Cleric (Templar) is Up

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup, gotta agree. TU was far and away the most effective CD. It is still going to be a pretty good choice, but at least now someone MIGHT pick something else.

And nobody has even mentioned all the bonus damage you can toss onto Radiant, and other effects.

Astral Wave was a bit silly too. Burst 8... yeah. Honestly, after reviewing several high level clerics that I've played with none of them are going to be really seriously hurt by this nerf anyway. Clerics still have plenty of good options.

 

[pauljathome]

The Character Builder is not a rules resource and is irrelevant in these discussions. The only valid rules resources are the online compendium - albeit I will grant you it's hilariously wrong on a whole ton of things now - books (Rules Compendium) and official errata documents. Healing Word never saw any of these things and people debated if it still had the divine keyword due to the lack of errata (and the fact the first PRINTED version did). Now they have reprinted it without the divine keyword for the templar it is an official rules change.

The CB is irrelevant.

Of course the CB is relevant. Its what people use to make characters. Do you really think that most people spend hours pouring over the hundreds of pages of errata and very carefully look up every power in the Compendium in order to make sure that everything is exactly right?

No. They create the character in the CB and print it out. And what it says on the sheet is what they think their powers can do. And thats actually arguably about the only sane approach a GM can take unless they wish to spend immense amounts of time vetting characters

 

[Aegeri]

Of course the CB is relevant.

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. Where the CB doesn't agree with an actual published rules resource or doesn't work correctly (which is also frequent) - the published rules resource always wins.

Because the CB is *not* a rules resource and where it contradicts the written rule, ONLY the written rule matters.

Edit: I don't mean to sound so harsh, but it comes up so often that people think if the CB does something it's actually the official rule, when its the complete opposite. The CB is quite buggy and is prone to being confused on how some rules work. It is not a rules resource and should *not* be used as one.

 

[Destil]

Once you get your basics covered, you still have some extra feats to play with, and it's far from ridiculous to spend two to make your minor-action gigantic high-damage, potent-control attack cover over half the available monsters in the game.

It also needs a third feat to get turned into a minor action.

...

At a close burst 8 with impressive damage and a minor action, it was really ridiculous. There was never any other reason to use any other CD.

I asked, specifically, on the WotC boards for the rule of three questions if it was the case that Turn Undead was nerfed as heavily as it was because of feats and such that can enhance it (well, I was more tactful, but it was still a leading question that'll never get picked).

Because that's terrible. If turn undead is okay without three feats supporting it and broken with them, which is the problem? Which should be erratated? Fix the feats. I weep for all the at-wills that will be nerfed to the ground in the future to balance Versatile Master.

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.

 

[Colmarr]

Hope you like healer's mercy.

Divine Fortune doesn't get the respect it deserves IMO.

My 13th level battle cleric of a war god has never really spent much time fighting undead (perhaps 15 encounters in 13 levels), and I didn't like the idea of spending a round every encounter weakened, so he's spent most of his career using Divine Fortune as his channel divinity.

+1 to attack is negligible but with Greater Divine Fortune it becomes +3, which is nothing to sneeze at. Between that and the human racial Heroic Effort, my cleric rarely misses.

There's another feat that makes Divine Fortune close burst 1, and the concept of giving 2 or 3 melee characters +3 to hit with a free action makes me more than a little giddy.

 

[Droogie128]

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.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You made a claim that M:TG has been a significant influence on D&D since WotC took over.

Ah, I see, you were taking issue with /just/ the first scentence or so of my post, not with the actual point I was trying to make.

To clarify, I never made that claim. I said that there had been a fear that such would happen, not that it had been going on the whole time. It's only more recently that we've seen things actually trending that way, as with Fortune Cards, for instance, or the 'exception based design' and heavy use of keywords of 4e (which, really, worked out better than I expected).

 

[Zaran]

I see too many people complaining about all the Errata. I LIKE getting errata for DnD. I think the game SHOULD be adjusted until it's perfect and I feel that there still needs to be changes done. That being said, I find it funny that they would nerf the cleric so badly and not do more for it being a dual stat class.

Everything I see makes me think that they want us to move to Essentials by making everything else unattractive. These Class Acts were supposed to make the Core Classes more compatible with Essentials not more obsolete.

 

[Zaran]

In general practice, even 28 x 28 maps a cleric could generally position to hit most or all monsters in an encounter.

Why shouldn't a cleric be able to do this though? They are supposed to be anti-Undead specialists and being able to decimate an army of dead is what an Epic level cleric should be able to do.

 

[Aegeri]

Why shouldn't a cleric be able to do this though? They are supposed to be anti-Undead specialists and being able to decimate an army of dead is what an Epic level cleric should be able to do.

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.