Me, I'd much rather the cleric fill the "holy warrior" niche than the "priest" niche. We are talking about adventurers after all. Why would a priest be an adventurer? A priest tends to his or her flock. A priest has duties and responsibilities that generally tie that priest to a specific location.
Whereas a "holy warrior" of this or that diety isn't tied to a flock. That character is meant to go forth and do battle on behalf of whatever diety is being worshipped.
You mention rogues as not being different from fighters. After all, they stab stuff just like a fighter. But, only, not really. The rogue is limited to certain kinds of weapons, and, since they don't get extra attacks, they are always looking to deal that sneak attack damage. It changes, significantly, how they play and they play VERY differently from a fighter.
But a land druid? Or a non War domain cleric? Yeah, they're not different enough, AFAIC, from a sorcerer or wizard. Often doing pretty much exactly the same thing. I'm sorry, but, "I do d8 radiant" vs "I do d10 fire" damage isn't enough to make much of a difference. Whoopee. They are both still standing off and lobbing spells. And the attack cantrips very strongly push clerics and land druids to do exactly that and not actually use straight up attacks.
I mean, you’re taking 1 cantrip each and saying that because these two cantrips are both “I deal XdY Z damage”, the classes are basically the same. That’s totally absurd. Both classes have other cantrips. More importantly, both classes have features other than cantrips, that are their primary means of engaging in combat. Cantrips are the backup, not the main tactic.
As for priests, please don’t get hung up on the word. It isn’t the point. The cleric being a holy person who can call down the wrath of the gods on their enemies doesn’t have anything to do with being stuck in a parish.
But even if we changed the name to Priest, there are priests IRL who rather than a parish, have a mission that involves going out into the world and doing “good”. In a world like dnd, there would absolutely be priestly orders that go into the dangerous places of the world to shine the light of the gods into the darkness, bring people hope, help save the weak from the predatory strong, etc. Ya know, the stuff clerics do. None of which requires armor and a mace.
In fact, it would be even more appropriate to their fluff if they had an AC calculation class feature.
I’d also be perfectly happy to see Clerics get the ability at level 5 to add 1d8 radiant damage to a weapon attack, once per turn. Upgrade to 2d8 at 11, and 3d8 at 17. Let the cleric smack things, but not like a fighter.
I imagine if the rogue hits things differently enough from the fighter, you’d be fine with that?
But also, speaking of which, how is the rogue more different from fighters than Druids and clerics are from wizards? They literally just run up and deal X weapon damage. What, number of attacks is dramatically different while different damage, range, method of resolution (save vs attack), aren’t different? Really?
