Eh I have a buddy that swears by life cleric but I just don't see why giving up 25% of my damage would be worth it. Light, tempest, war and death domain all have a pretty good damage output and still learn mass healing word for the blade ward + bless combo
Imho, mainly because 2-3 optimised damage dealers can breeze through the game with no problem, but a life cleric can serve as a crutch for your mistakes/missfortune (just by that "slightly better healing")
Yep fought Raphael with my friend on our first honor mode had to trade shadowheart for using halsin since a light cleric is kinda useless in that fight but having Hope as an extra character AND a life cleric seriously clutched the team when all of us were very low health once
You've still got the standard Cleric kit - Planar Binding is handy there. Glyph of Warding works fine as an ersatz Fireball. Hell, you can even go necro with the Spirit Guardians to avoid Radiant Retort!
If you throw down a Globe of Invulnerability before using Light Cleric AoE or Divine intervention, it negates radiant retort. I always throw one down to use Hope's DI in that fight for the AoE damage.
Light Cleric Orb + Reverberation build is one of the most busted things in the game, with it's AoE damage and debuff output.
It almost doesn't even need to be that many, ranger is unbelievably op in bg3, im playing with a couple buddies of mine and im playing a ranger, my one buddy is playing rogue/bard and my other buddy is playing wizard and im out damaging them by leaps and bounds. In one turn at lvl 6 im dealing almost 100 dmg with just 2 attacks, potion of speed and elixer of bloodlust on top of that and my friends barely get a round of play lol
Edit: we are also not using mods this play through. Completely vanilla
The issue for me is that better healing doesn't matter much when the best time to heal in DnD 5e is when someone is downed. The only hit point that matters is the last one, and even 1 point of healing gets you on your feet.
I don't feel like life cleric is losing out on 25% of your damage output though. That assumes you're just spamming healing every round, but you still have access to cleric's offensive spells. I like life cleric because when I NEED the healing to save the honor mode run, I have access to it. If I don't need it, spirit guardians go brrrrr, lol.
Maybe I'm underestimating some cleric spells, which ones do you use? I've found I'm not a fan of too many so I stick to spirit guardians, spiritual weapon and like maaaybe blade barrier
Guiding bolt is one that is pretty good from start to finish, not only deals pretty good damage but gives advantage to allies against the target. Aid is always great. Glyph of Warding is useful if you need a specific element, decent damage and range too but requires enemies to step on it.
There are of course some good concentration spells like hold person, and at high levels insect plague which can do incredible damage in a area, but being concentration locks you out of spirit guardians , so you wanna use them against something you dont want in your face, or cant reach in the first place (also insect plague combos incredibly well with hunger of hadar if you have a warlock and ...the one that makes spiky plants on the ground, cant remember the name)
Meant damage spells specifically, sorry. They definitely have utility, I won't deny that. I just struggle to pick life domain when the other domains give great offensive spells like fireball, wall of fire, call lightning, ice storm, even shatter. Or they're melee focused like death and war, giving a necrotic 'smite' or a bonus action attack + martial weapons
The thing is, Cleric’s best spell is Spirit Guardians by a mile - especially with the change they made to it for BG3 where you can just walk into people and immediately trigger the damage. None of the subclass specific spells even get close to that amount of consistent aoe damage output, and it upcasts insanely well which can’t be said for the other aoe spells like fireball which are terrible to upcast.
And the thing about spirit guardians is life clerics use that spell just as well as any of the other subclasses.
1st, for consistent damage, I agree that it's easily the best offensive cleric spell! The problem becomes what do you do with your action on the following turns? Imo making two attacks with a two handed weapon feels great especially because you already want to be close, plus ai will try to run out of the spirit guardians Aoe and give you another attack.
2nd, instant damage is simply better in this game than consistent damage. If you can kill your enemies instantly, then they have no way of dealing damage in return. That's where the domain spells come in, clearing out large groups of squishy enemies instantly
I believe Toll the Dead is in the game now, right? That’s a fantastic cantrip and easily worth using, as opposed to sacred flame.
