BG3 Honor Mode Class Tier List - Updated for Patches 5 and 6

I might have to disagree about Monks being bad controllers if you have high wisdom you can stun lock Myrkul granted I went halfing

Everyone lamenting that rogues don’t get an extra attack at higher levels, if they did they’d be stupid broken

When I did a solo run with all classes in Tactician back in August, this was my personal tierlist, based on how easy it was:

S Cleric (Light), Bard (Sword), Rogue (Assassin), Sorcerer (Storm), Wizard
A Paladin, Barbarian
B Monk (S if MS shenanigans with Hamarhraft), Fighter, Ranger, Wizard
C
D Druid

Do you feel like you miss some story cutscenes limiting your long rests?

sword bard is absolutely ridiculous being a full caster and getting a second martial attack at lvl 6. great control spells too

"abusing scrolls" - Which scroll hurt you?

I'm calling BS on your rules and most accurate...

I think swords bard flourish shouldn't be able to attack the same target. That's too broken

I would object to the notion in that Rogue sucks tbh, at least for Assassin Rogue. Thief is good, but in harder versions of play they remove your actions spent attacking the creature while they're out of combat with you if attacking them. As Assassin, you can hit them twice with sneak attack, potentially with crits both times if you opt to have somebody else surprise, and still deal a ton of damage if they don't. This can win you up to 6 attacks of extremely high damage output.

There's also that one amulet in Act 2 where you can paralyze an enemy on a crit, which is insanely useful for taking Gortash out back and effectively stabbing him to death if speedrunning and not 100%ing. Even then, just surprise your enemy, and then land the crit. Or force it with ilithid powersl. The fighter & assassin will obviously have a field day after that.

Arcane Trickster though... yeah, this needs a hard buff. Preferably being able to sneak attack with a levelled spell that does damage, or making Mage Hand be able to use Thieves' Tools with your proficiency and score to it, as that along with the ability to pickpocket is why it is OP in 5e.

I just WISH Rogue was better man, or they added the other sub classes which can be better. Good thing there are mods for post honor mode playthroughs. But even in regular 5E, Rogues are only really taken for their RP and Skills, but Arcane trickster is always the best since even a little magic is really good in 5E, it's a weird game. I wish Rogue had some sort of charges to use for additional sneak attacks per turn or something like that. That way they could still be considered a Burst Class, while having that ability limited to long or short rests, sort of like warlocks I guess

Cleric is the bloody easiest S-Tier for Honor Mode, no matter ifo n Tav or anybody else, especially Life domain

Grab a Heavy Armor, Grab a shield and Lathanders Blood and then choose your gloves and boots around bonusses based on Radiant Damage Procs and just run Spirit Guardians. Especially if combined with a Warlock that throws Hunger Of Hadar this is easy mode for 99% of fights

Another very broken thing are Druids which are specifically build regarding shape shifting ... Owlbear Body Slam all the time g

You’re wild shaping as a non-moon Druid? Ok Jan…

Watching this I just realized I don't know shit about this game and I played 400+ hours at this point. (I still think about the game like it's tabeltop)

What's a gish build?

If you don't care about the roleplay reasons for rest and insist on justifying it with your nonsensical difficulty adjustment reasoning then why do you long rest at all? If setting accurate resting is not important to you and you just pick a random number like 5 per act then I say you're taking the easy route. Take zero long rests per act. You don't have a reason not to, if all you care about is adjusting the difficulty.

Wizards get glyph of warding because since sorcerers dump int they can’t read.

This is great cause I don’t want to play a class that would do good in tactician In honor mode. Thought I’d save Druid for honor mode but you convinced me to just enjoy it on tactician mode

caveat: i have not played on Honour Mode, but Circle of the Moon w/ Halsin killed for me in Act 3. the Myrmidons are awesome (3 attacks + special effects). in 5e Circle of the Moon Druid is basically invincible at level 20.

Druid is probably the best class in the game with summons build. When you combine it with the free summons like Connor and building a party around summons, id imagine it would get pretty ridiculous. I have not tried it myself. But on paper having a army of summons along with the party of 4 is probably better then individual classes. Just having Scratch early game take one hit makes a small difference. Now multiply that by 10 and with stronger summons.

