# Cleric (Templar) is Up



## Obryn (May 17, 2011)

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Cleric (Templar))

It's been a long time since I've played a cleric or had one in my games, but the list of erratupdates is huge.

For one thing, it looks like the Radiant Servant finally got hit with the nerfbat.

For another thing, it looks like they changed some stuff to make Strength clerics more viable, but I really can't tell for certain.

So - talk to me.  What do these changes mean?

-O


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## keterys (May 17, 2011)

... wow, there are going to be a lot of unhappy clerics, for a fair number of different reasons.


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## UngeheuerLich (May 17, 2011)

Spiritual weapon is still implement vs AC... And now you don´t even get combat advantage for this attack...

the rest seems ok...


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## hvg3akaek (May 17, 2011)

and turn undead? did they really have to make it suck quite so much?

d8's instead of d10's.

close burst 2 instead of close burst 2/5/8 (per tier)

and 1/2/3 dice of damage compared to 1/2/3/4/5/6.

So we go (at high epic) from 6d10 in burst 8 to 3d8 in burst 2... _ouch!_


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## Aspeon (May 17, 2011)

And Consecrated Ground is no longer movable, which is both a nerf and an buff- nerf because it's immobile and the enemies can engage at a distance, buff because it removes the movable zone range restriction nobody remembers, so the cleric can go off in a corner and sustain it.

(They also continue to not answer the "is a dying character bloodied" question, but I don't want to derail this thread with that debate.)



> So we go (at high epic) from 6d10 in burst 8 to 3d8 in burst 2... _ouch!_




Yeah- wonder if they'll hit the avenger and invoker with the same nerfbat in this month's general errata. They didn't get the area scaling, but they got the same damage progression.


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## Neverfate (May 17, 2011)

I can't remember the last time I saw a Cleric using anything that wasn't from Divine Power. Also, nothing in the game scaled like Turn Undead and now nothing does. Haha.


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## Aegeri (May 17, 2011)

Wow.

No idea where to begin on this! Some things there were much needed nerfs.

Others are just brutal.

Edit: Oh thanks Wizards. Knights lost one of the only ways to get an effective mark mechanic as well with Warpriest's Challenge being nerfed to 1/encounter.


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## Peraion Graufalke (May 17, 2011)

They nerfed a lot of burst sizes. Ouch. 

Was the cleric that overpowered? I think not.

Next up: Twin Strike nerfing.


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## Nemesis Destiny (May 17, 2011)

Looks like there were some tweaks to Strength clerics in there as well with some powers getting changed to melee weapon Str attacks instead of being Wisdom implement powers.

I'm glad the Radiant Servant the nerf. Too many charop radiant damage builds relied on it.

Looks like some of the Warpriest PP also got hit.

And, wow, yeah, Turn Undead (as well as a lot of other powers) got a big de-tuning, which, frankly, given those kinds of damage levels on a non-striker class, just needed to happen. Not that I've experienced any of it firsthand, but those changes were sound in principle.


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## Aegeri (May 17, 2011)

I played with most of that broken stuff in my epic tier game Sorrow of Heaven, though I found warpriest dealable. Admittedly, Warpriest gets bad when you combine it with a defender that can make at-will attacks often. For example the Dwarf fighter in that campaign was making a CC and usually an OA against anything defying his mark (due to warpriest). Warpriest is now much reduced in power with this change for actual defenders.

Astral Storm being nerfed I don't regret going into the nerf bucket and neither am I sad to see turn undead nerfed either. Turn undead was pretty ridiculous at epic tier - especially when you could target immortals and elementals with it as well. A close burst 8 that did a hefty amount of damage as a minor action makes some *strikers* cry. Astral Storm was just ridiculous and was a better control power than some controllers, not sad to see it nerfed.

But this was pretty brutal, especially compared to how little they touched the much more imbalanced Warlord in comparison.

Edit: I cannot wait to see what they do to the ranger based on this. It's going to be a massacre.


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## Quickleaf (May 17, 2011)

Conceptually, what's the difference between a Templar of a battle order and a Paladin?


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## keterys (May 17, 2011)

Turn Undead really could be problematic in epic... and the cleric's powers they changed were... a bit off-role, so I'm okay _conceptually_ with some of the changes, except they should have added in leader Effects as part of doing so.

I'm overall just not happy with the choice.


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## Raith5 (May 17, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Looks like there were some tweaks to Strength clerics in there as well with some powers getting changed to melee weapon Str attacks instead of being Wisdom implement powers.
> 
> I'm glad the Radiant Servant the nerf. Too many charop radiant damage builds relied on it.
> 
> ...




But it is only striker level damage against a specific class of monster. Clerics (to most gods) should be able to do considerable damage to undead. It is in their job pd!

Changes like this are dispiriting (ha!) if you are a cleric focuses on anti undead stuff


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## Colmarr (May 17, 2011)

As someone who's persisted with a Battle Cleric for over 2 years and had some hope that this article might offer _something_ to smile about, I'm disappointed.

I know it's errata and that there was nothing in the fighter and warlord articles to buoy my spirits, but the only bone offered to me in this article is changing a few powers and the PPs Angelic Avenger and Warpriest from Wis to Str.

Against that you have the nerfing of Turn Undead, Consecrated Ground and Divine Power (IIRC, the regen wasn't previously limited to when you were bloodied). 

Colour me unimpressed 



keterys said:


> I'm okay _conceptually_ with some of the changes, except they should have added in leader Effects as part of doing so.




You know, if they'd done that, I might not be so unimpressed after all.


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## Destil (May 17, 2011)

These nerfs (particuarlly reducing the damage and area on all the devoted build's AoEs) would have been warranted if we still just had PHB1 to play with, where clerics were better than the wizard at a lot of the wizard's own areas of expertise. But given how powered up the wizard/mage has become since then and all the controllers that followed, some of this was unwarranted. Especially with bugs like Astral Weapon's Implement vs. AC not being fixed.

Turn undead could ideally have one more die at epic, just to be in line with a 2[W] power.

Illuminating Attack was one of the justifiable ones.

Warpriest just needed to require a 'cleric at-will attack power' not an encounter.

(And Versatile Master needs to be brought out back and shot. It's responsible for far too much stuff that's fine being nerfed in its stead)

Not looking forward to anything except the warlock now, I have to admit.


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## Incenjucar (May 17, 2011)

I don't really mind de-emphasizing Turn Undead. Ever since 2e I've never liked the idea of divine characters being shoehorned into being anti-undead. That would be fine for an undead hunter PrC or feats (the cleric was originally just a way to counter a vampire, after all), but it's always struck me as a weird and troublesome thing.


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## Camelot (May 17, 2011)

Quickleaf said:


> Conceptually, what's the difference between a Templar of a battle order and a Paladin?




I'd say that a templar would generally fight when the enemy invades the templar's home, whereas a paladin will go looking for the enemy to stop them before they get anywhere.  I see paladins as much more warrior-like, wanting to quell a threat before it grows, whereas a templar, even one from a battle order, would prefer peace to war.  Of course, I'd think that both clerics and paladins could come from the same order when the individual people interpret their teachings differently from one another.

And of course, a templar is a leader while a paladin is a defender (or a striker if you are a blackguard).


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## Aegeri (May 17, 2011)

Raith5 said:


> But it is only striker level damage against a specific class of monster. Clerics (to most gods) should be able to do considerable damage to undead. It is in their job pd!
> 
> Changes like this are dispiriting (ha!) if you are a cleric focuses on anti undead stuff



It can also be applied to elementals (Demons) and immortals (angels as an example). Given that epic tier is pretty much demons and your other option is undead, this makes Clerics supremely effective in epic tier. You may ask "Well just don't use demons and undead" and my response is "Enjoy making 90% of your own monsters for an entire tier of play then".


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## Obryn (May 17, 2011)

This is one of those articles that I really don't understand.  Simply put, while it's been a long time since I've seen a Cleric in play (because, you know, _Dark Sun_), they never struck me as particularly overpowered.

Yeah, some Leader Effect riders would have been nice.  I can see what WotC was thinking with most of this - this is a Leader, not a Striker and not a Controller - but I think there was too much of the nerf-bat and not nearly enough to compensate for it.  Except for Radiant Servant.  That thing needed nerfed, bad.

My real confusion is - how popular _were_ some of the nerfed powers?  How much of an impact will that really have?

The real buzzkill is that for some reason Healing Word has officially been changed so that it no longer works with Pacifist Healer.  That's kinda bizarre, IMO.  Granted, I hated healics with the passion of a thousand suns, but it's a kinda crazy move.

-O


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## Incenjucar (May 17, 2011)

When PHB1 was new, there was a lot of talk about how the cleric could out-control a wizard because it had a bunch of friendly AOEs. People may have just gotten used to that, like how we accept smog or gum on the sidewalk. I think they're basically trying to do damage control on Pacifist Healer. I get the impression that it's proven to be the Twin Strike of healing options.


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## Obryn (May 17, 2011)

Incenjucar said:


> When PHB1 was new, there was a lot of talk about how the cleric could out-control a wizard because it had a bunch of friendly AOEs. People may have just gotten used to that, like how we accept smog or gum on the sidewalk. I think they're basically trying to do damage control on Pacifist Healer. I get the impression that it's proven to be the Twin Strike of healing options.



Well, like I mentioned, I can't say I'll shed a tear for the healic if this is really the nail in its coffin.

I never had one in my game, hoped to never have one in my game, and just didn't get the impression one would help speed combat along instead of dragging it to a complete and total halt.  But, some folks apparently loved 'em, and I'm not one to pretend like my own preferences should be universal.

-O


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## Destil (May 17, 2011)

But, if they didn't like pacifist healer (understandable, I hate that build) why nerf all the damage-dealing powers for the old devoted build? Why not the actual powers that build uses?

If anything, this is going to _encourage _ranged Wis clerics to pick up more pacifist powers. *Meh.*

Example: Forget ever seeing a cleric who picks Turn Undead over Healers Mercy now.


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## Raith5 (May 17, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> It can also be applied to elementals (Demons) and immortals (angels as an example). Given that epic tier is pretty much demons and your other option is undead, this makes Clerics supremely effective in epic tier. You may ask "Well just don't use demons and undead" and my response is "Enjoy making 90% of your own monsters for an entire tier of play then".




