Class Tier Rankings for D&D 5e: Who is the best Damage Dealer?

before we get into this week's episode we have a very special announcement to make kelly and i have just launched our latest kickstarter project sebastian crowe's guide to drakenheim we're bringing this project to life with our amazing partners at ghost fire gaming who have sponsored this week's episode this new book is going to be filled with a ton of player options for you to explore including new subclasses for every core class a brand new class the apothecary also new tool feats new spells new contaminated magic and a whole ton of lore on the world of drakenheim whether you are running our original dungeons of drackenheim campaign looking for new dark fantasy inspired player options for your home games or just a fan of the world that we've created in our live streams and want to dive more into the lore of this world we're so excited to share that with you in this next project in addition to expanding the book with so many new stretch goals we've created a host of amazing gameplay accessories to bring to your game including some really amazing miniatures that we are super super proud of so if you want to keep up on everything involving this kickstarter which is currently live and running until mid-september make sure to check the links below to get in on it while you still can and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything d d including advice for players and guys for gms we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are continuing our series on ranking the classes in dungeons and dragons 5th edition and i'll bet this is one that all of you been waiting for because today we are asking the question which class is the best damage dealer in dutch the dragon's fifth edition there are many ways to deal damage in dungeons and dragons we have our martial combatants who are really excellent at dealing damage but there's also a lot of damage dealing spells and abilities and some blaster mages and all sorts of other fun ways that you can wreak havoc on your enemies but today the question is which class can reliably dish out the most damage time and time again we'd like to start off by acknowledging there's a lot of different damage dealing styles in 5e you can deal damage at melee or range you can have single target damage and you can also have aoe damage there's also distinctions to be made between sustained damage characters that can deal a high amount of damage reliably round over round over round versus characters who can do burst damage a lot of damage that is often enough to slay an enemy in a single hit there's a lot of nuances deciding which is better wish or worse and there's a lot of different variable situations where one might be stronger than the other but by and large we're looking at the big picture here of which class can kind of capture the most of these archetypes offers the most options and across all of these different damage types has something to offer it is also worth keeping in mind that when we are ranking these classes for damage dealing we need to look at the class overall specifically with damage dealing there are a lot of sub classes for some of the classes that really steer them towards being some of the best damage dealers in the game and when you start busting out the math you can actually see that there are multi-class combinations that actually are stronger by taking two maybe not as high ranked classes jamming them together and you end up with some of the best damage dealers in the game so although there are so many options and i think at this point almost every class has a sub class or a build option that you can use to turn that class into a damage dealer we want to try to look at the broad scope and decide which classes are very consistently going to be excellent damage dealers almost no matter how you build them and that's why up on the screen right now you're going to see the way that we are ranking these classes we're only going to award one s tier to whatever class we think is the best in the game and there's almost no way you can't be a damage dealer with that class keep in mind though that an a tier is still really amazing in the role really close to an s tier even in some cases and there are many many options and the class presents itself as being a really good damage dealer a beat here is a class that has several options that you need to choose but you can definitely build a good damage dealer a c tier might have one subclass or a certain build that you can make to really steer them in the direction of this party roll and the d-tier you're gonna really struggle to get them to fit into this party roll with that there's a lot to discuss so let's get rolling all right so kicking things off with the artificer in terms of damage dealing i think that the artificer is this really interesting middle ground there's a lot of cool damage dealing options here there's infusions to help you build a damage dealer there are spells to help you be a blaster you can be heavily armored and go on the front lines which allows you to continue to dish out that damage you can have the battlesmith with your companion that allows you to attack with both of them or you can have the artillerist who has their cannon and their turret and you can really deal a lot of damage with that build as well so out of the artificers i don't necessarily think that they are the greatest damage dealer in the game i do think that there are decent options here and i think that they're a b ranking i agree with that assessment i think the artificer once again demonstrates a class that has a lot of potential has a lot of options that you can choose from but you do really have to pick those options i think that in that respect the artificer is the definition of the class in a box right the damage dealer in a box if you want to put together all the pieces that the artificer offers you for example by being a battlesmith or a armored artificer who picks up the right weapon proficiencies picks up the right feats picks up the right spells chooses the right mix of infusions you could end up with a very very effective damage dealer that could be the beat down for your party depending on the the way the rest of the party is set up i will say that oftentimes to have success as a damage dealer as an artificer it is contingent on you choosing the right infusions the right spells having those feats and even being the right subclass i don't know what you're gonna do to be a damage dealer if you're gonna play an alchemist artificer on the other hand the battlesmith and the armorer offer a lot of options and the artillerist i think has good options but i've found myself surprised at how the artillerist often doesn't have the same oomph that the other artificer options do despite being presented as the damage dealer i think that there's a couple counter intuitive things there that with the artillerist in particular i think they they're one subclass that is hurt by the fact that they are the they're trying to be a spell based damage dealer but the artificer has that slow spell progression when the artificer is getting when the artillery artificer is getting fireball that's not until ninth level