I'm not sure how this is hard to understand, but I'll try to explain. It's simple logic based on known facts.
The class passes are 6+ years old and are still not yet completed. If making a pass on the enhancement trees of a class was quick and easy, it would have been done many years ago. And we wouldn't have classes waiting for a pass for one year, much less many years.
We have dev statements that creating the third tree for Artificer, or FvS, or Druid would take a lot of dev hours, and so they just don't do those things. As evidenced by the lack of those trees.
And we have the recent history of the alternatives. The U36 pass on Battle Engineer was half Enhancement tree and half core class changes. And the core class changes were far more significant to how the class plays than were the Enhancement tree changes. They could have just bumped the power of the Artificer class by bumping the BE tree, but they didn't. And it's clear that they took a lesson from this experience.
Instead they changed the core class. And now, very recently from the Artificer core class changes which were very successful, they are looking to change the core class of Cleric and Favored Soul.
As Gomer Pile would say: Well, Surprise, surprise, surprise!"
Now are you sure where I get "applying changes to the core class is easier?"
I don't think the domains will help melee clerics.
It lacks MP, most powerful melee classes are very backloaded (so no MC cleric can catch up) and the only benefit of cleric is the spells. But the vast majority of spells are redundant (can be acquired IG somehow), the offensive ones won't reach DCs on a melee cleric (not enough feats). So it is only the heals.
At that point, a DC caster cleric is way better as a PC.
However, since the devs balance around normal difficulty with a hire...who knows, maybe this is a success.
You know,
The only thing that matters is the warpriest tree...
I think they are going to pull a fast one on us,
Since they are revamping base class, by adding domains,
I suspect they will do no tree work
And if that is the case,
They would have completely missed the boat
On a cleric pass
Kil Glory
30 alchemist
HOW
Sarlona
That's a fairly narrow minded view. Cleric has 3 distinct trees ... "DPS", healing, and casting. All of them need tweaks in their own way.
1. Warpriest needs to be more viable for melee and ranged based clerics
2. Radiant Servant needs to be less expensive, improved TU scaling, increased buff/debuff options
3. Divine Disciple needs tweaking of SLAs (meaning Flamestrike being 20 sp and 12 sec cooldown is not very great for a T5 ability)
I've been asking this for a while with no response. It does seem like they are taking the approach of domains as the "class pass". Unfortunate.
Atleast flamestrike is functional and deals damage. Have you used the mass inflict moderate SLA? That's an absolute joke. Let alone all of the dark disciple SLAs need to be retooled to self cast on the player if no target is selected. I'm not sure why it requires a hard target in the first place. But anyone who's used negative energy burst on a wizard and then switches ends up utterly confused until they figure it out. And it's also a major hindrance for undead splash builds.
On the matter of the past few comments; I agree that Warpriest needs to be viable. Warpriest needs to be on par with Swashbuckler in the sense that you are giving up any form of spellcasting option to focus on weapon damage and potentially CC abilities in that tree. Heck, even adopting the Warchanter formula with actually decent returns on the AP investment is better than the current warpriest.
Additionally; I feel like the Blood of Vol should get a feat similar to the lord of blades passive in changing your religious spellbook. Blood of Vol should have inflict spells given a free slot instead of healing spells.
Ameliorating strike should be racial healing; in the regards that Warforged/Bladeforged should get full healing and undead splash builds should also heal. There's no reason a god of constructs would suddenly give his followers positive energy, nor a goddess of undeath give them positive energy.
The damage is exceedingly abysmal even when fully meta'd and you are slotted with a good amount of negative SP. If I had to guess the die on the SLA version is borked.
This also is the same for the Blood of Vol capstone for Angel of Vengeance with their inflict moderate SLA.
Last edited by edrein; 08-28-2017 at 08:04 AM.
searing light as an sla seems redundant because cleric can get searing light as an sla at lvl 3 via divine disciple tree, unless you intend to remove it with the cleric/fvs work. if this is not the case then instead of searing light, could the sun domain give sun bolt instead?
I know this doesn't belong here.
But looking at these free SLAs that clerics will be getting, on top of the ones they already have access to, can you throw FvSs some of that too please? FvSs are supposed to be the more casty blasty of the two aren't they? (Provided you play a Caster one and not a Warpriest of course)
They only have the one capstone, surely they deserve 1 or 2 more if Clerics are going to have up to 6 or 7 by level 14?
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Strange that this gets evocation DC's instead of spell power like the other domains.
Sharing Electic + light spellpower is cool. Builds I would want to use would prefer electric + positive; but either way works.
Does the bonus to electric resist also add your epic level? Electric damage keeps going up in epic levels, but a basic 40 resistance is going to be less and less effective if it doesn't include epic levels.
