Author: Haen the Heretic
Damaging spells! The iconic trait of spellcasters across a wide variety of fiction, the ability to unleash raw destruction upon your foes in one form or another.
While we have covered some of the best spells that deal damage in 5E, and many more damage-focused spells are almost universally known to be subpar, part of why we started Tabletop Builds is to discuss where we think everyone else seems to have gotten things wrong!
Recently, we kicked off this series by putting the ever-popular haste at the start of our list of over-praised offensive spells. Today, we’ll expand that list to include 7 more of the most overrated spells that deal damage.
Hex
The classic Warlock toy, the pew pew gun you get at level 1 that serves you well until you hit level 3 or so, hex is a spell that—much like hunter’s mark—just doesn’t actually do all that much. 1d6 more damage on a hit is commonly—and wrongly—treated as a massive damage boost, when in reality it’s an average of 2.3 damage per attack roll that prevents you from casting a levelled spell with your action this turn and eats your concentration.
At 5th level, you get two eldritch blast beams, so that jumps up to 4.6 damage per round per casting. Now however, you are blowing a 3rd-level warlock spell slot, the same price of a hypnotic pattern, to deal an additional 4.6 single-target DPR.
Hex’s only utility is effectively a poor man’s frightened condition, and it really isn’t anything to write home about. Conferring disadvantage on grapples and to the ability check for counterspell are likely to be the only universally applicable uses of hex’s rider effect. Disadvantage on escaping a web can be relevant, so Strength is probably going to be the ability score of choice here. But this is fairly minor, and not worth the concentration past 2nd level.
The Warlock does benefit from hex early in tier 1 play, where the Warlock spell list is a bit thin. Regaining expended spell slots on a short rest sometimes allows Warlocks to use tricks to cast hex for free (casting it on an insect and crushing it before taking a short rest, for example). Warlocks also don’t automatically have high value bonus actions vis-à-vis most other classes, which helps as well.
Hex though earns its place on this list because we regularly read about Warlocks defaulting to this mediocre spell deep into the later levels of a campaign, which is leaving quite a lot of the power of the Warlock class on the table. Try more spells, Warlocks!
Swift Quiver
A trap spell! Swift quiver similarly uses up your bonus action on the turn on which you cast it. After that, you’re doing an extra 9.2 DPR with this spell, assuming you’ve already maxed Dexterity. By comparison, a 5th-level conjure animals, with wolves for example, does 33.6 DPR without even taking into account their Pack Tactics, and with Pack Tactics that goes up to 57.1. Against a creature with resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, they are still outdamaging swift quiver by over 50 percent, and conjure animals lasts one hundred times longer.
If you cannot choose your creatures, or can’t choose anything close to as strong as wolves, the average CR 1/4 beast has +4 to hit and 1d4+2 damage, for a net 10.8 DPR with a 3rd-level slot, 21.6 with a 5th-level one. If you’re unable to summon your animals for whatever reason, or the enemy is immune to nonmagical weapon damage, then you can cast guardian of nature, which nets you an average DPR increase of 13.3, in addition to a few other neat boons. Or you could just have your animals grapple and shove or take the Help action. Either works, and provides more utility and combat benefits than swift quiver.
Bards, don’t even think about it for Magical Secrets!
Hail of Thorns
Where to begin? You need to use a spell slot, your concentration, and waste a bonus action to deal what is effectively a worse Divine Smite in a tiny area of effect. 1d10 piercing damage in a small area, and to top it all off it allows for a Dexterity saving throw for half. This spell is just bad.
This will do an average of (assuming a 65% chance to fail their saving throw) 4.5 damage to each creature it damages. Before you even consider this as good, remember that a hand crossbow bonus action attack (from the Crossbow Expert feat) does 4.88 DPR, so you’re expending a 1st-level spell slot to:
- Against a single target: reduce your DPR by 0.4 damage.
- Against two targets: increase DPR by 4.1 damage.
- Against three targets: increase DPR by 8.6 damage.
The comparison with Paladin’s Divine Smite gets even worse, as that feature lets you trigger it when you know you have hit, in addition to not requiring any action economy to function. Basically, imagine if hunter’s mark only lasted one turn, and this is what you get. One damage die? This shouldn’t be considered for one of your valuable choices for spells known on any Ranger.
