D&D 5E Classes that Suck

[JiffyPopTart]

Wizard's fireball is avg 28 damage.

59 vs 28 is not even fair.

Whats not even fair is comparing a min/maxed character with a specialized race pick, metamagic, buffing spells and abilities, and feats with "a wizard".

Played a sorcerer....it sucked.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But also, it could possibly be because the Purple Dragon Knight doesn't even have an identity. The Champion is someone that dominates with sheer will, like an arena champion. The battlemaster is tactical and understands their enemy's weakness, like someone who has mastered battle. The eldritch knight has mastered the arcane, much like a magical knight that chose magic in a way other than religion or study. The Purple Dragon Knight...what in the world does that name even mean? It's a knight, sure, but um...purple dragon? That doesn't even exist in D&D lore and it's meaningless. You aren't replicating a Dragon.

Everyone knows what a cavalier is unless you don't know the definition of the word. I know the definition of the words purple and dragon and knight and I have no clue what they are supposed to mean when put together.

To be fair, it is a Knight Order based out of Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms. So, people familiar with the realms will know what they mean.

That is why they also have a generic name in the "Banneret".

I agree that without knowledge of Cormyr, and everything going on there, the PDK makes no sense, but in context they make a little more sense

 

[Gladius Legis]

Fixing the PDK is actually pretty simple. Switch its Lv. 3 and Lv. 10 around. Giving the PDK the ability to enable an ally's attack at Lv. 3 makes it pretty nice. And moving the healing ability to Lv. 10 is OK because that's about the level it starts to be worth much of anything.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm struggling to imagine the party composition wherein the Hexblade is not a top tier character. The 4 attack thing is only at Tier 4, which is barely relevant in making class comparisons. And comparing it to the "EB spammer" is silly, it only takes one invocation for a melee Hexblade to be the EB spammer. Being such a viable switch-hitter is part of the Hexblade's charm.

I played a single-class Hexblade for over a year, from level 7 to level 12; it's probably the single best experience I've had playing 5E. That character was an absolute powerhouse despite having almost 0 magic items, I absolutely love Hexblades.

So, your recommendation to players who want to play Hexblades that focus on weapon use is to not focus on weapon use, if I'm understanding you correctly?

 

[Hohige]

Whats not even fair is comparing a min/maxed character with a specialized race pick, metamagic, buffing spells and abilities, and feats with "a wizard".

Played a sorcerer....it sucked.

Metamagic is what the sorc does.
The wizard can't do more than it in a single turn. The Sorcerer wins by far. 59 vs 28.
The sorcerer also can quicken fireball and still twin firebolt for still more power than I showed.
It's 79 vs 28.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The survey from D&D beyond is fundamentally flawed. Most notably, the free classes are leading most likely due to them being free and available to all players.

The rankings don’t change when corrected to only look at users with all options available.

 

[Minigiant]

Metamagic is what the sorc does.
The wizard can't do more than it in a single turn. The Sorcerer wins by far. 59 vs 28.
The sorcerer also can quicken fireball and still twin firebolt for still more power than I showed.
It's 79 vs 28.

Really they went soft on Metamagic

No Delay Spell
No Echoing Spell
No Enhance Spell
No Guided Spell
No Intensify Spell
No Maximize Spell
No Repeat Spell
No Sudden Spell
No Widen Spell

 

[FrogReaver]

The rankings don’t change when corrected to only look at users with all options available.

that’s because users didn’t always have all options there was a time when they tested it out with the free stuff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I also don't think being at the bottom of a popularity list makes them unpopular. The least popular would be correct, but unpopular implies the majority of people don't like them, which isn't necessarily true. It would be like an election between two extremely favorable Prime Ministers (if only this was common), so someone has to win and someone has to lose, but that doesn't mean that even a single person disliked the loser.

This is the worst kind of semantics - not even really technically correct, and actually obfuscatory of the point.

The survey from D&D beyond is fundamentally flawed. Most notably, the free classes are leading most likely due to them being free and available to all players.

The survey accounted for this in its methodology, which they discussed at quite some length at the time. The fact that you are unaware of this means your criticism is one from ignorance, and it is invalid because this was accounted for. If you want to look into the methodology, you can go dig up the threads from the time. I made a similar assumption back then, I believe, but I was wrong.

But also, it could possibly be because the Purple Dragon Knight doesn't even have an identity. The Champion is someone that dominates with sheer will, like an arena champion. The battlemaster is tactical and understands their enemy's weakness, like someone who has mastered battle. The eldritch knight has mastered the arcane, much like a magical knight that chose magic in a way other than religion or study. The Purple Dragon Knight...what in the world does that name even mean? It's a knight, sure, but um...purple dragon? That doesn't even exist in D&D lore and it's meaningless. You aren't replicating a Dragon.

Everyone knows what a cavalier is unless you don't know the definition of the word. I know the definition of the words purple and dragon and knight and I have no clue what they are supposed to mean when put together.

This is totally irrelevant, given the Bladesinger subclass is in the number one subclass for Wizards (albeit narrowly). All the same criticisms apply to the Bladesinger's name perhaps even more strongly.

Furthermore, the Bladesinger was in the same book as the PDK, so has the same level of people able to access it, so that also negates any arguments there.

The PDK is less popular than the equally ridiculously-named Echo Knight, which comes from a book which has sold far fewer copies (AFAIK) than Sword Coast, and had only been out like a month when the survey we're discussing landed. Compare that to the Bladesinger, and it's pretty obvious that people are actually looking at the abilities and themes of subclasses. Looking at the popular subclasses they're pretty much all either ones with a strong theme (sometimes a bit edgelord-y) or strong mechanics, or those with both.

(As a semantic aside, I can't speak worldwide, but if you say "cavalier" in the UK, people think "perfumed fop in a fancy hat on a horse who lost a war due to ineptitude", not "armoured knight" - I strongly suspect that the number of English-speakers who think of a D&D-style cavalier when they hear the term is, well, more limited than you think.)

 

[TwoSix]

So, your recommendation to players who want to play Hexblades that focus on weapon use is to not focus on weapon use, if I'm understanding you correctly?

My recommendation is that if you choose a class and subclass, you should play to its strengths, unless you're choosing to embrace the challenge of playing against type.

You can certainly forgo Eldritch Blast and Agonizing Blast as a Hexblade to free up a cantrip slot and an invocation slot. I chose not to, because I value the flexibility of having a top-tier ranged option to fall back on. But with Elven Accuracy and Great Weapon Master, I did far more damage in melee than I did at range, and I certainly could have used the invocation slot on something else. There's no feat that increases Eldritch Blast damage by the same degree.