I agree with both these problems. And to be fair the burst at epic is way too big and thus silly. But if anyone is going to handing out hurt to undead I reckon it should be clerics/paladins.

So I guess I agree with the nerf but I reckon they went too far keeping it burst 2 for all levels. I reckon something like 2 at heroic/3 at paragon and 4 at epic would be more reasonable.


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## Baumi (May 17, 2011)

I would have liked to see some buffs too ... like Priest's Shield.

Why does Healing Word and Pacifist no longer work together?


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## tiornys (May 17, 2011)

Baumi said:


> I would have liked to see some buffs too ... like Priest's Shield.
> 
> Why does Healing Word and Pacifist no longer work together?



Because of the Sentinel.

Ok, full explanation.  For some reason, they wanted to give the Sentinel the same healing power as the Warpriest, so they removed the Divine keyword from Healing Word.  This article represents full confirmation that yes, even for the original Cleric, Healing Word no longer has the Divine keyword.  Mostly it's a cosmetic change, but Pacifist Healer only applies to Divine Healing powers, and therefore no longer applies to the bread and butter Cleric heal.

t~


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## Baumi (May 17, 2011)

I don't think that was intentional since that change wasn't even mentioned in the change-summary.


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## Dice4Hire (May 17, 2011)

Well, I am running Dark SUn now, so no need to discuss this now, but when we start a new game, we'll have to decide what to include and what not to.


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## Aegeri (May 17, 2011)

Baumi said:


> I don't think that was intentional since that change wasn't even mentioned in the change-summary.



This is another example of what has been called "stealth errata". Personally I don't understand why the Sentinel needed "healing word" copied from the cleric, let alone why this cost the power its divine keyword. 

But this is wizards in a post-essentials world. I do not expect many of their decisions to make any sense anymore.


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## Njall (May 17, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> This is another example of what has been called "stealth errata". Personally I don't understand why the Sentinel needed "healing word" copied from the cleric, let alone why this cost the power its divine keyword.
> 
> But this is wizards in a post-essentials world. I do not expect many of their decisions to make any sense anymore.




I suppose they're just trying to cut back the number of powers. There are like 8000 powers out there... finding a name for yet another "spend an healing surge" power must be getting difficult, and this way when they want to create a new leader class they can just slap "healing word" in there without cluttering the compendium. 
Furthermore, it's just more intuitive. If two powers are exactly the same, just call them the same and be done with it. 
The fact that HW doesn't work with the pacifist healer anymore is probably just a blunder on their part ( and probably proof of the fact that the designers care about RAI more than they care about RAW). 
This decision does make a lot of sense if you assume that they're just trying to make the game more manageable from a design perspective.
You may not agree that it needs to be done or not like the way they're doing it, but it does make sense.


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## Aegeri (May 17, 2011)

> I suppose they're just trying to cut back the number of powers. There  are like 8000 powers out there... finding a name for yet another "spend  an healing surge" power must be getting difficult, and this way when  they want to create a new leader class they can just slap "healing word"  in there without cluttering the compendium.



Restoring Spirit
Healing Spirit
Mending Spirit

Just off the top of my head for the Sentinel to have a different kind of healing power, with spirit being far better for a primal character than the divine sounding "healing word". I mean it's not terribly difficult so long as it gets the point across. Also this hardly clutters up the compendium, because it's usually pretty obvious what class features belong to who at level 1. It's never been a problem in the past and it wouldn't be in future either I would bet. The only argument for this consolidation is for maximizing support with minimal feats. For example if every leader has "healing word" then you can have 1 feat for every class. They haven't done this though and so it's just a silly decision.


> Furthermore, it's just more intuitive. If two powers are exactly the same, just call them the same and be done with it.



Except when you want other feats or class features to interact with it. This decision has broke the Pacifist Cleric in a critical manner: For no actual benefit. What is the sentinel gaining from having healing word?

Nothing. But the Cleric is ironically losing because of it. This is just silly and makes absolutely no sense.


> The fact that HW doesn't work with the pacifist healer anymore is  probably just a blunder on their part ( and probably proof of the fact  that the designers care about RAI more than they care about RAW).



Really? Then why is encounters and LFR strictly RAW? In both examples, Pacifist Cleric wouldn't be able to give bonus healing to Healing Word. So to say this is utterly ridiculous.

Of course that it's a stupid mistake is obvious: The point is though that it shows how sloppy post-essentials design just is (at least as far as PCs are concerned). I'd also like to point out this is stealth errata that broke a core feature of some builds. That's overall really poor design and should be addressed sooner than later. We can hope that errata in June (the big update) changes how pacifist healing works so it again applies to healing word, but by RAW it now doesn't. It doesn't because of something _that shouldn't have happened in the first place_.

Honestly, was it truly that hard to call the sentinels healing something other than healing word? Was it really? Because I'm not buying any argument that says that makes sense, because it doesn't. Unless they errata ALL healing to the same kind of format, then I might be able to see the point.

But oh! They didn't change the fundamentally similar inspiring word from the Warlord to being "Healing Word". Yet logically if your argument on "sense" was true, this would have happened. But it didn't. So the cleric loses out here because an unrelated class in an entirely different power source got slapped with "Healing Word" when it shouldn't have and could _easily_ have been named different.

This is combined with all the significant nerfs to many of their powers, reducing the clerics off role abilities as a controller and defender. Now all of these were _fair_. I was there when the game came out. I saw that many people complained Clerics were better controllers than Wizards at the time. Remember that initially clerics had big party friendly AoE powers and actually could out control a wizard in many ways (this is obviously no longer true). The thing is while nerfing these powers wizards threw away the opportunity to make them more appropriate. They could have increased the leader riders (or given them more leadery effects) of these powers instead.

All of this would have made "sense". Blatantly nerfing most of the clerics off role powers (_even if justified_) while giving nothing back to make them more "leadery" instead, breaking the rather popular pacifist healing feat (for no real logic) and basically hammering this class _far more than the Warlord who arguably deserved more adjusting_ but didn't get anywhere near the nerfing, is just plain _nonsense_. 

I mean I actually played epic when all this cleric stuff was arguably most broken like Astral Storm, gigantic close burst 8 minor action (feat incidentally) turn undead (that affected elementals and immortals too) and other stuff. But even at its most broken this stuff never compared to what I saw Warlords do and what Warlords can still do. These nerfs to the clerics secondary role, without giving them back something on their primary to compensate leaves them behind Shamans, Bards and Warlords. 

In terms of why this makes no sense, we have some token changes for strength clerics without fixing any of the problems they actually have. We then have the most bizarre thing in while they're nerfing the crap out of the cleric, Divine Oracle - one of the most whacky PPs in 4E that is the base to a _lot_ of broken builds is _not changed_. I mean, whut?

The only thing that makes sense here is Mike Mearls writes an article about how nobody wanted to play a cleric, then we get this. Now that makes sense, it seems he wanted his article to be a self fulfilling prophecy.


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## Raith5 (May 17, 2011)

In terms of why this makes no sense said:
			
		

> lot[/I] of broken builds is _not changed_. I mean, whut?
> 
> The only thing that makes sense here is Mike Mearls writes an article about how nobody wanted to play a cleric, then we get this. Now that makes sense, it seems he wanted his article to be a self fulfilling prophecy.




Agree. It just seems so incoherent and random since Essentials. The turn undead nerf is an overreaction to an admittedly real problem (especially at high levels). But these changes seem to undervalue people playing the game who have invested in specific builds and powers with these dramatic rather than modest changes. 

But Id love to know if there is a system or math that underpins these changes. It seems really random to me but maybe I dont have the system mastery to understand it.

It seems to me that the system of 4th ed has so many layers and caveats that it has escaped the capacity to managed and molded rationally.


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## brehobit (May 17, 2011)

*Weird things broken or left unfixed.*

First of all, let me say that for the most part I'm really happy with the changes.  Though I do think turn undead got too nuked (I agree with others than a 2/3/4 area would have been much better, the drop in damage was fine.)  I'm also unclear on removing the divine keyword from healing word.  I think they largely improved the STR cleric. (Holy Wrath, nimbus of Doom, the Tactical Warpriest powers).  As someone who is hoping to play a fighter/tactical warpriest I'd say the changes there are a net win.  The once/encounter limit on the special mark is a big nerf, but the power changes are a big (big) win.

However there are some things they didn't fix that really needed fixing.

*Priest's Shield*.  I'd have gone with making the bonus an effect and for all defenses at the very least.  Even then unless it's +2 I have doubts about its usefulness.  As it stands it's just plain silly.
*Divine Fortune* Just really weak. Just move it to +2 and be done.  Now that turn undead has been nuked from orbit the other power should not suck.
I still want a clarification on how Battle Pyre works: I think it's really ambiguous. Do you get one secondary attack for each person you hit?  I think that is how it reads, but dude, that's really powerful.


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## Joshua Randall (May 17, 2011)

Clerics are still a great class. The wailing and gnashing of teeth will subside soon.

Turn Undead was freakishly overpowered prior to now, especially in combination with the feats that let you use it against other creature types (Dragons, Elementals, etc.).


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## UngeheuerLich (May 17, 2011)

brehobit said:


> First of all, let me say that for the most part I'm really happy with the changes.  Though I do think turn undead got too nuked (I agree with others than a 2/3/4 area would have been much better, the drop in damage was fine.)  I'm also unclear on removing the divine keyword from healing word.  I think they largely improved the STR cleric. (Holy Wrath, nimbus of Doom, the Tactical Warpriest powers).  As someone who is hoping to play a fighter/tactical warpriest I'd say the changes there are a net win.  The once/encounter limit on the special mark is a big nerf, but the power changes are a big (big) win.
> 
> However there are some things they didn't fix that really needed fixing.
> 
> ...



No. One hit entry, as it is a burst. You don´t roll for hits seperately on the hit line either...

I want to stress, that spiritual weapon either needs a +2 bonus, be a weapon power or is chaged against reflex. (I personally believe, a +2 rider would  be appropriate.)
I see no reason, why it should be so hard to hit with it. It is just a 1d10+wis power, which is ridculously low for a single target daily that does not hit very well...

edit: Ok, since the weapon is sustain minor 1d10 Damage attack, it does seem more or less apropriate to not have it hit that often...


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## DEFCON 1 (May 17, 2011)

Joshua Randall said:


> Clerics are still a great class. The wailing and gnashing of teeth will subside soon.