when other spellcasters have had that spell for several levels now and i find the intervening period with the arcane firearm well it's impressive it doesn't really let you interact with the other traditional damage dealing strategies that we might see in dnd 5e so let's talk about the barbarian i think that this is one class that we all know is advertised as a damage dealer yes it's really impossible in my opinion to play a barbarian that isn't going to be a primary damage dealer we've talked a lot about the barbarian and they've gotten a lot of d rankings in in the series but this is one place where they're not going to get that yeah this is the one place where they shine they're a good tank and they're a good damage dealer the barbarian is well suited and we're going to see this with several of the marshall classes but they're well suited to take the damage dealing feats like if you take great weapon master or polar master and you can really run into battle raging and no matter what subclass you play all of the subclasses have something that lend themselves towards you being even better at dealing damage so for that reason they were in consideration for the s tier they did not make the s tier for me though they do get a very high a in this category you nailed it the barbarian is obviously a damage dealer in all of their class features you have the encouragement to use strength-based two-handed weapons you get reckless attack giving you advantage on basically every attack that you want to have advantage on you have rage that is adding to your damage and your survivability at the same time and it is very obvious to even a casual reader of the player's handbook that great weapon master would probably be a good idea for a barbarian it's amazing how you can introduce d d5e to a new player and they can be like i want to play barbarian i want to take great weapon master and anybody can see that combination like it's it's not even like a secret right like it's just obvious and so new players love it because a plus b equals i'm having a good time and i think we'll see this as a recurring theme throughout the rest of this episode is oftentimes the classes that rank highly are the classes that play really really well with the great weapon master and its cousin and the barbarian is one of them it it just is a very natural fit um the barbarian remains strong throughout their entire career and depending on your choice of subclass you can amp their damage up into the stratosphere and certainly if you go further with the way you build your barbarian and also take polar master that's kind of the less intuitive choice i think for a lot of people they they imagine the barbarian is wielding a great axe and they want to have that fantasy so they don't think oh i'm going to pick up a up a pole axe and go further with it that's fine there's a lot of other great feats that you can choose the barbarian to amp up your damage and to create the feeling of your character and so you're still going to end up with this character that is satisfying to play as a presence on the battlefield just to jump off of what you said i have a brand new player first time playing d d at my table right now handed them the player's handbook and said you can read through this pick what you want to play they came to the table with a dwarf barbarian totem barbarian taking the bear and great weapon master and a giant sword and that's their shtick and i'm like yep you did it yeah playing d d yeah and and that is so accessible for new players it it is really easy for them to remember their abilities it's probably one of the better beginner character builds in the out there at least for players that are coming from a background of maybe video games as well and like seeing the big numbers yeah yeah as we move on to the bard uh we're doing a little bit of a reversal it's interesting that with a lot of our categories yeah we have been very much praising the spell casters the bard has gotten a lot of s tears great negotiator great infiltrator great so many of those aspects of play barred amazing when we come to damage dealing this is where i think we finally get to say bard this isn't your playground and i i will say there are options you can play a valor bard or swords bard and you can be a decent damage dealer but i think even when the bard is performing at their best for dealing damage they don't come into the same realm as the barbarian even so when i'm looking at the bard yeah you can take some blasty spells you can play a swords bar or a valor bard and there are specific ways you could be a damage dealing bard i i don't really think they're steered in that direction most of their spell list is not going to be very blasty and uh yeah i think they're a d not not like a d like yeah i i felt like this is the one time that i'm giving the bar to d and it's not a d like you suck and there's no options for you it's a d like if if you really want to play the damage dealer you gotta work for it i agree that the bard has to work for it i don't know if i would go as far as giving the bar to detail ranking for damage dealing because i do think that there are options there i just think it's going to be a bit of a struggle to get to that point because at the early levels of play before your subclass comes online and certainly for the higher level bard builds before you get that 10th level magical secrets it's a real uphill road that is an uphill road that you can fix very easily through multi-classing um and i am very impressed by what i see from for example hex blade bards or even bars that take a couple levels of fighter or otherwise but that is dipping into the toes of multi-classing that is dipping into the toes of building your character in a specific way and often for the bards that are dependent on magical secrets you either can be the lore bard that gets magical secrets early but then doesn't get extra attack or you can be the upper level bard that waits for a really long time so for quite a while there was a very popular combination for a valor bard that was to take sharpshooter and crossbow expert and get extra attack oh and then even get something like or maybe not take crossbow expert because you would take swift quiver with your 10th level magical secrets and so now you were shooting four times per turn and that is a pretty decent damage dealer albeit one that takes until 10th level to actually get their shtick happening and who is passable in that intervening period but not necessarily excelling compared to what you would get out the gate so you definitely feel like a character that can contribute in the damage area um and then is bringing all the other utility that the bard has at the same time as that but it doesn't really feel it doesn't really feel like you're totally succeeding in in all fields i think you can build some good damage dealing bards i think it really opens up when you multi-class and so for me i would give the bar to c because and and that ranking is not because there's not there's bad options it's because you have to plan the build very carefully you have to know what you're doing from the outset there are going to be several levels across that character build that are going to feel bad