"battle" = fail?

[Gol]

There is no such thing as a bad character, only bad players.
...
Builds with "battle" in the title seem to cause most of the bad stuff in the above 3 items to happen when I am around. Namely the Battle Cleric and the Warchanter Bard.

The combination of those 2 lines negates any valid points you could have possible made.

/fail

[scampb]

After playing for a while, I have come to realize a few things:

1) There is no such thing as a bad character, only bad players.
i.e. even the most 'gimped' builds can shine in the right hands, while even the best planned toon can get parties wiped without fail

2) Most quests succeed or fail when mistakes snowball to the point where the party either pulls together or gives up.
This make or break point happens most often with inexperience; either in the particular quest, or with your role in the party.

3) '1s' happen.
Even with the best gear and intentions, Murphy steps in and ruins the fun. What happens next is what really matters.

Which leads me to the real point of this post. Builds with "battle" in the title seem to cause most of the bad stuff in the above 3 items to happen when I am around. Namely the Battle Cleric and the Warchanter Bard. What causes this?
In my own view of the game, there is a much better battle cleric build out there. (Light red already has a name...pink) namely Paladins. If you are looking for a divine spellcaster that can raise the dead, heal your (self) friends, and buff the party that can really mix it up in melee, choose PALADIN. They are everything a battle cleric tries to be and more. Battle clerics, please stop confusing things by showing up to fill the 'healer' role and not healing. You built that character to be self-reliant, right?

And as for the oh so popular warchanter bard...figure it out already and stop doing what your build is not meant to do: tanking. DR/- 5 does not a tank make. Also, DR/-5 is not all that great anymore by the time you get it. The classes that really need DR get it themselves, and as for the ones that don't, they won't be taking too many hits that will be mitigated by a puny 5 DR. As far as I can tell, the best thing a warchanter can do is sing his (not usually) enhanced like crazy inspire courage song and stand in the back to give the casters something to hide behind long enough to AoE what gets by the actual tanks to death. I only need you to get anywhere near the main combat line once every 4-5 minutes to refresh the melee buff. (yes, if it is done right it is a pretty buff)

For some reason though, the battle clerics forget how to be clerics, and the warchanters forget how to chant, leaving the party without heals because a)you don't do that, or b)you took so much damage that you used up what we had. And when a party is without heals, observation 2 from above gets dropped on the party when it could have been an otherwise smooth run through even the most feared quests.

So, can somebody either explain to me what the point of a battle cleric is, or why warchanter is so awesome? Or if you are thinking about rolling one of them, bear this in mind before you do so that you might avoid the mistakes that all too many of your peers make around me.

Seriously Dags, you haven't been playing long enough to make broad statements like these. I don't even make statements like these. Although my characters are getting better and better with each build, it is only because I learn from those around me. You have a lot to learn about battle clerics and warchanters. Gee, I wonder also if the rogue should sit back and only do traps in your eyes? The problem is you get spoiled by those that play healbot and enjoy it. You can stand in a fight and melee without concern cuz your getting healed constantly. I suggest you learn how to play your melee more effectively.

[Impaqt]

It's a bit off topic, but I'm interested in how a party can recover in VoN 5 after someone swan dives into the lava with the voice.

Havent tried it myself yet, but I would be DIvine Intervention would alow the cleric to swim down to get it.

ASside from that, a High HP tank with FIresheild, Fire Protect and decent Resist can swim down and get it as well. (I've done it without FIreshield as well)

[cdemeritt]

After playing for a while, I have come to realize a few things:

1) There is no such thing as a bad character, only bad players.
i.e. even the most 'gimped' builds can shine in the right hands, while even the best planned toon can get parties wiped without fail

While I agree with this to a point, there are some builds even the best players would have trouble making sing.... (the 6 con elf barbarian, or the Sorc 10/rogue 6/cleric 4 comes to mind). However, Impaqt could take my worst gimp, and make him look like the best creation ever, and most likely I could take his best build and make it look a gimp. Yes player skill trumps 95% of build flaws, but not all of them.

However:
Battlecleric != Bad cleric
Healbot != good cleric

[taurean430]

It's a bit off topic, but I'm interested in how a party can recover in VoN 5 after someone swan dives into the lava with the voice.

I've only had to do this once since I started playing, but this is how it happened.