Bro I like your videos but the "s" sound in your mic sounds too loud and if I lower the volume of the video I can't hear you very well especially when I'm doing something else :/

Just heard a cool combo with Nature cleric, makes it no where near as good as light or life, but good for a nice bit of fun. pop down your guardian of faith, and you can pull enemies into it using grasping vine, or pull the guardian of faith into enemies

Monk at only A tier? Really? Yeah, I can't imagine going through honor mode without a tavern brawler open hand monk. They NUKE everything, especially if you go a few level in Thief Rogue. That is also something that has to be said about honor mode. There really is no class you will go all the way to level 12 with. My EASY MODE honor mode party is a ancients or retro Paladin 2 / Sword Bard 10 which is GREAT for CC AND bursting down hard targets. Pair it with the ring that lets you bonus cast Ench / Illusion with the helmet that gives arcane alacrity you are almost guaranteed 100% chance of your spells sticking after attacking. OH, and the mobile flourish is hilarious. Never mind it is a great face to party for avoiding fights all together. Second DPS must have is a Open hand Monk 9 / Thief Rogue 3. I have killed bosses turn ONE on HONOR MODE with this. For min/max you burn through pots of giant strength but that is the price you pay. It is also good at CC with topple flurry followed by stun strike. You can stun lock a lot of bosses while everyone else cleans up adds. About the ONLY class I have used that could honestly go 12 levels on honor mode is warlock, but for a slight edge you should go Sorlock or Bardlock. Machinegunning things down with buffed up eldritch blast is fun. You can really go any way you want with it. For fourth filler it is pretty much up to you and what you are going into. I like assassin rogue 7 / gloom ranger 5 for some quick first round kills and also for the utility of taking care of traps. A paladin 2 / light cleric 10 with orb gear is pretty solid. This can be tweaked to take a few levels in sorc or wiz to get Magic missiles you can spread the orb fun around with. It can be funny seeing all the baddies missing. I'd be careful in Act 3 though because Larian thought it would be great to have half the baddies reflect radiant damage back .

The thing with bards is they're the main author insert character. Game designers identify with the bard. Dungeon masters identify with bards. Writers? Voice actors? All bards. Musicians, illustrators. Everyone who makes the game, the books, or produces interactive content feels an affinity with bards. The level of self discipline it takes for a creator not to make a character they identify with overpowered is superhuman. How can they resist?

I don't actually mind. Glorify the artist in games. Fine. My only complaint is bards in practice are limited to music. We need more mime bards, or interpretive dance bards. We need it to matter that silence or darkness can block some bard media but not others. Also, Nailmaster Sheo? Where's the painter bards? So much fun left on the table because bards only do music.

Assuming the wording is still accurate to the way the ability functions (by no means a guarantee I know), Oathbreaker Paladin's Aura of Hate doesn't actually affect any of the undead you can summon. It only triggers on melee weapon attacks and none of the summonable undead have melee weapons. Regardless of how it's supposed to work in tabletop 5e, It only affects the Cambion from planar ally which to put it bluntly is not good.

For the record, i think its your ruleset that makes arcane trickster bad, at least in the late game. If you allow your arcane trickster to do what it would excel at in this game which is, at level 9, stealing high level scrolls and spamming them from sneak, it would be incredible and one of the best casters in the game. With stealth expertise, reliable talent, and greater invisibilty on it, you can have both 20 dex and 20 intelligence with the as many chain lightnings, cones of cold, fireballs, lightning bolts, etc. as you want. And you can do all of those without breaking greater invisibility for 3-5 turns, and while imposing disadvantage on all of those saving throws against your spells.

Arcane trickster is severely hindered in its effectiveness by your balance changes (and is a very underestimated class in this game). Even just allowing it do what it wants and steal like one scroll per short rest as an arcane kleptomaniac would be a fun rp, and would make it very strong in act 3.

Lol, @me who thinks a monk is by far the best melee controller, especially in your low rest rule set where they get significantly more controlling resources than any other melee class. They can stunning strike two enemies per turn for 6 turns per short rest, and their extreme mobility allows you to pick your targets really well.

I know this is a monoclass tierlist, but a battlemaster monk (4battlemaster 8 monk) you have the actual best melee controller in the game, easily on par with a caster because your control deals very good damage on top of the control.

How much lower would you rank warlocks and monks if you're not limiting long rests?
I really wish the game made long rests more resource intensive because without this self imposed limitation the recharge-on-short-rest classes feel kind of pointless to me.

Starting with barbs being weak and not mentioning throwing build, which is probably one of the higher DPS and utility classes with the free double prone twice a turn, and the first class to essentially extra attack with frenzied strike/enraged throw (I really needed the extra BA before level 5, especially against level 5s when you’re not)… I felt like was a disservice to barbs, but I agree with what you said otherwise about them.