yeah and you're going to have to grin and bear through it and wait for several levels for the whole thing to come online and then it might be pretty good that's fair and i think my my memory of a damage dealing bard or not so much is joe playing a bard at our table and he had a rapier and every time he used it he would be like that's three damage and we were like level eight or nine and every time he kept doing it and then he'd be like why am i using my sword yeah and in a lot of cases as a bard yeah it's like why aren't you just using vicious mockery why aren't you just using any other spell why don't why aren't you just using anything else oftentimes things that don't deal damage and if you look at the bard's native spell list there's not really a lot of damage dealing options on there most of the damage dealing options come with some form of utility or battlefield control attached to them even things like synaptic static or even things like thunder wave or even things like dissonant whispers now it's interesting if you want to make the argument that the bard in fulfilling their support role brings a lot of extra damage to the table sure but we're thinking about it but that's the support role we're thinking about the direct damage dealing capability here and it is hard to find it as we come to the cleric i think the cleric is an interesting middle ground as well because the cleric for most people when they think of a cleric they think of healing support maybe a bit of utility some battlefield control they don't really think of damage dealing but on the flip side of that they're underselling the potential of damage dealing on the cleric cleric has spirit guardian spiritual weapon guiding bolt told the dead sacred flame like they have some really really powerful damage dealing spells and they can actually dish out some of the most damage on the battlefield however with their versatility of spell casting and with a cleric in the party often being relied on for the support the healing which is support but i'm gonna just say support or healing utility with with them being kind of sectioned into that they don't always gravitate immediately towards being the damage dealer and so i think we are in the realm of the exact b tier lots of options are you gonna take them if you do you're good i think the cleric inherently has the most efficient damage dealing spell casting combo out there in the form of spirit guardians plus spiritual weapon and told the dead this is a very efficient damage dealing combination because for the cost of a second level spell slot in a third level spell slot then defaulting to cantrips you have this very reliable round over round damage that you can take through an entire combat encounter because you concentrate on spiritual spirit guardians you don't have to concentrate on spiritual weapon you just use your bonus action to continue swinging with it and then you've got told the dead giving you all that additional damage we have sung the praises of this combination many times but it does have its limitations and one of those big limitations is when you run up against magic resistance and monsters with very high wisdom saving throws and oftentimes that is where you see the damage just tank on this it's still reliable and in fact it's far less susceptible to say a character who casts scorching ray and fireball and that was all the damage that they got out in that combat but you still see it drop off very sp very precipitously oftentimes the best damage dealing strategy in dnd 5e is to be able to have attack roles as the basis because it's generally speaking monsters don't get their ac as high as what their saving throws get to be and there's you don't run up against things like legendary resistance and magic resistance when you're dealing with attack rules any cleric is just a day's worth of spells preparation away from being a really good damage dealer but even if you prepare those spells as a cleric you're going to be negotiating okay is this the combat where i'm the damage dealer or is this the combat where i'm fulfilling the support role because if you are concentrating on a damage dealing spell it's hard for you to bring down your other support support type spells if you're using your spell slots on your damage dealing again it's hard to so i think the cleric ends up with a lot of compromises and finally there's not a lot of builds for clerics to bring their damage up a lot higher either yeah really we are just talking about the fact that they have some great spells but a lot of the abilities from the subclasses are really more about that support role and honestly there are some times where your party is going to gain more in a combat encounter from you concentrating on bless than they did from you concentrating on spirit guardians yeah you can get some very impressive results out of tempest domain clerics abusing the fact that they can get max damage on a thunder damage dealing spell or lightning damage dealing spell and death domain clerics also have some really interesting options for dealing a whole bunch of damage as well but again there are limitations of those things those things very much gravitate those characters towards being able to do one massive hit not so much that consistent damage as we come to the druid uh often the druid and the cleric are kind of two sides of the same coin to me but one's nature and one's holy interestingly enough with the druid i actually think that we get less options than the cleric there are though some prominent options here that i actually think we do need to talk about because although the druid itself feels much more like a support character uh your wild shape is kind of utility focused a lot of a lot of it is support and utility yeah and healing and problem solving and exploration but if you play there's actually quite a few subclasses that really lean into some damage if you're playing a circle of the moon you can be a decent damage dealer by combining a good wild shape with moon beam and suddenly you're a bear eating people inside of a moon beam yep but also if we talk about the shepherd druid and their ability to summon a bazillion animals onto the battlefield and suddenly a million elk are trampling over your enemies uh that is something that we've talked about being pretty messy on the table it can be really clunky to have that many animals but if we're not worried about the clunkiness and we're just talking about damage dealing there are options there for the jewelry and we saw that in in our one shot play with chris from trampolines temple where he did play a shepherd druid that did a lot of damage by summoning hordes of velociraptors and giant owls so if you have that kind of system mastery to know oh these are the cool monsters to summon druids also have cool spells like erupting earth they have wall of fire you mentioned moonbeam druids also do have a lot of ways to instigate their battlefield control to push and pull enemies into those damaging areas and using those elements around i also think the circle of the stars druid is pretty cool with what they do with guiding bolt and with their various constellations to deal damage but at the end at the end of the day it's an uphill