Why Battle Cleric's get a bad name

[JasonJi72]

Why do battle cleric's get a bad name?

I am considering playing a Cleric again. I do not want to invest too heavily in arcane past lives to get a decent caster cleric, so I am making a battle cleric. When I mentioned this to one of my guildies, I got into an hour long discussion about how battle clerics suck, and never heal anybody. Personally, I think it has more to do with the player than whether or not they have a fighter or monk splash, but whatever.

I have noticed this in the past when I was leveling and experimental clonk. Sometimes, when I would join a group, the leader would make this huge deal about how people should bring potions, and I wasn't a real healer. My max/emp bursts wands and spells kept everybody up just fine. It was Gweylan's Stand, and the only guy who died was by himself on the other side of the map, and I had triple the kill count of the barbarian.

From my experience, the game has changed a bit. It is much easier to self heal, and it has become harder to be a DC caster in end game. No divine should ever be played as a healbot, but they should know when to go into heal mode.

Why do people still insist that a pure cleric is the only way to go?

Here is a look at what I am considering building:

18 cleric, 1 fighter, 1 wizard Human with a fvs past life

Str 16
Dex 08
Con 16
Int 10
Wis 14
Cha 14

+2 Tomes, and +3 str/con tome

Feats:

Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Extend, Empower, Maximize, Emp Healing, Toughness, Imp Crit Slashing, Quicken, Overwhelming Critical, and Epic Toughness

It seems like it will be fun, and be able to solo very well, and be a strong healer who can stand with the melee's. The only thing I am worried about is that I might tell someone what they can do with themselves if they give me too much flak about having a fighter level.

I played divines all the time when I started this game, but haven't really touched em in a year and a half. I developed a thick skin, but sometimes I let the idiots get to me. That is why most of my 'healers' have been parked for so long.

[Vellrad]

1. This name sounds really stupid.
2. Its beacuse of all battle clerics having extremally small DPS and 0 heals saying 'f*** off, I'm battle cleric, so I don't hjeal!'. You may call it bad memories.

If thats any important, I'm calling my melee capable offensive cleric, who also burst and heals a lot, a Warpriest .

[Phidius]

As long as you have 17 levels of cleric, I would blame people dumping their Int in RL.

[jandhaer]

My main earlier this life was a DC caster cleric on her 14th life with the following past lives 3x wizard, 3x favored soul, 3x sorcerer, 3x paladin and this being her 2nd cleric life.... long story short I run epic elites almost exclusively and she sucked.

I decided to LR her into an 18 cleric/1 fighter /1 wizard "battle cleric" dumped wisdom, took full cleave line and overwhelming crit. She's a wrecking ball and a lot of fun.

Haters gonna hate, but I'm too busy being awesome to hear em'.

[firemedium_jt]

Battlecleric is just a four letter word and if asked if I am I just play dumb and say nope. Then I ask if they mean melee Cleric?

U might want to trade extend for THF. I like divine power items. I save sp with them. I just keep one hot keyed if the timer runs out in the middle of combat.

[shadereaper33]

"Battle clerics" have a bad name for the same reason that drow have a bad name. It stems from people being very loud and very bad at their character, which seems to be prevalent amongst those types of character builds for some reason. Some people seem to get the idea that because they swing a sword, they can completely ignore the fact that they have a blue bar.

[JasonJi72]

I thought about taking Imp Crit Bludgeon instead of slashing. Perhaps I will drop Extend, and have them both. There are times when it would be better to use a staff as a melee healer.

I aggree about the name battle cleric. I don't know who came up with it, but it seems to have stuck.

Divine Warrior would be better I think. We can't use Warpriest, because the prestige... will be... comming soon... I think... oh yes... very soon... let me get back to you on that.

Jandhaer, your situation is exactly why I decided to go this route. I don't feel like putting the time into making a caster cleric, and in many EE's you get regulated into a healbot role anyway. I would rather play a caster druid than a caster cleric.

Shadereaper33, I think you are half right. The other half of the problem is that people play differently when they see the Cleric Icon. It is like all common sense goes out the window. A group that could easily complete without a cleric is now having difficulty, because they are now playing like a bunch of drunk kobolds. Bad players are everywhere, they are just more noticable as a Cleric.

[Kmnh]

Battle clerics get a bad name because of Dungeon Scaling.

The barbarian runs a quest with his hireling, kills stuff fast enough to be easy to heal, the hireling can easily keep him alive.

The battle-cleric runs a quest solo, does enough damage to complete the quest without much troublecompletes with half his sp bar left.

Our heroes join a 6-man party, all the enemies have 3 times the hp and do 3 times the damage. The barbarian is no longer that easy to heal, the battle-cleric no longer does enough damage to kill fast enough, they both blame each other for being bad players. What happened is that the game got a lot harder, punishing them for running together.