The party leader who; was a bit deep in his cups, and debating with a rogue in the party, ran into the lava in the control room section. My wizzy got the stone, voice, and ring back by:

1. Fire Resist
2. Protection From Elements
3. False Life
4. Target Object
5. Dive while spamming the 'e' button, which autograbs what you have targeted.
6. jumped out of lava, healed self

Rinsed, repeated until I had everything. And I kept the ring and voice for the rest of part 5, lol...

[sigtrent]

The OP starts well and then trips on its own feet.

Paladins are not party healers: You can build one as a healer, but its not a good plan. They have some "emergency countermeasures" and they can self heal somewhat and that is it. They are a high defense or situational DPS class.

Battle Clerics are a diverse lot: They range from self healing fighters, to clerics that have 14 str. The only ones that truly fail in my opinion are those who think they can get better DPS with cleric buffs than with a combat class. That just doesn't work. What does work is making a cleric that isn't a pushover in melee. A cleric that can and does fight is far better than one that simply follows around throwing heals.

Warchanters are awesome: They not only support the party but they fight really well. At low levels they do need to exercise some caution as thier HP will often be a little low. I'd wager the problem those groups had is the warchanter was better DPS than anyone else in the group and they pulled more agro than they could handle. More a sign the combat characters were not so hot than the warchanter was a bad build.

I'd say that if you haven't played the builds, try not to opine on them too much.

[taurean430]

Of course, when you make it to end game content you pretty much have it figured out. The level range between 5-10 for free to play (like I am) is where the quests become hard enough to require a party (assuming you are planning on doing them on higher than normal difficulty) and that is where my trouble with these 2 builds comes from.
Yes, a good player can make a pure int/cha fighter stomp everything in their way, but even an average player should be successful with most builds as long as they realize what it is supposed to do. So yes, I agree with your sentiment Anjila, what matters most is the player behind the toon. As far as the warchanter goes (in the low-mid level ranges) you NEED to know what you are doing or things will go south quickly. Self buffing is about all you can handle with a warchanter at those levels (outside of song) and the warchanters I have come across put all too much reliance on the /-5. If the point of the warchanter is to sing, displace, and DPS, then that sounds good. I am just not seeing that happen in the level ranges indicated.

And taurean, it is not that i need a healbot to follow me around, I just need there to be a little bit of health there for when the '1s' start showing up. (failed saves mostly) Yes, any build could soak all the Heal SP, but the 2 I am talking about here seem to cause most of it to dissapear at the level ranges stated. Both of the builds could contribute positively to the heals available in the party, but what I have seen (and maybe I just never come across a battle cleric or warchanter worth their salt) instills the desire to say what I said as a wake up call, and to get some intellegent discourse going on the topic.

Dkyle: My understanding of what a battle cleric is supposed to do is pretty much a description of paladin. Yes, paladins make lousy healers, but so do battle clerics. If I am wrong, let me know; but what I have read seems to indicate that battle clerics will be doing almost nil for healing also. Thats fine, I just think that if you want melee go melee, and if you want to do it the hard way, you are going to have to seriously evaluate your own abilities and figure out if you can really make the build do what it is designed to do (or not do).

So far, thank you for the input. I did not realise that most warchanter builds are 'supposed to' add DPS. I just usually see them rely on ironskin and sword-n-board til they splat. And for some reason, about half of the battle clerics I see can't even keep themselves healed, much less contribute to the cause.
I will hold out hope that someday I can see one of these builds played right so that I can glory in the awesome that they should(?) be.

On any of the toons that I make in this game, the primary goal is to be as self sufficient as is possible. This eliminates any frustration when a person who has ability to heal you chooses not to. Because really, whether imo the decision to heal is wrong/right/something entirely different, it doesn't matter. They are going to play the way they want to. I've found myself feeling badly for another player who chose to have no options to heal their damage when they aren't getting heals. And I've seen more than a few people playing clerics or favored souls that choose not to heal others. It never effects me because I find ways to keep myself healed on any toon I play. This has been true since my first badly built fighter/wizard all the way to the bard I started up a few days ago.

I'm assuming that you are a newer player like myself. And there is nothing wrong with that. Self healing only goes so far, and as the content gets harder (enemies doing much more damage per attack on you), it becomes that much more important to have someone that is able to bail you out if you bite off too big a mouthful. You must keep in mind however, that there are two sides to that coin. How you play becomes as much as of contributing factor as your choice of class.

