Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 170: More Preseason Takeaways

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

This season discusses takeaways (such as they are) from game two of preseason... and then experiments with a section about gaming.    I'll be unable to post an episode next week, but I'll be back to cover the regular season opener in the week thereafter! 

Welcome back, everybody listening to another episode of Drive into the Basket. I am Mike, and I hope you're all doing super, super well today. So we are halfway through preseason, and the preseason schedule is pretty brutal. For all, we are looking forward to watching more basketball, or watching some basketball, rather. This is kind of the equivalent of being subjected to super long hold times and a call you really just want to take care of. That is to say that the games are very, very far apart. So we'll talk a little bit more today about some takeaways insofar as preseason takeaways are possible from the second game. First, though, I want to give a bit of a plug to my buddy Bryce from Motor City Hoops,

who is taking over as co-host of the Game Theory podcast with Sam Vassini of the athletic. Sam, you know, for my money, I think, one of the best in the business at draft analysis. So I just want to say Bryce is a super smart, dedicated, hardworking, and passionate students of the game of basketball and just super happy for him. You know, game theory is a really big podcast, and I'd say he deserves every bit of it. So congratulations to Bryce. If you haven't checked out any of his content, have a look. He produces a ton of it and should check out game theory when he starts on there. So all that said, let's talk about game two of preseason. Well, actually, let's talk about the lineup thing again, because again, this is preseason. I'm just rather scared that Monty Williams

is actually being serious about potentially bringing Jaden Ivy off the bench in favor of, you know, and replacing him there with the Sart-Thombs. And it, would be goodness, I know I'm just repeating myself in last episode, but just an absolutely, unless Asarra has somehow become a reliable shooter in the offseason, and it's very, very, very, very rare for bad shooters to become reliable shooters across the course of their rookie offseason. You just don't see that amount of progress usually. And, like, unless that has happened, I mean, it's basically just courting having an absolutely terrible offense. Like, again, And like I said, you put a SAR in there in place of Ivy.

You are obliterating spacing. The lineup does not have enough shooting. You have Cade in there as the one and only ball handler. Basically, the onus for all creation and all playmaking goes onto him. At the same time as you're ruining his spacing and minimizing his playmaking by not giving him enough guys in the floor who can shoot the ball well. And I'm confident that Cable will be able to shoot, but also in this situation, Cape will constantly be on the ball. So he's not exactly going to be taking a lot of catch and shoots. So you just can't in today's NBA

Unless you're in a very special situation That almost invariably includes a superstar field A non-shooter on the perimeter It's just NBA offense is super super super stress The number one thing they stress actually Is creating open threes The three-pointer being an extremely efficient shot So if you cannot finish plays from the perimeter

That's a terrible terrible thing for your value on offense And also as we have all seen Defense is heavily heavily heavily punished guys who cannot shoot They just sag off. It just makes life more difficult on everybody else. And so on and so forth. It's just incredibly difficult. You can find good value on offense.

To find value, anything but negative value on offense is a perimeter guy if you can't shoot. And that's not only for the player himself, but also for the offensive large. So this would just basically be asking to have a bad offense. And I very much hope that we don't see it. The thing is that Ivy is really the only way. I must want to put Monti Morris in the starting lineup. I figure, you know, if you want Ivy to get maximum ball handling reps, you know, you might

as well do that. I mean, that's one way of doing it. You have, it's not going to change too much about who is lining up where. Monta can handle the ball and he can shoot. He's undersized, but, you know, that's okay. But, you know, so if you're replacing Ivy with him because you really want Ivy to get maximum reps off the bench, okay, I'm still not too happy about Caden Ivy not getting time to develop chemistry between them, but at least you're fielding something approaching a functional

offense because Monta can handle and Monta can shoot. He is good at both of those things. Whereas Assar Thompson, excuse me, is just like we saw in game two, like against the Thunder. And again, I know it's preseason, but that also means he was playing against players who weren't really that good. Assar is a work in progress on offense. Like, he's smart. He's good as a passer. But as a scorer, he is coming out of OTE good at nothing.

