GATHERING POWER - BG3 Spells Tier List - Level 2 Part 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- Let's talk about the general principles you can use to build strong characters. Want to never need a build guide again? This is the video for you!
Hang on. I may not have thought this plan through.
Today we're talking about level 2 spells, which is where your character truly begins to come into their own! Covers the first half of level 2 spells, from Aid to Heat Metal
BG3 Wiki complete stats for all level 2 spells: bg3.wiki/wiki/List_of_2nd_lev...
0:00 Intro
2:39 Aid
6:43 Arcane Lock
9:06 Barkskin
11:08 Blindness
13:12 Blur
14:57 Branding Smite
17:33 Calm Emotions
20:31 Cloud of Daggers
23:49 Crown of Madness
25:39 Darkness
27:35 Darkvision
29:42 Detect Thoughts
32:02 Enhance Ability
34:49 Enlarge/Reduce
37:13 Enthrall
38:50 Flame Blade
41:00 Flaming Sphere
44:01 Gust of Wind
46:14 Heat Metal - เกม
While i don't think it ultimately effects the ranking, one good thing to mention with flaming sphere is that it is immune to psychic, necrotic, poison and fire damage, and resists slashing, piercing, bludgeoning, acid, lightning and radiant damage. It is vulnerable to cold, but that is an uncommon occurance. Flaming sphere is incredibly tanky at almost every stage of the game.
Enhance ability is amazing in honor mode. There are so many crucial ability checks that solve encounters or provide permanent rewards in this game.
The more I watch this guy the more it becomes obvious that he just doesn't know the game that well. Aid is S tier? Flaming Sphere is A tier? But Enhance Ability is C tier? I use exactly one of those spells regularly, and I think you know which one it is.
@@garyco766 I think he’s generally pretty knowledgeable. Just a few bad calls. Aid really is busted on a party with summons.
@@garyco766 As mentioned this is assuming that you aren't long resting constantly, in which case expending a level 2 spell slot on something that is better-handled by a cantrip or by a slot item is really not great
@@RagnellAvalon I think you probably upcast Aid if you’re gonna make it worth it. You can really build a tanky army in this game with party that can summon ghouls, skeletons, multiple familiars, elementals, planar allies, etc.
@@Yobolight Yeah Aid is VERY good. More HP will never be 'bad', the question is how good it is versus the expenditure to receive it
The live HTML was amazing and potentially my favorite part
Glad someone enjoyed it! :P
Darkness is amazing for pick-pocketing and serves as a poor man's Globe of Invulnerability. It's indispensable in the standoff during the Shadow Curse quest.
My favorite is the cloak that casts it when you disengage, I've used it to rob every npc literally blind in broad daylight.
“Standoff” in Shadow Curse quest? Im 400 hours in and I am still sometimes confused by references to events in game. What’s that?
@doloresabernathy9809 maybe when Halsin goes into the shadowfell to rescue Thaniel
Right yes I have done that but skipped it in Honor mode, for time. Thanks for the reminder!
Darkness is S tier - but arrows of darkness are serious competition for it.
My favorite use for Heat Metal is on enemies who cannot be disarmed, and casting it as high level as I possibly can. That let's you make SURE the weapon won't be dropped, it let's you cast other damaging spells or non-concentration control spells as your action, and then possibly Bonus Reapply the damage. It's one of the main way I managed a fight in Act 3 (Balanced mode in my 1st playthrough) where a really scary enemy with a LOT of attacks was non-stop getting Sanctuary-ed by one of his allies (trying to keep this spoiler free).
Also, if an enemy has both metal armor and weapons, a fun 2 character combo can be Command Drop (from a Cleric, Fiends Warlock or Paladin) or Disarming Attack (from a Battle Master, with the added bonus of extra damage), followed by casting Heat Metal if the enemy has been disarmed.
Enjoying your tier lists!
Enhance Ability on a Bard really feeds into a jack of all trades theme. You are suddenly the best at lock-picking, talking, or any other skill. Plus each version has a small bonus buff. It’s even more powerful on Tactician or Honor Mode; unlike Friends, it will not anger NPCs.
Blur is very good if you are trying to solo the game. Blur on something like a monk (cast via scroll) or Eldrich Knight is very good. I think for normal play your rating is probably right, but there is a niche case where it can be quite good.
True! Eldritch Knight is the best user for the spell (outside of scrolls). But as you say, one build getting some reasonable niche value out of the spell is exactly what a marginal tier is for :D
Great work! Learning more use-cases for numerous spells is so helpful in Honor Mode
Thanks very much! Glad it's helping :D
Big fan of your presentation and style. 🙂 You make great points, even if I don't always agree with you.
Thanks so much for the support! I really appreciate it :D And thanks! I love it when people disagree with me, I've also learned a ton from the comments!
I'm looking forward to discussions. 🙂
To start our arguing off, you warned against Shield of Faith. But it synergizes so well with high Armor Class builds.
