Cleric (Templar) is Up

[Zaphling]

For me, I'm just very happy they gave a bit of justice to the Strength Clerics.
Especially the part where they changed the new Tactical Warpriest into Strength and Wisdom, instead of the pure Wisdom before. I'm content.

What I'm NOT happy about is, if you have studied Heroes of Shadow, THEY NEVER GAVE STRENGTH CLERICS SHADOW POWERS! ALL WISDOM???

I'm also confused why they did not change the original cleric at-wills' effects-on-a-hit into an effect entry, like the warpriest's at-wills. For example, Warpriest's Brand of the Sun, Damage on Hit, then the saving throw effects even on a miss. While Templar's Sacred Flame's effect has to happen on a hit? I don't get WotC.

Lastly, can someone explain to me the difference between a Battle Order Templar and a Warpriest?
So battle templars were ordained in an order? So they belong to a group? While a warpriest doesn't? Warpriest are solo priests traveling the world?

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

I'm usually an Essentials defender, but this is the first time the essentials-related Nerf-bat has really hit my campaign's characters.

I went back and checked my Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and Healing Word has been missing the Divine keyword since then. So I'm not positive we can blame the Sentinel, but I'm assuming that the two books were researched and developed simultaneously.

But then again, this doesn't bother me that much, not having the pacifist healer's boosted healing word will make my encounters more deadly . (Which has been an issue ever since the feat and power started adding more extra dice at 6th level).

EDIT: This is a big piece of stealth errata, because if it was in HotFL it must have been in the character builder this way for months and nobody noticed until today!

EDIT2: Okay, after so after reading the CharOp board they knew about this change already, so either I was just out of the loop, or some people missed this because it wasn't in an errata document.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

So there is a shortage of epic tier monsters that are not demons or undead?

According to the Compendium, there are 896 monsters in epic tier, including
- 247 Elementals, of which 104 are Demons,
- 177 Undead,
and also
- 49 Aberrants,
- 40 Fey,
- 187 Immortals, of which 38 are Devils and 26 are Angels, and
- 96 Dragons, several of which are also Undead (and a few who are Demons).

I'd say that there is a shortage of epic tier monsters in general. Personally, I'd like to see more aberrants, fey, and devils.

With Turn Undead enhanced to target immortals, elementals, and undead, it's effective against 611 epic tier monsters, or 68%. So this did need the nerf bat IMO; the rest of the errata went too far for me.
(And I'm getting pretty fed up with what has been coming out of WotC lately. )

 

[WalterKovacs]

What I'm NOT happy about is, if you have studied Heroes of Shadow, THEY NEVER GAVE STRENGTH CLERICS SHADOW POWERS! ALL WISDOM???

Admitedly, as a direct support for warpriests, they stuck with the stats for it, but even then, many of the powers don't require an attack roll, and don't actually use Wisdom for anything. So, they could have made it so that everything was useless for Strength based clerics, but instead made at least a few powers that are usable by all types of cleric.

I'm also confused why they did not change the original cleric at-wills' effects-on-a-hit into an effect entry, like the warpriest's at-wills. For example, Warpriest's Brand of the Sun, Damage on Hit, then the saving throw effects even on a miss. While Templar's Sacred Flame's effect has to happen on a hit? I don't get WotC.

The "goal" for most the errata has seemed to mostly be nerfing powerful stuff, not really trying to increase the power level of old stuff to make it competitive.

Lastly, can someone explain to me the difference between a Battle Order Templar and a Warpriest?
So battle templars were ordained in an order? So they belong to a group? While a warpriest doesn't? Warpriest are solo priests traveling the world?

The concept of a Battle Order Templar is sort of like a 'religious warlord'. They focus on Strength more than Wisdom, while a Warpriest gets his strength from wisdom (similar to avengers and Chaladins). The warpriest actually focuses heavily on their religion, specifically their domain. So a Battle Order Templar is almost like a Scout/Hunter ranger type ... a martial character with some divine magic in his back pocket. Also, in the case of the Death priest, it's not even a weapon based character, using implement attacks (although still in melee).

 

[Gorgoroth]

I can feel the pain here

if I were playing a 4e cleric I'd be pretty p*ssed...

but ya, if they nerf Twin Strike too I am literally going to burn all my 4e books, and try to purge it from my memory.

"I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity..." -EA Poe

ps then again, I could just play without any terrible Wotc errata, and forevermore ignore anything coming from them that isn't printed, including their kludgy builder

 

[IanB]

I'm actually playing an epic tier devoted cleric right now; I think of all the changes here the one I'm actually going to feel the most is the huge nerf to Fire Storm. No longer is it an 11x11 auto-minion-kill, which was a pretty huge thing to have access to in a group with no real controller.

That said it really probably was too good.

 

[Marshall]

I suppose they're just trying to cut back the number of powers. There are like 8000 powers out there... finding a name for yet another "spend an healing surge" power must be getting difficult, and this way when they want to create a new leader class they can just slap "healing word" in there without cluttering the compendium.
Furthermore, it's just more intuitive. If two powers are exactly the same, just call them the same and be done with it.

No, the problem is the lazy design of the Sentinels healing power. If the devs had put an inkling worth of thought into the design of that class and come up with a unique rider to the power like every other leader healing power than it wouldnt be "exactly the same" and deserve its own name.

Dont excuse lazy design with the desire to avoid clutter, especially when most of the classes in the HotF* books are nothing but clutter.

 

[Estlor]

I get really tired of erratta, excuse me, updates driven not by an imbalance of power or a prone-ness to abuse, but by the dev's intent.

If it ain't hugging broke, don't hugging fix it even if it wasn't what you had in mind.

 

[MrGrenadine]

if I were playing a 4e cleric I'd be pretty p*ssed...

I just switched characters in my weekly Sunday night game from a Battle Priest of Tempus to an Eladrin Wizard. I loved that character, though, and was really looking forward to seeing how he'd develop through Paragon. These changes make me happier that I swapped him out.

ps then again, I could just play without any terrible Wotc errata, and forevermore ignore anything coming from them that isn't printed, including their kludgy builder

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't the problem is that when rules and powers (and errata) are errata'd only in the Compendium, there's no way to revert to the old version unless you have a hard copy of it somewhere? Talk about confusing--now we have classic 4e, Essentials 4e, and various errata and revisions and additions to choose between. Character creation and progression is becoming a real nightmare.

 

[Droogie128]

I'm actually playing an epic tier devoted cleric right now; I think of all the changes here the one I'm actually going to feel the most is the huge nerf to Fire Storm. No longer is it an 11x11 auto-minion-kill, which was a pretty huge thing to have access to in a group with no real controller.

That said it really probably was too good.

Nerfing damage is fine. They didn't compensate it with anything to make the cleric a better leader is the problem. It was already mediocre at best compared to the Bard or Warlord. Now, I put it below the Shaman and Ardent.