While hex was an okay spell many seem to think is amazing, this is a terrible spell people many seem to think is okay.
Spiritual Weapon
Spiritual weapon is often touted as a great spell for Clerics to cast. The reasoning goes that it gives you something to do with your bonus action every round and it doesn’t require concentration, so you can use it in conjunction with good concentration spells like bless or spirit guardians. Since it supposedly doesn’t interfere with your actions and concentration, it is often proclaimed there is basically no reason to not cast the spell. In fact though, spiritual weapon is not free, and there are many reasons to not cast the spell.
Spiritual weapon costs you a prepared spell, which could cause you to miss out on one of the spells mentioned below for the entire day. It also requires a 2nd level spell slot to cast, and that 2nd level spell slot is better spent in another way. You could use it on other spells this combat, like upcast command or lesser restoration. You could also save it for another potential combat later this day, and use it for an upcast bless. It could be useful out of combat, like for casting locate object or even prayer of healing. Even if it ends up going unused throughout the day after all, you can still use that spell slot better by rest casting aid. To fully grasp the concept of effective resource management, we refer to our ‘Styles of Resource Management’ article.
Pack Tactics has an excellent video about why spiritual weapon is simply not a good competitor for 2nd level spell slots, where he showcases that even using that spell slot to upcast healing word on a character who’s not even at 0 HP (which is an extremely inefficient use of a 2nd level spell slot), is a better use of a 2nd level spell slot than using it to cast spiritual weapon when considering the damage it prevents your party from taking. Simply casting prayer of healing with that slot is already 5 times better than casting healing word, and other spells will likely have even better effects.
Secondly, you cannot cast a leveled spell on the same turn you cast spiritual weapon. This means two things. First, it means you probably won’t cast spiritual weapon in the first round of a combat that warrants using a 2nd level spell slot, because as we have argued, there are more powerful spells to cast that will have more impact. At lower levels this will probably be bless and at higher levels spirit guardians. You are thus losing one round of spiritual weapon damage, notably the first round of combat in which your actions matter most. Second, it means you cannot cast other high impact spells on the round you do cast spiritual weapon. You are the either locked out of casting spells like command, lesser restoration and dispel magic among others, or you have to delay casting spiritual weapon another round, cutting into the rounds it will be active and thus its damage output. The consequence is that a fight needs to go on for an unlikely large amount of rounds before the spell even has a chance to deal an acceptable amount of damage for the 2nd level spell slot it costs to cast. It also does this damage slowly, which is tactically the worst way for a spell to do damage. Damage has the highest value on the first round of combat, preferably before enemies have a chance to act, as killing enemies earlier in a fight will prevent more of their actions than killing them later would.
Additionally, the low 20 foot movement speed might not allow the spiritual weapon to get in range of an enemy to attack on follow-up rounds. Most monsters have at least a 30 foot movement speed, making it impossible for a spiritual weapon to keep up if they run away from it. It doesn’t even get to make attacks of opportunity as they do that. This is especially relevant in games where you employ kiting strategies to keep the enemies away from you. Any round you can’t hit with the weapon obviously lowers the damage output of the spell.
Finally, it requires a bonus action to use every round, and your bonus action might be better spent on other things, like healing word to get someone up from 0 HP, or sanctuary to guard a high value target. You might also have other uses for your bonus action through race, subclass or feats like Telekinetic that provide more value than taking a swing with spiritual weapon. In the case of Telekinetic, there are many situations where moving an ally away from an enemy or moving an enemy into a control effect has higher value than spiritual weapon damage. This is the case even without considering spirit guardians. Every turn you don’t swing with the weapon because you are better off using your bonus action for something else cuts into the damage output of spiritual weapon, lowering it even further.
As an aside, spiritual weapon is also often praised because it can be used to fill your bonus actions. While it may seem that using your bonus action for something—anything—is better than not using it at all, calling this a merit of spiritual weapon per se is a fallacy. A turn that makes use of your entire action economy need not be better than one where you only spend your action. For spiritual weapon we can take it a step further and say that the ability to get at most ten bonus actions to spend on using the spell need not be better than using a 2nd level spell slot on one action in combat, or for the case of for example prayer of healing, a spell slot out of combat. The benefit of the latter two will most often outweigh that of spiritual weapon, despite not using any bonus actions.
