Warrior Of The Mystic Arts Monk Spell Guide For D&D 2024 (5.5e)

Helping you pick the best spells for your mystic arts monk.

With fighters and rogues already getting their own 1/3 caster subclass, it’s the monk’s turn to get some spellcasting in the form of the warrior of the mystic arts subclass. It follows a lot of the same design philosophies of the eldritch knight, allowing them to weave multiple attacks with spells fairly seamlessly.

While that may seem like easy design, the reality is that it’s effective and my guide praised the subclass itself as a fun and potent alternative to other monk subclasses.

But as with any spellcasting build, working out exactly which of the many spells works best for your character can be challenging. It’s not enough to just look at what spells work well for a sorcerer (they have the same spell list after all). Monks are a completely different beast. Mage armor is great on a sorcerer, but pretty pointless on a monk for instance.

No need to worry though, I’ve analysed every single officially released spell for D&D 5.5e, scoring how good they are on a mystic arts monk and providing some advice and justification.

Considerations

Using spellcasting and choosing spells with a warrior of the mystic arts is quite unique, even among 1/3 casters like the eldritch knight and arcane trickster. Spells that aren’t great typically for a sorcerer, can work great for a mystic arts monk and vice versa. Because of this, it’s worth considering the following points when choosing your spells.

Monks are primarily built for melee

In fact, monks struggle with ranged attacks perhaps more than just about any other class. Because of that, you need to be wary of ranged spell attacks. Using them in melee will incur disadvantage. Fortunately, monks are pretty good at hit and run tactics which can mix melee and ranged attacks, but you won’t always be using your bonus action to disengage, for instance.

This also means that melee spell attacks and those that cause saving throws can be of increased usefulness to a monk. That’s not to say you don’t want any ranged spells. This is one of the benefits of the mystic arts monk is gaining some range for when you’re injured or can’t reach an enemy.

Mix cantrips with attacks from level 6

Like eldritch knights, mystic arts monks can replace an attack with a cantrip each turn. Cantrips scale in damage which can quickly make them more powerful than your standard attacks, plus they often have other effects too. This makes your cantrip choices very important and I’d often recommend using this feature most turns.

Replacing 2 attacks with level 1 and 2 spells

Once you reach the lofty heights of level 17, you can replace 2 attacks from flurry of blows with a casting of a level 1 or 2 spell. There’s a limit on spell slots you possess, but this can be potent too and it also allows for a cantrip replacing 1 attack and a levelled spell replacing 2 more attacks in the same turn and you should still have an attack or 2 to spare which is more than most can accomplish in a turn (though these are low level spells for level 17+).

