Only Sorcerers and Warlocks and other unfortunate souls need recommendations for spells. You're a Wizard. If you don't know every spell that exists, you should work on that. Try them all, see what personally feels great to you and what you enjoy using. As far as Cantrips, if you're not intending to dip Warlock for Eldritch Blast chicanery, Wizard Evocation Cantrips include:
Fire Bolt (Old reliable, most often chosen cantrip by evocation wizards if I had to guess)
Ray of Frost (Likely seriously underwhelming)
Shocking Grasp (the only one which is an attack roll by you, not relying on a failed save by the opponent, though that has certain counter synergies, and relies on melee range)
I'd not get stuck on those though, even with the benefits to evocation cantrips, Acid Splash actually does as much or more damage at virtually all levels if you have adjacent targets (though split between them), not to mention a limitless supply of acid can come in handy in certain circumstances.
Blade Ward is terrible, please don't get it, and True Strike is ALMOST always not worth it, as it requires 1) not already having advantage and not having a better way of getting it, 2) giving up a turn entirely to gain that advantage, 3) Using a spell where the difference between success and failure is significant enough for that lost turn to make up for itself, 4) not minding that any concentration effects are lost when you use it, and 5) Having all the worth of your next attack rolled up in 1 attack roll against 1 target. So basically when casting disintegrate and pretty much nothing else. Which, for what it's worth, as an evocation mage is pretty much always a worse idea than just doing Scorching Ray (At 6th level, Disintegrate is 40+10d6 (average 35) damage, or 75 total, on a miss it does zero damage; Scorching Ray at 6th level is 7 rays and deals 2d6 (average 7) + Spell Ability modifier (5?) per ray, so 12x7 or 84 average damage if they all hit, and it's spread across 7 attacks so it's very unlikely to do zero damage). TLDR Don't take true strike. Even as a full combat Wizard, other than your combat cantrip (or two, Acid Splash + Fire Bolt isn't bad), you're best off with non-combat cantrips.
Wow, I disagree with at least half of what GiantOctopodes has said.
Saying you don't need recommendations for spells is silly. Wizards do have the option to learn new spells but while the ones you can choose on levelling are free and all of them are available, you are limited. You get 6 on first level and then 2 every level thereafter. This is 22 spells. Once chosen you cannot change it. All other spells take time and cost to add to to your spellbook and even when halving that for Evocation spells you're going to spending a veritable crapton of gold on spells if you ever think to copy them all like GiantOctopodes suggests. Now add that you will find it exceptionally rare in most campaigns that people will let you do this for any spell - you have to get the spell somewhere and spells will be guarded knowledge. Do you really think they'll let people just walk in and learn how to disintegrate things or create zombie armies or summon meteors? Nope. You will find it incredibly difficult to find the spells you want to be just available. You may, DM willing, find some as loot. Maybe.
Spell selection is important, even for Wizards. Consider your choices very carefully. Your plan or build should be based around those 22 free spells, anything else being just happy extras. A good build will also have to factor defense (no point learning how to blast things if you get killed in the first turn or two) and making good use of your arcane tradition features and wizard class features.
Also, do not think a good Evocation build means just going with Evocation spells. This would be very bad. You will want other schools, for maximum efficiency. The are multiple spells from other schools you can combine with your Evocation spells for great effect. Evocation will be your damage-dealer but other schools give you defenses, control and support to make your battles easier or deal greater damage.
Cantrips
GiantOctopodes has basically handwaved cantrips and even went with the utterly ridiculous line "you're best off with non-combat cantrips". Which is like saying a Fighter is best off without weapons.
All of your spells have the chance to miss or do less damage or take no effect. This means there is a chance you can waste your spells slots. This might be fine if this is your only battle of the day, but how many times to go on a dungeon crawl and face only one battle? How many days do you have a single encounter? Not many, so you can't just go hell-for-leather with your higher level spells on every fight. Arcane Recover gets you only half your level in spells and no higher than 5th level slots and you only get this once per day. This basically means relying on your Arcane Recovery is going to put you at serious risk of entering boss fights with nothing in reserve. Especially given there's no guarantee you get a short rest before.
Cantrips are how you pace yourself. You can use them as much as you like so your initial battles will be mostly just these.
Fire Bolt is the tried and true attack cantrip for wizards. 120 feet in range is the best and base 1d10 (4d10 by level 17+) is decent damage. Level 10 Evocation wizards can add Intelligence to evocation spells and cantrips increasing damage further. By level 20 this should be 4d10+5. It's an attack, hit or miss deal. This is an average of 27 damage. The downside is that it's fire. Why is this a downside? Because A LOT of monsters have fire resistance and even more have fire immunity.
You must have a backup in case of coming across creatures resistant or immune to your main damage.
Ray of Frost, despite what GiantOctopodes says this cantrip is very nifty. Sure, it seems quite less than Fire Bolt but hey, you're not using this as your main one, are you? 1d8 damage, going to 4d8+5 (average 23) is not a big drop. It does have less range at 60 feet but to be honest there are ways around that and this will very rarely be a problem. This does cold damage, and it is rare to fight monsters resistant or immune to both fire and cold so this makes a good backup. It is a hit or miss attack but then so are many spells and weapons and you are likely to be more successful with an attack than a save-type spell. The secondary effect of slowing your opponent's speed (all speeds, including flying) is very useful. This is especially nasty when you combine it with effects that make character's prone like Sleet Storm or any of the various spells that create difficult terrain. Now consider a Slow spell... Yeah, this can be nasty with the right synergy and far more effective than throwing a bolt of fire.
Chill Touch - OK it's Necromancy not evocation but here's the thing: D&D features a lot of undead. At some point you will face undead. This cantrip has the range of Fire Bolt and the damage of Ray of Frost without the added Int (because not evocation) but with two very decent secondary effects: undead once hit will have disadvantage on attacks against you until the start of your next turn, and that's any undead, even if the evil Lich and all attacks even spell attacks. Not only this but the other effect it has is: until the start of your next turn the undead cannot recover health by any means. Many undead have a feature where, once they are down, they can, on their next turn only, heal 1 HP and come back up, infinitely. Your cantrip blocks this and so, if you kill them with this cantrip they stay dead. You completely bypass their strongest feature. It will make facing undead a breeze. No spell or feature will ever make fighting undead as easy as this simple cantrip. Consider having this in your back pocket, just in case.
Shocking Grasp - This cantrip has saved my life. Well, in campaigns not reality of course. Point is, it is frankly a must have. As an attack it's the same in range and damage as Ray of Frost. And yes it's a melee touch attack (although, you can use a Familiar to bypass that). However, the power of this cantrip is not the attack itself but the secondary effect: once a target is hit it cannot take any reactions until the start of your turn. This means if an enemy gets in close to you - and this will definitely happen at some point - you can use this to deal some damage and get away safely. Not only this but negating all reactions on a target for a turn can be incredibly helpful in some circumstances. This cantrip can save your character's life. Staying next to an enemy in melee is BAD, you can defend yourself with other spells but seriously, why waste the slots? Use this, get away, and get some breathing room. Try to move past your allies so that if it wants to follow you it will get hit by attacks of opportunity from your friends.
However, attack cantrips are good. But sometimes, the enemy just has too much AC or partial cover and you can keep missing. So, consider a backup that uses a Save instead. In the majority of circumstances a save will work less often than an attack, but there are times when attacking will not work properly. These "save" cantrips can help you out. The risk is that because they're cantrip if the target saves there's no damage or effect. Normally anyway. As an Evocation Wizard your cantrips still do half damage on a successful save. So, they're not as bad consider this is your "if attacks fail" backup plan. The trick is to analyse your opponent and use a "save" spell for a stat they are likely low in. The low health throwaway minions may have low Constitution. The slow moving enemies may have low Dexterity. And so on.