battle it does it relies on either a favorable ruling of conjure animals um and a favorable interpretation on the part of the dungeon master to give you that like i guess if your dm is going to let you summon your horde of velociraptors maybe the druid is asked here but if your dungeon master is not going to let that fly and if you're not going to or your table's just not going to use that as your go-to strategy i think the druid is see it best i mean i i also want to throw a nod in here to the wildfire druid the circle of spores druid but even even with all of these like there are many options for a druid to have a few great damage dealing tricks up their sleeve but i don't think the druid is ever the blaster no and even with the subclasses that say hey you get a bit of blasting they're still not the primary blasters so i'm willing to agree i don't think that they're as strong of an option as the cleric is in damage dealing so i'm going to give them a c which again you can build a damage dealing druid it's just uphill it's just uphill yep the fighter here we go because i think the fighter is such a versatile framework for building a damage dealer there are so many tantalizing options here from action surge being probably one of the most amazing burst damage powers in the game to the fact that they are the only class that gets upwards of four attacks natively through getting additional attacks on top of extra attack as you get into higher levels to just having a plethora of build options and the more opportunities to take feats so as a fighter you can get great weapon master polar master online before anybody else you want to have sharpshooter crossbow expert online you got it before any other class can get it basically um unless you're playing variant humans and custom lineages aside and it only gets better once you start adding subclasses on top of it there are so many fighter subclasses that have been the cornerstone of powerful damage dealing builds how many times have you talked to someone that is putting together a character build that being like i was really tempted to take two levels of fighter so i could get action search i mean i i'm just gonna agree with everything you said and really uh anything i'm gonna say is probably going to echo that but the the idea of a fighter just having more feats having more attacks and really like even when i look at something like the champion is one of my least favorite fighter subclasses i would still play a champion and know that i'm going to deal some of the best damage in the entire game all the subclasses except maybe the purple dragon knight are going to be amazing and like there's not a bad option here that like takes away from the fighter's ability to consistently deal damage and one thing that i do want to point out when we look at some of our other damage dealing classes the one that was contending for s tier that we're going to get to later does not do something that the fighter does and that is the fighter's ability to make multiple attacks and with action search high level fighter action surge let's make eight attacks and so what you get with that is yeah some other classes can nova a single enemy and be like i'm gonna drop 200 damage on this enemy and then you go okay that enemy's dead but if you're killing minions and you know the 200 damage on a minion that's a waste but a fighter can kill eight minions with an action search at high levels if they can hit each time one of the things that i see fighters do more consistently than all the other damage dealing classes and this is admittedly a thing that happens to them at higher levels is the fighter often is the one class that thanks to action surge is able to take out two or three really tough foes in a single turn so oftentimes the barbarian can totally i've seen barbarians won round dragons i have seen paladins one round dragons or particularly demons or undead or liches but i've see we've seen a fighter take out two dragons in one turn at our table in one of our recent game sessions the fighter often by merit of their additional attacks by narrative action surge by merit of just their their build mechanics is often able to just jump right in there and slice and dice and nothing is left for me this is the fact that takes the the fighter into the s tier for me personally you don't have to build a melee fighter you can build a ranged fighter and it's just as good if not better and the fact that it's amazing no matter which way you go with it is a really big feather in the cap for supporting the fighters options and then if you want to layer battlemaster or eldritch knight or whatever other subclass you want to take upon it you have this amazing chassis that you can take in whatever direction you want to go so yeah i'm agreeing that the fighters are asked here i don't think there's really an argument there they're not only consistent with very high damage capabilities but their ability to use feats all of the subclasses and their extreme versatility on play styles sword and board polearm ranged you can do whatever you want and still be one of the best damage dealers all right so let's talk about the monk uh now this is something that in theory the monk should be great at but in theory in theory uh the monks i'm gonna give them a little bit of praise here they do get quite a few attacks same as the fighter they are able to divvy them up and move around they have extreme maneuverability which allows them to mix and match how they're going to attack now the monk also is kind of this weird mix of not as good of a damage dealer as the primary damage dealers but they mixed damage dealing with utility with stunning strike but we're not talking about utilities so if we're just looking at pure damage dealing there are some subclasses that do make them better at damage dealing but they are never amazing the mercy monk has offered some redemption to deal more damage the uh the drunken master monk has the ability to do like massive flurries of attacks to a bunch of enemies around them there are some really fun ways that you can build a monk i think even the um the kensai monk has some cool damage dealing potential and for those reasons i don't think they ever get higher even when you're at your best build you're probably at about an a minus or a b plus but i want to give them a b for damage dealing because they can do it i give the bar to c and i feel like the bard has more options for being a better damage dealer than the mug really yeah i just think that there's not a lot like there's not a lot of room to go with with a monk like you can you have to hope that your subclass is going to give you something because in the base class on its own there's very little that you can actually do with what the base class of the monk to increase your damage there's barely any feats that support the monk's signature fighting style of being an unarmed combatant because i guess wizard of the coast didn't feel that it was necessary to have like an unarmed combat feat because only the monks would take it and so in the process there's no monks kind of suffer because there's no feet or feet support in dnd 5e that really improves one-handed weapon damage or dual-wielding damage