Cantrips

Warrior of the mystic arts monk: Wizards of the Coast

Acid splash (3/5) – You only need to hit 2+ enemies to make this do more damage than any other cantrip. Essentially it’s worse than most cantrips against 1 enemy, but better against multiple enemies.
Blade ward (4/5) – This normally isn’t great on most classes, but works for a monk. You’re a melee class so extra protection is more useful. You also have less important options to concentrate on and, from level 6, only need to replace 1 attack to cast this making it a solid defensive spell that won’t eat into your spell slots.
Chill touch (4/5) – Solid damage and monks won’t mind a melee cantrip. Sometimes can be useful stopping creatures healing too.
Dancing lights (3/5) – Decent enough way to tackle darkness if characters in the party lack darkvision.
Elementalism (1/5) – Maybe there are cool effects others can work out that this spell can do, but to me, it all just seems like showmanship.
Fire bolt (3/5) – Solid damage and the damage type is a little better than that for poison spray (even if the damage isn’t quite as good). Decent ranged option if you need it but no good in melee.
Friends (1/5) – It’s not great on a charisma build and monks don’t even have great charisma. Even if you do use this, it’s limited to a minute and only to non-hostile humanoids and you’ve got a minute before it ends making its scope a bit tricky to make work beyond that very short time frame.
Light (3/5) – Put down a monk weapon, cast light on it, then pick it up. Now you’ve got a torch without having to use a spare hand. Good for those without darkvision.
Mage hand (4/5) – Great utility spell. Grab or manipulate things that are out of reach. It’s also great for setting off traps while you stand at a safe distance.
Mending (2/5) – This one can be really useful, or not useful at all. It’s just too situational to be reliably of worth.
Message (3/5) – The range is a bit limiting, but if you’re split up and need to communicate, this is a good way to do it. No spell slots needed.
Mind sliver (5/5) – Most creatures have poor intelligence so this should land more often than most spells and psychic damage is rarely resisted. It will also make the target less likely to succeed on their next saving throw. That could be another spell or even just you using stunning strike. As this requires a saving throw, you can use it just fine in melee or at range.
Minor illusion (4/5) – Top utility spell. Great for creating distractions while you sneak around. The more cunning you are, the more useful this spell will be.
Poison spray (3/5) – Your highest damage for a ranged spell attack. Just be aware that the damage type is also one of the most highly resisted and a lot of creatures now have poison damage immunity. Be aware this will have disadvantage in melee too.
Prestidigitation (3/5) – This can be a useful utility spell if you’re creative enough. I’d prefer minor illusion and/or mage hand, but this can be handy too.
Ray of frost (3/5) – Good if you want to slow enemies down. You can combine this with the slow weapon mastery property from your allies to reduce movement by 20ft. It can work when using hit and run tactics too as you can hit, move away, then blast with this so the creature hopefully can’t reach you.
Shocking grasp (5/5) – I like this better than chill touch for the warrior of the mystic arts. The damage is the same and it’s great for melee attacks, but it will also prevent the target from taking opportunity attacks. This means that if you want to make hit and run attacks and don’t want the risk of being hit while you move away, you don’t need to spend your bonus action using patient defense, instead you can use this and use flurry of blows with your bonus action instead.
Sorcerous burst (3/5) – Decent damage, a good damage type and the chance to deal extra damage when you roll an 8. As you gain levels, the chances of rolling an 8 increase with the extra dice you roll for damage. Just be aware it’s not great in melee.
Thunderclap (4/5) – This is your biggest AoE option for a cantrip, but requires being within 5ft of multiple enemies. That’s often not the best place for a monk, but you can still use patient defense to get away. It only takes being next to 2 targets too for this to outperform almost all other cantrips for damage output.
True strike (4/5) – The highest damage, single target cantrip available as it adds your spellcasting ability modifier to damage rolls. At early levels, it’ll give you an alternative to standard damage with your monk weapons, but at later levels, will increase the damage from these too, so long as your wisdom is around as good as your dexterity.