The F2P quests can be rather chaotic at times. It's because that's where the majority of the new players are. Anyone experimenting with what their choice in a toon can do is definitely going to make some errors. I've made some nice ones myself, and laugh about it often when trying to explain something to another new player. I've taken my favored soul through all of that content a total of 4 times now. I still have plenty of 'noob' moments. I'm just fortunate that the guild that lets me hang out clarifies those things for me. And it's a melee build that party heals as well. I think one of the biggest parts of the learning curve in this game is coming to the realization that an icon is not equal to what a character does. It's just better to ask tactfully if they can meet the expectation you had in mind.

Also, at the levels you are playing at... hell, even in end game content I've seen to date, bard songs are a HUGE multiplier in party dps. Some can heal some too, and just about all of them can pick up a weapon and be very effective. It's not the class you should be bashing. Perhaps taking a closer look at what choices the player is making with that class is key. Even on the subject of battle clerics, I'd rather have one in my party than a healbot any day. Or an evoking cleric who nukes things before my melee guy can respond to the threat.

My suggestion to limit your frustration is to try a little harder at making you the primary factor in whether you live or die in a quest. Not placing that squarely on the shoulders of someone learning the ropes of party healing. I think you'll have a lot more fun playing...

[Dags2171]

The OP starts well and then trips on its own feet.

Paladins are not party healers: You can build one as a healer, but its not a good plan. They have some "emergency countermeasures" and they can self heal somewhat and that is it. They are a high defense or situational DPS class.

Battle Clerics are a diverse lot: They range from self healing fighters, to clerics that have 14 str. The only ones that truly fail in my opinion are those who think they can get better DPS with cleric buffs than with a combat class. That just doesn't work. What does work is making a cleric that isn't a pushover in melee. A cleric that can and does fight is far better than one that simply follows around throwing heals.

Warchanters are awesome: They not only support the party but they fight really well. At low levels they do need to exercise some caution as thier HP will often be a little low. I'd wager the problem those groups had is the warchanter was better DPS than anyone else in the group and they pulled more agro than they could handle. More a sign the combat characters were not so hot than the warchanter was a bad build.

I'd say that if you haven't played the builds, try not to opine on them too much.

Finally someone who can make sense of the opposing points in the first post.

Yes, if you have not figured it out yet, the battle cleric - paladin comparison is based on a decent wis/cha paladin vs a cleric who only thinks of melee; the one you say (and I agree) that does not work. I did not mean to say that any paladin can heal just as well as any non-healbot cleric, just that for what most people I have had the (mis)fortune of grouping with's definition of battle cleric does not have much more to offer in the way of heals than a reasonable paladin build.

For some reason, almost all of you seem to think that all I want to see are healbot clerics, that is not the case at all. While they are a boon on TS, they are not the be-all-end-all of what a divine caster should be. Let me restate this as clearly as possible: I not wants only teh healz clerics, me likey all workey cleric.

Yes, you probably also hit the nail on the head with your summary of the warchanters I have dealt with. Perhaps watching too many inexperienced players not grasp the concept of aggro control/survivablilty has left me with a bad taste in my mouth as far as warchanters are concerned. When I said all they should do was be a buff machine, that is the bare minimum. Yes, everybody should be able to contribute to combat somehow. The reason I have such a problem with the warchanter build is that the learning curve with their PrE limitations seems to hit the pass/fail point in my key level ranges. Monks have a similar mortality rate around level 5-7 when they find out the hard way that they are not bulletproof anymore.

Honestly, I have played most of the classes up through PrE I or its equivalent with as many different lines as I can stand, exception being FvS(the whole free to play thing). Most of them can bring something worthwhile to a party that is hard to cope with if you don't have it. I have learned a great deal about what warchanters can do from all of your responses, but I still have yet to see very many players below level 12 pull off the build, and thats a shame.
And to touch back on the cleric thing to wrap up, I would like to see more of the in-between builds. The clerics that cannot move without a party (pure heal) and the cleric that thinks it is a barbarian (pure melee) get old, I just have a bigger problem with the latter than the former.

[Gunga]

Other people in this thread have way more gumption than I to point out your inconsistencies and logic failures.

So, I'll just say:

No.

[Torilin]

"Battle Cleric" is viable if the player can play it, I suspect most people build "battle clerics" because they feel they need a way to solo quest. Honestly though you want to learn to play this game from the ground floor build a healing based cleric and make sure party members hook you up with a wand or 2 or maybe even a scroll.