if there was a completely neutral power attack feat which personally i think there should be like if there was a feat that just said power attack minus five plus ten doesn't matter what kind of damage what kind of weapon you're wielding you can just do a minus five plus ten then yeah the monks would be amazing because of flurry of blows and what that would do in terms of combination so the monk is like this class that is waiting for one thing to kick them over the edge and i think for me it's a c and i'm giving them a c against my better judgment to not give them a d but i think it's really pretty poor right like a monk is gonna come into the game with a decent capability for dealing okay damage like their their baseline is not too bad but the moment you start layering any sort of build options it's like the monk just doesn't have any build options and that's why i can't even give them a b because i feel like beyond choosing your subclass and beyond like the base class just kind of sets you up and say yep choose your weapon choose your subclass that's all you've got and even when you choose the subclass you don't end up with anything that is remotely comparable to the other primary damage dealers i i think it's a it's a real tough place for the poor monk i mean i personally feel like there's more build options than you might be considering but that's also for me who loves monks yeah i know that i like monks and you're not the biggest fan of them and that's that's okay you you see all the holes i see all the potential and uh that's why we're doing these videos i i mean ultimately i like the fantasy of the mug i think that the idea of playing among an unarmed combatant that has like these kind of quasi-magical abilities is really cool and i say i'm critical of it because i feel the class needs to be fundamentally re-examined all right so we're coming to the paladin now when we talked about the fighter i did mention that the one benefit that the fighter has is the ability to make multiple attacks which means that they'll never waste a nova attack when we come to the paladin i will say right now that it was my other consideration for s tier but the one thing that they have to do is they basically are big nova machines yes the paladin i think is the poster child for burst damage in d5e we have all seen the dramatic critical hits divine smite obliterate powerful demons and undead and it is satisfying it is fun i gotta say it might be that fighter is the better damage dealer i think the barbarian and the paladin might be more fun um they just just in my survey for new players overall but i think that they're all satisfying in in many different ways but i think that there is something about that big damage moment which is so satisfying and you get that in spades with the paladin we were doing a campaign that was very dark souls where we had full reign of walking around a city sounds familiar and we could walk into the wrong place and run into the wrong monster and i remember we once at a low level ran into a giant demon and you were you were like well this is a total party kill and then the bard cast haste on my paladin yep and i ran in and i think i landed a critical third or fourth level smite and i did so much damage in that turn that i killed the demon and you were like i thought this was that yeah you thought you were going to mop the floor with that demon but my paladin killed it in one turn and that's what a paladin does and i think you see that in particular because so many paladin players yourself included have a tendency to just go ham like they use all their spell slots smiting in the first round of combat they drop everything and then they run out of gas really really quickly yeah and i think that that's the biggest thing that holds back the paladin is that is that when you start smiting on every single attack and why wouldn't you you can still build your paladin around having um great weapon master and polar master but because the paladin is a little bit more feet starved and because the paladin wants to have paladins care about their charisma score and they have other roles that they're really good at performing which maybe the fighter might not care about like as a paladin you might care about your capability to provide support and well both the fighter and the paladin are both capable of being damage dealers and front liners at the same time because the paladin has this third focus that is often being like yeah you could be an amazing damage dealer but do you want to take sentinel or do you want to take inspiring leader here and oftentimes the support elements of your paladin are often asking you you got this really nice support feature that you could be bringing if you're willing to compromise a little bit on your ability to be a damage dealer and that's a constant temptation i think for any paladin is that you want to do right you want to be that team player right yeah and i think that when we do come to ranking the paladin like i played a vengeance paladin who had great weapon master was a half-orc it was intense that paladin was the damage dealer oh yeah they were also backed up by i believe like a bard and a wizard who were constantly buffing them yeah uh so it was just it was just insane what my paladin could do but not all paladins are doing that and paladins are a very split class in the sense that they're one of the only classes that demands that you look at more than two stats to be good you want a good constitution you want a good strength you want a good charisma those three as opposed to most classes there's two and then maybe a third that maybe you could dabble in yeah but as a paladin you really want to have a high strength a high charisma and you need to have a good con and so when it comes to the the big flagship damage dealers they're one of the only damage dealers that does suffer from that issue they have amazing subclasses they have an amazing spell list everything is great you can build an absolute monster of a damage-dealing paladin um i do think it requires a little bit more care and consideration than the fighter because as a fighter your bit your basic only determination is who are you who are you going to attack and when are you going to spend action surge and as a paladin you always want to smite you want to smite all the time you just want to smite smite smites might smite smite and then you run out of those spell slots and you're like it's tough having a spell list as a paladin because you're like when do i use these and i do think after all of this we're i feel like we're talking down about the paladin which yeah we're not because i'm giving it an a well we yes we're giving it an a and it's an a plus i think that all of these things that we're discussing are kind of why it didn't get the s to your ranking yeah and i do have to say that maybe if i had something different for breakfast today and had an extra cup of coffee i might have given the s-tier ranking to the paladin it's that close yeah yeah so but we're choosing only one if we didn't have to choose one i think for me it would be the paladin the fighter as the s tier i think that the two of them are just a cut above the barbarian overall it's it's so narrow