The +2 AC doesn't matter much to characters with low or moderate AC. But at low level, it can make heavy armor characters very hard to hit -- especially combined with the Shield spell. I probably wouldn't use it past a certain point, but at low levels it's great. Or at least that's my opinion. 🙂
just a fun fact about detect thoughts, while it's not normally useful outside of dialogue. it's worth noting that when manually cast it counts as a concentration spell and lasts all day (until concentration is broken)
which means that MINOR SPOILER:
You can use it to cast
the Illithid power Concentrated blast
at any time (like at the start of a fight)
and if you got the passive to make Illithid powers a bonus action, means you could start a fight cast concentrated blast, and then cast a new actually useful concentration spell on the same turn.
just a neat little trick.
True! That's definitely an interesting use since it's resource-free!
Nice combo
A better way is to cast guidance as that's concentration
@@noinim3013 Yes however I think only clerics and druids have access to guidance, but detect thoughts (while a spell and not a cantrip) is available to a lot more classes.
@@vennicerunnos The Cantrips True Strike and Dancing Lights also work
Enhance ability is S tier, if you have proficiency it all but guarantees success for any given check, especially if you combine it with guidance. Detect thoughts and Enlarge have potion equivalents that you can get pretty easily, so if you carry those with you, you never really have a need for either spell since you can get access to it without spending a spell slot or using concentration
Agree. Casting this on party face Act 2 clears initial encounter from Kar'niss, Thisobald Thorm, Mauls Thorm, and Yurgir. Insane value in honor mode.
I rolled double 1s with advantage the other day. Very painful. 1/400 chance
With Cloud of Daggers, i love using ice or grease surfaces to keep enemies in it.
Flameblade has some specific uses that definitely bump it out of D-tier and are good Enough to make builds around. The main one is it's a non concentration way to trigger the Pyroquickness Hat that gives an extra Bonus Action. Open with a fire spell action like fireball, giving you an extra Bonus Action, now you can cast flame blade into your offhand and still make an ofdhand attack with it that same turn. Every time after that your offhand attack with flameblade itself triggers the extra Bonus action giving you two offhand attacks with it per turn.
But to really optimise you can upcast flame blade to lvl 4 to get it to 4d6 and you do this on Thief multiclass dip, where it then gets three offhand attacks per turn. That means by the 2nd round you're doing 12d6 per turn from your offhand attacks, using your spell modifier and not needing a feat if your use a light weapon in your main hand. It's a very viable gish build that leaves your Actions free for spell casting.
Love your tier lists, keep doing them, they're great. One thing I found with flame blade because I was playing a Sword Bard Mephistopheles Tiefling, the Defensive Flourishes actually work with them. Still not a great spell, but in the right build, it can still do better than expected
Thanks very much! Flame Blade is actually a spell I really want to do more of a deep dive on at some point, I feel like there has to be *something* cool you can do with it. Its damage is weak but maybe critical hit builds could benefit from just having more dice.
Upcasted flame blade in offhand is fun
Calm emotion shuts down a lot of honor mode bosses' additional rage effect, such as the owlbear and the spider matriarch fight. The fact it was always prepared on knowledge cleric is one of those things I didn't expect to have such a large impact, but it did.
Enhance Ability is secretly the best pickpocketing spell, Cat's Grace will give you advantage on slight of hand checks, which combined with guidance and some slight of hand boosting items, you can become a pickpocketing monster
As soon as you get the Pearl of Power Amulet (restores up to level 3 spell slot), Aid is a free cast up to level 3, the Spellcrux amulet makes it free up to level 6, making it S+ tier IMHO.
IMO it’s better to cast heroes feast with a 6th level slot and use aid at 4th/5th. since aid only gets +5 hp per level it’s not as important to cast at max level. that also leaves you with another 6th level slot for a myrmidon or deva.
aid lvl 2 is 5hp, lvl 3 is 10 (100% increase), lvl 4 is 15 (50%) increase, 5 is 20 (33% increase), 6 is 25 (25%). So as you can see it gets less and less worth it compared to what else you can do with a higher level slot. if you’re aiding a huge number of allies it can be worth it but usually it’s kind of a waste to max upcast aid.
what's fun is when we let items into the equation, you can do both. There are like 2 staves at the very least plus the spellcrux amulet that lets you cast 1 free spell at any level, letting you get aid, heroes feast, and a deva if you want without any cheesy things. Not to mention freecast if you decide to go half illithid.
Without that stuff, heroes feast is generally a better idea because of the other benefits
@@riptidetube123 Marko is good enough that it's almost never a "spare" thou, and spellpower/amulet might also not be depending on your party. So it's really only 0-2 free spells.
What I mean is, if your e.g. wizard is the one with freecast, then using it on a summon is clearly taking away a lv6 slot from a boss fight or something for that day. No different from using his lv6 slot directly in fact.
Similarly marko used on hero's feast is still 1 less ~200 dmg scorching ray on your fire sorc.
Also is swapping gear to buff really less cheese than swapping character to buff?