Of clerics, sure.  But don't worry... another product will be released shortly that will bring about more wailing and gnashing of teeth.


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## brehobit (May 17, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> No. One hit entry, as it is a burst. You don´t roll for hits seperately on the hit line either...



Duh.  Thanks, I missed the obvious for more than a year.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 17, 2011)

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the reason the Pacifist Healer doesn't work anymore is because Healing Word no longer has the "Divine" keyword in it.


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## Mengu (May 17, 2011)

Never liked laser clerics, still don't like them. Nothing gained nothing lost as far as I'm concerned.

I'll be glad to not see Tactical Warpriest on a Warden and Radiant Servant on radiant abusing poachers.

And they can remove the pacifist healer feat from the game as far as I'm concerned, so that feat getting hit by the removal of the divine keyword from Healing Word doesn't bother me. What does bother me is feats like Beatific Healer, and PP's like Holy Emissary that use the same "divine healing powers" wording, no longer work for their intended purpose. I expect errata to the errata to fix this back, provided the issue gets on their radar.

Overall, some of the changes aren't favorable for the game from a design stand point. I really don't mind any encounter/daily powers doing more base damage, I think their damage is entirely too close to at-will powers. At paragon levels the difference between 1d6+15 and 2d6+15 is pretty negligible, it's the effects you're looking to make use of. And it's not like laser clerics have a ton of ways to boost their damage. So I do philosophically dislike the reduction of damage. But on a personal/game group level, the changes don't affect me/us in the least. None of my groups have a laser cleric. I like strength clerics, and almost every other leader better, Warlords, Artificers, Bards, Shamans, and Runepriests are great, I'm not big into Ardents, and haven't seen a Sentinel in action yet.


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## Kaodi (May 17, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> You may ask "Well just don't use demons and undead" and my response is "Enjoy making 90% of your own monsters for an entire tier of play then".




So there is a shortage of epic tier monsters that are not demons or undead?


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## the Jester (May 17, 2011)

Hmm, I'll have to print out the updates for the cleric in my 4e group.

AFAIK nothing that she uses (other than _turn undead_) changed. Damn you, _break spirit_ and _steel to glass!_


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## Zaphling (May 17, 2011)

For me, I'm just very happy they gave a bit of justice to the Strength Clerics. 
Especially the part where they changed the new Tactical Warpriest into Strength and Wisdom, instead of the pure Wisdom before.  I'm content.  

What I'm NOT happy about is, if you have studied Heroes of Shadow, THEY NEVER GAVE STRENGTH CLERICS SHADOW POWERS! ALL WISDOM???

I'm also confused why they did not change the original cleric at-wills' effects-on-a-hit into an effect entry, like the warpriest's at-wills. For example, Warpriest's Brand of the Sun, Damage on Hit, then the saving throw effects even on a miss. While Templar's Sacred Flame's effect has to happen on a hit? I don't get WotC.

Lastly, can someone explain to me the difference between a Battle Order Templar and a Warpriest?
So battle templars were ordained in an order? So they belong to a group? While a warpriest doesn't? Warpriest are solo priests traveling the world?


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## Kelvor Ravenstar (May 17, 2011)

I'm usually an Essentials defender, but this is the first time the essentials-related Nerf-bat has really hit my campaign's characters. 

I went back and checked my Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and Healing Word has been missing the Divine keyword since then. So I'm not positive we can blame the Sentinel, but I'm assuming that the two books were researched and developed simultaneously.

But then again, this doesn't bother me that much, not having the pacifist healer's boosted healing word will make my encounters more deadly . (Which has been an issue ever since the feat and power started adding more extra dice at 6th level).

EDIT: This is a big piece of stealth errata, because if it was in HotFL it must have been in the character builder this way for months and nobody noticed until today!

EDIT2: Okay, after so after reading the CharOp board they knew about this change already, so either I was just out of the loop, or some people missed this because it wasn't in an errata document.


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## Peraion Graufalke (May 17, 2011)

Kaodi said:


> So there is a shortage of epic tier monsters that are not demons or undead?




According to the Compendium, there are 896 monsters in epic tier, including
- 247 Elementals, of which 104 are Demons,
- 177 Undead,
and also
- 49 Aberrants,
- 40 Fey,
- 187 Immortals, of which 38 are Devils and 26 are Angels, and
- 96 Dragons, several of which are also Undead (and a few who are Demons).

I'd say that there is a shortage of epic tier monsters in general. Personally, I'd like to see more aberrants, fey, and devils.

With _Turn Undead_ enhanced to target immortals, elementals, and undead, it's effective against 611 epic tier monsters, or 68%. So this did need the nerf bat IMO; the rest of the errata went too far for me.
(And I'm getting pretty fed up with what has been coming out of WotC lately.  )


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## WalterKovacs (May 17, 2011)

Zaphling said:


> What I'm NOT happy about is, if you have studied Heroes of Shadow, THEY NEVER GAVE STRENGTH CLERICS SHADOW POWERS! ALL WISDOM???




Admitedly, as a _direct_ support for warpriests, they stuck with the stats for it, but even then, many of the powers don't require an attack roll, and don't actually use Wisdom for anything. So, they could have made it so that everything was useless for Strength based clerics, but instead made at least a few powers that are usable by all types of cleric.



> I'm also confused why they did not change the original cleric at-wills' effects-on-a-hit into an effect entry, like the warpriest's at-wills. For example, Warpriest's Brand of the Sun, Damage on Hit, then the saving throw effects even on a miss. While Templar's Sacred Flame's effect has to happen on a hit? I don't get WotC.




The "goal" for most the errata has seemed to mostly be nerfing powerful stuff, not really trying to increase the power level of old stuff to make it competitive. 



> Lastly, can someone explain to me the difference between a Battle Order Templar and a Warpriest?
> So battle templars were ordained in an order? So they belong to a group? While a warpriest doesn't? Warpriest are solo priests traveling the world?




The concept of a Battle Order Templar is sort of like a 'religious warlord'. They focus on Strength more than Wisdom, while a Warpriest gets his strength from wisdom (similar to avengers and Chaladins). The warpriest actually focuses heavily on their religion, specifically their domain. So a Battle Order Templar is almost like a Scout/Hunter ranger type ... a martial character with some divine magic in his back pocket. Also, in the case of the Death priest, it's not even a weapon based character, using implement attacks (although still in melee).


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## Gorgoroth (May 17, 2011)

*I can feel the pain here*

if I were playing a 4e cleric I'd be pretty p*ssed...

but ya, if they nerf Twin Strike too I am literally going to burn all my 4e books, and try to purge it from my memory. 

_"I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity..."_ -EA Poe

ps then again, I could just play without any terrible Wotc errata, and forevermore ignore anything coming from them that isn't printed, including their kludgy builder


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## IanB (May 17, 2011)

I'm actually playing an epic tier devoted cleric right now; I think of all the changes here the one I'm actually going to feel the most is the huge nerf to Fire Storm. No longer is it an 11x11 auto-minion-kill, which was a pretty huge thing to have access to in a group with no real controller.

That said it really probably was too good.


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## Marshall (May 17, 2011)

Njall said:


> I suppose they're just trying to cut back the number of powers. There are like 8000 powers out there... finding a name for yet another "spend an healing surge" power must be getting difficult, and this way when they want to create a new leader class they can just slap "healing word" in there without cluttering the compendium.
> Furthermore, it's just more intuitive. If two powers are exactly the same, just call them the same and be done with it.




No, the problem is the lazy design of the Sentinels healing power. If the devs had put an inkling worth of thought into the design of _that_ class and come up with a unique rider to the power _like every other leader healing power_ than it wouldnt be "exactly the same" and deserve its own name. 

Dont excuse lazy design with the desire to avoid clutter, especially when most of the classes in the HotF* books are nothing but clutter.


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## Estlor (May 17, 2011)

I get really tired of erratta, excuse me, updates driven not by an imbalance of power or a prone-ness to abuse, but by the dev's intent.

If it ain't hugging broke, don't hugging fix it even if it wasn't what you had in mind.


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## MrGrenadine (May 17, 2011)

Gorgoroth said:


> if I were playing a 4e cleric I'd be pretty p*ssed...




I just switched characters in my weekly Sunday night game from a Battle Priest of Tempus to an Eladrin Wizard.  I loved that character, though, and was really looking forward to seeing how he'd develop through Paragon.  These changes make me happier that I swapped him out. 



Gorgoroth said:


> ps then again, I could just play without any terrible Wotc errata, and forevermore ignore anything coming from them that isn't printed, including their kludgy builder




Unless I'm mistaken, isn't the problem is that when rules and powers (and errata) are errata'd only in the Compendium, there's no way to revert to the old version unless you have a hard copy of it somewhere?  Talk about confusing--now we have classic 4e, Essentials 4e, and various errata and revisions and additions to choose between.  Character creation and progression is becoming a real nightmare.


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## Droogie128 (May 17, 2011)

IanB said:


> I'm actually playing an epic tier devoted cleric right now; I think of all the changes here the one I'm actually going to feel the most is the huge nerf to Fire Storm. No longer is it an 11x11 auto-minion-kill, which was a pretty huge thing to have access to in a group with no real controller.
> 
> That said it really probably was too good.




Nerfing damage is fine. They didn't compensate it with anything to make the cleric a better leader is the problem. It was already mediocre at best compared to the Bard or Warlord. Now, I put it below the Shaman and Ardent.


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## IanB (May 17, 2011)

Droogie128 said:


> Nerfing damage is fine. They didn't compensate it with anything to make the cleric a better leader is the problem. It was already mediocre at best compared to the Bard or Warlord. Now, I put it below the Shaman and Ardent.




Well in the case of Fire Storm the 'real' nerf is moving the zone damage to end of turn instead of beginning IMO. The burst size and damage reduction hurts, but now the minions (or whoever) you miss can walk out of the zone before they die.


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## Droogie128 (May 17, 2011)

Here's the thing. The cleric was basically built around powerful healing and strong control. Now, its most potent healing has been neutered twice (Pacifist Healer), and the control has been reduced to lol. Not much left in the way of redeeming features.

Couldn't they have just made it simple, and posted "Forget this class! Play a Warpriest!"


