glyph is easily A if not S. some combats can be ended with well positioned damage variants and others can turn large group fights into a joke through non hp restricted mass sleep
The first time I fought the Sharran cloister the only way I was able to win was by basically spamming warding glyph. Completely saved my ass. Definitely at least A tier.
The sheer optionality of glyph of warding should put it in A at least. You will literally always want it on every single person that can get it. And scrolls of it are pure gold. The number of times I found myself thinking “damn, the enemies grouped up nicely right now. If this character just had a decent ice AOE I could kill 3 enemies.” It has to be A tier. You wont use it every turn, but you will often see opportunities for it to do good work. it’s the wizards Swiss Army knife spell.
my problem with glyph of warding is the low reach it has, most encounters where u want the AOE damage, enemies are either far away or far from each other or both and the 9m (feet dont exist as measuring tool) just simply doesnt get the job done most of the time... but in theory it's an excellent spell
@@criticalreveluse minor illusion cat or find familiar cat (meow) to attract enemies to one spot. Then blast them with glyph. You can also get the void bulbs from the nautiloid or from Omeluum in act 1 to pull enemies into one group for glyph damage.
@@jack.h99 it can flatout break tabletop given sufficient time and resources to set it up. It's a mechanism that allows you to deal an arbitrary amount of damage or have All The Concentration Buffs!
Feign dead is not to be used on playable characters, but on npc s. If there is a suicidal maniac that you dont want them to die, you can put them to coma. If you use sanctuary they will still attack without any consideration, will lose sanctuary and get sanctuary blocked for 1 turn. With feign death, they will be able to do nothing, and enemies will ignore it regardless of the resistances. That spell saved me from restarting the whole fame when i was trying to get the achievement for saving all tieflings possible. I for some reason made my life very difficult by leading minthara to grove and then defending it instead of just taking care of the goblins myself. A spider jumped up and attacked an archer, which was definitely going to die next turn as i was not going to be able to kill the spider, bcs of my characters locations. I casted feign death on that tiefling via a scroll. At the end i did get the achievement ın that run, saving me between 10 to 50 hours.
You can also give npc's gold or items to improve their affinity, then cast feign death to take back your stuff and rob them blind. This spell sees a lot of use on vendors I don't want to die (yet), but have gear I want.
Bacon of Hope is the best spell in D&D! 5 out of 5, would cast again! Summons a Celestial Boar to fight for your party. When slain, the Celestial Boar casts Bless & Healing Word on all allied creatures in a 6m radius.
I LOVE larians change to call lightning. In dnd 5e you need a 100ft clearance above you AND 60 foot radius around that. That's the space the cloud needs, and the cloud is where the lightning comes from. Basically its an outdoors only spell with rules as written. Very limiting . They made it such a great spell now, it take it every time i can!!
Daylight can be used to give the grymforge fights and other duergar fights disadvantage on attack rolls as they all have sunlight sensistivity which is really strong.
Your gushing about level 3 spells at the beginning basically describes why I was so delighted when I slurped up some Shadow Weave with Origin-Gale and got one nice, dark extra level 3 spell slot for defying my goddess. ^^ Such a good power grab.
It does. Press the right analog stick to bring the tool tips. The enemy spell tooltip says what level it is. I counterspelled the heck out of Raphael last night.
With regard to counterspell, you can examine an enemy's spell name in the tooltip of the counterspell reaction prompt, and I find that this usually (if not always) will tell you the level of the enemy spell. Very helpful if you're not great at memorizing spell names and levels.
Feign Death has use for exploiting vendors. You can make them friendly/allies by giving items/gold. Feign Death the vendor, cast darkness, take everything. I learned this method from AoE RU-vid channel Edit: it's still a low ranking spell, could get patched out as well. So maybe just bump it up 1 rank
Another boon of counterspell is that it's an abjuration spell. The significance of this is that it will also BUFF the arcane ward of an abjuration wizard based on the level of the spell slot used for it. And arcane ward is broken for any who don't know. Edit: Same above applies for Glyph of Warding so I agree with many comments here of it being an A-tier spell at WORST
Call Lightning is in my favorite archetype of spells in TT DnD, that is the extremely efficient spells, the spells that you cast once and then get to activate multiple times are so nice because you spend a single spell slot to set you up for the rest of the fight, then you can save your spells for utility and necessary castings, like healing word an ally or counter spell. Tho i favor these spells so much because of my playstyle and my experiences brougt upon me by running out of spells.
The amount of damage you get from animate dead, while not even having to waste an action in a fight to summon them, plus all the extra tankiness it provides to the team makes it an easy S tier in my mind. The skeletons specifically are just insane if you keep them alive over the length of a long rest with how much damage they provide for just one lvl 3 spell slot. And upcasting the spell is really good too.
