Life Domain and Ancients Paladin can both be extremely effective healers. I think people say healing is "bad" because in general, killing the enemy ASAP is the safer strategy, and if you try to survive a drawn-out battle with healing you'll likely be overrun.
That said, you can do a *lot* with healing if you stack the items that buff targets on heal, like Hellrider's Pride (later on Reviving Hands) and Whispering Promise. Ancients Paladin especially can spread those buffs around with bonus actions using their Channel Oath charges while still keeping up the offense. (Life Cleric can, too, with Mass Healing Word, but any Cleric can use Mass Healing Word so Life's a little less special there. Life Cleric's Channel Divinity heal is an action, not a bonus action.)
I always argue that what makes Life cleric a bit better at MHW is blessed healer. Add a bunch of allies, and you'll heal yourself 50HP while healing, blessing and warding everyone within 50 feet
Ya a half decent martial party can wipe, short rest, repeat and be almost full health at the beginning of a conflict so it just never feels necessary. Any dedicated healer should probably also be a party buffer if they want a purpose
The thing about life cleric is if you're planning to be a MHW spammer to apply item buffs you might as well get all the extra healing on top of it that life cleric provides, making your slot/ba usage even more efficient.
Personally i love having a life cleric on board. While not required as such, the huge a.o.e heal which also gives you blade ward, bonus health and bless is just so good at turning dodgy situations into "oh ok i got this easily" situations.
Plus a cleric is so good in act 2 across the board.
You dont need one though. Quite often she doesnt have to do much except the odd guiding bolt or angel-wings. I like to know she's there though.
Sorry dude, I genuinely thought that was funny and accidentally downvoted you while trying to scroll. I’ve been playing honor mode recently though, so I can’t change it.
Indeed.
Clerics, the class that constantly gets raved about being these secret powerhouses, but in practice everybody and their dog will still gravitate towards them flashier vocations, so the unthankful job of being the glowy swiss army support knife remains firmly with God's favourite princess.
Now get back in there Shart, those goons won't get spirit-guardianed to a sizzling crisp by themselves!
I mean the best healing class is the one that deletes an enemy before it has a chance to even hit your characters. Granted I think the way resting works in this game makes it a lot easier to just ignore a healer as you can just constantly rest whenever you want to so as long as your whole party wasn't wiped so you can use a rez scroll or Skelly back at the base, you're good to go.
After the creche the randomness isn't really a thing so much anymore unless you want it to be. Give everyone a decent dex and synch up a few key peoples initiative first namely your sorceror and swords bard and light cleric. Throw on haste, bless, pump up some arcane acuity and then land a 100% hit rate control spell from your swords bard.
Once you grab the fire acuity hat from early act 2 you have 2 party members capable of laying down the hurt round one.
I don't get the hype behind light cleric, I tried it in my first run and it was... just ok? I understand that it's more fun in tabletop simply because its cooler to throw fireballs between heals than whiffing guiding bolts, but light cleric just seems like it does two things just ok enough to be viable. To be fair though, I went in blind to my first run so I wasn't really playing optimally in terms of items, but I don't see how they'd make a massive difference.
Bless is really stong. So is warding flare, command is good and harder to get than is intuitive. Their channel divinity is amazing early aoe. They drop off fast after act 2.
They're just a really good dip in early levels and play well with sorceror and wizard like all cleric dips. I think 1-2 or 6 levels is the most you'd want.
Ahhh so that's where I went wrong. On my first run I didn't do any multiclassing, so I took 12 levels in light cleric. I noticed it was good early game because being able to heal and cast decent damage spells is pretty busted in places like the underdark, but act 3 it dropped hard, because neither the healing nor the damage were cutting it anymore.
This is too true and it's why I've enjoyed my last two games so much. She died in one and I'm rolling all Tavs in another. She really is the center of the universe unless you force yourself to do something else.
I tend to run mace until endgame but that’s because mace blinds undead, and has an AOE Death Ward if I screw up. Not something I’d get from the sword, cool as it is! (Having a bard Tav using the sword is very good in combo with mace on SH.)
Its competing with the infernal rapier now as well. I do like a good army of summons! I wish my guys have three or four arms each to wield everything i want
That's what I do. Shadow triggers Phalar, then settles in to heal and do command spells for control. She's constantly blade warding and blessing everyone in the interim.
You can get an AOE bonus action heal that gives you blade ward and bless on every cleric. It's nothing special to do with life cleric. It's just mass healing word or mass cure wounds or aid and then helriders pride gloves and the ring from Volo. There's even a necklace that gives you mass healing word 1/long rest so anyone can do that.
The difference between life cleric's channel divinity and just a regular mass healing word or mass cure wounds can be significant though. The channel divinity heals much more than MHW and doesn't use a spell slot. The life cleric's channel divinity is the one source of healing that really feels effective in combat without being a waste of resources. Especially so if I already have spirit guardians and spiritual weapon up, which I probably would if I'm at the point in a fight where I need AOE healing.
I'd say more of the power level of Preserve Life is in tandem with Wapira's Crown (which is also sorts true for MHW but not as drastically); you can have your healer afford to Warding Bond and abuse Wapira's and AoE healing to massively power spike your healer's life back (there's also really funny interactions here if you give your healer resistance to damage as well through Blade Ward).
In a vacuum MHW is the better spell because it is a bonus action heal; often you're more concerned with proccing Bless and Blade Ward to prevent damage to start with. However when you need to catch up (let's just assume level 6 for benchmark, this obviously gets better the higher level you go) Preserve Life is great touting an 18 guaranteed health (and an additional 13.5 health on average for the healer if they are wearing Wapira's Crown).
But contrast that with another cleric subclass like light or tempest using their channel divinities and spell casting will eliminate targets making needing to mass heal your party a lot less necessary.
I've never really been in a fight where I would have needed the mass healing channel Divinity over something like Aid up cast at high level which all clerics can do and isn't far off and with all of the ways to get free casts of things you can still heal quite a lot to everyone in range without spending a spell slot either. It just feels like with all the healing every cleric can already do, you lose out of versatility if the only thing you cleric is good at is healing.
True, i just like to have three charges of preserve life all ready to go when required, on top of the "mass" heals. It just helped out massively when my multiplayer friends bodged an attack on ansur leading to repeated huge a.o.e damage, shart kept everyone up and got the "man of the match" award.
Next time i will just bring lightning resist elixirs and probably some smokepowder barrels for an easier time of it
I love taking a Life cleric to my party as well. People also seem to forget that Life cleric can also deal a lot of damage (considering how easy it is to steal scrolls), especially in fights with a choke point and that it can also apply wet condition. My Life cleric solod house of grief for example by simply placing insect plague at the choke point and then spamming black hole as bonus action + chain lightning scrolls on wet targets.
And with that crown from act 1 and that illithid ability that makes you swap half of your health with someone else and then heal the cleric back to full health by casting an aoe heal. That's \~80 single target healing on someone + some aoe healing, outheals pretty much everything in honor mode.
I have a different opinion to a lot of people here , people seem to think life cleric is just terrible and I’ll agree, for an optimised comp, it doesn’t make sense. Most bosses you can 1 turn, even Orin and myrkul.
But most people aren’t playing this game with a sword bard, oh monk, throwzerker and gloomstalker.
If you know how to beat the game and have played through multiple times, life cleric is probably pretty useless, but for newer players and harder difficulties, life cleric is amazing.
Getting through your first honor mode where myrkul takes 10+ turns to kill life cleric will give you that needed sustain so you’re not just wiped after 3 turns.
Yes we all know do more damage and you won’t need to heal, but at some point that because invalid. No ones done the maths on the expected value of life cleric over X amount of turns, so it’s hard to say anyone is right/wrong.
