics I don't like mainly because it doesn't fit the literary archetype such as not being able to set it to attack without commanding it every round. I wish you could set it on something and go do your own thing. I think I'll try one at some point to test out its effectiveness.

 

[Ashrym]

I want to try a Beastmaster ranger. I was looking it over. It doesn't look as bad as it is made out to be. I was looking at some of the combinations, you could make a very interesting wolf companion. Some of the mechanics I don't like mainly because it doesn't fit the literary archetype such as not being able to set it to attack without commanding it every round. I wish you could set it on something and go do your own thing. I think I'll try one at some point to test out its effectiveness.

Train it to do more. Anything that an animal can be trained to do is reasonable to train the ranger's companion. For example, if a wolf was trained it could protect a patron on it's own action while the ranger is elsewhere. The action costs are for directly controlling the animal and the default is that it doesn't attack without that control but there's no reason it could not be trained like other war beasts.

The action costs were also a deliberate backlash from too many actions getting out of hand as a powerful ability.

I think the wolf makes a good pet for decent damage on 2 attacks, the pack attack deal where it attacks with advantage with an ally near it, proficiency in perception and stealth with some advantage in perception based on sound and smell, and free trip attacks. Giving up one attack for 4d4+12 damage and 2 free trip attacks isn't exactly bad, especially when they are at higher accuracy than you likely have unless you also have advantage. I think people underestimate the scaling.

 

[Celtavian]

Train it to do more. Anything that an animal can be trained to do is reasonable to train the ranger's companion. For example, if a wolf was trained it could protect a patron on it's own action while the ranger is elsewhere. The action costs are for directly controlling the animal and the default is that it doesn't attack without that control but there's no reason it could not be trained like other war beasts.

The action costs were also a deliberate backlash from too many actions getting out of hand as a powerful ability.

I think the wolf makes a good pet for decent damage on 2 attacks, the pack attack deal where it attacks with advantage with an ally near it, proficiency in perception and stealth with some advantage in perception based on sound and smell, and free trip attacks. Giving up one attack for 4d4+12 damage and 2 free trip attacks isn't exactly bad, especially when they are at higher accuracy than you likely have unless you also have advantage. I think people underestimate the scaling.

One drawback that was somewhat turning me off to the class was the lack of magic attack capability. A lot of high level creatures have resistance to physical damage. That puts a huge damper on Beastmaster Damage. If they had added a means for the companion to bypass this type of resistance at higher level, the archetype would be better balanced.

 

[Wik]

For the most part I agree with you, but:



Bards also get Expertise (a bit later, admittedly), and can add half their proficiency to untried skill rolls; knowledge clerics get double proficiency for two knowledge skills and can channel divinity for when it's needed. Rogues do not hold the skill-monkey niche the way they did in 3.x: The bard is better for this. (I agree with you on the rogue's damage, though).

The only skill-based ability rogues get is the ability to apply expertise to Thieves' tools. Everything else, by level 3, is a wash.

Okay, fair enough. I forgot about expertise in other areas. My point still stands, though - the rogue is amazingly good. Damage + Disengage/Hide is pretty awesome... and fun in a way that rogues haven't been in a long time.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I'm with you -- I love the rogue. Though I do regret the way that it got scaled back from some of the options we saw in the play test. At various times, it looked like it would be flexible enough to accommodate strength, Intelligence, and Charisma builds as well as a Dex build. I'm not saying that's not still possible, but my sense dis that they really do expect a 12 or 14 dex minimum for most rogues.