Level 1 spells

Burning hands (4/5) – A proper AoE damage dealer makes monks considerably better at handling crowds and monks won’t mind getting fairly close to enemies (they do this anyway).
Charm person (1/5) – You aren’t great as a party face and this has too many drawbacks that make it awkward to use successfully.
Chromatic orb (4/5) – The damage here is decent and the ability to change damage types means you should be able to avoid resistances. What makes this even better is your ability to potentially hit additional targets. You’ve got a 34% chance of rolling a double, but if you upcast this, the probability gets higher becoming 59% at level 2, 79% at level 3 and 92% at level 4. Plus you can have it bounce as many times as the level it’s cast at. As a level 1 spell though, it will average 13.5 damage per target. With it bouncing 34% of the time, it should average 18.1 damage. It’s not as potent on a monk as on a sorcerer, for instance, as you have less ways to increase your chances of a bounce, but it’s still a good spell.
Color spray (4/5) – Blinding multiple enemies with a single spell is pretty good and whether you use your action or bonus action to cast this, you still have the opportunity to make follow up attacks against your now blinded enemies this turn and next giving you some nice advantage. Monks won’t mind having to get close to a group of enemies to make this work either.
Comprehend languages (2/5) – It’s rare that not understanding a language would be a blocker to your game progression. Can be useful, but not often enough.
Detect magic (4/5) – Someone needs this in the party and as it can be cast as a ritual, you don’t need to eat into precious spell slots.
Disguise self (2/5) – Can be useful, but you will lack the charisma to be convincing under any kind of scrutiny.
Expeditious retreat (1/5) – Monks can already take the dash action as a bonus action so this is completely pointless for you.
False life (3/5) – Decent number of temporary hit points. You can cast in preparation for a battle too so no need to expend your action during combat.
Feather fall (3/5) – Monks need this much less than other classes, but it can still help your friends. Situational, but important when those situations occur.
Fog cloud (3/5) – Lots of uses for heavily obscuring an area with fog, including making a quick escape and handling invisible enemies (making the attacks more even).
Grease (3/5) – Decent in narrow areas like dungeons, especially if you want to fight enemies from a distance or stop them in the grease in melee combat giving them the chance of constantly slipping.
Ice knife (2/5) – The damage on this is pretty poor. There are cantrips nearly as effective as this by level 5.
Jump (2/5) – An extra 20ft of movement each turn of combat with no concentration required is decent. Or you can use it to jump across long distances or up buildings. Can be useful, but monks are already fast and their bonus action is already precious so I’m not sure it’s that worthwhile for them.
Mage armor (1/5) – With unarmored defense, this likely adds nothing to your AC making this a fairly pointless spell unless you’ve for some reason opted to dump wisdom (please don’t)!
Magic missile (4/5) – The damage isn’t that high, but it as an automatic hit on multiple enemies which can be very useful and compensates for its lower damage. This is especially useful against highly resilient enemies that are difficult to hit.
Ray of sickness (2/5) – An average of 9 damage and the poisoned condition for a turn is not strong enough I think compared to your other options.
Shield (4/5) – Can be really useful if you want to focus on not taking damage and losing concentration. You do have deflect attacks and the reaction here will conflict with that, but shield will increase AC for the rest of the round, deflect attacks is for a single attack and won’t necessarily prevent all damage. I’d use deflect attack for a single, smaller damage attacks and shield when you expect multiple attacks and/or the attack has larger damage.
Silent image (4/5) – A better version of minor illusion, but at the cost of a spell slot.
Sleep (4/5) – It’s a small AoE, but if you can catch multiple enemies in this, the odds of success increase a lot and can be fairly substantial. It’s one of the only ways to nullify multiple enemies from 1st level. And if the enemy fails their saving throw twice, they don’t get other chances to wake up (though an ally could kick them).
Spellfire flare (3/5) HoF – In terms of raw damage, the dice are equal to inflict wounds, but inflict wounds will deal half damage on a successful saving throw, this just misses. However, this is ranged (inflict wounds requires touch) and it ignores half and three quarters cover. Where it gets interesting is with upcasting as it creates separate blasts like scorching ray. It has one less blast than scorching ray, but the damage at level 2 is slightly higher, and because we’re dealing with d10s instead of d6s, it scales better at even higher levels, though that’s less useful on a warrior of the mystic arts.
Thunderwave (4/5) – Decent AoE damage and some crowd control through pushing. Monks won’t mind getting close to the action with this either.
Witch bolt (2/5) – The damage isn’t enough to consume your concentration and it’s too easy for an enemy to stop the additional damage by running round a corner.