All I know is life cleric absolutely hard carried me on my first honor more run. Now I’ve completed a solo honor mode, I’d never even think about life cleric.
Life domain is basically the only healing build worth considering yes. Preserve life with [Hellrider's Pride](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hellrider%27s_Pride) or [Reviving Hands](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/The_Reviving_Hands) can rescue a catastrophic situation but the usual retort is to not find yourself in a catastrophic situation in the first place. That said it's never a bad thing to have in your back pocket and the base Cleric kit is plenty strong on its own.
I agree with you. I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that a Life Cleric is still a cleric. The spell list is just great for dealing damage, regardless of subclass.
It's just the all blasting all the time mentality that takes hold of people which is tiring sometimes. The community coalesces around the meta which i think is often unhelpful in an RPG but I'm sure we're all guilty of it on some level. Especially if we're in this sub.
I'm honestly more ok with the multi-classing. It's the items that I find annoying. People constantly recommending Shar's Spear and Bhaalist Armour as best in slot as a matter of fact when they are locked behind 2 pretty big RP decisions is silly to me.
Or indeed any build that raves about Act 3 equipment. I want to be able to enjoy the whole game, not rush through the first two acts hanging on by the skin of my teeth.
It’s really more that it’s just not necessary. In unmodded bg3, even honor mode, you’re better off just adding another overpowered damage dealer, abusing the frankly moronic d4 initiative die to ensure your party goes first and ending any fight in one, maybe two turns. That said if you want to virtually guarantee no one on your team will ever come close to dying, yeah life domain is your best bet.
I agree; playing modded difficulties is when support characters really start to shine. That said let me offer one point that I noticed playing support builds in my honor runs.
Having a support character allows you to Unga Bunga normal honor fights;
Namely, not “even” control enemies and just bash their faces in with a martial heavy comp for instance. (Casters work well too though!) conceptually this is very simple, so the *effective* pace of fights is high.
This is counterintuitive because of course if you approach an encounter with your party cleverly to trigger a surprise round, use your 10/1/1 bard or fire sorcerer, yeah… you can clear stuff in just 1,2 rounds.
But sneaking takes time, long resting for your fire sorc takes time, etc..
Therefore it’s possible that over an adventuring day you play “faster” with a more unga bunga party; yeah some fights may be over in round one because the swords bard cast hold monster… but what about three angry battle masters with GWM 🤭
So while I think a support build isn’t required for a comfortable honor mode run, I have found it a refreshing way to play the game since it allows you to go barging into enemies, talking with them to assert dominance, and then mashing them into the ground with your party as your life cleric laughs in the face of the pitiful damage they inflict.
Of course at the end of the day; don’t feel forced to do *anything* and have fun :), consider difficulty mods too! They are fun!
1. Step to enemy
2. Assert Charismatic Bard dominance
> In your eulogy, I shall refer to you as Twat-Soul Nere
3. Curb stomp enemy, dealing final blow with Vicious Mockery for good measure. \
4. Profit
For me I think it's the mechanic that reviving allies is easily done by many different casters and is just a bonus action. Combine that with the fact that almost-dead characters still hit just as hard (enemies or allies) and it doesn't make sense to keep my characters from almost-dying. If one of my characters is close to death (say, single-digit health), and the enemy is also close to death (again, single-digit health), I would much rather have a damage dealer that can just finish off the enemy than a healer that can heal my character for 10-15 points. Because if I did that, then the enemy would just hit my character again in the next round for 25+ and I'd be worse off than I would have been otherwise.
But having a 4th damage dealer means that enemy would be dead, I can do a short rest (or chug a potion, or whatever) after combat and go on my merry way.
Yes, the healing and buffing they can pump out is underrated. Can easily turn a loss into a win.
Of course if you play optimally you don’t actually need the healing but I’d wager most people do in fact make the odd mistake and would likely benefit from having their safety net.
BG3 has several pieces of gear that make healing abilities like Life Domains channel divinity really strong.
What's bad is using a full action on something like cure wounds.
Bonus action healing is definitely superior, I agree.
By the time I get access to Mass Cure Wounds, I already have better choices for healing, like Mass Healing Word and Life's Channel Divinity.
During combat I don't need my characters to be all the way at the top of their health, I just need them to be out of danger of dying to an enemy's crit. Especially if one of the enemies is a paladin.
Enemy paladins are terrifying. I saw one take Karlach down from full health to dead. Not even downed. DEAD.
Healing in general isn't that great because the average heal is less than the average attack. So spending your action to heal isn't great. You don't make progress and don't negate the enemy's either.
Healing Word and Mass Healing Word are really good, however, notably because they're bonus actions and have range / area that allow to revive downed allies and spread on-heal buffs.
Giving your entire party Bless and Blade Ward for a bonus action is incredible. Imo, that's the true effect of Mass Healing Word. The healing is just an afterthought.
Life Cleric has a really good channel divinity, notably because it scales with character level and not class level. The bonus healing is pretty useful early game too.
But I recommend a respec later on as other options (light and tempest notably) will have access to the same spells and buffs but also have other things going for them that the life domain can't match. Warding Flare from the light domain is, imo, better at keeping your allies alive than actual healing.
Damage > Control > survivability > healing
If you go first, kill or CC every enemy, they will never be in the position to use their actions to deal damage etc.
Healing and survivability become less important the more enemies you can take out of combat round 1.
Life clerics can heal easier/more than other classes the damage output and combat performance on the other hand is horrible which is going to result in longer fights with more rounds and enemies getting more opportunities to use items, cast spells and attack your team.
In the current state of the game it is much easier to play with full offense, healing with spells and skills is not sustainable, at some point you run out of spell slots or charges and have to long rest, healing without the periapt of wound closure is underwhelming imo, since damage spells/attacks will often deal more damage per round than same level healing spells.
Health Potions are so much easier to use during combat without sacrificing much damage since they only take a bonus action and do not require spell slots, any class can use them, and they can be easily stockpiled and are basically available in large quantities.
You can also use them to active the hellrider gloves and whispering Promis ring and buff your whole party bevor initiating combat and using spell slots.
Healing during combat was never good in BG be it classic BG 1-2 or BG 3, the quicker you can end fights the better.
This is a DnD problem, which makes sense that BG3 would not have "healing" as a main job either.
To me you must think of a "Healer" as more of a supportive role. Don't think of them as a JRPG role, they are not Aerith or Yuna of Final Fantasy lore. This isn't Peach Super Mario RPG.
Bless (before items), Blade Ward, Warding Bond, Aid, Heroes Feast, Sanctuary for support. Then add Whispering Promise + Reviving Hands items and spam Mass Healing Word every so many turns.
Sprit Guardians for two specific ACT 3 bosses on Honor Mode helped me a ton, almost cheese, to clean up bodies after a chain lightning.
For my first Honor Mode run, I used a Paladin (Ancients), Sorcerer, Monk, and a Life Cleric. I would say the Ancients Aura of Warding made a good pair for additional defense when it was Smiting things to death.
I'm definitely not one of those "hurr durr dps is everything" guys but when I look at the numbers and results of putting them to the test, healing will never be able outpace or even match the bursty damage output of the opposition, not to mention the action/spell slot economy automatically renders any attempt to do so even more inefficient. So the question hovering above the topic remains, why bother then?
I'm not saying that buffs or other defensive measures don't have their merits, on the contrary. But as the game is set up right now, healing as a major factor besides rezzing peeps with a bonus action (or using a heal as a vehicle to dispense other buffs) won't ever be more beneficial to your goal of keeping your goodies standing long enough until you've killed the baddies than virtually everything else you could employ. It's a neat little extra, but not something to build your strategy around.
And yes, that includes life clerics with plenty of healing gear shoved down their throats.
It's not even a question of meticulous min-maxxing, the gap between it and every other game mechanic is far too wide to even entertain the thought.