If you’re looking for an alternative to spiritual weapon for using that 2nd level spell slot, upcasting command to 2nd level is frequently a good use of that slot, and has an immediate effect on the battlefield. Commanding two enemies to flee, especially while your allies are walking away, can very easily prevent 2-3 actions from each enemy affected, in this case up to two enemies. This can be even more impactful in the presence of allied control effects. These effects make command and upcasting command a go-to option for a non-concentration “nova” spell that Clerics can use on the second turn of combat after a concentration spell is used, or even on the first turn.
In conclusion, there are many reasons why spiritual weapon isn’t as good as it’s sometimes presented. There are many caveats to using the spell that aren’t immediately obvious. The most important reason the spell is overrated though, is the fact that the 2nd level spell slot it costs is better spent on other spells. So the next time you’re thinking of spending that slot on spiritual weapon, do consider whether it may be better used on another spell later.
Inflict Wounds
There’s an awful lot of Clerics who don’t yet know that bless is superior. To cut this spell some slack, at least your damage is actually going up relative to what you’d otherwise be doing. 9.9 average DPR isn’t the worst thing you could be doing, but at early levels when you have limited slots and preparations, it’s not worth it. Inflict wounds actually manages to be the best option the Cleric spell list can offer in terms of single target damage up until the 6th level spell harm. This says more about typical Cleric single-target capabilities than the quality of inflict wounds though. Sometimes killing a creature on your turn, right now is what needs to happen, so this spell could be worth a preparation at those mid-tier levels, but bear in mind this is best as a niche spell, not a default use of a slot. You will get your money’s worth if you can somehow guarantee a critical hit, but if you’re considering more mediocre options like hold person to make it happen, don’t. If you have reliable ways of getting the target to fall unconscious, either via sleep or eyebite, inflict some wounds. Otherwise?
Scorching Ray
Scorching ray is massively overrated and a common trap for players to fall into. Three attacks with an often-resisted damage type are not an efficient way to spend your spell slots. With a base damage of 2d6, this spell does less damage than burning hands to two targets (assuming 65% accuracy on both).
Scorching ray does an average of 14.7 damage.
By comparison, a magic missile spell upcast to 2nd level will do 14 force damage. Force is much better than fire as far as resistance and immunity goes.
“But magic missile gets countered by the shield spell.” This is true, but scorching ray gets countered by shield too, as well as absorb elements. If you are targeting a caster, there are more reliable sources of damage that you can draw on, and there are more useful things to deal than damage. When fighting melee enemies, slowing them down with control is very frequently much more efficient than this lukewarm ray.
Hunter’s Mark
Advantage on checks to find your target is something, but the Help action can confer advantage as well. Tracking a creature is unlikely to come up, compared to killing it in the fight where you cast this spell, but if you really need to tail something instead of killing it, this has some utility. Per the targeting rules of spells in the Player’s Handbook (p. 204), targets are aware they a spell has been cast on them if the spell “has a perceptible effect or if its text says you’re aware of it,” and hunter’s mark would likely be ruled as one such spell, so it does have an occasional, rare use.
2.3 DPR per attack roll, or 1.8 with Sharpshooter, is not a good use of your limited spell slots. Even more so than hex, since weapon users have stiff competition for dealing damage with your bonus action. On most Rangers, Crossbow Expert obviates the need to know this lackluster spell.
Hunter’s mark is a 1st-level spell drug that makes you addicted to wasting your bonus action. As a ranged martial, you should always be firing a hand crossbow, and the math doesn’t lie! Expending a bonus action to do this is going to lower your DPR, and require two turns to compensate for. It could only be useful in a vacuum where you’re fighting a single creature with an obstinately large pool of hit points such that the encounter drags on for very long, but such encounters are exceedingly rare, even more so in a game with optimized characters.
Pack Tactics, friend of Tabletop Builds, explains the math quite well in his YouTube video on this subject. Check him out!
Hunter’s mark prevents you from concentrating on pass without trace or conjure animals. A lone wolf (without the wolf’s Pack Tactics ability active) attacking a 20 AC target (60 percent accuracy for a 20th-level build) does 1.75 DPR. Hunter’s mark is over seven times worse than a single wolf with zero support attacking a demigod, and said wolf still beats hunter’s mark by 250% if the demigod resists piercing damage. When you consider that conjure animals summons eight creatures, hunter’s mark gets buried even more, as it is worse than just concentrating on conjure animals and not using your bonus action at all, never mind using it to deal good crossbow damage. Create 10 goodberries instead.