Tbh that seems like a total waste of a lvl 6 spell slot and your refund amulet. Given how valuable/powerful lvl 6 spells are I don't think you can ever justify casting a lvl 6 Aid unless you're a necromancer.
Heroes Feast exists, and Globe of Invulnerability making you immune to everything is way better than having extra HP from Aid. A Myrmidon summon tanking enemy attacks for you and doing damage on its own is also more useful than Aid. If you use a water Myrmidon you can combine it with Chain Lightning to 1-shot multiple wet enemies. Those are all way better uses of your lvl 6 spell slots.
re: blindness, i don’t know if it’s a bug but if you upcast it, it targets multiple enemies. unlike other single target debuffs or cc spells like command however, you can target the same creature multiple times. that makes it fantastic for bosses, you can cast it with in effect triple, quadruple, quintuple advantage and it’ll basically always hit
Love these, thanks!
Thanks very much!
Enhance Ability. Crucially, this spell, if cast by a cleric, is always available for use, as it pops up as an option when trying to pass a persuasion check, some of which are very important to make. It fits perfectly in the Situationally Useful spell (one tier higher than you had it). You may not need it often but when you do, it can be invaluable. If is was a spell you had to learn (like a wizard spell) it would have less value, but on a cleric it is a good spell and B tier all the way.
They should add an effect to arcane lock that allows you to cast it on your party as a ritual to prevent the affected characters from being disarmed. This way, it would have some marginal combat utility, particularly if your party has a lot of dual wielders.
Enhance ability, for honour mode, is absolutely S++ tier. It allows you to kill several bosses, or make them easier, throughout the game. It makes act 2 a joke. It's much more effecient to use 1 rank 2 spell slot than it is having a whole fight.
Inspiration is good, yes, but you want 3+ at all times so you can avoid game overs, or close to game overs.
All of those checks you can get advantage on for free with Friends though - EA matters for ones that aren't persuasion checks, of which there are a couple (notably the mirror and the book of thay). I could see bumping it up a tier because those are powerful effects, but most of the time you won't need a levelled slot
I think you're forgetting Enhance Ability can be used outside of dialogue. When you have the slots to spare, it's nice for Perception and Stealth, and it can be twinned.
And high DC religion or arcana checks (like mirror of loss). Or in a pinch against locks/traps (multiple other ways to get advantage on slight of hand though).
Yes - it's very good for the mirror and one or two other checks in the game, but since the most important individual skill checks are persuasion it's mostly superseded by Friends. I think you'll relevantly cast it 3-4 times in a playthrough, so it's possible I should bump it up to B tier
@Cephalopocalypse Except that on higher difficulties, friends has consequences and is more or less unusable.
@@garyco766 Most of the important persuasion checks are against characters you'll fight anyways
Enhance ability also doubles carry weight and can give hp. I love enhance ability
Shar’s Darkness is the best spell of the game, being able to spam Darkness is just insane and lets be honest, should be nerfed 😅
Gust of Wind - There are two maps I can remember where poison clouds are a problem. Gust of Wind gives your party a safe corridor to walk through. Might help in a few other niche situations. I’d call it at least C tier, because you will find it very effective in a few situations
A thing to mention about enlarge/reduce being a damage boosting spell, is that (unlike hunters mark/hex) you dont need to use your bonus action. You just get the extra damage on every melee attack no questions asked. If you have a tiger barbarian, you get that extra 1d4 on every attack they make with their cleave attacks.
something to note about arcane lock is it can be really helpful for certain things like the isobel last light fight. yes you can just use barrels but they sometimes dont work. you can have an extremely easy time defending her by just using arcane lock then killing the 3 enemies close to her.
"Blur is best used on a druid"
Eldritch knight on full heavy armor with blur and also the shield spell: Can't touch this.
'This spell is a day long' Ooooh 'Concentration spell' boooooooooooo!
Some thoughts.
Barkskin can make robes viable for druids. Somewhat of an edge case, but there are some good options out there.
Blur makes your character resistant to sneak attacks, as characters can't gain advantage on them. The very best an enemy can hope for is to roll at normal chances. But that's a really edge benefit.
Crown of madness in D tier is wild. Like maybe it’s not a great wizard spell, but you can be a bard/sorcerer and twin cast it as a bonus action with band of the mystic scoundrel, and congrats you’ve effectively banished 4 enemies. Except it’s better than banish because they’ll be damaging each other and might even kill one another. Also I’m playing on Xbox and it’s not bugged at all
Barkskin is most definitely not a D tier spell. It becomes weaker as you go up in levels, but when you first get it as a druid, the best wild shape you have is the bear. The bear has 10 AC. Going from 10 to 16 may not be an amazing upgrade since 16 is still pretty bad AC but it's definitely good and worth casting.