Feign Death - can be cast on merchants to pickpocket them easily if you've maxed out relationships with them - can be used to save NPCs with suicidal tendencies like Isobel in A2
Legit, thank you for making mention of counterspell's mechanics. As someone who had surface level knowledge of dnd's mechanics going into this game, it took me so long to figure out why my counterspells "randomly" failed once I switched to balanced mode. It really is one of the few instances where the upcasting prompt is a detriment.
Call lightning has quickly become my favourite spell in my current playthough. Being a Storm Sorc with reliable con saves and a high spell save dc means you can reliably use it for the entire fight without needing to recast it. Creating water + quickened spell in the opening round of combat is great against tough bosses.
Glyph's sleep is actually really powerful. There are some bosses that the Wiki claims are immune to sleep, but are actually vulnerable to glyph. I sadly forget which boss I discovered this on.
Act 2, Isobel fight, last light, Honor mode, Sanctuary+Feign Death (haven't found other uses though). Thorough reasoning, although haste is somewhat less impressive in BG3 due to the availability of Spores and potions - as long as fights can be ended within a couple of turns.
Feign Death makes it easier to steal from vendors though. They're having all their stuff in steal window just like knocked out, but without the need to get hostile with them.
The 10 turns haste has is a huge thing over haste potions I will say, the potions are good in situations where the extra action will end combat sooner, but some initiatives are forced to last longer than 3 turns, and can screw you over if you aren't careful when you get lethargic
Disagree with the reasoning on Crusader’s Mantle. Most of the classes that have access to it /can’t/ learn Fireball so it should be compared to spells they can learn
@@Cephalopocalypse There is actually a marginal use case for Crusader's Mantle that just occurred to me, which is that in certain fights with many raised undead that have Undead Fortitude (getting back up unless their killing blow did radiant damage), it can actually speed up clearing them out significantly, but that's still a marginal use case
I love these lists! There just too much for a player like me to sift through the duds, as well as trying to figure out how they work mechanically. Much appreciated!
Id bump Daylight up a rank, act 2 is a think, its filled with darkness and so many of the shadow type enemies get weaker in daylight specifically, against these relatively common enemies in act 2, daylight become a really powerful debuf. Kinda eh otherwise, light in itself isnt that important in BG3, darkvision is so common and the light cantrip will cover you most of the time, but since Clerics are prepared casters and the light clerics get it for free, its not much of an opportunity cost.
There is no hope for beacon to recover from that verbal evisceration. Love the videos. I actually made an audible "oooh" when i saw this opening up youtube. Keep it up good sir
Would love to see glyph a little higher. Had a few runs on bg3 and glyph is always in my party. One of my absolute favourite abilities in the game with so much flexibility. S tier in my books without a doubt but I always love your takes 👌 thank you for all of your effort in your videos.
Beacon of hope is nice in big fights with lots of AI allies along with mass healing word- can make for a good momentum shift. Not optimal but can be good and fun
If you could cast hex or hunters mark outside of combat, they would maintain a tier throughout the game. Bestow curse can set up an encounter for a scorching ray build like crazy. If it was available to sorcerers, I’d rank it S tier, but since it isn’t, b tier is fine. If you had to prep it in combat, it would still be d tier since it costs too much action economy and puts you in range where you can lose concentration easily, as well as giving you disadvantage on scorching ray. Casting it, walking away, and unleashing hell is insane. The opportunity cost of setting it up is what makes it insane. It’s mostly used on a wizard using scorching ray, so you can swap it in and out of encounters easily if you won’t be able to set it up in advance. If you use a scroll of bestow curse as a fire sorc using scorching ray, it becomes AS POWERFUL AS STRENGTH ELIXIRS. You can Swiss cheese whatever boss of choice that you like with that combo.
i think feign death earns its D tier rating - it has a useful corner case in stopping NPCs from getting themselves killed if you're really trying to do that. i used it to stop the gnomes in the steel watcher factory from running headlong into the combat in truly stupid ways. feign death + dimension door to just...pile them up in an unconscious heap in a corner. i agree it's generally useless but it does have some very specific uses if you are going in specifically trying to save some NPC during a combat encounter.
I think Haste will be S. Even with the "nerf" in honour mode, Haste gets you so much extra damage, and casters don't really care about the nerf to the extra attacks. Whenever I'm considering a spell that requires concentration, the question in my mind is always "is this better or worse than just concentrating on Haste?".