[Artos_Fabril]

Why do battle cleric's get a bad name?

Is it because they don't know the difference between pluralization and possession?


I would wait for the enhancement pass, with the cleric domains and other PrEs, unless you plan (or are at least willing) to TR again when it comes around.

Failing that, you might consider dropping one fighter and one cleric level for 2 monk for evasion and an extra feat (toughness and power attack are both available as monk bonus feats). That costs you a level 9 spell, but not the important one.

[JasonJi72]

Is it because they don't know the difference between pluralization and possession?


I would wait for the enhancement pass, with the cleric domains and other PrEs, unless you plan (or are at least willing) to TR again when it comes around.

Failing that, you might consider dropping one fighter and one cleric level for 2 monk for evasion and an extra feat (toughness and power attack are both available as monk bonus feats). That costs you a level 9 spell, but not the important one.

Oops, you got me. That was a typo.

Eventually, I want a 36 pt build, so yeah, I will tr again.

If I were to take 2 monk for evasion, I would build it completely different. I would take half elf with paladin dilly, and put some points into dex. Since almost all of my characters have some monk in them, I figured it would be cool to have a guy in plate mail for a change. I still want my sp as high as I can get it, and one fighter level brings a lot to the table.

I am not going to wait on an enhancement pass that may or may not ever come. It took them 6 years to release druids after they said they would, so I figure I have some time with regards to the enhancement pass.

[firemedium_jt]

Why do battle cleric's get a bad name?

I am considering playing a Cleric again. I do not want to invest too heavily in arcane past lives to get a decent caster cleric, so I am making a battle cleric. When I mentioned this to one of my guildies, I got into an hour long discussion about how battle clerics suck, and never heal anybody. Personally, I think it has more to do with the player than whether or not they have a fighter or monk splash, but whatever.

I have noticed this in the past when I was leveling and experimental clonk. Sometimes, when I would join a group, the leader would make this huge deal about how people should bring potions, and I wasn't a real healer. My max/emp bursts wands and spells kept everybody up just fine. It was Gweylan's Stand, and the only guy who died was by himself on the other side of the map, and I had triple the kill count of the barbarian.

From my experience, the game has changed a bit. It is much easier to self heal, and it has become harder to be a DC caster in end game. No divine should ever be played as a healbot, but they should know when to go into heal mode.

Why do people still insist that a pure cleric is the only way to go?

Here is a look at what I am considering building:

18 cleric, 1 fighter, 1 wizard Human with a fvs past life

Str 16
Dex 08
Con 16
Int 10
Wis 14
Cha 14

+2 Tomes, and +3 str/con tome

Feats:

Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Extend, Empower, Maximize, Emp Healing, Toughness, Imp Crit Slashing, Quicken, Overwhelming Critical, and Epic Toughness

It seems like it will be fun, and be able to solo very well, and be a strong healer who can stand with the melee's. The only thing I am worried about is that I might tell someone what they can do with themselves if they give me too much flak about having a fighter level.

I played divines all the time when I started this game, but haven't really touched em in a year and a half. I developed a thick skin, but sometimes I let the idiots get to me. That is why most of my 'healers' have been parked for so long.

You need base CON21 for epic toughness and STR23 for Overwhelming Critical. Even with +3 tomes u cant get both.
Str16+3+4lvlups=23
Con16+3+1lvlup=20 only
You should drop INT for it. INT8 +1 tome cheap at AH, and a +2 item gives you lvl1 spells.
You can drop wis or chr for it or...

You can just take Con14. Max STR18 to 23 with 2 lvlups and take more Wis with heighten and spell focus. You can take FTR2.

I recommend clr17/wiz1 then the ftr lvls . U get prof with Masters Touch spell.

[voodoogroves]

You need base CON21 for epic toughness and STR23 for Overwhelming Critical. Even with +3 tomes u cant get both.
Str16+3+4lvlups=23
Con16+3+1lvlup=20 only

Remember you get one more level up for 6 total at level 24 ...

[Steveohio]

Melee battle healers are the way to go currently as a divine. Pure healbots are by default gimped, and caster/evoc divines, while great at soloing suffer a few major flaws IMO.

First off, any divine needs to do more than heal to not drag a group down and/or solo/hold his own in fights. I think only the stauchest purist premade grouper would say otherwise at this point of the games life. Single role toons are dead. Finally.

