Cleric (Templar) is Up

[Destil]

This is likely what they meant when they said the seeker and the artificer would be 'getting support'. Now they're both just as good as a cleric, see?

 

[Destil]

Also, a thought: does the dev team just tremendously overvalue AoE? Was that frost-cheese eratta way back actually to weaken the wizard, and not the rogue/ranger? I always assumed loosing the ability to use it with area attacks, I assumed the RAI, was a causality to balance out multi-attacks. But what if it's the other way around?

 

[Tony Vargas]

All I've heard from people is how well the Pre-E classes and the E classes work at the table together. Why are they even doing this if they work so great together?

There is a difference between working well enough side-by-side at the table, and meshing mechanically. One player can play a TWF Ranger and one a Slayer, and there are no problems. But if the Ranger wants to MC to Slayer, there'll be problems, while there's no problem with the TWF Ranger MCing to 4e Fighter.

I still don't get the difference in flavor between Warpriests and Battle Clerics. Someone give more explanation? There was already, but it wasn't enough. Thankx

There is no real flavor or conceptual difference. The Warpriest and Battle Cleric are both divine warriors who favor smashing their enemies with weapons over waving symbols at them and chanting. The differences are mechanical: the Warpriest uses WIS, the Battle Cleric uses STR. The Battle Cleric chooses it's powers from a list (that's signficantly smaller than the Devoted Cleric's power list), the Warpriest gets fixed powers based upon a single choice of Domain.

The same is true of the Slayer and Greatweapon Fighter, the Knight and Guardian Fighter, the Enchanter and the Orb of Imposition Wizard, the Illusionist and the Orb of Deception Wizard, the Evoker and the Wand of Accuracy Wizard, and the Theif and Artful Dodger Rogue.

 

[Mengu]

Also, a thought: does the dev team just tremendously overvalue AoE?

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.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just look at the article, they reprinted Healing Word and it now doesn't have the divine keyword. There is no more RAIing you way around it. If a power, feature or similar needed the divine keyword for healing, it no longer works with healing word. It completely sucks, but that is the way it works and they have reprinted it sans divine keyword so that is as good as it gets official errata wise.

This is a bit of an understatement.

Especially because even when I had a cleric abusing ALL of this stuff just about, he was nowhere near a Warlord in encounter breaking. If you've never seen an epic level warlord you just have no concept of how much they can destroy encounters trivially. Warlords already have a massive impact simply by ensuring that PCs will go first more regularly in encounters - let alone their ridiculous PPs (Battle Captain) and some powers. I mean they changed Warpriest and Radiant Servant, yet didn't change Divine Oracle (which is actually more broken). Thinking back, they changed virtually nothing significant about the Warlord and didn't take any time to nerf Battle Captain - which deserved it WAY more than Warpriest/Radiant Servant did.

There is just no thought or logic behind this, as clerics were about the middle of the pack in terms of leaders anyway.

Agreed, though honestly for whatever reason nobody has gone for the really hard core cleric builds in any of my games, so I defer to others on the relative potency vs warlord. Certainly seems like the warlord is FAR better than the STR cleric I have seen in this kind of situation (which was still pretty potent using Angelic Avenger in paragon). A bit sad that she won't get a boost to her Spiritual Weapon, but it is still a pretty nice power even with the accuracy being low just the guaranteed CA for all the other characters is nice, and they all have developed a way to take advantage of that.

Well, one thing we can say is that they have plenty of chances to make tweaks. Just because they haven't fixed Divine Oracle YET doesn't mean they won't. They still have a chance to go back and update Warlord more too I suppose. At least now they're in DDI in PDF.

 

[tiornys]

Divine Oracle has been stealth nerfed; according to the Compendium, the level 16 feature only applies to Cleric and Divine Oracle attacks.

t~

edit: FYI, latest word is that info was incorrectly entered into the Compendium, and the path did not get this errata after all.

 

[Camelot]

So the leaders defend the temple, and the defenders lead the charge against the enemy?

Ha, I didn't think of it that way. You know, thinking back on it, it's really dependent on the character and how he or she uses the class features. Clerics and paladins both can be stay-at-home or outgoing, and they might even have the same goals, but their methods are still very different, and that determines what class a character is.

On the discussion, I think this is way out of proportion. The cleric was not made into a useless blob. Several problematic powers were reduced in power because they've always needed to be reduced in power, and the new templar is something perfectly viable and compatible with everything else. Maybe it seems weak because other overpowered options have yet to be reduced, so you have three options. 1) Ignore the updates. 2) Use the updates and fix the other things that make it weak yourself with house rules. 3) Use the updates with everything else and find new broken combinations to exploit.