Fogcloud, darkness, and crucially, gust of wind, all disperse cloudkill within their area of effect. Its situational but a huge bonus to gust of wind in certain situations, like the balthazer fight. Clear (a portion of) his cloudkill while also yeeting some of his goons into the abyss
There's a debunking video by Proxy Gate Tactician called "Busting More Myths in Baldur's Gate 3" that showed that enemies don't pick up their dropped weapons unless they literally can't do anything else. If they can hit you unarmed, or run up to you to hit you next turn, the AI will prioritise those actions above picking up their weapon. So you may not need to rush to pick up an enemy's dropped weapon as you mention in 48:40. It's from 4 months ago, though, so maybe the AI has changed since then? Just thought it was worth pointing out. Please keep up the great vids.
In my own experience, enemies seem to spend their next turn picking up and equipping their weapons if they're disarmed, but it probably varies a lot. If you can pick up the enemy's weapon without putting yourself in a bad position, you might as well.
I think it depends on if the class is martial or has spell options that could be better than losing a turn re-equipping the weapon.
Interesting! That has not been my experience at all - from what I have seen in my play enemies happily pick up not only their own weapons but also any powerful weapons on the ground, including weapons you throw at them
@@Ampathetic I feel like they patched the AI on this, on release they legit never picked it back up, now it's their first move against me 7/10 times
I think that might be a difficulty thing, on balanced they never picked up a disarmed weapon.But on tactician or higher i've found they pick them up, if they can, at least 90% of the time.
You’re missing out on Flame Blade’s best feature. You can summon it in your off hand, which doesn’t get your proficiency bonus anyway. 3d6 in your off hand when you’re duel-wielding in melee is pretty huge
And you can make a whole build around this with the Pyroquickness hat since flame blade attacks trigger the hat's extra Bonus action feature...
Gust is situationally useful for dungeons with clouds of poison, in turn based mode you can clear a path through the cloud and avoid taking the damage to get to the vent to disarm.
Enhance ability is actually rly good to steal or to make potions with a Alchemy Mage, which is allways on base 😅
I wouldnt say critical to have, but an A tier foro sure
You mentioned a d16 under the Blade Ward bit. It should totally be in the game. 🙂
I advocate for that die type. It covers that big gap between the d12 and d20.
If you don't have a d16 (they're not part of most die sets), you can create a flat distribution of 1-16. Roll 1d8, and any other die (the mod die): if even add +0, if odd add +8. Or use heads/tails for the mod.
Might be fun to build a system around such a gimmick. I have ideas.🤔
Totally unrelated but a common problem in game design is that one is too big. The difference between zero and one is infinite, and the difference between 1 and 2 is *double.* A lot of designers (Hearthstone is a prominent example) start their system at 2 or 3 so they can get around that problem without using fractions. Just a cool thing to consider I think!
Re: Darkness.
It's one more reason why I bloody love Wyll. Not just his super likeable personality, but also as a party member.
Eldridge Blast, Cloud of Daggers*, and darkness.
*Which allowed me to bottleneck and clear out the outside of the shattered sanctum after countless wipes so I could continue the bloody story because me and the guy I was playing with forgot to get the fucking waypoint. >.
The thing with crown of madness is that when I’ve used it on an enemy, it makes the other enemies also target that one enemy which can nullify multiple enemy’s turns. My first playthrough I used it on Zrell to start combat and her teammates killed her on the first round before she could even do anything lol not sure if it still does that but if it does that’s a huge effect for a level 2 spell
The words "Arcane Lock" and "useless" do not belong in the same sentence. A well-placed Arcane Lock can provide an enormous tactical advantage depending on the encounter.
You should listen to what I say about the spell :)
@Cephalopocalypse Arcane Lock doesn't by nature "break" encounters. It tactically closes off a pathway from enemy passage for precisely as long as you wish, allowing you to funnel the enemies where you want or buy yourself time to prepare for their arrival. Nothing encounter breaking or exploitative about it, just another tactic to employ. And enemies definitely do try to break down the doors. I think the AI only seems to do it if they have a decent chance of actually breaking the door, so they wont waste their turn hitting a door with high toughness. And as for stacking crates in front of the door, the enemies can still open the door and use ranged attacks, or just break those flimsy crates faster than most doors. I've even seen them jankily climb over the crates if the crates don't quite line up right. And of course the bigger the door, the less practical stacking crates is.
I really have gotten a surprising amount of use out of arcane lock. To say that "in tabletop, its just a roleplaying spell," and in bg3 "it's main use is just an abusive AI breaking... exploit," I respectfully disagree.
Sounds a little Bit rude my Friend ,even when you are right
That's fair enough. I did sound a little snippy at the end. I edited my comments to sound a bit less disrespectful. I still stand by all my points. A lot of people say Arcane Lock is useless but if you start looking for opportunities to use it, you'll be surprised how often it comes in handy. Especially given how easy it is to get ALL the spells you could want as a wizard from scrolls, you don't need to sacrifice anything to pick up Arcane Lock.
Enlarge can be used in conjunction with Bless if you want a specific carry to kill everything. I would trade a Wizard concentration for it any day.
Barkskin is a prime exemple of how the oversimplification of the mechanics in DnD 5e is destroying spells and effects.
