Cleric Rework Idea

designedbyrng

Clerics have lots of great class features. Oh wait, never mind I must have been thinking of a different class. Clerics have a few great class features, and then many that do nothing, since they don't help the party in any way. Cleric also has two capstones that fit a very similar (and often useless) purpose.

I keep seeing people ask for anointed action to become a party buff and soothe reworked into a party buff, and every time I see this I just look back to before terrifying insight and prophetic action got reworked and think maybe all of them should be party buffs. Here is just a random idea I had for reworking these features.

Class Mechanic Bless
Some of your powers now Bless nearby allies. Blessed allies gain the benefits of your equipped class features.

Virtuous Capstone
Bless now functions as a 60 foot aura around yourself instead of being applied through spells

Faithful Capstone
All of your powers now Bless effected allies

Righteous Capstone
Bless no longer affects allies. The effects of your class features are doubled.


Some class features would need reworked, but the main concept would be that class features could only effect yourself unless Bless shared them with others.

Healer's Lore -- Increase your Incoming and Outgoing healing by 20%
Divine Fortune -- You generate 20% more Divine Power or Stamina if you cannot generate Divine power
Soothe -- You heal 5% of your maximum hit points every 3 seconds.
Holy Fervor -- You generate 20% more Action Points
Foresight -- Increase your Damage Resistance by 10%
Terrifying Insight -- Increase your Damage Output by 20%
Hastening Light -- Your cooldowns are reduced by 4 seconds when you cast a daily power.

etc

With this change, maybe break the spirit and other party buffs could be changed to apply bless instead of their own buff. This would function very similarly to paladin auras. Every time I see someone ask for anointed action to become a group buff, I think back to before terrifying insight and prophetic action effected allies. Will every class feature become party wide eventually anyways?

Just a random thought I had. It obviously needs a lot more thought put into it, but I like throwing around random ideas where the devs might see them.

mebengalsfan

Thanks for putting work into this idea. The devs definitely need to do something to make the other paragon feat paths viable for DCs.

dairyzeus

Its definitely an interesting idea, and I like the concept. A few initial thoughts...

I can't see any dc going full righteous under this system. Even the best dps DO with a double terrifying insight buff probably won't do the damage of a real dps character, and their party buffs would be on the weak side without terrifying insight shared to the party.

That would leave faithful and virtuous as the paths that can "always" share their class features, and between the two, going virtuous with a splash in righteous just seems like a straight up better option?

This would be a pretty huge nerf to hastening light too.

vorphied

Great job of thinking of different ideas and ways to tweak existing class mechanics.

That being said, back away slowly from the Righteous capstone, because I will cut a lich.

vorphied

Faithful and Virtuous need major work. Too many feats are inconsequential, only a few are really good, and the rest are rendered undesirable simply because primary healer is not a role that suits DC best.

Would be nice to see them consolidate more of the wayward healing bonuses into a single tree to cut out bloat, then focus the other more strongly on mitigation and general defense. While unlikely to change the meta where damage is usually > all, it could allow for some further variety of class and role.

meirami

You put a lot of work into this and I appreciate it on the whole, but... I like where DC is, mostly. I'd probably get upset if DC got Paladin-like auras and Righteous got downgraded into a "solo only" tree.

Also, Virtuous and Faithful require more work than just changing the capstones because, like others have stated, they're overly similar with each other... Even more so if the HoT/non-HoT thing goes away.