Your tone makes it really hard for me to want to continue this discussion with you.
No offense, but continually picking up your goalposts in an argument and moving them is far more rude IMO.
You asked me to compare a warlord with a cleric out of the PHB and I did so, dismantling your argument. Now you're picking up your goalposts AGAIN and changing the argument, which still doesn't change any of the previous points that killing a creature faster is far more important than trying to grind out a battle with healing reserves (which frankly, will utterly fail in some encounters and
badly). Now we're apparently comparing the woeful strength cleric to the warlord - albeit I did ask you to compare Godstrike with Defy Death - but even the devoted cleric who is an arguably superior healer doesn't bring much else. When healing fails, the cleric isn't bringing anything else substantial to the party anymore. That's the problem with the nerfing of their strong secondary controller elements.
Your argument completely ignores all the points about how at epic tier, healing is no longer a very efficient strategy anymore for numerous reasons. For one thing, you have monsters like the Balor that can quite easily on their day inflict over 50 points of damage per character in a blast in a single standard action attack. On his day, you can put that damage much higher and then you can expect one of those targets to be dropped easily (due to an AP and double attack). Not to mention the Balor if not killed fast enough gets two bites of the cherry at it as well. Plus if there is a demon in all of 4E that begs to have soul stealer put on him, it's the Balor.
Then there is a Dracolich, demons with Soul Stealer or monsters that outright prevent gaining HP like the Klurichir. They're all epic monsters and they all show you how much healing can become very inefficient at epic. While a Warlord? He strives to just destroy all three before their healing punishment mechanics matter. But even if we go into
heroic tier, nobody wants a pure healing cleric when fighting a tembo (albeit not that you wouldn't as no divine in Dark Sun in the first place). You want a character that's going to make that tembo
dead. Again, the Warlords sheer strength in enabling is what makes them the best ranked leader in the game.
Now you seem to be misunderstanding what I'm saying, which probably comes across because I am not communicating my position well. I'm not saying the Cleric is useless, because healing does work: It's just healing has a glass ceiling in 4E. This glass ceiling isn't shared by the warlord, bard, shaman and ardent - all of whom bring a strong secondary role into the game as well. Before the Cleric bought an extremely strong secondary controller role into the party, which in those encounters like the Balor/Dracolich and similar meant they were competitive.
Now they just "heal" and what happens when those creatures just don't care how well you "heal"? What does the Cleric do now? The answer is nothing.
I don't know how many times I will need to reemphasize this, but I
agree with the nerfs.
My problem is they gave nothing back.I would have changed astral storm, fire storm and turn undead to maybe have some kind of leader riders if they were going to nerf them that much. Like make turn undead give an attack bonus vs. undead creatures until EoNT or whatever. Doesn't matter: So long as it put the leader BACK into the nerfed powers. Nerfing the powers was FINE - how often can I stress this? - but giving them nothing back and just making them awful
was not fine. All leaders can heal - not to the extent that the cleric can - but to enough of an extent that it's never going to be crippling.
Leaders in my experience live and die on what else they bring to the party
aside from healing. The Sentinel for example is a miserable healer and really isn't anywhere up there with other leaders for enabling. Yet the Sentinel brings a whole host of strong druid controller dailies like summons to the fight. This means that the sentinel can contribute, despite his relative lack of healing ability compared to other leaders in the game: Because he has a strong and worthwhile secondary role.
Group composition matters a whole lot when you're making the comparison, if nobody in your group has a sexy basic attack then the warlord's attack granting powers lose a lot of luster*.
This is true, but powers like Defy Death, Lead the Attack, the flat bonuses to *ANY* attack power you use that Warlords can provide show they aren't entirely dependent on characters having basic attacks. Warlords go from incredibly good to ridiculous when they have allies with very good basic attacks. They are
still incredibly efficient even without it.
The first party I ever had with a Warlord - who only had the PHB and he chose 99% of his stuff from it - was a Warden, Rogue (No melee training), Fighter, Wizard, Warlock (No Eldritch Strike, back in the day!). Bearing in mind most of this used some of the more
broken stuff imaginable, like huge amounts of forced movement + bloodpulse (the old bloodmage bloodpulse in fact), displacer armor (I still shudder at that armor as originally written) and similar. Only 2 PCs could really get much out of relentless assault, but believe me they
did. Lead the Attack destroyed any solo encounter off the bat for 30 levels. He gave big bonuses to the parties initiative (quickening order, which was one of his few non-PHB powers I will concede), they could action point and really tear things up with the big attack bonus (ensuring near auto-hits on anything important) and such forth.
You don't need a whole party with hugely optimized MBAs to make a warlord great. It just makes the warlord
better.
Again, I bring up the warlord so specifically because he's exceptionally powerful and nobody seems to dispute this. Yet look at what class - one nobody regarded as broken anywhere just about - got severely nerfed and what got barely touched. Where is the logic in that whatsoever? If any class needed adjusting, it was the Warlord and not the Cleric. Or perhaps in the end both: But to nerf the cleric this badly while not touching the warlord - encounter powers like Hail of Steel for example - is maddening.
And hey, our DM can use more than a handful of minions again without me killing them without having to bother rolling a die, which I'm going to file under "good for the game."
Wizards do this better at epic. Have you never seen the power
Legions Hold, which is a close burst 20? I have. I've even seen it turned into an
encounter power with archmage.
On a level of broken, the Cleric isn't touching the Warlord and on control post-PHB it isn't touching the Wizard. Of course I would point out that at the time, back in the good old days when 4E was new the Cleric out controlled the wizard. Huge area friendly bursts? Wow! Of course, this is now no longer true and the Wizard is clearly where he needs to be as a controller. The Cleric isn't anywhere near as strong a controller, but he still had that role and it was appreciated by any party. Now? Sure he brings a ton of healing, but my experience is that you can't out heal a difficult epic encounter before it goes pear shaped.
With regards to your final point: Any leader will struggle in that situation actually. With 3 PCs the chance of one being picked off with focus fire - namely the leader - is actually really high. Leaders work best when they can give the maximum amount of bonuses to the most characters, while not being targeted themselves. There is a good reason I target leaders first whenever I can in an encounter!
