Look how they've massacred my boy! - BG3 4th Level Spells Tier List 

Fourth level spells slots are just for upcasting counter spell

My girlfriend keeps complaining that I’m always frenetically checking my phone each morning. She thinks I’m cheating. But I’m really just checking for the next Aestus RPG tier list.

if the woodland being wasnt already op enough: It is also immune to madness, so you can use the abyss beckoners for free resistance to all non-psychic damage

Confusion worked very well for me. It is a massive aoe, and does not have friendly fire, and lasts 3 turns. Enemies seem to attack whoever is closest to them. When used right, it feels like hypnotic pattern on steroids.

Wall of fire is amazing in the fight to protect the portal while Halsin is in the shadow fell rescuing the boy. It will just one shot a decent amount of enemies when they spawn

Me and my gf really like these, the very best resource to learn about spells and how they actually work! The game would really benefit from a quick "How the spell works" video for each one you could check when leveling up etc.

I haven’t tried this but theoretically you could polymorph a large creature to reduce its weight then have someone throw the sheep off a cliff

nice thing about ice storm, if you hit the area with a fire attack it melts into water triggering the wet condition for those standing in it

Evard's damage is tied to the smothered effect, which also makes it so they can't move at all. If you pair it with stinking cloud, everyone inside it can't move, can't act, and takes damage every turn.

I think confusion is one of the best CC spells in the game when you just want to generate as much action economy advantage and chaos as possible against the enemy.

I love confusion! You can get it as a warlock invocation and it’s my favorite way to deal with hordes/crowds of enemies. My favorite time I’ve used it was the fight with all of the fish people at the shack across from last light inn. So many turns cancelled!

For Staggering Smite, the wiki literally says "This spell is only available for NPCs" when you show it.

Im not 100% sold on the way you pitched greater invisibility, but i saw a guy solo myrkul in 4 turns with it, so ill take your word for it

I really enjoy these I agree with you more often that not, you are the only one who seem to really understand these mechanics. I hope feats are coming soon

Anyone watching now after Patch 6 grasping vine is now a good spell. It's bonus action now like spitual weapon - Has more health and AC - DOESNT require concentration AND has entangling Vines around it What a glow up - Emphasis ON GOOD it's not S but it's A or B now you can easily cast a Main Spell on Druid then just plonk this down with your Bonus Action for it to lockdown and grab an enemy every now and again and Entangle them OR for example get your Woodland Ally to put down Spikes Over the Vine you creat and it will keep them in the damaging area

Blight absolutely wrecks the second fight against Auntie Ethel. Her big advantage is she’s invincible until you destroy her mushrooms. Well, Blight always does its absolute maximum damage when you hit a plant with it, so the three of them went down very quickly, and she not long after.

Watched your cantrips video and you mentioned Minor Illusion was S Tier, stating that it's great for grouping up enemies before a fight. Well cast Confusion in that group and the first 3 rounds of combat will be a combination of surprised enemies and confused enemies. That's 3 free rounds, at enough distance you won't be in much danger. I love this spell

For polymorph i like "breaking the game" use. Firstly, you can sheeptara, so you may fight alongside Minthara, Karlach and Will, no problem. And they have even dialogues so that is probably possible normally in the future. Secondly, polmyorph is OP against shadowcursed. If they do NOT HAVE in their name "Shadowcursed", only status. You can polymorph them and they become themselves again after polymorph ends. I saved this guy from harpers cutscene this way. He was bugged, but got with their team to Lost Light and even stand with them and helped with their fight against shadows! I will have to check if he lasts after long rest.

These are perfect to listen to while at work. (Also because I’m indecisive af when it comes to my spell book)

I've seen a ton of these type of videos, yours are the best. I constantly check your page for the next one, keep it up 😁

Otherwise a pretty solid list but a bit of a nitpick on tiering Banishment vs Confusion. While cha save is really good for banishment its still just a single target(upcast for +1 starting at 4 starts to cost a bit too much) while confusion is a quite a big FF safe area (even bigger when upcast). While banishment can make a battle a bit easier by removing one high priority target to wait for nuking, confusion in big battles completely turn the tide instantly by making enemies completely skip their turn (action econ!) or just kill their selves on each other (mini dominate). And you ranked it B while it basically outshines banishment in every possible category besides typical wisdom saving throw type. I think people sleep on this spell because they don't prepare their fights right or lack overall positioning by standing next to confused enemies. One last note that it is really superb spell to have on a bard for example who might not have their concentration tied to things like haste or area dots.