So, taking that into account you have 2 build paths to go down, melee or caster.
Caster, while having great utility and the full spellbook to play with is nice to have. However, as a divine your primary role is healing or keeping the group up. This inherantly brings up a few thing going against your main function. Most importantly, how much damage is generated by sp spent. When you have essentially free damage coming from groupmates that far surpasses what you can do by evocation spells, that sp has now become less effecient. Also, that sp is no longer to be used on your primary function, thus weakening your role. Good sp management can help this by allowing you to cast some while keeping enough to keep everyobe alive and rolling. Myself, i would like to use my build to its fullest, so caster/healer builds can blow some of thier load but then have to keep some in the tank in reserve just incase. When you reach that low sp threshold you are now effectively playing a healbot, because your evocation focus cannot be used anymore, effectively limitting your build.

Now, once you take the above truth into equation, factor in the extremely high dc's require for endgame into the mix, your instA death spells now are unreliable at best, and unattainable for most, what you effectively do now is use your sp for dps. In a solo envirnment, blade barrier is effiecent for the sp used. In a group setting, its a pia for other members to have to deal with you kiting, infact i wont even group with mad zerging bb kiters as a melee, its just not plain fun.

So it boils down to dps per point spent in the end.
As a melee divine, you dont suffer the same weakenesses. You effectively have "free" damage in the form of your attacks which ars always there, regardless. All you have to do is maintain healing the group while doing dps. Buffs for such a task are minimal sp spent, thus taking all of this into account a melee divine actually has MORE sp allocated towards healing, while simultaniously providing more dps than the caster divines at a much higher dps/sp ratio.

So, in effect the best way to play a divine in full regards of effeciency would be the melee route.

HOWEVER, and this is a big one. Playing a melee divine properly takes a myriad of factors into play.
Firstmost, you absolutely need to put healing everyone above your own personal dps. This takes alot of attention.
In addition, and in my opinion the greatest failing of a battle healer is the ability to stay alive. This might even take precedence over healing everyone else. Generally if the healer dies SHTF and chaos ensues. If a general melee dps dies a quick raise and rebuff and your back on your way.

As a melee healer you need to survive well enough to actually put that free dps to work. This requires positioning, timing of spells, as well as having a solid core of defenses, ac, prr, evasion, saves, etc. Most players can't even do these minor things on less important builds, let alone those whom the groups fate hinges on.

[firemedium_jt]

Melee battle healers are the way to go currently as a divine. Pure healbots are by default gimped, and caster/evoc divines, while great at soloing suffer a few major flaws IMO.

First off, any divine needs to do more than heal to not drag a group down and/or solo/hold his own in fights. I think only the stauchest purist premade grouper would say otherwise at this point of the games life. Single role toons are dead. Finally.

So, taking that into account you have 2 build paths to go down, melee or caster.
Caster, while having great utility and the full spellbook to play with is nice to have. However, as a divine your primary role is healing or keeping the group up. This inherantly brings up a few thing going against your main function. Most importantly, how much damage is generated by sp spent. When you have essentially free damage coming from groupmates that far surpasses what you can do by evocation spells, that sp has now become less effecient. Also, that sp is no longer to be used on your primary function, thus weakening your role. Good sp management can help this by allowing you to cast some while keeping enough to keep everyobe alive and rolling. Myself, i would like to use my build to its fullest, so caster/healer builds can blow some of thier load but then have to keep some in the tank in reserve just incase. When you reach that low sp threshold you are now effectively playing a healbot, because your evocation focus cannot be used anymore, effectively limitting your build.

Now, once you take the above truth into equation, factor in the extremely high dc's require for endgame into the mix, your instA death spells now are unreliable at best, and unattainable for most, what you effectively do now is use your sp for dps. In a solo envirnment, blade barrier is effiecent for the sp used. In a group setting, its a pia for other members to have to deal with you kiting, infact i wont even group with mad zerging bb kiters as a melee, its just not plain fun.

So it boils down to dps per point spent in the end.
As a melee divine, you dont suffer the same weakenesses. You effectively have "free" damage in the form of your attacks which ars always there, regardless. All you have to do is maintain healing the group while doing dps. Buffs for such a task are minimal sp spent, thus taking all of this into account a melee divine actually has MORE sp allocated towards healing, while simultaniously providing more dps than the caster divines at a much higher dps/sp ratio.

So, in effect the best way to play a divine in full regards of effeciency would be the melee route.

HOWEVER, and this is a big one. Playing a melee divine properly takes a myriad of factors into play.
Firstmost, you absolutely need to put healing everyone above your own personal dps. This takes alot of attention.
In addition, and in my opinion the greatest failing of a battle healer is the ability to stay alive. This might even take precedence over healing everyone else. Generally if the healer dies SHTF and chaos ensues. If a general melee dps dies a quick raise and rebuff and your back on your way.

As a melee healer you need to survive well enough to actually put that free dps to work. This requires positioning, timing of spells, as well as having a solid core of defenses, ac, prr, evasion, saves, etc. Most players can't even do these minor things on less important builds, let alone those whom the groups fate hinges on.

