Teleport is instantaneous mass evacuation, the best tool for exploration on a single plane, and one of the culprits in the upper tiers of play for removing the entire survival pillar from the game. Access to Teleport means access to every location you’ve ever heard of, no matter the distance, in the blink of an eye.

Teleportation Circle is neat, albeit a bit of a headache to manage from a DM perspective. It comes into play at 9th level, meaning if you’re new DM or just never had somebody bring it up, you may stumble into a player learning it while you have put exactly zero thought into implementing these in the world.

Time Stop can grind games to a halt. If you’re looking to bust out this busted spell, do your homework, figure out what you can and can’t be doing without ending it, and establish some sort of plan to save your friends the time at the table you’d need to figure it all out on the fly.

Transport Via Plants takes you anywhere you’ve already been, so long as a large plant is there. That may not sound like a particularly high bar, but you can immediately rule this spell out of being able to take you somewhere you haven’t been yet. It can never move creatures to new places, and can never bring you to spots where no flora exists.

Weird may not be the worst spell in the game, as some literally do nothing and this does something, but it EASILY ranks among the worst.

Tree Stride is a spell with the rare benefit of actually being decent on half-casters, while being substantially worse on the full casters. Rangers and paladins typically care more about their positioning and mobility, and will likely get the most out of the spell compared to their full caster buddies.

The sheer quantity of game breaking shenanigans True Polymorph offers makes it a top tier spell. It is one of the best in the game, if not the best. True Polymorph only gets better as more books are printed, and its floor is so game warping I’d recommend discussing what you and your DM feel it should be able to do at the table before trying it out.

If you happen to run into a single enemy who manages to kill a friend with Disintegrate, you can prepare and use True Resurrection when you’ve got some downtime and a small fortune to burn.

True Seeing makes it so a DM doesn’t really WANT to pose illusory, ethereal, or invisible threats against you because this spell just removes any kind of interesting problem solving those encounters normally ask for.

Wall of Force may seem innocuous, but has some surprising utility and genuine power attached to it. In the right player’s hands, this spell can warp the table, and make some serious scenes breakdown in hilarious hijinks centered around an unbreakable hamster ball.

Like other area of effect damage spells, Wall of Ice rewards controlling enemy movement. Entering an area for the first time each turn opens Wall of Ice up to be abused easier than Wall of Fire; like Blade Barrier, you get a decent chunk of damage out of subsequent pushes and pulls.

You’d rather have Wall of Stone when you’d want to build permanent stuff with it out of combat. In these cases, the spell is solid. If you’ve got some downtime, it can easily be used to erect literal defensible walls around entire villages, create a convenient connection over chasms and rivers, and even build the foundations of your own fortress.

With a little effort, Wall of Thorns is solid. If you can keep shoving things back into the brambles, you’ll have a good time with it. As a wall, it does its job of barring a path, and can be a great tool to encircle weaker foes to keep them in place for a bit.

This is the kind of spell you build in as a foundational element to a campaign or campaign arch. An adventure spanning the Plane of Air, Mt. Celestia, and Sigil, the City of Doors can be truly one of a kind experiences when done with Wind Walk.

Wish gives you the power to do anything you set your mind to, and that’s after the suite of game breaking features it has as a baseline.

There lies the problem with Word of Recall; any group with the average level of competency adventurers tend to have (which is incredibly low, mind you) won’t often actually cast Word of Recall because they won’t be in situations where they need to. In big set piece fights, holding on to your 6th level slot isn’t viable until you’re in the epic tier of the game as you’d almost always want it to be doing something powerful that affects the encounter and hypothetically removes the need for this spell in the first place.

Arcane Gate can be a blast to use, but the strict limitations make most problems you’d look to solve with it outclassed by lower level options. Crossing large gaps can be remedied with a Conjure Animals, Fly up-cast, Wall of Stone, or any other assortment of tools.

It's a shame that Armor of Agathys is so terrible because the fantasy it sells is unique in the game; the numbers are just far too low, and you have no means of recouping or reusing the spell over time. As is, this spell offends the eyes, and doesn’t belong on your character sheet unless you DESPERATELY want cold armor that claps back.

A 4th level spell that keeps people off of 0 hit points, negates max HP reduction, and provides resistance to a rare damage type isn’t the text of a good spell; it's a list made to shit on one specific kind of undead.

For Aura of Purity to be “worth it”, you need it to either net your side at least an action by preventing people from dropping from poison damage (which is unbelievably niche), negate at least one disease that would majorly affect an ally, or mitigate enough conditions that it nets you more “action economy” than the action spent to cast it.