Why Battle Cleric's get a bad name

[Braegan]

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.

Mostly true assesment.

Regarding the bolded part, The game punished both players for playing solo in a group instead of changing their tactics and adapting to the strengths and weaknesses they both could potentially bring.

[Apoxia]

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

Win.
/Thread

[JasonJi72]

I really don't see how GTHF would be better against a single durable target than OC and Cleave feats. You lost me on that one.

My Gweylan's example was only to comment on other player's attitude, and had no relation to anything else.

Why I chose to make a melee cleric has already been argued quite well by others. Thanks Guys!

The need to stay alive does concern me though, because I realize that my primary role in difficult quests will be to provide healing, and a dead man tells no tales. The reason I want a melee capable Cleric was because I have found myself having to be a healbot of divine casters more than I would care for.

Will my defense be good enough with no reflex/evasion? I plan on getting my healing amp and HP as high as I can. If I build for an effective evasion on a Cleric, I will lose HP and SP. Also, by using plate mail and occasionally 'turtling up' with a tower shield, I can be my PRR much higher.

[Matuse]

It's ok. This thread no longer needs to continue. When the enhancement pass comes, there won't BE any more battle clerics.

Inconvenient abilities that don't pigeonhole clerics into hjealbots (like Divine Might, Spell Penetration, the Smiting line) are being removed, so melee and offensive spellcasting won't be viable anymore.

[ThePrincipal]

battle clerics are easier to build now than ever before - pure 20, clonk, 17/2/1 whatever just pick up the Sentinel ED with Exalted Angel twists and you're a beastly 800hp first life invulnerable killing machine.

[SetofBs]

battle clerics are easier to build now than ever before - pure 20, clonk, 17/2/1 whatever just pick up the Sentinel ED with Exalted Angel twists and you're a beastly 800hp first life invulnerable killing machine.

If by invulnerable killing machine you mean hard to kill but takes forever to kill anything. Seriously. If you are running around in Sentinel and think you are significantly contributing to party DPS you are misleading yourself. Well, maybe you are if you have great gear, but then you would do much better in Fury or LD with a few Sentinel or Angel twists. Sentinel is just a really weak destiny for most situations.

[Kriogen]

Why do battle cleric's get a bad name?
....

Fear. Those that don't know how or simply don't want to create a char with some form of BYOH, are afraid they will not get you heal because you are busy pwning mobs.

Its simple fear.

BYOH builds (this include even barbarians with SF pots), don't care.

It's ok. This thread no longer needs to continue. When the enhancement pass comes, there won't BE any more battle clerics.

Inconvenient abilities that don't pigeonhole clerics into hjealbots (like Divine Might, Spell Penetration, the Smiting line) are being removed, so melee and offensive spellcasting won't be viable anymore.

I just hope Epic Destinies's don't get changed. I mean with the right ED even Arty (ranged/support class) can be a melee war machine.

If by invulnerable killing machine you mean hard to kill but takes forever to kill anything. Seriously. If you are running around in Sentinel and think you are significantly contributing to party DPS you are misleading yourself. Well, maybe you are if you have great gear, but then you would do much better in Fury or LD with a few Sentinel or Angel twists. Sentinel is just a really weak destiny for most situations.

Its works on Normal. But yes, even on Normal its slow.

Juggernaut is a good example for a "War Priest".

[Kinerd]

I really don't see how GTHF would be better against a single durable target than OC and Cleave feats. You lost me on that one.

You generate glancing blows against your main target. Cleaving slows down your attack chain more than the +[W] can make up against single targets. OC is not that big a DPS increase. For example, with a falchion:

OC and no THF
main blow: 13 + 4 * 2 + 2 * 3 = 27 * base
glancing blow: 19 * .5 * .2 = 1.9 * base
total: 28.9 * base

no OC and GTHF
main blow: 13 + 6 * 2 = 25 * base
glancing blow: 19 * .75 * .5 = 7.125 * base
total: 32.125 * base

Or in a general case:

OC increase of main blow: +2 * 1 = 2 * base
GTHF increase of glancing blow: +19 * [.5 * .3 (stronger glances) + .25 * .5 (a third glance)] = 5.225 * base
GTHF net: 3.225 * base

My Gweylan's example was only to comment on other player's attitude, and had no relation to anything else.