Back when natural armor was a thing, Barkskin made total sense to use, it was a non-stacking natural armor boost to AC (normaly natural armor is the only armor type that can be stacked with itself, but barkskin being a spell is doesn't get to stack with already existing natural armor, balancing it in higher level when characters might have more natural armor). And it was great, very powerful at lower level as it was +4AC. 5e removing every armor types to just have "armor class" makes barkskin totaly useless, because if it was turned into a raw +4 to AC it would be busted at higher levels and mage armor would become pointless.
I swear the more I see what 5e did to the rules the more I feel sad people actualy play this bare-boned version of the game (where half of the bonus you get is the so boring "get advantage", because apparently people are too dumb and lazy to keep track of basic additions...)
Flame Blade - a few things you left out about it that made me sad. It's a weapon that uses your casting stat to hit, so gishes like it. It lasts for 10 turns, so you can precast it and then go into the fight with it in hand and still have all your actions available. Even if you don't precast, it's one bonus action in the first turn and then you have it for the rest of the fight It's upcastable, so if you burn a level 6 spell slot (not that you would, but bear with me), now you have a light weapon that hits with your Wisdom and does 5d6 damage. Did I mention it's a weapon? Any gear you have or any class abilities that increase weapon damage will affect the flame blade, so Strange Conduit, Hellforged gloves, etc. Lastly it's light, so it can go in your offhand and give you a nice weaponized bonus action if that's something you want (though you can't hit with Dex, which is annoying). It also looks cool!
Edit: had the upcast damage wrong.
Let me add to this.
Flame Blade always uses your primary casting ability stat to hit, which means, it is very good in multiclassing and is free TWF if you use it in your offhand (since it will still use your casting stat to hit). It procs all weapon item abilities in addition to some spell ones, like the pyro hat that gives you an additional offhand attack. It also Nova's pretty well with another spell he doesn't like, Searing Strike. If you have Elemental Ability: Fire, you can do crazy damage as a Druid/Paladin. It also synergizes as well with Spores as any Druid build can, so that was a complete false comment.
@@jkap9828 I was actually curious as to whether or not it would proc pyroquickness hat. Good to know it does!
In my experience heat metal makes them drop weapon, i can recast it if they pick it up again, but interestingly it stays as available for bonus action even after the enemy is dead and you cant recast it to someone else obviously. But everytime i use it i feel like it makes exactly 5 dmg each time i recast it.
I believe gust of wind can dispel gaseous aoe like fog cloud, cloudkill? Not too sure but i vaguely remember doing that. I only really utilized it in orin fight against other enemies as they have sanctuary and the aoe is pretty big so i pushed few enemies at once which thunderwave wouldnt allow in that fight. Though i think i used scrolls, and you will have scrolls of it at that point so no need to keep it learned and spend a spell slot. I guess it would be useful in Nere encounter too but otherwise not really useful
cloud of daggers is also really useful when there is an entrance between you and a bunch of enemies, you pop it in there and watch as the fools walk through it and get shredded before even getting to you. also i feel like it damaging everyone on your turn if you cast it on them, and then right afterwards on their turn is a little weird
I agree! The timing rules on spells in bg3 are weird, and different from tabletop in some odd ways. Most of the equivalent spells in tabletop happen on the *caster's* turn, so there's no weird double dipping and the timing rules are much more consistent across different spells.
Gust of Wind also clears up clouds which can give it additional utlitiy in some situations but still not great spell.
Something I want to add to Heat Metal.
Yes, the enemy will more than likely pick their weapon back up, BUT
If you use this against martial enemies (for instance, the "Paladin of Tyr" or Dror Ragzlin") who are incredibly tough enemies because of their weapons or skills with weapons, forcing them to spend their only action to pick up the weapon again is effectively a stun, since their bonus action economy is terrible. This is still an incredibly powerful spell, I love it. Plus, if they keep failing saving throws, its an effective stun-lock on a bonus action and a level 2 spell slot
I was still figuring out the game when I reached the Nere fight and totally wrecked him with Cloud of Daggers.
Cloud of daggers has been critical in my play through. Having two overlapping with will and gale won me the fight against Thorm.
Cloud of Daggers is so embarrassing for every other damage spell. Not only is it no save, it's also just straight up more single target damage than dedicated single target nukes!
What was the setup, did you just make a wall in front of your characters so nobody would get within melee of them? There’s still ranged spells and other attacks. How did you use it?