I really enjoy these videos. Also, as a Druid lover - it’s always hard for me to pick the spells because so many are good

I admire your thoroughness here. I think the game simply needs a higher difficulty that hopefully comes with definitive edition.

Good list, I agree with most. I'd put Evrard's tentacles in A tier though. This single spell had been a game breaker for me in some fights, like the big fight at Moonrise tower. Most of the ennemies taken into this never get to attack. And just died doing nothing with their turns.

I think confusion is the best crowd control spell in the game, the range is insane, has no cap on the number of enemies affected, and most of the time the enemies will attack the closest target. Attacking confused enemies also doesn't remove the condition which is crazy

Blight came in clutch for me when you have to get rid of the Hag's shrooms in act 3 normally you have to one shot them or chill them or they regen but blight just obliterates them making the fight way easier. For Dominate beast and poly morph they work really great together. It lets you dominate any being that can be polymorphed and move them anywhere on the map you have access to via fast travel. So lets say you have an enemy you want to knock of a cliff you can polymorph them used another turn to dominate them then just go somewhere else with them even camp where everyone can just obliterate them In an older patch in the game you can even use this to recruit minthara without killing the druids and tierflings.

I'd put Wall of Fire in S-tier. It is so useful in taking out large groups of enemies. All those groups of enemies as a whole do a lot of damage to your party but you can wipe them all out in a single turn. ie the House of Grief or the Halsin Portal etc.

Banishment is one of those spells where I rarely use it, but whenever I am in a situation where I use it, it's genuinely really really good (a good example of that is in the fight against Myrkul, I took the item in the colony that made my entire party have advantage on Melee Attacks but made them weak to Psychic Damage, so when the fight started, I had Gale use Banishment on the Mind Flayer so that it couldn't one tap my party with a Psionic Blast after everyone was gathered up by Myrkul, now all of my melee characters went crazy on the boss without fear of getting obliterated and thus my high risk high reward strategy lost almost all of it's risk. That's imo the best type of showcase for this spell, not for every fight, but whenever you cast it in a fight where it's relevant, it'll flip the script by itself

I would put Confusion at least on A tier. Wherever there are a lot of enemies grouped together, it can turn fights into a joke. I remember casting it using a high charisma character during the fight against Orin. Many of the enemies began walking around and hitting themselves while my party threw AoE spells. Then my hasted fighter just walked in with the giantslayer sword and destroyed the boss.

Phantasmal Killer should be in C tier, borderline rp tier. The save they get on each of their turns is before the damage, and completely ends the spell on a successful save. Meaning that the creature you target has 2 chances to make your 4th level spell do literally nothing.

"Staggering Smite is a 4th level Evocation Spell. This spell is only available for NPCs"

Thanks for these spell tier lists, really informative!

Grasping Vine is a rare example of a thing is BG3 that's broken but not in any way that makes it good. There are so many bugs with the spell that I'm convinced it's summoning the wrong entity and Larian just can't be bothered to fix it. The best use case is to raise morale in a bad multiplayer session by bugging it out to have a movement speed and a weapon because watching a vine slide around the battlefield firing crossbow bolts is hilarious.

For the gauntlet right before the final encounters, you can actually sneak past everything, even easier with flight. Much quicker than slogging through all those mobs. You only need 1 guy to sneak/fly over there and then your party will TP to you when you enter the final fight.

Banishment can also Banish a target that is casting a self destruct so that their explosion doesn’t hurt you.

I haven't tested Confusion extensively, but looking at the status in the code, its definitely slightly different from Crown of Madness. Its a DC11 check every turn to just skip the turn and a source spell DC (=the casters spell save DC) check to remove it. It does not stack with Crown of Madness (same Stack ID but higher priority). For all intents and purposes it should be an AoE Crown of Madness with a possibility to skip the turn. That makes it incredibly powerful. Also its a huge AoE that does not affect allies and has the maximum range of 18m (other than some other big AoEs like create water), which makes it very versatile.

Another thing: Early I used the Azer a lot. The Azer is very tanky compared to Mephits, since its a single unit (half AoE damage), doesn't have vulnerabilities and good AC. The AoE burn it has is a special burn that does 1d10 fire damage. Once I got into wet blasting later I swapped to Ice Mephits. One melee of them in a fight in early Act 3 (Rivington) dealt over 50 damage (crit, wet, decent rolls ~8d6 cold and 2d4 slashing). Ice Orb is great for ranged damage and causing prone, while Ice Breath is definitely the most situational. I actually barely use their death burst. Also, from what I saw in the code, if they die, their death burst does HALF damage. So triggering it manually is better. What I want to say is, for a Level 4 spell they are also S tier. Give them Aid and later Heroes Feast and they aren't as horribly vulnerable. Fly lets them position to avoid AoE and attacks. Cold damage lets their damage stay relevant until the game is over.

