It's interesting because I had very different feelings about a lot of the classes. To say it first though, I think they all suffer from the problem of one subclass or configuration being wildly better than the other choices.
Ranger: Solid damage and armor, the summons and spells are meh but who cares because your real job is being a bow warlock. You apply your mark, shoot the badguy, and laugh at the warlock's starting ac.
Rogue: Thief is incredible, I'd even argue that in the current content is the outright best for combat as long as you're level three (and your should be with how easy it is to hit). Their action econpmy is splendid, sneak attacks are ready to setup (especially for dark vision races), and their extra bonus action means that they have a solid way to work shove into their turn if needed. Arcane Trickster is... alright too I guess? They have a few helpful spella and True Strike makes setting up long range sneak attacks easy... but so does crouching.
Cleric: Meh... Light can pull off some excellent tankiness and the spells are impactful but you end up constantly resting if you rely on your spells heavily and if you're saving your spells you're basically just a bad fighter. Oh the bright side, eachsubclass can pull off at least one useful gimmick fairly reliably so you have more freedom to make choices based on flavor preference without being handicapped. So far the best use for a Cleric I've found is casting Shield of Faith before going back to camp so I can take someone else.
Wizard: Garbage, it has strong burst but after that's used up you're slinging cantrips for damage. I get that Wizard's supposed to have more cc and utility than many of the other classes but I've yet to find an encounter where the utility was that needed. Down the road as we get new encounters and spells this situation could change but atm the most useful thing to do with a Wizard of to have them cast Mage Armor on somebody else before swapping them out of the party.
Fighter: Battle Master is excellent and honestly I'm not sad that riposte needs work because I never want it. I get the damage value of riposte but Battle Master already does decent damage enough damage considering our tends to be the party tank. The damage+status of scary shot is nice and there isn't much worse to say there, Rally is helpful for buying the team that one extra turn they need to reinforce a struggling companion's position, and push shot is a ranged shove in a game where falling damage often does at least "a lot" of damage.
Warlock: Not bad at all, their defense feels a little light till level 4 when you can feat for some better armor and a shield but they're not softies by any stretch. Blast+Hex+Cha by itself is great from just a damage standpoint but one you add shoving to the blast Warlock becomes indisposable. To top all of this off, imps make great bonus buddies, Scorching Ray gives them decent burst, and Misty Step goes a long way for keeping your Warlock out of trouble (especially if paired with their story power).
Overall: My optimal setup right now is a Thief PC, Thief Astarion, Battle Master Lae'zel, and Fiend Warlock Wyll. You'll still need to rest occasionally but overall you get a team that has a pretty wide range of skills, can dish out a lot of shoves on cliff/ledge fights, you get a very reasonable amount of mobility, decent ac all around (especially at level 4), and you can dish or 6a lot of damage without expanding much in the way of rest reliant resources.
Last edited by Sunfly; 14/10/20 02:45 PM.