Which wizard subclasses are best and what are they good at?
There are 4 wizard subclasses in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Each of these wizardly subclasses represents a different school of magic. These are:
- Abjurer – Masters of abjuration, the protective school of magic.
- Diviner – Masters of seeing things of the past, present and future. They focus on the divination school of magic.
- Evoker – Experts in the elemental magic of the evocation school.
- Illusionist – Experts at misdirection and trickery, fuelled by their prowess in the illusion school of magic.
You might ask where the other 4 schools of magic can be found. In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, each class got 4 subclasses. This means there isn’t room for 8 wizard subclasses.
While disappointingly fewer than the 2014 Player’s Handbook, we can likely expect future releases to revisit the conjurer, enchanter, necromancer and transmuter. For now, you can still use the 2014 versions of these subclasses.
In this article, I’ve taken a deep dive into each subclass to help you know their capabilities and how good they are at what they do. I’ve also rated each subclass to help you choose which one is best for your wizard.
Abjurer
What are they?
Masters of protective magic. Abjurers not only have a strong grasp of abjuration magic, but they also have additional protective capabilities at their fingertips.
Key abilities
- Abjuration savant (lv3) – Know lots of abjuration spells.
- Arcane ward (lv3) – Create a protective ward that absorbs damage.
- Projected ward (lv6) – Use your arcane ward to protect allies.
- Spellbreaker (Lv10) – Learn counterspell and dispel magic. Your dispel magic is enhanced and can be cast as a bonus action.
- Spell resistance (Lv14) – Resistance and advantage against spells.
What are they good at?
Being more durable than most wizards and helping to protect other characters. Your arcane ward will reduce the damage of incoming attacks and can protect your allies.
With bonus action dispel magic and an extra use of counterspell, they’re also pretty good at preventing and ending nasty magical effects.
How effective are they?
Your arcane ward can easily add up to a fairly substantial number of hit points protected. I’d say it’s even better than healing. This is because it prevents damage from taking place, but also because it requires no action economy when protecting yourself and only the rarely used reaction when protecting an ally.
Beyond this, abjurers are the best at tackling nasty magical effects. Dispel magic and counterspell are practically requirements for adventuring parties and abjurers get a free use of each. What’s even better though, is a use of dispel magic as a bonus action. This preserves your action for cantrips, increasing your output on turns where protective magic is needed. They’re also better than anyone else at actually succeeding with dispel magic.
Add on to this a strong resilience to spells and you have a fairly strong subclass. If you’re looking for a protective subclass and a good team player, then the abjurer is definitely a strong option.
Score: 4/5
Diviner
What are they?
Capable of seeing things that have been, things that are and things that may come to pass. Diviners use their magic to foresee and gain knowledge not normally available through non-magical means through their expertise in divination magic.
Key abilities
- Divination savant (lv3) – Learn additional divination spells.
- Portent (lv3) – Replace 2 d20 tests with already known rolls for yourself and others each long rest.
- Expert divination (lv6) – Restore a spell slot when you cast a higher level divination spell.
- Third eye (lv10) – Temporarily activate darkvision, see invisibility or the ability to comprehend any language.
- Greater portent (Lv14) – You can now use your portent feature 3 times per long rest.
What are they good at?
Information gathering and ensuring the right outcomes happen at the right times.
How effective are they?
They’re a pretty strong option. Portent is a hugely powerful feature capable of almost guaranteeing success or failure in 2 crucial rolls each day.
Third eye is a little situational, but the need for one of the 3 abilities is regular and problematic enough to be frequently useful. The reduced cost on divination spells means you can be information gathering more often too.
The obvious comparison though, comes with the clockwork sorcerer who fulfils a similar role. I’d argue that the clockwork sorcerer is superior though as they can more regularly influence the outcomes of rolls. This doesn’t make the diviner weak (it’s still a strong subclass), but the clockwork sorcerer is just that powerful!
Score: 4/5
Evoker
What are they?
Experts with elemental magic, evokers are powerful damage dealers that enhance the power of their spells.
Key abilities
- Evocation savant (lv3) – Gain more evocation spells.
- Potent cantrip (lv3) – Cantrips that miss will still cause half damage.
- Sculpt spells (lv6) – Protect allies from the effects of your AoE spells.
- Empowered evocation (lv10) – Increase damage slightly from evocation spells.
- Overchannel (lv14) – Cause maximum damage with a spell.
What are they good at?
Dealing more damage with their spells than other wizards. They can also protect allies from their AoE spells giving them more opportunities to blast off some of their most powerful spells in combat.
How effective are they?
Really effective! Evokers are the best damage dealing wizard subclass in the game. Being able to cast AoE spells in the middle of the fray is hugely beneficial too, allowing you to consistently use some of your most powerful spells. Evokers are also able to enhance the damage of their spells really consistently allowing their extra damage to really stack up.
It’s easy to boost their damage output further too. For example, if you use empowered evocation, using AoE spells will allow that extra damage to be magnified by the number of creatures hit by the spell. Overchannel can be enhanced in a similar way, or you could use an upcast chromatic orb for guaranteed bounces and potentially huge damage.
For me, evokers are just so consistently powerful, with regularly useful features, that they are up there among the best subclasses in the game!
Score: 5/5
Illusionist
What are they?
Masters of illusions and misdirection, illusionists specialise in creating magical effects that are not actually there.
Key abilities
- Illusion savant (lv3) – Know more illusion spells.
- Improved illusions (lv3) – Enhance illusions with greater range, no need for verbal components and an improved minor illusion.
- Phantasmal creatures (lv6) – Summon spectral beasts and fey creatures.
- Illusory self (lv10) – Cause an attack to miss with an interposed illusion.
- Illusory reality (lv14) – Make an object that’s part of an illusion you’ve created become temporarily real.
What are they good at?
Using illusions. This gives them advantages when it comes to stealth and deception. These illusions can also aid them a little in combat and for problem solving.
How effective are they?
Illusionists are really hard to judge because a lot of what they can do is so dependant on the DM’s generosity and the player’s creativity. For me, this creates a problem because the results of the illusionist’s features are so open to interpretation that you could end up with something brilliantly clever or frustratingly ineffective.
Even with a generous DM, I’m not convinced that these features are better than those of other wizard subclasses. The problems they solve are not overly difficult to accomplish through other methods, or they’re quite niche.
For these reasons, I think they’re the worst of the wizard subclasses. That’s not to say they’re necessarily a bad subclass, if you have a willing DM. I would certainly speak to your DM before playing an illusionist though. This will let you establish expectations of how they might respond to illusions used in various ways.
Score: 2/5
Which Wizard subclass is best?
Sadly, the illusionist doesn’t really make it into this conversation. With weaker features, and often, weaker spells, as well as a propensity towards ineffective features (depending on the DM), I think this is the weakest wizard subclass.
Fortunately, the other 3 subclasses are quite strong options. Both diviners and abjurers have some powerful features. However, for me, the evoker is the best wizard subclass. They have the most commonly used and consistently powerful features and should be hugely satisfying to play as you consistently land big damage attacks on your enemies.
However, I’d base your decision more on the kind of wizard you’d like to play. If you want to play a protector, be an abjurer. If you want to gather knowledge and affect outcomes, then play a diviner If you want to deal powerful spell damage, be an evoker. And if you want to trick and mislead opponents, then take an illusionist. All these subclasses (even the illusionist) can be useful in their particular specialty.
Which wizard subclass do you think is the best? Let me know about them in the comments below.
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