It is always the player behind the character, but my stance has always been be self reliant, and if u want to build a melee build a melee.

[OldAquarian]

1) Yes, there are bad builds
- BattleCleric and Warchanter are just not in that category
- a build that leaves CON at 6 is hard to play well
- mixing Wiz and Sorc is bad
- mixing Pally and Barb is very bad - especially if you think you can
- most builds are average - thats okay - thats what average means
- many people seem to not have a build as much as just choosing what to do when the game says it's time to level, those that actually play a build seem to be way ahead of the curve

2) Bad players tend to flock together

3) A PuG stops being fun when people start expecting anything from it

[vVAnjilaVv]

Of course, when you make it to end game content you pretty much have it figured out. The level range between 5-10 for free to play (like I am) is where the quests become hard enough to require a party (assuming you are planning on doing them on higher than normal difficulty) and that is where my trouble with these 2 builds comes from.
Yes, a good player can make a pure int/cha fighter stomp everything in their way, but even an average player should be successful with most builds as long as they realize what it is supposed to do. So yes, I agree with your sentiment Anjila, what matters most is the player behind the toon. As far as the warchanter goes (in the low-mid level ranges) you NEED to know what you are doing or things will go south quickly. Self buffing is about all you can handle with a warchanter at those levels (outside of song) and the warchanters I have come across put all too much reliance on the /-5. If the point of the warchanter is to sing, displace, and DPS, then that sounds good. I am just not seeing that happen in the level ranges indicated.

And taurean, it is not that i need a healbot to follow me around, I just need there to be a little bit of health there for when the '1s' start showing up. (failed saves mostly) Yes, any build could soak all the Heal SP, but the 2 I am talking about here seem to cause most of it to dissapear at the level ranges stated. Both of the builds could contribute positively to the heals available in the party, but what I have seen (and maybe I just never come across a battle cleric or warchanter worth their salt) instills the desire to say what I said as a wake up call, and to get some intellegent discourse going on the topic.

Dkyle: My understanding of what a battle cleric is supposed to do is pretty much a description of paladin. Yes, paladins make lousy healers, but so do battle clerics. If I am wrong, let me know; but what I have read seems to indicate that battle clerics will be doing almost nil for healing also. Thats fine, I just think that if you want melee go melee, and if you want to do it the hard way, you are going to have to seriously evaluate your own abilities and figure out if you can really make the build do what it is designed to do (or not do).

So far, thank you for the input. I did not realise that most warchanter builds are 'supposed to' add DPS. I just usually see them rely on ironskin and sword-n-board til they splat. And for some reason, about half of the battle clerics I see can't even keep themselves healed, much less contribute to the cause.
I will hold out hope that someday I can see one of these builds played right so that I can glory in the awesome that they should(?) be.

OMG...seriously your reply to me is a complete and utter insult. You are F2P and have been playing for how long........I have been playing for well over three years......and while I agree I do not know everything......you clearly do not know much at all. Please don't talk down to me like I don't know what I am talking about....it is really insulting.

Just as I am sure you have probably insulted all kinds of people who read these forums with this whole thread.

This is a primary example of why so many f2p's are shunned by vets.

Also BTW what you have to say about a WARCHANTER between level 5-10 is completely erroneous. Self buff....LOL....by level 8 they can cast Good Hope..aoe party buff....haste, blur, and displacement. By that time because of the enhancement of the prestige line to their songs they are also adding a lot of dps to the whole party with just their songs. And BTW, dr 5/- is pretty big in low to mid levels.......things do not hit that hard yet and that mitigates a lot of damage.

Honestly.....you are not a victim of bad battle clerics and warchanters......you are a victim of the low-mid level range population which at this point is flooded with f2p players who just simply do not know the game well enough yet. You can call that an elitist vet remark all you want...but the truth is the truth. I guarantee you before EU went live, a warchanter or battle cleric that was playing the way you suggest was not getting in groups.

Your taking a specific type of build and bashing it because u ran with a couple bad ones....if you have even run with any at all.....so far ur whole thread has been off for the most part....I wouldn't doubt your in-game experiences are too.

What this whole thing boils down too....is you playing with not necessarily bad....but probably often inexperienced players......if u want things to get better....pony up and get into the higher levels.........that's where you will start to meet more players who "know their roles"...and I use that term loosely.