For so long I have been wondering why when I had previously cast counterspell, it just didn't work and it said, "Counterspell Failed," or something like that, so truly thank you for explaining that.
I am going to defend bestow curse, specifically its "pass a wis save or skip the turn". Like hold person, it takes two saves for it to first do something, however if I remember correctly, unlike hold person, if you fail the initial save, it sticks for as long as you concentrate, and the turn upon turn saves are only to skip or not skip that turn, not to end the bestow curse effect. For that reason, it is great if you manage to get this stuck onto a boss that will take take some time to kill, since it can target most things, not only humanoids, and if it fails the initial save, they essentially have a chance to skip future turns, even if they manage to take one turn, they might skip the next one. Hold person is probably better, however bestow curse also works on non-humans, and hold monster requires a very high level slot.
Great video as always. I would just move daylight and glyph of warding up a tier. Daylight because of act 2. It helped me breeze through act 2, making undeads blind, a great use. It also helps in underdark a lot. For the glyph of warding lightning, cold, sleep etc are really powerful. The ability to choose the damage type, and apply a trap is also very appealing.
Isn’t crusaders mantle a party buff? I haven’t tried, but I imagine you could reach some pretty hefty numbers buffing an action surging fighter or flourishes on a swords bard
I understand on a numbers level why Counterspell is good, but I just dont use it because i find it so boring. Same reason I don't cast Sanctuary on my Sorcerer after doing twinned Haste. I realize it would be smart to do so, but I'd just rather keep casting offensive spells and try to mitigate the risk of losing concentration through other means (positioning, blocking, crowd control etc)
I get what you’re saying (it’s more fun to make offensive casts vs enemies than defensive casts) but Counterspell is a bit different because it’s only a reaction. You’re not using a turn on a defensive action. The opportunity cost is pretty small, since wizards and sorcs don’t tend to do much else with their reactions
@@ProbeAwayAgreed, plus it actually buffs the Arcane Ward of an Abjuration Wizard. I didn’t realize how great Abjuration Wizards were ‘til I specced Gale that way on my Tactician run!
Shadow Blade + Conjure Barrage = 4d8 psychic damage in a 30ft cone. Ne'er Misser + Conjure Barrage = 1d6 + 2d8 force damage in a 30 ft cone. If you're also including other riders on the weapon damage (eg. Flawed Helldusk Gauntlets/ Dipped in poison/Strange Conduit ring) it a potentially volatile aoe is little to no resistance to the damage. At face value its not good but with heads up plays you can add a decent option for your ranger with it.
I think Grant Flight is slightly better than you think. It's C tier. The "jump" it gives is longer and doesn't use your bonus action. I usually use it to rage and move Karlach (Fighter/Barbarian with Alert feat) on the same turn so she can kill Wizard type NPCs before they act.
I took fly in my first playthrough because it's great in 5E. When I ran into Grym, I was like, oh yeah! This is the time for fly! Then I can avoid his almost-the-whole-arena AOE the same way that Quothe can! And then I plummeted into the lava. Sigh.
Flight was the only reason i was able to save everyone in the act 3 timed rescue quest with several turns to spare. It effectively acts as a disengage bc you can fly past enemies without provoking opportunity attacks and it massively increases your movement speed.
flight is reasonably useful as a source of mobility for characters who are not meant to be very mobile. I guess it can give you the same functionality as misty step without requiring a bonus action. I don't think it is worth casting as a third level spell but I often drank potions of flight in my playthrough before some encounters (you can group up your party and throw it and get the effect on multiple characters). I'd say it is more useful towards the endgame (or maybe it is just when I discovered its functionality) and solved me the underwater prison encounter.
I think they should implement some kind of system for going up/down a story if a building or incorporate a 3D grid for flying. Also worth note: the sorcerer flight counts as a dash, it gives you extra movement for that flight.
I think you really underestimated the damage variant of Bestow Curse, because it works with spells too, so for example with Magic Missile, more or less doubling its damage. And unless they fixed it, it stacks with riders too from what I remember.
I don’t know if it actually works with magic missile. I think scorching ray is fine though. Magic missile doesn’t have attack rolls but scorching ray does so I think that’s the distinction. Either way, hex for a wizard is strong when you can precast it before combat. Most act 2 bosses let you set up before you engage with the extra damage scorching rays.
Feign Death is fantastic for pickpocketing vendors, so I definitely wouldn’t call it an F-tier spell since some of the casters who get it are prepared casters. Crusader’s Mantle is also fantastic if you’re building a party around multiple characters applying Radiant Orbs.
