The new cleric domains reviewed.

[fatherpirate]

What to skip to the end ? The new domains are very forgettable and surprisingly useless.

So what is wrong with them ? In an effort to not effect play balance, domains were made nearly useless.
A whole domain set can be quickly duplicated or replaced with a few enhancement points.
It has no bite. no 'flavor'. If a cleric was from the animal domain, it should be easy to tell, but it is not.
They operate just like all the other clerics, no way to even tell.

An animal domain cleric can not even summon an animal. He/she still summons 'monsters'.
A magic domain cleric adds 2 missile attack spells....yawn
A death domain cleric becomes immune to level drain - just like everyone else that has a death-block item.

What they should have done - eliminate all current cleric enhancement trees and replace them
with the full list of domain trees (cleric only). Limit clerics to only 2 domains and they cannot be
opposed forces (like good and evil).

in the end, current domains are - forgettable.
Peace

[EllisDee37]

A death domain cleric becomes immune to level drain - just like everyone else that has a death-block item.

Deathblock items don't prevent level drain.

[Marshal_Lannes]

Air - Looks great to me. Can turn undead and elementals (which are always a pain especially those champion fire/water ones). Adds to Evo DCs, adds chain lighting to your spell book.

Animal - Looks very good for the HPs alone. Would have to test to see how Feral Charge works.

Chaos - I would never use this one. SLA Prisimatic Spray doesn't make it draft sexy enough over other options.

Death - Looks like an outstanding domain if you are going to be necro focused.

Destruction - Opens the door up for raging Barbarian/Cleric combos. I think the creative builders can have a lot of fun with this one

Earth - A nice dual purpose domain right? You get Earthquake to CC trash and a meta-magic'd up Melf's for Boss DPS. Plus elemental turning. I like what's going on here.

Fire - I like the Earth and Air SLAs much better. Unless you are flavor building a cleric of the lord of light I guess I pass on this one.

Good - Sneaky good (heh) right? BB SLA is awesome. +3 to all saves. A L20 Cleric is going to give his party 100 Temp HPs and we all know Temp HPs are golden in Reaper. +40 Light SP at 20. Lots of utility here.

Healing - I wouldn't use this one. Basically free empowered healing? Not worth it. This domain should have had the ability to self heal w/o penalty in Reaper.

Knowledge - Not a bad domain for new players. +4 Spell pen and a blanket +2 DCs. Suggestion a very good SLA in Reaper. Nothing here for vets but again, a decent domain for new players which helps them land spells gives all their spells a DC boost and they get a useful Reaper SLA.

Law - I wouldn't take this because you can't mix it with Bard (for enchantment fun) and the only really thing I can see it does it allows you to be a master at greater command. That has it uses but for your main ability? Not enough.

Luck - Bonus to saves and auto-Displacement. Big win. Will likely be the most splashed domain especially for melee mixes.

Magic - the more I look at this domain the more I like - especially for a nuking cleric. Evo DC boosts, tons of Spell points, Chain Missiles SLA and a spell power upgrade. Looks like a very good domain.

Protection - Does the Shield spell stack? Otherwise its +25 PRR/MRR. If shield stacks yes, otherwise no.

Strength - Maybe the worst one. No.

Sun - Lots of SLAs. Doesn't this allow you now to get all the light SLAs from the domain and you can then take all the dark SLAs from Divine Disciple? I mean that's really good right?

Trickery - So this would be the one to consider with Bard mixes. I am not sure here would have to play around with it. The invisible SLA would have been a lot better when you could still stealth. Could go either way on this.

War - Great domain. You can now be a Paladin...err Cleric/Bard Swashbuckler with Holy Sword and Swash.

Water - Would have liked snowball instead of Mind Fog. I don't know if there is enough here.

I disagree, I think a lot of them are quite useful

[doubledge]

To be honest, the first thing I thought when I saw the domains and their spellpower substitution was "Hey, I can build a warlock which only uses one kind of spellpower."


And it works.

Did some testing, and an earth domain cleric with 100 light spellpower was dealing more damage with a GOO pact die, AND sorcerer spells.

Honestly, it seems like you could splash 2 cleric into some builds to convert spellpower.

(For instance, you could go Warlock/Cleric/FVS Fiendlock and just entirely disregard fire spellpower.)


Oh, and Marshal: Holy sword does not stack with swashbuckler. They're both competence bonuses.

[voxson5]

Holy sword does not stack with swashbuckler. They're both competence bonuses.

Oh I think a dorf 17/3 divine defender parody would benefit

[FuryFlash]

Animal - Looks very good for the HPs alone. Would have to test to see how Feral Charge works.

Your review is quite accurate from a builder's perspective. Almost every domain opens up new builds, even if those builds are pretty weak. Many of them could be used effectively on a pure cleric as well, adding more choice and variety.

In terms of Feral Charge, I did a little bit of testing. Here's a little review:
- The animation is great, as opposed to some Vanguard/other dash attacks with similar themes. It hits a large area of people and passes through them in whatever direction you use it in.
- It doesn't have a long delay before you can attack afterwards.
- It has a fairly short cooldown (15 seconds).
- It can be used as a leap ability (e.g. Abundant Step) unlike certain other dash abilities.
- It doesn't auto-aim to your selected target, taking away a lot of potential bugs/misfires.
- It's DC is quite high BUT it's the only melee CC ability I have seen that has a save based off of Reflex. This could be a problem if evasion works against it; I didn't think to test this until after I deleted the test character, so I'm not sure about this one.

Hopefully that gives some insight.