Level 2 spells

Alter self (2/5) – Kind of like disguise self with extras. The disguise is a bit less restrictive than disguise self but still isn’t great on a monk. You can get a swim speed which is sometimes useful. Monks have no need for natural weapons as their martial arts is just far better.
Arcane vigor (3/5) – This is OK if you need a self-healing option and only taking a bonus action is decent enough (though a monk’s bonus action is under heavy use). You have decent hit dice so the healing is alright here but this does consume hit dice and can only be cast on yourself.
Blindness/deafness (4/5) – Solid enough saving throw spell with the benefit of not requiring concentration elevating it a point.
Blur (3/5) – Strong defensive spell, though it gets less effective as enemies get better at hitting you, with disadvantage causing less of a problem for accurate creatures.
Cloud of daggers (1/5) – Unless you can block a 5ft wide corridor with this, it’s just a waste of a spell slot and you should have just cast a cantrip to save the spell slot.
Crown of madness (2/5) – The challenge with this is you’ll need to maintain it using your action to continue its effects. This is an acceptable sacrifice if you come across someone powerful. You essentially nullify their effectiveness while using their attacks against your enemies. You’ll also need to engineer that they start their turn next to one of your enemies which can be tricky, but easier now there’s a lot of weapon mastery abilities knocking around.
Darkness (4/5) – A strong control option. Good for tackling invisibility, making an escape or if you have some form of blindsight.
Darkvision (3/5) – The best way to see in the dark if you don’t already have darkvision.
Death armor (5/5) HoF – Advantage on death saving throws is fine, but it’s the kind of buff you don’t really want to need (and often won’t need). The important bit here is the extra damage. The wording is once per turn the damage can be dealt, that means it can affect every enemy that makes a melee attack against the target. That damage can soon rack up, even if it is spread between multiple enemies. You’ll want to pop it on a tanky ally that’ll throw themself into the middle of the fray (like a barbarian). Monks tend to prefer evasiveness, so while an OK spell on you, it’s probably better on others. The longer you can keep that ally on their feet, the better, so healing spells from allies will be great. You can cast ahead of combat and it doesn’t require concentration making it an excellent buff!
Detect thoughts (3/5) – There are interesting ways to use this for both stealth and social situations, but taking advantage of it is a bit situational, depends on your DM’s generosity and can go wrong with that wisdom saving throw.
Disruptive tune (2/5) AU – The initial effects could be very similar to just hitting them. However, the DC using this will likely be higher. Even with a relatively low spell save DC of 13, you’d need to deal 26 damage to equal this. Shatter, a 2nd level AoE spells isn’t going to get anywhere close to this and it’s half the size. So it’s good at imposing tough saves against concentration. I’d say it’d be rare to catch multiple spellcasters in the same area, but ending concentration can be really important. You could instead use hold person or hypnotic pattern. These will really restrict the spellcaster. There’s an argument for the fact that they’ll be worse at maintaining concentration too, but hypnotic pattern and hold person entirely prevent new spells being cast. I think this is difficult to justify when there are more profound ways to end concentration and it’s a bit more situational than other spells.
Dragon’s breath (3/5) – This is kind of like reusable burning hands for a whole combat that you can grant to someone else. You could cast it on someone else with less precious actions (like a familiar if you have one).
Dueling ground (1/5) AU – This is designed entirely as a flavour spell and not one that has much practical use. Cool for magical duels without the high stakes of death, but how often this occurs is rare, and duels naturally lead to other players becoming spectators which isn’t as fun. Leave this one for NPCs.
Enhance ability (4/5) – Great for tackling high stakes skills checks like those involving stealth or social encounters. You can use this on yourself or someone else.
Enlarge/reduce (4/5) – Cast it on yourself and with your many attacks, will add up to a fair amount of extra damage. On top of that, it’ll let you grapple larger creatures too.