though it's so narrow yeah and but really like the paladin when we give it an a and it doesn't get the s here here you need to keep in mind that i i assume we're going to do a video at some point that's the entire all of our rankings and you're going to see that the paladin is b a or s in a lot of categories and that makes them one of the best classes in the game and even some people have argued with us about where we gave them detour rankings and they got good reasons for doing so yeah so paladin might be one of the strongest classes in the whole game uh it's just other classes have lower lows and might push out the paladin in terms of what they're really really good at moving on to the ranger the ranger is much maligned almost as maligned as the monk but the contrast between the ranger and the monk in the actual damage-dealing department is they're in a completely different league because while the monk doesn't have any of the build options to be an amazing damage dealer the ranger actually has a plethora of them because not only does the ranger have the ability to get the archery fighting style to weapon fighting style they can get sharpshooter hunter's mark lots of additional features a great spell list rangers can cast conjure animals they can gas conjure woodland beings and rangers also got the gloom stalker yeah the gloom soccer is the all-star but even if we look at some of the other subclasses that have been introduced ever since they came out with the gloom stalker from that point onwards we have seen a massive rise in what the ranger is capable of and some of the most fun subclasses that i have seen and actually more than ever i went from the ranger being like ah not my favorite class in the game to i really want to play a ranger yeah and so they have a lot of what the fighter has for their ability to build a character who is reliable in melee combat i just have to say like i think about our experience recently with drackenheim where we have jill piloting a fighter that took great weapon master but then her other character is a gloom soccer ranger who has sharpshooter and you see um when you have someone that is really good at fighting and has that good combat strategy and that good awareness regardless of those two putting it on the table i i actually feel like veo often outperforms rudy although rudy now that yeah it's it's a it's a tough call the thing the thing is with the gloom stalker ranger is that it the ranged in my opinion range damage dealing is almost always stronger than melee even if it doesn't do as much damage it's the sniper effect of range damage that is so effective like as a dungeon master when you put if you put a fighter in front of me with great weapon master and polar master and that same fighter with sharpshooter and crossbow expert the one that's going to warp my encounter balance more is probably going to be the sharpshooter for the sole reason that a character with sharpshooter and crossbow expert who is an effective archer has the capability to send that damage downtown and so if i put a necromancer surrounded by all their they get sniped yeah and so you have to do more you can't do the body blocking as a dm that you can with a melee damage dealer with a melee damage dealer i can put some zombie giants in front of the necromancer and know that at least the barbarian or the paladin has to get through those and that's a notable thing is that the paladin often has the teleportation spells in this they they often have the way of like jumping the mobility that is unexpected whereas the rangers just gonna be like yeah i see that you have those giants but i ignore cover so die necromancer i think the ranger is another a tier um i don't think that they're as eight here as uh the paladin or the barbarian but for me they're they're the next choice yeah and i think that people are undervaluing the potential that the ranger has to be an excellent damage dealer because yeah they steal if there's they steal bits from the fighter and they steal bits from the uh druid which are actually the druid bits that can be used to make a damage dealer i they have a lot of they have a lot of cool abilities now and you can play many rangers that have animal companions that just add more damage and uh yeah there's some really fun options now for maneuverability damage dealing being on the battlefield in a very meaningful way and i think that the ranger is a solid egg yeah and it's not just the gloom stalker anymore i think that the revised beast master i think that the drake warden i think that even if you want to go back to the classics of being the hunter ranger you can make a compelling excellent damage dealer with what you with the pieces that you get from those classes and subclasses however the consistent theme across it is did you take sharpshooter i think that um as we come to the rogue i think that this is really interesting because we have another nova class yes this class baked into its system is the damage nova which is sneak attack rogues are often steered towards probably being a ranged combatant you can play the melee as well no matter what you're fishing for the sneak attacks you're stealthy you're sneaky you hit your target you do a ton of damage how much did you do with your critical hit last night i did 80 something damage with my critical hit your critical sneak attack yeah so a critical sneak attack landing is a 10th 11th 11th level rogue yeah yeah so really really solid and i do think that the rogue needs to be raised up here and talked about for its potential as a damage dealer but i will say there's one big negative that all of the other damage dealers we've talked about get that the rogue doesn't get extra attack but that's where two weapon fighting or crossbow expert really saved the day for the rogue yes right so a rogue that does dual wield and a rogue that does bring in a crossbow expert can really compensate a lot for that i've we've had rogues that have taken crossbow expert and sharpshooter and just been delivery vehicles for a big sneak attack it is worth noting that jill's gloom stalker is multi-class ranger rogue and i think you really see the best of both worlds happening there it's a really sweet combination um and i think that the rogue overall you do it it's amazing how the baseline sneak attack looks amazing on paper but in play can come up come up a little bit short but then as soon as you are like oh actually sneak attack needs a little bit of help for example if you play an arcane trickster that picks up booming blade or as soon as you play a swashbuckler and have more reliable options for dealing with your sneak attacks or even just a little bit of an augmentation it really ups the rogue's game to a pretty impressive degree yeah and i for that reason i think i'm going to give the rogue an a as well again i'm giving them that a that's more an a minus i don't think that they can do as much as a fighter a barbarian or a paladin but their ability to nova damage i've seen a lot of rogues one shot a boss yeah i guess i'm a little torn here between bna and which is what you acknowledge for the a minus i think that the rogue's baseline is great but i think that it does take some building to boost the baseline