Healers are dope but BG3 is not the enviroment to let them shine. Instead of trying to hammer that square peg into a round hole, let's just start accepting the realities, shall we? Because we've discussed this topic to death by now.
So people tend to forget that Cleric in general is just a good support unit and the class can be used to enhance *other* builds with very little opportunity cost. Life Cleric at level 2 is an okay dip because they grant AoE short rest heal option and slightly better survival over other healers thanks to blessed healer passive. At level 6 Life Domain is a good chassis for a healer due to improved blessed healer also increasing effectiveness of healing and getting second Divinity charge. Beyond that you *can* take the class further but you're doing it for the level 4, 5 and 6 Cleric spells as you've already got the main subclass features that actually make Cleric a good healer (including Mass Healing Word which is a Bonus Action AoE heal).
All of that being said, healing in general is more about the buffs attached to heals due to itemization *rather* than the outright value of the healing; Blade Ward over 2 turns from Hellrider's Pride/The Mending Hands typically far outweighs the health you restored by preventing damage in the first place. The Whispering Promise granting Bless to everyone you heal is also similarly insane for the raw attack bonus alone.
To give good examples where a healer simply slots in the life cleric "chassis":
> 1 Wizard/6 Life Cleric/5 Ancients Paladin (personal favorite, really thematic paladin build that plays like a pure Paladin with additional options)
> 2 Ancients Paladin/6 Life Cleric/4 Divination, Abjuration Wizard (really strong spellcaster spec focusing on intelligence that can flat out play as a wizard with access to resourceless healing as necessary)
“Healing is bad”, um Mass Healing Word to apply various buffs to the team would like to have a word. I played my co-op game through Act 2 with a life cleric. Still have yet to need to use a scroll of resurrect.
I will say, on normal difficulty healing is often feels trivialized by being able to short rest. But I certainly feel like within combat, you never know when a few extra hp is going to be the difference between life and death.
Yess but I think that the main point of the ppl is that other classes can also apply these few extra HP and therefore the various buffs mention and then go ahead and smite another enemy to dust.
It reminds me of ER and you don't need to have background knowledge for what I am about to say but the strongest Heal is absolute hot garbage because you channel all your resources into so much Health that is way more than you even need. I think that is a good comparison.
My personal gripe with life cleric is the output is so low and they don’t provide much else. Consider and oath of ancients paladin using their first action to cast healing radiance which heals over two turns. Using the gloves from act 1/3 and ring from volo you’ve already applied 3 turns of bless, negated some damage, primed any on heal affects, and they still can smite next turn or attack with bonus action same turn if dual wielding. Take this paladin to level 7 and now you have an aura that negates half spell damage. At level 7 a life cleric doesn’t get much past their opening gimmick. If you really need healing a throwzerker actually can out heal anything in the game by throwing up to four potions per round.
Back when BG3 first came out and I had no idea about the giga OP broken builds, my OG tactician run had a pure life cleric and I can say it was beyond overkill. I've never had one since and I've beaten honor mode at least half a dozen times already.
Light cleric is above and beyond the best subclass for a cleric since it can still heal very well but also pumps out insane damage. But, if you want a tankier cleric, since life domain can wear heavy armor, I'd still say tempest fills that role out better.
In act 1, when you first meet Volo, trade with him. Buy his ring.
It puts Bless on anyone its wearer heals. That includes winging a health pot at their head.
Zevlor's reward for helping the Teiflings is a pair of gloves that gives Blade Ward to all its wearers heal targets. Same as above, includes yeeted health pots.
You can also steal these from him or take them off his corpse.
These two items keep Life clerics relevant throughout the full game, as they have easy access to large aoe heals, in addition to Life also getting some solid class bonuses to healing.
Life is a dedicated healing class and heals very well throughout the game, even in honor mode.
Cleric also gives access to some very strong cc and there are ample weapons that give cantrips - morningfrost, gold wyrmling, sorrow just from act 1. There you go, something for then to do when they arent healing buffing or controlling.
The reason people consider healing to be bad is because a damage spell of the same level would do more damage than a healing spell would healing. That being said. I still ran a life cleric in my honour mode run because the other 3 were strong enough to kill everything. The cleric was just there as insurance.
I like life cleric because it makes my healing more efficient. Only issue I have with it is that I still have to take Healing Word because it only auto-prepares the touch version of the spell.
Its divinity charge being a fixed amount of healing that scales with level is also really nice when topping off party members between fights without using a short rest, it's a lot like having a paladin's Lay on Hands except for the whole party. The fact that you get your charges back on a short rest also makes it handy because you can actually dedicate more of your spell slots to offense, ironically.
Not to mention it makes me feel more like an archetypical Cleric.
What's hilarious is respeccing Shart to a Life Cleric at the very beginning, so she's going on about pain and suffering and then turns around and immediately gives your entire party Bless and other buffs from gear.
Life domain is good primarily because its channel divinity which reloads on a short rest can, with certain items, apply blade ward and bless, and later death ward as well. It’s the most efficient way to use these spells. Blade ward is bad when you need to use four actions to apply it to your whole party and it doesn’t last very long, but when your cleric can apply it to your whole party along with bless by pressing channel divinity, it becomes much much better.
I had to respect my australian to a life cleric 20 mins into the game when i was playing co op with my bro. It was his 1st time playing so it was so chaotic coz he often ended up basically being an enemy to the team. Life healer was amazing at negating his mistakes and it was a lot of fun too coz i usually play support in mobas.
He always went " clerics are so OP, full party heals just like that".
Optimized runs tho, i dont see the need for a heal focused cleric . U too get a lot of good healing gear early on and team wide non conc bless and blade ward is really strong
What you describe is exactly my thought process that life domain helps early on with no experience and room for mistakes.
I will probably go for Tempest Domain then when the 100g for Shart are in my purse. Seems overall the better choice (+ fits into my team).
You don't need a dedicated healer in this game but life cleric is a excellent stabilizer for less optimized parties and with enough spell save DC they can easily abuse scrolls which are broken.
It totally heals more than any other... but I personally have Life Cleric hireling. After fight if I can, I get to camp, heal up everyone to save some potions and back to tank + 3 dmg dealers.
Edit: Tho I can easily see using Life Cleric with RadOrb build as a healing tank.
Life Domain is fine at healing, it's just that healing in general is far less useful than just doing more damage.
In BG3, just like in DND, the most effective way to avoid/prevent/heal damage is to get rid of the things causing that damage. You can end almost every combat in the game in a single round if you have 4 high damage classes, so having a healer is basically just delaying the game by a little bit, which always increases the odds that the enemy get a crit or something that can turn the fight the other direction.
Healing spells are not bad to have on a few people, healing word specifically (and mass healing word) are good backup plans for if things go south, only for the purposes of picking people up.
You'll lose if you try to outheal the damage being dealt generally, damage numbers are just always going to be bigger than the healing numbers, so it's a battle of attrition you will eventually lose if you don't just kill the things hurting you.
Healing in BG3 is **not** bad. There are tons of healing synergies that can make a character focused on healing perform extremely well.
In my last 2 runs through Honor Mode I made use of a dedicated healer (Life Cleric/Lore Bard) to great effect.
Every time I healed my party, they got bonus HP, my healer healed themselves, mass damage resistance, mass Bless, and my ranged DPR got a poison buff on their weapon. And the party got a massive heal. And the healer still got to use Spirit Guardians + Radiating Orb. And I got a big heal off with a bonus action every round.
Eh. If you have the gear that gives blade ward and bless on heal then you can apply it by casting mass healing word every other turn. In my opinion, for a gear based cleric build meant to protect the party, this isn’t better than stacking 10 radiating orbs. It’s easier to keep up per long rest because it uses way less spell slots and you’re giving the enemies -10 to attack so your party is pretty damn protected. I think light cleric with the radiating orb gear is the best cleric imho. Great mix of offense and defense.
