Hi all, I’m not sure if I’m playing Arcane Trickster wrong, or of that subclass just isn’t for me, so I’d love some advice.
I’m level 4 now, and I find myself never using my spells in combat. I love trying to figure out the best ways to gain advantage for my sneak attacks, but since all my spells take a whole action to cast, I never feel like they are worth using for this purpose, when I can try to hide or go to an ally to help them fight in melee. Is there some neat way to use Arcane Trickster in unison with all the sneaking and backstabbing, or do the two objectives not quite work together?
To me the arcane trickster spells are more about utility out of combat.
But it depends on your party in the end. I combat, you need damage and controle, and some lvl1 spells are very good for control already. Fog cloud for example. Or grease, color spray and sleep. If no other spellcaster is casting this kind of spell, it can be handy.
But usually you'll prefer either defenses (at lvl7 the arcane trickster can get blur or mirror image), buffs (longstrider is exceptional for example), or other utility (disguise self, misty step, invisibility, charm person…)
Ahh, okay! Our Warlock has some utility, but it does feel like we could use more of that, maybe that's something I should look more into! I think perhaps I haven't been thinking much about control, but we've had a few rough fights recently and I realise now that it actually could be very useful. Just recently a couple enemies ran away to get reinforcements, if I hadn't only been thinking about damage I could have maybe put them to sleep. Really thanks a lot!