The low to mid level grind is a nightmare right now if ur pugging......and it hardly has anything to do with "battle builds"

Inexperienced people bashing viable builds on the forums = fail.

[Shaftronics]

God. More people to smear the good name beginners like me try to build.

I have a Battle Cleric up to level 13-ish, somewhat capped after doing all the f2p quests on an f2p account (not my main that has Gianthold) and I'll tell you this; The journey to making one up to that level has been an AMAZING experience. The lessons, the mistakes you make and how you fix them, how the lives of 5 other party members are in YOUR hands while you are potentially out-DPS-ing the nab Fighter who has his stats built wrongly.

There are a very few rare cases where the healer has done a phenomenal job and we thank him/her for it. But USUALLY in most Pugs, its pretty much as expect as to what the Cleric has to do. But eh...

Trust me. I very much enjoy proving the people who go "we need another cleric" for Tempest Spine or the "kick cuz he can't heal" while I lead on the kill counts AND keep everyone's ass alive. Its a total boost for me, as well as having more options to grief certain people who get the party in a risk of a wipe if they're alive. (Not healing, not ressurecting).

I have a Paladin up to level 15. He gets treated like any Fighter, just that he has 4-5 "extra heals" when I feel like being a daredevil and rushing in or keeping the poor healer alive when a noob fails up. More options to heal and I save the cleric's mana, as well as the ability to cast resists and stuff. But the point is, I barely have enough SP to keep MYSELF up to buffs, much less everyone else in the party.

I have a warchanter up to level 8. Wonderful little daredevil with healing wands, blur and heroism with his own songs and rage. Much more fun than the builds above since you don't have much responsibility, if at all. =p

[hecate355]

Everything is already said out, original post is nonsense, nothing essentially wrong with warchanters at midlevels. Mine was easiest thing to play next to my dps paladin. You think extended rage, displacement, haste, some +6 per damage song, enough to hit to swing at anything with power attack on is some sort of weird and funny decoration? Do us a favor and actually try playing builds you comment about. If they still suck, go back, reroll and find out what you did wrong, instead of bashing builds.

At mid levels, decent warchanter is way above any pure melee, they have awesome buffs, and best selfheal among dps chars in that range. Your somewhat lower hps only pay you back when you do something idiotic and even then you can probably patch it all up by yourself.

[Kyrn]

When a bad player runs ahead, agros everything, then comes running back (screaming "heal me" is optional) to the party with 20+ mobs in tow.

Crowd control.

Dying in lava in Von 5 while holding the Voice still fubar the party?

High HP character, fire protection, fire resistance, throw heals. (unless said person fell in that other lava area, which I would find it unlikely)

[GhoulsTouch]

After playing for a while, I have come to realize a few things:

1) There is no such thing as a bad character, only bad players.
i.e. even the most 'gimped' builds can shine in the right hands, while even the best planned toon can get parties wiped without fail

2) Most quests succeed or fail when mistakes snowball to the point where the party either pulls together or gives up.
This make or break point happens most often with inexperience; either in the particular quest, or with your role in the party.

3) '1s' happen.
Even with the best gear and intentions, Murphy steps in and ruins the fun. What happens next is what really matters.

Which leads me to the real point of this post. Builds with "battle" in the title seem to cause most of the bad stuff in the above 3 items to happen when I am around. Namely the Battle Cleric and the Warchanter Bard. What causes this?
In my own view of the game, there is a much better battle cleric build out there. (Light red already has a name...pink) namely Paladins. If you are looking for a divine spellcaster that can raise the dead, heal your (self) friends, and buff the party that can really mix it up in melee, choose PALADIN. They are everything a battle cleric tries to be and more. Battle clerics, please stop confusing things by showing up to fill the 'healer' role and not healing. You built that character to be self-reliant, right?

And as for the oh so popular warchanter bard...figure it out already and stop doing what your build is not meant to do: tanking. DR/- 5 does not a tank make. Also, DR/-5 is not all that great anymore by the time you get it. The classes that really need DR get it themselves, and as for the ones that don't, they won't be taking too many hits that will be mitigated by a puny 5 DR. As far as I can tell, the best thing a warchanter can do is sing his (not usually) enhanced like crazy inspire courage song and stand in the back to give the casters something to hide behind long enough to AoE what gets by the actual tanks to death. I only need you to get anywhere near the main combat line once every 4-5 minutes to refresh the melee buff. (yes, if it is done right it is a pretty buff)

For some reason though, the battle clerics forget how to be clerics, and the warchanters forget how to chant, leaving the party without heals because a)you don't do that, or b)you took so much damage that you used up what we had. And when a party is without heals, observation 2 from above gets dropped on the party when it could have been an otherwise smooth run through even the most feared quests.