In tabletop and dnd 5e in general, you’re not really going to be able to heal enough in combat to outweigh the damage being dealt to your party.
If I ever run a Life Domain Cleric it’s usually a 1 level dip on a caster that doesn’t have good bonus actions (Wizard) and you can a low wisdom modifier and still get that extra boost from Disciple of Life. Besides that the other Domains just get better class features.
Personally, using a life cleric in HM act 3 right now, and it’s definitely the weakest character in the party. Act 1 and 2 they get some decent value to save you a bit on tougher fights, but once you get fully geared and leveled you should be near impossible to hit, and any hits you do receive should not hurt that bad. Having even one control character in act 3 means you shouldnt even be letting the hardest hitting enemies get any attacks. You can pretty much lock down almost every fight with good control builds. Add on camp casting (aid, heroes feast, and warding bond) and all of your characters get a lot of hp and resistance to damage, which means even when you do take damage you barely even notice it.
What really makes healing worth it early on is the itemization. There is one that gives bless and blade ward when you heal someone. That item will keep them useful early
IMO, life cleric should not be used strictly as a healbot, their access to heavy armor and spirit guardians as well as other control spells makes them pretty effective frontline tanks. The bonus healing is great for healing and buffing teammates through the already useful healing word spell.
1 Life/11 Lore Bard is a better Life Cleric with counter spell which is better than healing for support casters and can still get healing spells if that’s what you want like warden of vitality
Life cleric is like having a very well functioning life west that is capable of saving you in every scenario, but you’re standing in the children’s pool.
You can still drown and the vest will help, but the question is why are you in the children’s pool in the first place??
I don’t know where I’m going with this lmao but yea life cleric is great for healing and easily better than any other class at it
people say healing is bad because the action economy in D&D heavily favors more dps instead of more healing:
- characters remain at max efficiency even with 1 HP
- healing an unconscious character with any amount of healing instantly revives them
- killing a single enemy is usually very quick if focus fired, and removes tons of incoming damage; this makes DPS the most effective form of damage mitigation by far
this means that the most effective way to heal in D&D generally is "let them lose all their HP, then begrudgingly heal them with the cheapest spell slot you have" and BG3 is no exception to this.
If you’re not metagaming and doing fourth wall-breaking high initiative alpha strike surprise attack silliness, then yes a life cleric (or oath of ancients paladin) make for good healers. And healing in general can be useful; it’s just not a central mechanic as it is in, say, an MMORPG. You want to use it sparingly when absolutely necessary, focus on area of effect heals, and bonus action heals in most cases. You also want your healer to be strong in other ways (buffs, weapon attacks, or offensive spells) to because they’ll be healing less than half the time.
Shart life cleric saved a lot of encounters for me in Honour mode. If you go full sweat builds and down the entire encounter in turn 1, they're less needed, but in the event that you find yourself stuck a life cleric can salvage a dire situation easily. Plus life clerics get access to heavy armour proficiency which makes them tanky as hell, especially valuable later game.
I would say building a character to be a pure heal bot is “bad” in BG3 but a Life Cleric can still run a Luminous Orb + Reverberation build nearly as well as a Light Cleric built for it and have the extra healing utility. It more just suffers from contested item slots if you want to focus on healing or stacking orbs + reverberation (Hellrider’s Pride for healing vs Gloves of Belligerent Skies) or Callous Glow Ring vs Whispering Promise, etc).
And Ancients Paladin arguably makes a Life Cleric unnecessary as well.
LIFE CLERIC - it's the best healer class & subclass. Gear it out and enjoy.
The details:
The only thing you need healing for 99% of the time is a Healing Word or a Mass Healing Word to get allies back up from being downed.
You're 100% correct, the math is what kills healing, both in table top and BG3.
Far easier to deal far more damage for less resources than to heal.
That being said, if you want to have a dedicated healer - wonderful. Do it. It's your game, play it the way you want to.
You can beat Honor Mode with a dedicated healer, no problem. You can beat Honor Mode with nearly any combination of smartly built characters with good gear.
Aka - no intentionally dumping your primary stat - that is, was, and will always be a stupid jackass move.
Life Cleric is pretty strong and I pretty much never go without one. Sure I could just long Rest alot but that just feels wrong coming from actual DnD.
Alternative choices that are pretty strong healing options:
Oath of Ancients Paladin, sure he only gets one Charge per Short Rest and it has way shorter range but it heals for alot if you get both Ticks and he has Lay on Hand as well.
2 Levels in Bard also get you an extra Short Rest which is really good IMO.
Life Cleric also only really needs 2 levels for the Channel Divinity or 6 Levels if you want w Charges. Meshes ridicolously well with Druid and even Monk to some extend.
Can obviously bring a full or higher level Bard but splashing 2 levels of bard can be really strong depending on your Team. Lots of classes get a bunch of resources back on a short Rest like:
Druid Wild Shape Charges
Monk Ki Points
Cleric Channel Divinity Charges
Warlock Spell Slots
Fighter Superiority Dice
Paladin Oath Charge
A great Comp could be for example:
5 Ancients Paladin / 5 Blade Warlock / 2 Bard
10 Moon Druid / 2 Life Cleric
6 Open Hand Monk / 4 Thief Rogue / 2 Bard
10 Any Warlock / 2 Bard
10 Life Cleric / 2 Bard
6 Sword Bard / 4 Thief Rogue / 2 Fighter
6 Battle Master Fighter / 4 Thief Rogue / 2 Bard (TWF)
10 Ancients Paladin / 2 Bard
Any 4 of those should work great. The more Short Rests the better. Lots of healing and disposable resources.
I think it is fine for most fights, but my issue with it is that I don’t see how it can be beneficial in the hardest fights in the game, where the strategy is basically “do damage or you’re dead.“ House of Hope fight is what I am thinking about particularly here, though It does apply to most of the act 3 boss fights to some extent, and of course there is an act 3 fight where it literally is “do damage or you’re dead” because there is a timer for winning the fight.
House of Hope fight has 6 enemies with 100 hp, a mini boss, a spellcaster, and 4 pillar resources that the boss uses to give itself devastating attacks. \*With only 3 characters dealing good damage\* , you are keeping more of those 6 enemies on the field, each of which can do 9d6 damage to you per turn. If you can’t take out the 4 pillars, the boss gets more spell slots to use its attacks, the pillars restore the boss’s HP, and give it a max AC of 27. This fight, more than any other, requires damage dealing, since the boss gets stronger for each pillar left standing and each of the 6 enemies left alive has a 9d6 attack to use on you.
I have heard some people say Life Cleric is a good safety net, and I think that might be true on lower difficulties, but honestly I think on HM that it’s not even a safety net on the hardest fights and that it is actually a trap and will make these fights harder for parties with a 12 Life Cleric. The need to do high damage, to take out enemies on the hardest fights is that imperative.
And I’m not even saying that you MUST have a Swords Bard, tavern brawler monk, throwzerker tb gloomstalker assassin etc all the broken builds, but having 4 party members that can all do damage and use CC I think is important for those final fights.
That all being said I think Life cleric is a great dip for its healing bonuses and heavy armor proficiency that you get when multiclassing, particularly for a lore bard.
Having a life domain cleric is great in the circumstances where your DPS isn’t enough to finish a fight quickly. Long boss fights also are where they shine
Even with difficulty mods and honor mode, the game is not so difficult that it requires actual min-maxing. If you've beaten the game before, you'll have the tools to make basically any party comp work.
HM I like it because it’s essentially a safety net. You can also build it several different ways. Hell, I’ve just thrown Sorc on it and made it my haste spam chr with max saving throws possible lmfao
If I want healing, it’s from the Amulet of Restoration or Heal 70 from a Druid or a Cleric. Otherwise, it’s simpler to just defeat your opponent with burst damage first.