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## IanB (May 17, 2011)

Droogie128 said:


> Here's the thing. The cleric was basically built around powerful healing and strong control. Now, its most potent healing has been neutered twice (Pacifist Healer), and the control has been reduced to lol. Not much left in the way of redeeming features.
> 
> Couldn't they have just made it simple, and posted "Forget this class! Play a Warpriest!"




I don't know that the healing has been tremendously nerfed, I'm still going to have 4 minor action heals per encounter, three of which affect two people, still have a surge worth of temp hp for everyone at the start of encounters, etc.


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## Droogie128 (May 18, 2011)

IanB said:


> I don't know that the healing has been tremendously nerfed, I'm still going to have 4 minor action heals per encounter, three of which affect two people, still have a surge worth of temp hp for everyone at the start of encounters, etc.




I was talking about Pacifist Healer, which has now been nerfed twice. That's all clerics get now, too. Healing. Leaders do a lot more than just healing, or they used to.

To quote someone from the WotC boards:

On the bright side, now people have a reason to play Runepriests. Because now they're the divine leader that DOESN'T suck.

And, ironically, they can still use Pacifist Healer, while the class it belongs to can't.


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## shmoo2 (May 18, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> This is another example of what has been called "stealth errata". Personally I don't understand why the Sentinel needed "healing word" copied from the cleric, let alone why this cost the power its divine keyword.




This is super stealth errata.
My copy of the OFFLINE Character Builder has no _Divine_ keyword on Healing Word.

I don't know why the change was made, but it probably wasn't because of the Sentinel.


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## Droogie128 (May 18, 2011)

shmoo2 said:


> This is super stealth errata.
> My copy of the OFFLINE Character Builder has no _Divine_ keyword on Healing Word.
> 
> I don't know why the change was made, but it probably wasn't because of the Sentinel.




I think it's because WotC has shown lately that they really have no clue how their own system works.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2011)

All I've heard from people is how well the Pre-E classes and the E classes work at the table together.  Why are they even doing this if they work so great together?


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## Zaphling (May 18, 2011)

I still don't get the difference in flavor between Warpriests and Battle Clerics. Someone give more explanation? There was already, but it wasn't enough. Thankx


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## occam (May 18, 2011)

UngeheuerLich said:


> Spiritual weapon is still implement vs AC... And now you don´t even get combat advantage for this attack...




But you get a minor-action repeat of the attack for the rest of the encounter; if it misses a little more often, that seems OK.


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## Aegeri (May 18, 2011)

Steve Winter on the official boards posted this:



			
				Steve Winter said:
			
		

> R&D is planning a design & development-style podcast for next  week to talk about the templar and why some of the changes were made. If  someone here puts together a list of Rule of Three-type questions,  we'll be sure to pass them along to Bart before the recording session.  (It probably goes without stating, but I'll state it anway, that  questions that aren't wrapped around insults are more likely to be taken  seriously.)
> 
> Steve



That is one podcast that will be worth the price for admission. I seriously cannot wait to see what on earth they are going to say here. I could understand these changes if they gave back leader riders or abilities to the cleric, but without that it's really way too much.

Edit: I have to say reading the official boards that this is the first time I've seen a near universally overwhelming negative reaction to errata. Negative reactions and gigantic arguments over errata are the norm, but this level of consensus from posters who regularly argue like cats with one another? That's the sign right there something monumental happened.


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## Saeviomagy (May 18, 2011)

shmoo2 said:


> This is super stealth errata.
> My copy of the OFFLINE Character Builder has no _Divine_ keyword on Healing Word.
> 
> I don't know why the change was made, but it probably wasn't because of the Sentinel.




Are you sure it's not just a bug? Was there a specific "hey, we removed the divine keyword from healing word so that X happened"? Because otherwise I'm inclined to believe that it's a software bug - that the character builder is using the wrong healing word, or someone just changed it because it didn't make sense that it was a divine power being used by a primal class or vice versa, and they're not in a position to understand the implications - compounded by someone copy-pasting from the character builder.


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## Obryn (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> All I've heard from people is how well the Pre-E classes and the E classes work at the table together.  Why are they even doing this if they work so great together?



You seem to believe these nerfs are because of Essentials.  While I agree that some stuff like Melee Training was likely hit in the Essentials crossfire, I don't see anything here - except for the bizarre Healing Word thing - that is _at all _related to Essentials.  And I'm hoping the Healing Word/Pacifist Cleric thing is patched up soon.

And yeah, E-classes and PHB classes still work great together.  You know, you could try it yourself.

-O


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## Quickleaf (May 18, 2011)

Camelot said:


> I'd say that a templar would generally fight when the enemy invades the templar's home, whereas a paladin will go looking for the enemy to stop them before they get anywhere.  I see paladins as much more warrior-like, wanting to quell a threat before it grows, whereas a templar, even one from a battle order, would prefer peace to war.  Of course, I'd think that both clerics and paladins could come from the same order when the individual people interpret their teachings differently from one another.
> 
> And of course, a templar is a leader while a paladin is a defender (or a striker if you are a blackguard).



So the leaders defend the temple, and the defenders lead the charge against the enemy?


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## BobTheNob (May 18, 2011)

Impressive. I reckon wizard hit on everything (remaining) about the cleric that upset the apple-cart.

If anyone thinks the Nerf to turn undead was too much : We once had a priest who was tuned as undead slayer. He was SO good at it that it became practically pointless to put undead encounters in the game. I had to over-engineer encounters so undead could be included, it was just plum ridiculous what his character did (and yes, he was radiant servant too).

The same debate raged when they first nerfed Solar wrath. I believe that was a good change (and Im glad they brought the rest of radiant servant in line...its about as good as the other paragon options now) and I think the change to turn undead now makes it worthy in its place as an encounter power.


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## Aegeri (May 18, 2011)

It isn't the fact the nerfs are justified, believe me they are and the bollocks I put up with when the Cleric in my epic game made turn undead into a close burst 8 _minor action_ attack was very annoying (that targeted elementals and immortals, the only other 2 decent high level antagonists with actual stats in epic tier). It's the fact they nerfed a swathe of stuff and gave absolutely nothing back to the Cleric in the process - while breaking many paragon paths, feats and features that normally interacted with healing word (which is now confirmed to not have the divine keyword).

It's also that they didn't even bother updating some of the useless healing utilities, which are currently standard actions (so nobody ever uses them). I will say again I fully agree with nerfing consecrated ground, firestorm and astral storm. What I disagree with is not making those LEADER powers instead of just making them blatantly awful.

There is an important difference there.


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## Nemesis Destiny (May 18, 2011)

Do you have a link/source on that keyword removal for Healing Word?


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 18, 2011)

Eh, people always hate it when changes take away some of their toys. It does seem like a number of things have been pretty seriously nerfed though. I do wonder where the big necessity was. Radiant Servant and Warpriest stuff is OK. Just don't really see the big need for most of the rest of it. Some seems overnerfed.


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## Aegeri (May 18, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Do you have a link/source on that keyword removal for Healing Word?



Just look at the article, they reprinted Healing Word and it now doesn't have the divine keyword. There is no more RAIing you way around it. If a power, feature or similar needed the divine keyword for healing, it no longer works with healing word. It completely sucks, but that is the way it works and they have reprinted it sans divine keyword so that is as good as it gets official errata wise.


AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, people always hate it when changes take away some of their toys.



 This is a bit of an understatement.

Especially because even when I had a cleric abusing ALL of this stuff just about, he was _nowhere_ near a Warlord in encounter breaking. If you've never seen an epic level warlord you just have no concept of how much they can destroy encounters trivially. Warlords already have a massive impact simply by ensuring that PCs will go first more regularly in encounters - let alone their ridiculous PPs (Battle Captain) and some powers. I mean they changed Warpriest and Radiant Servant, yet didn't change Divine Oracle (which is actually more broken). Thinking back, they changed virtually nothing significant about the Warlord and didn't take any time to nerf Battle Captain - which deserved it WAY more than Warpriest/Radiant Servant did.

There is just no thought or logic behind this, as clerics were about the middle of the pack in terms of leaders anyway.


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## MatthewJHanson (May 18, 2011)

I am amused that they changed the name of the Warpriest paragon path because it was confusing to also have a subclass called the Warpriest. 

Were it me, I might have not named the subclass something that was already used for a popular paragon path.

Then I also probably would also named of Heroes of the Adjective-starting-with-F Word-Meaning-Place books something else, so what do I know?


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## Raith5 (May 18, 2011)

Understatement yes! When there are really dramatic errata's like some of the changes that have come out in recent times it produces bad blood between players of these specific builds and WOTC.

But it also produces uncomfortable discussions between DMs and players who have often setup their PCs around specific powers on whether to errata or not errata. I reckon that WOTC need to remember that this is a social game and avoid dramatic erratas.


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## Destil (May 18, 2011)

This is likely what they meant when they said the seeker and the artificer would be 'getting support'. Now they're both just as good as a cleric, see?


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## Destil (May 18, 2011)

Also, a thought: does the dev team just tremendously overvalue AoE? Was that frost-cheese eratta way back actually to weaken the _wizard_, and not the rogue/ranger? I always assumed loosing the ability to use it with area attacks, I assumed the RAI, was a causality to balance out multi-attacks. But what if it's the other way around?


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## Tony Vargas (May 18, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> All I've heard from people is how well the Pre-E classes and the E classes work at the table together.  Why are they even doing this if they work so great together?



There is a difference between working well enough side-by-side at the table, and meshing mechanically.  One player can play a TWF Ranger and one a Slayer, and there are no problems.   But if the Ranger wants to MC to Slayer, there'll be problems, while there's no problem with the TWF Ranger MCing to 4e Fighter.



Zaphling said:


> I still don't get the difference in flavor between Warpriests and Battle Clerics. Someone give more explanation? There was already, but it wasn't enough. Thankx



There is no real flavor or conceptual difference.  The Warpriest and Battle Cleric are both divine warriors who favor smashing their enemies with weapons over waving symbols at them and chanting.  The differences are mechanical: the Warpriest uses WIS, the Battle Cleric uses STR.  The Battle Cleric chooses it's powers from a list (that's signficantly smaller than the Devoted Cleric's power list), the Warpriest gets fixed powers based upon a single choice of Domain.  

The same is true of the Slayer and Greatweapon Fighter, the Knight and Guardian Fighter, the Enchanter and the Orb of Imposition Wizard, the Illusionist and the Orb of Deception Wizard, the Evoker and the Wand of Accuracy Wizard, and the Theif and Artful Dodger Rogue.