And I'm not exaggerating there. And again, the Pistons, I'm quite certain would not have drafted him if they were not sure. that his shooting would come along. And again, all it's going to take for him to be a very strong starter is for him to become a good shooter. That will take time, most likely. Who knows? Maybe we'll see it next season. But he, against OTE defenses, and overtime elite is a joke of a league. Compared to the NCAA, it's very weak.

Compared to the G League, it's very, very weak. The G League, you know, of course gets laughed at a lot. But it's one of the strongest basketball leagues in the world, you know, full of guys who are extremely good at basketball, just not good enough to take one of the like, you know, 450 slots, not counting two ways in the NBA. So basically, he was good at nothing in the half court. He was managed to post something, you know, managed to boast acceptable efficiency because of two things. Number one, he got fouled a lot. And number two, OD is a very transition-focused league.

But Asar was awful at scoring at the basket through contests, like genuinely awful. He shot, I think, somewhere in the low 40s on layups off the dribble. and in the high 40s on half-court layups in general. He was bad from mid-range, and he was, of course, bad from three. He shot about 31% on uncontested threes, and I believe that included those three games in the playoffs where he just went Nova and was very much a blip and obviously a very unsustainable performance.

Some guys do that time to time. I don't know, from recent history, take Matisse Stuybel, for example, who went completely Nova with the Trailblazers in the early stages there after he was traded from the Sixers. and then crash back to the mean. It just happens. And you don't look at those very, very short periods of a player just, you know,

performing well above his baseline. You know, those are anomalies, and those players are invariably regression candidates. So you get the point. You get what I'm saying. So Assar just has a very long way to go as an offensive player. And again, all it's going to take for him to be very good is for him to become a reliable shooter. if you add on top of that him being able to do it just basically to attack off the dribble and score at the basket, then he has potential all start upside. But again, he's just got a long way to go at this point.

Asar is game ready on defense. He is extremely game unready on offense. And it's fine for him to get minutes for the pistons. You want to be basically the pistons on offense are going to have a tough time winning any minutes with him on the floor. and the possibility of him finishing games, I'd say, is fairly remote. If they're defensive possessions, absolutely. At latent games, if they're offensive possessions, you want guys in the floor who, I mean, you really want buckets.

You can't feel guys like that. So this is not all to say that a Sart Thompson sucks. It's to say that he is a rookie who is coming into the league rather incomplete. He is an upside player. You know, things need to happen with his offense in order for him to be a positive value player and in order for him not to be a liability. I mean, but let's look, just as an example, let's look at how the average possession goes in the NBA. You drive in, ideally, and either kick it out to an open shooter or, you know, you're broken down

the defense, somebody has to come help on the guy who's driving in, and then you kick and kick and kick. If you're the heat, you also drive and then kick and kick and your idea there is sometimes you get an open layup, like particularly if somebody closes out hard in a shooter who's got a decent degree of explosiveness. But for the most part, what you're looking for is a three. So you think about a guy in an instance in which you have a guy like Asar on the floor, he can't participate in that. He just, he can't. You kick it, you kick it, you kick it,

so you get to Osar Thompson, who might be able to shoot like 32% on open threes. I'm wide open threes. Wide open threes, you're looking at guys who are, you're looking for guys who are going to shoot those in like the high 30s. So it basically just ends with a pretty bad possession with a very inconsistent shooter who might get it on,

you know, might come alive really in one game or another, but for the most part is likely to just not shoot the ball well. But like I said, You come in and your rookie offseason, it's unlikely to make that. You're unlikely to make that much progress. As far as a shot for him is also still pretty ugly. Like, brings me back to Stanley Johnson the way that he shoots it. He needs to work on that.

