Well, like we did with the Hollow Warden while it was still in UA, we're going to try out the subclass from the most recent UA that I'd be most excited to play. Bringing back the idea of Wild Shape using Templates from the One D&D playtest, the Circle of Titans provides, I'd think, a more consistent shape-shifting druid experience. And on top of that, you can eventually become Gargantuan.
Of all Druid subclasses, this is the one that I think I'd be most excited to play in a real game, especially thanks to the fixes in the recent UA. But how do they do, damage-wise? Well, now that we've designated a Wyvern as our default monster to attack (rather than a Death Knight, which is too unusual of a monster for these purposes) we can try it out.
So, how do we build this?
Stats and Feats
Naturally, we'll want to maximize our Wisdom, because it will increase our AC, our attack bonus, our Rend damage, not to mention our spell modifiers. Thus, we'll aim to start with a Wisdom of 17. The question, then, is whether we want to try to just cap it at level 8 or pick up general feats.
As a Druid, we are still a full spellcaster, so we'll have plenty we can do when we're not transformed, and that might encourage us to take feats that aid in spellcasting or allow additional spells. Fey Touched is a classic choice, letting us get a free Misty Step and then have it prepared, along with other spells (though I don't think we'll need Hunter's Mark, at least by level 10).
Given that our Titan Forms are pretty solidly "SAD" (single-ability-dependent,) I'm inclined to say that we can slow-play our Wisdom in order to cram as many General Feats in there as possible. At level 4, as always, we grab War Caster, but for level 8, we have a few options. Inspiring Leader is a very solid feat that works great on both Charisma and Wisdom characters in 5.5, though you won't benefit as much from the Temp HP.
While we will be primarily a melee combatant, none of the melee feats are likely to do much for us given that we're using natural weapons. We might get something like Sentinel later on, but probably not until we cap Wisdom. So, we'll assume we've got a 19 Wisdom by level 10, and thus a +4.
As for our other stats, I think basically we want to get a decent Con more than anything. We'll want decent Dex as well, both for Initiative and for our AC while out of combat. That said, I'm going to suggest going Magician rather than Warden for our Primal Order, because the bonuses from the latter stop being relevant when we Wild Shape. It does leave us pretty squishy when we aren't shifted, and unlike a Moon Druid, we can only be shifted for 10 minutes at a time, so we need to really make sure we save our spell slots to refresh Wild Shape if we run out of charges. Luckily, any spell slot will do, and for sure taking on our Titan Form is going to be the best use of a 1st level spell slot.
As a side note: if we want a magic item to boost our Rend attacks, in theory a Wand of the War Mage could help, but it's a matter of interpretation. Technically you get the bonus to spell attack rolls "while holding the wand." And thus, does it actually raise your spell attack bonus or is it a bonus to the spells you cast while holding it? As a DM, I'd for sure interpret it in the former way, as otherwise there'd be no way for you to increase your attack bonus in this form (this is a big problem I have with the Moon Druid). If you're attuned, I'd say you get the bonus.
But we're not taking magic items into account here.
Spells:
So, we have a lot of spells and spell-like effects from our Titan Forms.
We can only cast our Circle Spells while shifted, but if we spend our first turn casting a good concentration spell, we can keep that up.
Naturally, Druids are one of the two classes that gets Conjure Minor Elementals, so it's going to be hard to consider any other. We can upcast it to 5th level to get 3d8 extra damage on each attack. While we only get two attacks, that's still pretty significant damage, even if it's not like what we'd do with Scorching Ray. Note that we will really want to do our best to protect our Concentration. We might even spend our level 8 feat on Resilient Con and just worry about getting Wisdom capped later on. War Caster will help, but even if we have a +3 to Con, that still makes it somewhat easy to drop concentration.
So, if CME is adding potentially 6d8 damage per turn for us (27 average,) are there other options? We could do Summon Fey. Cast at 4th level (saving us some higher-level spell slots and only having two less damage than a 5th level version) it'd hit twice for 2d6+7. That's actually 28 average if they both hit. Now, CME will do more on a crit, so the truth is that CME is probably doing more damage overall. And the Fey is endangered both by our losing concentration as well as just taking too much damage. That said, it also has some utility.
I would say both are very worthy concentration spells, but for the sake of simplicity, we'll assume we're going CME. CME lasts 10 minutes while Summon Fey lasts an hour, which means both could plausibly be cast before combat starts, but I'm also going to just assume combat is something of a surprise, so we'll need our action on turn 1 to cast it.