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## Mengu (May 18, 2011)

Destil said:


> Also, a thought: does the dev team just tremendously overvalue AoE?




I'm inclined to think they actually understand the potency of AoE, unlike the majority of the community. The damage reduction in Come and Get It is also a testament to this. I believe the community undervalues AoE damage.

In my game the following is entirely possible, fighter pops Come and Get It, followed by Paladin's Astral Thunder, Sorcerer's Flame Spiral, and Shaman's Guardian Eagle Flock. If these powers only catch 3 targets, that's the equivalent of four rain of blows. With a near guaranteed initiative using something like Strategist's Epiphany, AoE's deliver a decisive blow to the enemy out of the gate, which the enemy often won't recover from.

The dev team can be accused of many things, but I don't think overvaluing AoE is one of them.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 18, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> Just look at the article, they reprinted Healing Word and it now doesn't have the divine keyword. There is no more RAIing you way around it. If a power, feature or similar needed the divine keyword for healing, it no longer works with healing word. It completely sucks, but that is the way it works and they have reprinted it sans divine keyword so that is as good as it gets official errata wise.
> 
> This is a bit of an understatement.
> 
> ...




Agreed, though honestly for whatever reason nobody has gone for the really hard core cleric builds in any of my games, so I defer to others on the relative potency vs warlord. Certainly seems like the warlord is FAR better than the STR cleric I have seen in this kind of situation (which was still pretty potent using Angelic Avenger in paragon). A bit sad that she won't get a boost to her Spiritual Weapon, but it is still a pretty nice power even with the accuracy being low just the guaranteed CA for all the other characters is nice, and they all have developed a way to take advantage of that. 

Well, one thing we can say is that they have plenty of chances to make tweaks. Just because they haven't fixed Divine Oracle YET doesn't mean they won't. They still have a chance to go back and update Warlord more too I suppose. At least now they're in DDI in PDF.


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## tiornys (May 18, 2011)

Divine Oracle has been stealth nerfed; according to the Compendium, the level 16 feature only applies to Cleric and Divine Oracle attacks.

t~

edit: FYI, latest word is that info was incorrectly entered into the Compendium, and the path did not get this errata after all.


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## Camelot (May 18, 2011)

Quickleaf said:


> So the leaders defend the temple, and the defenders lead the charge against the enemy?



Ha, I didn't think of it that way.  You know, thinking back on it, it's really dependent on the character and how he or she uses the class features.  Clerics and paladins both can be stay-at-home or outgoing, and they might even have the same goals, but their methods are still very different, and that determines what class a character is.

On the discussion, I think this is way out of proportion.  The cleric was not made into a useless blob.  Several problematic powers were reduced in power because they've always needed to be reduced in power, and the new templar is something perfectly viable and compatible with everything else.  Maybe it seems weak because other overpowered options have yet to be reduced, so you have three options.  1) Ignore the updates.  2) Use the updates and fix the other things that make it weak yourself with house rules.  3) Use the updates with everything else and find new broken combinations to exploit.


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## MrGrenadine (May 18, 2011)

Regardless of the wisdom in the errata itself, I have a big problem with the _way_ things are being updated--bit by bit, in a constant, slow drip, over months and months....

In my industry, digital tools made production faster, easier and cheaper, which is generally a good thing.  Before this, changes to work--especially late in a production cycle--were often very expensive, and sometimes impossible.  But one downside of the digital tools is that you may have to work with people who think that the fact that something _can_ be changed fairly quickly and easily means that it should....always....at the last minute....and then maybe changed again, or changed back.  It can be maddening.

Just because something can be changed, doesn't mean it should be changed.

I for one would like to see a moratorium on game-changing updates and errata for a while.  Keep 'em to yourselves, R&D, and when you have a large number of important changes, _that have been weighed against one another and balanced_, and that add up to a significant update to the system, release them together as a revised edition of the game.

That way, the changes can easily be recognized and understood in a big-picture way, and campaigns can decide for themselves what changes they want to incorporate or ignore.

But this new edition by a thousand cuts--adding and revising feats, changing monster stats, adding and deleting class features, renaming things on an apparent whim--is truly frustrating.  Maybe the character I've been playing for months will be viable tomorrow, and maybe it won't--I guess I'll just have to wait and see!  

I want the game to feel solid, well-planned, rigorously tested and stable, and the current state of affairs--especially in light of stealth errata like the Healing Word change--makes the game feel quite the opposite.


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## Droogie128 (May 18, 2011)

MrGrenadine said:


> Regardless of the wisdom in the errata itself, I have a big problem with the _way_ things are being updated--bit by bit, in a constant, slow drip, over months and months....
> 
> In my industry, digital tools made production faster, easier and cheaper, which is generally a good thing.  Before this, changes to work--especially late in a production cycle--were often very expensive, and sometimes impossible.  But one downside of the digital tools is that you may have to work with people who think that the fact that something _can_ be changed fairly quickly and easily means that it should....always....at the last minute....and then maybe changed again, or changed back.  It can be maddening.
> 
> ...




It was really changed in Heroes of the Fallen Lands with the Warpriest. Healing Word doesn't have the Divine keyword in there. This did cause some debate, but the Templar made it official, I guess.

As far as the slowly trickling these updates out. Couldn't agree more. A lot of people like to plan their characters far ahead, and this prevents that. Especially if you play in LFR. However, with the way the Templar turned out, I'd like for them to just leave it alone at this point. They clearly don't know how their own system works.

The Warlock is next month, and I would never build one at this point thinking the article will possibly completely invalidate every option I choose.


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## Tony Vargas (May 18, 2011)

MrGrenadine said:


> Regardless of the wisdom in the errata itself, I have a big problem with the _way_ things are being updated--bit by bit, in a constant, slow drip, over months and months....
> 
> In my industry, digital tools made production faster, easier and cheaper, which is generally a good thing.



Nod.  Maybe it's to sell DDI.  Maybe it's to pad Dragon content. Maybe the just lack the development resources to do more?



> I for one would like to see a moratorium on game-changing updates and errata for a while.



A year at a time'd be good.  Thing is, if that's how they did it, people could subscribe to DDI once a year, right after the updates, and yoink 'em all.  1/12th revenue compared to stringing 'em along.



> I want the game to feel solid, well-planned, rigorously tested and stable, and the current state of affairs--especially in light of stealth errata like the Healing Word change--makes the game feel quite the opposite.



When WotC first bought TSR, there was a fear that they'd turn D&D into Magic:the Gathering.  I think we're getting there.  M:tG exists in a constant state of rules dis-equilibrium, with multiple sorts of play, new sets, classic sets, errata, etc.   That's were D&D is getting to be, too.  The game changes constantly, the new stuff shoulders asside the old, demanding to be bought, and organized play encourages competativeness...


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## Matt James (May 18, 2011)

Tony Vargas said:


> When WotC first bought TSR, there was a fear that they'd turn D&D into Magic:the Gathering.




Can you qualify this statement? I don't recall this at all. I remember the sense of liberation the fanbase had because TSR had run D&D into the ground.


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## Droogie128 (May 18, 2011)

Matt James said:


> Can you qualify this statement? I don't recall this at all. I remember the sense of liberation the fanbase had because TSR had run D&D into the ground.




Read the rest of his post. He kind of has a point.

These statements were mostly made when 3e was released, and you can see it on amazon reviews and such. It was also pretty common on their forums, IIRC.


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## Matt James (May 18, 2011)

Droogie128 said:


> Read the rest of his post. He kind of has a point.
> 
> These statements were mostly made when 3e was released, and you can see it on amazon reviews and such. It was also pretty common on their forums, IIRC.




I read the whole post, which was predicated off of that statement. I just don't recall it being that way; thus why I asked.


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## Aegeri (May 18, 2011)

People complained that 3E turned DnD into a video game and ruined it etc. I remember that, but I honestly cannot remember anyone saying they would turn DnD into Magic. 

As for Divine Oracle: So it got stealth nerfed. That's brilliant. Now I have to wonder what the hell else might actually have been changed without me knowing about it.

Really, this is an extremely poor way of doing things Wizards.


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## IanB (May 18, 2011)

I do remember a certain subset of people being worried that they would tie the products together - like we'd start seeing MtG cards with Elminster on them, and a Dominaria campaign setting, spells being sold in random packs, etc. 

I don't know that it was a LOT of people worried about it, but I definitely remember there being a bit of chatter on those sorts of things.


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## shmoo2 (May 18, 2011)

Droogie128 said:


> It was really changed in Heroes of the Fallen Lands with the Warpriest. Healing Word doesn't have the Divine keyword in there. This did cause some debate, but the Templar made it official, I guess.




No, Healing Word was changed before Essentials.

The Offline Character Builder from before Essentials has no Divine keyword on Healing Word.

This change was made like a year ago.


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## BobTheNob (May 19, 2011)

Mengu said:


> I'm inclined to think they actually understand the potency of AoE, unlike the majority of the community. The damage reduction in Come and Get It is also a testament to this. I believe the community undervalues AoE damage.
> 
> In my game the following is entirely possible, fighter pops Come and Get It, followed by Paladin's Astral Thunder, Sorcerer's Flame Spiral, and Shaman's Guardian Eagle Flock. If these powers only catch 3 targets, that's the equivalent of four rain of blows. With a near guaranteed initiative using something like Strategist's Epiphany, AoE's deliver a decisive blow to the enemy out of the gate, which the enemy often won't recover from.
> 
> The dev team can be accused of many things, but I don't think overvaluing AoE is one of them.



I think AOE in this game is too powerful. You have to consider that AoE multiplies potential damage output (in the right circumstance).

By the end of the game, our wizard (allegedly controller) was out damaging both our teams striker in all but solo encounters (thank you very much dual implement focus...+6 from one feat, what were they thinking).

In one encounter, we hit the pause button to add up our wizards damage in a round. 900+ is a big number, a big big number.

Frankly, AOE areas burst 8 just shouldnt be in the game, full stop. The fact that it was on an encounter power just shows the immature state of the game when they designed it. Developers have clued on that close burst 8 is too much, full stop. The changes to turn undead and solar wrath reflect this.


