How to Rend Fiends and Immolate People: A Guide to Sorcery

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There is a world of difference between what you can do in 2 minutes with a shovel and two minutes with Mold earth. The latter is going to give you a 5ft deep ditch with a five foot pile of earth behind it that's 60 ft long. Or double depth/height and 30ft long. A shovel won't even give you a 5 ft pit.

I'm not disputing that you can do more with Mold Earth than you can with a shovel in a time crunch, I'm disputing the notion that you will ever find yourself in a situation in which you have the forewarning to prepare for a pitched battle, no natural defenses to use to your advantage, and enough time to prepare with Mold Earth, but not enough time to grab a few shovels. Or rather, I think you might, but not more than once.

In the average campaign, Mage hand should be the third cantrip any class with it on the class list takes, right after an attack cantrip and Minor Illusion. It's that useful to be able to pick something up from a limited distance away. Mage hand should be blue in a general guide.

Why are people acting like I don't like Mage Hand? I love Mage Hand. My Transmuter uses it all the time, but it's still situational. It does not make him more effective at influencing the world around him on a regular basis. It's useful once every two or three sessions, and it's a lot of fun, but it's still only situationally useful.

I feel like you're playing 5e mostly as a series of battles, and building a sorcerer guide based on that. for example, rating message as purple (typically means low or limited situational use). The situations in which message can be useful are common enough in average campaigns that aren't heavy combat focus to rate it black. Your heavy focus on twinned spell metamagic seems to indicate the same.

Message is a perfectly good spell. I think it's black on an Arcane Trickster since you can speak to the party while you scout. It's okay for a Sorcerer, but it's not one of the standouts. Again, you're acting like purple is a bad rating. It isn't. It just means it's not going to be one of the spells you rely on regularly.

Rating everything that's non-combat as 'situational' also shows your game style you're writing a guide to.

Here are some non-combat spells I've rated, with the rating they had as of your post. I have since revised Friends and Disguise Self.

Spoiler: Non-Combat Spells

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• Light
• Minor Illusion
• Charm Person
• Detect Magic
• Invisibility
• Misty Step
• Spider Climb
• Suggestion
• Feather Fall
• Major Image
• Dimension Door
• Seeming
• Teleportation Circle
• Arcane Gate
• Mass Suggestion
• Move Earth
• True Seeing
• Etherealness
• Teleport
• Gate

You implied as much in your introduction by taking about blasty with utility, but you really need to just outright state that it's a guide for making heavily combat-focused sorcerers, not a general sorcerer guide. That'll cut down on the number of counter augments you're going to get.

It's an optimization guide. Optimization guides tend to focus on combat utility. It's also a general sorcerer guide, and I purposefully included a lot of out-of-combat utility because I tend to run and play games that frequently involve out-of-combat interactions.

And I welcome counter arguments. I'm just not necessarily going to agree with their conclusions, especially when one of the bases of the argument is that a purple rating is somehow bad.