I am curious at what range and how many enemies you tested this on. I generally agree with most you have said but Confusion is, in my humble opinion, the strongest control spell in the game. It lasts 3 turns, does not affect allies, has a big AOE, can be upcasted to basically cover an entire room, and will make enemies useless thralls. Level 4 spells are pretty bad, except Woodland Being, but it is Druid only. Greater Invisibility is good but in combat I would rather just use Sanctuary. Definitely test it more lol!

one pretty awful downside of woodland being is that neither the dryad nor the wood woad can jump. it’s pretty easy to get them stuck somewhere while exploring

Death Ward deserves to be bumped up a tier IMO. It lasts until long rest and has no concentration requirement, so you can have Shadowheart or another Cleric cast it on your whole team and then leave her out of the party to get another character with full spell slots

interestingly, by near the end of the game I came across two Spectators and some imps. Yeeting a flying creature off into the abyss just takes away some of their movement. However, if you Polymorph the flying creature (Spectator in this case) they can't fly back... So I killed a Sheepified Spectator by shoving it into oblivion. :P Don't recommend this unless you just want to have fun.

Potential future tier list “best use for a level X spell slot”. So we can see how an upcasted level 3 spell measures up to a level 4, etcetera.

Phantasmal Killer is pretty terrible in my experience. The big problem with it that the condition is removed entirely if the target passes any one of the saving throws. Since the initial cast is a saving throw and a saving throw is made each turn they have the condition, that means the target has to fail two saving throws to even take damage one time or else the spell is wasted entirely. I've managed to get it to deal damage once per cast a few times, and I think once I managed to get it to proc twice, but never more that. I was really disappointed because it looked good on paper, but it's incredibly unreliable.

Banishment is definitelly B tier max. Single target cc (good thing is a char save), but at the same time comparing it to confusion, is just way worst. Confusion is aoe, has the chance of making enemy attack other enemies, KEEPS the targets affected on the battle, which allows for a round of aoe burst damage on them, while banishment makes them untargetable by anything. So banishment is a temporary -1 enemy, confusion is always at least -1 to -x enemies temporarily, while still allowing you to attack them if you feel like it, even if it breaks the spell. So besides the charisma save, i dont see a point in ever using banishment if u have access to confusion (ofc you can always come up with a scenario where 1 target is so strong is worth not stunning 5 to stun him), but its super nieche

Im still crying about stoneskin... Great videos, keep up the good work!

Confusion is definitely A-Tier, it can be an encounter wrecker when facing a mass of opponents.

Just a quick note about Polymorph, I only have used it successfully a handful of times, but one of those times was against the Gold Thorm. I turned her tanky ass into a sheep, cleaned house on her little skulls, and then struck her down with no issue at all. Probably the greatest use I ever got out of that spell. Turned an insane fight into a super trivial one.

Sheep are also much easier to shove/throw into a chasm than most creatures worth spending a 4th level spell slot on.

Also I’m surprised by your ranking for fire shield. Genuinely can’t see how it’s consistently good/situationally amazing. The concept of retaliation damage is great but it’s a woeful average of 9 damage per hit, it only works for melee attacks and it only works on the caster. The secondary benefits of the spell are meh and it’s not even an abjuration spell so it won’t stack arcane ward. I’m really struggling to understand why you would ever waste both a 4th level spell slot and a turn in combat on casting this!

In one of my playthroughs I'd sometimes cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on a Spirit Guardian-ing Shart and let her Dash + Click Heels and run into a horde of enemies. Idk if it's an efficient use of my turns but it was hella fun and satisfying.

Polymorph works well against bosses with non-regenerating temporary hit points, because the sheep will still have them, and you can take down the extra health bar while they're doing nothing. Besides that though, it's a trap.

By far best bg3 content

Going to disagree with you on Evard's Tentacles. I find it a useful early spell to make enemies slog through, Halsin's Portal for example, while the rest of my party can stand back and pick them off. In later game I use it as a cc root while my tempest cleric calls down lightning wrath (House of Grief slaying ground is already a mess, so I just add to it).

I was so excited about grasping vine being like a black hole grapping everyone around it towards it, to make some nice aoe setup I think that wouldnt be too op.