Flame blade (1/5) – This will deal less damage than your standard attacks and that doesn’t even account for enhancements from using cantrips or something like stunning strike.
Flaming sphere (2/5) – Like a slightly better version of cloud of daggers. It has a larger radius, affects creatures within 5ft on the first turn and can be moved with a bonus action instead of an action. The damage is a little lower though and it has to be rolled rather than teleported. Despite being better, it’s too low damage to consistently invest in.
Gust of wind (2/5) – Can be decent for corridors, poor for enclosed or large spaces. This makes it too situational to be regularly useful.
Hold person (3/5) – Decent save or suck spell. Just be aware that less creatures are now classified as humanoids in the 2024 Monster Manual. Things like Goblins and Gith are now Fey and Aberrations so this won’t work on them. Personally, I’d favour Tasha’s Hideous Laughter or sleep at level 1 for this kind of effect which is less limited by creature type and can also nullify enemies.
Invisibility (5/5) – Excellent stealth spell and will help you for a round of combat too.
Knock (2/5) – If you don’t have a rogue, I’d say just invest in thieves’ tools proficiency and sleight of hand with your background, species or feats instead. This could get expensive on spell slots if you come across a few locks.
Levitate (3/5) – Useful for scaling tall buildings and scouting. You can also nullify an enemy to some extent with this, especially if they don’t have ranged options.
Magic weapon (3/5) – A small buff to attack and damage rolls is decent but you can only apply this to a maximum of 2 of your attacks (your flurry of blows requires unarmed strikes). Your bonus action is fairly precious and I’d suggest that enlarge/reduce is a better buff for you (though you can technically do both). You can cast this ahead of combat though and I think that’s the best way to use this. Decent on a monk with a monk weapon.
Mind spike (1/5) – The problem with this is the damage is low and you have to be able to see the creature to hit it and then nullify future invisibility attempts. The issue is, you often don’t know you’re going to face something that can turn invisible until it turns invisible. There are better ways to tackle invisibility.
Mirror image (3/5) – Solid protective spell, and will help you maintain your concentration.
Misty step (3/5) – Great safety spell. It’ll get you out of sticky situations like grapples and crowds. Can also get you to hard to reach places and make you travel further if needs be. Having said all this, you can nearly achieve similar things with patient defense and your bonus action. This does add the ability to escape grapples which is good, but it’s less useful on a highly mobile monk than on other classes. And will cost a spell slot for the privilege.
Phantasmal force (3/5) – If you’re creative, you can do a lot of interesting things with this spell. False bridges, fake ground or holes are all possibilities as well as scary creatures.
Scorching ray (3/5) – Solid damage and the flexibility to target multiple creatures.
See invisibility (4/5) – At least someone in the party needs a way to deal with invisibility and this is probably one of the better, low level options. This is even more handy now that the hide action grants the invisible condition.
Shatter (4/5) – Probably one of the better pre-level 3 AoE damage dealer. One of your best options at this level for dealing with crowds.
Spider climb (2/5) – This can be useful sometimes, but I’d probably just go for levitate if I need some height.
Suggestion (4/5) – Time for some jedi mind tricks! It’s inferior to hold person at incapacitating enemies, but sometimes you need to have someone do something for you (like to grab the key to the jail cell you’re in). You’ll need to be careful at wording your instructions.
Web (5/5) – Strong control spell. Will slow down multiple enemies and can restrain them too.
Wither and bloom (4/5) AU– Like shatter, this is a rare AoE damage dealer below level 3. Not only that, but the numbers stack up quite nicely. It’s also a rare healing spell for your monk. It’s an average of 10.5 damage per target plus about 6.5-11.5 healing to one target depending on their hit dice and your spellcasting modifier. You can also choose who gets damaged so no friendly fire. Compare that to shatter with an average of 13.5 damage per target and no healing and I think this is pretty good.