 

[MrGrenadine]

Regardless of the wisdom in the errata itself, I have a big problem with the way things are being updated--bit by bit, in a constant, slow drip, over months and months....

In my industry, digital tools made production faster, easier and cheaper, which is generally a good thing. Before this, changes to work--especially late in a production cycle--were often very expensive, and sometimes impossible. But one downside of the digital tools is that you may have to work with people who think that the fact that something can be changed fairly quickly and easily means that it should....always....at the last minute....and then maybe changed again, or changed back. It can be maddening.

Just because something can be changed, doesn't mean it should be changed.

I for one would like to see a moratorium on game-changing updates and errata for a while. Keep 'em to yourselves, R&D, and when you have a large number of important changes, that have been weighed against one another and balanced, and that add up to a significant update to the system, release them together as a revised edition of the game.

That way, the changes can easily be recognized and understood in a big-picture way, and campaigns can decide for themselves what changes they want to incorporate or ignore.

But this new edition by a thousand cuts--adding and revising feats, changing monster stats, adding and deleting class features, renaming things on an apparent whim--is truly frustrating. Maybe the character I've been playing for months will be viable tomorrow, and maybe it won't--I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

I want the game to feel solid, well-planned, rigorously tested and stable, and the current state of affairs--especially in light of stealth errata like the Healing Word change--makes the game feel quite the opposite.

 

[Droogie128]

Regardless of the wisdom in the errata itself, I have a big problem with the way things are being updated--bit by bit, in a constant, slow drip, over months and months....

In my industry, digital tools made production faster, easier and cheaper, which is generally a good thing. Before this, changes to work--especially late in a production cycle--were often very expensive, and sometimes impossible. But one downside of the digital tools is that you may have to work with people who think that the fact that something can be changed fairly quickly and easily means that it should....always....at the last minute....and then maybe changed again, or changed back. It can be maddening.

Just because something can be changed, doesn't mean it should be changed.

I for one would like to see a moratorium on game-changing updates and errata for a while. Keep 'em to yourselves, R&D, and when you have a large number of important changes, that have been weighed against one another and balanced, and that add up to a significant update to the system, release them together as a revised edition of the game.

That way, the changes can easily be recognized and understood in a big-picture way, and campaigns can decide for themselves what changes they want to incorporate or ignore.

But this new edition by a thousand cuts--adding and revising feats, changing monster stats, adding and deleting class features, renaming things on an apparent whim--is truly frustrating. Maybe the character I've been playing for months will be viable tomorrow, and maybe it won't--I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

I want the game to feel solid, well-planned, rigorously tested and stable, and the current state of affairs--especially in light of stealth errata like the Healing Word change--makes the game feel quite the opposite.

It was really changed in Heroes of the Fallen Lands with the Warpriest. Healing Word doesn't have the Divine keyword in there. This did cause some debate, but the Templar made it official, I guess.

As far as the slowly trickling these updates out. Couldn't agree more. A lot of people like to plan their characters far ahead, and this prevents that. Especially if you play in LFR. However, with the way the Templar turned out, I'd like for them to just leave it alone at this point. They clearly don't know how their own system works.

The Warlock is next month, and I would never build one at this point thinking the article will possibly completely invalidate every option I choose.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Regardless of the wisdom in the errata itself, I have a big problem with the way things are being updated--bit by bit, in a constant, slow drip, over months and months....

In my industry, digital tools made production faster, easier and cheaper, which is generally a good thing.

Nod. Maybe it's to sell DDI. Maybe it's to pad Dragon content. Maybe the just lack the development resources to do more?

I for one would like to see a moratorium on game-changing updates and errata for a while.

A year at a time'd be good. Thing is, if that's how they did it, people could subscribe to DDI once a year, right after the updates, and yoink 'em all. 1/12th revenue compared to stringing 'em along.

I want the game to feel solid, well-planned, rigorously tested and stable, and the current state of affairs--especially in light of stealth errata like the Healing Word change--makes the game feel quite the opposite.

When WotC first bought TSR, there was a fear that they'd turn D&D into Magic:the Gathering. I think we're getting there. M:tG exists in a constant state of rules dis-equilibrium, with multiple sorts of play, new sets, classic sets, errata, etc. That's were D&D is getting to be, too. The game changes constantly, the new stuff shoulders asside the old, demanding to be bought, and organized play encourages competativeness...