So, can somebody either explain to me what the point of a battle cleric is, or why warchanter is so awesome? Or if you are thinking about rolling one of them, bear this in mind before you do so that you might avoid the mistakes that all too many of your peers make around me.

A battle cleric is one that can take some abuse so he can be on the frontlines to mass heal because its cheaper on mana, and also swing a weapon since he is up there anyway. His blade barrier centers around him after all. Should your tanks need to step out or other critters want to step in the safest place either of you could be is by each other's side...

Now let me ask you something, if you arent being healed why aren't you getting the heck out of dodge? Too often I see warriors that dont think a healer sees combat, gets held, needs to defend themselves etc. Like they are somewhere else in another world and made just to heal them in a soft and fluffy cloud. There are more stupid non divine casters that dont do any type of self healing at all out there then there are incompetent clerics...trust me.

Mellow...
Elvis used to get mad and shoot his Television, do you want to be like Elvis?

If you have the same attitude in game as here, I would think twice about healing you too.

[voodoogroves]

DISCLAIMERS

Started playing when EU happened and was F2P for a few months. Now VIP.

Also, played plenty of Diablo X and other multiplayer games, but really none of the popular MMOs (WOW, EQ, whatever). For some reason, avoided them.

Long time, steady PNP D&D player and COer.

==============================

I had some misconceptions coming into DDO. Some had to do with mechanics of the system (what is different between DDO/etc. ... case in point, Quicken Spell). Some had to do with the mechanics. What's worse is that some of the things that my gut wanted me to play a certain way were shaped differently when I started playing DDO. How roles work in a party in DDO as opposed to PNP, for instance. I had one expectation, but as I started playing as a F2P those assumptions were altered.

It seemed that folks were highly specialized but narrowly focused.

Now this goes against how I've always built characters (except TO exercises that weren't going to be actually played). I have this mental list I run through in PNP ... can I heal myself at least a little, can I get rid of conditions, do I have some sort of ranged capability, do I have some sort of melee capability, do I have some capacity to increase speed if needed, do I have some capacity to amp up damage if needed, do I have a non-lethal option for protect or capture missions, etc.

Those were all in my head and I slowly beat them out as I started playing F2P.

Then one day I spent some time stepping outside my comfort zone. I had found a few TRs that were about the same level as one of my characters that were XP grinding and noted their names. I spun up a few characters and when I saw them on the social panel, I joined.

There I discovered that all those assumptions I had about self-sufficiency, etc. I'd be un-learning were all of a sudden very, very relevant. My one-sided characters have all been deleted.

So, what do I play?

Battle-clerics, warchanters and fighting arcanists.

Seriously. When I saw this thread I chuckled. Now don't get me wrong, my "battle cleric" isn't going to compete in kill-count with dedicated TR'd body-count generating rangers, barbs, etc. Neither is my warchater. Neither is my wizard. They all, however, can self heal. They are all highly self-sufficient. They can all fill multiple roles in group that is weak in one area. The wizards can trap/lock, sneak and (god forbid) smack things when they aren't charming, holding, wall of fire-ing, buffing, transporting or basically making the adventure run smoother and quicker for the party. The clerics have decent BAB and easy access to DP w/o clickies, so they carry around a number of condition-spewing weapons as well as holy/pg for those times when you don't want to spend the spell points and instead just beat something into submission. The warchanters carry DPS weapons and specials to help out (at 14 i'm more likely to be swinging a vorp, paralyzer, smiter, banisher, disrupter, etc. than pure DPS - I'll pull the best match out of my golf bag and go to town).

Now that isn't saying I'm going to run off all crazy and aggro a bunch of monsters ... but I like to think I know when to beat on things and when to cast the spells.


I think you honestly have seen too many people claiming to have great battle cleric or warchanter builds but just not knowing what they are doing. A good battle cleric won't pidgeon-hole himself as such - there's no need. A good cleric is a good cleric, and should be healing, commanding/holding, buffing and swinging wood when appropriate. I consider my STR 10 cleric to be capable of meleeing when necessary and I'm not shy about it.