So, yeah, you have that situation where just the guy cannot participate in that high efficiency form of offense. So him being the terminal, you know, the point of the terminus point, I want to call it the terminal point, whatever, the end point of that offense getting the open three. And then just not being able to capitalize on it. And these are the inexorable mathematics of the NBA. You have to be able to keep up on offense. And that's one of the reasons why fielding a guy who can't shoot is such an issue. The other one, of course, is the spacing question, where, you know, if you have a guy whom opponents are more than happy to leave open, they've got an extra guy who can help elsewhere

on defense. And he clogs up the interior, which makes it harder for anybody else to drive in. I've been asked, does it, you know, can he provide some spacing just by being a good awful move. The answer is nowhere near enough to compensate for the spacing that is lost and for the fact that he can't shoot well. If he's just moving around the perimeter, I mean, his defender has less ground to travel to just keep him reasonably well covered. And sure, I mean, if you're cutting, if you're cutting along the baseline, that's something you have to watch. But again, his defender is going to be sagged off of him. You know, it's going to be a lot easier for him to just pick up a

SAR off the drive. He doesn't need to be trying to cover him closely and be subject to. to Asar explosively cutting past him. And it's like using Asar as a screener, I mean, no, I mean, you just, you can't hide guys like this in today's NBA. You just, you can't. So all of this is to say, like, Asar, if he can just get the shot together, great. You know, you start him. Fantastic. He's like a strong, very strong 3-and-D guy.

But that's unlikely to be this season. And you absolutely do not want to start him. Just you're going to kill the offense. It's just it doesn't make any sense. And the fact that Mani even seems to be contemplating that is, is an issue to me. It makes me pretty anxious. Brings me back to Dwayne Casey having his own ideas of how, you know, what kind of lineups he could field, you know, oh, we're just going to make this work on defense. And it's like,

no, Dwayne, you can't. You know, that was especially like coming into the 2018, 2019 season, which was Dwayne's first. That was after the premium of motion rules have been put into place, which made defense even harder. So, yeah, he's like, oh, well, I just start three shooters. And it's like, well, that's not going to work. Or, you know, in game one against the bucks when he's just like, oh, well, we're going to start two shooters and we're just going to win on defense. You can't keep up on defense. I mean, that lineup was never going to of goodness, who was it? Reddy Jackson, Wayne Ellington, Bruce Brown, Thonmaker and Andre Drummond, of course, you know, the number of good defenders there,

actually good defenders. Just Drummond completely checked out of the series. The number of good defenders in the lineup was one. That was Bruce Brown because Thon was not good. And just anybody looking at that from the outside in, it's like, Dwayne, what the hell are you doing? Like, honestly, you like, what are you doing this lineup, even if he could play good defense, has no hope of keeping up on offense. You know, he was allergic, you know, for much of his tenure to the idea, for example, of starting Lukanard or even playing Lukaard a ton or even really involving him in the offense until that last season.

So, which I guess was just the second season. No, excuse me, the third season, third season that Dwayne Casey was coach. So in any case, you just, you can't buck the NBA meta unless you have the assets to do so like a superstar you built an offense around like a Jimmy Butler of course Spolster is a big deal there or a Janice and Tedricumpo who they have to surround him with shooters otherwise things go badly in the postseason even during the regular season it's not ideal but that's the way at brook lopez there and bobby porters at center because they can both shoot uh draymond green of course plays in for the exception of all exceptions helps that he has two of the best shooters ever

ideally well curry in terms of three-point shooting is the best shooter ever and in a steve curr system And again, these are just exceptions. Now, you've heard me rant about this. I'm sorry. I hope you found this entertaining. But just my point is that, like, if Monty Williams runs it out early in the seas, like on opening night with a lineup where Kate is the only handler and Assar Thompson is there to act as a spacing liability, it's going to be extremely frustrating.