Believe it or not, we’re not quite done with this topic, but we’ll save the next batch for a future post. Thanks for reading! Do you agree with any of our choices? What spells do you think are overrated?
Thank you for publicly popping the Hex bubble.
Thanks for reading, I’m glad you enjoyed it! We have long believed this spell to be less than ideal for the cost of an increasingly higher Pact Magic slot, and we hope to spread this message as far as it will go.
My first 5e character was a warlock, and I read the hype on Hex before starting play. But I quickly determined for myself that the value of the spell is overinflated. Hex is indeed fine at early levels simply because, frankly, the warlock’s level 1 spell list is pretty abysmal. But you soon start gaining access to spells that are a FAR better use of your concentration. And by the time you have two EB beams, you REALLY have better things to spend your concentration on. Hex also doesn’t do anything to further the narrative flavor of your character the way spells that do more than damage do. By L5, it’s a spell I keep only for the odd situation I want to impose skill disadvantage. By tier 3 (and sometimes sooner), it’s something I drop altogether without hesitation.
Good article overall. My only criticism would be the false comparison of Hunter’s Mark to PWT and Conjure Animals. Those spells are absolutely better, yes, but they’re also not level 1 spells, and with an hour long duration even a 1st level Hunter’s Mark could be carried through multiple fights. The comparison is more valid on Hex, since a Warlock would only be able to cast Hex with higher level slots, but a Ranger maintains multiple low level slots even to the highest levels.
True, Hunter’s Mark’s main competition isn’t with higher level spells that cost more, it’s with Crossbow Expert, which is always on and at will. The bonus action conflict often leaves it at a loss compared to not casting anything.
And that’s not even accounting for other ranger spells you could’ve spent the slot on instead, like Goodberry, (with it’s 24 hour duration,) Fog Cloud, or the Tasha’s addition of Entangle.
Thank you for that list.
ad Hex: Yes, I agree, as a damage spell it is not great. But what makes Hex shine is the disadvantage on ability checks it forces. I disagree with that just being a “minor debuff”. It applies without any save and no monster is immune to it (whereas immunity to frightened is fairly common amongst higher level creatures). The debuff is fairly useful from my experience. Things it can be used for include disadvantage on contested ability checks for grappling and for the Telekinesis spell, disadvantage on Counterspell or Dispel Magic checks, disadvantage on Perception and Insight checks, disadvantage on the check to escape a Maze spell and other things.
But what I want to say is that Hex even at higher levels still has a lot of uses aside from just dealing damage – probably its best users actually are Fighters with Fey Touched or Fighters with a Warlock dip (Hexblade, Genie, Undead) who don’t have anything else to concentrate on and can actually benefit a lot from its damage bonus?
ad Swift Quiver: I think you might underrate it a bit and overrate Conjure Animals. Of course a crossbow build already has a bonus action attack, but unfortunately there are very few magical hand crossbows out there. So if you for example have an oathbow, this spell gains a lot of value – and even Guardian of Nature only is better than Hunter’s Mark or Swift Quiver if you don’t already have advantage from another source such as the aforementioned oathbow or an ally’s ability (such as a Wolf barbarian) or spell.
Conjure Animals also is overrated at high levels in my opinion, especially when you conjure things like wolves. Aside from the problem with nonmagical damage, they just die too quickly to any AoE. You might get one turn off – but the spell requires your full action to cast, and with that same action you would have been able to make a number of Sharpshoooter shots. If you are unlucky with initiaitve or the monster(s) have AoE lair or legendary actions or damaging auras, your poor animals might not get a single turn.
ad Hail of Thorns: I agree. The spell also has the issue of friendly-firing, which is particularly bad because you have much less freedom in positioning than for normal AoEs like Fireball.
ad Spiritual Weapon: I agree, not much to add besides Spiritual Weapon having some use to attack someone who is imprisoned in a Wall of Force or Forcecage.
ad Inflict Wounds: I agree, although while Hold Person is mediocre as a single-target save or suck, it absolutely is a strong spell when dealing with groups of humanoids due to it being cheap to upcast.
ad Scorching Ray: Again, I generally agree. Just generally take into account that counterspelling the Shield often is a good idea especially when you have multple counterspellers in the party, because it not just allows your Scorching Ray or Magic Missile to hit, all other party members will be thankful too.
ad Hunter’s Mark: Agree, although you might be able to cast it *before* combat starts to preserve your bonus action attack; and just like Hex, it probably is better on a Fighter than on any other class (or on a Fighter/Ranger multiclass) due to their great number of attacks. And just like Swift Quiver, it might be useful if you are using a weapon other than a Hand Crossbow.
