The Complete One D&D Tactics Metagame Tier List
While classes and subclasses are important, they are ultimately just tools for D&D game play, and like any tool, the proficiency in how they’re used it entirely dependent on the wielder! While understanding how naturally good some of these classes are, understanding how to best leverage these classes come down to a combination of knowing how to build them (the subclass guides) or tactics when playing them!
To that end, this is a tier list of the most common tactics employed by D&D players in combat and how strong they are. To be clear, you absolutely don’t have to pick the strongest builds and employ the best tactics to be effective, most campaigns are designed for pretty low optimized play, so if that sounds like your campaign, you should focus on some of the lower tier tactics to keep things interesting. As you creep up the tier list, you can quickly see how some of these strategies can very easily invalidate what would be impossible encounters for less optimized parties.
Tier List Rankings
S Tier – Problematic in some way, either in power level or some sort of game play facet is problematic (a lot of the time, it’s both).
A Tier – The best of the best. These are the top dogs in terms of power without broaching into unfair territory like S Tier might.
B Tier – These will not be as inherently powerful as A Tier options, but are still quite strong in their own right. These are likely a bit more situational or slightly weaker than the A tier options, but still very good.
C Tier – Decent options, but likely not particularly strong. These options don’t offer too much or may just be a bit too situational to be ranked higher, but are still options you should consider as these will be the average power level.
D Tier – While weaker than the average, these can still function and be useful when utilized to their full potential.
F Tier – Something has to be the worst/weakest, these are it.
S Tier
Invisible Friend/Gaze Of Two Minds – This powerful combination can come online as early as level 5 and be pretty brutal when used effectively. With Pact of the Chain (or Unseen Servant), you get much better familiars from Find Familiar including an Imp (or Quasit, but Imp is better here) who can turn invisible and stay invisible until they take an action to break it. Then you need the Gaze of Two Minds invocation which allows you to spellcast as if you were in the marked creatures space. You then send your friend in and spellcast from their space which does not break their invisibility as they aren’t doing it themselves. Use this to soften up future enemies with functionally no risk and very little downside by just blasting enemies from an invisible helper. If you abuse this, your DM may ban this from your table so be careful how much you use this combination.
Conjure Woodland Beings Flyby* – Popularized by Treantmonk’s, the tactic is for a Druid to cast Conjure Woodland Beings and then Wild Shape into any flying creature with the Flyby ability to avoid opportunity attacks. Now for your next turn, you use your movement to get as many enemies in the emanation as possible then you can either use your action to dash to get more enemies or ready your action to move on the enemies turn to double up on emanation damage. In encounters with a lot of enemies, this strategy can absolutely invalidate the entire encounter due to the sheer amount of damage you’re dishing out. However, in encounters with just one tougher enemy, this strategy will still be good but way less effective.
The Microwave – A strategy as classic as it is brutal, the most popular form of this is to drop a Sickening Radiance and a dome of Wall of Force to trap enemies inside. This can work with other AOE damage spells and other walls, but the Wall of Force part is pretty important as it is unbreakable.
Conjure Minor Elementals Blaster – With the change to Conjure Minor Elementals, anything that has multiple attack rolls is extremely powerful. So whether you’re going for an upcasted Scorching Ray or just a high level Eldritch Blast can easily do the job. This will deal incredible amounts of damage, even with relatively minimally investment, though you do need to be able to cast at least 5th level spells to get the full effect from this.
A Tier
Emanation Steed – Similar to the Conjure Woodland Beings Flyby, you just need a steed to move you around as they move on their own turn independent of your giving you multiple rounds of emanation damage for functionally no opportunity cost. Better yet, you can have the steed ready their action to move on a different turn to get another round of damage. In theory, you can use your action to do the same thing, but that would require hopping off of your mount which isn’t ideal so I would likely avoid that.
The Cheese Grater – Spike Growth is an awesome spell, so any way to rake enemies across it is considered the cheese grater. The easiest way is being a Genie Warlock that can cast Spike Growth and have their Eldritch Blast push enemies away with Repelling Blast, but the most effective is having a Monk with the Grappler feat drag enemies around in it it dealing massive amounts of damage. Even by level 6, a standard Monk can grapple an enemy, use their movement to move the enemy 45ft, and their bonus action to Step of the Wind to dash another 45ft for 90 total feet which equals 38d4 damage (approximately 95 damage on average) that offers no save beyond the initial grapple.