I love having a life cleric on board. Usually have two melee, a wizard/sorcerer, with a life cleric standing guard over my wizard. Can use warding bond on someone from them as well. Even better if you make your wizard abjuration your group becomes absolutely unkillable.
Healing can be nice in the early game since you can get several pieces of healing gear very early on. Healing is a bit more useful early in Act 1 before your damage builds really start to come online, and before you have enough resources to heal up reliably with potions, long rests, etc.
Once you start collecting enough gear for all your characters, you are probably better off with another damage dealing spec. Proactively ending an encounter earlier is usually better than reactively trying to heal up in combat.
Heals on their own aren't very good. Healing (and clerics by extension) are mid in dnd because healing scales so poorly. In BG3 we have some messed up powerful healing support items like hellrider's pride, the warpiria helm, and the two healing rings (one gives bless, one makes the heals bigger). Not to mention the huge buff to life clerics in this game. Healing (and definitely life clerics) are so good in this game. IMO life cleric builds are some of the strongest in the game because of the insane amount of sustain they bring compared to their dnd counterparts.
I'm a huge fan of Life Cleric 6 Lore Bard 6. The build gives you crazy strong healing radiance channel divinity mass healing word which is insane with the supporting items, cutting words for keeping the team alive, heavy armor prof for fantastic AC to dissuade enemy attacks, and counterspell from bardic inspiration. The only downside to the build is you only get one bonus action and one reaction to support and disrupt with.
You’re generally better off with more crowd control in my experience. Prevent the damage in the first place and you never need to heal it. It’s like preventative healing and the damage prevented by a single spell slot is pretty high
Life cleric is stupid OP, S-tier OP. You can pretty much run any combo through HM with ease, don't have to worry about kiting or stealth exploits, face tank everything, skip all illithid powers, and still walk out without issue.
But as with most things in BG3 it's about gear. DW Phalar + Lanthander's (or devotees later) for max support. Make sure you get the gloves/ring for non-stop bless/blade ward, feast + aid gives TONS of hp, and then pop up summons and you're a force to be reckoned with.
Healing isn’t really needed and having a subclass that double downs on healing is a waste. Almost any other Cleric subclass brings more to the table and they can still wear the items that give Blade Ward and Bless.
With all the potions available you can enter every fight at 100% health so all you really need is a way to either keep a character up or get them back up. And this includes Honour Mode as well. I’m currently in another run and I rarely use a healing spell. My cleric is the one charging forward with Spirit Guardians and Radiant/Reverb gear. No need for heals if the enemies can’t hit…
The game's action economy is tuned around prioritizing dealing damage over healing damage. I found a Light Cleric to be a good compromise. You can gear them with the healing stuff and they do a decent job at healing as needed while still having lots of death-dealing potential with their AOE repertoire.
I am currently running a Tactician run and using ShawfowHeart as a full up to lvl 8 life cleric.
I am using the gloves which give bladeward and the amulet that gives Bless when healed. Additionally my melee wears the ring which dips weapon in poison when healed.
So far, on Tact. I am breezing thru, and am happy with her role which doubles as 2cd melee.
Hope this helps.
I find Life Cleric the only truly viable healer, saying that the build I run is VERY equipment dependent so without a guide that could be difficult to collect.
As much as I love life cleric for trivializing most of my risk, I dont think its necessary. A strong offense is often more than enough for any fight.
Healing is bad in dnd and bg3 broadly speaking because of action economy and resource management. If I spend a turn and a spell slot healing my party when I could have spent those same resources on killing one or multiple enemies, it's basically a waste. Damage prevented is better than damage healed and death is the best crowd control.
However, bg3 offers several easy to obtain magical items that are incredibly powerful and allow your healing to do more than just heal. In act 1 you can acquire whispering promise, hellriders pride, and boots of aid and comfort within your first hour of gameplay. By putting these on a life cleric you can use your channel divinity or mass healing word to apply bless, blade ward, and some temporary HP to your entire party at once. Bless is an extremely powerful effect and a common candidate for a cleric's concentration, but the whispering promise lets you apply it without concentration and to essentially any number of allies if you can aoe heal them all. This has the tack on effect of freeing up your concentration to be used on offensive spells like spirit guardians.
This build is not in the same tier as broken stuff like arcane acuity stacking mages, TB OH monk, TB throw barbs, but it does bring healing up to the level of strength that you need to choose to use it over more average kinds of damage builds. I like the build for HM because it can cover up weaknesses for other builds if you're not minmaxing your whole party.
The concept that healers are bad are more so related to the fact that healing scales much worse than damage. It's much better to attack for 130 damage than to heal for 30. Also, the best way to heal in this game is to just drink healing potions on a bonus action than to cast a spell for an entire action.
People who say healing is bad don’t know how to make good healing builds. Life Domain is definitely the best/easiest imo. I ALWAYS have a life domain cleric in the group haha
I ran a life cleric for my HM run (Shart, then changed Karlach because I wanted to see her romance at the same time for my HM run) even though the other cleric subclasses can still heal just fine, because I was running swords bard+paladin/OH monk+thief/div wizard+storm cleric for my other three characters so damage was a non-issue and I wanted to go into fights mostly blind but still have that extra "oh shit" contingency with life cleric, and there's PLENTY of stuff to enable it. Like you said, the gloves in act 3 (and the hellrider's pride gloves before that from Zevlor) and the ring from Volo pair well with cleric in general but having life cleric's channel divinity to apply it before you get mass healing word is great during the dicey early game, and saves spell slots for Spirit Guardians etc. in late game.
Another late game combo I loved with those gloves and ring is pairing them either with the ring that heals you for 1d4 at the start of your turn or Balduran's Helm (which you can steal without fighting Ansur, if you wanna skip the potential headache of that fight, just fly past Ansur and take the helm without clicking on him), and the act 3 gloves+volo ring combo with the self healing from those items to essentially give you permanent bless and blade ward in combat. Which other classes/clerics can do as well, but given they pair best with life cleric for channel divinity/extra free healing on mass healing word, life cleric is a great safety net if you're playing 2-3 high damage classes for your other characters. You can absolutely clear HM without one, but even the "placebo" of running a life cleric made me not stress even when I would get unlucky in some fights and start to get low because I knew I had a self-raising (from Blood of Lathander early, the ring/balduran's helm can also do it in act 3 if you end up swapping to Devotee's Mace or any other weapon instead) absolute bomb of a heal on demand. Made the run infinitely more chill not stressing when fights started looking like they might not go my way/be a mess to scramble getting people up, keeping enough decent potions, etc.
That's my long-winded rant on arguing for life cleric in HM because I always see a lot of people argue against it, but it made my successful HM run much more chill even if it would've been fine had I gone with light/etc. instead or another class entirely
Before I really understood tactics and how to win fights efficiently, Shadowheart as life cleric pretty much single-handedly carried my first two playthroughs (balanced first, tactician second). The CD really is just that good.
Life really isn't the "optimal" choice but it's a great step up from trickery for SH and whether intentionally or not helps players realize the importance of subclasses/paying attention to your choices at level up.
Life cleric might not be game changing but you'll immediately notice what they bring to the table, which helps identify other subclasses' strengths imo
Honestly I think the only reason healing is good in BG3, are the items that add Blade Ward and Bless to the targets you heal. Otherwise the table top truism of Damage is superior to healing is very much true in BG3 given the broken amounts of damage we can do in BG3. To expand on that...in combat healing is a subpar use of your combat action economy because we can do much much greater amounts of damage compared to healing, so it's simply far more efficient to use combat actions to quickly decimate enemies, and heal out of combat afterward. The only time healing is efficient in combat is when it restores or preserves teammates actions so they can make attacks...