SLA's will run into max caster level issues pretty hard. Shocking grasp has a maximum caster level of 5... so as a spell it will never get better as soon as you get it. Since the base cleric class doesn't really have electric-damage spells; all 3 SLA's should be at least decent to make building electric spellpower (or getting it free) feel good.
Can you increase caster level/max caster level with destanies? If yes, does it take a divine sphere destiny or an arcane sphere destany to increase them? Having to choose between increasing your SLA's or your regular spells at epic levels could suck.
Can you increase the max caster level of shocking grasp and lightning bolt via the "Master of Air" feat? I would hope so.
Shocking grasp in general is fairly weak. Electric loop would be better.
Spot/Listen/Reflex isn't a great passive bonus, but this is ok since the HP coming later is good.
Being able to turn animals is cool.
Con on turn undead seems to be finicky; Not that many builds can really utilize having an extra 10 con for 20 seconds; for most it will be just like getting a very small amount of temporary hit-points (assuming that increasing the con does give extra health. Having this also immediately cure poisons and diseases would be a decent buff.
Bonus HP is probably the main draw of this destany; and they're pretty good.
Fort bypass and feral charge make this sound like a melee destany; but 15% fortification bypass is much worse then the melee benefits of other destanies, while HP disapears quickly without PRR/MRR to back it up; so the main draw in a hybrid melee/beefy tree here is the extra CC; so it needs to be workable in high-difficulty content.
Can you get workable trip DC's as a cleric in difficult content? Does this require you to pump wisdom much higher then is advisable in a melee build?
+1 will save is fairly weaksauce. Most things that will saves effect you can be come immune to through spells and clickies. A cooler passive would be to have shiardi-type procs on chaos spells. 1% chance per 2 cleric levels.
Turn undead bonus is cool and thematically appropriate for chaos domain.
The SLA's are good and thematically appropriate; as long as prismatic spray counts as a cleric spell (uses wisdom for DC, buffed by divine destanies, etc).
Spell critical chance is good... but wouldn't it be more chaotic if they instead got spell critical damage instead?
This is a good, solid domain. But thematically better turning undead doesn't make sense for the death domain; that fits in the Sun domain. Death domain should have a charm undead or a buff undead effect instead.
This appears to be for a warpriest; but looks a little lackluster in a few spots.
Able to cast cleric spells with raging is a cool effect that I know I won't appreciate as much as some other people.
Melee/ranged power is good. It's both good in the passive and in the turn undead bonus. No complaints here.
Durability damage reduced on items is fairly weak, and also fairly melee-only. Something like wracking strike or bonus damage to constructs might fit better here.
+2 to hit and damage is always useful for melee or ranged or whatnot; but it's also a rather small boost. Improved destruction would make sense here; as many classes can get the effect at level 4; and the debuff it applies isn't powerful enough to warrent a level 14 slot.
Improved destruction is not strong enough to be a level 14 ability nearly on-par with a chain lightning SLA or holy sword. It is; when fully stacked against a boss who lives for more then 16 seconds; 15% fortification bypass and -15 AC for the target. I would suggest moving this down to the level 9; and changing the level 14 to grant all favored weapons the Vorpal ability, which is upgraded to improved vorpal at level 20, and sovereign vorpal at level 28.
The main problem with this domain is that there is almost no way to use acid spellpower on a cleric, and one low-level SLA doesn't make very good use of the cool ability to get acid spellpower shared with light spellpower. Stoneskin and Earthquake are both great SLA's, but not spells that seem to go best with a high light-spellpower cleric; since that typically means they're focused on casting damage through divine deciple. Therefore I would propose that Acid Spellpower is instead shared with positive spellpower, which is more useful for a support-type cleric who would make good use of stoneskin and earthquake.
As I mentioned above, the acid resist for turn undead should be increased by the character's epic levels as well.
Replacing the level 9 ability with something like "Your Protection from energy, Protection from elements and Protection from elements; Mass spells now scale with acid spellpower". Would be a cool ability that grants a second use to having acid spellpower in this tree.
In it's current form, the only way I could see anyone ever picking this domain is for the earthquake SLA.
This domain legitimately looks like one of the stronger caster-domains on this list (besides being keyed off fire which is often resisted). The spellpower is good, the SLA's are good, the spellpower sharing is good for both cleric spells and the granted SLA's and clerics can get a lot of use out of it.
The only thing I would change is having the fire resistance scale into epic levels a bit better.