Titan Form:
I actually think our form doesn't really change our damage output much, but the Insectoid form will have Flyby at this level, meaning we can go in and out and potentially avoid getting hit. That said, it's only a 40-foot fly speed, so even if we fly in and out, we're probably only 20 feet away, and a Wyvern at least has 80 feet of fly speed, so unless we have a friend locking them down, they can still come after us.
I think the best damage ability for a form is the Behemoth's, giving them that Godzilla breath weapon, so I'd probably default to that unless we need the Insectoid's healing (Leviathan is going to probably only be useful if we need to fight in the water).
That said, for single target situations, we probably want to save our spell slots - if we needed to really burn something down, the breath weapon is great, but we'll be doing tons with our Rends anyway.
Game Plan:
All right, so, when combat begins, we're going to start off by casting Conjure Minor Elementals at 5th level. This will add 3d8 damage to our Rend Attacks if the target is within 15 feet (and our Rends have a 10-foot reach, so that should be fine). We then go into our chosen Titan Form.
This gives us an AC of 17, and our Rend attacks will have a +8 to hit. At this level, they'll do 2d8+4 damage on their own, but CME adds 3d8, meaning each of our two hits will impact for 5d8+4. We can't attack yet this turn. We can be Huge sized by level 10. If we're worried about getting hit, we can expend a spell slot to get bigger. It's most efficient to use an odd-numbered spell slot - a 1st will get us to AC 18, a 3rd will get us to AC 19, and if we burn our other 5th level slot, we'll get AC 20. I think this is dubiously helpful - maybe if we're drowning in 1st levels we can get that little bump.
Next, we'll use 20 or more movement to activate Shock Wave. If we're running to our target, that's easy, but if we're already within melee range, we'll want to run around them (if there are multiple foes, this can be tough, as circling a target will probably draw an opportunity attack from one of its friends). If we can manage this, we can send our shockwave to knock the target prone. (Great if we're fighting non-hovering flying enemies like a Wyvern). Our saving throw DC will be 16 at this point, and a Wyvern has a +3, meaning that they fall on a roll of 12 or lower, or 60% of the time.
On turn two, we'll be able to attack. However, given that the Wyvern probably stood up on their turn, we'll need to run around them again to try to do Shock Wave.
With a +8 to hit, we'll hit on a 6 or higher, meaning a 75% hit chance. But we'll have advantage 60% of the time.
So, without advantage (40% of the time0 we'll hit for 5d8+4, or 26.5, and crit for 22.5 extra. Thus, 26.5x75% is 19.875 and 22.5x5% is 1.125, so this is 21 on average. Happening 40% of the time, that gives us 8.4.
With advantage, we have a 93.75% chance to hit, and the usual 9.75% chance to crit. 93.75%x26.5 is about 24.8, and 9.75%x22.5 is about 2.2, so we get about 27 here. Happening 60% of the time, that's 16.2.
Thus, each hit is going to do an average of 24.6. Across two hits, that's 49.2 damage per round.
That's pretty good, if not staggeringly so. But it's certainly very solid and comparable to a lot of other builds we've done. There are fewer moving parts, like our somewhat complex Eldritch Knight Booming-Blade-Push build.
Just out of curiosity, if we were willing to empty the tank, I'm wondering what the Behemoth's breath attack would do. If we spend a 5th level spell slot, it does 10d10 radiant damage and half as much on a success. Our DC is 16, and the Wyvern has a +0 to Dex (ok, this is one area where they may be atypical). So, if they roll a 15 or lower (75% of the time) we do full damage (55) and if they succeed, it's half (27.5). So, 55x75% is 41.25 and 27.5x25% is 6.875, so we'd be doing 48.125. That's less than we'd do with our attacks and CME.
However, there are some caveats: we get to do this on turn one, for one thing. So, if we imagine averaged out across a 3-round encounter, our CME version does 49.2 on turns two and three, but nothing on turn 1, so it's really more like 32.8. At this level we can't do three 5th-level breath weapons, but if we drop the third one to a 4th level spell slot, it just means it'll do 80% of the others, so that becomes 38.5. Thus, our average damage over three rounds is about 44.9 damage.
The other caveat is this: if we can hit more than one target with that breath, the overall damage we do becomes insane. While AoE doesn't kill any one target faster (though evidently it might if we're willing to burn out all our spell slots) it does wind up doing far more damage overall, and in a fight to the death, that's all relevant, even if, for your own safety, it's better to knock down monsters one at a time if you can do it faster.
Truly, given that it scales better than Lightning Bolt, I'm actually expecting that the breath weapon will get nerfed at some point, but I think this subclass, played pretty straightforwardly, will do just fine.
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