Acid Splash is a decent choice, I will agree ith GiantOctopodes on this. It can get 2 enemies in one go if they're close, so works decently at clearing groups of minion fodder a DM only throws at you to slow you down and trick you into using your class resources before the proper fights. It is also Acid damage, which few creatures have resistance to and even fewer are immune to. Being able to hurl blobs of acid over and over again make it wonderfully effective outside of combat too depending on the DM - RAW this spell cannot target anything but a creature. Most DMs, however, will overrule this and let you use it for other purposes because making a bubble of acid you cannot throw at non-creatures is silly beyond measure. The downsides are it only does 1d6 damage, increasing to 4d6 by Level 20 which is an average of 14 damage. Also this is a Dex save. Arguably the most common save type that many monsters will be OK with. There are ways around that, but wasting those ways on a cantrip is pointless. So, enemies are more likely to save against this than fail.You also cannot add your Int mod or use evocation wizard features because it's a conjuration spell. Still, acid damage and the only cantrip to target multiple enemies at range without attacking makes this worthy of consideration.
Frostbite Is a tidy one. The damage is the same as Acid Splash but you can add your Int mod as it's evocation although only targets one creature. What makes this worth considering is that this targets Constitution which is better to target than Dexterity for the minions - it will not be effective at bigger enemies like elementals or dragons but for a minion type, the weaker ones with low HP/Con this is nifty. It has the secondary effect of imposing disadvantage on the next attack it makes. Situationally useful.
These are the only cantrips for attacking I would recommend. I do not suggest getting all of them. You will want some utility outside of combat so cantrips like Message, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation should be considered to round things out.
Always mix blasting with some utility and mix your blasting between attacks and saves and damage types. Your attacks are useless against high AC enemies or those with cover and focusing on a single damage type will render your main attack method useless if they're resistant/immune. Feats can help you, but you may need to focus on increasing Intelligence first. If you're not +5 mod Int or higher by level 20, you did something wrong.
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Even though it is not Evocation, do not listen to GiantOctopodes about Disintegrate. He's confused about how the spell works. It's not an attack - you cannot miss with it. It's a Constution save and always deals damage - half damage on successful save. It is also Force damage, the least resisted damage and which, if my memory serves, no creature is immune to. Even with a successful save and resistance you will still do 13 damage. OK, not much. But wait, there's more! Combine with Polymorph and you can defeat 99% of monsters within a few turns. Disintegrate has an effect where if you reduce a creature to 0 HP it disintegrates. This bypasses polymorph, wildshape and all those "when dropped to 0 HP you go back to 1 HP instead" abilities that Orcs, Barbarians, Shadow Sorcs, and Undead all have. It bypasses them. There's no coming back from it - a polymorph or wildshape transforms you, it does not work if there's no body to transform. So, even if you reduce a polymorphed or wildshaped character to 0 HP they do not transform back, they just become dust and die. It also prevents resurrection except by True Resurrection or Wish. So, use polymorph to turn enemy into a creature with 13 HP or less, use Disintegrate and voila. You will have 11 spell slots for use with Polymorph which is more than enough to ensure success even against creatures with high wisdom and legendary resistance. Just one works, and then 1 more spell slot of 6th level or higher and boom, dead enemy.
There are spells, like Bestow Curse that even let you grant disadvantage to any save type you want and if cast at level 5 or higher it lasts a long time and no concentration. Polymorph away.
And the irony is that this is all Transmutation, not Evocation. Strangely, Transmuters, not Evokers, are the best at dealing with single-enemies. They're the main boss-fighters.
Evokers are best at AoE spells. You have Sculpt Spells feature to keep allies safe, you can add Int to the damage roll of any evocation spell and then that once per day Overchannel to have a level 5 evocation spell do maximum damage.
There are many spells to consider in Evocation, I will not list them all. But I would suggest paying attention to: Fireball only level 3 so can be cast a lot, 20 foot radius area of affect at a point you choose, brilliant at clearing the field of multiple enemies but Dex save and Fire. Still, 5th level Overchannel for 45 damage, 22 with save, 11 with fire resistance and save against multiple enemies is not bad. Not best to use your overchannel on, really, but use at lower levels for spamming the holy hell out of it. 3d8+5 at level 3 for multiple enemies, is fantastic. You can consider Lightning Bolt which is same damage and such as it does Lightning damage which is less resisted but it's a line area which is much less likely to get multiple enemies and a waste in comparison.
Cone of Cold is anothing must. It's a Con save which is better than a Dex save and is a 60 foot cone area. Now, it may be trickier to aim and you have to be closer to use, but you could, aimed well, get more enemies than a Fireball can. It's level 5 so you can overchannel. This is 8d8 cold damage, 8d8+5 with Int mod as it is evocation, and this is 69 damage with overchannel, 34 if saved or resistant, 17 if saved and resistant.
You may be noticing by now that when factoring saves, attack misses and resistances these are not super high numbers. Indeed, this is why you will burn through spell slots quickly for tougher enemies and why you should ALWAYS have an attack cantrip, and ideally 2 or 3 of them with different damages and types.
Magic Missile yes, magic missile. I know this may be a weird suggestion, it's the least damaging levelled spell there is. But hear me out. At level 5 this spell will do 7 darts at 1d4+6 Force damage each. Focused on one target this is 7d4+42. It's force damage so the best damage type. And you can overchannel this for 70 force damage. And it is not an attack and no saves. It just does the damage. That's 35 or 70 damage the target cannot prevent except with Shield or Antimagic Field - which will be very rare. This should never be underestimated. If you check figures, it works out better than a level 5 Fireball or Cone of Cold. How does it achieve this? Whether you go for multiple targets or just one you only roll damage once for what a single dart does, 1d4+1 and as an Evocation wizard you add your Int mod to "one roll", so the individual dart becomes 1d4+6 each which, when overchanneled is 10 per dart. And you make 7, each one applying the damage for 70 total damage.
Scorching Ray - I agree with GiantOctopodes that this is a good spell. Not as good as he makes out. But definitely good. Like with Magic Missile you create "rays" each dealing damage and each can be against different enemies or the same one. This is definitely one to take for facing multiple enemies as it is a solid Level 2 slot choice. Each ray has it's own spell attack but unlike Magic Missile, each attach has it's own damage roll which means out of the 7 rays you can make for a Level 5, only 1 benefits from your Int mod. Also, because it is multiple attacks each one has the potential to hit or miss and a miss means no damage. The chances of hitting on every attack is slim. Perhaps 5 of the 7 on a good day? Each ray, overchanneled is 12 fire damage, for 5 this is 60 plus int mod 65. With fire resistance this is 32. Is this really worth wasting an overchannel on? No. But, it's a best-pick for your level 2 spells for the ability to deal 2d6 damage to multiple targets if they're too spread out for a fireball.
I'm not going to go through all the spells. They all have uses. There are only 2 more Evocation spells I'll mention and two spells I would mention from different school.
Mordenkainen's Sword - most of your damage-blasting spells are not concentration so why not use your concentration for something useful? This spells is tidy, it's evocation but you can only use your Int mod for extra damage once when you first cast it and it's level 7 so no overchannel. However, this is not the point. The point is that this spell is a Bonus spell and uses your bonus on subsequent turns to deal 3d10 Force damage as a spell attack leaving your main action to cast your blast spells. So this is great way to wrack up extra damage for the next 10 rounds. You don't use your bonus for much of anything, you don't have to use it each turn if you want to use a bonus for something else non-concentration if needed, so... you have nothing to lose. It's incredibly helpful.
Meteor Swarm - this one is a given. But, the most powerful evocation spell in all of D&D has to be a mention. This is your 9th level Big Daddy Spell. 40d6+5 damage. This is up to 245 damage. But the true power of the spell is not the damage, funnily enough. It's not that damaging when you consider the average of 40d6 is 140 and this would be split as half bludgeoning and half fire, which is very often resisted or immune to and is a Dex save which is the easier save for most things and some enemies and characters have Evasion ability meaning they take no damage if they succeed and only half if they fail. Average 70 damage, 35 if resisted or failed with evasion, less with both... The true power comes with the area of effect. 4 points you see within 1 mile is insane and covers 40 feet radius from each point! This is an insane coverage. That's the true power of this spell: there's no escape. And strangely the damage can be more effective on structures so you can actually level a town with this easier than you can one-shot an enemy. The big bad may send an army of throwaway minions to wear you out but nope, cast this and bye-bye army and you can freely go to the Big Bad with all your other spell slots and health intact as can your entire party.