Battlefield Control Lock – Utilizing CC spell like Entangle, Fog Cloud, Plant Growth, or Sleet Storm over enemies is implicitly good, but if you’re able to keep the enemies in there as well through any combination of means like Repelling Blast, grappling, shoving, or anything else you can think of, you come away with an extremely effective strategy that nearly any party can pretty easily utilize.
Conjure Minor Elementals Martial – Conjure Minor Elementals is a messed up spell, and while not many builds can get this to work, being able to upcast this and attack a bunch of times a turn (think Dual Wielder and Extra Attack) will deal massive amounts of damage each round.
Undead Army – There are plenty of reanimation spells available to you like Animate Dead or Danse Macabre, get a bunch of them, hook them up with Shortbows, and let them go absolutely ape on enemies. Simple, but pretty effective with some proper planning.
The Friendly Grapple – Similar to the Conjure Woodland Beings Flyby, you need an ally to create an emanation and have them move around enemies. Then you go up to your ally, grapple them, and drag them around the battlefield so it triggers a whole other round of emanation damage. This is less effective than Conjure Woodland Beings Flyby and the Emanation Steed as this consumes an allies action, but it gets the job done.
B Tier
One Sided Blindness – While plunging every fighting party into Darkness is a great way to negate all instances of advantage/disadvantage, but if you can see for some reason (Blindsight, Devil’s Sight), this is pretty debilitating for enemies as you have advantage, they have disadvantage, and they can’t cast most spells as they’ll require sight.
Magic Stone Servants – While this may seem somewhat innocuous, using the Magic Stone cantrip when you have at least one Unseen Servant or Tiny Servant so they can snatch up a stone and start pelting enemies with it. While this by itself may not seem that strong, if you have three servants at once (which is really not hard to do, you can even do it by yourself), your servants can toss all three stones each round which will deal pretty consistent damage. If you have multiple people doing this, you can deal an obnoxious amount of damage each round with relatively minimal investment (doubly so if you’re a Sorcerer who can just Quicken Magic Stone).
Giant Insect Spider Lock – This is pretty simple, cast Giant Insect, do the Spider form, and let it Web Bolt an enemy with no good ranged options every turn. This can invalidate a surprising amount of fights if their AC isn’t super high.
AOE CC – Simply using any spell that applies CC in a large area (Hypnotic Pattern, Sleet Storm, etc.) is extremely powerful and one of the most consistent ways to win fights.
Grappling – Just in general, grappling is very powerful as the Grappler feat is arguably the strongest feat in the game. It combines well with so many game plans that every team should have at least one person who can grapple on it. It’s not the most broken thing you can do, not by a long shot, but its effectiveness can not be understated.
The Loose Demon* – Summon Greater Demon is a great 4th level spell implicitly, but if you drop concentration, the demon doesn’t immediately disappear. So for a 4th level spell slot, you can just summon a CR 5 enemy that will stick around for 1-5 rounds just beating on your enemies if you position the demon to be right in the middle of enemies and nowhere near friends. While this won’t be super effective for a long while, this will be useful for quite awhile.
C Tier
AOE Blasting – Simply blasting enemies with spells that have a large AOE is really effective, less so than CC, but still very effective.
Rope Trick Concentration – If there’s a spell you desperately need to hold concentration on, there’s nothing saying you can’t cast that spell, then next turn cast a Rope Trick to hide away while your party fights without you.
Mutual Obscurement – While one sided heavy obscurement or Darkness is best, negating all instances of advantage and disadvantage while stopping the vast majority of spells and abilities (as most require line of sight) is surprisingly effective in tough fights.
Thief Utilizer – There are a lot of great magic items and even common items that become substantially more effective when you can activate them as a bonus action rather than a full action like a Chain, Manacles, or otherwise that have pretty low checks and can give your enemies a real headache.
Martial – Simply just walking up and wacking enemies is still an effective strategy, especially with weapon masteries, more ways to knock things prone, and otherwise.
D Tier
Archery – Not nearly as good as it used to be since the massive nerf to Sharpshooter and how many ways there are to knock enemies prone.
Cantrip Blasting – With the exception of Eldritch Blast, just hitting enemies with cantrips just kind of sucks, similar to Archery.
F Tier
None