So let's talk about some takeaways from game to a preseason. Again, it's preseason. A number of takeaways is going to be inherently limited, especially when you're talking, for example, about players who are playing big minutes against second, third string players. Or just playing against bad lineups, put it that way. So Killian Hayes seems to, I mean, he's at a fairly strong preseason so far. We haven't seen him do his hit threes, which is really what he needs to do. I don't think that his, I mean, he's largely just been taking a lot of mid-range offense,

just dribbling around the interior and attempting mid-range shots. And it's very, very unlikely that that will fly. And unless Killian has improved a great deal, either way, got to be able to hit his three. He's been pretty good on defense. Again, playing against not so great competition for the most part. And he's always good as a pastor, though he still kind of struggles to break down defense. As many just goes and dribbles in the interior, he's just got one guy in him. Nobody comes to help on Killian.

We've seen him be a little bit more willing to accept contact, but it's not really accepting contact. It's more like risking contact or on the basket. So as he looked better, yes, as he fulfilled the conditions, I think, to actually be a solid NBA a rotation player, I would say no, you've got to be able to hit your threes and you've got to be able to break down those defenses to a least degree. I mean, if he can shoot a high percentage on mid-range pull-ups, cool, but as I've said many times in the show, the number of guys who can actually do that in an efficiency, well, let me put it this way. For the average player, that is just a tool in their toolbox. And they have much more efficient forms of offense, like at the

rim and from the three-point line to make the more efficient players. If that is your go-to and you're shooting like 50% that is an inefficient shot. It's just it's not going to it's not really going to get you there. Well, it's not an inefficient shot. Excuse me, but like your overall efficiency is going to be pretty poor, especially for a player like Killian who does not get to the rim. So not super thrilled with how he's been playing like the style he's been playing. He's just got to be able to hit threes. And he's not really being put in a position where that's being asked of him. But no solid offense is going to be playing around Killian Hayes. So if he can hit his threes, there's not. going to be some interesting lineup decisions.

You know, the Pistons are going to be put in a good situation where they have to make a choice. Though I think even if he does end up in the lineup, which I believe is most likely to require an injury, though who knows, maybe they'd play Alec Berks up to small forward off the bench. I think that they would want a pretty large sample size before they decide to really commit anything, really decide to commit to him being a big part of the rotation. And who knows where he's going to find that. Though, unfortunately, for any team, there are almost inevitably something. injuries. So we'll keep going over this in no particular order. Game two of the Wiseman versus Bagley

bowl, so to speak. Bagley won this, excuse me, Wiseman won this one. Bagley came out and here's the thing about Bagley. I mean, it comes out in the majority of the value he provides is just as a role man and a finisher, which plenty of guys in the NBA can do. Marvin Bagley, we saw again this game how absolutely and utterly gruesomely horrible he is on defense. The guy just cannot make the decisions. I don't need to expand upon that. The defensive IQ is still not there, and I don't think it's ever going to be there. James Wiseman came out. He was good on offense. I mean, he's, he's not going to shoot 100 percent and score 20 points, you know, for the most part in any given NBA game. But he actually came out and played relatively smart and worked hard, which he doesn't always do.

You know, when James Wiseman is working hard at the very least, he is going to get a lot of rebounds, and he's going to be somewhat disruptive, both on offense and on defense. And we saw more of that. Now, of course, he was going up against pretty weak competition. But, you know, that is what it is. I still think that Wiseman is likely to get the nod because the pistons who gave up the equivalent of basically gave up the chance at five second round picks for them unprotected. Second round picks do matter. They can be trade assets. You can get decent players in the second round. So I don't think they gave that up and gave up Sadiq Bay, of course, just to grab Wiseman and say we're, we're stable, you to the bench. And again, Wiseman has the potential like, okay, maybe you can make better decisions,

whereas Bagley, it's over for him on defense. It's never going to get better. You can say that with a high degree of certainty. Terrible at Duke, terrible in the NBA so far. And this is his sixth season, and he still is completely clueless. And again, nothing special on offense. The guy can finish. That's about it. His shot form looks a little bit better, but he's going to be doing the majority of his damage in the interior. Though, again, dude's stretched the floor. That's helpful. But I don't think he's ever going to get to a point where, given his difficulties on defense, especially at center, it's going to really be worth having him on the floor. Let's move on to Jalen Duren and Kate Cunningham, both of whom were completely invisible in this

game. All right, I'm joking. Of course, they didn't play. So we haven't heard anything further about Duren. Teams in preseason will take no risks. There is no reason for any team to take risks. If a player gets banged up even a little bit, they'll usually pull them out of the game. If it's anything that's lingering at all, they will keep them out of games.