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## Aegeri (May 19, 2011)

The Character Builder is not a rules resource and is irrelevant in these discussions. The only valid rules resources are the online compendium - albeit I will grant you it's hilariously wrong on a whole ton of things now - books (Rules Compendium) and official errata documents. Healing Word never saw any of these things and people debated if it still had the divine keyword due to the lack of errata (and the fact the first PRINTED version did). Now they have reprinted it without the divine keyword for the templar it is an official rules change.

The CB is irrelevant.


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## Tony Vargas (May 19, 2011)

Matt James said:


> Can you qualify this statement? I don't recall this at all. I remember the sense of liberation the fanbase had because TSR had run D&D into the ground.



It was 14 years ago, and the community wasn't quite as monolithic back then, so you could certainly have a different recollection of that watershed moment.  As I recall, it was really part of a broader fear that CCGs were dooming the RPG hobby, outright, as, for a few years there, they positively took over conventions, and seemed poised to swipe a whole generation of potential RPGers.  And, if you don't remember /that/, well, try some Co-Q10.

WotC did make its fortune with M:tG, it's still a major property of theirs, and every so often they put out something for D&D that's collectible (minis since 3.0), or cards (power cards), or arctual collectible cards (Gamma Word Alpha/Omega cards; Fortune cards).



> I read the whole post, which was predicated off of that statement. I just don't recall it being that way; thus why I asked.



Meh, it was just by way of introducing the idea.  The points still stand, whether you think it was a long time coming, or that it's a total shock to everyone that WotC might want to make D&D perform more like the M:tG cash-cow.


----------



## Matt James (May 19, 2011)

That still doesn't validate your prior post, which is what I was challenging. Also, TSR was producing collectable cards several years prior, and merchandized anything they could.


----------



## MrGrenadine (May 19, 2011)

Matt James said:


> That still doesn't validate your prior post, which is what I was challenging. Also, TSR was producing collectable cards several years prior, and merchandized anything they could.




Why does his prior post need to be validated?  I also remember that there was a lot of support for WotC when they bought D&D, but I also remember there was some concern that they would muddy the D&D waters with M:tG features.  

Not that my recollection would validate anything either, but there you go.

Also, the fact that TSR was stamping the D&D logo on junk doesn't in any way mean people wouldn't or shouldn't be concerned with the direction WotC is taking the brand.  To each his or her own, you know?


----------



## Tony Vargas (May 19, 2011)

Matt James said:


> That still doesn't validate your prior post, which is what I was challenging. Also, TSR was producing collectable cards several years prior, and merchandized anything they could.



The actual point was:



> M:tG exists in a constant state of rules dis-equilibrium, with multiple sorts of play, new sets, classic sets, errata, etc. That's were D&D is getting to be, too. The game changes constantly, the new stuff shoulders asside the old, demanding to be bought, and organized play encourages competativeness...




So, are you saying that the D&D ruleset has been fairly stable the last 3 years?  That there's been no power creep?  No nerfing of older material, like the Cleric?  That the new Lair Assault doesn't sound like it could promote a DM vs Players competative attitude?


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## Matt James (May 19, 2011)

Now you're putting words in my mouth. You made a claim that M:TG has been a significant influence on D&D since WotC took over. I'm asking for you to clarify and quantify. You're coming back and a strawman? When did I ever say the game was stable with no power creep? It's cool. I know the answer to my original question now.


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## Raith5 (May 19, 2011)

BobTheNob said:


> Frankly, AOE areas burst 8 just shouldnt be in the game, full stop. The fact that it was on an encounter power just shows the immature state of the game when they designed it. Developers have clued on that close burst 8 is too much, full stop. The changes to turn undead and solar wrath reflect this.




I think they went way too far with turn undead being only CB2 but I agree CB 8 is problematic. I cant help but think that they envisioned epic encounters on a grand scale of large area fights with large scale monsters etc. But not having played epic I accept the accounts of others who testify to the over powered nature of some of these massive AOEs.


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## keterys (May 19, 2011)

In playtesting a level 22 game, optimized turn undead characters were excessively powerful, to the extent that multiple encounters needed to be tweaked, including artificially changing creature types and making very sure that immobilized and pushed 8 away wouldn't just break every encounter 

In general practice, even 28 x 28 maps a cleric could generally position to hit most or all monsters in an encounter.

And in something like 8 combats in Carceri, I believe that turn undead w/ immortals and elementals worked against something like 82% of the monsters. Even with trying to avoid those three types.


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## Neverfate (May 19, 2011)

tiornys said:


> Divine Oracle has been stealth nerfed; according to the Compendium, the level 16 feature only applies to Cleric and Divine Oracle attacks.
> 
> t~




I don't mind errata. I think it helps the game or helps us get an idea of where the game is heading in terms of development and usually it's for the better, however, a minor disconnect like this is annoying. What happened in the brief period of the article going live and then copy/pasting it into the Compendium did this come up?


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## Charwoman Gene (May 19, 2011)

This is why people like the other two James brothers, Brian and Mike, more than Matt James.


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## Colmarr (May 19, 2011)

keterys said:


> And in something like 8 combats in Carceri, I believe that turn undead *w/ immortals and elementals* worked against something like 82% of the monsters. Even with trying to avoid those three types.




This feature keeps coming up, and I think it needs to be explicitly pointed out that to get to that point the PC needs to spend 2 feats to boost a power that it will get to use once per encounter.

That doesn't necessarily mean that Turn Undead doesn't need nerfing, but full disclosure and all that...


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## Obryn (May 19, 2011)

Colmarr said:


> This feature keeps coming up, and I think it needs to be explicitly pointed out that to get to that point the PC needs to spend 2 feats to boost a power that it will get to use once per encounter.
> 
> That doesn't necessarily mean that Turn Undead doesn't need nerfing, but full disclosure and all that...



Yeah, but we're talking epic levels, where those feats probably couldn't be spent in many better ways.  Once you get your basics covered, you still have some extra feats to play with, and it's far from ridiculous to spend two to make your minor-action gigantic high-damage, potent-control attack cover over half the available monsters in the game.

-O


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## Aegeri (May 19, 2011)

Colmarr said:


> This feature keeps coming up, and I think it needs to be explicitly pointed out that to get to that point the PC needs to spend 2 feats to boost a power that it will get to use once per encounter.
> 
> That doesn't necessarily mean that Turn Undead doesn't need nerfing, but full disclosure and all that...



It also needs a third feat to get turned into a minor action.

This doesn't change that it's utterly ridiculous and going back to an earlier point I made: Demons, Immortals and Undead are the _sole_ creatures in 4E with an actual epic tier presence (As in there are a viable number of standard monsters for them). So pretty much it becomes a minor action close burst 8 that affects all the significant creatures in epic.

If I could make an epic tier campaign with say, Fey Court creatures and had enough creatures to make those encounters relevant (without making most of it myself) the limited targets thing could be a viable argument. But given the sheer lack of anything in epic other than demons in particular, it's not hard to make turn undead affect almost everything you fight! It gets to the point you have to work around it, by having terrain and other things that actively misdirect and affect blasts. For example, a huge glass surface with teleporting enemies. No line of effect prevents the cleric from affecting them with turn undead (unless they choose to be). Another example are phasing creatures.

At a close burst 8 with impressive damage and a minor action, it was really ridiculous. There was never any other reason to use any other CD.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2011)

Yup, gotta agree. TU was far and away the most effective CD. It is still going to be a pretty good choice, but at least now someone MIGHT pick something else. 

And nobody has even mentioned all the bonus damage you can toss onto Radiant, and other effects. 

Astral Wave was a bit silly too. Burst 8... yeah. Honestly, after reviewing several high level clerics that I've played with none of them are going to be really seriously hurt by this nerf anyway. Clerics still have plenty of good options.


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## pauljathome (May 19, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> The Character Builder is not a rules resource and is irrelevant in these discussions. The only valid rules resources are the online compendium - albeit I will grant you it's hilariously wrong on a whole ton of things now - books (Rules Compendium) and official errata documents. Healing Word never saw any of these things and people debated if it still had the divine keyword due to the lack of errata (and the fact the first PRINTED version did). Now they have reprinted it without the divine keyword for the templar it is an official rules change.
> 
> The CB is irrelevant.




Of course the CB is relevant. Its what people use to make characters. Do you really think that most people spend hours pouring over the hundreds of pages of errata and very carefully look up every power in the Compendium in order to make sure that everything is exactly right? 

No. They create the character in the CB and print it out. And what it says on the sheet is what they think their powers can do. And thats actually arguably about the only sane approach a GM can take unless they wish to spend immense amounts of time vetting characters


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## Aegeri (May 19, 2011)

pauljathome said:


> Of course the CB is relevant.



I'm not going to say this again, but as a rules resource the CB is not relevant. _It is not a rules resource_. It is that simple. Where the CB doesn't agree with an actual published rules resource or doesn't work correctly (which is also frequent) - the published rules resource always wins.

Because the CB is *not* a rules resource and where it contradicts the written rule, ONLY the written rule matters.

Edit: I don't mean to sound so harsh, but it comes up so often that people think if the CB does something it's actually the official rule, when its the complete opposite. The CB is quite buggy and is prone to being confused on how some rules work. It is not a rules resource and should *not* be used as one.


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## Destil (May 19, 2011)

Obryn said:


> Once you get your basics covered, you still have some extra feats to play with, and it's far from ridiculous to spend two to make your minor-action gigantic high-damage, potent-control attack cover over half the available monsters in the game.





Aegeri said:


> It also needs a third feat to get turned into a minor action.
> 
> ...
> 
> At a close burst 8 with impressive damage and a minor action, it was really ridiculous. There was never any other reason to use any other CD.





I asked, specifically, on the WotC boards for the rule of three questions if it was the case that Turn Undead was nerfed as heavily as it was because of feats and such that can enhance it (well, I was more tactful, but it was still a leading question that'll never get picked).

Because that's terrible. If turn undead is okay without three feats supporting it and broken with them, which is the problem? Which should be erratated*? Fix the feats. *I weep for all the at-wills that will be nerfed to the ground in the future to balance Versatile Master.

Turn Undead could have used a few nerfs at higher level. But would Close Burst 2/3/4 dealing 1d10/2d10/4d10 really have been broken? They went _way_ overboard. Hope you like healer's mercy.


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## Colmarr (May 19, 2011)

Destil said:


> Hope you like healer's mercy.




