Yeah, I guess I'm kind of fixated on Conjure Minor Elementals - maybe about a year late, and one nerf errata past.
Once again, the scaling of this spell getting toned down has, to be honest, probably put it at "good" without being "insanely overpowered."
But if there's a spell, or rather a spell category, that I'm more obsessed with, it's the Summon spells from Tasha's, which got reprinted (and tweaked) in the new Player's Handbook (with some exceptions: there's no new Summon Shadowspawn).
While one cannot flood the field with these spells like you could with, well, spells like the old Conjure Minor Elementals, they do add one somewhat harder-hitting ally to the board.
Each of these spells has a similar structure: you have a creature that obeys your commands and acts on its own initiative, so it only takes any action on your part when you summon it. The creature's stat block scales to give it two attacks for every two of its spell levels - meaning that it's 1 attack at level 2 (the lowest level of these spells), 2 attacks at 4, 3 attacks at 6, and 4 attacks at 8th level. Each attack also deals damage equal to a die roll, its relevant modifier, and then the spell's level.
Thus, the spells are all very comparable with one another, and that means we can also determine which deals the most damage (many have other secondary effects that can still make them preferable).
Notably, there are two sort of "failure states" on these spells - the creatures have a decent chunk of HP, but probably not as much as the caster. They also tend to have fairly low ACs (though you can get to decent levels when casting them at high spell levels). If the creature is killed, of course, the spell's effect is over. But these are also concentration spells, so if the caster gets hit too hard and fails their Con save, you're also SOL.
Still, they are pretty good - the amount of damage they put out is quite nice, and having another body on the field can be useful. They also last an hour, so you can have them up potentially for multiple combats.
Each tends to have three options for what kind of spirit you're summoning, often with their own unique attacks that might deal different amounts of damage. A few get ranged attacks, and some of them also have flight speeds, which can make them a fair amount safer in a fight.
On pure damage output, I think that the Devil version of the Fiendish Spirit wins overall, dealing 2d6+3+ the spell's level (it's the highest-level of these spells, with a base of 6, so that's three attacks doing an average of 16 each). This is Fire damage, though, so you might be tempted to use other ones if dealing with devils, demons, fire elementals, iron golems, red dragons, etc.
Also of note is the Dragon spirit, which only hits with its Rend for 1d6+4+ the spell's level, but then gets a bonus action breath attack that deals 2d6 in a 30-foot cone. Certainly situational.
But anyway, the Summon spells use your own spell attack modifier to determine their attack bonuses, so it's actually fairly comparable to CME's bonus damage.
CME adds 2d8 for each hit you land against a target in its emanation, and adds a d8 for each level above 4 you cast it at.
While this will lead to several high-damage hits, we should bear in mind that CME is only adding this bonus - if we were concentrating instead on one of these spells, we could still be making those attacks.
We can't cast Summon Fiend at 4th level, of course, but I think the next hardest-hitting one we could cast at that level is Summon Elemental, which hits for 1d10+4+ spell's level. (EDIT: Actually, Summon Fey is actually equal to the Devil version of Summon Fiend, dealing 2d6+3+Spell level, but oh well, it's pretty close - 9.5+SL vs 10+SL - though Fey does Force damage, which is the most reliable damage type in the game.)
This will be getting in two attacks per turn. Our total damage with it is 13.5 per hit, or 27 on average total.
By contrast, CME is adding 2d8 at this level to each of our hits. If we assume we're on a Bladesinger or someone else who can cast this spell but also has extra attack, and that we're hitting our foe twice per turn, that's 2d8 for each attack, or 4d8 total, which comes to only around 18 extra damage.
So, yeah, that doesn't look great for CME, at least for now.
But let's upcast. Summon spells of course benefit a lot from hitting even levels, but CME scales up quite quickly. If we cast Summon Elemental (it's only .5 damage behind the Devil spirit from Summon Fiend, so that feels close enough) at 6th level but also CME at 6th level, here's what we're looking at:
CME is going to be adding 4d8 per hit, or around, well, 18 damage on each hit. If we get two hits, that becomes 8d8, or 36 damage.
Summon Elemental is now making three attacks, and each of these do 1d10+4+6, or 15.5 damage per hit. Three of those will deal 46.5.
Yeah, still pulling ahead.
Now, in fairness, there are some nuances here at play: as mentioned before, the summoned being can be killed, and while we can also drop concentration on CME, it is, again, two potential points of failure.
There's also the fact that critical hits benefit CME better than the summoned ally - proportionately more of the CME damage is rolled (all of it is) while most of the summoned creature's damage is from static values that don't get doubled on a crit.
If we assume a 60% hit chance (like a +9 to hit versus an AC of 18,) we can look at it the following way:
Summon Elemental:
Hit damage: 15.5 (see above)
Crit damage: 5.5
15.5x60% (or 9.3) + 5.5x5% (.275) comes to 9.575, and then three attacks gives us 28.725
CME (spell damage only)
4d8, or 18
60% hit plus 5% for crits (because the damage from this spell is only rolled, we can just add these to make 65%)
And we've got 11.7, doubled with extra attack to 23.4 per turn.
So, yeah, I think the summon spells will, in most situations, actually do better damage. My Wizard has Summon Undead (he's a very bright and cheerful character, but has a somewhat naive attitude toward necromancy because his favorite professor was a necromancer). He usually goes for the Skeletal Spirit, which does 2d4+3+spell level per hit.
If cast at 6th level (which he can't quite do yet) that changes the values a bit:
Summon Undead:
Hit damage: 2d4+3+6, or 14
Crit damage: 2d4, or 5
14x60% is 8.4, and 5x5% is .25, so we're looking at 8.65 per attack, times 3 gets us 25.95.
Ok, yeah, the summoned spirit is looking better.
However, there's one last thing to consider: if you can do more than two attacks in a turn, the math starts to get a bit better.
With just three attacks (such as a base-level Scorching Ray - I was going to say a Warlock with either a tier 3 Eldritch Blast or Devouring Blade, but they can't upcast CME to 6th level) you're looking at 35.1 damage, which has now overtaken the summon spells. Upcasting Scorching Ray will continue to add a lot of damage.
But there are two disadvantages to CME/SR. The first is that this is going to cost you a lot in spell slots. It's not maintainable like just letting the summoned creature attack over and over for its full duration.
Second, CME only lasts one minute. So while your summoned creature could take you a significant way through a dungeon, CME is a one-encounter spell.
I guess a third thing is that it's just a bit awkward: you need to get real up close and personal with foes to take advantage of CME (unless my dumb Scribes Wizard trick works).
In the end, I think that one of these options is a reliable, sustainable method of dealing consistently good damage. But the other is more of a nova option - if you need to burn down that boss as fast as possible, CME/SR is the way to go.
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