astral seal

[Destil]

Strong on it's own.

Can easily look overpowered if you pile on lots of +healing feats/items/powers. I'm very weary of this, but I haven't seen it in play.

I've seen the power in normal play and the biggest thing that I dislike it that it forces the NEXT attack to grant the healing. Should be the attackers choice, so if someone else is hurt you don't need to re-arrange the initiative order.

 

[dvorak]

As been stated before, Astral Seal can have some potent kickers added to the healing portion of this At-Will power. Someone else's example http://www.enworld.org/forum/5065580-post63.html

While playing at an LFR event, I overheard another table had a Pacifist Healer Cleric in their party; the story went that the DM made a critical strike on a character almost dropping them to 0, then that character hit an NPC with an active heal due to Astral Seal. Next thing I learned was the character recovered enough hit points to make that critical strike meaningless. The character no longer was bloodied.

IMO the heal portion just needs to be 2 + your Charisma modifier + Healer's Lore (Healing keyword) and nothing more.

Attack: Wisdom +2 vs. Reflex
Hit: Until the end of your next turn, the target takes a –2 penalty to all defenses.

The other part of Astral Seal I dislike deals how long it lasts ~ end of your next turn. This provides the Cleric an additional bonus to their To Hit roll and could potentially negative defense lock the NPC for a number of rounds. My suggestion would be to append it to read ~ Until the START of your next turn.

 

[Nifft]

Anybody actually played with one of these in their group? Did it seem overpowered in practice?

I've used it. It was certainly better than Lance of Faith.

With a party of multi-attackers (a Ranger, a Fighter with multiattack powers, a Rogue with Minor Action attack powers, etc.) it could probably be broken.

Cheers, -- N

 

[TerraDave]

I saw it in play the other day, thats why I asked. Like I said, the whole "hit him and get a prize thing" was fun, but as I thought about it I got a little concerned.

Of course the cleric also still used sacred flame, but that is also a great at will (at least when a save is needed).

 

[Jack99]

Anybody actually played with one of these in their group? Did it seem overpowered in practice?

Cleric in my old campaign had it from around level 15 to level 22. While it by itself didnt break the campaign, it was certainly a very powerful tool. There are worse offenders, but I must admit that after that, I think that at-will surgeless healing is just a bad idea.

 

[KarinsDad]

Anybody actually played with one of these in their group? Did it seem overpowered in practice?

I'm DMing two groups. It is used in one and not in the other. I think it is very potent and I am not even recommending it to the Cleric in my second group because she already does a ton of healing which makes encounters less challenging.

To me, it's not Astral Seal per se, it's the plethora of healing options in Divine Power (including Healer's Mercy) that add up to having a healbot in the group that can for the most part prevent PCs from going unconscious, let alone dead. Astral Seal is just one aspect of that and a strong one at that.

The Cleric can do 8 damage and give +2 power bonus to hit to one ally PC against that target with Lance of Faith, or the Cleric can do 8 (or typically more) healing and give +2 bonus (untyped) to hit to everyone including the Cleric next round against that target with Astral Seal. It's really potent. Definitely a lot more than Lance of Faith.

 

[Stalker0]

Its the first ranged at-will to compete with sacred flame for sure.

As others have mentioned, the core power isn't that bad, but combined with a host of easy to get healing riders it becomes very powerful very fast.

I will say its probably one of the better "leader" powers I've seen. I've never seen a party put the bullseye on a monster so fast as when the cleric declared they would heal upon hitting him.

 

[Davachido]

Anybody actually played with one of these in their group? Did it seem overpowered in practice?

I think it only gets borderline broken at epic levels (in my campaigns), during paragon/heroic it seems to be strong at not broken so much.

At epic levels with a +9 wis mod and +7 Cha mod: the spell can have 2 + Cha + Wis + Cha (Beautific healer) + item bonus (mace of healing) + healer's brooch

Thus: 2 + 7 + 9 + 7 + 5 + 5 = 35 hp restored

Yea that is where it gets kind of silly because that's a healing surge value for some classes at the cost of none for an at-will, but paragon/heroic seems to have gone alright with it.

 

[Blackbrrd]

At level one it can be: 2+cha+wis = 2+3+5 = 10 hp restored, in other words more than a healing surge except for some very rare characters.

 

[Lord Ernie]

Only if you're playing a Kalashtar (or some other +wis +cha race), and gave yourself 20 wisdom and 16 charisma, which leaves you with exactly one point to spend on other stats, leaving you with the unenviable defense array of 10/10/17. Any race without a wisdom and charisma bonus need not even apply. Hardly broken.

The elven cleric in my campaign converted to a hybrid cleric|invoker right before this power was released, and as such isn't using it (he uses Sacred Flame instead). From my own reading, it's okay at heroic levels, but might get out of hand with multiplying healing bonuses later on (Healer's Brooch/Armor/Implement stacking); all in all, a strong power for any laser cleric, and of course the go-to at-will for pacifists (who can arguably break it even on heroic).