Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Feat Tier List

I have a str based heavy armor Ranger/Tempest Cleric that dual wields since Rangers don't get Great Weapon style. The str and heavy armor go well together so dex is a 10.

For a dex dual wielder the feat probably is not worth it, Savage Attacker is probably better.

A two hander with GWM will outdamage a dual wielder but sometimes style counts for more than pure mechanical advantage.

I think Resilent: Con is an A-tier pick.

I've done simulations comparing Warcaster and Resilient. On average, War Caster is +3.2 to your concentration saves. As soon as you hit level 5, your proficiency bonus is +3, so Resilient Con is just -0.2 below that. However, perhaps that +1 to CON bumps you up to an even number, meaning it's now +0.8 better than War Caster. And it applies to things other than Concentration checks.

At 9th level, your proficiency bonus is +4, and Resilient Con is undoubtedly better unless you have a particular need for the shocking grasp reaction.

So in summary, early game War Caster is slightly better. By level 5 it's about a wash but I think Reslient is better overall and especially if it lets you hit an even number for CON. By level 9 Reslient is undoubtedly better.

savage attacker is godly on 2h weapons where minimal damage is much lower and yes dual wielder i still wroth for sword of scream that deal like much more than crap you linked and still rapier +1 give much more damage


again str weapons is much better than dex in any scerio

Except I'm not actually trying to break records of how high my constitution saving throw was. Thats actually completely worthless to me.

In fact I dont care how high I roll in absolute numbers, I just want to roll high enough, as consistently as possible.

Which means Warcaster is clearly superior to Resilient: Constitution.

Very simple example, with Resilient: Constitution the chance for a critical fail is 5%, or one in 20, just like before.

With Warcaster the critical fail chance is lowered to one in 400, or 0.25%.

Who is talking about breaking records? You just want to pass your concentration checks and maybe save against a few other spells, ya? What a strange thing to get aggro about.

Passing a DC check is a binary event. Doesn't matter if you roll a 1 or a 7 if the DC is a 10 or whatever. Good job on computing the probability of rolling a 1 though. You can use those skills to compute the probability of passing a check with an extra ~3.2 points from Warcaster or 4 or 5 points from Resilient: Con when added to the 10.5 average roll of a d20.

I didnt get aggro.

I explained why Warcaster is better than Resilient: Constitution.

Any aggression in my posting is imagined by you.

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Judging by the rest of your posting you dont understand what Warcaster does.

If you roll a regular d20, every roll has a 5% chance.

If you have Warcaster, you have Advantage.

That means you roll TWO d20 and take the higher roll.

The chances are now:

20 - 9.75% (or 39 in 400)
19 - 9.25% (or 37 in 400)
18 - 8.75%
17 - 8.25%
16 - 7.75%
15 - 7.25%
14 - 6.75%
13 - 6.25%
12 - 5.75%
11 - 5.25%
10 - 4.75%
9 - 4.25%
8 - 3.75%
7 - 3.25%
6 - 2.75%
5 - 2.25%
4 - 1.75%
3 - 1.25%
2 - 0.75% (or 3 in 400)
1 - 0.25% (or 1 in 400)

As you can see, high rolls are now much more likely to happen than low rolls.

For example the chance to roll 15 or higher is now 9.75%+9.25%+8.75%+8.25%+7.75%+7.25% = 6*8.5% = 51%

you forget about one thing, you can get war caster only from feat but you can get con res from items that why war caster is better

To expand on Halycon Styxland’s answer, let’s assume you have +2 from your Con, not an unreasonable assumption imho. Concentration checks have a DC of 1/2 the damage taken, or 10, whichever is higher. Focusing on the 10 since it’s guaranteed and many hits will be for 20 or less damage, you need an 8 thanks to your Con bonus.

Getting proficiency and thus an extra 2-4 means you need to hit a 6 at low levels or 4 at high levels and thus your chance of failure is 25% down to 15%. Not bad.

Getting advantage on the other turn makes it so your chance of getting a 7 or lower is 12.25%, straight away from level 4. That’s better.

In terms of stacking bonuses too the advantage stacks better- if you get a +3 from a Paladin aura or bless or something, without advantage you cap at 95% chance to succeed. With it you’d be at 96%, and you can get all the way to a 99.75% success rate.