However, you need defences to last so consider Mage Armor and Shield and the wall spells, particularly Wall of Stone and Wall of Force are particularly useful in case you need to make an escape, create a raised platform to reach higher areas and so on.
The Hold spells can paralyze the target meaning they cannot move, take reactions or attack. Any attacks against them have advantage and if the attacker is within 5 feet and the attack hits it's an automatic critical. Now, you can use this, you make a normal attack, level 5, overchannel and this means you deal double the damage. Always make time to consider this.
Bestow Curse at level 5 plus will allow you to target an ability, like Dexterity or Wisdom, and if they fail to resist this curse they are disadvantage on all those ability saves for 8 hours, no new saving throws to stop this, and no concentration required. This provides fantastic synergy when you use Wisdom because then you can use the Hold Person/Monster monster spell to boot. Or use this to increase likelihood of success with with a Polymorph + Disintegrate combo. Furthermore at level 5+ you don't need concentration and there is nothing saying a target cannot be cursed more than once. Do once, target wisdom saves, do again use the effect where they have to make wisdom saves or lose their turn. The downside to this spell is being melee touch. But a familiar from Find Familiar can help with that and you could use things like Mirror Image to help keep you safe.
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Finally let's talk about feats.
Elemental Adept is a must. This allows you to bump up damage if you roll 1s on the damage roll, it also bypasses resistance. However, consider that it doesn't do anything for immunity and more creatures are immune to fire than they are resistant to it, the same not being true for other damage types.
Spell Sniper - you get an extra free attack cantrip of your choice, you double the range of all ranged attack spells. More importantly, you ignore 1/2 and 3/4 cover so you can focus more on attacks rather than "vs save" spells as these will have a greater chance of hitting.
Magic Initiate Wizard: Two more cantrips and a 1st level spell. Because you're a wizard this will mean you can use that spell normally or use it at base once a day without using spell slots. Consider using something like Mage Armor. +3 for 8 hours per day for free isn't bad.
Warcaster: allows you to use an attack spell as an attack of opportunity and advantage on concentration checks to maintain concentration if you take damage. However, this will have less priority over others because ideally you will try to be at range without enemies near you and not taking damage.
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Spell Mastery
At 18th level you can choose a 1st level spell and a 2nd level spell that you can cast at-will. Meaning, no spell slots required. I recommend Shield because being able to add +5 on your reaction to attack every time is insane. Combine with mage armour and you can effectively consider yourself to have +8 to AC throughout battle. This is literally AC 18 without adding your dexterity! Now combine with magic items to increase your AC like Bracers of Defense and you're suddenly a harder target to hit than the Fighter in his steel plate. Level 2 would be something offensive. Scorching Ray maybe?
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Wizards are not focused on being the best blasters. Evokers can deal the most damage across multiple enemies, however, and they are fantastic at crowd control. They are also good at longevity by being one of few subclasses that can add bonuses to cantrip damage giving them the freedom to rely more on their cantrips to reserve their bigger spells for bigger fights later on.
I know this was long but I hope some of it proves useful.
Wow, I disagree with at least half of what GiantOctopodes has said.
Cantrips
1) GiantOctopodes has basically handwaved cantrips and even went with the utterly ridiculous line "you're best off with non-combat cantrips". Which is like saying a Fighter is best off without weapons.
These are the only cantrips for attacking I would recommend. I do not suggest getting all of them. You will want some utility outside of combat so cantrips like Message, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation should be considered to round things out.
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2) Even though it is not Evocation, do not listen to GiantOctopodes about Disintegrate. He's confused about how the spell works. It's not an attack - you cannot miss with it. It's a Constution save and always deals damage - half damage on successful save. It is also Force damage, the least resisted damage and which, if my memory serves, no creature is immune to. Even with a successful save and resistance you will still do 13 damage. OK, not much. But wait, there's more! Combine with Polymorph and you can defeat 99% of monsters within a few turns. Disintegrate has an effect where if you reduce a creature to 0 HP it disintegrates. This bypasses polymorph, wildshape and all those "when dropped to 0 HP you go back to 1 HP instead" abilities that Orcs, Barbarians, Shadow Sorcs, and Undead all have. It bypasses them. There's no coming back from it - a polymorph or wildshape transforms you, it does not work if there's no body to transform. So, even if you reduce a polymorphed or wildshaped character to 0 HP they do not transform back, they just become dust and die. It also prevents resurrection except by True Resurrection or Wish. So, use polymorph to turn enemy into a creature with 13 HP or less, use Disintegrate and voila. You will have 11 spell slots for use with Polymorph which is more than enough to ensure success even against creatures with high wisdom and legendary resistance. Just one works, and then 1 more spell slot of 6th level or higher and boom, dead enemy.
3) Scorching Ray - I agree with GiantOctopodes that this is a good spell. Not as good as he makes out. But definitely good. Like with Magic Missile you create "rays" each dealing damage and each can be against different enemies or the same one. This is definitely one to take for facing multiple enemies as it is a solid Level 2 slot choice. Each ray has it's own spell attack but unlike Magic Missile, each attach has it's own damage roll which means out of the 7 rays you can make for a Level 5, only 1 benefits from your Int mod. Also, because it is multiple attacks each one has the potential to hit or miss and a miss means no damage. The chances of hitting on every attack is slim. Perhaps 5 of the 7 on a good day? Each ray, overchanneled is 12 fire damage, for 5 this is 60 plus int mod 65. With fire resistance this is 32. Is this really worth wasting an overchannel on? No. But, it's a best-pick for your level 2 spells for the ability to deal 2d6 damage to multiple targets if they're too spread out for a fireball.
4) Spell Mastery
At 18th level you can choose a 1st level spell and a 2nd level spell that you can cast at-will. Meaning, no spell slots required. I recommend Shield because being able to add +5 on your reaction to attack every time is insane. Combine with mage armour and you can effectively consider yourself to have +8 to AC throughout battle. This is literally AC 18 without adding your dexterity! Now combine with magic items to increase your AC like Bracers of Defense and you're suddenly a harder target to hit than the Fighter in his steel plate. Level 2 would be something offensive. Scorching Ray maybe?
First, overall I think that's a very thorough and well thought out post, and I agree with a large portion of it. I do have some quibbles though.
1) Be fair, I recommended getting 2 attack cantrips (1 a ranged attack w/ fire damage, 1 an AOE save based acid damage spell) which I stand by being the best 2, if you only get 2. You recommended getting 4 different non-attack Cantrips as well! As a Wizard you only get 5 cantrips, and even if you go Magic Initiate to get 7 (which is certainly an option), my point is you shouldn't go *all* attack cantrips, just because you're an evocation wizard. Presdigitation, Minor Illusion, Mage Hand, and its ilk will come in handy in countless circumstances. I don't think you actually disagree with my point there, but certainly I could have phrased it better.
2) Read Disintegrate again. I was wrong, it's worse than I even thought in the PHB as it's save based not attack based, but you're wrong as well. It's a Dex save not con, and it is indeed all or nothing. Zero damage on a successful Dex save, which as you say is the most commonly made save in the book.
I also want to point out that I would consider your interpretation of the order of events in the spell combo in question to be dubious at best. Both effects (reverting and turning into dust) take effect simultaneously, causing conflict as to which has precedence, especially as both are modifications of your form, requiring DM ruling. I would rule it as a) disintegrate does damage, dropping polymorph form to zero or less, b) creature reverts due to polymorph text, with remaining damage rolling over, c) check to see if the creature which pops out is dropped to zero, if it is, it's disintegrated. There are clarifications regarding both the RAW and RAI of this, and it has actually been clarified both ways, but you're describing something which I want to make it clear, may not work that way in all, or even many, campaigns.