Radiance spellpower is good for a caster cleric; It grants radiance spellpower, but both the SLA's it grant use different types of spellpower. It grants a small amount of positive spellpower, but has no other healing bonuses. It has 2 casting-dps spells, but no spellpower or DC bonuses to them, and it grants a small bonus to non-casting DPS and defense against evil creatures that doesn't seem to fit any sort of theme with the rest of the stuff it grants. There is no focus in this destiny, and most of the bonuses are fairly weak considering.
If this is supposed to be good for an unfocused cleric; the bonuses need to be larger, if it's supposed to have some in-built synergy or focus; then it needs to change up the abilities in a big way. In keeping with the unfocused focus; I propose the following buffs:
Level 2: Grants +2 radiance spellpower, +1 heal skill and +2 mana per cleric level.
Turn undead unchanged
Level 5: You gain Defiec Vengance as an SLA. Additionally you gain 2 melee, ranged and universal spellpower, and 2 physical and magical resistance ratings.
Level 9: You gain Blade Barrier as an SLA. Additionally you gain 2 melee, ranged and universal spellpower and 2 physical and magical resistance ratings.
Level 14: You gain +5 hit, damage and AC against evil creatures in combat. You gain +5 to saving throws against spell effects cast by evil creatures. Additionally you gain 2 melee, ranged and universal spellpower and 2 physical and magical resistance ratings.
This would make it weaker then the melee trees for melee, weaker then the caster trees for casters and weaker then the tank trees for tanks, but would feel a bit better to play as a jack of all trades-destroyer of evil.
Positive spellpower is good and thematic; as is healing amp with turn undead.
Cure moderate as an SLA? With the current iteration of cleric, I would prefer a cure-minor as an SLA, as there is very little difference between the spells once you remove the max caster level in radiant servant, and cure minor costs less spellpoints. Another good option is close wounds.
Panacea is a good SLA to put in this tree.
So level 14 is just "you get +75 positive spellpower but aren't allowed to use the empower meta-magic on healing spells"? 75 is a lot of spellpower, but I'm not sure if more spellpower is really what healing clerics really need.
I would prefer a level 14 ability more like: "Party members death timers are reduced by 50%. Your Resurrection spell does not increase the number of death penalties the target has when they are raised, and your True Resurrection spell removes all death penalties on the target when they are raised."
This would make healing clerics once again better at raising dead then something that any character can do with a min-level-7 scroll.
Ok... It would also be cool if the level 2 ability granted +2 skill points per cleric level. That might open up some multi-class builds that find it hard to pick up all the skills they want with cleric's basic 2 skillponts per level.
Spell pen and DC are good buffs for CC style clerics. As are suggestion and feeblemind SLA's.
This almost looks as skattered and weak as the good domain; but it actually has a lot better synergy and is much better then the current good domain.
Enchantment DC is good with Greater Command, which comes as an SLA. Great for many cleric builds. Saving throws on turn undead can be situation-ally useful. It would be good if you could get no-fail-save on a 1 with this, perhaps as part of the level 9 ability. It would also fit the law+order theme to remove the chanciness of failing on a 1.
Order's wrath is there because it's a law/order domain; but it does not have synergy with anything else in the domain, as it is evocation (not enchantment) and a spell (doesn't benifit from hit/damage buffs). Since it fits the theme I don't want to take it out, but because it has no synergy I'd rather have it be stronger. So I propose this SLA deal 1d5+5 damage to chaos instead of the usual 1d4+4, and have a DC that's +3 higher then the basic spell.
Greater command is a great SLA and no adjustments need be made here.
Level 14 for +3 against a relatively small subset of enemies when the rest of the tree doesn't have a huge amount of melee synergy is rather weak. I'd like to see these bonuses increased to +5, although this could be spread out so that it's +3 at level 14 and +5 at level 20..
This seems to be a defensive domain of sorts. Bonus saves is good. The turn undead seems to be an exact copy of the turn undead for law domain, except that luck gets don't fail saving throws on a 1... which seems like it's removing the luck factor. Theme seems to be a bit missed there.
A more luck-based turn undead would be something like "Allies have a 20% chance of gaining 25x cleric level temporary hitpoints for 20 seconds."
Displacement SLA is good; level 5 seems to be way too early to get it. This should be the level 14 ability (most others get similar effects at about level 12, but cleric domains seem to be 1 step behind others most of the time). Having displacement as free-extended would make it very worthy of a level 14 abilty, and even just plain SLA displacement is almost level 14-worth.
Level 9 DC of spells is good.
No fail saves on a 1 should be changed into "re roll a failed save"; which is more luck-dependent then having no fail saves, while still being good. It should also be moved to level 5, which is a better level for this level of power in an ability.
This domain seems to be a pretty standard casting domain that's good at being decent at all (damaging) spells but master of none. Not much I would change here.