Divine Fortune doesn't get the respect it deserves IMO. 

My 13th level battle cleric of a war god has never really spent much time fighting undead (perhaps 15 encounters in 13 levels), and I didn't like the idea of spending a round every encounter weakened, so he's spent most of his career using Divine Fortune as his channel divinity.

+1 to attack is negligible but with Greater Divine Fortune it becomes +3, which is nothing to sneeze at. Between that and the human racial Heroic Effort, my cleric rarely misses.

There's another feat that makes Divine Fortune close burst 1, and the concept of giving 2 or 3 melee characters +3 to hit with a free action makes me more than a little giddy.


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## Droogie128 (May 19, 2011)

Healer's Mercy has always been the best CD. TU was situationally good, but not really strong compared to what an optimized striker can do. Divine Fortune has been bottom of the barrel.


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## Tony Vargas (May 19, 2011)

Matt James said:


> You made a claim that M:TG has been a significant influence on D&D since WotC took over.



Ah, I see, you were taking issue with /just/ the first scentence or so of my post, not with the actual point I was trying to make.  

To clarify, I never made that claim.  I said that there had been a fear that such would happen, not that it had been going on the whole time.  It's only more recently that we've seen things actually trending that way, as with Fortune Cards, for instance, or the 'exception based design' and heavy use of keywords of 4e (which, really, worked out better than I expected).


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## Zaran (May 19, 2011)

I see too many people complaining about all the Errata.  I LIKE getting errata for DnD.  I think the game SHOULD be adjusted until it's perfect and I feel that there still needs to be changes done.  That being said, I find it funny that they would nerf the cleric so badly and not do more for it being a dual stat class.  

Everything I see makes me think that they want us to move to Essentials by making everything else unattractive.  These Class Acts were supposed to make the Core Classes more compatible with Essentials not more obsolete.


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## Zaran (May 19, 2011)

keterys said:


> In general practice, even 28 x 28 maps a cleric could generally position to hit most or all monsters in an encounter.




Why shouldn't a cleric be able to do this though?  They are supposed to be anti-Undead specialists and being able to decimate an army of dead is what an Epic level cleric should be able to do.


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## Aegeri (May 19, 2011)

Zaran said:


> Why shouldn't a cleric be able to do this though?  They are supposed to be anti-Undead specialists and being able to decimate an army of dead is what an Epic level cleric should be able to do.



Or demons, or immortals. You know, pretty much every monster that is available at epic tier (especially post-MM3, your options for new maths and new power design epic creatures are _chronically_ limited to say the least). I wouldn't find this HALF the issue I do if I had viable epic fey, or viable epic anything except demons/undead (immortals only tangentially actually).

Also it's the whole fact that it's also a minor action by this point that is a huge problem. You can minor action use it, bunch all the enemies up and then dump a standard action astral storm on them.

I honestly think if you never saw this in play it's hard to how broken it got. Especially when you consider OTHER characters exploiting everything being bunched up to drop AoEs on them too.


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## Zaran (May 19, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> Or demons, or immortals. You know, pretty much every monster that is available at epic tier (especially post-MM3, your options for new maths and new power design epic creatures are _chronically_ limited to say the least). I wouldn't find this HALF the issue I do if I had viable epic fey, or viable epic anything except demons/undead (immortals only tangentially actually).
> 
> Also it's the whole fact that it's also a minor action by this point that is a huge problem. You can minor action use it, bunch all the enemies up and then dump a standard action astral storm on them.
> 
> I honestly think if you never saw this in play it's hard to how broken it got. Especially when you consider OTHER characters exploiting everything being bunched up to drop AoEs on them too.




While I will admit that it was a bit too powerful but they went too hard with the nerf bat beating.   They can say better to nerf too much than not enough but when they hardly ever make changes to increase power this is bad change.


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## pauljathome (May 19, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> I'm not going to say this again, but as a rules resource the CB is not relevant. _It is not a rules resource_. It is that simple. .




You're missing my point.

A rules resource is not what WOTC says or what you say. Its what is actually used by the gamers at the table.

The last campaign I was in all the characters were built using the CB. And the rules we were using were the rules on the powers on the printed character sheets. Whether or not they were correct or not really didn't matter.

Maybe that was a strange group and an outlier. But I rather doubt that.


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## Aegeri (May 19, 2011)

Oh I absolutely 100% completely agree with you on that point Zaran. It needed to be toned down, but what they did to it was excessively brutal. Personally I would have fixed the minor action feat moreso than completely nerfing the power. The minor action feat is what turned it from pretty powerful, but still taking your turn at the very least to rather broken.

Of course in saying that there is broken like turn undead and then there is what the warlord does for, well, _just being a warlord_. Why one was barely touched and the other brutally nerfed makes no sense to me.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> Oh I absolutely 100% completely agree with you on that point Zaran. It needed to be toned down, but what they did to it was excessively brutal. Personally I would have fixed the minor action feat moreso than completely nerfing the power. The minor action feat is what turned it from pretty powerful, but still taking your turn at the very least to rather broken.
> 
> Of course in saying that there is broken like turn undead and then there is what the warlord does for, well, _just being a warlord_. Why one was barely touched and the other brutally nerfed makes no sense to me.




Yeah, this I agree with. I don't get why the cleric particularly needed to be singled out. Like all well-supported classes it has a few crazy out of whack things, but it would have been far from the first class that would have leaped to mind as urgently requiring a big hammer dropped on it. It was nice that they gave the STR cleric a few bits of stuff and all too, but it seems odd that they suddenly chose to do that after they basically made the build virtually obsolete almost a year ago.


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## the Jester (May 19, 2011)

I'll be very interested to listen to that podcast when it comes out. 

I just hope it doesn't turn out to be one of those phantoms like the article WotC was going to write to explain and justify the expertise feats when they first came out- I'd _still_ be interested in the thinking behind them.


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## keterys (May 19, 2011)

To be honest, many of the changes make an awful lot of sense. It's what didn't _also_ happen that doesn't make sense.

The cleric didn't get a whole lot of Effect: leader buffs
The warlord's craziness wasn't reined in, at all.

They're not revising _all_ of the powers to bring them to that new chosen standard.


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## SSquirrel (May 19, 2011)

Destil said:


> Turn Undead could have used a few nerfs at higher level. But would Close Burst 2/3/4 dealing 1d10/2d10/4d10 really have been broken? They went _way_ overboard. Hope you like healer's mercy.




Burst 2/3/4 and 1/2/3d10 damage would have been fine and cutting the power exactly in half.  One of my friends was thinking about making a Cleric for an upcoming game.  I may point her over toward Warlord now.




Droogie128 said:


> Healer's Mercy has always been the best CD. TU  was situationally good, but not really strong compared to what an  optimized striker can do. Divine Fortune has been bottom of the  barrel.




Turn Undead at epic level was a 17x17 effect that with just 2 feats could damage over 60% of the currently published monsters in epic play.  6d10 damage time a possible max of 219 enemies is mind boggling.  Altho having an encounter w/that many undead w/o a Cleric around would be complete suicide heh.  I challenge you to find a Striker who can dish out 13,140 potential damage with one attack.

If they had changed it to max out at CB4 and 3d10 damage you would still max out at 2,430 potential damage, which is nothing to sneeze at.


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## Neonchameleon (May 19, 2011)

Mengu said:


> I'm inclined to think they actually understand the potency of AoE, unlike the majority of the community. The damage reduction in Come and Get It is also a testament to this. I believe the community undervalues AoE damage.
> 
> In my game the following is entirely possible, fighter pops Come and Get It, followed by Paladin's Astral Thunder, Sorcerer's Flame Spiral, and Shaman's Guardian Eagle Flock. If these powers only catch 3 targets, that's the equivalent of four rain of blows. With a near guaranteed initiative using something like Strategist's Epiphany, AoE's deliver a decisive blow to the enemy out of the gate, which the enemy often won't recover from.
> 
> The dev team can be accused of many things, but I don't think overvaluing AoE is one of them.




Indeed.  A good rule of thumb is that damage to secondary targets is worth half the amount damage to your primary target is.  Which means that to match Twin Strike an AoE power needs to hit three separate targets.  Off the top of my head, Hand of Radiance, and Enlarged Freezing Burst are up to the job here (with Hand of Radiance being radiant, and Freezing Burst having a nice slide attached to set people up for your allies' area powers (or your own zones)).  Unravelling Dart is also a contender on the DPR stakes - normally a bit behind Twin Strike from mid-high heroic, but when it rocks it rocks.

This isn't where Rangers get their serious DPR though.  Ranger DPR starts high - Twin Strike is good.  But it gets even higher because of the number of minor action and interrupt attacks they get.  These stack onto Twin Strike and stack scarily - so rather than two attack rolls they get three in a round, which would be the equivalent of needing _five_ targets in the burst (a lot easier said than done - three is readily doable but five's incredibly hard).

And I agree with nerfing Turn Undead - when a specific target power gets too strong, it makes its targets irrelevant.  Close Burst 8 and seriously nasty effets on a minor action does that.  Nerfing the damage as well was possibly too much.  But that burst 8 was over the top.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2011)

Yeah, it seems a bit over-nerfed, but the concept was solid.


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## Neverfate (May 19, 2011)

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/27650565/Divine_Oracle_NOT_Errataed!

So, it would appear costumer service says that there was in fact no "stealth errata" to Divine Oracle. I'm interested to see how this plays out. CS is good, but they have given out wrong info before.


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## keterys (May 19, 2011)

The folks imputting data for the compendium get stuff well before it's finalized (unfortunately) due to the extra time needed to code any changes required, so it is extremely possible for errors to slip in with errata that was _considered_ but not actually done happening.

For example, the warlord power "Intuitive Strike" has actually been wrong in the compendium for months, using a version that was never released to the public.


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## Tony Vargas (May 19, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> Or demons, or immortals. You know, pretty much every monster that is available at epic tier....Also it's the whole fact that it's also a minor action by this point that is a huge problem.



Now, the demons & immortals bit is a feat, and so is the minor action, right?  So, really, its a feature+feat+feat combo, that's broken.  

Rather than trebly nerfing the power, reigning in the feats somehow might have been an option.