3) Yeah I routinely forget about that errata entry since I don't use it in my games. I was torn between making it so Warlocks et all have the same happen to theirs and reverting evocation and fell on the "moar power" side of things. You are 100% correct about that one, but I'm also correct in that though it's exceedingly unlikely All hit, it's also exceedingly unlikely None hit :-)
4) Just want to point out that Shield is indeed amazing (it's basically +5 AC, unless you have other things you're spending your reactions on, which is not excessively common with Wizards), so I'd agree with that one, but for the level 2 I would go Misty Step over something offensive. Misty Step is my preferred method of disengaging as it works against a limitless number of targets as far as denying reactions, and also has incredible bonus utility for reaching otherwise difficult to reach or inaccessible locations. Baseline, teleport effects don't have a conservation of momentum clause on them either, so it also is great for taking care of fall damage should you not have featherfall or not have it prepared (though again your DM may have something to say about that). Many other spells are potentially worth considering from a flavor standpoint, but from a combat standpoint those would be my two picks, and if there's another spell you use routinely enough that it warrants consideration, by level 18 you'll know that well enough on your own without requiring recommendations :-)
Very good digests of spells. A couple more ideas however.
You want at least one cantrip that requires a save rather then attack roll. First you will run into creatures with too high an AC to be hit reliably. Second you will want sometimes to take advantage of the evoker's ability to do half damage with a cantrip even on a successful save. So you should have either Acid Splash or Frostbite.
Don't forget that Shield will nullify Magic Missile and can be triggered by being a target of one.
I personally hate Scorching Ray. An individual attack roll for each 2d6 damage can result in very little to no damage. I prefer more reliable sources. I much prefer 2nd lvl Flaming Sphere (transmutation) and 3rd lvl Melf's Minute Meteors. Both of those spells will let you do reliable damage (unless target is immune to fire) with a bonus action while you cast another damaging spell with your main action.
Talking about fire immunity. It's usually pretty obvious which creatures have it. At which point you switch to non-fire spells. Devils, Fire Giants, Red Dragons, Hell Hounds, and Fire Elementals are some of the most common examples.
And one more spell I wanted to mention for it's versatility. Lvl 1 evocation: Chromatic Orb. You decide which element of damage it does at the time of casting. It gives you a lot of flexibility when fighting various critters.
1) You did but you were also dismissive of other attack cantrips which serve as better backups for fire bolt. My recommendations are not "get all of these" they were to suggest thinks to consider. A good evoker should really have 2 attacks, 1 save type and 2 utility cantrips (he's starting at level 20). I was suggesting these. Also you can increase your number of cantrips by taking Magic Initiate and Spellsniper feats.
2) I did write it as Con save first and realised it was Dex. I was supposed to change it but evidently forgot to do so. Yes, it's Dex and the most common save. There are ways around that, as I later point out, it can be used with other spells to kill most creatures more easily than through just damage. It also has out of combat uses. I will always take this over Scorching Ray if I had to pick between them. I would not use it just outright, I would combine it with Hold or Sleep spell since both cause auto-fail on dex saves, or use others spells that incapacitate or restrain to impose disadvantage. Combine with Polymorph and once you've burned through its legendary resistances you can take out an ancient dragon in 2 or 3 turns with this combo. Less, if you have other spellcasters helping you.
As for this "interpretation" - it's not just my interpretation. It's the rules and was confirmed in Sage Advice Compendium by Jeremy Crawford. As soon as the spell reduces you to 0 hit points you are instantly turned to dust and killed outright completely. See the Sage Advice Compendium for confirmation. While this only specifically mentions 0 HP trigger effects and Wildshape since Polymorph and Wildshape transformation works the same way (in regards to what happens when you drop to 0 HP) the ruling applies. In the unofficial fan page Sage Advice Chris Perkins confirms both that Polymorph + Disintegrate is insta-kill anything (link) and Mike Mearls answered when somebody asked if a polymorphed creature reduces to 0 HP by immolation spell does it turn to ash and he replies saying if worded the same as Disintegrate then yes (link).
Polymorph + Disintegrate is the most powerful combination in D&D. It works like this on purpose - it's the inclusion of this that keeps things like Unlimited Moon Druid Wildshape and people constantly Polymorphing themselves still balanced.
3) True, although, you don't know just how poorly I roll. Seriously, my luck is shoddy. But yes, Scorching Ray is more likely to hit than miss entirely and equally more likely to miss some rather than hit with all. It's one I always take when going in a more blastery route with my spellcasters. However, this is typically not a spell you want to focus on for evocation wizards when considering an Overchannel. It's a backup spell when you run out of Fireballs or if the enemy is too spread apart.
4) I mentioned an offensive spell because being able to cast Scorching Ray, for instance, as if it was a cantrip is very decent for a build that's going balls to the wall Blast Their Face Off type. Personally, I freaking love Misty Step. I love teleport spells in general really. Misty Step also works great with Conjurers to reset benign transportation. Combining them, with Misty Step as a level 18 "cast as much as you want" choice, basically gets you overland travel speed of 6 miles per hour and you don't need to stop for short rests to prevent fatigue because you're just teleporting not actually moving and wearing out your muscles. This spell can also free you from restraints: it's verbal component only, so as long as you can speak you can get free of any bindings, grapples, cages, and can bypass many traps and get to higher ground and all with just a bonus action. This is one of my favourites and staples.
Magic Missile yes, magic missile. I know this may be a weird suggestion, it's the least damaging levelled spell there is. But hear me out. At level 5 this spell will do 7 darts at 1d4+6 Force damage each. Focused on one target this is 7d4+42. It's force damage so the best damage type. And you can overchannel this for 70 force damage. And it is not an attack and no saves. It just does the damage. That's 35 or 70 damage the target cannot prevent except with Shield or Antimagic Field - which will be very rare. This should never be underestimated. If you check figures, it works out better than a level 5 Fireball or Cone of Cold. How does it achieve this? Whether you go for multiple targets or just one you only roll damage once for what a single dart does, 1d4+1 and as an Evocation wizard you add your Int mod to "one roll", so the individual dart becomes 1d4+6 each which, when overchanneled is 10 per dart. And you make 7, each one applying the damage for 70 total damage.
This is why Magic Missile is a beast. Auto-Hit 110 damage split as you need is gross, even if you need to burn a 9th level slot to make it happen. That can KO something later in a fight or take out a couple higher level minions all by itself.
Magic Missile yes, magic missile. I know this may be a weird suggestion, it's the least damaging levelled spell there is. But hear me out. At level 5 this spell will do 7 darts at 1d4+6 Force damage each. Focused on one target this is 7d4+42. It's force damage so the best damage type. And you can overchannel this for 70 force damage. And it is not an attack and no saves. It just does the damage. That's 35 or 70 damage the target cannot prevent except with Shield or Antimagic Field - which will be very rare. This should never be underestimated. If you check figures, it works out better than a level 5 Fireball or Cone of Cold. How does it achieve this? Whether you go for multiple targets or just one you only roll damage once for what a single dart does, 1d4+1 and as an Evocation wizard you add your Int mod to "one roll", so the individual dart becomes 1d4+6 each which, when overchanneled is 10 per dart. And you make 7, each one applying the damage for 70 total damage.
ONE roll, not each roll. So with 20 Int you get +5 damage to one magic missile not to all of them. 7d4+7+5. I still think it's a great spell, just not as good as you make it out to be.
Knighthawk unfortunately what you're seeing is the result of twitter being treated as official rules errata. One roll (as specified in the errata) could logically be read one of two ways as it pertains to the spell- one bolt, or on one target. Either way would result in the result you specify. No universe would allow "one roll" to specify all damage rolls of a type as being applied to it while still being logically consistent with the principle of "ONE" roll, but hey, Jeremy Crawford says it's so on twitter, therefore that's how it is for anyone who takes those tweets seriously.