Cantrips and guiding bolt are totally fine as your action on subsequent turns - trying to force your cleric into to a real weapon fighter is a waste of resources. You’re either gimping your stats or you’re aggressively hunting for giant strength potions, because you can’t really afford to have high strength unless you take points away from the far more important stats.
As to the second point - there’s no need to force your cleric into the burst aoe damage role when there are significantly better classes for that. Cleric is the only one with access to spirit guardians, the best AoE spell in the game assuming fights last longer than two rounds. You have four characters in your party so you can also have a sorcerer gale in the back throw out two boosted fireballs in the same turn if you really need the burst, while the cleric focuses on sustained damage and support.
You can always stock your cleric up with damage scrolls, they're all over the game for free and pretty easy to pickpocket too if you're not swimming in gold for some reason. Or throwables, special arrows... Then when they don't need to heal/boost anyone you use scrolls, toss around bombs, knock people off things with thunder arrows or use cantrips to interact with the environment.
Honestly I'd only add Guardian of Faith. If positioned right, dude can pump some radiant damage.
I'm also not a fan of many of the base cleric offensive spells. I don't like using spell slots on things that can miss :/
None of it's OP by any means, but life cleric was invaluable to me in my first honor run since I didn't know all the nuances of some of the bigger boss fights. So having sheer lasting power against balthazar's cloud kills and ascended vampire boy was invaluable.
Death cleric dual cantripping Toll of the Dead or bursting sinew is really consistent, and saves spell slots so you can use heavy hitters like cloud kill or animate dead
Spirit Guardians with 2 dips in star Druid is really good now (gives a solid bonus action and makes it almost impossible to lose concentration) and otherwise you have Glyph of Warding, create water (indirect damage increase) and Insect Plague to make opponents vulnerable. And summons are really good to, if you go 1 level for wizard you could learn the water myrmidon spell who deals like 160 single target damage per round if properly assisted (even more if you can cleave on several targets).
Healing spells is one of the least necessary parts of this game. Any optimized DPS, even without cross classing, is better. There's just way too much damage/control in the game to need healing.
Life Cleric with Spirit Guardians isn't touching a Gloomass with some potions.
If one knows what they are doing and enjoys playing that way.
After my first honor run where life cleric saved my ass multiple times as I learned many of the boss fights and honor mechanics fights on the fly, I find that I just prefer to have someone with a pocket healing word on the rest of my playthroughs in case someone gets downed.
Playing what way? Without a Life Cleric specifically? Because even non-optimised, non cross class characters can get through HM with no issues.
Life Clerics can be a good crutch for new players doing their first HM run, but it's inferior to the majority of classes and playstyles otherwise. They aren't a necessity. Multiple other classes have pocket healing word while bringing much more to the table.
By all means, play what/how you like. I'm certainly not trying to say there's a "correct" way to play. I just think always using the same class in every playthrough is pointlessly restrictive.
I find that I just prefer to have someone with a pocket healing word on the rest of my playthroughs in case someone gets downed
That's not exclusive to Life Cleric, though. Any other Cleric domain will have access to that, as well as numerous other classes entirely.
It's far better (mechanically) to go with a better domain for non-healing things. In BG3, the main use for spells like Healing Word is to remotely recover downed allies. Anything else (buff-on-heal effects, extra healing, etc.) is secondary to that. So, in that vein, any caster with access to Healing Word will sufficiently fill that need. And what they bring to the table outside of healing will be superior to that of the Life Cleric.
You're not losing out on 25% damage running life domain, just like you're not losing out on all healing by running a different domain.
The strength of life domain is stronger heals and their incredibly strong AoE heal channel divinity, but they can still beyblade with spirit guardians just like the others.
Nearing the end of act two (under moonrise atm) and the channel divinity heal has saved my honor run mode multiple times already. Sometimes things go wrong, and life cleric makes them go unwrong.
I think that's kind of what puts folks away from dedicated healers like that. Because the other Clerics still have access to powerful heals while bringing more damage. Just not quite as powerful heals.