Dominate beast + Polymorph need to be S tier PURELY because they allow you to get Minthara on a good playthrough (cheesy as hell, but a character being on your team has got to be worth it every time)

You forgot that Phantasmal Killer also makes its target unable to move as long as it’s affected by it! I think it’s great for tying up a strong melee enemy, doing a solid amount of damage to them in the process

In BG2 freedom of movement made you unaffected by haste, so I just immediately wrote it off, I am happy that it was fixed

A Halfling casting Greater Invis + an ally casting Pass Without Trace, with the right gear, allows you to pretty much never break invisibility and keep attacking targets while invisible till they drop dead. I'm not even sure if this is intended but it's outright broken and obscenely OP.

Another great list man I appreciate your hard work 🙏

It's dissapointing the only plants that you fight around the time you get blight resist necrotic damage.

I disagree on the confusion ranking. It's one of my go-to spells for a wizard. From my experience the chances are like the Pnp version (except with shorter duration): 10% chance to move randomly, 50% chance to skip turn, 20% to hit the closest target once (enemy or ally) and 20% to act normally (which doesn't end the spell, they get the same chance next turn unless they make the save) So it's a large aoe party friendly (this is what separates it fron Hypnotic pattern) spell that disables or severely limits the danger of the enemies it hits for 3 turns. It's wisdom save so it benefits from arcane aquity. In many cases it's like upcasting Command except it lasts 3 turns. It effectively trivialises several challenging encounters with a ton of enemies such as the Shar temple in Act 3, Raphael's fight (Raphael will break free after 1 turn but the adds won't) and the Sarevok fight (if you attack him in the blood chamber all the enemies are close by and get hit with an upcasted Confusion). Confusion is in many cases an amazing spell, you don't want to use it if you only hit a few enemies but if there are 5+ enemies it's great on average. Definitely at least A tier for me

Confusion might be amazing for a stealth focused party. Cast and watch the chaos in the shadows. Sneak attack when appropriate.

Staggering Smite is used by the Death Knights. There are only 4 in the game, 2 of them (the weaker ones just outside the Murder Tribunal) are level 10 and can be captured and used as a summon by the Oathbreaker's Control Undead.

Confusion is hipnotic pattern's big brother. It isnt a charm so it bypass charm immunity and resistances, it also makes enemies help you and, despite having a small radius, it can be increased by upcasting it. Hypnotic pattern is what you cast during levels 5 to 8, Confusion is what you cast at further levels

It says on the staggering smite page that it's only available to NPCs. So yeah, it's unlearnable. Its something for enemies to use against you.

My question about polymorph was "How much does the sheep weigh?" Because if it brings down like a 100kg+ target down to a range where you could actually pick them up and throw them into a chasm for an instant kill, that's pretty cool

I used Dimension Door in the Myrkul fight to get a downed Nightsong to a spot where I could heal her.

I enjoyed your tier lists. They have helped me plan my builds. The only niche case I know where you could use Polymorph is exploiting a bug with NPCs (Minthara) who are scripted to die. You can knock Minthara out, instead of killing her. You can later polymorph her and take the sheep to Moonrise Towers. She gets her cut scene, after which you can recruit her into a “good” party.

I got some use out of Grasping Vine with a scroll as well. In the Gnoll fight by the cave in Act 1 (don’t remember where I got the scroll from). It drew a lot of aggro, and my Light Cleric wound up covering it with the reactive ward and it got quite a few turns out of it while the big boss gnoll focused just on it while the rest of my party cleaned up. No idea why it’s a fourth level spell, though.

Coming from DnD this is the first look im getting at the higher level spells as i haven't gotten out of act 1 yet. Man did they ever neuter some of these spells. Banishment and Polymorph are Iconic usually encounter winning spells in DnD. And in BG3 i wouldn't even take the time to learn them.

I'm sure someone told you in the comments here over the last few months, so apologies if I'm repeating, but the wiki page you were looking at said that Staggering Smite is only available to NPCs.

I think you’re undervaluing polymorph. It’s pretty comparable to banishment, if a but weaker overall. Targets a worse save, but lasts longer. The sheep is a presence and can still attack, but can’t hit consistently, and does poor damage. Against major enemies with a poor WIS save, this spell can blank the encounter.

Massacre? That seemed like an overstatement.

I really enjoy your tier lists Aestus! Cheers. Would you really prefer upcasted Cloud of daggers over Wall of fire? I know Cloud is sweet but they seem like apples to oranges spells based many factors, size being one, which is monumentally different. I liked Cloud but getting access to wall of fire made it seem like a much less efficient spell when you can deny a long strip with as much damage as WoF provides. I used it a few times and thought it was basically cheese because it worked so well and i tried to self limit usage. But that is the case for a lot of spells in this game right now, which is fine, i know the difficulty mods are getting polished up. Take care

I used Polymorph on the boss in the Last Light Inn fight and just proceeded to murder his minions while he stared at me and Isobel . 10/10.

grasping vine is just if thornwhip were a level 1 spell, without damage even

Ice Storm (and Sleet Storm) are god-tier for holding the portal for Halsin. They both make a joke out of all the melee enemies. Spirit Guardians for the ones that manage to get close, and all you have to worry about are the archers.