The principle of MM's "damage roll" being calculated per bolt, applying it to each of them, and then being summed for a vastly disproportionate power bump comes from there. There's really nothing to debate, either, unfortunately, as there's no chance anyone will say "yeah you're likely more correct than the official twitter rules maker of the game".
Official rulings on how to interpret unclear rules are made in Sage Advice. The public statements of the D&D team, or anyone else at Wizards of the Coast, are not official rulings; they are advice. One exception: the game’s rules manager, Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford), can make official rulings and usually does so in Sage Advice and on Twitter.
Yes, I'm aware. I could go on and on about what I think about that system, but no one would care. Suffice to say, thank heavens for rule zero. I do not personally consider Sage Advice or his twitter to be useful for just about anything, and consider it to often be wrong or contradictory, and one of the first parts of the houserules I hand out is basically "disregard sage advice", but I recognize that per the way that WotC has structured 5e, all of that, and any rulings I make which contradict Crawford, would be considered houserules, and his rules would be considered RAW. As I will state whenever it is relevant, RAW does not matter *whatsoever* during normal play, as no one is forcing any DMs to use it outside of very structured events, but RAW is RAW, and Crawford is law. I'm aware.
As a side note, have you ever played at a table which, for example, actually used that particular ruling? What gameplay effect did it have? Did any evoker wizards pretty much disregard any other single target damage spells in favor of the then massively OP magic missile? If so (as has been my experience), would you consider that a positive result for the game? Would you recommend any DMs actually use that ruling? Just wondering. Just because per WotC he's right, doesn't mean it's wise or balanced to use that ruling, after all.
Personally, I disagree with the ruling. The reason why we roll the damage is because it represents various factors like where it hits and how hard - something hitting you as a graze is less damaging than something hitting you full on and something hitting a shoulder is less damaging than hitting your face. Therefore, since the darts are separate things, they will hit different areas at different levels of impact and so each one should be rolled individually. Scorching Ray and Eldritch Blast all use separate rolls for each beam/ray so why not magic missile? It works the same, just you don't roll for attack because it hones in making it unavoidable.
Never encountered this in any game I've played and seems unlikely a DM would allow this ruling. However, some DMs insist on "RAW is right" and adhere to it and some may be interested in things that would work in AL.
Personally, I disagree with the ruling. The reason why we roll the damage is because it represents various factors like where it hits and how hard - something hitting you as a graze is less damaging than something hitting you full on and something hitting a shoulder is less damaging than hitting your face. Therefore, since the darts are separate things, they will hit different areas at different levels of impact and so each one should be rolled individually. Scorching Ray and Eldritch Blast all use separate rolls for each beam/ray so why not magic missile? It works the same, just you don't roll for attack because it hones in making it unavoidable.
Never encountered this in any game I've played and seems unlikely a DM would allow this ruling. However, some DMs insist on "RAW is right" and adhere to it and some may be interested in things that would work in AL.
That's very fair and level headed of you, and well expressed. Thanks for the post. And yes I agree, it is certainly useful to discuss within the context of RAW when not in the homebrew forum, except when expressly indicating you are referring to homebrew, so as to not sow confusion and keep conversations on a plane on which all can agree, for the widest array of usefulness. And absolutely, adventure league is a thing, and in there RAW rules, so it's helpful to discuss within that context as well.
Treantmonk has good spell rankings and I usually agree with his perspective. He also does Wizard guides and various build guides.
Toll the Dead is probably your best damage cantrip. Evocation for Sculpt Spell can be fun to drop AOE bombs into combat as well as persistent AOE spells. Divination is your control wizard king... Let's you get through Constitution saves and really control a key baddie as well as potentially help a team member on an important save. Abjuration is the counterspell king and has some really cool potential with 1 level of Lock for Armor of Agathys stacking with your spell shield.
Here's my prepared spells for my flying Feral Tiefling level 6 Divination Wizard:
In regards to creating a powerful Evocation wizard, do you prefer feats or stat increasing? And what would you recommend the order of selecting these feats/stat boosts as? I'm planning on building one and I know I'll probably take the spell sniper feat first, but not too sure where to go after that.
I think that evocation is a safe choice, though I do suggest illusionist at 14th level since you can do many things with your illusions(although you couldn't directly cause damage)
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i want to make a wizard that can totaly just crush his enamies any tips.
Make an Evocation wizard. That's basically the point of the subclass.
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Yeah but any recomindations for spells and i am making it level 20 to see how powerful ot can be
Only Sorcerers and Warlocks and other unfortunate souls need recommendations for spells. You're a Wizard. If you don't know every spell that exists, you should work on that. Try them all, see what personally feels great to you and what you enjoy using. As far as Cantrips, if you're not intending to dip Warlock for Eldritch Blast chicanery, Wizard Evocation Cantrips include:
Fire Bolt (Old reliable, most often chosen cantrip by evocation wizards if I had to guess)
Ray of Frost (Likely seriously underwhelming)
Shocking Grasp (the only one which is an attack roll by you, not relying on a failed save by the opponent, though that has certain counter synergies, and relies on melee range)
I'd not get stuck on those though, even with the benefits to evocation cantrips, Acid Splash actually does as much or more damage at virtually all levels if you have adjacent targets (though split between them), not to mention a limitless supply of acid can come in handy in certain circumstances.
Blade Ward is terrible, please don't get it, and True Strike is ALMOST always not worth it, as it requires 1) not already having advantage and not having a better way of getting it, 2) giving up a turn entirely to gain that advantage, 3) Using a spell where the difference between success and failure is significant enough for that lost turn to make up for itself, 4) not minding that any concentration effects are lost when you use it, and 5) Having all the worth of your next attack rolled up in 1 attack roll against 1 target. So basically when casting disintegrate and pretty much nothing else. Which, for what it's worth, as an evocation mage is pretty much always a worse idea than just doing Scorching Ray (At 6th level, Disintegrate is 40+10d6 (average 35) damage, or 75 total, on a miss it does zero damage; Scorching Ray at 6th level is 7 rays and deals 2d6 (average 7) + Spell Ability modifier (5?) per ray, so 12x7 or 84 average damage if they all hit, and it's spread across 7 attacks so it's very unlikely to do zero damage). TLDR Don't take true strike. Even as a full combat Wizard, other than your combat cantrip (or two, Acid Splash + Fire Bolt isn't bad), you're best off with non-combat cantrips.
Wow, I disagree with at least half of what GiantOctopodes has said.
Saying you don't need recommendations for spells is silly. Wizards do have the option to learn new spells but while the ones you can choose on levelling are free and all of them are available, you are limited. You get 6 on first level and then 2 every level thereafter. This is 22 spells. Once chosen you cannot change it. All other spells take time and cost to add to to your spellbook and even when halving that for Evocation spells you're going to spending a veritable crapton of gold on spells if you ever think to copy them all like GiantOctopodes suggests. Now add that you will find it exceptionally rare in most campaigns that people will let you do this for any spell - you have to get the spell somewhere and spells will be guarded knowledge. Do you really think they'll let people just walk in and learn how to disintegrate things or create zombie armies or summon meteors? Nope. You will find it incredibly difficult to find the spells you want to be just available. You may, DM willing, find some as loot. Maybe.
Spell selection is important, even for Wizards. Consider your choices very carefully. Your plan or build should be based around those 22 free spells, anything else being just happy extras. A good build will also have to factor defense (no point learning how to blast things if you get killed in the first turn or two) and making good use of your arcane tradition features and wizard class features.
Also, do not think a good Evocation build means just going with Evocation spells. This would be very bad. You will want other schools, for maximum efficiency. The are multiple spells from other schools you can combine with your Evocation spells for great effect. Evocation will be your damage-dealer but other schools give you defenses, control and support to make your battles easier or deal greater damage.
Cantrips
GiantOctopodes has basically handwaved cantrips and even went with the utterly ridiculous line "you're best off with non-combat cantrips". Which is like saying a Fighter is best off without weapons.