A spell I would like to add to the list of overrated spells is Conjure Barrage. It is a 3rd level Ranger spell, dealing 3d8 piercing damage in a 60-feet cone or half as much on a successful dex save. That is literally the same damage as Shatter, which is only a 2nd level spell and can be accessed by full casters at 3rd level, whereas a ranger must be at least 9th level to learn 3rd level spells. The area, while larger than a Fireball, is more difficult to make effective use of in many situations, and while the damage type is much less likely to be resisted, even a resisted fireball deals more damage on average than a non-resisted Conjure Barrage. In my opinion this spell, while it might seem drastic, needs its damage doubled to 6d8 to be worth taking.
There are certainly other bad spells too, but Conjure Barrage is one I have already seen multiple times in subclass spell lists of homebrewed classes.
Overall a pretty good list. I think Hex has a little more utility than you say, but not by much. Doing something like decreasing insight and perception checks on a spell that doesn’t do damage, has no save to resist, and is cheap has some practical value, even if these scenarios are rare.
On the topic of Inflict Wounds- I really wanted to make this work with some elaborate DS Sorcerer Assassin build that subtle spells it to get the guaranteed crit. Not the most powerful build, but something fun to think about.
Yeah, fully agree with most of these.
I also never understood why one would use swift quiver over cbe+ss+guardian of nature. That is so much more useful and costs a lesser spellslot.
“Swift quiver similarly uses up your bonus action on the turn on which you cast it.” – I assume “similarly” here means in comparison to Hunter’s Mark. It’s even worse, though, because at least Hunter’s Mark bonus action casting allows you to actually utilize its effect on the turn that you cast it. That’s not the case with Swift Quiver.
Agree with most of these with one caveat. I have an 11th level Sorlock build and I utilize Hex quite a bit. Quicken Eldritch Blast and you get six attacks; so, that’s a potential of 6d6 of extra damage.
I feel like the Swift Quiver math isn’t giving the full picture as it uses a very basic build. Unless I’m mistaken it’s assuming longbow + max dex (9.5 damage) with 65% hit chance over 4 turns which result in 9.26 dpr (counting the 1st turn loss).
But who is picking Swift Quiver with just a mundane Longbow? Rangers get the spell at level 17 and Bards at level 10-11, at that point you are running Sharpshooter + Archery if you care a little about optimization (1 level fighter dip is well worth for archer Bards). This bump the damage to 19.5 with 50% hit chance for a dpr of 13. Now Conjure Animals is only 23% extra damage against resistant targets. And with the longbow massive range it also doesn’t suffer all the limitation the wolves will have from being stuck in melee (and easy to wipe out).
But there is more, by level 10 a +2 weapon is likely, a +1 weapon pretty much guaranteed unless your DM hate martials. That’s 15 dpr for +1 weapon and 17,2 dpr for a +2 weapon. And it will become way better if your weapon has anything more than a simple +X enchantment.
Now all of this is mostly relevant if compared to Call Animals alone but the existence of Crossbow Expert does make Swift Quiver way less appealing. Still if someone would rather use a longbow, Swift Quiver is solid on its own.
An other spell that’s important to mention for Bards when comparing with Swift Quiver is Holy Weapon, it’s also a 5th level spell and it boost weapon attacks. Even with a SS + Archery build it adds a pretty decent 4.5 dpr per attack without burning your bonus action so it can be combined with CBE typically.
Your maths on scorching ray is inconsistent, using the previous 65% accuracy = 13.65 damage, not 12.6
@J: the Scorching Ray section says 14.7 DPR, which is correct. Your value is omitting the effect of critical hits.
* 3×2d6 = 21 damage on a hit
* there’s 60% chance of a non-crit and 5% chance of a crit
* giving a total of (.6+.5*2)*21=14.7