However it should be noted, *both* of these effects can be obtained from items, and advantage doesn’t stack. If you’re wearing the moon devotion robe, Warcaster doesn’t do much for you and Resilient would be better. If you’re wearing the robe of supreme defenses, Warcaster is the far better option.

So of course The right feat depends as usual on what the context might be, but on a blank slate and in isolation Warcaster offers far more of a benefit, and has more favorable interactions with further save bonuses you might obtain.

You can get con saving throw advantage from items as well. Steelwatcher Helmet, Barkskin Armor, Dark Justicar half-plate, to name just 3. And con saving throw advantage is better than advantage on concentration saving throws, as it applies to concentration saving throws and more.
And yup, there's an opportunity cost to using items, but that also applies to feats.

Anyway, War Caster is generally better for keeping concentration, as well as a choice of how to react to enemies moving away from you. Resilient (con) though helps all con saving throws, so helps against things like poisons, and also gives you a point of con.

for me war mage is auto pick on cleric and sorc

Thankfully we have Withers and can respec if such a problem arises.

I know how Warcaster works. I've run simulations generating two sets of 10 billion d20 rolls and the average is 13.7. That is 3.2 points better than the average of a d20 roll (10.5).

At level 5 your proficiency bonus is +3. That's just slightly worse than 3.2. But it's better if the +1 CON bumps you up to a total of +4 compared to what you had before. In that case your average roll would be 14.5. At level 9 your average roll is 15.5 compared to 13.7 from Warcaster. (Note: I didn't add in any CON bonuses because I don't know what people are going to have. My one assumption for this paragraph is that whatever your CON was, it was an odd number so Resilient bumped it up to an even number)

'style counts' I couldn't agree more that's part of the reason I chose duel wielder for my Ranger and used those two Finesse swords all through the Shadow lands they just looked cool. In act 3 I think my Ranger looks cool duel wielding with Nyrulna.
Ranger

I don't just want to beat the game I want to look cool while doing it.

It's not like PvP where I have to maximise my advantage to win. You certainly don't need to maximize your MC to finish BG3 tactician.

Average roll doesn't matter, though, since what you're after is not being below a certain point. So what are the odds of failing a certain DC? Well, let's compare those numbers.
# = number you need to roll higher than to succeed, without the extra Resilient modifiers.
DC = What you need to beat, going up to 25 to account for Resilient, but a 20 will always succeed.
WCFR = Warcaster Failure rate in percent.
RFR = Resilient Failure Rate, and for this, going best case scenario, of +1 extra bonus from con and +4 prof. In percent.
And since those are failure rates, a lower percent is better.

DC - BFR - WCFR - RFR
25 - 95% - 90.25% - 95%
24 - 95% - 90.25% - 90%
23 - 95% - 90.25% - 85%
22 - 95% - 90.25% - 80%
21 - 95% - 90.25% - 75%
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20 - 95% - 90.25% - 70%
19 - 90% - 81.00% - 65%
18 - 85% - 72.25% - 60%
17 - 80% - 64.00% - 55%
16 - 75% - 56.25% - 50%
15 - 70% - 49.00% - 45%
14 - 65% - 42.25% - 40%
13 - 60% - 36.00% - 35%
12 - 55% - 30.25% - 30%
10 - 50% - 25.00% - 25%
09 - 45% - 20.25% - 20%
08 - 40% - 16.00% - 15%
07 - 35% - 12.25% - 10%
06 - 30% - 9.00% - 5%
05 - 25% - 6.25% - 5%
04 - 20% - 4.00% - 5%
03 - 15% - 2.25% - 5%
02 - 10% - 1.00% - 5%
01 - 05% - 0.25% - 5%

So from that, assuming I didn't screw up the math, you can see where each has its advantages. Overall, if you typically get hit for 20 or less damage, and have plenty of saving throw bonuses from gear, warcaster wins out. But if you are routinely getting hit harder, have low saving throw bonuses from whatever, and you're con is pretty low, Resilient wins out (if only barely for certain bits, with a tie at 10) until you reach a point where you're screwed regardless. And for much of it, you won't notice the difference either way.