there is nothing to be gained by exacerbating an injury in preseason, nothing at all. Let's talk to start, Thompson. I know that I spoke about him quite a bit. His difficulties on offense really shined through in this game, in that he had trouble generating much of anything. He also had some issues with his handle. Like, generally, he can handle the ball pretty well. He's not a guy who's going to be, like, you know, jukeing anybody, really,

because he doesn't have that in his repertoire right now. But he just really struggled to get anything going on offense. He's a rookie. It was preseason game. He's raw on offense, very raw. And just your hope is to see improvement from him across the course of the year, but he's got a long way to go. Ivy's struggle up from the three-point line, but he just looks so different to me when it comes to driving into the rim. I mentioned this last episode. He's actually able to, he's moving laterally a lot more off the drive. He's not making it anywhere near as easy to predict where he is going to go, which was

extremely easy for defenders last year. And he's had some nice finishes through, you know, through very small spots going full tilt. So it's good to see. Struggled from three. But I feel pretty confident in an obvious shot. Stuart is Stuart hit more of his threes. You know, the hope is at power forward. He can be, you know, a decent bench-level contributor. I don't think the guy is never going to be a, you know, a decent power forward as a starter. There's just not much to say about him. as power forward. He's very, very unremarkable. And then we talk a couple more guys, a couple more guys of interest. One is Marcus Sasser, who I guess you could say showed out,

but again, it's worth keeping in mind that this was pretty poor competition. But he's quicker than I thought he was. He's a little bit more explosive than I thought he was. He's, of course, a pure shooter. We know that. I mean, he was a strong shooter in the NCAA, and fantastic, just one of the best shooters in the country in the senior year. Did a little bit of playmaking, which really isn't his strength.

That was another thing that made the pick a little bit baffling for me was that Sasser is just not a very strong playmaker. But, you know, he can get out there and he can find a shot for the most part. And that was cool to see. Clearly, a weaver guy in terms of culture, we already knew that should be, you know, has good leadership skills and works extremely hard out in the court. It's going to be a little bit more difficult just to find where he fits into the rotation because he's an undersized guard who doesn't really have much in a way of ability to run an offense. So it's like you can put him out there with Cade. But you're going to have trouble putting him out there with Monta Morris, for example, because just the size,

the size between the two of them is pretty awful. They're both about six foot one, if I remember correctly. So it seems to be destined to be in that really just shooting specialist role, though it's going to be tough to find minutes for him. But, you know, regardless of the circumstances in terms of the competition he's going up against, it's always nice to see a guy go out there and do well. Just again, don't really know where the minutes are going to come from this year. But he was fun to watch, and again, clearly an extremely hard worker. And then we get to an interesting case, Stanley Amoudé, who's actually been pretty good for the piston so far, pretty much just shooting threes.

I can't really tell. I mean, he's just really been largely invisible on defense, which just means that he's not really making any serious mistakes. Is there a possibility that he's going to be the 15th man of the roster? I think it's more likely that the pistons, if they really felt like they wanted to keep him, would use the third two-way slot. Right now, it's just Casalone and Rod and Nader.

We really played very much. I don't know what their status is. but I think you've got to think that the Pistons could get him on a two-way deal from which you could easily be just upgraded to a minimum contract. That's a nice thing about minimum deals, especially if you have some of the biannual exception remaining. Oh, actually, no, that's the mid-level exception. Never mind.