Agree on Summon Woodland Being - it’s the one compelling reason for me to have Jaheira or Halsin. As followers go, fulfills a gap as a support type summon.

I will put my vote for confusion being a very good spell. It has became my large crowd control spell. It has a large radius and does not have friendly fire limitations. And it doesn’t break with damage. It is also an enchantment spell so it can be cast as a bonus action with certain magic item. There is what I believe is a 33% chance that it attacks your party but there is also a 33% chance it attack their own teammates which in my opinion balance it out.

I don't understand how we can make a tier list without giving each spell a few test casts beforehand. The amount of "I haven't used this much but..." Detracts from quality. Confusion is the greatest use of my controller's concentration slot for a number of reasons.

I only recently caught on to how good fireshield is. Had Wyll as a bladelock in clothing cast this and agathys anyone stupid enough to attack him pretty much imploded. Greater invis is fucking sexy too

Out of curiosity, I've tried Evard's Black Tentacles from the necklace that grants it. Very buggy.

Stoneskin was extremely powerful up including 3e. If not for concentration and "until Long Rest or after consuming damage" it'd probably be B-tier or higher C-tier, but concentration is just pushing it down.

Watching this video made me realize how insane paladin is

I always cast Death Ward... From my camp cleric who casts it an then is replaced. It's not that useful, but if I'm shuffling through every possible buff my two camp clerics can give that survive having the caster swapped out, I might as well.

Grasping Vine is most certainly the worst. However it does have some funny bugs in that if you drop a speed potion, it can use it and gain the ability to move and equip weapons. Not very useful but it IS funny. Also in the game's current state only THREE enemies use Stagger Smite which are the three death knights in the crypt. No single class learns it atm. And I have one particularly niche use for Stoneskin. Moon Druids. Cast it before Wildshaping and there you go. Outside of that, yeah, there's no point in bothering.

wall of fire when upcasted is just straightup the best level 4 spell imo or 2nd best atleast. But imo its the best WALL spell.

The only one I really disagree with is Confusion. This spell is just nuts and falls into the "instant fight ender," category for any fight with multiple enemies, which makes it a clear S-tier IMO. Confusion has a big AoE with no other limit to the number of targets, and it wastes so many actions. Because of the lack of target cap and forcing enemies to use their actions, attacks, and especially spells on each other, it's "scaling" comes from how many enemies you can hit at once and how impactful each of those enemies is, which just means it gets even stronger the later into the game you get. Where it really shines is in a full ranged comp because you'll be further away from the enemies than they are from each other. Cast it on the biggest clump of enemies (or group everyone up with Black Hole/minor illusion) at the start of a fight, and nobody can close the gap on you because they're too busy beating each other up.

I just wish there was more lv4 spells. A few spells and effects I feel are very underutilized. For example bleed, poison, and acid. Would be cool to have spells that cause bleeding other than going tigar build.

So gets a save each turn, fail = takes dmg. Success spell status is removed.

Best day when Aestus uploads!

I managed to Polymorph Balthazar and shove him into the void in the Shadowfell

Polymorph is useful in maps that have chasms. Polymorph + have your strength character throw the sheep into chasm = instant kill

I thought vulnerability just doubled the damage done, not the number of die rolled. Is the calculation for an Ice Mephrit explosion against a Wet NPC 16d6, or 8d6x2?

i like black tentacle more than spike growth because enemies tend to not walk on spiked growth or they just jump out of it and take only 1stack of damage. Black tentacle entangles and enemies cannot jump out, they just stopped. it saved my whole team when I bumped into githyanki patrol where they are out lvl me. black tentacle spread them out allowing me to finish them off one by one

I used confusion like...once as a spell I got per rest from an item. I was fighting the back guards because they got pissed at me for accidentaly hitting them with the psionic jump ability. I ended up casting confusion on around 10 of them and they killed eachother more than I killed them

Dimension Door comes in clutch so many times haha

staggering smite is only available for NPCs!! not sure why it’s included on the wiki list tbh bc i’m pretty sure there are other spells only available to npcs that aren’t included… but yeah no playable character can learn it lol

Staggering smite comes from conjure planar being - deva

Guardian of faith has a 100% hit rate, which really helped on some mega high ac boss fights