2Wiz2Lockest: Smoking Leaves
Peace1/Chronurge X Mark of Handling human > Peace 1/Chron X Winged Tiefling
We're changing this to Winged Tiefling for WT's incredible defensive profile. Otherwise, no notes.
Twi1/Scribes X Shadow> Peace1/Scribes X Handling
We get to drop Mark of Shadow since PWT is already covered by the new Druid. We're instead shifting Mark of Handling over to this so that the Chron can pick WT. Chron is investing in defense for as they're our best party member.
Compliments to the chef: I would've never considered Scribes before reading Sil's article, but he's brought me on board here.
We're also switching Twi to Peace here. This is because I believe that PB/LR uses is not always synonymous with
enough uses. Idk why no one's brought up multiple Peaces yet; I can
imagine there being more than 2-3 encounters in a day where you want
EmbBond up, and later on you'll have more than PB creatures worth EmbBonding. Note that it's the Wizards who have Peace, not the Lock nor Druid who would have to forgo their good at-will for a turn to activate EmbBond.
Life1/Undead Warlock X/DSS1 Healing>Twi1/UndeadlockX/DSS1 Storm
Again, we get to drop the race thanks to the Druid, so here I propose Mark of Storm, which greatly improves Lock's T1 and T2 performance with Fog Cloud, to a lesser extent Feather Fall, Levitate, Sleet, Wind Wall, and CME, peppered with nice Charmed and Lightning res's.
Naturally, we're dropping Life in favor of Twi. We've now really okay on the EmbBond end, so I'd rather have another lv 1 Sleep caster and a source of Darkvis and Adv on Init than even more EmbBond (a minor flaw is that one of Scribes or Druid needs to go on without Darkvis due to both not natively having it and this comp only having 1 Twi).
This doesn't matter anymore thanks to our new team comp, but Sil overlooked that the Undeadlock SR casting Aid and Death Ward means it's not SR casting Lifeberry with those slots, making it ironically rather inefficient at being the Lifeberry bot.
HexClock Handling > Wildfire3/Life1/Hex 2/Wildfire X Simic Hybrid
And indirectly huge force multiplier thanks to the aforementioned freed up races. This has Lifeberries, EBARB, PWT, CA and Aid, so every check mark is hit except GoA which is covered by the obligatory Chron.
As you may have noticed, the level spread is relatively abominable. This is the price paid for role compression, and I'm totally fine paying it, because it really does improve our other members a lot, and we don't desperately need to rush Druid, as other members already cover us not prioritizing CA and control spells, like Plant Growth and Wall of Stone.
In addition, we can get into some of the coolest shenanigans in 5e with Fire Spirit + Wave Dashing, detailed in TTB's general Wildfire article and their build, are eventually the best damage dealer in the party with CA + Spike Growth + Hexblade Curse-boosted EBARBs. Don't worry about being MAD, as the only notable Druid spell that wants you to invest in Wis is Entangle, which you can live without, so we just keep Wis at 13.
In addition to what TTB has already discussed at length, I wanna highlight Simic's insane pre-Psteed kiting capability. Through wavedashing, it Dashes for 120 ft speed, which is a lot more than a mule's 80. This allows Simic to solo-kite certain encounters that would otherwise be unkitable. This requires the party to scout ahead and determine in advance that only you can kite the fight, at which point the rest go away for you to do the dirty work.
Notable enemies only kites thanks to this include, but aren't limited to, Aarakocra, Pixie, Winged Kobold, and some Wyrmlings. This is before adding a Longstrider boost to your Speed, which expands the list even more!
Also don't diminish the value of the +1 AC at lv 5 (I wouldn't recommend the Climbing speed as wavedashing and Wilsfire Spirit should be plenty and the +1 AC is way more common to be helpful.
Finally, this is easily the best option for the Lifeberry bot, as you combine 2 SR slots with mostly-full-casting slots and don't cut into your castings of ADead, Death Ward, etc.
This build is mostly the same as TTB's WitchFire build, with the exception of the level order being changed as shown above (I loathe delaying PWT) and adding Life. See that excellent build for more details.
Comparing the three parties
Haen: Better in predictable campaigns, decent Lifeberry bot, but struggles to deal with threats while both Locks are out of slots.
Sil: More versatile, but generally slightly weaker across the board due to not recognizing Druid's role compression potential and choosing a bad fit for Lifeberry.
Mine: Equally versatile as Sil's, only one with a dedicated roll compressor (for better or for worse, you tell me), much better Lifeberry bot, can Simic kite, but admittedly having less control and early T2 damage due to delaying Druid very far.
A route I'd explore is shifting the role of the 2nd EBARBer to the secondary Wiz so that Druid gets their stuff a lot faster, at the cost of the 2ndary Wiz having to bite the bullet between worse EBARBing, Wiz save DC or a middle-ground between the two.
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