Level 3 spells

Draconic sorcerer DND 2024 — Warrior of the mystic arts monk: Wizards of the Coast

Blink (3/5) – This essentially gives you safety for 50% of your turns in combat. Not bad for a melee class that relies on evasion, especially in longer encounters. The action setup is less punishing on a monk that can use their bonus action for multiple attacks still.
Cacophonic shield (5/5) HoF – Like a slightly less damaging spirit guardians. The emanation’s range is smaller too but you get thunder resistance, ranged attacks have disadvantage against you and you cause deafened with it. These seem like decent trade offs and a great option for a non-cleric to grab something like spirit guardians. For monks, this is especially good as they’re highly mobile so can affect more creatures with this spell.
Catnap (2/5) AU – Badly need a short rest but don’t have an hour to take it, then this is the spell for you. It’s especially useful for party warlocks, classes with channel divinity and anything else that replenishes on a short rest. My main question though, is how often DMs will give time for a short rest of 10 minutes when they wouldn’t have given time for a rest of 1 hour? That’s a very DM and campaign dependant question that I can’t definitively answer for other tables, but I’m not convinced it’s that often… It’s also worse than prayer of healing which is a level 2 spell.
Clairvoyance (4/5) – There’s quite a lot of potential for information gathering with this spell, especially if you want to be privy to conversations not meant for your ears! It’s a bit situational though so you may not get loads of use out of it (then again, you could end up using it a lot depending on the campaign).
Counterspell (4/5) – Preventing a nasty spell is great. This is especially the case for PCs as most monsters won’t use spell slots, instead they’ll be able to cast spells a certain number of times per day and this will still expend those uses.
Daylight (2/5) – While this has its uses for tackling things like the darkness spell and creatures that hate sunlight, it’s far too situational to recommend under normal circumstances.
Dispel magic (5/5) – Really useful for ending nasty spell effects.
Fear (4/5) – Strong way to take a bunch of enemies out of the combat simultaneously, especially if you’re fighting large groups. You do have to get fairly close to the enemy for this one but that’s fine for a monk. I still prefer hypnotic pattern though, which essentially does the same thing at range.
Fireball (5/5) – Really strong damage dealing AoE spell. Best used in the first turn before you and your allies get in the way.
Fly (4/5) – Really useful utility spell. Can keep you safe (ish) in combat by using hit and run movement into the skies. It also helps you access hard to reach locations.
Gaseous form (4/5) – Strong exploration spell. Will get you places you might not ordinarily be able to get.
Haste (4/5) – A strong buff that can easily enhance yourself or an ally. An extra action, more speed, better AC and better saving throws all combine nicely.
Hypnotic pattern (5/5) – I’d probably prefer this over fear as it’s got better range but effectively removes a group of enemies from the combat.
Inflict doubt (2/5) AU – At first glance, it would seem that hold person or a similar save or suck spell would just be better. This is a single target spell that imposes disadvantage rather than completely nullifying the individual. But, other effects won’t cause the saving throw made to overcome them to be made with disadvantage. Does that justify this as a weaker, but more reliable, long term spell cast at a higher level? I’m not sure. I’d be more inclined to go after multiple targets with things like fear and hypnotic pattern and ensure the desired effect that way.
Laeral’s silver lance (2/5) HoF – Basically a weaker lightning bolt that also knocks prone. It has a slightly greater range than lightning bolt but quite a bit less damage. Unless you’re fighting down corridors, this probably isn’t a great option and I’m not convinced that prone is enough for the damage sacrifice.
Lightning bolt (3/5) – Lines of enemies are harder to find than groups, but can happen in long corridors. Generally though, this tends to be weaker than fireball.
Major image (4/5) – If you’re really creative, this can be amazing! Use it to distract and deceive enemies. And once you get 4th level spells, you can cast this without using concentration and can make the illusion permanent.
Protection from energy (2/5) – A single resistance can be bypassed easily (by using a different damage type or targeting another character). The options of damage types are quite limited too. Situationally useful against certain creatures but that’s all.
Sleet storm (3/5) – A more problematic version of fog cloud. Good for controlling the battlefield and nullifying enemy spellcasters a bit. It’s best in more confined spaces where enemies may be forced to travel through it.
Slow (4/5) – I prefer hypnotic pattern over this which completely nullifies an enemy rather than severely debilitating them. But this is still very good and has a larger area it can cover.
Stinking cloud (3/5) – Good control spell. Works best in confined spaces and for getting enemies in the places you want them to be. Poisoned is nastier with this spell, but only lasts a turn. Consider combining it with something that restricts movement like sleet storm, grease or web to really get enemies stuck.
Tongues (2/5) – It’s unlikely that this will be useful very often so not usually worth taking.
Vampiric touch (1/5) – The damage and combined healing here is worse than you’ll manage with an attack and a cantrip with your action making this just a bad spell at the expense of a 3rd level spell slot.
Water breathing (2/5) – It’s not often you need to breathe under water. Situationally useful when those moments do come up, but often pointless.
Water walk (1/5) – I’d just use fly instead if you need to cross water, or walk across it because you’re a monk.