The support abilities of a Paladin are most useful in the beginning of a fight when you’re grouped together or when your melee guys are hanging up on a big bad, as staying within 10 ft othwerwise can be tough. I think the balance between protection and the ability to pour damage on quickly against a boss makes them the best tav class because it lets the rest of your party builds be more flexible.

Why do you say that Paladin is not a top striker? How are we comparing striking ability? The only thing that matters in a turn based game is burst damage because burst damage = defense (you can take out the most powerful enemy mage). Paladins can guarantee 3 hits WITHOUT HASTE due to lucky strikes and executioner ring, therefore, a paladin/sorcerer should achieve roughly 240 damage without haste (and without vulnerability)... how many classes out damage that without haste?

I understand your preference for warlock as a damage dealer because in my game, I try to only allow only 1 short rest per every 6 fights and 1 long rest every 12 fights (boss fights count as 6 fights). The warlock dominates without rest because its using a cantrip... however, when things go bad and the entire game might end there's always only one character who answers the call and saves the team - the paladin. The Paladin saves its level 4 through 6 spell slots (sorc/paladin) for real fights and then when the situation is dire and your team can't seemingly win, what do you do? You always Globe of Invulnerability --> Paladin smites everyone to death. The rest of the time the Paladin does nothing, but who cares? You don't need damage when things are good, you only need damage when things are bad and that's why Paladin is basically the "carry" damage. It is the only one that can kill the big bad guy in 1 turn. And 1 turn is the only thing that matters in a turn based game. Nothing matters after Turn 3 when everyone's dead...

If wizards are not the strongest class and intelligence is shit, I call that a serious design flaw...

Id put rogue over ranger.

Warlocks can drop max level spells every combat, which i feel like should have been mentioned... Still a fair list!

monk do a lot of dmg (especially with rouge lvl's) but you have a mobility (fighter doesnt have), you have stuns (better then battle master as more of them) knock downs you forgot, you have aoe blinding, aoe sound canceling and teleportation, aoe dmg (ofc all depends on sub class). Tbh they are more fun to play and less boring then half of casters using 2-3 the same abilities whole game while sitting in back, and still majority of your attention will be at the main class that will deal dmg while taking dmg.
Tbh i find it odd that a monk/rouge can have more attacks then a pure monk. Its kinda stupid as because of it its far superior fighter.

I have never once considered using a paladin for support, always the front line tank and single target damage dealing (smite stacking and crit chasing)

Sorcerers= least fun class. Should just change their name to Twinspellhaster

technically the illusion wizard is the strongest class as it is simply not possible to locate them if played correctly thus there is no need to even build any defense. Although I need to agree that lvl 6 for them is bad

I have not seen anybody do a tier list for reactions yet. Have you given this any thought?

Necromancy Wizard is a beast late game, and I'd even argue is low S-tier at least. The staff you get from the mummy lord imposes Disadvantage on saves against your Necro spells, and also allows you to cast Necro spells for free when you get a killing blow. Combine that with something like Cloudkill, which your Undead minions are immune to, and you just throw the cloud around while your minions run in and smack anything that stays.

Also Divination should be S-tier, imo. Being able to force a failed save on an enemy or several can just autowin encounters.

Edit: Didn't realize it was for Honor Mode I'm an idiot. I haven't tested Necro wizard on HM, but on normal and tactician it still shreds.

you don't like the smite-long rest way of life and are coping
paladin number 1

at this point they should make it so you can only cast 1 leveled spell per turn, no reason wht a fighter cant make 9-12 attacks in a turn but a spell caster can cast 3-4 leveled spells

Fighter not in S tier invalidates this entire list.

What's better? Pure Sorcerer or Sorlock crit build? One has a lot of powerfull spells, the second eldritchs a lot of blasts

Honor mode doesn't limit long rests my guy, so idk why you keep pretending youve only got 5 long rests an act

Maybe I’m confused but isn’t ranger actually good? Like I fucking destroy in my games as ranger

Multi-classing Monk/Fighter for one of the best short-rest heroes. Who cares about controlling the field when you can just kill? 👌

Rogue in c tier is wild because assassin rogue is where you utilize the sneak attack to proc big damage on whatever target you choose to initiate combat whilst surprising all enemies first turn to get a free turn of full damage, that feels like a very valuable asset. I know some enemies can’t be caught off guard but I haven’t made it all the way through yet but I’m level 11 in act 3 and that’s been few between for me personally. (First time player on just standard difficulty, not easy but not hard)