D&D 5E Is it better to prevent or inflict damage? (psi warrior, battle master, others)

[Zardnaar]

Inflict. Death is best debuff. This is true in every edition.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Did you hear about the horrible tragedy at the College of the Bards? There was a terrible fire that burned down their library.... they lost all of their books.

Spoiler

The true catastrophe was that 1/3 of them hadn't even been colored in yet.

Isn't the true catastrophe that some of the bards escaped the fire, alive?

 

[FrogReaver]

weeeeellllll

You could build a party around defense, where every PC has strong defenses and defensive abilities that protect themselves and other party members... and it would make battles take forever. long, drawn out slugfests aren't necessarily fun.

Fun doesn’t factor into which is mechanically better which is what your OP asked...