My opinion for changing Dark Cleric

[Targal]

I played dark cleric once, and I found the potential of it. so I wrote this to show how I saw the pontential. You'll have a confusion because my English is not that much skilled, but I believe you can understand this enough.


Introduction
Cleric Divine Disciple has two ways of studying. one is light and another one is dark. but nobody should deny that dark is worst than light. Yes, Dark is not good to use. becasue there're some serious problems.




Problem?
Let's see what spells there are and how they are. I colored what each should be compared with.


1st SLA - Nimbus of Light, Chill Touch
Light: No ML, No DC, Ray Ranged, Free Metamagic.
Dark: ML 5, DC checks, Touch ranged, Free Metamagic.
- At lvl 5, the damage of dark is stronger than light, but there's other good spells on light.
- But there's a problem that low level enemies are mostly undead or construct which don't take any negtive damage.

2nd SLA - Searing Light, Necrotic Bolt
Light: ML 10, No DC, Ray Ranged, Free Metamagic
Dark: No ML, DC checks, Ray Ranged, No Metamagic
- What? No Metamagic?

3rd SLA - Holy Smite, Negative Burst
Light: ML 10, DC checks to damage and blind effect, Normal Ranged, Free Metamagic
Dark: ML 10, DC checks, SR checks, Touch Ranged(?), Free Metamagic
- Seriously? Even SR chekcs?

4th SLA - Flame Strike, Inflict Moderate Wounds Mass
Light: ML 15, DC checks, General Base Damage, Normal Ranged, Free Metamagic
Dark: ML 30, DC checks, Low Base Damage, SR checks, Normal Ranged, Free Metamagic
- Wounds spells ML is meaningless. CL 15 Flame strike is stronger than CL 30 Inflict Moderate Wounds... and that SR checks!

1st~2nd Spellknowledge
There's no problem on them I think. but enervation should have a bit more improved... but not nessacery.

3rd Spellknowledge - Sunburst, Power Word: Stun
Light: ML 25, Area of Effect, Limited Targets(undead and ooze), DC checks to damage and blind.
Dark: Single Target, Long Cooldown(40 seconds), No DC
Power word stun is another version of Otto's irresistable dance. It's really similar.


As you can sse, most of Dark SLAs are ultimately suck. about spellknowledge, even you can get spells of another side if you got 20 lvl capstone, but only SLAs and some abilities are related to what you seleted first.





Potential and Solution?
I played once Dark Cleric, and I found a clue which can make dark better. but We should know what difference there is between light and dark. Light Cleric has many abilities to attack enimies with no DC checks and give them a condition of blinded. This is kind of a sorcerer magic cannon. while Dark cleric is specialized to negative ability such as Energy Drain or Destruction... such as wizard-like. So what I want to say is... It's NOT that dark cleric must cast damage-based spells to attack enemies like light cleric.
So changing like below thing I wrote would be good.



1st SLA
Cuase Fear[SP 6/4/2, Cooldown 9/6/3]: This spell is good crowd control skill. target can't act anything and has -2 save penalty, as a result you and your friends kill him easily.

2nd SLA
Burning Blood[SP 20/15/10, Cooldown 18/15/12]: I'm not sure what will be good at 2 tier SLA. There's some other candidates: Poison(I'm not sure this will be good at epic), Ghoul Touch(but should be changed as being able to use all living cretures), Negative Burst(with no SR check)

3rd SLA
Undeath to Death[SP 35/30/25, Cooldown 40/35/30]: I agree that putting high lvl spell to low tier is not good... Also It's not matched to the original concept. as you can see Slay Living(lvl 5 spell) is at higher tier than Undeath to Death(lvl 6 spell). but putting Undeath to death spell is not that bad. Cleric is already a good undead killer, so giving them this is not bad idea, and Cleric have not enough spell slots to use this spell ever. There's lots good spells to use at lvl 6 spells.

4th SLA
Slay Living[SP 50/40/30, Cooldown 21/14/7]: I don't like this spell because of unbalanced SP cost even if it has a bad panalty; you should touch enemies to use this, and face him directly. but If I can cast this with free metamagics, This will be good. This can be a bit compared to Phantasmal Killer SLA of Archmage.

1rd Spellknowledge: Add not only Enervation but also Disrupt Undead to your spellbook... disrupt undead for fun... just a joke, nevermind. lol

3rd Spellknowledge: Add Wail of the Banshee to your lvl 9 spells - Warning: this spell has shared Cooldown with Implosion. If you cast Implosion, the Cooldown of wail of the Banshee would be on same, or cast Wail of the Banshee, the Cooldown of Implosion would do so.
This is for maximizing for your Necromancy Ability with preventing cleric to have powerful spells both.
but if you can't make this, There's another way to put Circle of Death to lvl 7 or 8 spells. I hope You would NOT put this on lvl 6 spells, Cleric has no spell slots on lvl 6 spells.






Guessing Result of Change
The concept of Cleric's two ways would be more than clarified ever. AoE and unavoidable(NO DC) spells by light cleric, Single Instakill and some CC by dark cleric. unless Dark cleric spend his AP to all Divine Disciple, He would be difficult to get Spellpower ability because Dark Cleric need Spell penetration... this need 2 AP per rank... and other abilities needed, while Light Cleric have multiple abilities with less spending on his Light Way. They can take it from Sorcerer Past Life if they really need.
what I'd like to say most is that there's a really good reason to take heightening metamagic for Cleric. This can be most difference with ligth and dark.

[Targal]

I want to hear hows your thought and your opinion. all feedback would be good.

[EllisDee37]

Slay Living as an SLA would be pretty overpowered, I think.

[EnziteBob]

Slay Living as an SLA would be pretty overpowered, I think.

Not really it does not work as well in high level content. It get way too easy to save against. But if you are big on debuff first it could be powerful. Now Symbol of Death would be a bit overpowered as a SLA.

[Targal]

Slay Living as an SLA would be pretty overpowered, I think.

If that can be said as overpowered, I believe Phantasmal Killer can be called as also. These low level instakills have some problems to use. the problem of slay living is that you must close to enemies, and be careful of directioning to target enemy. for Phantasmal killer, It's immune to fear-block such as great heroism. PK was not said as overpowered.

Not really it does not work as well in high level content. It get way too easy to save against. But if you are big on debuff first it could be powerful. Now Symbol of Death would be a bit overpowered as a SLA.

Slay living will work well also if you're set as wizard, but also Destruction... You'll need much spell penetration. Symbol of Death would be good also, but This means you can cast 2 symbols at the same time as you know. I'm not sure this can be called as overpowered.

[Targal]

Slay Living as an SLA would be pretty overpowered, I think.

I considered that a bit, and I got agree that this has a potential to be overpowered... I think the SP cost for slay living should be 30 back. so I fixed the word.

The reason is that It has high proficiency than light way. Nimbus and Searing light has total 6 SP and can attack enemies for 250~350 each. if I cast 5 times, This can be 30 SP and 1250~1750, and 2500~3500 if crit. enemies' general HP for 20 heroic elite is about 3000 around. if Slay living cost only 15, the light way would get suck such as dark was.