I think you underestimate yourself there. Wands are very effective in low level content, but because they max out at CSW off the shelf are pretty useless in high level content. The DPS gap increases as levels increase, especially as PrEs increase for melees and not you. The difference between a level 1 barb and a level 1 cleric is what, +2 Strength? That's nothing, Divine Favor pretty much covers that. The difference between level 20s starts at +16 Strength, +3 multiplier on 19-20, 6d6 damage on hit and glance... and that's vs. a mediocre DPS class. How about against a rogue getting 57.5 sneak attack * TWF * haste boost... and all that before Shadowdancer and epic feats?

[firemedium_jt]

You generate glancing blows against your main target. Cleaving slows down your attack chain more than the +[W] can make up against single targets. OC is not that big a DPS increase. For example, with a falchion:

OC and no THF
main blow: 13 + 4 * 2 + 2 * 3 = 27 * base
glancing blow: 19 * .5 * .2 = 1.9 * base
total: 28.9 * base

no OC and GTHF
main blow: 13 + 6 * 2 = 25 * base
glancing blow: 19 * .75 * .5 = 7.125 * base
total: 32.125 * base

Or in a general case:

OC increase of main blow: +2 * 1 = 2 * base
GTHF increase of glancing blow: +19 * [.5 * .3 (stronger glances) + .25 * .5 (a third glance)] = 5.225 * base
GTHF net: 3.225 * baseI think you underestimate yourself there. Wands are very effective in low level content, but because they max out at CSW off the shelf are pretty useless in high level content. The DPS gap increases as levels increase, especially as PrEs increase for melees and not you. The difference between a level 1 barb and a level 1 cleric is what, +2 Strength? That's nothing, Divine Favor pretty much covers that. The difference between level 20s starts at +16 Strength, +3 multiplier on 19-20, 6d6 damage on hit and glance... and that's vs. a mediocre DPS class. How about against a rogue getting 57.5 sneak attack * TWF * haste boost... and all that before Shadowdancer and epic feats?

I agree that GTHF does more single target damage. But that is an ideal universe and not necessarily a "General Case." Also a lot of this thought process and math is pre Epic Destiny, but still true just not as much a disparity.

The big difference is that those GTHF numbers are based on...


***** standing still *****


That might be ok for a melee with 800 hit points, but not a Cleric that has the responsibility of healing. So in real gameplay the math is not everything. You may not get all your GTHF attacks in as the target might move out of range. And that is just one example.

Also I think you can still double tap the 2hd weapons for extra attacks and that interrupts the GTHF attacks.

You may not get all your glancing attacks off on a target.

Cleaving allows all your critical to go to the mobs around you, so your damage output might be more effective than GTHF on mobs.

More importantly for a Divine Melee your weapon effects like Paralyzer and Curespewing affect all mobs around you hit by your cleave type attacks, and that is really nice for heroic levels.

Cleaves reset some epic enhancement attacks like Momentum Swing and Lay Waste that critical better and really raise the damage output a lot in terms of percentage to a pure melee with 3 heroic prestige enhancements. Epic Destinies close that gap.



It should really be about what melee style you are going to use on your Divine and what will be more useful to your gameplay.

I have lvl 23-24 Melee Clerics that average with buffs about 130-150 normal attacks and average critical of 600-800 and cleave critical is average 600 to mobs around me. My lay waste is about 1600 critical. That is with an EAGA and average gear from commendations and auction house. Epic Destinies are EA and LD so far. And this does not include damage output for Divine Punishment doing over 200 damage per second when triple stacked. Melee allows me to save enough spell points to stack my DOT on the boss and orange/red names... and still heal your arse.

And I don't notice much of a difference from my STR based Horc with STR40 to my Human Generalists with a STR32 except I have to click Divine Power on the Generalist more often. And I like the higher Wisdom on the Generalist.


Saying a Cleric melee will never match up to a pure melee is not the point of clerics going melee in the first place. I hope my melee clerics don't melee as good as pure melee because then you would really suck. Cleric melee is really not about standing toe to toe with a boss although there are those that probably can. It is more about flexibility with party types and certain non elite and epic elite content. It is more about mitigating spell point use and dispatching mobs IMHO than toe to toe with bosses, but I have done Raid boss on melee when low on spell points and getting my aura and burst healing in there. It really depends more on the situation and judgment and the group.

To say Clerics should not melee because they will never be as good as a pure melee is nonsense, and really not the point.

[erikbozelie]

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 .

the dps of my battle cleric was fine up to the update to damage from hit dice damage. rerolled him few days ago to a 930hp, 25%dodge, 345 to 400% healing amp freak with Ein and cleave, great cleave, momentum swing and lay waste.