For instance, instead of 'Your Turn Undead power afffects Immortals,' it could be 'Your turn undead power has some affect on immortals: inflicting half damage upon them and does not immobilize them, with no effect on a miss'  or 'your turn undead power damages immortals, but does not push or immobilize them.'   Then more modestly nerf the high-level AE, maybe boosting the low-level AE - 3/4/5 would be about ideal, IMHO.  Big enough at low level that a mostly-ranged Devoted Cleric can catch some undead in it without having to set himself up to be mobbed, but not so big as to hit the whole field at high level.  OR, leave the AE, but bring the damage way down, so the Epic cleric can still clear an army of minion zombies, but not bloody every-other encounter.


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## Incenjucar (May 19, 2011)

The power is a problem when facing undead.

The feats are _additional_ problems, though only when the power is a problem.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 19, 2011)

Could it be that Wizard's really needs to use more monster types in Epic?  If Turn Undead is only kicking ass in Epic level because Epic has the fewest monster types then maybe this is the problem.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 19, 2011)

How many epic modules involve these few types of monsters?


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## mudlock (May 20, 2011)

Don't worry: if a bunch of epic-level fey come out, I'm sure there will be a feat that makes turn undead work on fey creatures, too.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 20, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> How many epic modules involve these few types of monsters?




Umm, considering that there are basically 3 epic modules, plus Scales of War, basically 100% of them.

There simply AREN'T any epic monsters that don't have some keyword/origin that you can't hit with TU. Maybe there are a few. Fey, but there are like 3 epic fey and they're around 20th level. There are a few misc monsters. Maybe the Apocalypse Spells? Not sure about Slaadi, I think they're elemental. There are some few aberrations. That is about the long and short of it. Maybe a natural magical beast or two. Basically if you're going to run epic and don't want to use demons and undead you're SOL. You could manage a few encounters where TU wouldn't work, but with 10 levels = at least 60 encounters that isn't much.

As Aegeri has said many times, Epic really is pretty barren. E1-3 pretty much used (or invented) all the epic undead. You could do a demon-themed story arc, but it will be ALL demons, and TU will work nicely there.


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## Aegeri (May 20, 2011)

To show how desperate Wizards got, it's worth having a read of E1-E3. Note how many non-new demons they made, but how many paragon level creatures they began slapping levels on and leveling up into epic. It's pretty clear from that module that even Wizards ran out of monsters.

Also all of the current epic tier adventures I can think of use undead and demons. E1-E3 has plenty of them obviously, but so does the Scales of War series of adventures. One deals with Orcus and the other with Tiamat. You can throw a few dragons in there as well with Scales of War as well.


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## cignus_pfaccari (May 20, 2011)

ForeverSlayer said:


> Could it be that Wizard's really needs to use more monster types in Epic?  If Turn Undead is only kicking ass in Epic level because Epic has the fewest monster types then maybe this is the problem.




I agree.  I'd get really, really tired of fighting demons and undead at epic.  If I ever get to play more than 4 sessions at that level.

Brad


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## Aegeri (May 20, 2011)

cignus_pfaccari said:


> I agree.  I'd get really, really tired of fighting demons and undead at epic.  If I ever get to play more than 4 sessions at that level.
> 
> Brad



Try being the DM who has to either use those monsters or make his own monsters. That's really how little choices you have: Use the limited resources available or make everything yourself. I don't want my PCs fighting demons (or elementals) and undead all the time. I really don't, but at the same time I'm a human being and I can't be expected to write all my own monsters for 10 levels of play. So they have to be a significant chunk of it or I just can't do it.

While at heroic tier? You have about ten billion options for all kinds of cool and different monsters. Paragon tier? You don't quite get into the billions, but you have so many good choices that you're pretty spoiled there too.

Epic tier? Nah, forget it if your campaign wasn't about demons or specifically named solos/elites.

Edit: Like just to make my point, I have 2 campaigns right now ongoing where I have an absolutely 100% clear idea from levels 1-20 down to what monsters I will be using. After level 20? I have no idea. I'm just holding out hope that when I get there support for epic tier monsters will have finally appeared.

On the other hand I am starting another game soon where I have everything from 1-*30* down. Why? Because I am indulging myself in all the new demons and elementals added to the game. It isn't that running epic tier is impossible: It's about what choices you have to do so.


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## cignus_pfaccari (May 21, 2011)

Aegeri said:


> Try being the DM who has to either use those monsters or make his own monsters.




True dat.  I know our DMs get bored with the same types of monsters...though the one running Dark Sun LOVES him some undead.  The other of our DMs has a habit of saying "Okay, I'm done with this one.  Please kill it." when his monster's done all its cool tricks.  He also used the Monster Builder a lot more, including de-leveling monsters.

We fought a 24th level Dispater once.  That was...odd.

Brad


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## C4 (May 23, 2011)

*Late to the Party*

These have already been answered, I'm sure, but I'll ask anyway:

1. Are the CC articles ever going to be added to the compiled errata doc?

2. Other than the Templar, Marshal and Weaponmaster articles, has there been any other 'stealth' errata? This is all rather sudden for someone who doesn't do DDI.

Thanks!


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## Neverfate (May 23, 2011)

C4 said:


> These have already been answered, I'm sure, but I'll ask anyway:
> 
> 1. Are the CC articles ever going to be added to the compiled errata doc?
> 
> ...




Number 1: I'm not sure if they'll be added to the official compiled PDF or be generated into one, single PDF entitled "Class Compendium".

Number 2: The errata of the classes of the Class Compendium have all been planned and laid out since the release of the Marshal (I think we were told the plan of release in February though I could be wrong). So these class changes aren't considered "Stealth Errata", which is more associated with items or powers that were never publicly announced as being switched. The changes to Flaming Weapon from the PHB version to the DM Kit version in the CB/Compendium without any public PDF mentioning it is an example. The CC articles are also free and don't require DDI (thankfully).

Also, I think I've answered the question accurately, but anyone is welcome to correct me.


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## pemerton (May 23, 2011)

*More Stealth Errata*

In the PHB one of a cleric's starting rituals must be Gentle Repose. In CC, it is "any two 1st level rituals". I haven't seen this explicitly called out anywhere by WotC.


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## Incenjucar (May 23, 2011)

pemerton said:


> *More Stealth Errata*
> 
> In the PHB one of a cleric's starting rituals must be Gentle Repose. In CC, it is "any two 1st level rituals". I haven't seen this explicitly called out anywhere by WotC.




That would be nice, especially if it also gave you two free alchemy recipes if you choose that instead.


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## Siberys (May 23, 2011)

With the Epic-level monster problem... I don't forsee it being a problem for me. And not because I plan on using a bunch of demons, undead, and elementals, either.

I already am going to be heavily reskinning over the course of the campaign, so changing the size/type line is not going to be an issue. Hell, if it DID become a problem in-game I could easily do a mental change mid-game. :/

Now, if you're doing sanctioned events or trying to stick to official stuff, that's an issue, but in a home game? Not so much. YMMV, of course.


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## Aspeon (May 23, 2011)

Neverfate said:


> Number 1: I'm not sure if they'll be added to the official compiled PDF or be generated into one, single PDF entitled "Class Compendium".




Looks like at least the warlord and fighter updates are already in the compiled PDFs. (I only searched for Lead the Attack and Come And Get It, but it looks like there's enough other stuff in there)


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## Aegeri (May 23, 2011)

Siberys said:


> I already am going to be heavily reskinning over the course of the campaign, so changing the size/type line is not going to be an issue.



Actually it is, because demons, elementals and similar have distinct mechanics that scream "I am the same stuff you've been fighting for 6 entire levels now!". Believe me, your players can notice if they've played epic before that all of these powers and monsters are feeling REALLY familiar. 

There is only so much you can do reskinning monsters. If you look at monsters, especially the new ones, they have coherent features and abilities that make them _feel_ they should be together. They are also pretty distinctive and that's why current monster design is so successful. Taking one creature and changing names doesn't make its mechanics a new creature: It's still obviously the same thing. That's why epic becomes so problematic: If you run 2 epic games they are going to feel like reruns of the same thing, unless you mechanically change the monsters to feel different.

Then we're back to "Just make up your own stuff". When you've been using the same monsters for 6 levels and your PCs have been fighting the same things for 6 levels, it doesn't matter how much reflavoring you do: _They notice_.


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## C4 (May 23, 2011)

Neverfate said:


> Number 1: I'm not sure if they'll be added to the official compiled PDF or be generated into one, single PDF entitled "Class Compendium".



It appears that the weaponmaster update is part of the April errata doc, but not the marshal or the templar. Weird.

It's a real nuisance to have errata scattered around multiple docs.



pemerton said:


> *More Stealth Errata*
> 
> In the PHB one of a cleric's starting rituals must be Gentle Repose. In CC, it is "any two 1st level rituals". I haven't seen this explicitly called out anywhere by WotC.



Interesting. I concur with Incenjucar.


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## Siberys (May 23, 2011)

Well, reskinning isn't _just_ changing names and keywords. Shuffling around a few powers between creatures isn't hard, and it's a lot easier to make a handful of powers iconic of the sort of creature you want to toss at the PCs than it is to make whole new creatures.

Instead of making new monsters, make monster themes. *shrug*


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 23, 2011)

C4 said:


> It appears that the weaponmaster update is part of the April errata doc, but not the marshal or the templar. Weird.
> 
> It's a real nuisance to have errata scattered around multiple docs.
> 
> ...




It is just a matter of time and energy and being able to keep careful track. WotC has probably what, 2-3 guys that regularly do QC? The community has thousands. So you see something like the Flaming Weapon thing, which the guy who made the change obviously knew about, but unless some QC guy is going to go look up every word of every rule that already exists that is mentioned in any new document... So he misses one and everyone is up in arms that it is a 'stealth errata'. 

Likewise with all the stuff in the CC articles, it will all very likely make it into the errata documents, most of it already has or is in the pipeline. One or two small things will get missed. They will get pointed out, then eventually they'll get added when someone over there has time away from say testing the Feypact Binder everyone will scream about when it comes out because it isn't exactly what they wanted. 

Meh, it is an RPG, there will be a few little things missed. That would be really bad if they were say me where when I miss something some guy somewhere instantly loses $50k. It just ain't that critical in a game. Besides, you want to see a mess? I was reading over the Chaosium BRP book the other day. Ugh, the thing barely makes sense. The rules are a complete mess. WotC actually has a pretty high standard of quality.


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