Colossal Slayer vs Horde Breaker wildshaped Druid/Ranger

[nickl_2000]

I'm a level 10 Moon Druid and likely going to multiclass into Ranger for RP reasons, utility, and flexibility of the character.

My next plan for the character is to take it 3 levels into Ranger to give me more flexibility and more damage in elemental shapes. When wildshaping I will cast hunter's mark to add additional damage to each attack. The questions is which feature to take as Hunter's Prey. Would be be better to take the extra 1d8 damage once per turn for Colossal Slater or the extra attack from Horde Breaker. Both should proc pretty often, as we are rarely fighting against a single opponent. I've been told by my DM that both will work in Wildshaped forms.

What have other players found work better?

ADDITION (edit):
Party Members:
Half-Orc Melee Stone Sorcerer Booming Blade with Reach Weapon and casts haste a lot.
Tabaxi EK/Rogue
Melee Fiend Bladelock with reach weapon, two attacks, and hex
Battlemaster/Bard who focuses on support.

We are not a sneaky party at all,

I have the Sentinel feat.

Also if it makes a difference, this will be being used with elemental forms. So, we are talking 2 slam attacks that do 2d8+5 damage each.

[stoutstien]

How often does your dm toss large groups of mobs at you compared to one or two targets?

[lperkins2]

I'm a level 10 Moon Druid and likely going to multiclass into Ranger for RP reasons, utility, and flexibility of the character.

My next plan for the character is to take it 3 levels into Ranger to give me more flexibility and more damage in elemental shapes. When wildshaping I will cast hunter's mark to add additional damage to each attack. The questions is which feature to take as Hunter's Prey. Would be be better to take the extra 1d8 damage once per turn for Colossal Slater or the extra attack from Horde Breaker. Both should proc pretty often, as we are rarely fighting against a single opponent. I've been told by my DM that both will work in Wildshaped forms.

What have other players found work better?


Also, does Horde Breaker proc for reaction attack from Sentinel?

Horde breaker is almost always better. It's a contingent extra attack, that stacks with extra attack. Easilly 1d8+1d6+stat extra damage. It doesn't proc unless it's your turn, which means no effect on reaction attacks (including readied action and similar). Note that it doesn't require you to have made the attack action, only a weapon attack (so you could GFB or similar and then still take the horde breaker attack).

Colossus slayer does process once per turn, so it does affect reaction attacks. That's really the only thing it has going for it.

[nickl_2000]

How often does your dm toss large groups of mobs at you compared to one or two targets?

Most of our combats so far have ended up being around 3-4 baddies, and most of the combat has been against melee critters who hit hard.


And I do have sentinel as a feat if it makes a difference, and we have a Fighter/Bard who uses commanders strike fairly often.

[stoutstien]

Rest of party make-up?

[nickl_2000]

Rest of party make-up?

Half-Orc Melee Stone Sorcerer Booming Blade with Reach Weapon and casts haste a lot.
Tabaxi EK/Rogue
Melee Fiend Bladelock with reach weapon, two attacks, and hex
Battlemaster/Bard who focuses on support.

We are not a sneaky party at all.

[gloryblaze]

Horde breaker is almost always better. It's a contingent extra attack, that stacks with extra attack. Easilly 1d8+1d6+stat extra damage. It doesn't proc unless it's your turn, which means no effect on reaction attacks (including readied action and similar). Note that it doesn't require you to have made the attack action, only a weapon attack (so you could GFB or similar and then still take the horde breaker attack).

Colossus slayer does process once per turn, so it does affect reaction attacks. That's really the only thing it has going for it.

I would argue the opposite: colossus slayer is almost always better.

1) It's far easier to proc CS than HB, as HB requires that you be attacking 2 enemies that are adjacent. Smart enemies split up to avoid being hammered by AoE, and sometimes you end up fighting one big guy and not several smaller guys. Even if every single fight has multiple enemies at the start (unlikely), by the time each fight ends, there will be a point where there will only be 1 enemy left, and HB becomes useless. CS, on the other hand, is never dead.

2) CS applies additional damage to your primary target rather than forcing you to split up your damage - it's essentially always best for the party to focus fire one enemy at a time instead of spreading damage out among all enemies.