Curious how the cleaving dps works out for him with spear of the sky.
ill let you know how that build works out.

PS., clerics beat fvs in melee power on the heroic level. (dont start a debate about this, search the forrems, already proven this many times over). so why nitpick on clerics? start with fvs please!

[axel15810]

My STR based horc 17 cleric 2 fighter 1 wiz is amazing. He stays in FoTW and uses an epic antique. I also have a capped Kensei and my battle cleric's melee DPS is not that much worse! He's basically a fighter with blade barriers and a DOT who can heal everybody. Melee cleric's got so much better when destinies were introduced because the gap between them and regular melees DPS shrunk dramatically.

[taurean430]

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.

This is what I have done with Cromix lately. I was having fun playing him as a warpriest as opposed to a pure class for once. I get all kinds of snide commentary, but no different than when he was pure class. This tr has been fun, though admittedly I've been focused on other things and not playing him as often as I should. He heals just fine, has 15 turns to use for aura/burst. The melee is decent, but far from uber. He is a heroic solo machine, yet I prefer to group with him.

People will make stupid commentary. People will tell you that you are doing it wrong. People will complain that you kill things in excess of what they are. But they don't die, and they get healing when needed, thus their commentary carries little weight beyond being an irritant. Anyway, I went 17clr/2fighter/1barb. You lose the boost to blade barrier from the Wiz level but still gain two bonus feats, fast movement, tier one str enhancement. Access to mass heal is still there from cap.

With your current build you have posted, you could go 14 con and be just fine. You will need a 17 base con anyway to gain epic toughness. If you already have a gs hp item there is plenty of room to breathe. 16 charisma opens up divine might 3 for you, which can be very helpful. It also increases your amount of turns.

Granted these are only opinion. Either way don't let the bias of other dictate your fun.

[JasonJi72]

Yep, I will not let anyone interfere with my fun! Good advice.

Regarding Cleaves v/s GTHF: When I play melee healers, I tend to use the 360 degree panoramic vision that good divines tend to develope, so twitching is not something I want to bother with too much, and the 100% effects from weapons in cleave are pretty good.

Action points are somewhat limited, so Divine Might III would be hard to fit in with everything else I want; max healing, some smite for DP, etc... With my current setup, I couldn't even fit extra turn IV into the planner. I also want as much hp and prr as I can get since I am dumping dex.

Currently, I am planning on dropping Extend for Extra Turns. This is kinda a free feat for me that I haven't 'locked' in yet.

What was said about Fvs' really comes home for me. My fvs' were all caster healers with one elf scimmy fvs, and I would always get the third degree about whether or not I could heal; my answer was always the same... I am a favoured soul. Occasionally, a 'melee only and will not heal one bit' fvs would join a quest and people would be fine with that. Now as a caster fvs who now had to heal that idiot with no healer's friend or healing amp, I would be steaming. What other spells does he need besides cures and buffs!? Yet people get all up in arms when they see a cleric with a fighter level or 2 monk. I just don't understand, and I guess I never will.

As far as the enhancement changes go, bring it on! I love a challenge, and I love building characters.

Anyhoo... I started the character this morning before work. Jinnji of Thelanis.

Cya around the playground!

EDIT: I have a +3 str and con tome, so I need a 16 base str and boost str at levels 4,8,12, &16 to get to 23. I need a 16 base con with boosts at 20 and 24 in order to hit 21. That will give me Overwhelming Critical at level 21 and Epic Toughness at level 24. Oh, and I do have 16 cha with a +2 tome. I think I have +2's on all the stats but str and con (+3). I raided my stack of failed characters... I mean Mules. lol I have actually been thinking about making a character like this for a couple years, and have made a few test runs. This will be my first real test, since this one has tomes, a past life, and some gear.

[erikbozelie]

It's ok. This thread no longer needs to continue. When the enhancement pass comes, there won't BE any more battle clerics.

well yeah... unless you splash
asfar as i have heard about those enhancements it takes 1 level dip to get access to most enhancements of that class.
not only that but its posible to get multiple presteges at the same time of the same class.

We will see what happends when the enhancement pass comes, when it does we will find other ways to get some exploit erhm, feature out of it.

[Feralthyrtiaq]

And what's in a name anyway?

