I am really confused about the reaction to the DW change.
I honestly didn't realise DW blocked negative damage, and never saw that as its most important feature. It provides immunity from instant-death spells and energy drain, which are both really useful.
Some people have talked about how broken shadowdancer energy drain immunity is - I really don't get it. It doesn't block instant-death or energy damage at all, and you can get it as a paladin or VKF (which every melee was for the capstone, apparently). Some bizarre takes.
I would still take DW in a heartbeat on a build that could cast it.
FvS and Cleric spell lists do need some buffs of course, particularly to buff spells. The Paladin equivalents are disgustingly better (MP, stacking PPR/MRR, doublestrike...) - let some other divines have some fun at some point.
Shadowdancer is just one example of how weapon users can easily acquire an enhancement that does the same thing as Death Ward, but better, because it's not dispelled. We have Deathblock from level 1 on items. Martials have Energy Drain Immunity on many sources, including Vistani, yes, which nowadays 90% of melee classes use.
The only advantage of Death Ward over those non-dispellable and permanent sources was that it also eliminated negative damage. Turning it into the Fire Shield of negative energy is a joke, really.
Are they going to leave any decent spells? Spells *should* be better than the external sources that mimic them, because they are class features. And currently, one by one, they've destroyed all the spells. I've said it before, FOM; Haste, Displacement, Neutralize Poison... these are just a few examples of spells that have become useless because they've been made ubiquitous outside of the classes that should have them.
If they want to do this, the change should only affect enemy spells. After all, mob spells work differently than ours, so why affect player Deathward as well?
Although I should point out that this doesn't solve the problems of negative casters, since deathwarded enemies are only one part of the enemies immune to negative energy. Besides, half damage is a joke, really. If they want to do it right, at least against deathward, they should implement magic dispel mechanics. In PnP, a very common strategy is to cast Dispel Magic and a spell in the same round (one of them quickened). Well, they should add deathward dispels to the players' negative damage, for example. Here we would already be talking about an elegant solution.
Divine casters shouldn't have their spells nerfed just because they don't know how to solve the problem of negative casters, especially when the solution is so obvious. They're not going to leave a single decent spell, and in the meantime, they're giving all the nerfed spells to other classes that shouldn't have them, and they're doing it by making those sources better than the spells themselves! (permanent and not dispellable). It's a joke at our expense.