The Pistons, if you have some of the mid-level exception remaining and you elevate a guy on a two-way deal, then you can sign him to like a four-year deal with the last two years being non-guaranteed. and if a player turns out to be good, then you've got a player on the roster at an extremely low price. You can even make all the years non-guaranteed. Like yours, two, three, and four. And if it doesn't work out, you just cut bait.

And they're, you know, and that's it. So I kind of feel like for roster spot 15, the Pistons may look for a little bit more help but power forward, which is really just a general position of weakness for them right now. I mean, Amoudé is not small. He's about 6-6-2-10. which is decent. He's clearly very well built. But for the most part, he plays shooting guard, small forward, and the pistons are already kind of, I don't want to say stacked, because usually you say stacked, it means that there's, you know, there's a ton of talent there, but hopefully

there will be in time. But, you know, the minutes to go around just aren't there. So it's worth noting that across the course of the preseason, I mean, William Bogdanovich isn't there, Monta Morris isn't there. I mean, Caden Dern have only been there for, for, for, for game. We haven't seen anything like what the roster will ultimately be. Blayon, of course, is a very, very elite shooter. Monta Morris, one of the better point guards, backup point cards in the league, who is also a very strong shooter. And, you know, those are two guys who are going to make a significant difference overall in general. Also, again, preseason games generally just see the good players been no longer in the lineup come the second half. Like when Marvin Bagley had his big game against

the Sons, he was going up against, you know, know some bench players, some third stringers, bowl bowl at center who's terrible. It was terrible on defense and yada, yada, yada. It'll be good to see the pistons obviously hit the floor and an honest to goodness regular season game. It feels like it's been forever. In any event, that's about all I have to say about basketball. I'm going to miss next week. Not going to be able to post an episode. There's just some stuff going on that's unfortunately going to. to make that not particularly possible. Just some pretty severe demands upon my time

that just aren't going to make it possible for me to even watch the next two preseason games. Well, maybe I'll watch them on replay. But in any event, just want to let you folks know that there will be no episode next week. I'm actually recording this on Sunday night, so hopefully nothing huge changes between now and Wednesday. But I've actually been asked,

and I don't know if I'll make this a regular segment, but I occasionally get some questions about gaming, the last one being at Mass Effect 2. and hey, I've seen another podcast about sports, just put out a section at the end of an episode that doesn't really have anything to do with basketball. So if you don't really give a crap about gaming, then you can just shut it off right now.

Otherwise, I'm going to talk about, you know, some of the questions I've gotten for the next three or four minutes. So, yeah, if that's it, and you just hear to listen to me talk about basketball, then, you know, by all means, thank you for listening. I always appreciate it. And like I always say, I love to hear from people on Twitter, Discord, Reddit. Really, any feedback really helps me improve the quality of the show to make it, you know, as enjoyable listen for all of you as I can.

So time to nerd out on gaming. The questions I've gotten are about Balders Gate 3. Number one is, you know, how does it compare it to Divinity Original Sin 2, in my opinion? And I'll get to that one second after what I have. after the second question, excuse me. And that one is, how would you rate each class, and you could put out a tier list of each class, or for each class, rather.

So let's speed through that. Starting with the S-tier, definitely Paladin, just a very, very strong combat class with good spell casting ability and also healing. And it's going to do very well in combat without even casting any spells, even if you just want to use your spell slots for divine smite, you can just do a lot of Nova damage.

just a very, very well-rounded class. S-tier definitely in tabletop D&D as well. Yeah, I've played a decent amount of D&D in the last, well, not for a while, but in the last six or seven years, did a little bit of DMing as well, which is fun. Moving on to elsewhere in the S-tier Warlock I put up there, I know this would be a little bit of a controversial opinion, but here's the thing in Baldess Gate 3.

If you're playing tabletop, then long rests and short rests are gated behind a DM. And so like let's say you want to take a long rest to replenish your spell. So that's the DM. If you're in a dangerous place, then the DM will just say, okay, you can try, but may not go too well for you, you know, which obviously means you might be attacked during your long rest. And that could be bad. And also, you're not going to get to complete it. Or even a short rest, you know, those are less of an issue because, you know, in in game terms, it's only about 20 minutes. But in PG3, basically, you can long rest whenever you want, which means that, you know, it means that your economy is, in terms of just shepherding your resources, your spell slots is a lot easier.

