D&D 5E [GUIDE] The God-Wizard Stans were wrong, or: Inquisitor Lim's Guide to the DPR-Focused Wizard

[Rofel Wodring]

Treantmonk's latest video about how DPR-focused wizards suck and how DPR is a bad tool got me all salty. Especially because Tasha's, and to a lesser extent Wildemount and Xanathar's, made DPR-focused wizards much, MUCH more viable than they were at the start of this edition. Of course, I can hardly blame him -- the last time I seriously thought about wizard DPR as a respectable career path (rather than a gimmick you can use with utmost mastery of the rules and a bit of help with magical item drops) was when I originally wrote that guide over a year ago. To that end, I overhauled this guide I wrote over a year ago and added a lot more. Big changes are:

• A cheeky title change.
• A shift in design philosophy from 'blasting' to 'DPR'. DPR now includes blasting, summoning, AND enabling. Blasting will still form the backbone of your DPR, especially as most tables won't tolerate you making twenty d20+4 attack rolls against a creature with an AC of 19 every round, but I wanted to broaden the horizons a bit. In the end, an enemy with 0 hit points is still one with 0 hit points.
• A brief history of the changes between 2E, 3E, 4E, and 5E with respect to monster hit points and why I think a lot of people miss how instantaneous and average DPR is a much more respectful first principle in 5E than it was in 3E/4E.
• Suggestion of DPR-focused Wizard builds aside from Hexvokers. I think that as of Tasha's splashing levels of Sorcerer and Order Domain Cleric are now much more competitive and even in many cases superior to Hexvokers in the realm of DPR.
• Making it more Evoker-agnostic. There are some other really strong DPR-focused wizards who would pick the same spells Evokers would, like Theurgists and Necromancers. I changed up the spell ratings to assume that you're playing any kind of wizard that thirsts for DPR -- of course making dual-ratings for spells that change significantly in the hands of certain wizards. I found that this was most common with Evokers, so the guide uses them as a straw-model. But if you want to go nuts with a Necromancer who augments their skeleton hordes with Summon Undead and Danse Macabre, this guide will help you, too.

TO-DO:

• Magical items ratings. I talk a lot about the busted magical items Tasha's introduced, but didn't actually rate them individually. No matter, anyone can see how busted they are, it doesn't change the overall thrust of the guide.
• Additional builds and breakpoints, especially in late T2 and early T3.
• Things to put in a Contingency. Thinking of just copying from my Bladesinger Guide.
• Things to summon with Summon Greater Demon / Infernal Calling. I generally think Summon Whatever is better because they give you merely modestly worse DPR while being MUCH more sustainable, but there are certain wizards who can make casting those spells 95-100% safe if, again, the DM allows those broken Tasha's magical items.
• Additional tactics for Wizards in general. I definitely want to have sections on Tactical Light Usage, Avoiding Stealth Nerfs of Illusions, Combat Pre-Casting, and Tactical Door Usage for examples.