Cleric (Templar) is Up

[Obryn]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Cleric (Templar))

It's been a long time since I've played a cleric or had one in my games, but the list of erratupdates is huge.

For one thing, it looks like the Radiant Servant finally got hit with the nerfbat.

For another thing, it looks like they changed some stuff to make Strength clerics more viable, but I really can't tell for certain.

So - talk to me. What do these changes mean?

-O

 

[keterys]

... wow, there are going to be a lot of unhappy clerics, for a fair number of different reasons.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Spiritual weapon is still implement vs AC... And now you don´t even get combat advantage for this attack...

the rest seems ok...

 

[hvg3akaek]

and turn undead? did they really have to make it suck quite so much?

d8's instead of d10's.

close burst 2 instead of close burst 2/5/8 (per tier)

and 1/2/3 dice of damage compared to 1/2/3/4/5/6.

So we go (at high epic) from 6d10 in burst 8 to 3d8 in burst 2... ouch!

 

[Aspeon]

And Consecrated Ground is no longer movable, which is both a nerf and an buff- nerf because it's immobile and the enemies can engage at a distance, buff because it removes the movable zone range restriction nobody remembers, so the cleric can go off in a corner and sustain it.

(They also continue to not answer the "is a dying character bloodied" question, but I don't want to derail this thread with that debate.)

So we go (at high epic) from 6d10 in burst 8 to 3d8 in burst 2... ouch!

Yeah- wonder if they'll hit the avenger and invoker with the same nerfbat in this month's general errata. They didn't get the area scaling, but they got the same damage progression.

 

[Neverfate]

I can't remember the last time I saw a Cleric using anything that wasn't from Divine Power. Also, nothing in the game scaled like Turn Undead and now nothing does. Haha.

 

[Aegeri]

Wow.

No idea where to begin on this! Some things there were much needed nerfs.

Others are just brutal.

Edit: Oh thanks Wizards. Knights lost one of the only ways to get an effective mark mechanic as well with Warpriest's Challenge being nerfed to 1/encounter.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

They nerfed a lot of burst sizes. Ouch.

Was the cleric that overpowered? I think not.

Next up: Twin Strike nerfing.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Looks like there were some tweaks to Strength clerics in there as well with some powers getting changed to melee weapon Str attacks instead of being Wisdom implement powers.

I'm glad the Radiant Servant the nerf. Too many charop radiant damage builds relied on it.

Looks like some of the Warpriest PP also got hit.

And, wow, yeah, Turn Undead (as well as a lot of other powers) got a big de-tuning, which, frankly, given those kinds of damage levels on a non-striker class, just needed to happen. Not that I've experienced any of it firsthand, but those changes were sound in principle.

 

[Aegeri]

I played with most of that broken stuff in my epic tier game Sorrow of Heaven, though I found warpriest dealable. Admittedly, Warpriest gets bad when you combine it with a defender that can make at-will attacks often. For example the Dwarf fighter in that campaign was making a CC and usually an OA against anything defying his mark (due to warpriest). Warpriest is now much reduced in power with this change for actual defenders.

Astral Storm being nerfed I don't regret going into the nerf bucket and neither am I sad to see turn undead nerfed either. Turn undead was pretty ridiculous at epic tier - especially when you could target immortals and elementals with it as well. A close burst 8 that did a hefty amount of damage as a minor action makes some *strikers* cry. Astral Storm was just ridiculous and was a better control power than some controllers, not sad to see it nerfed.

But this was pretty brutal, especially compared to how little they touched the much more imbalanced Warlord in comparison.

Edit: I cannot wait to see what they do to the ranger based on this. It's going to be a massacre.