The Path to Enlightenment

[Anthem]

How can you be good at all three aspects (melee/heal/casting) if you are a pure cleric? [...]

Specced for heal and CC, my main's DPS is pretty weak. Even with 36 build points and tomes, her strength now, at level 9 is just 20 with gear, which makes her melee DPS respectable, but far from uber.

In her past lives, the main equalizer has been vorp and save-or-die weapons (banish, smite, disrupt...). We clrs have enough to-hit, and with those weps we just have to touch the mobs often enough for them to proc.

Your Hold Person spell plus a weapon that does something brutal on the auto-crits (stat damage, bursts, etc.) brings "person" class mobs down in a real hurry too.

Your CC spells also allow you to 'melee' slowly but safely even through crowds if you're soloing. I know that's not the same as the DPS melee power you're asking about, but the results are there.

Short of some real specialty builds we won't come close to the true melee classes for direct DPS, but cleric combat is realistic and rewarding, if maybe a little expensive in gear.