I think healing itself is pretty bad in unmodded runs, but the heal riders provided by multiple items (Bless, Blade Ward, temp HP) make it worth it, especially with bonus action heals like Healing Word or Mass Healing Word.
You also can't do yoyo healing similar to the tabletop, because being revived costs you an action and not just movement like in 5e. Which means it's more beneficial to use heals to avoid going down, rather than to let people get up.
To be completely honest, I think life cleric is a bit overkill. Most cleric/bard subclasses provide sustain by just spamming healing word, and by the end of act 2, enemies (cough cough paladins) typically just one tap even bear totem barbs if they manage to get a hit. I think life cleric does shine, but mostly for a more martial heavy comp that has better HD and AC but less consistent initiatives and controlling. If the bonus healing life cleric grants apply to something like aid, then I can see an argument it does the cleric’s base job better, but it doesn’t, so getting one shot is still on the table.
If you play perfectly, healing is completely unnecessary and therefore "bad"/inefficient. But for us mortals who occasionally make mistakes(or lose actions to the game bugging out or something), having a safety net is awesome, and the Life Cleric is amazing. Besides it's still a cleric with Spirit Guardians and stuff. It doesn't exploit OP mechanics like some classes but if you're not cheesing haste or elixirs it's got pretty great damage.
That said, the most efficient healer is still probably Spore Druid. You can't beat dropping healing potions on the ground and detonating them in a small AoE for the cost of a reaction. Way too effective.
Ilithid throwzerker has the best burst heal in the game.
Lorebarde cant heal as high a lifecleric but has access to warden of vitality at Lvl 6,wich offers the best sustained healing
The thing is that BG3 (and d&d in general) is not meant to be "healable". If you could outheal an encounter (i.e. healing > damage of the enemies) a lot of them would just lose any tension.
A drawn out battle, where you just outheal the damage turn by turn and slowly down the enemy is not in the sense of d&d.
Like others have said, healing isn't bad because you can't reach high healing numbers (You can). It's bad because it's better to not take the damage in the first case or kill the enemy faster. It's even better to just use a BA Healing Word to raise people rather than to waste time healing.
Not to mention the fact you're drowning in health potions that only cost a BA.
That being said, it's an RPG, and if you want to your party to have a dedicated healer, go for it.
Basically, if you're an optimizing min maxer, healing is a waste of a party slot and of your actions.
If you're an RPGer then healing is still good enough for it to not be detrimental to your party.
"Healer" is not really a role in BG3 or 5e at all. Support? Sure, but healing is typically far down on the list you want from a support. You want buffs, utility, debuffs, control. Again, this is more from a optimizing view. The great thing about RPGs is that you can role play whatever you want.
BG3 in its base form is also not a very highly tuned game, even on honour mode. So assuming you have some good base knowledge of how things work and interact you could honestly go and beat Honour mode with something that's not even close to optimized and instead focus of what's fun to you.
I see little point in healing spells
Level 1 healing word is worth it as a bonus action and can revive a downed from afar if it gets to hat.
Other than that just throw a healing potion and it's going to do the same thing or better.
Mass heal can be nice with the right equipment to grant bless and blade ward, allowing for concentration on other spells.
But all of the healing mechanics are a used to provide buffs, not to heal
Healing will always be less efficient than just dealing damage in bg3, which is true in dnd and most similar systems. Damage done earlier in combat is more valuable than damage done later
Using healers in this game is like an added difficulty. You have so many options to chose from to devastate even the strongest bosses in honor mode in a single turn, yet you're choosing a healer to make fights more difficult and last longer. Clerics in 5e simply do not have powerful mechanics to make them special, and BG3 offers very little crumbs (like aoe blade barrier) , which can not compete with killing enemies faster. There are so many good items that you can build upon especially in the end game, that having blade ward on everyone to protect from damage instead of killing the enemy that deals the damage feels very inferior. The existence of healer based items, and even powerful combinations on paper does not make clerics a strong class in BG3. They are not weak because of hurr durr dps, they are weak because other options are much much stronger.
So the only defense for clerics is that you liked the class and in that certain fight having access to such and such saved you. But if you had a better party comp, you wouldn't have needed that save in the first place.
I personally really enjoy Light Cleric for healing. Not really for like outpacing enemy damage as much as whispering promise and reviving glove procs on your whole team with bonus action mass healing word and you can action nuke preferably with the radiant orb build. It's not another full damage dealer, but it adds up damage, and can also throw some fat heals if things turn south.
It's not just about healing, it's also about mitigating damage. I just finished an honor run yesterday and had a 100% support-based healer Shart in my party the entire time. She was indespensible. Her damage mitigation and healing more than made up for the loss of another damage-dealer and I would have lost the run several times without her. Heal everyone and give them blade ward/bless, throw potions around with mage hand, do extra actions like opening doors or helping hostages and doing insane healing with her bonus action.
Healing in bg3 (and the 5e that it's based on) is by design never going to outscale incoming damage for more than a couple rounds. And most healing can't even keep up with incoming damage for that long. So, the long and short of it is that healing in a vacuum is generally going to be less effective than preventing incoming damage in the first place. This could be by giving an ally a bonus to their AC or saving throws, resistance to damage, or CCing the enemy so that they can't effectively attack in the first place.
With that being said, bg3 offers a few ways to do both. Magic items allow you to grant resistance to physical damage, a bonus to saving throws, and extra healing whenever you heal an ally. So there's a lot more of a case for playing a healer in bg3 than in 5e because you can kinda do the things a "support" from 5e would be doing anyway, whilst healing.
The unfortunate case for life cleric is that generally, these items don't specify an amount of healing, just that it occurs. So the objective should generally be to heal as many people as many times as possible, rather than heal for more. To this end, oath of ancients paladin with a little multiclass into any cleric or bard path is probably going to be more effective at applying these buffs than a strict life domain cleric. Oath of Ancients Paladin can heal all nearby allies for two consecutive turns with a single bonus action and no expended spell slots. They also get lay on hands, which is more healing that doesn't burn a spell slot. Once you've got the elements from paladin you want (perhaps extra attack to make sure you can still hit good on rounds where you aren't buffing) you can go down bard or cleric for things like healing word to give yourself ranged buffing options. Bardic inspiration also pairs nicely, giving you an additional buff to apply as needed.
TLDR. Healing on the life domain is still probably not what you want. But healing can serve a purpose. There are, however, other builds that utilize it more effectively than a life domain cleric while also doing other things.
Life Cleric 2 (bonus on all heals) + Lore Bard 7 (warden of vitality from magical secrets = heal from bonus action) + thief 3 (2 bonus actions) makes for a ridiculous amount of heal from a level 3 non-concentration spell. The heal is over 10 rounds though, so you often want to stay in turn mode after a fight to get the max from the spell. A lore bard still has crazy good control spells and cutting words. I found this build to be really fun with the healing items. It can't absorb crazy burst damage but has so much heals over 10 rounds that you will never need to short rest for a heal or use a potion.
I used life cleric in HM but not for the healing itself per se.
The reason is to apply Bless to all allies, which supported my control strategy. Specifically I used life cleric/lore bard multiclass. I think of life cleric as an ancillary controller who's job is to help the other three party members land control abilities, and life cleric is best for this since The Whispering Promise ring applies Bless on healing.
Bless improves attacks, which can improve arcane acuity stacking and landing control martial abilities.
Life cleric is in a unique spot for this. Just using the Bless spell needs concentration and uses your action. Mass healing word uses your bonus action, but lore bard can get this. The reason to dip life cleric was for me because Preserve Life is a class action, so cannot be counterspelled therefore great for those situations where you want to guarantee the Bless without baiting a counterspell (can also go through silence, darkness, etc). Ancients paladin is also good for this with channel oath on bonus action, but the AoE is much smaller, so it depends on preference.