+1

Even a Melee Cleric can cast well enough. It is situational. Unless you are a sole divine in a Raid you can still have enough SP to stack Divine Punishment on Bosses in fights. I would never gimp Divine Punishment on any Divine build. Cleric Smiting 4 and 2 tiers of critical smiting always comes in handy

[Rawrargh]

Melee battle healers are the way to go currently as a divine. Pure healbots are by default gimped, and caster/evoc divines, while great at soloing suffer a few major flaws IMO.

First off, any divine needs to do more than heal to not drag a group down and/or solo/hold his own in fights. I think only the stauchest purist premade grouper would say otherwise at this point of the games life. Single role toons are dead. Finally.

So, taking that into account you have 2 build paths to go down, melee or caster.
Caster, while having great utility and the full spellbook to play with is nice to have. However, as a divine your primary role is healing or keeping the group up. This inherantly brings up a few thing going against your main function. Most importantly, how much damage is generated by sp spent. When you have essentially free damage coming from groupmates that far surpasses what you can do by evocation spells, that sp has now become less effecient. Also, that sp is no longer to be used on your primary function, thus weakening your role. Good sp management can help this by allowing you to cast some while keeping enough to keep everyobe alive and rolling. Myself, i would like to use my build to its fullest, so caster/healer builds can blow some of thier load but then have to keep some in the tank in reserve just incase. When you reach that low sp threshold you are now effectively playing a healbot, because your evocation focus cannot be used anymore, effectively limitting your build.

Now, once you take the above truth into equation, factor in the extremely high dc's require for endgame into the mix, your instA death spells now are unreliable at best, and unattainable for most, what you effectively do now is use your sp for dps. In a solo envirnment, blade barrier is effiecent for the sp used. In a group setting, its a pia for other members to have to deal with you kiting, infact i wont even group with mad zerging bb kiters as a melee, its just not plain fun.

So it boils down to dps per point spent in the end.
As a melee divine, you dont suffer the same weakenesses. You effectively have "free" damage in the form of your attacks which ars always there, regardless. All you have to do is maintain healing the group while doing dps. Buffs for such a task are minimal sp spent, thus taking all of this into account a melee divine actually has MORE sp allocated towards healing, while simultaniously providing more dps than the caster divines at a much higher dps/sp ratio.

So, in effect the best way to play a divine in full regards of effeciency would be the melee route.

HOWEVER, and this is a big one. Playing a melee divine properly takes a myriad of factors into play.
Firstmost, you absolutely need to put healing everyone above your own personal dps. This takes alot of attention.
In addition, and in my opinion the greatest failing of a battle healer is the ability to stay alive. This might even take precedence over healing everyone else. Generally if the healer dies SHTF and chaos ensues. If a general melee dps dies a quick raise and rebuff and your back on your way.

As a melee healer you need to survive well enough to actually put that free dps to work. This requires positioning, timing of spells, as well as having a solid core of defenses, ac, prr, evasion, saves, etc. Most players can't even do these minor things on less important builds, let alone those whom the groups fate hinges on.

Nailed it

[cru121]

You need base CON21 for epic toughness and STR23 for Overwhelming Critical. Even with +3 tomes u cant get both.
Str16+3+4lvlups=23
Con16+3+1lvlup=20 only

Breaking news! Level 20 is no longer the level cap. You get another ability increase at 24!

[Whesper]

The same reason battle barbarians, battle monks, battle rangers and battle sorcerers get a bad name. Ineptitude.

[Kinerd]

Why do people still insist that a pure cleric is the only way to go?

Your most effective offensive contribution at endgame, by far, is negative levels. Going less than pure compromises your Spell Pen.

More broadly, I would be careful extrapolating your experiences in Gwylan's Stand to the rest of the game. I would also strongly encourage you to go for GTHF rather than OC. Your biggest obstacle as a battling cleric will be highly durable single targets: your self-healing bosses and the like. OC does very little for you there, the Cleaves (into LD) actively hurt you there, GTHF keeps chugging along there.

I think only the stauchest purist premade grouper would say otherwise at this point of the games life. Single role toons are dead. Finally.

To me, it depends on what you mean by "the game". EH and under, certainly, do whatever you want, but EE's increased enemy damage output favors masters of one trade over jacks of all.

[Artos_Fabril]

EE's increased enemy damage output favors masters of one trade over jacks of all.

Funny you should say this, because the vast majority of both my personal experience and the reports of others on this forum indicate that overspecialized characters are a significantly greater risk to a party than a character with multiple capabilities all the way through EE.

[Kinerd]

Would you rather have one tank and two DPS or three "I'm both... well, I can back-up tank... well, I have a lot of HP and a THF"? And so on.