For me the character builder is one of the least interesting parts of DDB. I will try it out but managing a character without is pretty easy IMO. It would be nice to have it on multiple devices and if everyone in my group was using DDB it would be nice for the DM to access it. So I do see some benefit to using it. 

What are your thoughts?

Most games I play are online based, rather than in person.  Having the digital platform and cross-character visibility works amazingly for my situation.  Prior, we'd use Google Drive and import all our sheets to the DM's master to replicate changes.  It worked, but this is a much nicer solution.

If I were to continue playing in person, I would still prefer to avoid bringing the papers with me.  The only complaint I'd have vs paper is turning on my phone's screen each time I want to take a look at a stat, rather than having it sit in front of me at all times.

It is incredibly important to me. In the next year or two, I plan to go back into DMing for primarily teens and tweens. Having something like this where I can quickly make characters and print them without having to flip between several pages is great.

I also like being able to share ALL my content with my players. The only thing I wish that could change is the possibility to let players write in their character features. For example, if I want to use a custom background (which I used to make ALL THE TIME with the kiddos) with original background features... that isn't possible on the online version of the sheet.

It doesn't do a lot for me personally, but my players might enjoy using it in the future because doing so will effectively give them access to books not on our shelf - and they'll be able to be looking at the same book at the same time, instead of taking turns passing around one copy.

But for me personally, the entire purpose that D&D Beyond serves is to make it take less time, effort, and space on the table for me to reference the rules while DMing.

For now it's of middling importance to me but when the details of Fantasy Grounds integration finally get announced I hope that it will become the main way for me to manage my players characters and import them into my games.

 Fairly important to me. I like statting out important NPCs, the ability to do so at the push of a button has proved invaluable. I've had a character builder for every system I've run going back to Marvel FASERIP.

Pretty much the most important part for me - I like being able to quickly roll stats on a character, especially when showing a new player how it works. It's convenient to have them just use the character builder and see everything laid out rather than try to explain the point-buy system, ability scores, etc. 

From a player perspective, it wouldn't be an important feature for me, but for the game I DM this has already been a great utility.  I send out the campaign link in an email with instructions on what material is allowed and in no time I get to have access to everyone's character sheets.  I love having it all right there. I'm hoping a quick view will be available soon with the stuff a DM needs popping up like the spell, item, monters, etc tool tips.

I've been using digital character sheets since before 5e launched.  In our 3.5 campaigns, they became kind of essential for resource tracking and to cut down on Math Party Time.  5e's relative simplicity makes paper a realistic option again, but I really love being able to look up a feature or a spell on the fly with a single tap.  Done well, a digital character sheet speeds up gameplay and keeps you in the game instead of flipping through books or trying to remember whether you've already used [Feature X] since your last rest, etc.

Sadly, for me at least, Beyond's character sheet isn't quite there yet (too spread out, no integrated rolls, no answer for summoning and wild shape etc.) but given the pace of development during the beta I have no doubts that it will get there, and get there relatively quickly.

So my expectation going in was that Beyond would be a fantastic way to acquire the books digitally, in a format that's searchable and cross-linked and clean and accessible -- and it has absolutely been that -- but I've also discovered, to my surprise, that I really like the character builder.  Part of that might be that I'm never, ever going to print out a character sheet (that seems to still be a place that needs a lot of work), but in terms of mechanically picking a class and a race and a background and spells and equipment and putting it all together… the compendium integration just plain works great, provided you're not using UA or third-party stuff.  Sure, there are bits and pieces here that still need improvement, but I find that as I'm thinking about character ideas for my next campaign, I'm coming here to try things out, rather than building anything in my character sheet app.

So I guess the answer is "way more important than I expected".

I'm a DM playing in no games. It's mostly useless for me, though I may be using it for randomly-generated characters in a highly-deadly oneshot soon (if one character dies, we just randomly-generate a new one and insert you between encounters!), so that could make it of-use.

Quote from Dave_Rich >>

So my expectation going in was that Beyond would be a fantastic way to acquire the books digitally, in a format that's searchable and cross-linked and clean and accessible -- and it has absolutely been that -- but I've also discovered, to my surprise, that I really like the character builder.  Part of that might be that I'm never, ever going to print out a character sheet (that seems to still be a place that needs a lot of work), but in terms of mechanically picking a class and a race and a background and spells and equipment and putting it all together… the compendium integration just plain works great, provided you're not using UA or third-party stuff.  Sure, there are bits and pieces here that still need improvement, but I find that as I'm thinking about character ideas for my next campaign, I'm coming here to try things out, rather than building anything in my character sheet app.

So I guess the answer is "way more important than I expected".