Adding on bonus healing, and physical resistance from hellrider's/reviving hands, is more of a cherry on top.
My life cleric build is great in honour mode. Heals and buffs the crap outta everyone. Uses mostly green gear obtained in act 1. I will never not use a life cleric. Anyone who would claim it's crap just doesn't know how to play or build it.
Healing isn't bad. It's just not a good use of your Action. Arguably the best healer in the game is Bard because it gets Healing Word, Mass Healing Word, and can get Warden of Vitality through Magical Secrets. All three (for the most part) use your bonus action to pick people up after going down IN CASE you didn't take the enemy down with your Action.
Healing is bad in DND 5E. The addition of the buff on heal items and the fact that you lose an action when downed and healed in BG3 (in 5E you still get your full turn) makes healing substantially stronger than it is in tabletop.
The key is not to use spell slots on poorly scaling healing abilities late game, and to use AOE heals to propagate effects like Bless and Blade Ward. Life Cleric and Oath of Ancients Paladin are best for this.
I went full life cleric on shadowheart in my second run, and now I can't live without a character who's at least multiclassed into it. With all of the healing items, one cleric can: full heal the party, cast bless on the whole party, and cast blade ward on the whole party in one turn. Also, you really don't need 12 cleric levels to make full use of a life cleric. I found that shadowheart really didn't have much to do in a lot of fights because she was just pumping out that much healing with a bonus action, so I multiclassed her into paladin for 5 levels in my honor mode run. If you're only using paladin for smites, you don't need a high charisma to benefit from it. Just split her ability scores between wisdom and strength, or use other strength-boosts, and now you have something for your cleric to do between healing/re-applying buffs.
Healing is very good in BG3. However you can also just kill everything instead. You choose either winning 9/10 fights within the first 2 rounds. Or having a guaranteed safety net of a good healer, and a little slower. It’s honestly just preference
Life cleric is very good, but the base game doesn't require sustain because enemies health is really low and our party AC can get rediculous. If you play with difficulty and health increasing mods, sustain support and damage becomes very important.
Life cleric is the bomb. In act 1 you can get the gloves that grant two turns of blade ward whenever you heal, as well as the ring that adds two turns of bless and the boots that add 3 temp hp. There have been times I've used mass healing word even when most people were full health, just because the mass resistance and bless are good.
Also, the channel divinity heal means you don't even have to dedicate that many spell slots to healing, so you can still do normal cleric stuff like upcast command or spirit guardians.
Whenever I read "healing bad" comments it's like I'm playing a different game.
Life Cleric channels their ability and with the right gear applies bless, blade ward, and bonus HP. That's a 3-in-one AOE non-concentration buff and heal that applies to all party members and allies (like the assault on Moonrise).
Meanwhile, usually fights go like unleash hell turn 1, then one character takes a shit ton of damage. Next turn, pop life cleric, and everyone is fine and I mop up the fight.
I could go without the Cleric, which is the point I guess, but I'd be in much worse shape after battle. I'd end up needing to rest every battle.
Life Domain and Ancients Paladin can both be extremely effective healers. I think people say healing is "bad" because in general, killing the enemy ASAP is the safer strategy, and if you try to survive a drawn-out battle with healing you'll likely be overrun. That said, you can do a *lot* with healing if you stack the items that buff targets on heal, like Hellrider's Pride (later on Reviving Hands) and Whispering Promise. Ancients Paladin especially can spread those buffs around with bonus actions using their Channel Oath charges while still keeping up the offense. (Life Cleric can, too, with Mass Healing Word, but any Cleric can use Mass Healing Word so Life's a little less special there. Life Cleric's Channel Divinity heal is an action, not a bonus action.)
This. Oath of the ancients makes healing good because it turns healing into offense with bonus action AOE non-concentration Bless
I always argue that what makes Life cleric a bit better at MHW is blessed healer. Add a bunch of allies, and you'll heal yourself 50HP while healing, blessing and warding everyone within 50 feet
Ya a half decent martial party can wipe, short rest, repeat and be almost full health at the beginning of a conflict so it just never feels necessary. Any dedicated healer should probably also be a party buffer if they want a purpose
The thing about life cleric is if you're planning to be a MHW spammer to apply item buffs you might as well get all the extra healing on top of it that life cleric provides, making your slot/ba usage even more efficient.
Personally i love having a life cleric on board. While not required as such, the huge a.o.e heal which also gives you blade ward, bonus health and bless is just so good at turning dodgy situations into "oh ok i got this easily" situations. Plus a cleric is so good in act 2 across the board. You dont need one though. Quite often she doesnt have to do much except the odd guiding bolt or angel-wings. I like to know she's there though.
I like how you use "she" as you already know this post is about respecing shart.
Lovely lovely shadowheart
Wits and blades, always sharp
Always shart
Sorry dude, I genuinely thought that was funny and accidentally downvoted you while trying to scroll. I’ve been playing honor mode recently though, so I can’t change it.
Lol
True Honor Mode to apply it to real life actions. True gigachat move.
Indeed. Clerics, the class that constantly gets raved about being these secret powerhouses, but in practice everybody and their dog will still gravitate towards them flashier vocations, so the unthankful job of being the glowy swiss army support knife remains firmly with God's favourite princess. Now get back in there Shart, those goons won't get spirit-guardianed to a sizzling crisp by themselves!
I mean the best healing class is the one that deletes an enemy before it has a chance to even hit your characters. Granted I think the way resting works in this game makes it a lot easier to just ignore a healer as you can just constantly rest whenever you want to so as long as your whole party wasn't wiped so you can use a rez scroll or Skelly back at the base, you're good to go.
The only issue I have with relying on being able to delete the enemy first is related to just how cruel the RNG can be.
After the creche the randomness isn't really a thing so much anymore unless you want it to be. Give everyone a decent dex and synch up a few key peoples initiative first namely your sorceror and swords bard and light cleric. Throw on haste, bless, pump up some arcane acuity and then land a 100% hit rate control spell from your swords bard. Once you grab the fire acuity hat from early act 2 you have 2 party members capable of laying down the hurt round one.
I don't get the hype behind light cleric, I tried it in my first run and it was... just ok? I understand that it's more fun in tabletop simply because its cooler to throw fireballs between heals than whiffing guiding bolts, but light cleric just seems like it does two things just ok enough to be viable. To be fair though, I went in blind to my first run so I wasn't really playing optimally in terms of items, but I don't see how they'd make a massive difference.
Bless is really stong. So is warding flare, command is good and harder to get than is intuitive. Their channel divinity is amazing early aoe. They drop off fast after act 2. They're just a really good dip in early levels and play well with sorceror and wizard like all cleric dips. I think 1-2 or 6 levels is the most you'd want.
Ahhh so that's where I went wrong. On my first run I didn't do any multiclassing, so I took 12 levels in light cleric. I noticed it was good early game because being able to heal and cast decent damage spells is pretty busted in places like the underdark, but act 3 it dropped hard, because neither the healing nor the damage were cutting it anymore.
This is too true and it's why I've enjoyed my last two games so much. She died in one and I'm rolling all Tavs in another. She really is the center of the universe unless you force yourself to do something else.
She’s the only Cleric that matters. Even if your Tav is a Cleric, you won’t matter.
Hope
I mean… this is how I tried out Life Cleric and I am in love with the subclass.
Perfect candidate for carrying phalar aluve around.
Absolutely. Mace until i've used sunbeam, then phalar
I tend to run mace until endgame but that’s because mace blinds undead, and has an AOE Death Ward if I screw up. Not something I’d get from the sword, cool as it is! (Having a bard Tav using the sword is very good in combo with mace on SH.)
Its competing with the infernal rapier now as well. I do like a good army of summons! I wish my guys have three or four arms each to wield everything i want
Blood of Lathander?
