A gateway spell to real magic, Prestidigitation gives you all the powers of a birthday party magician. Maybe the lameness of that association is to blame for its underutilization. But there’s a use right there. If you need to keep a crowd’s attention while the rest of your party sneaks behind them, dazzle them with some flashy magic tricks.

Creation should feel incredible to use, but it doesn't to me. It should be everything I want in a spell; it's simple, yet opens up a world of options to the caster by offering them any physical object with a minute of casting.

Shocking Grasp is the sorcerer, wizard, and artificer tool to attempt to deal a bit of damage and get the raging gnoll off you without getting stabbed in the back while running.

The reality of True Strike, even in situations where you’d think it’d be decent, is that there are always better things to do than this. If you’re getting to use it as a bonus action, sure, I guess it's fine, but consider what other cantrips you’d probably rather be using as a bonus action if that’s the option available to you.

Eldritch Blast is just good regardless of circumstances. At its floor, it's a slightly better Fire Bolt, and its ceiling has some major potential to turn a warlock into a gatling gun. You don’t have to dedicate any part of your build outside of a learned cantrip to it, but it encourages you to do so, especially with how limiting pact magic is.

Vicious Mockery defines the identity of the bard class; you’re a charismatic support whose wit alone can inspire friends to greatness and bring enemies down to groveling.

Guidance is the ideal support cantrip. It's a commonly used d4 boost to skill checks that get players working together. I wish so badly it was a bard spell, as Guidance via sick lute riff sounds like something I need at my table. For just artificers, clerics, and druids, it adds a class feature like effect to bolster a ton of skill checks, and help make the party feel like a team.

Some niche cases will occur where you know a trap is directly in front of you, the barbarian intends to just set it off with the aid of trap sense, and Resistance can add on a bit to help them succeed on the save. That’s the best use case scenario for Resistance.

Watery Sphere enters as a long term consistent save or die that can restrain up to four creatures at once so long as they’re medium or smaller. Add on the mobility it has, and you’ve got yourself a pretty slick option that can meaningfully add a lot to your team.

Out of all the wall spells, I’m pretty confident this is the worst option for its level. You’re getting a one foot wide wall that doesn’t even provide full cover from ranged weapon attacks. Then, if you’re willing to spend more resources, you can freeze it into a 5 AC 15 hit point SECTION of the wall!

I’m confident in saying Wall of Sand is the second worst wall spell, only to Wall of Water. Functionally, for a 3rd level spell, you’re eating half of the movement of however many creatures that can get in the wall. That is all.

If you plan on up-casting your damage spells, Vitriolic Sphere does scale better than Fireball. If you’re spending 7th level or higher slots, you’re better off with Vitriolic Sphere basically across the board.

Transmute Rock can be super fun to play with. It fits in the category of “lower level spells can do it better”, but does have some unique elements that make it worth the slot.

At its baseline Storm Sphere is a turret. You get a 20 ft. area swirling death cloud that deals a bit of damage on its own that offers a 60 ft. ranged lighting strike for your bonus action each turn. With just two or three hits (depending on how much damage the sphere itself did) this can quickly rack up decent chunks of damage over longer fights, and can really sell the storm sorcerer fantasy.

Outside this basic binary, using Maelstrom isn’t necessarily straightforward. A 30 ft. area isn’t that large in underwater fights that tend to be more three dimensional with creatures with quick swim speeds. For Maelstrom to be worth the cast you’re probably going to want at least 12d6 damage out of it on a handful of creatures, or at least eat their actions by forcing them to dash.

Immolation, in its best case scenarios, is somewhere around 16d6 damage over three turns and three saves. Sometimes you’re just getting 4d6 damage; sometimes you’re just getting 8d6, sometimes 12d6 damage. None of those numbers are worth a 5th level spell slot when you’ve got Fireball you can up-cast.

Elemental Bane ends up being something you’d want if you’re committed to an elemental build (probably fire based) when specifically diving in to fight things of that type. It's a way your cool build can deal with damage resistant creatures, and specifically very large damage resistant creatures.

Control Winds is basically three modes: difficult terrain and disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks, disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks and flying creatures possibly getting knocked prone, and halving fall damage and adding ten feet to jumps. None of these modes are better than lower level options.

Nobody really needs Sacred Flame. Damaging cantrips are overrated, especially given that equipment often feels “free”. If you’re a cleric, use your weapon proficiencies. It’ll open up more room to take other options over the lower damage, slightly higher accuracy damaging cantrips like this. 

If you’re playing a cleric, don’t bother with Spare the Dying. I know it may seem counterintuitive that the healer character doesn’t take something whose name literally evokes preventing death, but I promise you it is ghoulish overkill.