I don't find this game to be very enjoyable. There are some systemic problems with the focus on getting lucky drops instead of making choices between tradeoffs and my ire for the "each side alternates playing cards instead of a proper character initiative system" but this post is about something else. Disclaimer: This is about my experiences getting to level 8. Maybe things change at higher levels, but I'm not sticking around to find out. Clerics are terrible. I see a lot of posts around here by people who are struggling with the game. Usually it is not their fault. They are playing with the recommended party that has one of each class in it. They would likely be much happier if they used a party of 3 wizards or 2 wizards and 1 fighter. Cleric healing spells are so weak that they cannot even recover the damage from an average strike. The 'tactical' abilities they have are designed around a gaming system with free shifts or larger party sizes. The aura cards in particular are terrible. I saw a few spear cards later, but giving them melee attacks was probably also a mistake. It is so bad that I would seriously consider adding "draw a card" to all of those 'Heal 2' spells in the cleric deck. Now, I was quite pleased to see that I could play the game with 3 wizards. I hate when a game gives you the option of interesting party makeups, but does not support them. Unfortunately, the current state of the introductory game is that the default party makeup is not well supported. Is anyone else using a party of 3 wizards? How far have you taken them? Isn't it a little silly that Force Bolt is a better damage mitigation spell than any of the available heals? (Denying the attack swing causes it to be discarded...)
Clerics are a bit weak in the very beginning but they become a lot more useful later on once you get cards like Invigorating Touch, Unholy Wellspring, Unholy Power etc. I pretty much dropped all healing items after the beginning and made my cleric a melee killer who can also boost others.
It's difficult to play a cleric because you can do a lot of things with him: heal, buff, strike. So people try to have a "toolbox priest", who can do anything but not excel in anything. I think that the best cleric is a focused one: my cleric has only 7 attack cards, but 17 heal cards and Talented Healer + Healing Spirit. He can sustain my dwarf warrior indefenitely. Of course a buff cleric can shut down the healing ability, and a strike cleric can team up with the warrior to kill faster an enemy. My point is: a focused cleric is the best choice if you want to use a cleric. Otherwise, you can play him but he can't shine. And regarding Force Bolt: there's a lot of step cards (or range 2 attack cards), so be careful with it.
If I can offer a counterpoint, the only problem with clerics is wizards. Swapping the wizard out of the trinity for either a warrior or a priest makes them feel awesome, but a wizardly lack of armour, hit points and attack cards really limits a priest's opportunity. In the other hand, combining frenzy with extra draws makes a warrior or life steal priest monstrous. Did you know you can proc altruism with righteous frenzy
Unholy Wellspring + AoE damage is OP. Clerics and Wizards rock together once you get the Wellspring and some Fireballs / Cone of Cold / Winds.
Awesome, I'm looking forwards to that. Let me amend my earlier comment,then, to low level priests then. I found them kind of annoying to use because all their stuff is so situational, but almost everything they do gets better if you swap out a wizard for another priest - it seems to make the biggest difference to Righteous Frenzy and Healing Presence, both of which felt really unwieldy with the trinity, but consistently useful and strong with 2 priests. There's enough armour and healing easily available to makes it incredibly hard for anything in the earlier levels to kill you, and it's easy to mix in the occasional really big hit to supplement the warrior's damage.
well, I guess you've yet to play 3 x cleric party with 12 impenetrable nimbuses + 2 x Holy presence + 1 x Talented Healer + a bunch of lifesteal/cycling/buffs walking together like The Three Stooges.
Rude. And changes not just the tone, but what I actually said. If this type of direct feedback sans coddling is not welcome here, I'd prefer you just nuke the thread and I will be on my way.
Your original title is rude and not helpful in the slightest. Your post, however, was fine so I left it as is. I'm sorry if you found that offensive.
Lets try it out. Your opinion about clerics sucks! Seems to work fine now the question is how much do you like the statement personally?
There's quite a difference between a topic and a word in a post - especially if it's used to try to prove a point why the topic was edited. Nice try Also: I like priest, but their role makes them hard to field more than 1 of - wizards and fighters are more on the ends of the scale while priests (which is the class name, actually) are in the middle. They're team players more than killing machines.
I was actually having a lot of fun with a warrior + 2 priests party in the early/mid game. Normally, priests need to specialize a lot to be able to do their job, but 2 priests gives you a lot more room to build them less rigidly, and there's a surprising amount of awesome there. Firstly, as buff-bots they get better in numbers. A warrior with a righteous frenzy can do a lot of damage. A warrior with 2-3 frenzies and a bunch of bonus cards is really, *really* fun. Secondly, they can buff/heal each other. There are some pretty reasonable lifesteal cards, and it turns out that lifesteal + frenzy works pretty nicely if you've got some spare frenzies around, and combining lifesteal and heals can make for a *really* tough character. Thirdly, they sort of compensate for each other's weaknesses. For example, it's really kind of annoying that you can't cast healing presence on yourself, but it's much less annoying if you can just get the other priest to cast it on you instead. Demonic Feedback is really awesome if you've got the spare heals. It helps a lot that it's so easy to find gear with lifesteal/frenzy/presence. Give it a whirl, see if you change your mind
I have 4 separate parties on the go now and having messed about a bit with combinations all of them ended up with one priest - I love the priests as they are now, combining heals with attacks. Consistently through the four teams I have found heavy hitting priest weapons before equivalent warrior weapons - making the priests useful as finishers. The level of healing feels right to me - it allows a balance of choices in a tactical game - rather than keeping everyone alive as in an RPG (online or tabletop). My only disappointment with priests (and this goes for wizards too) is the artwork of the males. The females are young, dynamic fresh faced adventurers - and the males are old, bald and/or bearded (admittedely there is younger priest - with a pudding basin haircut!). I'd like some heroic 20 or 30 something characters to pick from too! (nb my avatar has a beard, I am not anti beard - just pro choices!)
Im going with 3 elven wizards in SP. They are OK, but I dont think I'd like to see them in a MP match. Lulzy 16 HP per willowy forest folk and all I can see in my nightmares is a 30 odd chunk of dwarven warrior up close and personal with mighty hack or something equally easy to find.
Welcome to being a woman! Seriously though, I see at least one male human (#1), elf (#9) and dorf (#11) who could easily pass as "30something". If you're that worried about the diversity of the artwork you might do better to worry about the monochrome skintone on offer.
