Cleric (Templar) is Up

[Zaran]

Or demons, or immortals. You know, pretty much every monster that is available at epic tier (especially post-MM3, your options for new maths and new power design epic creatures are chronically limited to say the least). I wouldn't find this HALF the issue I do if I had viable epic fey, or viable epic anything except demons/undead (immortals only tangentially actually).

Also it's the whole fact that it's also a minor action by this point that is a huge problem. You can minor action use it, bunch all the enemies up and then dump a standard action astral storm on them.

I honestly think if you never saw this in play it's hard to how broken it got. Especially when you consider OTHER characters exploiting everything being bunched up to drop AoEs on them too.

While I will admit that it was a bit too powerful but they went too hard with the nerf bat beating. They can say better to nerf too much than not enough but when they hardly ever make changes to increase power this is bad change.

 

[pauljathome]

I'm not going to say this again, but as a rules resource the CB is not relevant. It is not a rules resource. It is that simple. .

You're missing my point.

A rules resource is not what WOTC says or what you say. Its what is actually used by the gamers at the table.

The last campaign I was in all the characters were built using the CB. And the rules we were using were the rules on the powers on the printed character sheets. Whether or not they were correct or not really didn't matter.

Maybe that was a strange group and an outlier. But I rather doubt that.

 

[Aegeri]

Oh I absolutely 100% completely agree with you on that point Zaran. It needed to be toned down, but what they did to it was excessively brutal. Personally I would have fixed the minor action feat moreso than completely nerfing the power. The minor action feat is what turned it from pretty powerful, but still taking your turn at the very least to rather broken.

Of course in saying that there is broken like turn undead and then there is what the warlord does for, well, just being a warlord. Why one was barely touched and the other brutally nerfed makes no sense to me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh I absolutely 100% completely agree with you on that point Zaran. It needed to be toned down, but what they did to it was excessively brutal. Personally I would have fixed the minor action feat moreso than completely nerfing the power. The minor action feat is what turned it from pretty powerful, but still taking your turn at the very least to rather broken.

Of course in saying that there is broken like turn undead and then there is what the warlord does for, well, just being a warlord. Why one was barely touched and the other brutally nerfed makes no sense to me.

Yeah, this I agree with. I don't get why the cleric particularly needed to be singled out. Like all well-supported classes it has a few crazy out of whack things, but it would have been far from the first class that would have leaped to mind as urgently requiring a big hammer dropped on it. It was nice that they gave the STR cleric a few bits of stuff and all too, but it seems odd that they suddenly chose to do that after they basically made the build virtually obsolete almost a year ago.

 

[the Jester]

I'll be very interested to listen to that podcast when it comes out.

I just hope it doesn't turn out to be one of those phantoms like the article WotC was going to write to explain and justify the expertise feats when they first came out- I'd still be interested in the thinking behind them.

 

[keterys]

To be honest, many of the changes make an awful lot of sense. It's what didn't _also_ happen that doesn't make sense.

The cleric didn't get a whole lot of Effect: leader buffs
The warlord's craziness wasn't reined in, at all.

They're not revising _all_ of the powers to bring them to that new chosen standard.

 

[SSquirrel]

Turn Undead could have used a few nerfs at higher level. But would Close Burst 2/3/4 dealing 1d10/2d10/4d10 really have been broken? They went way overboard. Hope you like healer's mercy.

Burst 2/3/4 and 1/2/3d10 damage would have been fine and cutting the power exactly in half. One of my friends was thinking about making a Cleric for an upcoming game. I may point her over toward Warlord now.

Healer's Mercy has always been the best CD. TU was situationally good, but not really strong compared to what an optimized striker can do. Divine Fortune has been bottom of the barrel.

Turn Undead at epic level was a 17x17 effect that with just 2 feats could damage over 60% of the currently published monsters in epic play. 6d10 damage time a possible max of 219 enemies is mind boggling. Altho having an encounter w/that many undead w/o a Cleric around would be complete suicide heh. I challenge you to find a Striker who can dish out 13,140 potential damage with one attack.

If they had changed it to max out at CB4 and 3d10 damage you would still max out at 2,430 potential damage, which is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm inclined to think they actually understand the potency of AoE, unlike the majority of the community. The damage reduction in Come and Get It is also a testament to this. I believe the community undervalues AoE damage.

In my game the following is entirely possible, fighter pops Come and Get It, followed by Paladin's Astral Thunder, Sorcerer's Flame Spiral, and Shaman's Guardian Eagle Flock. If these powers only catch 3 targets, that's the equivalent of four rain of blows. With a near guaranteed initiative using something like Strategist's Epiphany, AoE's deliver a decisive blow to the enemy out of the gate, which the enemy often won't recover from.

The dev team can be accused of many things, but I don't think overvaluing AoE is one of them.

Indeed. A good rule of thumb is that damage to secondary targets is worth half the amount damage to your primary target is. Which means that to match Twin Strike an AoE power needs to hit three separate targets. Off the top of my head, Hand of Radiance, and Enlarged Freezing Burst are up to the job here (with Hand of Radiance being radiant, and Freezing Burst having a nice slide attached to set people up for your allies' area powers (or your own zones)). Unravelling Dart is also a contender on the DPR stakes - normally a bit behind Twin Strike from mid-high heroic, but when it rocks it rocks.

This isn't where Rangers get their serious DPR though. Ranger DPR starts high - Twin Strike is good. But it gets even higher because of the number of minor action and interrupt attacks they get. These stack onto Twin Strike and stack scarily - so rather than two attack rolls they get three in a round, which would be the equivalent of needing five targets in the burst (a lot easier said than done - three is readily doable but five's incredibly hard).

And I agree with nerfing Turn Undead - when a specific target power gets too strong, it makes its targets irrelevant. Close Burst 8 and seriously nasty effets on a minor action does that. Nerfing the damage as well was possibly too much. But that burst 8 was over the top.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, it seems a bit over-nerfed, but the concept was solid.

 

[Neverfate]

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/27650565/Divine_Oracle_NOT_Errataed!

So, it would appear costumer service says that there was in fact no "stealth errata" to Divine Oracle. I'm interested to see how this plays out. CS is good, but they have given out wrong info before.