But even then, I mean, if you really want to cheese, then that's one thing. But if you want to kind of play it in a more realistic fashion, like not long resting in the middle of like a protracted encounter, like moonrise towers or something, then Warlock just in terms of its ability to replenish all. spell slots with a short rest coupled with Eldridge Blast, especially as Warlock moves on. I guess this would be kind of like the border of the S&A tier at the end of the game, like in level 10 plus, it's absolutely an S-tier class. Early on, not quite as much, but you've got like the best damage-dealing can'trip in the game and you can refresh all of your stuff in a short rest. And of course, all of your spell slots are the maximum spell slot you can get.

Further on in the S-tier, bards are just like the ultimate party buffers. You have a good spell list. You can even, especially with Lorbar, through magical secrets, get yourself some good damage spells, and you just have an incredible amount of versatility in terms of the ability to buff your party. I mean, if you go with one of the other schools, then you can easily, you know, do more damage in melee, though I think that's kind of a waste. BART as a battlefield controller is just amazing, whether it be a spells or Bardic inspiration to just improve everything for your team, you know, for your party members. Also, you can play instruments, which is pretty cool. That has absolutely no impact.

upon actual gameplay, but, well, by standards will throw you coins, though. Honestly, you should have no shortage of money in BG3, and you can basically steal everything if you want. Moving on to A-tier, Sorcer is pretty good. I'd say it's a strong class just because you can use your sorcery points to quick and stuff. I don't really have a ton to say about it, but it's a class that gets stronger and stronger as the game goes on and you have more sorcery points to throw around.

also in A tier, cleric, I mean, clerics, the ultimate support class, particularly if you go with a life cleric, where you just use all your stuff for buffing and healing, and it's very, very difficult for your team to die. Though, of course, you can just spam health potions in this game because they're so widely available. Light cleric is a great nuker, just a very, very versatile class. You know, light cleric or Tempest can be very combat-focused, but otherwise, you know, just the support-focused ones are just, you know, extremely useful. Monk I'm going to throw in the 8 tier for late game. Once you get to Act 3 and you get these particular set of gloves and just do more damage and allow you to heal using a bonus action and all the other stuff that you get, all the other items that you've got transformed the monk from one of the worst classes in the game to super, super

powerful doing a ton of damage. Not really having any teammate utility, but in terms of ability to move around the battlefield and do damage and not die, it's a very, very strong class. At the beginning of the game, I'd give it like C tier, which would be, you know, which is the worst. A-tier class just in terms of its ability to do pure damage. And in BG3, it's pretty much, you know, your objective is to just kill the enemies as fast as possible. It's just do as much damage as you can. Death is the best form of crowd control, that sort of thing. Whether it's a melee, a melee fighter or a ranged fighter, they're both super, super strong. And then let's move down to B-tier.

I put wizard there. Wizard, I think, is just kind of objectively inferior to sorcery. You get a wider spell list, but you just can't really do as much. Like, divination school is really nice for, you know, helping you alter some dice rolls. But for the most part, just, it's kind of vanilla, like fighter. And just your options are much more limited than the sorcer, you know, the sorcerer is. You can more in spells from scrolls, and that's nice. And you have, so you have access to a wider spell list. But just in terms of the ability to just do a crap load of damage, which is really what you want to be doing. Sorcerer is just better. So that is the A tier. A B tier, I'd put Barbarian. Barbarians are a lot of fun, particularly early in the game because it's very, very difficult to

kill them. However, when you get better and better gear and you just get your armor class super high, your fighter is going to be very difficult to hit in any case, particularly if you're using your shield, do I think all fighters should go two-handed, in my opinion, just to do more damage. So when you're not getting hit as much, of course, the barbarian's utility is significantly smaller. and they can't keep up with the sort of damage that the fighter can do. So Barbarian, in my opinion, just gets worse and worse over the course of the game. Very strong early, easily outclassed by Fighter once you get to Act 3. I think that would be it for the B tier, and the remaining classes are in the C tier, I would say.

