D&D 5E How to War Cleric

[Yunru]

Your feats should be going towards resilient constitution. I would not take great weapon master too early. Divine favour is better than bless and -5/+10 at first. You can cast it with a bonus action. You could of course cast bless and use your extra attack immediately but it's usually not worth it in the beginning.
A 16 in Strength, a 14 or 16 in con and a 14 or 16 in wisdom is all you need for stats.
If you are a variant human or goliath that will be easy to get. Also as a dwarf. Variant human allows for resilient con or heavy armor mastery at level 1 to increase your chance to hold concebtration. Goliath can reduce damage once per short rest. Dwarf is golden with +2 Str and Con saving valuable generation points. Standard human is not too bad either actually.
The most optimized spread would probably be variant human with
15+1 str
8 dex
15+1 con
8 int
15+1 wis
8 charisma
Resilient constitution.

That would not be my personal favourite however.
I'd prefer
Goliath
14+2 str
8 dex
15+1 con
Int 8
Wis 15
Cha 10

Bless? Nonono. You use your CD for +5/+10

Inversely I recommend leaving Resilient Con to level 8 at earliest, when your proficiency really starts to make an impact.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Bless? Nonono. You use your CD for +5/+10

Yes. But not before level 2. And even then it is still not a guaranteed hit and the chance for wasted damage is high a bit thin for a feat and the use of channel divinity. Resilient constitution to maintain bless or devine favour longer and later spirit guardians will give a longer lasting gain.
It may even be useful to have a shield and a warhammer instead of a maul.

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[Blue]

Bless? Nonono. You use your CD for +5/+10

That's good for one GWM attack per short rest, but if you're going to invest in STR and a melee feet, doing it more often than that would be useful. Plus Bless will also buff to allies in edition to yourself.

 

[Yunru]

That's good for one GWM attack per short rest, but if you're going to invest in STR and a melee feet, doing it more often than that would be useful. Plus Bless will also buff to allies in edition to yourself.

Two at level 6, plus the bonus action attack on a crit/drop.
It's not the best, but it's still good. Plus there can be situations where you can use it anyway due to low AC or advantage.

Also at low levels Bless adds more than proficiency from ResCon.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Also consider the Magic Initiate feat and pick up Booming Blade. In fact, I'd prioritize that over GWM for a War Cleric.

 

[bid]

That's good for one GWM attack per short rest, but if you're going to invest in STR and a melee feet, doing it more often than that would be useful. Plus Bless will also buff to allies in edition to yourself.

One failed attack per short rest. So you're good for maybe 5 rounds at level 6. Earlier, not as good.

Divine favor actually makes GWM worse, as it increases the lost damage when you miss.
Bless helps delay your first missed attack and increases the number of round you can safely keep GWM active. It helps the higher-DPR part of the party too.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

You want to be human. You want to be a cleric. You want to smack things with a big hammer.

So you're not a dwarf or a paladin or a bladelock. Shields are really good, but not using a shield leaves you an open hand for spellcasting without sucking up a feat.

Should you take F1 first? No. Nothing here is worth delaying spells.

Since you are human, you are probably a variant human. Your starting Feat is either Resilient Con or Heavy Armor Mastery. I prefer the latter: soaking 3hp per hit really matters at low levels. At high levels, it still isn't bad. (And if you take 3hp less damage, your Concentration saves are easier too.)

Clerics compete poorly with martial classes in terms of damage. Nothing to be done about that. But you can happily wade into combat with spiritual weapon and spirit guardians (at 5th level) and be very dangerous while providing support.

I recommend spending level 4 and level 8 ASIs on Wisdom: You're a still a *cleric*, and when you command someone in the name of Sigmar, you want him to obey! Besides, you might get Ogre's Gauntlets or a Belt of Giantkind to boost your Str; there is no equivalent for Wisdom. But if Concentration is an issue, Resilient Con might come first. Up to you. But swinging a weapon is something to do when you're not doing the cleric thing.

As you and others have noted, this approach is not necessarily optimal. Call your Paladin a "Cleric of Sigmar" and you get great support and great combat ability. A Fighter or Barbarian will dish out more damage, but not by that much, and you have great spells and class features to more than make up for it. Choose an Arcana Cleric (Sigmar has granted me special blessings, so there) and you lose the heavy armor and martial weapons, but get great melee cantrips based on Wisdom, so you'll never really need Second Attack. Of course, if you are a dwarf instead of a human, then you keep the hammer iirc, and Sigmar likes dwarves.

Anyway,

Ken

 

[carnage220]

just gonna throw this idea into the conversation. you are a cleric but are you the cleric or can someone else also heal? the healer feat at level one will be a godsend if you are the only healer. it will consistently save you spell slots which you can then use for the other wonderful spells mentioned. it is very valuable at 1st level and it does scale. i would go with the standard array of 15 8 13 10 14 12 bump up str and con. then as you level you can decide go more str and more melee or pump wis and spells. if you go wis the rest of the way your str is still enough to not have armor movement penalties and still be decent enough in melee. never gonna be a power attack barb but you will have access to spells.

 

[Blue]

One failed attack per short rest. So you're good for maybe 5 rounds at level 6. Earlier, not as good.

Bless helps delay your first missed attack and increases the number of round you can safely keep GWM active. It helps the higher-DPR part of the party too.

I mostly agree with you, with a slight nitpick. The CD is not an "apply on miss" power, it's an "apply after you see the roll". Early on when in a combat when you haven't zeroed in on what you need on the die to hit you could waste it either by it still not converting a miss into a hit, or being used when it was already a hit. "You'd hit AC 15, do you use it" is just as unsure as "you hit AC 6, do you use it". Either case it might be wasted.

But that's a really small nit-pick. You're right, it's good for keeping the GWM going much like the BM's Precision attack.

 

[balzebub]

War cleric.. All the way with magic initiate for shield spell (which can be cast with your cleric spell slots if I am not wrong) and melee cantrips like Greenflame Blade. Decent damage spamming melee cantrips and spiritual weapon attacks. Firebolt for ranged attacks.

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