Party optimisation philosophy

[MaxWilson]

The reason at-will attacks are important is that they let you efficiently turn defense into offense, which in turn matters because 5E makes defense much cheaper to acquire than offense. E.g. there is no spell which can triple your DPR against an orc, but there are spells that can triple your longevity against an orc (e.g. Blur if you're already in heavy armor).

Spells are not the only form of defense either. If you can kill said two orcs by expending 40 yards of movement plus a couple of bags of caltrops and two arrows (one of which you can retrieve after combat), you should. Movement regenerates, so to speak, much faster than HP and spell slots. Higher at-will damage here raises the number of orcs you can handle at a time before they catch up to you, and/or reduces their window of opportunity to switch strategies in a way that will inconvenience you. (E.g. if you've got plenty of movement speed but only 1d6 damage per round from a cantrip, the orcs may stop pursuing you and Dash off in opposite directions bellowing for reinforcements, and you'll wish you had killed more of them when you had the chance.)

Nova damage, on the other hand, is useful for emergencies like when your buddy the Lore Bard just failed his save against Hold Person, within melee range of a hypothetical mob of orcs. At that point your own defensive abilities cease to matter and what matters now is the sheer amount of offense you can bring to the table, or your ability to find an alternate solution (Dimension Door, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Wall of Force, whatever you've got.) It must also be admitted that emergencies are fun and interesting for the player even if they are not so fun for the PC, and there's a tension there between the PC's rational desire to stay alive and the player's in-character desire to prevent emergencies, and the player's desire to stick the PC into water hot enough that emergency measures and improvisation are needed. This is another reason to desire a nova capability--realistically, you know you're going to need it eventually, or the game would be boring.

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RE: paladin auras, I endorse Eldariel's perspective on Paladin Aura of Protection. Ultimately it's just a numerical bonus on saving throws, and saving throws are something you don't want to be making in the first place. A maxed out Charisma bonus (+5) will convert a failure to a success 25% of the time, so on average if four PCs are in Fireball formation and gets hit with an AoE effect, the aura is likely to save one PC on average (e.g. 3 fails => 2 fails, or 2 fails => 1 fail). That is nice to have, but it is also worse than saving 3 PCs automatically by virtue of not being in Fireball formation in the first place.

There are some other paladin aura effects which are much more reliable (in particular I'm thinking of Charm immunity at Paladin of Devotion 7) and which I totally would enter Fireball formation for, in certain situations, but in general I've found that Bardic Inspiration is a surprisingly good substitute for a Paladin aura because the aura only covers a couple of PCs anyway. It is nice that the aura is always on, and the aura is still definitely a standout feature, but overall I feel like a good source of Bardic Inspiration is probably about half as valuable as a Paladin Aura, and neither is absolutely essential although both are painful to live without.

There are lots of capabilities that are painful to live without, and a 4-man party can afford only about half as many as I'd like even with judicious multiclassing. Sometimes you have to just accept that a given party is going to have e.g. Greater Restoration and Revivify instead of Paladin save bonuses, and use one to compensate for lack of the other, if necessary.