And the best, if you want to get serious and do something like a druid who strolls through his own thorn patches, is to have both. If you're MC'ing into Barb, Fighter, or Sorc, make one of those your initial class, at least on respec when the time comes. If your gear can get you either advantage or proficiency, get the one that you are lacking. If you're a halfling, go Resilient.

War caster always performs best when things are very easy or very hard.

I was told Savage attacker was great for Paladin because of smite dice and you might have a great sword besides.

In practice I like defense like heavy armor master and sentinel. You can see how effectively Ansur uses his DR. Now your Paladin and Laezel can do it too..

@Talismina not bad but you're missing a few things in there- namely that the DC of 10 is the minimum, and also, a bit of context on what the effect is of your overall bonuses. Here's the odds of a failure if against a specific target DC with a specific save bonus normally:



And here is the odds of failure if you have advantage:



This of course continues on infinitely in both directions, but the failure chance never gets lower than 5% (or .25% with advantage) or higher than 95% (or 90.25% with advantage) and thus it's just a continuation of the same trends. Getting Resilient moves you right (or up, it's the same thing) 2 squares at level 4 since it's +2 to your save bonus, or up to 4 squares at level 12. Getting advantage moves you to the same square on the advantage table. As with the original chart these are failure rates, or the chance you'll Lose concentration, so the lower the better.

I've color coded it - Red, Advantage (and thus Warcaster) is always better than even a +4 save bonus. Yellow, and a +4 bonus is better but a +2 is not, so Resilient is better at higher levels while Warcaster is better at lower levels. Green, and Resilient is always better, even at only a +2. A few things to note - the yellow edges, Resilient is *barely* better with a +4. 5% instead of 6.25%, or 55% instead of 56.25%, or 90% instead of 90.25%. Also, the very best case for Resilient, where you had a DC 20 check (meaning you took 40 damage) and have a 75% chance of failure instead of 90.25% chance of failure, you still have a 75% chance of failure. It's far more likely than not you're losing concentration there.

The reason the bonuses are stretching so high is because you can realistically get +10 or more to your saves - Bless (especially with the Bless staff), the Robes of Supreme Defense, the Paladin Aura, the Barbarian ability, shields, rings, and proficiency, all of them add to your overall bonus. Just with an 18 Cha Paladin, the Con amulet, proficiency, and the robes with a 20 in your casting stat, and you're already at +19.

This, combined with the reality of the situations where Resilient is significantly better, where you're taking 40+ damage in a hit and are more likely than not losing concentration anyway, is why I prefer Warcaster generally. It's also the case that I don't typically think it's worth taking both, which is why I don't have Resilient higher, but you certainly could, if you absolutely never wanted to fail a concentration check.

I didn't miss that, actually. I wasn't talking about the DC, but rather, what you need to roll to hit the DC. If I have 3 pieces of gear that provide +1 to saving throws, Bless is active, and a 14 con, I'm looking at +6 to +9 to my saves. So with a bless roll of 1, I'm looking at only needing to roll a 4. So DC 10, but only a 4 needed. Basically putting an advantage column next to a +resilient (and one more point from con) column for ease of comparison.

Of course, I am simplifying things quite a bit. Like the assumption that the +1 from Resilient will be combined with investing 1 more starting point in con, rather than the reverse of spending one fewer. And that, before you cap out the prof bonus at 4, Resilient will be weaker, but Warcaster will do what it does regardless of level.

Overall, though, I think if you're just looking for some help about concentration, they're about equal, in time, anyway. Warcaster is overall better at protecting your concentration, but it provides weaker benefits outside of that. But if you are serious about protecting your concentration, then you are looking at a situation where you are trying to avoid that 5% failure rate, are building more save boosts into your team, and so on, and yeah, then Warcaster comes out ahead. Which it should. It is the more specialized feat, after all.

I personally wouldn't recommend taking both either. Feats are too rare, especially with MC'ing in the mix. So just too much opportunity cost. You're better off getting the perks in other ways, like by making your initial class a fighter, barb, or sorc, or using a piece of equipment that gives con save advantage. Or just cheesing it with a camp NPC, if you want to go that route.