For any cleric that's looking to be an evoker, a few options are markedly better than others: specifically, sun and fire.
Sun for free fire AND light SP as well as some really awesome SLAs, mixed with the ability to give 10% light vunlerability on every turn undead. This route works well because practically nothing resists your light spells and an 8 sp sunburst on an 8 second cooldown is nothing to sneeze at.
Fire for some even better SLAs and the ability to just hard spec into fire Spell Power and have it cross-apply to light. This route is particularly potent because fire is the only spell type that gets an immunity strip via racial (which gives cleric its ONLY access to any sort of immunity strip).
The other options all have a lot of issues;
-Earth route basically just gives stoneskin and nothing else--earthquake + melfs are such pitiful damage options that speccing acid for them only is going to be fairly useless.
-Cold route suffers the same issues--cone of cold + greater creeping cold is better, but you're better off using Divine Punishment for a DOT and the two alone isn't enough to spec into ice (Maybe in epics with Burst of Glacial Wrath it becomes more viable? Seems unlikely to me.)
-Electricity route is better than the other two, gives +dcs instead of SP which is useful, and the SLAs are better, but for some bizzarre reason, the chain lightning SLA takes a 12 second CD and a higher SP cost than the Firestorm and Sunburst ones (when it's just an inferior spell across the board.)
-Magic SLA seems like it's supposed to be for a general caster, and the DCs, 40 universal spell power + 40 more on any sort of turn undead attempt isn't terrible, but the lack of useful SLAs really hinders it, and you're already getting 40 for both light + fire in the sun tree, plus you get SLAs for leveling and an extra 10% damage with light spells after using turn.
-Good domain suffers from weird decision making, giving it diefic vengeance + blade barrier are both really decent SLAs for leveling, but then it randomly gives you a bonus to hit for its last one, making it a bad choice if you're going nuker (sun is always going to be better) and a bad choice if you're going melee, too.
-Chaos has the very useful +3% crit rate, and chaos hammer could be a good SLA if you went for the epic master of alignment feats and went with the "This damages everything" enhancement in DD, but the best SLA is used on prismatic spray which is also given a stupidly long CD for what it is.
Most of the options are plagued by the same issue: Clerics really only have the base spell pool to support Light, Fire, and Force (untyped) damage. The domains which augment the damage types clerics already have shine. They particularly shine because exalted angel specifically wants BOTH fire and light spell power. Other domains don't offer enough power in the SLAs to justify not taking light/fire instead, which offer BOTH better SLAs and an augment to existing damage spells that the other ones lack. This is amplified by the fact that the shared power thing comes only from spell power and not spell crit (a stat which is just as important, if not more so tbh). Meaning even if you can cross-spec in the spell power bit, you have to pick one or the other in the crit department.
-Death domain is almost fine. With the addition of DA, there's no reason for it to give immunity to energy drain any more, since a good chunk of necro clerics should theoretically be running the undead shadow form. It'd be nice to see it get a death aura or something similar instead. But the destruction SLA and the necrotic bolt are both excellent, added to the +necromancer DCs. But that's only if you're able to get the DCs to be an insta-kill caster, running negative energy nuker is an excercise in frustration because it's the most resisted type in the game.
It honestly feels like they went with thematics over balance here, and made some weird balance choices (chain lightning being so much higher CD and cost, Good domain having a random bonus to hit on a domain that otherwise supports a caster.) These honestly could do for an update--either have the domains also add in a few extra spells to the spellbook which make it more justifiable to warrant going outside the typical light/fire, or else make the SLAs SIGNIFICANTLY more useful so that Light/Fire aren't the ones which also have the best SLAs out of the bunch, too.
Sun for free fire AND light SP as well as some really awesome SLAs, mixed with the ability to give 10% light vunlerability on every turn undead. This route works well because practically nothing resists your light spells and an 8 sp sunburst on an 8 second cooldown is nothing to sneeze at.
Fire for some even better SLAs and the ability to just hard spec into fire Spell Power and have it cross-apply to light. This route is particularly potent because fire is the only spell type that gets an immunity strip via racial (which gives cleric its ONLY access to any sort of immunity strip).
The other options all have a lot of issues;
-Earth route basically just gives stoneskin and nothing else--earthquake + melfs are such pitiful damage options that speccing acid for them only is going to be fairly useless.
-Cold route suffers the same issues--cone of cold + greater creeping cold is better, but you're better off using Divine Punishment for a DOT and the two alone isn't enough to spec into ice (Maybe in epics with Burst of Glacial Wrath it becomes more viable? Seems unlikely to me.)
-Electricity route is better than the other two, gives +dcs instead of SP which is useful, and the SLAs are better, but for some bizzarre reason, the chain lightning SLA takes a 12 second CD and a higher SP cost than the Firestorm and Sunburst ones (when it's just an inferior spell across the board.)
-Magic SLA seems like it's supposed to be for a general caster, and the DCs, 40 universal spell power + 40 more on any sort of turn undead attempt isn't terrible, but the lack of useful SLAs really hinders it, and you're already getting 40 for both light + fire in the sun tree, plus you get SLAs for leveling and an extra 10% damage with light spells after using turn.
-Good domain suffers from weird decision making, giving it diefic vengeance + blade barrier are both really decent SLAs for leveling, but then it randomly gives you a bonus to hit for its last one, making it a bad choice if you're going nuker (sun is always going to be better) and a bad choice if you're going melee, too.
-Chaos has the very useful +3% crit rate, and chaos hammer could be a good SLA if you went for the epic master of alignment feats and went with the "This damages everything" enhancement in DD, but the best SLA is used on prismatic spray which is also given a stupidly long CD for what it is.
Most of the options are plagued by the same issue: Clerics really only have the base spell pool to support Light, Fire, and Force (untyped) damage. The domains which augment the damage types clerics already have shine. They particularly shine because exalted angel specifically wants BOTH fire and light spell power. Other domains don't offer enough power in the SLAs to justify not taking light/fire instead, which offer BOTH better SLAs and an augment to existing damage spells that the other ones lack. This is amplified by the fact that the shared power thing comes only from spell power and not spell crit (a stat which is just as important, if not more so tbh). Meaning even if you can cross-spec in the spell power bit, you have to pick one or the other in the crit department.
-Death domain is almost fine. With the addition of DA, there's no reason for it to give immunity to energy drain any more, since a good chunk of necro clerics should theoretically be running the undead shadow form. It'd be nice to see it get a death aura or something similar instead. But the destruction SLA and the necrotic bolt are both excellent, added to the +necromancer DCs. But that's only if you're able to get the DCs to be an insta-kill caster, running negative energy nuker is an excercise in frustration because it's the most resisted type in the game.
It honestly feels like they went with thematics over balance here, and made some weird balance choices (chain lightning being so much higher CD and cost, Good domain having a random bonus to hit on a domain that otherwise supports a caster.) These honestly could do for an update--either have the domains also add in a few extra spells to the spellbook which make it more justifiable to warrant going outside the typical light/fire, or else make the SLAs SIGNIFICANTLY more useful so that Light/Fire aren't the ones which also have the best SLAs out of the bunch, too.
Upvote
3