so for me i feel like a bee is where i'm at because i i have seen some rogues that have felt like they hit like wet noodles because they didn't do much to build their damage up um but it's still it's still good it's just that as soon as you take a couple more options it becomes so much better the ceiling is a lot lower though at the end of the day right like i i think that even if you build your rogue to the nines i don't think the rogue's gonna come anywhere close to what the barbarian the fighter the paladin and even the ranger can accomplish well let's be real here the turns that i was unable to get sneak attack which can happen uh you suddenly are not doing any like you're doing some damage but it's laughable but the merit to that and it's it's once again one of the cool merits with the rogue that is kind of exclusive to them in the barbarian is the rogue is never going to run out of gas yeah the barbarian is never going to run out of gas the fighter once they spend action surge is still really good the paladin once they expend all their smites they got nothing left in the tank and this is one of those things that especially as we come into the spellcasters i think with damage dealing it really can be that thing of are you starting to run into spells are you starting to run out of key points are you starting to run out of your limited usabilities because with damage dealers you really want to have that consistency somewhere because if your nova didn't take them out or there was a second wave of the fight you need something more to dig deep and i think that as we come to the sorcerer we're looking at that sorcerers other than the two newest ones don't get the expanded spell list they have limited spell options they do have some great meta magics so i will say that a sorcerer who has empowered spell can be a really decent blaster but you're limited by your spell slots uh the or a divine soul that picks up the best of the clerics felons yes yes so the the sorcerer does have some really amazing options and it is a really compelling blaster and really great at it uh but at the end of the day i this is one of the categories when we talk about damage dealing you've heard a lot of bias from us towards spell casters and this is one of the categories where i'm like i don't think the spellcasters take the cake here no i mean the spellcasters have a lot of strategies and with spellcasters you have to be efficient with the way that you use your spells because at the end of the day a sorcerer that just decides i'm going to fireball things over and over and over and over again is going to do good damage and going to do really impressive aoe damage but the reality is is that you have thir you have three third level spell slots until you start up casting and you can start burning through those with fireball in particular very very quickly fireball is a great spell to kick things off at the start of combat to wash out the low damage minions but like fireball really starts to look ineffective when you start throwing it at a single target yeah and in many cases the average damage of a fireball is around 25 damage for a third level spell slot and even in our game last night pluto veo and even wilhelm their typical attack was doing more damage to a single target than a fireball would to a single target and that's the biggest difference between aoe damage and single target damage i think in 5e which is which is where you know i love fireball love fireball but the the the martial damage dealers do more damage with a single hit than a fireball does in absolute terms of course a fireball that hits three enemies has just done 90 damage to all of the total across split clock across three foes but often times you want to take somebody out completely yeah so i think the sorcerer for me is a b uh lots of options here and they're going to be amazing and you can definitely be a damage dealer sorcerer and be great at it so i think that their ceiling is really high but you can also build a sorcerer in a completely different way and you really have to be careful with your spell slots and when it comes to damage dealing sometimes dropping the concentration spell that changes the battlefield for something like support utility battlefield control is more impactful on the game than dropping a fireball and when you're in a party with the primary damage dealers and you drop slow on your enemies or hypnotic pattern or something like that that is usually a better move for a lot of these spell casters so i think the sorcerer is a b because there's a lot of good ways to play them the blaster is one of them but the blaster's not as good as a fighter with actions i mean and that's the the sad thing is that over the course of a combat encounter you can get a lot of damage out of a concentration spell when it's well used and as we move into the warlock the warlock is really relies on this because here you go warlock spouse lot's coming back on a short rest we got hex we got eldritch blast we got agonizing blast we got forceful blast we can forceful blast people into our hunger of hadar or our wall of fire or our damaging area effect and so with the warlock we actually have a spellcaster that can bring that round of around consistent damage and that is really geared towards it basically out of necessity because with the warlock you're going to burn your spell slots immediately so one of them better be a concentration spell to help your damage out and i think when we do come to the warlock it's actually interesting that we are more limited in our spell slots but we we talk about how spell casters they have their limited spell slots and they're very versatile in their build options but i think for me warlock squeaks into the a tier okay and the reason why i want to say that is yeah you can build a warlock any way you choose but you're going to notice something that happens at the table if a sorcerer says i'm going to build a battlefield control sorcerer everybody goes oh cool that's good um but if you're a warlock and you say i'm going to build a warlock that isn't taking eldridge blast and hex everybody at the table turns and looks at you like you've just done something completely off book and so yeah with the warlock i find that everybody who reads the warlock goes ah eldridge blas hex agonizing blast maybe another thing that allows me to either push or pull targets using my eldritch blast and then eldritch blast is the most powerful blasting can trip in the game you get multiple beams so now we're looking at the same way the fighter can divvy up attacks they can blast blast that guy's dead move over blast blast and there are subclasses that amplify this even further they can drop like a cool spell like hunger of hadar and then blast everybody to bits i think that they squeak into the a because out of all the spell casters not playing the blaster warlock is something that people go oh that's a weird choice and i feel like you almost have to play you'll be a hex player okay in which case you're still an amazing yeah that's very you often very much are but i will just say i will say for my part i think that that top tier elder blast damage dealer is a little bit tricky to do i think that a lot of