All of your spells have the chance to miss or do less damage or take no effect. This means there is a chance you can waste your spells slots. This might be fine if this is your only battle of the day, but how many times to go on a dungeon crawl and face only one battle? How many days do you have a single encounter? Not many, so you can't just go hell-for-leather with your higher level spells on every fight. Arcane Recover gets you only half your level in spells and no higher than 5th level slots and you only get this once per day. This basically means relying on your Arcane Recovery is going to put you at serious risk of entering boss fights with nothing in reserve. Especially given there's no guarantee you get a short rest before.
Cantrips are how you pace yourself. You can use them as much as you like so your initial battles will be mostly just these.
Fire Bolt is the tried and true attack cantrip for wizards. 120 feet in range is the best and base 1d10 (4d10 by level 17+) is decent damage. Level 10 Evocation wizards can add Intelligence to evocation spells and cantrips increasing damage further. By level 20 this should be 4d10+5. It's an attack, hit or miss deal. This is an average of 27 damage. The downside is that it's fire. Why is this a downside? Because A LOT of monsters have fire resistance and even more have fire immunity.
You must have a backup in case of coming across creatures resistant or immune to your main damage.
Ray of Frost, despite what GiantOctopodes says this cantrip is very nifty. Sure, it seems quite less than Fire Bolt but hey, you're not using this as your main one, are you? 1d8 damage, going to 4d8+5 (average 23) is not a big drop. It does have less range at 60 feet but to be honest there are ways around that and this will very rarely be a problem. This does cold damage, and it is rare to fight monsters resistant or immune to both fire and cold so this makes a good backup. It is a hit or miss attack but then so are many spells and weapons and you are likely to be more successful with an attack than a save-type spell. The secondary effect of slowing your opponent's speed (all speeds, including flying) is very useful. This is especially nasty when you combine it with effects that make character's prone like Sleet Storm or any of the various spells that create difficult terrain. Now consider a Slow spell... Yeah, this can be nasty with the right synergy and far more effective than throwing a bolt of fire.
Chill Touch - OK it's Necromancy not evocation but here's the thing: D&D features a lot of undead. At some point you will face undead. This cantrip has the range of Fire Bolt and the damage of Ray of Frost without the added Int (because not evocation) but with two very decent secondary effects: undead once hit will have disadvantage on attacks against you until the start of your next turn, and that's any undead, even if the evil Lich and all attacks even spell attacks. Not only this but the other effect it has is: until the start of your next turn the undead cannot recover health by any means. Many undead have a feature where, once they are down, they can, on their next turn only, heal 1 HP and come back up, infinitely. Your cantrip blocks this and so, if you kill them with this cantrip they stay dead. You completely bypass their strongest feature. It will make facing undead a breeze. No spell or feature will ever make fighting undead as easy as this simple cantrip. Consider having this in your back pocket, just in case.
Shocking Grasp - This cantrip has saved my life. Well, in campaigns not reality of course. Point is, it is frankly a must have. As an attack it's the same in range and damage as Ray of Frost. And yes it's a melee touch attack (although, you can use a Familiar to bypass that). However, the power of this cantrip is not the attack itself but the secondary effect: once a target is hit it cannot take any reactions until the start of your turn. This means if an enemy gets in close to you - and this will definitely happen at some point - you can use this to deal some damage and get away safely. Not only this but negating all reactions on a target for a turn can be incredibly helpful in some circumstances. This cantrip can save your character's life. Staying next to an enemy in melee is BAD, you can defend yourself with other spells but seriously, why waste the slots? Use this, get away, and get some breathing room. Try to move past your allies so that if it wants to follow you it will get hit by attacks of opportunity from your friends.
However, attack cantrips are good. But sometimes, the enemy just has too much AC or partial cover and you can keep missing. So, consider a backup that uses a Save instead. In the majority of circumstances a save will work less often than an attack, but there are times when attacking will not work properly. These "save" cantrips can help you out. The risk is that because they're cantrip if the target saves there's no damage or effect. Normally anyway. As an Evocation Wizard your cantrips still do half damage on a successful save. So, they're not as bad consider this is your "if attacks fail" backup plan. The trick is to analyse your opponent and use a "save" spell for a stat they are likely low in. The low health throwaway minions may have low Constitution. The slow moving enemies may have low Dexterity. And so on.
Acid Splash is a decent choice, I will agree ith GiantOctopodes on this. It can get 2 enemies in one go if they're close, so works decently at clearing groups of minion fodder a DM only throws at you to slow you down and trick you into using your class resources before the proper fights. It is also Acid damage, which few creatures have resistance to and even fewer are immune to. Being able to hurl blobs of acid over and over again make it wonderfully effective outside of combat too depending on the DM - RAW this spell cannot target anything but a creature. Most DMs, however, will overrule this and let you use it for other purposes because making a bubble of acid you cannot throw at non-creatures is silly beyond measure. The downsides are it only does 1d6 damage, increasing to 4d6 by Level 20 which is an average of 14 damage. Also this is a Dex save. Arguably the most common save type that many monsters will be OK with. There are ways around that, but wasting those ways on a cantrip is pointless. So, enemies are more likely to save against this than fail.You also cannot add your Int mod or use evocation wizard features because it's a conjuration spell. Still, acid damage and the only cantrip to target multiple enemies at range without attacking makes this worthy of consideration.
Frostbite Is a tidy one. The damage is the same as Acid Splash but you can add your Int mod as it's evocation although only targets one creature. What makes this worth considering is that this targets Constitution which is better to target than Dexterity for the minions - it will not be effective at bigger enemies like elementals or dragons but for a minion type, the weaker ones with low HP/Con this is nifty. It has the secondary effect of imposing disadvantage on the next attack it makes. Situationally useful.
These are the only cantrips for attacking I would recommend. I do not suggest getting all of them. You will want some utility outside of combat so cantrips like Message, Mage Hand, Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation should be considered to round things out.
Always mix blasting with some utility and mix your blasting between attacks and saves and damage types. Your attacks are useless against high AC enemies or those with cover and focusing on a single damage type will render your main attack method useless if they're resistant/immune. Feats can help you, but you may need to focus on increasing Intelligence first. If you're not +5 mod Int or higher by level 20, you did something wrong.
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Even though it is not Evocation, do not listen to GiantOctopodes about Disintegrate. He's confused about how the spell works. It's not an attack - you cannot miss with it. It's a Constution save and always deals damage - half damage on successful save. It is also Force damage, the least resisted damage and which, if my memory serves, no creature is immune to. Even with a successful save and resistance you will still do 13 damage. OK, not much. But wait, there's more! Combine with Polymorph and you can defeat 99% of monsters within a few turns. Disintegrate has an effect where if you reduce a creature to 0 HP it disintegrates. This bypasses polymorph, wildshape and all those "when dropped to 0 HP you go back to 1 HP instead" abilities that Orcs, Barbarians, Shadow Sorcs, and Undead all have. It bypasses them. There's no coming back from it - a polymorph or wildshape transforms you, it does not work if there's no body to transform. So, even if you reduce a polymorphed or wildshaped character to 0 HP they do not transform back, they just become dust and die. It also prevents resurrection except by True Resurrection or Wish. So, use polymorph to turn enemy into a creature with 13 HP or less, use Disintegrate and voila. You will have 11 spell slots for use with Polymorph which is more than enough to ensure success even against creatures with high wisdom and legendary resistance. Just one works, and then 1 more spell slot of 6th level or higher and boom, dead enemy.
There are spells, like Bestow Curse that even let you grant disadvantage to any save type you want and if cast at level 5 or higher it lasts a long time and no concentration. Polymorph away.
And the irony is that this is all Transmutation, not Evocation. Strangely, Transmuters, not Evokers, are the best at dealing with single-enemies. They're the main boss-fighters.
Evokers are best at AoE spells. You have Sculpt Spells feature to keep allies safe, you can add Int to the damage roll of any evocation spell and then that once per day Overchannel to have a level 5 evocation spell do maximum damage.