Can you plz tell me how you beat Ketheric because he one shotd twe party members in one turn in my playthrough, Lae'zel is only one who standing and she misses alot
i did not realize cloud of daggers was guaranteed damage and dealt damage at the start of enemy turns. (assumed it could miss and triggered at the start of casters next turn, like spirit guardians)
that makes me go from considering it C tier, to S tier.
although you are dead wrong about enhance ability.
it is essentially a level 2 spell slot to get advantage on EVERY SKILL CHECK IN THE GAME.
granted most skill checks are char in which case friends *can* be better, but friends has a failure chance too so its not even outperformed and not ALL skill checks are char, some are wisdom or int, even strength. you could possibly consider it in a similar vien to calm emotions where you might not always want it prepared, but you would always want access to it. it is also worth noting that the spells have additional effects along with the advantage, most notably the con one giving temp HP.
early game i will sometimes cast the bear version at someone before a combat encounter, as temp HP and advantage on con is actually kinda nice to have without a action cost attached even if there are better ways to concentrate mid-late game. (and the spell is so flexible it almost certainly has potential in some strategies, such as if you wanted grease in a choke point but still wanted your barbarian to be in the fray possibly blocking them from leaving the grease without a opportunity attack, you could cast the dex one on the barb)
I always felt like crown of madness just never worked, nice to know it's not just me
Tbh, Crown of Madness has been my favorite spell. I have had a strong goblin take out three weaker ones while those three damaged the strong one's health to near zero by the end, without me doing anything about it. My party was busy with other enemies and that one mad enemy did all the work for me. When it works i find it amazing and i struggle to see how command can be better, since crown of madness takes an enemy out of combat (effectively for you), AND it makes enemies attack and damage each other for multiple rounds. How the hell can command be better than that?? That seems absurd to me.
I’m on my 2nd playthrough going for Minty. Knocked her out at shattered sanctum, cleared all of the main act 1 map AND the under dark run to moonrise and she wasn’t there. I did something wrong. I spent all day Saturday on this. So I went way back to a save about 12 game hours earlier and attacked the grove with minthara, rushed it to moonrise and she was there! Successfully recruited her. Interesting thing is I can go back to act 1 and do quests (some are voided and undoable now obviously) for needed loot BUT Minthara will ONLY stay in Act 2. She has dialogue explaining that those were her “Absolute” days and wasn’t herself and wants to put all that behind her. That’s fine, I just had to get her in my party, I love her character!
Nice! I've heard the new recruiting method where you knock her out is buggy, which is really annoying since as you found out the hard way it takes so long to learn whether your game is bugged or not. Glad you got her this time around!
Enhance ability is critical when trying to pickpocket anyone. With the Dex modifier it makes picking items almost impossible to fail
Enhance ability is pretty important in honor mode.
Branding smite on ranged attacks w multiclass Swords Bard can be very good. D tier a bit too harsh. Thanks for these lists & guides.
Yep, the fact that it can be used on ranged attacks does give it more of a niche - but then you're still spending a level 2 spell slot and a bonus action for 2d6 damage. I just don't think that's a good trade!
Please more Tierlist
I don't see any other comments stating this, which I find a little surprising because I've already run afoul of it a few times, but Darkness is completely useless against creatures with Darkvision. Seems obvious, but I'm still early in the game and haven't gotten used to examining every enemy I encounter. It was a surprise when I set Wyll up in Darkness and the gnoll archers filled him with arrows. >
I used Gust of Wind once from a scroll. To clear the cloudkill the mummy lord cast in his house.
I was wondering if you could make an ultimate pick pocket build
Bark skin for monks with no armor? What’s your thoughts on taking 1 level cleric, 11 open hand monk to get heavy armor?
Barkskin counts as armor so will sadly turn off unarmored defense and fast movement for a monk, so I wouldn't recommend it. Heavy armor monks *can* be good - the only thing you lose is fast movement, but you get to dump wis and deprioritize dex which makes you much less MAD so there's some real advantages as well (especially if you don't like chugging elixirs)
What if you Reduce a dragon and then try to grapple it with Enlarge character? Probably to throw somewhere hazardous.
Regarding Branding Smite, can't you use this AND a smite at the same time? With guarantee critical from mindflayer power, won't it turn into a huge amount of damage?
You can, though thunderous smite is the same damage for a lower level slot, so if you really need 2d6 extra you should just use that.
Im going with the masses on this one, enhance ability deserve a higher slot. All of the physical enhance abilities give you an additional affect, temp hp, double carry weight, or resistance to fall damage. But I'd say B tier and no higher. Im in act 3 honor mode currently and i dont believe ive used it outside the mirror of loss. In most cases, youre correct. You have enough bonuses to pass a skill check with ease and done need the advantage. Youre waisting a spell slot. But from act 3. Act 1 and 2 i used it a great deal. Act 1 is the scarriest (personally and thus far) since you dont have many levels or gear for builds so passing checks become vital. That wears down over time, over levels. Now, with limited long rests? I havent tried it, and no i dont burn all my spells and run to a long rest after every fight, however the spell slot vs spell affect might not be worth it then. I dont know enough to fairly comment
I won't say it's not S, but I have found a lot of enemies to be capable of shooting into Darkness or will at least resort to throwing alchemist fire into it. This doesn't happen if you sneak, so it's still incredible for rogues, but I've found it to be a lot less of an invulnerability circle. I've also had NPCs become hostile because of casting darkness in them, and it has forced shovel into combat despite being stealthed, I assume because of the blind effect.