I will say that on a life cleric pure healer build, beacon of hope with sanctuary and warding bond WITH all heal buffing gear you can pretty much have your whole party immortal. But that's like a 0 DPS build. I've run it, its fun and feels surprisingly strong in practice despite looking bad on paper
Forgot to mention, guardian of faith is a way to deal damage despite being in sanctuary. I'd try it out if I were you in a party with high DPS its quite insane
Just a sidenote, you don't need to know ranks of spells to use cs correctly, when you put cs as ask on reactions you can mouseover the spell that you're trying to counter in the prompt window where you get a tooltip popup with detailed info of your enemies spell.
Bestow curse can only be useful if you combo it with Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, to basically prevent them from doing damage and also causing the curse on them. But aside from that specific combo, Bestow Curse is useless.
At the start of part 2 of 2nd level spells you told that you will give corrections and feedback about 1st level spells at the beginning of the next video. Where is it my dude?
HASTE will be in S tier. maybe S plus. It is mandatory at high levels in Honor mode. Haste scrolls are among the rarest of any scrolls sold in the game, and its alchemy substitutes - speed potion and haste spore grenades - have very rare ingredients and are rarely sold. The Half-Illithid Mind Sanctuary in Honor Mode is also inferior although much cheaper to use if you are willing go half-mind-flayer. Playing without haste or equivalent seems crippling when you have to kill a boss in one round in honor mode. The spell is stronger than in tabletop because you get two spells without sorcery points. The only Haste drawback is Concentration and lethargy which most often comes from loss of concentration (by accident in my case or from damage to the caster). That can kill a character and maybe even lose a fight if most of your party gets lethargic at the same time. I think 5 turns is more than enough for any fight - except massive battles with hordes of angry guards (which are at worst tedious and I find its best to just invis and run away from those if they are not required). Three turns from the potion though is sometimes too short. I don’t think the haste spoors and Mind Sanctuary cause lethargy - but they are immobile - unless maybe if you are hasted when you go in. I have not tested that. I’m eager to hear what you think!!
Side note: As a designer, I would have to say that these thumbnail titles are quite inefficient - I'm referring to the actual titles in the thumbnail graphics. Potential viewers tend to skim through videos looking for what they want and titles need to give adequate info while still being attractive. Eg, a title like "These LEVEL 3 spells are OP!" or something less clickbaity like "BEST LEVEL 3 SPELLS RANKED pt1" would do much better versus a design with almost no info such as "What you need"
Funny enough, ive only used counterspell on 1/5 playthroughs. Definitely seems like a nice to have that would make some fights easier, but I just havent felt like I needed it. When I have it, its cool, but when I dont, I just use other solutions to the problem. More often than not, the times i actually want counterspell I want it to counterspell enemy counterspells.
You mentioned that with Crusader's Mantle characters must make about 11 hits to surpass the effectiveness of a fireball, but that should be considered over the duration of its cast right? I would think that it should be very easy to get up to 11 hits in even just two rounds of combat, when considering a martial class's extra attack or even just a handful of summons. Also this is damage applied to enemies scattered around and not just in a singular aoe.
I normally only have some minor quibbles with your rankings, but can I humbly suggest that you have hugely undervalued bestow curse: dread? If you can cast this with boosted spell save DC (eg arcane acuity), and/or with enemy disadvantage (eg staff of cherished necromancy), you can make powerful enemies repeatedly just skip turns. It’s not at all like hold person because it’s not cancelled when they make a single save, and it can be cast on any enemy and immediately prior to combat. You won’t want this in every fight, but the fights it’s useful for are the ones that matter. B tier absolute worst, and on the right build it can be S tier. I’d comfortably have it at A tier. I also agree with others that glyph of warding is minimum A tier. Its flexibility to do different damage types as well as cc without concentration makes it a must prepare spell. The only reason I’m not completely sold on it being S tier is the relatively small AoE, which can make it a little situational
I think the downsides on haste are pretty significant, having a character get stunned when you lose concentration. It's also available in pot and grenade form and the only time I've found the spell truly excellent is when you twin spell it with meta magic. I'd put haste in A but I often differ in opinion. The only thing in the video I disagree with so far is beacon of hope in that beacon also maximizes healing potions for your party allowing very solid bonus action healing on hard fights.
Fear appeared at Tier A between Counterspell and Crusaders Mantle. I spent ten minutes relistening thinking i missed a spell that was not on the index. For dummies like me you may want to edit in an explanation where that appears so they don’t do what I did.