There are many spells to consider in Evocation, I will not list them all. But I would suggest paying attention to: Fireball only level 3 so can be cast a lot, 20 foot radius area of affect at a point you choose, brilliant at clearing the field of multiple enemies but Dex save and Fire. Still, 5th level Overchannel for 45 damage, 22 with save, 11 with fire resistance and save against multiple enemies is not bad. Not best to use your overchannel on, really, but use at lower levels for spamming the holy hell out of it. 3d8+5 at level 3 for multiple enemies, is fantastic. You can consider Lightning Bolt which is same damage and such as it does Lightning damage which is less resisted but it's a line area which is much less likely to get multiple enemies and a waste in comparison.
Cone of Cold is anothing must. It's a Con save which is better than a Dex save and is a 60 foot cone area. Now, it may be trickier to aim and you have to be closer to use, but you could, aimed well, get more enemies than a Fireball can. It's level 5 so you can overchannel. This is 8d8 cold damage, 8d8+5 with Int mod as it is evocation, and this is 69 damage with overchannel, 34 if saved or resistant, 17 if saved and resistant.
You may be noticing by now that when factoring saves, attack misses and resistances these are not super high numbers. Indeed, this is why you will burn through spell slots quickly for tougher enemies and why you should ALWAYS have an attack cantrip, and ideally 2 or 3 of them with different damages and types.
Magic Missile yes, magic missile. I know this may be a weird suggestion, it's the least damaging levelled spell there is. But hear me out. At level 5 this spell will do 7 darts at 1d4+6 Force damage each. Focused on one target this is 7d4+42. It's force damage so the best damage type. And you can overchannel this for 70 force damage. And it is not an attack and no saves. It just does the damage. That's 35 or 70 damage the target cannot prevent except with Shield or Antimagic Field - which will be very rare. This should never be underestimated. If you check figures, it works out better than a level 5 Fireball or Cone of Cold. How does it achieve this? Whether you go for multiple targets or just one you only roll damage once for what a single dart does, 1d4+1 and as an Evocation wizard you add your Int mod to "one roll", so the individual dart becomes 1d4+6 each which, when overchanneled is 10 per dart. And you make 7, each one applying the damage for 70 total damage.
Scorching Ray - I agree with GiantOctopodes that this is a good spell. Not as good as he makes out. But definitely good. Like with Magic Missile you create "rays" each dealing damage and each can be against different enemies or the same one. This is definitely one to take for facing multiple enemies as it is a solid Level 2 slot choice. Each ray has it's own spell attack but unlike Magic Missile, each attach has it's own damage roll which means out of the 7 rays you can make for a Level 5, only 1 benefits from your Int mod. Also, because it is multiple attacks each one has the potential to hit or miss and a miss means no damage. The chances of hitting on every attack is slim. Perhaps 5 of the 7 on a good day? Each ray, overchanneled is 12 fire damage, for 5 this is 60 plus int mod 65. With fire resistance this is 32. Is this really worth wasting an overchannel on? No. But, it's a best-pick for your level 2 spells for the ability to deal 2d6 damage to multiple targets if they're too spread out for a fireball.
I'm not going to go through all the spells. They all have uses. There are only 2 more Evocation spells I'll mention and two spells I would mention from different school.
Mordenkainen's Sword - most of your damage-blasting spells are not concentration so why not use your concentration for something useful? This spells is tidy, it's evocation but you can only use your Int mod for extra damage once when you first cast it and it's level 7 so no overchannel. However, this is not the point. The point is that this spell is a Bonus spell and uses your bonus on subsequent turns to deal 3d10 Force damage as a spell attack leaving your main action to cast your blast spells. So this is great way to wrack up extra damage for the next 10 rounds. You don't use your bonus for much of anything, you don't have to use it each turn if you want to use a bonus for something else non-concentration if needed, so... you have nothing to lose. It's incredibly helpful.
Meteor Swarm - this one is a given. But, the most powerful evocation spell in all of D&D has to be a mention. This is your 9th level Big Daddy Spell. 40d6+5 damage. This is up to 245 damage. But the true power of the spell is not the damage, funnily enough. It's not that damaging when you consider the average of 40d6 is 140 and this would be split as half bludgeoning and half fire, which is very often resisted or immune to and is a Dex save which is the easier save for most things and some enemies and characters have Evasion ability meaning they take no damage if they succeed and only half if they fail. Average 70 damage, 35 if resisted or failed with evasion, less with both... The true power comes with the area of effect. 4 points you see within 1 mile is insane and covers 40 feet radius from each point! This is an insane coverage. That's the true power of this spell: there's no escape. And strangely the damage can be more effective on structures so you can actually level a town with this easier than you can one-shot an enemy. The big bad may send an army of throwaway minions to wear you out but nope, cast this and bye-bye army and you can freely go to the Big Bad with all your other spell slots and health intact as can your entire party.
However, you need defences to last so consider Mage Armor and Shield and the wall spells, particularly Wall of Stone and Wall of Force are particularly useful in case you need to make an escape, create a raised platform to reach higher areas and so on.
But the other spells I said I would mention are: Hold Person (likewise Hold Monster) and Bestow Curse.
The Hold spells can paralyze the target meaning they cannot move, take reactions or attack. Any attacks against them have advantage and if the attacker is within 5 feet and the attack hits it's an automatic critical. Now, you can use this, you make a normal attack, level 5, overchannel and this means you deal double the damage. Always make time to consider this.
Bestow Curse at level 5 plus will allow you to target an ability, like Dexterity or Wisdom, and if they fail to resist this curse they are disadvantage on all those ability saves for 8 hours, no new saving throws to stop this, and no concentration required. This provides fantastic synergy when you use Wisdom because then you can use the Hold Person/Monster monster spell to boot. Or use this to increase likelihood of success with with a Polymorph + Disintegrate combo. Furthermore at level 5+ you don't need concentration and there is nothing saying a target cannot be cursed more than once. Do once, target wisdom saves, do again use the effect where they have to make wisdom saves or lose their turn. The downside to this spell is being melee touch. But a familiar from Find Familiar can help with that and you could use things like Mirror Image to help keep you safe.
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Finally let's talk about feats.
Elemental Adept is a must. This allows you to bump up damage if you roll 1s on the damage roll, it also bypasses resistance. However, consider that it doesn't do anything for immunity and more creatures are immune to fire than they are resistant to it, the same not being true for other damage types.
Spell Sniper - you get an extra free attack cantrip of your choice, you double the range of all ranged attack spells. More importantly, you ignore 1/2 and 3/4 cover so you can focus more on attacks rather than "vs save" spells as these will have a greater chance of hitting.
Magic Initiate Wizard: Two more cantrips and a 1st level spell. Because you're a wizard this will mean you can use that spell normally or use it at base once a day without using spell slots. Consider using something like Mage Armor. +3 for 8 hours per day for free isn't bad.
Warcaster: allows you to use an attack spell as an attack of opportunity and advantage on concentration checks to maintain concentration if you take damage. However, this will have less priority over others because ideally you will try to be at range without enemies near you and not taking damage.
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Spell Mastery
At 18th level you can choose a 1st level spell and a 2nd level spell that you can cast at-will. Meaning, no spell slots required. I recommend Shield because being able to add +5 on your reaction to attack every time is insane. Combine with mage armour and you can effectively consider yourself to have +8 to AC throughout battle. This is literally AC 18 without adding your dexterity! Now combine with magic items to increase your AC like Bracers of Defense and you're suddenly a harder target to hit than the Fighter in his steel plate. Level 2 would be something offensive. Scorching Ray maybe?
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Wizards are not focused on being the best blasters. Evokers can deal the most damage across multiple enemies, however, and they are fantastic at crowd control. They are also good at longevity by being one of few subclasses that can add bonuses to cantrip damage giving them the freedom to rely more on their cantrips to reserve their bigger spells for bigger fights later on.
I know this was long but I hope some of it proves useful.