3) Building on 2), you seem to have skewed the math in favor of HB by claiming that the HB attack will deal 1d8 + 1d6 + stat damage, but this is false - you can only have Hunter's Mark up on one enemy at a time, meaning that if you get the 1d6 on your HB attack, you didn't get it on your primary target. Both the CS Ranger and the Horde Breaker Ranger will proc Hunter's Mark the same number of times each turn, assuming they use the same weapon loadout. Thus, the math is more like 1d8 + stat vs. a secondary target or 1d8 flat versus your primary target. I would argue that the superior targeting schema makes up for the lesser numerical value by itself, but there's more...

4) as you mentioned, you get CS on reaction attacks. This means that if your party strategizes to make reaction attacks common (like if you have a battlemaster friend with Commander's Strike, or if you multiclass BM yourself and take Riposte), you are doing 2d8 per round vs. the Horde Breaker doing 1d8 + stat. 2d8 is better than 1d8 + stat until your attack stat is 20, at which point it's only 0.5 DPR behind.

EDIT: you mentioned you have sentinel and a battle master pal with Commander's Strike. Easy Colossus Slayer pick, IMO.

[tieren]

I vote colossus slayer.

IMO it is better to focus down one target than to spread damage to two targets. The extra attack from horde breaker won't get the HM bonus (because you can only mark one opponent at a time).

[lperkins2]

I would argue the opposite: colossus slayer is almost always better.

1) It's far easier to proc CS than HB, as HB requires that you be attacking 2 enemies that are adjacent. Smart enemies split up to avoid being hammered by AoE, and sometimes you end up fighting one big guy and not several smaller guys. Even if every single fight has multiple enemies at the start (unlikely), by the time each fight ends, there will be a point where there will only be 1 enemy left, and HB becomes useless. CS, on the other hand, is never dead.

2) CS applies additional damage to your primary target rather than forcing you to split up your damage - it's essentially always best for the party to focus fire one enemy at a time instead of spreading damage out among all enemies.

3) Building on 2), you seem to have skewed the math in favor of HB by claiming that the HB attack will deal 1d8 + 1d6 + stat damage, but this is false - you can only have Hunter's Mark up on one enemy at a time, meaning that if you get the 1d6 on your HB attack, you didn't get it on your primary target. Both the CS Ranger and the Horde Breaker Ranger will proc Hunter's Mark the same number of times each turn, assuming they use the same weapon loadout. Thus, the math is more like 1d8 + stat vs. a secondary target or 1d8 flat versus your primary target. I would argue that the superior targeting schema makes up for the lesser numerical value by itself, but there's more...

4) as you mentioned, you get CS on reaction attacks. This means that if your party strategizes to make reaction attacks common (like if you have a battlemaster friend with Commander's Strike, or if you multiclass BM yourself and take Riposte), you are doing 2d8 per round vs. the Horde Breaker doing 1d8 + stat. 2d8 is better than 1d8 + stat until your attack stat is 20, at which point it's only 0.5 DPR behind.

EDIT: you mentioned you have sentinel and a battle master pal with Commander's Strike. Easy Colossus Slayer pick, IMO.

Oh, shoot, you're right that you don't get the second hunter's mark. That said, CS is dead on creatures still at full health, which mostly matters when fighting large quantities of crap guys. If you have other rider effects on your attacks it helps too. I suppose I'm a bit biased since I'm usually considering it for a character with either SS+XBE or GWM, where the extra attack at +10 damage makes a lot bigger difference. I think part of my bias against CS is also that it is contingent on the target not being at full health, and contingent effects are often forgotten effects, I've seen players forget to include the extra d8 a lot.

As a DM, I'd probably let you just add the D8 from the start, especially once you get to where you can attack twice in a turn, since having to remember it use CS on the second (but not the first) attack is rather fiddly. Generally, either the enemies will have few enough HP that it doesn't matter, or enough HP that only the first attack will not do the extra damage.

[nickl_2000]

Also if it makes a difference, this will be being used with elemental forms. So, we are talking 2 slam attacks that do 2d8+5 damage each.

[samcifer]

I vote colossus slayer.

IMO it is better to focus down one target than to spread damage to two targets. The extra attack from horde breaker won't get the HM bonus (because you can only mark one opponent at a time).

Plus HB is situational in that there needs to be enemies clustered together. More damage to someone you're already hitting is better than hoping you get to pull off an extra attack against someone else.

[stoutstien]

Something to note is with horde breaker it's a attack with any rider that may happen like fire damage from fire elemental or auto grapple in some forms. So it comes down to damage vs control