Tempest is my personal favorite domain because it focuses on one of my favorite things to do in 5e: pushing people around. We get an ability to push an enemy 10ft when we deal lightning damage to them at 6th level, and this is an incredible build around option.

The big points of power here are the emboldening bond, a feature that works like an improved Bless that also stacks with the actual Bless spell, a channel divinity that grants healing that makes the Life Cleric jealous, and the ability to grant a party-wide reaction to spread damage out evenly between players and keep enemies from using focus fire, forcing our opponents to play suboptimally.

The Order Cleric is one of the few domains that significantly changes the playstyle of the typical cleric, focusing quite a lot on buff spells for their party and granting them extra attacks when they do buff them. We also get a great control ability with our channel divinity, leaning this cleric is less of an offensive and more of a defensive and control style of play.

The Nature domain is a bit of a weird one. At first glance it seems pretty weak, especially at higher levels when plant and beast enemies are practically non-existent. However, if you ignore the features that relate to plants and beasts, you’ll find some real gold in this subclass.

It’s the cleric that gets Fireball, please clap. In all seriousness, this domain is pretty great. At low levels we immediately get both a defensive and an offensive feature, with our channel divinity being one of the best blast options available at low levels, period. It does lose its luster as time goes on, but it’s good when it is important for it to be good.

The most cleric-y cleric to ever cleric, the life domain doubles down on the assumed stereotype of “the cleric is the healer”, and does so to its detriment. Healing is bad in 5e, and no party needs a dedicated healer.

This domain might very well be the least combat focused cleric subclass, but that by no means makes it a bad choice. Knowledge functions as the skill monkey of the clerics, gaining expertise in two intelligence skills and a channel divinity that give proficiency in any skill or tool of our choice

Despite the seemingly sinister name of this domain, Grave Clerics take very supportive role in the party. Don’t let the word “support” make you yawn though, because this domain supports everything your party does, including dealing damage.

The Forge domain is one whose features provide ample defense, but whose expanded spell list is a highlight reel of great offensive spells like Wall of Fire and Animate Objects. This allows the Forge Cleric to function as a tank and a powerful damage dealer, though probably not through the use of weapons, as we have no real incentive to use them.

The Arcana domain has the honor of owning the single greatest capstone feature of any subclass in all of 5e. Learning the best spells of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level makes up for the lacking selections of the Cleric spell list by leaps and bounds.

The Armorer lets us live our armored super hero fantasy in 2 different ways, defender or infiltrator. The defender trades damage for tanking ability, support for its party, and debuffing enemies. The infiltrator focuses on ranged single target damage, stealth, and mobility.

The Battle Smith is the commonly agreed upon “best” Artificer subclass, and it’s easy to see why. We get good weapon use, the ability to focus solely on intelligence, a very effective pet, and the Shield spell. In many ways this is a fixed Beast Master before that subclass itself was fixed.

The Artillerist would be a very bad subclass, on par with the Alchemist, if not for one thing: the Protecter Eldritch Cannon. The ability to start every combat with your party having about 11-12 temporary hit points that refresh every single round is such an insane buff to your party’s durability that it is only outmatched by the infamously overpowered Twilight Cleric.

The Alchemist has no clear role in combat. Being a half caster is not enough, we run out of slots quickly and our spells aren’t as effective as a normal caster. That being said, the Alchemist can still provide a character who does have some effective things to do in combat, we just have to get creative, and our feats are going to need to do some heavy lifting.

The Wildfire Druid might be sneakily the best Druid subclass of them all. At a passing glance you may disagree with that statement. The expanded spell list is mediocre at best, and our features are definitely all good, but none jump off the page as broken. The secret of this subclass is hidden in the Wildfire Spirit stat block.

As with the majority of the subclasses introduced in Tasha’s, the Stars Druid shines brightly amongst its piers as a brilliant example of powerful and flavorful subclass design. The big draw of the subclass is the three options for bonus action transformations that replace a use of Wildshape.

The Circle of Spores is sometimes called the weakest of the Druid subclasses, and for the life of me I cannot understand why. Yes, Halo of Spores and Spreading Spores are horrible features, no doubt about it. However…

The Shepherd Druid could accurately be called a one trick pony, but dang it’s good at that trick. Summoning magic is already completely busted in half in this game, and the Circle of Shepherds only serves to make it even more busted.

The problem with the subclass is that it ONLY buffs Wildshape and nothing else about the Druid, so if you’re playing this circle then you might as well lean into Wildshape as hard as you can. For that reason this will be a list more focused on feats that work in tandem or buff Wildshape in some way.

Sadly the Circle of Dreams is probably my pick for the weakest Druid subclass, but don’t misunderstand, you can still make a very powerful character with it, it just won’t be because of your subclass selection.