A pretty solid defensive domain. I would have liked to see a little more party-buffs and less self-buffs in a domain named "protection" (and not "invulnerability") But I suppose this works.
If I was to change it, it would be more like the following:
Level 2: You gain +1 to AC, PRR, and MRR. This increases by +1 at 5th level, 10th level, 15th level, and 20th level.
When you use Turn Undead your party gains a Divine bonus to PRR and MRR equal to twice your Cleric level for 20 seconds
Level 5: You gain the Shield spell as an SLA. This version of the shield spell can target allies.
Level 9: Your turn undead now grants a Divine bonus to PRR and MRR equal to four times your cleric level for 60 seconds.
Level 14: Your Armor Class is increased by your Cleric level + your epic level. Gain Radiant Forcefield as an SLA. This version of Radiant Forcefield can be cast on allies.
This is a pretty cool and thematic domain. However it would be nice to see "can cast spells while raging" in here; just to throw a bone to those strength-domain barbarian clerics.
This is a pretty strong casting domain and hits all the checkboxes that a caster wants besides DC's. I like it how it is.
Gaining charisma is fairly weak and doesn't have much synergy with the rest of the domain. The rest of the domain looks pretty solid + good.
Having the turn undead also do a diplomacy-effect (with good DC or auto success) on mobs would fit the trickery theme and make the currently underwhelming turn a little more useful.
Damage is nice, turn undead for melee/ranged power is nice. Tactics DC's are workable, Holy sword is very nice and nearly makes war-priests viable. With a little love to the warpriest tree, a melee cleric in this domain would do quite well; although...
Proficiency in martial and exotic weapons sucks. Every deity grants proficiency in the weapon it uses, so this is only useful if you want to use a non-deity weapon. Having this here pretty much is saying "take this domain to ignore warpriest and ignore deity weapons and just pick up khopeshes with kensai tree" or something. I would rather have clerics pay more attention to their diety's favored weapon.
Something like "Your deity's one handed favored weapon uses a 1d10 damage die and your diety's two handed weapons use a 2d8 damage die" would be one ability that helps clerics feel unique and reward them for using their favored weapons.
This is a pretty cool domain. As mentioned above I'd like to see the cold resistance scale better into epic levels, and I'd like to make sure the SLA's benefit from divine epic destinies and don't have severe caster-level limits. Other then that, I like this domain how it is.
Selvera: Aasimar Fighter 20/Epic 10; Old and wise fighter.
Jen: Half Elf Fvs 4; Healer Archer on a TR with friends
Mayve: Drow Bard 14/Wizard 6/Epic 7; Vampire Enchantress
Most of these domains look nice. I think it would have been cool if they had added a Nobility type domain and you got to summon a follower at level 2. The follower would scale to cleric level and work like the skeletal knight in Pale Master. A couple of the Nobility domain level up abilities would buff your summoned creatures, hirelings, and pets.
I thought something better for Heal domain 14 lvl.
"Your healing spells/SLAs do not have healing decrease penalty of all types."
that means you can heal yourself well in Reapers, perhaps can heal warforgeds better(if devs allow it).
It'll be good for traditional playing in reapers. If there, I'd seriously consider to choose Heal domain than others.
At least it takes you 14 clr levels, not good for multi-classing.
Last edited by Targal; 08-31-2017 at 06:36 AM.
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Oh man, that would be so bad ass., and might help- with one of the other issues I tend to have with the Cleric, where their Spell List tends to become outdated greatly at higher level due to it being so easy to get gear that is just better.
But having a Follower similar to the Skeletal Knight you can still buff with Bull's Strength for a tiny little boost would be really cool and fun. Especially if it was flavored in a way that really works well for the Cleric, maybe for a Lawful/Good Cleric it is a Paladin in training, or for a Chaotic one a Barbarian/Shaman in training. Or even a "Petitioner" sent to Eberron to earn ascension in the afterlife into an Angel or Demon/Devil.
Warpriests are dead unless the war priest tree bring something pretty unique. Holy sword is not that unique, virtually every class has it now.
Why would someone play a melee cleric?
Melee DPS will be, pending war priest, lacking. Not much melee power, no DBs, no truly special ability with good damage.
Casting + melee is dead in high end content.
So the only true benefit is the capacity to melee and heal. With self healing penalties in reaper, it is fair to say the devs don't intend for us to self heal much. And if you are going to be the party's main healing, then being in melee is a drawback. Going insta kills and heals is a much more powerful route.
I don't see the majority of the domains as properly balanced. Raging clerics won't be a thing, the SLAs across domains are not very balanced (destruction SLA vs firestorm?), the flavor is there but not the effectiveness.
I feel that most things the dev balance are based more on "sounds cool" than "it is a legitimate option IG, given others".