I think they fixed the AI handling darkness because I used to cast it and it would complete break the ai combat
Aid even cast with active party is top tier man, in act 1 you can cast at level 2 or 3 and recover the spell slot with necklace from omelleum and act 2 can cast at any higher level and recover with necklace from prison warden, act 3 can use freecast to cast at level 6…. You never actually need to waste a spell slot on it
Can just use bark skin potion too if you really wanna use it….
Enhance ability top tier on a swords bard tbh wtf else you using your spell slots on…
Heat metal works fine for me, always use it on paladins they never pick their weapons back up or I’ve never seen it, but yeah it does always target weapon…
Calm emotions is inferior to Protection from Evil and Good. Protection does the same, as long as you're fighting the right enemy types (harpies included), and also gives disadvantage on attack rolls against you. In addition it's also a level 1 spell and lasts until long rest or until you break concentration.
Yet you put Protection in C and Calm Emotions in B.
There are so many encounters where protection can be used. Harpies, auntie ethel, the spectator, all undead (most of act 2), meenlocks, meazles, yurgir and his merrigons and the cloaker just to name a couple. Besides, Protection is very widely available, you can easily find scrolls of it so anyone can use it or have a wizard learn it, whereas Calm Emotions has to be learned by a cleric, bard or Archfey warlock.
Protection hits one target and is melee range - you can't easily protect your whole party thanks to the concentration requirement and it's a much less efficient use of slots. Calm Emotions is aoe and ranged so you only need one spell slot, it protects everyone, and is much more usable reactively if you don't know an enemy has charm in advance. Grabbing protection from scrolls *is* very good, but is actually a reason to rate it *lower* since that makes you less likely to want to actually learn the spell.
did they ever fix crowd of madness?
Cutting off right before Hold Person is really funny to me, it's like "come back next week to see where we place this spell" even though everybody and their mother knows exactly where it belongs lmfao
You might be surprised!
@@Cephalopocalypse I saw the video and I *fundamentally* disagree
First, most of it is based around something that actually isn't true : for the first turn at lrast the check happens at the end of the turn so you don't need two failed saving throws for the enemy to lose a turn, so the entire thing on which the analysis hinges doesn't hold (wink wink), and second, even if it *did* work like that, Hold Person would still be amazing as that would still allow everyone in Melee range to have guaranteed Crit which by Level 5 would by itself average out way more damage with just one Martial character in range than any 2nd level spell could dream of (outside of Spike Growth against a full cluster of enemy), and if it's a *Paladin* that's in Melee range then forget it, this will shred.
Hold Person is legitimately in contention for best spell in the game with a ton of versatility and almost every instance of it resolving absolutely changes the fight and gives you a massive edge (as long as you know who to target of course but at this point, same could be said for almost any high value spell, but Hold Person is one of the most consistently excellent ones and one that I would never pass on
one extremely niche us that I love for enlarge/reduce and I only use it in the couple fights where applicable is owl bear from the top rope. in those fights its s-tier. Otherwise I never use it
i think the crown of madness isnot the only one thats bugged with the enemies ignoring it, cause i remember being wacked by enemies right after casting sanctuary on myself in honour mode and dying horribly
Yeah - they supposedly fixed a couple cases where sanctuary wasn't working in patch 6, so hopefully that's been addressed!
Would blur work well with the eldritch knight?
Its probably the best spell to concentrate on a solo fighter. Its really good
Yes! Eldritch Knights and Land Druids are the best users for Blur in terms of gaining benefit, and EK's don't really have anything better to concentrate on so they're definitely the best use case. For them it's not a bad spell
My 2 cents.. Cloud of Daggers is A tier not S tier.
It's a good spell, particularly early on. There are plenty of fights were it comes down and does a lot of work. But the damage really falls off after the mid game - in addition this damage is physical (slashing), which a ton of enemies have resistance to (especially as the game goes into later acts).
The radius of the effect is also very small, so while you can get 2 targets, more than that is not all that easy to pull off unless you can funnel enemies through it. This spell has no slow effect attached to it, so it has to be paired with another spell or tactic to get extended use out of the spell on the same targets. There are environmental situations you can take advantage of (slapping this down in a doorway for example), but mobs can shoot through it and I have found the AI handles cloud of daggers reasonably well.
The thing is, even if you only get one enemy for one turn, it's *still* the best single-target damage spell at level 2 (technically moonbeam and scorching ray are marginally more damage, but those both have saves/hit rolls). The *floor* on the spell is better than the *ceiling* on almost every other spell, and that's assuming the worst case scenario!
Arcane Lock isn't useless at all. In fights like the Tribunal or Ragzlin or Gut or the brawl before the Inquisitor where a boss calls for help to people beyond a door, arcane lock is invaluable because it locks any reinforcements out for 10 turns, which seems like exactly the intended purpose of the spell and not an exploit in the slightest.
That sounds like exactly what he said in the video lol
Also: Darkness has no scroll according to wiki so you have to learn it from leveling. and i’ve never seen a scroll for it.
