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Not Much Ado About Bless
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<blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8610240" data-attributes="member: 6799660"><p>Well first and foremost, although it's not quite the same as complaining about [being powerful], no one seems to think that <em>bless </em>is not-powerful, so it really could be an issue about attention span. Or people just looked at it and thought, <em>'yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable tier 1 go-to spell for a class (let me do a thread on how Hunter's Mark sucks as a go-to ranger spell, or Cleric's tier 2 go-to spell...).'</em></p><p></p><p>However, I think there are other points of nuance. One being that, at least for clerics*, you rather quickly run into other spells which require concentration. Spirit Guardians** in tiers 2-3 for sure, but also the Shield of Faith you cast on your non-shield-using front-liner instead, or <em>Enhance Ability</em> or <em>Hold Person</em>. The timeframe where Bless isn't actively competing with lots of other situationally good spells (which in combination can crowd it out) is small. It's also the level range where 1) enemies are casting fewer save-or-suck effects (certainly the ones which can really wreck your day), and 2) most of your comrades don't have feats. The later one means that the +1d4 to-hit is just DPR through misses avoided, not setting up a PAM-GWM or archeryFS-ElvenACC-SS-XBE combo-wombo (or whatever extreme example I could come up with). Mind you, misses avoided is super-helpful (and likely more effectiveness in the long run), but hardly sexy. And sexy is what inspires people to call out something as too-good.</p><p><em><span style="font-size: 9px">*and paladins and others who natively get bless, there are action economy concerns as others have mentioned</span></em></p><p><em><span style="font-size: 9px">**And this spell clearly takes up a lot of proverbial oxygen in discussion of Cleric spells</span></em></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px">Sample size/benefit-over-group might also be an issue. I doubt it is because it competes with <em>healing word</em> for slots (at least for people who use regular rest frequency), as those are apparently rarely in jeopardy. </span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Willie the Duck, post: 8610240, member: 6799660"] Well first and foremost, although it's not quite the same as complaining about [being powerful], no one seems to think that [I]bless [/I]is not-powerful, so it really could be an issue about attention span. Or people just looked at it and thought, [I]'yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable tier 1 go-to spell for a class (let me do a thread on how Hunter's Mark sucks as a go-to ranger spell, or Cleric's tier 2 go-to spell...).'[/I] However, I think there are other points of nuance. One being that, at least for clerics*, you rather quickly run into other spells which require concentration. Spirit Guardians** in tiers 2-3 for sure, but also the Shield of Faith you cast on your non-shield-using front-liner instead, or [I]Enhance Ability[/I] or [I]Hold Person[/I]. The timeframe where Bless isn't actively competing with lots of other situationally good spells (which in combination can crowd it out) is small. It's also the level range where 1) enemies are casting fewer save-or-suck effects (certainly the ones which can really wreck your day), and 2) most of your comrades don't have feats. The later one means that the +1d4 to-hit is just DPR through misses avoided, not setting up a PAM-GWM or archeryFS-ElvenACC-SS-XBE combo-wombo (or whatever extreme example I could come up with). Mind you, misses avoided is super-helpful (and likely more effectiveness in the long run), but hardly sexy. And sexy is what inspires people to call out something as too-good. [I][SIZE=1]*and paladins and others who natively get bless, there are action economy concerns as others have mentioned **And this spell clearly takes up a lot of proverbial oxygen in discussion of Cleric spells[/SIZE][/I] [SIZE=4]Sample size/benefit-over-group might also be an issue. I doubt it is because it competes with [I]healing word[/I] for slots (at least for people who use regular rest frequency), as those are apparently rarely in jeopardy. [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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Not Much Ado About Bless
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