Great Weapon Master has long been considered one of the strongest feats in 5E. It gives you two bonuses - being able to get an extra bonus action attack if you get a crit or kill an enemy, but more famously, it allows you to take a -5 penalty to your attack roll with a heavy melee weapon in order to get a +10 to the damage if you land it.
The new version is a bit different:
Like all general feats, you get a +1 bonus to an ability score (Strength in this case) and there are some other subtle changes like that this now works with Heavy ranged weapons (though I'd probably be hesitant to take it on an actual ranged character).
The big thing is that the -5/+10 mechanic is totally gone. In its place, however, you can now simply add your Proficiency Bonus to the damage of any attack with a Heavy weapon made during the Attack Action.
So, we no longer risk having a lower chance to hit with the weapon, but the damage bonus is significantly lower. But damage-wise, how does it work out?
I'm going to do some of my usual napkin math. We're going to be making some assumptions and ignoring a few things to just boil down the change to this central part of the feat. We're going to ignore the +1 to Strength, and we're going to just play with a character using a Maul or Greatsword (and without the Great Weapon Fighting Style, which I've come around to feeling is just not very good - but it also makes the average damage a pleasantly whole number). No magic weapon here, either. And we'll assume that the character is starting with a +3 to Strength and won't be able to bump it up at level 4 (say our new character only started with a 16 and needs a second feat to bump their Strength up to 18).
Our enemy, I think, will maybe not be a full boss-monster. Let's say in our tier 1 example, we'll have an AC of 14.
So, the earliest we can get this feat is level 4. So let's look at this level.
At level 4 with a +3 to Strength, we're looking at a +5 to hit. Thus, we're going to be hitting our target on a roll of 9 or higher, which is 60% of the time.
Old Version:
We drop our entire attack bonus, so we now need to roll a 14 to hit, giving us a 35% chance to hit. Our damage is, on average, 7+3+10, or 20.
Thus, before accounting for crits, we're looking at 7 damage per attack. We then add .35 for the potential crit damage, thus getting 7.35.
New version:
Our average damage here is 7+3+2, or 12, which we get 60% of the time. That's 7.2, and then adding the .35 on crits for 7.55.
So, wow! With a relatively modest AC and the absolute lowest bonus of from our PB, we're still out-performing the old version.
For fun, let's give the old version its best-case scenario, namely hitting a zombie. Zombies have one of the lowest ACs in the game (actually, I think a Gelatinous Cube has lower) which makes it all the more likely your GWM character will hit them.
With an AC of 8, or old version is going to need to roll an 8 on the die, meaning they have a 65% chance to hit. Our new version only needs to roll a 3, giving them a 90% chance to hit.
Old: 20x.65, which is 13, plus .35 for crits, so we get 13.35.
New: 12x.9, or 10.8, plus .35, so we get 11.15.
Ok, fair enough: here the math favors the old version. But I would say that a 14 AC is not terribly uncommon in a tier 1 situation, and will be pretty low at higher levels. Let's visit a different level.
At level 8, if we're playing a Fighter with their extra feat at level 6, we could reasonably assume a character to get to 20 Strength along with Great Weapon Master. By this level, it's also not unreasonable to assume that they get a +1 weapon.
I might guess we're facing somewhat better-armored enemies, though - we might say that we'll see 16 AC monsters with some frequency, so we'll use that as a baseline.
Here, our total attack bonus is +9 to hit. Thus, our typical chance to hit is on a 7 or higher, or 70% of the time. The old GWM will only get a +4, meaning they have to roll a 12 or higher, meaning a 45% chance to hit.
Old: damage is 7+5+1+10, or 23 damage on average (yes, it's twice a turn here, but it is in both cases so this difference cancels itself out). Thus, we're looking at 23x.45, which comes to 10.35, plus our extra .35 for crits, which brings us to 10.7 average damage.
New: damage is now 7+5+1+3, or 16 on average. 16x.7 is 11.2, then our .35 for crits gets us to 11.55.
Extrapolating from here, I'd guess that because the bonus damage from the new GWM goes up over time, while the old version's bonus remains static, means that especially at higher levels, this new version of the feat will outperform the old one.
The surprising thing here is that this is the case even at lower levels. The +2 bonus from a tier 1 PB seems so minuscule compared to the +10 damage of the old version, but it really goes to show you how important being able to actually hit with your attacks is.
When you consider that a standard Goblin (at least the 2014 version) has an AC of 15, the new version of the feat will apparently be better against even monsters that are classically the very first creatures that a PC is likely to fight (and of course, given that you won't be getting this until level 4 at least, you could very likely find yourself fighting tougher enemies).
I will say that as someone who has always felt a certain discomfort with the riskiness of the old Great Weapon Master, even if I know the math favors it most of the time, it's somewhat heartening to know that this version is usually going to be better, without making you take any penalties. For those who like the gambling aspect of it, this might be disappointing. But if you were worried that melee was now going to struggle to be viable, I think this should put those fears to rest.
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