If ever I roll another Cleric (a VERY BIG IF considering the Enh Pass /Groan)

I would ONLY roll a 2Monk/2Pal/16Cleric

When people see you don't have that coveted....oh so very precious Mass Heal they don't expect much out of you...but get REALLY surprised when you cover their precious lil lolth and let them have their fun.

[axel15810]

well yeah... unless you splash
asfar as i have heard about those enhancements it takes 1 level dip to get access to most enhancements of that class.
not only that but its posible to get multiple presteges at the same time of the same class.

We will see what happends when the enhancement pass comes, when it does we will find other ways to get some exploit erhm, feature out of it.

I hope all this talk is just speculation, I already freaked out enough when I lost my superior ardor clickies on my battle cleric a few updates ago...

[Kinerd]

I agree that GTHF does more single target damage. But that is an ideal universe and not necessarily a "General Case." Also a lot of this thought process and math is pre Epic Destiny, but still true just not as much a disparity.

The big difference is that those GTHF numbers are based on...


***** standing still *****


That might be ok for a melee with 800 hit points, but not a Cleric that has the responsibility of healing. So in real gameplay the math is not everything. You may not get all your GTHF attacks in as the target might move out of range. And that is just one example.

Because non-GTHF generates glances on 1st and 4th, the GTHF is even better off if you only get 3 animations in. If you literally can only get 2 animations in your chain in, you are literally having to manually heal every 1.2 seconds, why are you even in melee if the situation is that desperate?

Regarding EDs, the percent difference may be smaller but the additive difference is exactly the same. You can take 3 feats to get +2 * base against a single target or you can take 3 feats to get +5.225 * base against a single target. Adding MS and LW to the Cleave chain barely get single-target DPS back to the level of auto-attack even with GTHF. Comparing Cleave-MS-LW with no THF to auto-attack GTHF is no contest.

That Cleaving et al is useful against groups is of course true, but not relevant to the point I made, which was that the most difficult target for a soloing battle cleric is a single durable target.

Regarding Cleaves v/s GTHF: When I play melee healers, I tend to use the 360 degree panoramic vision that good divines tend to develope, so twitching is not something I want to bother with too much, and the 100% effects from weapons in cleave are pretty good.

Nothing I said had anything to do with traditional twitching, which is a long dead style.

[Stormraiser]

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.

Fixed for you :

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's blade barrier still kills enemies faster then the barbarian.

[firemedium_jt]

Because non-GTHF generates glances on 1st and 4th, the GTHF is even better off if you only get 3 animations in. If you literally can only get 2 animations in your chain in, you are literally having to manually heal every 1.2 seconds, why are you even in melee if the situation is that desperate?

Regarding EDs, the percent difference may be smaller but the additive difference is exactly the same. You can take 3 feats to get +2 * base against a single target or you can take 3 feats to get +5.225 * base against a single target. Adding MS and LW to the Cleave chain barely get single-target DPS back to the level of auto-attack even with GTHF.




Comparing Cleave-MS-LW with no THF to auto-attack GTHF is no contest.




That Cleaving et al is useful against groups is of course true, but not relevant to the point I made, which was that the most difficult target for a soloing battle cleric is a single durable target.Nothing I said had anything to do with traditional twitching, which is a long dead style.

Well my CLR17/WIZ1/FTR2 Horc STR based Melee Cleric has

Toughness
Power Attack
EMp Heal
Maximize
Quicken
ICSlash
Cleave
Empower
GCleave
THF
OC
ITHF

My Human Generalist CLR17/WIZ1/FTR2 has Heighten. He has lvl up WIS and STR just enough for OC. He can also take either ITHF or SF Evocation for more SF destinies. Without Heighten and SF he can take the full GTHF also. And I might rebuild him that way, but I want to try him out for more fun with some DC in evocation.

So most 2hd Melee Clerics are NOT dumping the THF line. All my melee clerics have at least THF.

So now is GTHF worth giving up OC or GCleave and you lose lay waste on my STR based Horc above?
What about ITHF and GTHF?

[MeliCat]

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

^ yup

CITW this morning I was basically ignored by a couple of party members and never referred to as a"healer". But it was one of those fairly messy chaotic pugs that I just totally love so we had a lot of dead pure cleric and dead FvS and I got to go to total healbot mode at times. In between times I got to punch things and ein to get my kill count up. Was awesome fun

Playing a pure caster divine feels less viable for me as after your sp goes you're kinda stuck. At least with clerics you have the awesome positive burst that regenns. Add to that some ability to apply melee smack down and it's a lot more fun