Like Druid is just nothing special. You do wild. I mean, you're kind of a battlefield controller, but this game is just much better to just do damage. Wild Shape doesn't do all that much. like it's strong early it's very strong early but not just like in tabletop but it doesn't really scale well when you're in wild shape i mean it's it's just it's nothing special and you can't cast spells um rogue just rogue is kind of like a skill monkey in in tabletop and there's a ton of stuff you can do outside of combat and there's something i forgot to say about bard i mean bard is the best skill monkey in the game

but rogue just doesn't really do enough damage with sneak attack to really make it worthwhile bringing him along him or her along in combat and so much the game is about combat. Like if you want, if you want just a class that's going to go with skills, go with Bard, there's no reason to go with Rogue. Stealth gameplay just isn't really all that powerful in Baldur's Gate 3. Rogue is a ton of fun in tabletop where you just have so much more. I mean, basically everything is just limited to the imagination of the DMs in the player. Of course, you can't code for that. And then there is what I would call the worst class in the game. It's the only like true detail class, which is not worth playing at all. And that's the Ranger. So the Ranger is the worst of both worlds. Like it has,

you've got less damage capability as a melee character or an archer than the fighter, probably even in the Barbarian. And you have battlefield control stuff, but it's not very good. And if you're using those spells, it means you can't be just shooting stuff. So you don't have very good battlefield control and you don't have very good damage. So this class is pretty useless. I mean, I guess you can it an animal companion, but that's not really going to make up for it. And this brings us to the original question, which is what I prefer, which game do I like better, Divinity Original Sin 2, which is the predecessor to Baldur's Gate 3 from the same studio or Balders Gate 3. I would honestly say Divinity. I just, I like the world better. I like the combat better. It's just,

you just have so much more flexibility and you can just do much more stuff. Like BG3 is limited in terms of action economy and available stuff to the fifth edition at combat rules. And also, Baldersgate 3 really breaks the fifth edition combat system thanks to two things. First amongst those is that it gives a crap load of equipment that gives you bonuses to abilities. And in Tabletop, these items are very, very rare because that's a very, very powerful thing. So in Balders Gate 3, I mean, unless you want to house rule it, I mean, you can get items that just kind of trivialize combat. And in the next Of course, in terms of what I said earlier about short and long rest in particular, which you can just basically do any time.

So even on tactician difficulty finding Baldess Gate 3 to be very not much in the way of a challenge. I could make it more of a challenge by using less items. That's kind of the only way. But the game is kind of sort of balanced around those items, so it can get a little bit wonky without them, but it's not balanced enough around those items because it's extremely difficult to balance D&D 5th edition around getting a crap load of attribute boosts.

Divinity Original Sin 2, if you haven't played it, I strongly recommend it. I think that though it's less polished, much less well polished than Balders Gate 3, it's still polished enough. I think the story is great. I like the characters a lot better. And again, I think the combat's a lot better and the difficulty of the game on tactician is pretty steep. Like from beginning to end, the combat, the encounters tend to be pretty difficult. They're also a ton of great mods. I don't know if BG3 will ever get Steam Workshop, but there are a ton of them for a Divinity Original Sin 2.

decide to play it, play with Divinity Unleashed, which really kind of improves the, improves in my opinion, the combat quite a bit. So I just spent a while talking about gaming. That was actually pretty cool. If you like this segment, let me know and I'll continue doing it. If you think it's a complete waste of time and it's just, and you just don't care or something, then let me know and that will be good to know to. So that'll be it, folks, for this episode. Again, we'll be missing next week, unfortunately. I'll be back the following week and hope you all doing super well. I'll catch you in the next episode.