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Very good digests of spells. A couple more ideas however.
You want at least one cantrip that requires a save rather then attack roll. First you will run into creatures with too high an AC to be hit reliably. Second you will want sometimes to take advantage of the evoker's ability to do half damage with a cantrip even on a successful save. So you should have either Acid Splash or Frostbite.
Don't forget that Shield will nullify Magic Missile and can be triggered by being a target of one.
I personally hate Scorching Ray. An individual attack roll for each 2d6 damage can result in very little to no damage. I prefer more reliable sources. I much prefer 2nd lvl Flaming Sphere (transmutation) and 3rd lvl Melf's Minute Meteors. Both of those spells will let you do reliable damage (unless target is immune to fire) with a bonus action while you cast another damaging spell with your main action.
Talking about fire immunity. It's usually pretty obvious which creatures have it. At which point you switch to non-fire spells. Devils, Fire Giants, Red Dragons, Hell Hounds, and Fire Elementals are some of the most common examples.
And one more spell I wanted to mention for it's versatility. Lvl 1 evocation: Chromatic Orb. You decide which element of damage it does at the time of casting. It gives you a lot of flexibility when fighting various critters.
1) You did but you were also dismissive of other attack cantrips which serve as better backups for fire bolt. My recommendations are not "get all of these" they were to suggest thinks to consider. A good evoker should really have 2 attacks, 1 save type and 2 utility cantrips (he's starting at level 20). I was suggesting these. Also you can increase your number of cantrips by taking Magic Initiate and Spellsniper feats.
2) I did write it as Con save first and realised it was Dex. I was supposed to change it but evidently forgot to do so. Yes, it's Dex and the most common save. There are ways around that, as I later point out, it can be used with other spells to kill most creatures more easily than through just damage. It also has out of combat uses. I will always take this over Scorching Ray if I had to pick between them. I would not use it just outright, I would combine it with Hold or Sleep spell since both cause auto-fail on dex saves, or use others spells that incapacitate or restrain to impose disadvantage. Combine with Polymorph and once you've burned through its legendary resistances you can take out an ancient dragon in 2 or 3 turns with this combo. Less, if you have other spellcasters helping you.
As for this "interpretation" - it's not just my interpretation. It's the rules and was confirmed in Sage Advice Compendium by Jeremy Crawford. As soon as the spell reduces you to 0 hit points you are instantly turned to dust and killed outright completely. See the Sage Advice Compendium for confirmation. While this only specifically mentions 0 HP trigger effects and Wildshape since Polymorph and Wildshape transformation works the same way (in regards to what happens when you drop to 0 HP) the ruling applies. In the unofficial fan page Sage Advice Chris Perkins confirms both that Polymorph + Disintegrate is insta-kill anything (link) and Mike Mearls answered when somebody asked if a polymorphed creature reduces to 0 HP by immolation spell does it turn to ash and he replies saying if worded the same as Disintegrate then yes (link).
Polymorph + Disintegrate is the most powerful combination in D&D. It works like this on purpose - it's the inclusion of this that keeps things like Unlimited Moon Druid Wildshape and people constantly Polymorphing themselves still balanced.
3) True, although, you don't know just how poorly I roll. Seriously, my luck is shoddy. But yes, Scorching Ray is more likely to hit than miss entirely and equally more likely to miss some rather than hit with all. It's one I always take when going in a more blastery route with my spellcasters. However, this is typically not a spell you want to focus on for evocation wizards when considering an Overchannel. It's a backup spell when you run out of Fireballs or if the enemy is too spread apart.
4) I mentioned an offensive spell because being able to cast Scorching Ray, for instance, as if it was a cantrip is very decent for a build that's going balls to the wall Blast Their Face Off type. Personally, I freaking love Misty Step. I love teleport spells in general really. Misty Step also works great with Conjurers to reset benign transportation. Combining them, with Misty Step as a level 18 "cast as much as you want" choice, basically gets you overland travel speed of 6 miles per hour and you don't need to stop for short rests to prevent fatigue because you're just teleporting not actually moving and wearing out your muscles. This spell can also free you from restraints: it's verbal component only, so as long as you can speak you can get free of any bindings, grapples, cages, and can bypass many traps and get to higher ground and all with just a bonus action. This is one of my favourites and staples.
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Knighthawk unfortunately what you're seeing is the result of twitter being treated as official rules errata. One roll (as specified in the errata) could logically be read one of two ways as it pertains to the spell- one bolt, or on one target. Either way would result in the result you specify. No universe would allow "one roll" to specify all damage rolls of a type as being applied to it while still being logically consistent with the principle of "ONE" roll, but hey, Jeremy Crawford says it's so on twitter, therefore that's how it is for anyone who takes those tweets seriously.
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/557820938402947072
The principle of MM's "damage roll" being calculated per bolt, applying it to each of them, and then being summed for a vastly disproportionate power bump comes from there. There's really nothing to debate, either, unfortunately, as there's no chance anyone will say "yeah you're likely more correct than the official twitter rules maker of the game".
As was once pointed out to me: In Sage Advice Compendium it specifically states that tweets from Jeremy Crawford are considered the legal rules.
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Yes, I'm aware. I could go on and on about what I think about that system, but no one would care. Suffice to say, thank heavens for rule zero. I do not personally consider Sage Advice or his twitter to be useful for just about anything, and consider it to often be wrong or contradictory, and one of the first parts of the houserules I hand out is basically "disregard sage advice", but I recognize that per the way that WotC has structured 5e, all of that, and any rulings I make which contradict Crawford, would be considered houserules, and his rules would be considered RAW. As I will state whenever it is relevant, RAW does not matter *whatsoever* during normal play, as no one is forcing any DMs to use it outside of very structured events, but RAW is RAW, and Crawford is law. I'm aware.
As a side note, have you ever played at a table which, for example, actually used that particular ruling? What gameplay effect did it have? Did any evoker wizards pretty much disregard any other single target damage spells in favor of the then massively OP magic missile? If so (as has been my experience), would you consider that a positive result for the game? Would you recommend any DMs actually use that ruling? Just wondering. Just because per WotC he's right, doesn't mean it's wise or balanced to use that ruling, after all.
Personally, I disagree with the ruling. The reason why we roll the damage is because it represents various factors like where it hits and how hard - something hitting you as a graze is less damaging than something hitting you full on and something hitting a shoulder is less damaging than hitting your face. Therefore, since the darts are separate things, they will hit different areas at different levels of impact and so each one should be rolled individually. Scorching Ray and Eldritch Blast all use separate rolls for each beam/ray so why not magic missile? It works the same, just you don't roll for attack because it hones in making it unavoidable.
Never encountered this in any game I've played and seems unlikely a DM would allow this ruling. However, some DMs insist on "RAW is right" and adhere to it and some may be interested in things that would work in AL.
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I'm doing the inverse of this currently I refuse to take damage spell and only use wands for that purpose. Everything else is utility spells.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkRG5hPXldc&t=2240s
Treantmonk has good spell rankings and I usually agree with his perspective. He also does Wizard guides and various build guides.
Toll the Dead is probably your best damage cantrip. Evocation for Sculpt Spell can be fun to drop AOE bombs into combat as well as persistent AOE spells. Divination is your control wizard king... Let's you get through Constitution saves and really control a key baddie as well as potentially help a team member on an important save. Abjuration is the counterspell king and has some really cool potential with 1 level of Lock for Armor of Agathys stacking with your spell shield.
Here's my prepared spells for my flying Feral Tiefling level 6 Divination Wizard:
Chose buff and battlefield control spells, and let the meat shields do all of the work. ;)
In regards to creating a powerful Evocation wizard, do you prefer feats or stat increasing? And what would you recommend the order of selecting these feats/stat boosts as? I'm planning on building one and I know I'll probably take the spell sniper feat first, but not too sure where to go after that.
I think that evocation is a safe choice, though I do suggest illusionist at 14th level since you can do many things with your illusions(although you couldn't directly cause damage)