No, I don't long rest after every fight..... But taking on but taking on moonrise pop but taking on moonrise Tower after destroying the last light inn was exhausting to say the least. Definitely one fight you need to Long rest after
Doesn't beacon of hope work with potions, allowing you to hit max value with every bonus action? I know you can't have both spirit guardians and sanctuary up, that would just be unfair... but Beacon with sanctuary? You can just throw out heals for max, or let others consume with their spare actions with no risk of losing the concentration. I've won many a fights with spirit guardians though, so I'm biased to always pick my woodchipper, but I can definitely see it being usable.
Animate dead is S tier imo late game, after getting the staff of cherished necromancy. It makes it hard for me to walk past corpses because having 3 free ghouls is just nothing but upside. Without abusing that staff, A is fine for sure. Elemental weapon sort of sucks, but with the illithid freecast power I think it's an ok damage augment for prebuffing
there is a staff that comes with counter spell its called the staff of interruption, im not sure if it can be upcast though, i wish i could count the times beacon of hope helped my party i say it deserves a bump to B- i will say it needs a few things make it better that much better but if you are running a cleric and dont need to concentrate on anything else. I say it pairs well with items that give bless and blade ward from act 1 a nice cherry on top since your already healing your party anyway.
Daylight Spell has a lot more relevance in Act 1 & 2, than in Act 3. #1 Improves Ranged Attack distance, even for characters with Darkvision. #2 A lot of enemies have debuffs in daylight... Underdark & Shadow Curse. I'd pop it up at least 1 Tier to C, it makes battles a lot easier.
Not sure if you read your comments and react to them but here goes nothing. I've seen many tier lists for spells. None as comprehensive as this. But what I am always looking for and can never find is WHICH spells are the best to take in general troughout a playthrough. A sort of tierlist for that. I like playing classes like Sorcerer and Warlock, who only get to switch out spells on level up. So you're usually stuck with what you take. How do I choose between the pletora of damage and CC spells that are offered to my class? For example as a Warlock, I get Hunger of Hadar, but what do I take to round off my kit? Do I take Command or Hold Person/Monster. Do I also take Eyebite or do I take a 6th level damage or utility spell. Do I take Fear, Hypnotic Command, Slow or Confusion? Especially if you dip, you have even less learned spells. Most guide makers never go over this. Maybe you could make a guide specifically aimed at classes that aren't able to switch out spells out of combat so that they have the most versatile and well-equipped kit of spells they can have for the majority of the game?
I do read all my comments and try to reply to as many as I can! For level by level spell breakdowns, you might want to check out my class guides and builds for those classes - I go over spell selections in detail for every level for those builds!
Hmmm... I wonder if the Gith proficiency feature can be turned towards their casting modifier to get proficiency on the Counterspell check. I know at least in tabletop, Bard's Jack of All trades works on it.
I had been so annoyed at how Counterspell was nerfed in the game, but it turns out it wasn't and the game just lies to you that it doesn't work like tabletop.
Always make sure I have like 5 gaseous form scrolls saved up so astarion can get into the vaults at counting house… only time I’ve ever used that. Haste come on def S tier it’s haste literally the one spell I use the most in the game, it’s also the only one I’ll sanc my caster and just hide them just to be sure they don’t lose concentration, fuck sometimes I’ll have a transmutation wizard at camp making proficiency in con saves stones too just to be fukn sure you know… but like not often coz it’s annoying fuking around with camp exploits tbh…
no disagreements so far... possibly a "surprise" coming with haste not going S tier? pots are just better, bonus action use and no concentration, and while only 3 turns, you'll be killing most encounters within that if being efficient. the haste effect is gamebreaking, but the spell isn't the best application.
When I have counter spell set to ask me before triggering, it gives me several options, of different level counters, but how do I know which level to use to counter that spell? If I can counter an incoming spell with a level 3, 4 or 5 counter, for example, which do I use? It only tells me the name of the incoming spell, not the level.
Feign Death is a pretty shitty spell, BUT, it's not completely worthless. With how stupid the ai allies can be sometimes, having the ability to use feign death + sanctuary on them makes them neigh unkillable. I rarely use it, but it keeps Isobel safe fron being kidnapped bc she decided to play like a goof, or I got shafted by rng
I wonder how often you're supposed to Counterspell if you are self-imposing limits on long rests. There's a lot of asymmetry, as it's always more of a beat-em-up than a Street Fighter in terms of the number of enemies. I assume it's still really strong but you might be really selective about it.
Am I the only that never cared about wet effect lol are yall really wasting turns to wet 2 mobs like everyone keeps talking about it and I get it can be good be seems wayyyy overated
Omg, why isn't there a "Bacon of Hope" spell?! That would be an amazing single turn buff, or maybe it'd work as a distraction against monsters, haha! 'Throw Bacon' and 'Consume' would be natural bacon-related actions.