Level 4 spells

Backlash (4/5) HoF – Solid damage reduction and retaliation. For comparison, hellish rebuke will deal 5d10 damage if upcast to this level (average 27.5 damage). Backlash will protect from an average of 14 damage and deal 14 damage back (with a better damage type). So I think they’re comparable in power. Just depends whether you want to be more protective and have the flexibility of casting at lower levels.
Banishment (5/5) – Take an enemy out of combat for the duration while you deal with its friends. Hold person accomplishes a similar thing but this is better as there aren’t any repeat saving throws, many creatures have poor charisma and it can target any kind of creature.
Blight (2/5) – An upcast fireball will do nearly this amount of damage to a single target (and that can hit multiple targets). With that context, I’d say this is quite a weak spell.
Charm monster (2/5) – I find this tough to recommend. You’re not necessarily gaining an ally for combat, even then, it’ll only hang around for an hour before knowing you magically influenced it. It could be a way to tackle a creature without violence, but you’re best doing this before combat erupts.
Confusion (3/5) – This is like an unreliable hypnotic pattern. I prefer hypnotic pattern with it’s larger area of effect and greater reliability, but if you like chaos, this can sometimes cause enemies to attack each other.
Dimension door (3/5) – Good for getting out of dungeons quickly or getting the jump on far away enemies. You may need to be a little creative, but as long as you can see, have seen or can precisely determine distance of the location, you can get there safely.
Dominate beast (2/5) – This can be a powerful spell, if circumstances align. The problem is you need to cast it on a beast (and there’s no guarantee the beasts you meet are good ones to charm). It only lasts a minute so you either have to use it during combat or to get the beast to do something that only takes a minute. If you’re fighting the beast, it’s harder to make work. For me, this is too hard to contrive into a useful, 4th level spell.
Festering blast (4/5) – A 1 minute duration that doesn’t require concentration is quite tempting. Lightning bolt is 40ft longer but half as wide. This has a bigger area overall and I’d argue, it’s easier to hit with because of the width. The initial damage of this averages at 22 while lightning bolt averages at 28, but this has persistent damage that quickly overtakes lightning bolt and causes the poisoned condition. I think this is better than lightning bolt.
Fire shield (4/5) – No concentration needed and you should be able to discourage enemies from attacking you (and damage them if they do). Some damage resistance is decent too. I’d go for the chill shield normally as the resistance and damage type are both better.
Greater invisibility (5/5) – Disappear in combat and attack with advantage and be attacked with disadvantage.
Ice storm (3/5) – Alright enough spell, but the damage sacrifice for difficult terrain for a round makes this only OK.
Polymorph (5/5) – Effectively nullify an enemy, enhance an ally or gain some kind of utility benefit like flight. This is a really versatile spell!
Spellfire storm (3/5) HoF – Like a weaker fireball that lasts and can prevent spells when cast in it’s area, but it seems unlikely that will happen often. With teamwork, you could make some big damage happen here by keeping enemies in the area, but it’s tricky.
Stoneskin (3/5) – Solid protection spell, but be aware, this consumes your concentration and as enemies get more magical attacks and less standard weapon damage, this becomes increasingly redundant.
Vitriolic sphere (5/5) – This is a little more damage than an upcast fireball, but spread over a couple of turns. The damage type is probably slightly better too. I’d say it’s pretty comparable.
Wall of fire (4/5) – Really useful way to control the battlefield, separating, slowing and/or damaging your enemies.