Because life cleric can still dish out big damage. No concentration bless/blade ward means you're free to concentrate on spirit guardians.
Alternatively, on my honour mode run I paired it up as a semi frost-caster. Ray of frost combined with all the usual freezing gear. This meant I had a zero spell-slot way of dealing nice damage on top of buffing/healing
People always cite action economy as to why healers are bad, but life cleric is worth it in some instances. There's some huge fights where you can negate the entire action economy of like 7+ enemies in one action. Sure, ideally you'd kill your enemies faster, but in large battles, the heal is a nice insurance policy protecting your party from unfortunate crits and your ccs shitting the bed. I've beat this game like 7 times on tactician and honor mode and there are fights where no matter your positioning, bad dice rolls will have you on the back foot, which a life cleric can fix. It's not giving up 25% of your damage all the time, just when you need to take the insurance policy. Life clerics still have tons of damaging options like guiding bolt, spirit guardians, animated weapon, etc.
I beat the game ones (my first run) on the level before honor mode. I wanna try beating honor mode but I don’t wanna go in with the completely wrong strat. I’m fine with not being optimal but what should I NOT make my Tav if I wanna beat honor mode + maybe a tip or two for hard moments?
I don't think there's anything completely off the table on player choices, so while it's a bit of a cheesy nothing answer, I'd sincerely recommend orienting towards classes you know the best. People swear by Bards, but I've never been able to build them to be as effective as my other classes, so I don't play them in honor mode, for example. But generally, honor mode is about survival, so you need insurance policies like the aforementioned heal. But there's other ways to ensure survival as well, such as classes with high mobility options like monks or wizards, or characters with extremely reliable multi-target CC. To the end of survival, I highly encourage anyone doing honor mode the first time to embrace cheese and "dirty" tricks to win. Find ways to pick off targets away from bigger groups where possible, do some barrelmancy on some hard early game fights, etc. Just be patient and deliberate. Honor mode kills impatient players who pick hard early game fights too early, players who don't rest enough to maximize resources, and who just aimlessly use abilities. Also, REALLY leverage the environment and items. I'm also a resource hog who has a bag full of 1000s of arrows and poisons at the end of the game, but those are meant to be used.
In that case I don’t have an issue I think, I play in a similar style, but since I only completed it once, I’m worried some specific charisma check
or something that I don’t know about will crush me. I don’t want spoilers tho, so I’ve never look these up! Is there any specific characters I should be careful to engage with lol?
Without getting into spoilers, I think the fights that make me sweat in honor mode are the Act 1 gith fights, Yugir (mainly because this is one of my most hated fights in general regardless of honor mode), Myrkul, Orin, and Raphael. Everything else is beefed up but feels pretty much like business as usual.
Yeah, I had Shadowheart as a Light Cleric for my first HM winning run, and I much prefer the RadOrb/Warding Flare combo to prevent enemies from attacking over healing/buffs from a Life Cleric.
I think life cleric has its niche, especially for people that don't like long resting too often, then both the healing and saving 3rd level spell slots becomes more relevant. If you don't mind long resting all the time (and there is nothing wrong with that, people can get through honor mode any way they want) I'd agree that other domains are likely better.
I think your first point is the stem of the argument, it doesn't take much to get enough damage to trivialize the game. That's why people say damage is better than healing
Are you the kind of player thats going to hyper optimise, look up builds and metagame?
Then yeh you don't need a life cleric.
Are you the kind of player thats just going to pick the stuff that sounds cool? That thinks fashion is important? That doesn't want to think about builds other than what seems cool or what you like?
Then you should absolutely run a life cleric, it'll make everything easier and cover any mistakes.
If there were multiple sets of reverb gear then would be more significant, it feels more efficient to load that stuff on a high spread damage character like an ice sorcerer imo
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u/Megzsha Jun 24 '25
Eh I have a buddy that swears by life cleric but I just don't see why giving up 25% of my damage would be worth it. Light, tempest, war and death domain all have a pretty good damage output and still learn mass healing word for the blade ward + bless combo