UA: Spiritual Guardian Barbarian

 So, for context, one of my players in my Ravnica campaign is a Loxodon Ancestral Guardian Barbarian (part of the Selesnya Conclave). It's been a fun character, who's a total himbo, and tends to keep it light, while also being a really powerful tank character in combat (he's also the one that has the party's artifact weapon, which, among other things, gives him angelic wings with a 90 foot flying speed).

This subclass, from Xanathar's, is one of the best "true tank" subclasses, largely because it causes foes you hit to both get disadvantage on attacks against other targets and also gives those targets resistance to their damage. In other words, the monsters are strongly incentivized to keep attacking the character who can take the most punishment.

The revision appears to actually slightly nerf this capability, though it also grants some new options.

Level 3:

Spiritual Protectors:

When you are raging, if you hit a creature with a weapon or unarmed strike, the spirits cause one of the following effects of your choice:

Distract: The creature has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than the Barbarian until the start of your next turn.

Protect: The next time the creature hits a creature other than you with an attack roll, its target has resistance to the damage of that attack.

Strike: The target takes an extra 1d6 of your choice of Acid, Cold, Fire, Force, Lightning, or Thunder damage.

    So, notably this nerfs the old version's protective capabilities because you don't get Distract and Protect combined. Also, protect now only affects one attack. That being said, you'll note that there's nothing here saying a creature can't take different effects from different attacks - if you hit them with the first attack, you can Distract, and if you hit them with the second attack, you can Protect, which nearly gets you back to the old version. The damage bonus isn't huge but isn't nothing either, and especially at low levels can potentially let you finish something off (which would make the other effects irrelevant).

Level 6:

Spirit Shield:

While your rage is active, if you see a creature within 30 feet of you take damage, you can use a reaction to reduce the damage by an amount equal to the rolls of d6s equal to your rage bonus (so 2d6, 3d6, and eventually 4d6).

    I think the scaling here is a different than the old version, but it's the same idea. The difference is that at higher levels, you don't get to then reflect that damage back upon the target, as that later feature has been replaced. Again, though, this continues the trend of letting you really defend your allies effectively. (Now that I actually have Xanathar's open:) the scaling is similar, but the old version had the dice go up at different levels, not tied to your Rage bonus.

Level 10:

Consult the Spirits:

You can cast Augury or Clairvoyance without a spell slot or material components, with Wisdom as your spellcasting ability for them. Once you cast either spell, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

    This is unchanged. This doesn't see a ton of use in my game, but I think the rest of the subclass is still quite strong.

Level 14:

Vengeful Spirits:

When you attack with a melee weapon as part of the attack action and roll an 18 or higher on the d20, you can make one additional attack roll with the same weapon as part of that action. Once you do this, you can't do so again until the start of your next turn.

    So, this totally replaces the old one, which allowed you to reflect back the Spirit Shield damage reduction as damage to the attacker. With two attacks made at advantage, you have a roughly 48% chance to get this third attack. A roughly 50% chance to get another attack in each turn means roughly a 25% damage increase - though only if you're being reckless.

Overall Thoughts:

    It's a bit of a question of interpretation: I think that this is overall a bit of a nerf, but not enough to make it a bad subclass. The overall idea of it remains in place, but notably, if we want to forgo our protective capabilities and focus on pure damage, we have options to do that.

Does this need a reprint? I'm not convinced - I think the Xanathar's version is actually fine. But if it were reprinted in this way, I don't think I'd complain about its new form.