Darkness sucks imo. Arrows of Darkness cost a fraction of a martial’s action, don’t cost concentration or a spell slot and they do the same thing. This is a very low tier spell to me.
A lot of people don't like to use consumables other than healing potions.
Gust of wind to remove clouds of stuff
Gust of Wind clears clouds (unique effect?) and gives advantage on attack rolls. Comparing it to shove is silly
"blindness is a pretty good condition"
The video says Blindness doesn't allow another save. This is false. I was sure I'd seen enemies save against it after the first save, so I booted up the game, cast Blindness on a random goblin and sure enough she saved against it every turn until she made the save and the condition was gone.
You can use the spell to give an enemy disadvantage/advantage for one turn, or prevent an opportunity attack etc, but in general it isn't good, it targets a strong save and gives another save every turn. Using raven familiar to blind an enemy for a turn does more or less the same thing, usually has higher chance to happen because it's attack roll instead of save and is a ritual spell you can precast. I would rate blindness a weak spell
My bad! I was going off memory and the wiki but apparently that was fixed in a patch to be in line with the tabletop version - used to only be one save. At save ends I think C tier is probably fine - definitely worse than Hold Person but still usable in boss fights against nonhumanoids.
I don’t rmb aid stacking in honour mode tho
I think there are a few things you got wrong with flaming sphere, and it probably deserves S-Tier.
Firstly flaming sphere does not act independently, insteat it is controlled by you,
secondly there is no saving throw when it attacks (probably a bug), it just allway hits.
Edit: Got correctet in the comments. He ment that the sphere has a seprate turn, and there is a save, it just reduces the damage instead of causing a miss.
Sorry for the confusion! By "acts independantly" I meant "doesn't require the caster's turn, since it gets its own turn" - in tabletop, you need to use your bonus action to move and attack with it, so I was trying to make that distinction.
The enemies do get a save, it's just for half damage, so it will always do *something,* just might be very little damage.
@@Cephalopocalypse
My bad then, I just remember it not missing througout the entire act 1 and figured that there just isnt a save.
Thanks for correcting me.
Lmao Harpy fight is so easy, use a lvl 1 wizard spell to jump across the area to hit the one in the back easy. also very useful for the hag fight as well as magic missle.
Mush i like your videos but 50 min Time is money wow , i might as well move in😂
For all intents and purposes bless should be a level 2 spell
Cloud or daggers combines itself so well with other spells that freeze opponents/ slow opponents. I found that fear and hunger of hadar, plant growth make an already incredible spell broken. I also had no idea aid was so good, appreciate that information!
And I have to disagree with enhance abilities placement here. I find the game tends to overly reward/overly punish characters who pass dialogue checks. Cats grace and the charisma one are so strong and saying something like advantage adds 4 to rolls has not been true in terms of just how valuable advantage is.
Taking away the chance to roll a natural 1 because of advantage is already huge, you’re also doubling the chance of a critical success roll. You also can cast this from shadow heart back home on a character like Astarion who wants to steal stuff,, but not go out adventuring with her, thereby allowing him to keep his cats grace that she casted on him the entire day, which is something a stealth archer very much wants.
Finally, the negative aspect of the friends cantrip being possibly that it will possibly aggro the NPC’s you cast it on, or causing members of your party to disapprove of you that you cast friends on doesn’t happen because eagles splendor isn’t cast on them, but on you. This means advantage on charisma checks with no drawbacks. Bulls strength with a strong melee character means your shoving everyone off of cliffs, and whatever benefit you want lasts all day, not 10 rounds or something like that. Cats grace, Eagle Splendor, and Bulls strength are all wrapped up into 1 level 2 spell slot that lasts all day and can be cast from a party member you weren’t even going to use that day. It’s an easy S tier in my opinion.
Crown of Madness is worth using for one key fight (Spoilers Below for Shadowhearts Act 3 Quest)
In the fight against Viconia DeVir in The House of Grief landing a Crown of madness on her (not recommended as she has legendary resistance) or one of the 2 Dark Justiciars that are present (you can easily make crown a 100% on these guys) will practically win the fight as not only will the person you Crown hit their allies with a massive damage (Viconia generally uses Blight while the Justiciars will use Divine Smite) But also at least half of the other enemys in the room will use their turns attacking the person you Crowned.
Holy shit that is fantastic advice. I’m gonna have to try it out
Without devil's sight, what is the strategy for Darkness?
With Fog Cloud, you can put it on enemies and get advantage on ranged attacks
But with Darkness you cant do that, and if you have neither advantage nor disadvantage on melee attacks, i guess i dont see the utility
If you dont want enemies to shoot you with ranged attacks, you can use Fog Cloud on top of them
Cast it on your group. Makes them immune to ranged attacks and melee attacks have disadvantage. On your party turns, step out of darkness - make an attack - then step back into darkness. It's pretty powerful when used this way. You don't need devil's sight to make it really good.