players see elder blast agonizing blast and hex and don't think about it more than that and there are many more options out there and i do think that the build really matters for the warlock it really does and you have to figure out when you're going to take your invocations what spells you're going to use what you're going to do in what order and if you nail all of those things you will end up with a phenomenal damage dealer but for me that's the definition of a b tier fair yeah as we move on to the wizard i think that uh we come to the all the same things we've said about a lot of the security poker last year you think the evoker's the guest here no no no okay i i was gonna be like the evoker isn't even the best blaster no the evoker isn't even the best blaster in the game the best damage dealer i think that you can build with a wizard is a blade singer yeah yeah and it's amazing perhaps one of the best damage dealers in the game but that is but one build and one bill does not an entire class ranking get you again even less so than the sorcerer i don't think that the wizard is pushed into being a damage dealer yeah i think that there are great spells for dealing damage and you can drop all the fireballs you want lightning bolts and meteor swarms at higher levels and you can wreck the battlefield but i think that like a lot of the spellcasters were talking about a wizard gets more out of not being the damage dealer yes they're a battlefield controller they get things like force cage and mirror image and simulacrum and like they get spells that nobody else gets that they can use to change the world and when they focus on being a damage dealer i think they fall under our other damage dealers and you're missing out on what the wizard's potential is i mean at the end of the day the wizard if they do want to throw down can summon a baby's hand animate a bunch of objects summon up some fae or throw people into a prismatic wall yeah um so it's not that a wizard can't do damage no they can't but oftentimes as a wizard i think that you really want to have this holistic view and it's it's interesting again the wizard has an ironic dearth of actual build options for improving their damage there's not a lot of feats that you can take to increase your damage there's spell selection and you can choose different combinations of spells with the wizard and you can also do some interesting multi-classing and i think it's worth mentioning that there's some really cool multi-classing that you can do by adding sorcerer to get madam magic to either the warlock or the wizard or even taking metamagic adept or taking eldritch adapt or mixing mixing and matching some interesting things to get around but again those are all builds and we're not ranking based on builds alone we're ranking on the big picture and i think the big picture for the wizard is that it's a bee for me it's not that the wizard can't do good damage it's that that oftentimes the wizard can answer their problems in ways that don't require them to do damage at all and if you try to answer every problem as much to say fireball is not always the answer to every problem it's the answer to a lot of them it's the answer to a lot of them but it's not always the answer to every single problem and and that's for me is where they land as a bee i i'm willing to agree i think that the the wizard to me has always felt more like a support utility role than it has a damage dealer but they the wizard has the benefit of being able to fill almost any role in a party that you need it to fill based on your build options we we gave it s tier in something like utility because they are they have access to some of the best utility spells in the game and can easily be the best whereas when they focus on being a damage dealer i think they can stand up with the other damage dealers you can have a party that's a paladin a fighter a barbarian a ranger and a wizard who's focusing on damage dealing and you're gonna wreck everything but i actually think in that party you'd be better off with a utility wizard so i'm gonna give it a beat here let's see what the community thought so this is pretty cut and dry yes i i think that we are all in agreeance that the fighter is the top tier damage dealer but unlike some of our other party roles this is a little more mixed the fighter wins clearly yes and got the most votes from our whole community but there were a lot of other people who thought that there were other classes that were the best in the game paladin gets a huge chunk here and that's worth noting that it comes in second followed not too far behind by the barbarian and then interestingly enough the rogue the sorcerer and the wizard beat the warlock and the ranger both of which i ranked higher than the sorcerer and the war and the wizard and the rogue i put under the ranger but our community thinks it's higher i'm not surprised at this i think that the the rogue often is a fan favorite we can just we can just see that and people love playing blaster sorcerers and wizards and they are good just don't sell the ranger short i think that there really is a lot of strength there and that's that's all i would say to that i i don't think the community is wrong at all in their assessment of this i just think that it's often hard to recognize the ranger for the strengths that they have yeah and generally i think that the this lands very safely in mostly agreement with where we landed and i think that we can clearly see which classes are excellent damage dealers which ones are pretty awesome damage dealers and which ones you probably shouldn't rely on for damage dealing but i think it all checks out uh the bard got no votes the bard got no votes so maybe my d tier was justified maybe maybe it is um worth noting that the monk tied the cleric with only 16 responses and beat the druid on that too interesting and i appreciate that thank you monk fans for understanding that monks can be pretty okay at some things uh sadly i can never say that the monks the best at anything but they're pretty good at some stuff in fact the monk even beat the artificer uh in the in the community polls in terms of responses i think the artifice is pretty much better better but when we're looking at these low numbers it's really hard to get break out the signal to noise ratio so take for that what you will so this has been a look at who the best damage dealer in dungeons dragon's 5th edition is if you have different opinions on who you think the best damage dealer is let us know in the comments below the videos that we make in our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on youtube please consider supporting our show by by clicking the links in the description below and if you want to watch our friend jill just prove to you how good of a damage dealer many of these classes are you should check out our live play in the worlds of drakenheim which airs tuesday evenings on twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more tier ranking videos for you right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 428,015

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: 4qGkoxo3ktI

Length: 59min 48sec (3588 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022