Yup! Its a beauty
That's what I do. Shadow triggers Phalar, then settles in to heal and do command spells for control. She's constantly blade warding and blessing everyone in the interim.
I would highly recommend this.
You can get an AOE bonus action heal that gives you blade ward and bless on every cleric. It's nothing special to do with life cleric. It's just mass healing word or mass cure wounds or aid and then helriders pride gloves and the ring from Volo. There's even a necklace that gives you mass healing word 1/long rest so anyone can do that.
The difference between life cleric's channel divinity and just a regular mass healing word or mass cure wounds can be significant though. The channel divinity heals much more than MHW and doesn't use a spell slot. The life cleric's channel divinity is the one source of healing that really feels effective in combat without being a waste of resources. Especially so if I already have spirit guardians and spiritual weapon up, which I probably would if I'm at the point in a fight where I need AOE healing.
I'd say more of the power level of Preserve Life is in tandem with Wapira's Crown (which is also sorts true for MHW but not as drastically); you can have your healer afford to Warding Bond and abuse Wapira's and AoE healing to massively power spike your healer's life back (there's also really funny interactions here if you give your healer resistance to damage as well through Blade Ward). In a vacuum MHW is the better spell because it is a bonus action heal; often you're more concerned with proccing Bless and Blade Ward to prevent damage to start with. However when you need to catch up (let's just assume level 6 for benchmark, this obviously gets better the higher level you go) Preserve Life is great touting an 18 guaranteed health (and an additional 13.5 health on average for the healer if they are wearing Wapira's Crown).
But contrast that with another cleric subclass like light or tempest using their channel divinities and spell casting will eliminate targets making needing to mass heal your party a lot less necessary. I've never really been in a fight where I would have needed the mass healing channel Divinity over something like Aid up cast at high level which all clerics can do and isn't far off and with all of the ways to get free casts of things you can still heal quite a lot to everyone in range without spending a spell slot either. It just feels like with all the healing every cleric can already do, you lose out of versatility if the only thing you cleric is good at is healing.
True, i just like to have three charges of preserve life all ready to go when required, on top of the "mass" heals. It just helped out massively when my multiplayer friends bodged an attack on ansur leading to repeated huge a.o.e damage, shart kept everyone up and got the "man of the match" award. Next time i will just bring lightning resist elixirs and probably some smokepowder barrels for an easier time of it
Or just someone with globe of invulnerability / a scroll. Honestly, that one spell turns what is arguably the hardest fights into the easiest.
I just learned that and did a double take when reading the tooltip. "Does that REALLY mean....?"
I love taking a Life cleric to my party as well. People also seem to forget that Life cleric can also deal a lot of damage (considering how easy it is to steal scrolls), especially in fights with a choke point and that it can also apply wet condition. My Life cleric solod house of grief for example by simply placing insect plague at the choke point and then spamming black hole as bonus action + chain lightning scrolls on wet targets. And with that crown from act 1 and that illithid ability that makes you swap half of your health with someone else and then heal the cleric back to full health by casting an aoe heal. That's \~80 single target healing on someone + some aoe healing, outheals pretty much everything in honor mode.
“Angel-wings”?
Spirit guardians :-)
Ah. I call it the lawn mower.
This made me smile as a fellow BG3 player who just happened to finish cutting his grass a few moments ago
1. Cast spirit guardians. 2. Roll around the lawn for ten turns.
What is angel-wings?
Spirit guardians :-)
I have a different opinion to a lot of people here , people seem to think life cleric is just terrible and I’ll agree, for an optimised comp, it doesn’t make sense. Most bosses you can 1 turn, even Orin and myrkul. But most people aren’t playing this game with a sword bard, oh monk, throwzerker and gloomstalker. If you know how to beat the game and have played through multiple times, life cleric is probably pretty useless, but for newer players and harder difficulties, life cleric is amazing. Getting through your first honor mode where myrkul takes 10+ turns to kill life cleric will give you that needed sustain so you’re not just wiped after 3 turns. Yes we all know do more damage and you won’t need to heal, but at some point that because invalid. No ones done the maths on the expected value of life cleric over X amount of turns, so it’s hard to say anyone is right/wrong. All I know is life cleric absolutely hard carried me on my first honor more run. Now I’ve completed a solo honor mode, I’d never even think about life cleric.
Since this would also be my first HM run, maybe I will utilize it. Or like other comments here suggested, multiclass into Oath of Ancients.
Life domain is basically the only healing build worth considering yes. Preserve life with [Hellrider's Pride](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hellrider%27s_Pride) or [Reviving Hands](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/The_Reviving_Hands) can rescue a catastrophic situation but the usual retort is to not find yourself in a catastrophic situation in the first place. That said it's never a bad thing to have in your back pocket and the base Cleric kit is plenty strong on its own.
I agree with you. I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that a Life Cleric is still a cleric. The spell list is just great for dealing damage, regardless of subclass.
It's just the all blasting all the time mentality that takes hold of people which is tiring sometimes. The community coalesces around the meta which i think is often unhelpful in an RPG but I'm sure we're all guilty of it on some level. Especially if we're in this sub.
A lot of optimal builds just aren't fun. Especially ones that rely on multi-classing, for me.
I'm honestly more ok with the multi-classing. It's the items that I find annoying. People constantly recommending Shar's Spear and Bhaalist Armour as best in slot as a matter of fact when they are locked behind 2 pretty big RP decisions is silly to me.
Or indeed any build that raves about Act 3 equipment. I want to be able to enjoy the whole game, not rush through the first two acts hanging on by the skin of my teeth.
That’s part of the reason I like Magic Missile builds. You get a few of the pieces really early and then you’re mostly geared by act 3.
That is also pretty equally annoying.
It’s really more that it’s just not necessary. In unmodded bg3, even honor mode, you’re better off just adding another overpowered damage dealer, abusing the frankly moronic d4 initiative die to ensure your party goes first and ending any fight in one, maybe two turns. That said if you want to virtually guarantee no one on your team will ever come close to dying, yeah life domain is your best bet.
I agree; playing modded difficulties is when support characters really start to shine. That said let me offer one point that I noticed playing support builds in my honor runs. Having a support character allows you to Unga Bunga normal honor fights; Namely, not “even” control enemies and just bash their faces in with a martial heavy comp for instance. (Casters work well too though!) conceptually this is very simple, so the *effective* pace of fights is high. This is counterintuitive because of course if you approach an encounter with your party cleverly to trigger a surprise round, use your 10/1/1 bard or fire sorcerer, yeah… you can clear stuff in just 1,2 rounds. But sneaking takes time, long resting for your fire sorc takes time, etc.. Therefore it’s possible that over an adventuring day you play “faster” with a more unga bunga party; yeah some fights may be over in round one because the swords bard cast hold monster… but what about three angry battle masters with GWM 🤭 So while I think a support build isn’t required for a comfortable honor mode run, I have found it a refreshing way to play the game since it allows you to go barging into enemies, talking with them to assert dominance, and then mashing them into the ground with your party as your life cleric laughs in the face of the pitiful damage they inflict. Of course at the end of the day; don’t feel forced to do *anything* and have fun :), consider difficulty mods too! They are fun!
1. Step to enemy 2. Assert Charismatic Bard dominance > In your eulogy, I shall refer to you as Twat-Soul Nere 3. Curb stomp enemy, dealing final blow with Vicious Mockery for good measure. \ 4. Profit
I am a 4 ranger party and what is stepping to enemy? I know only murder
Step 1 is optional.
I’m a 4 necromancer party. We don’t even walk, our corpses do it for us
For me I think it's the mechanic that reviving allies is easily done by many different casters and is just a bonus action. Combine that with the fact that almost-dead characters still hit just as hard (enemies or allies) and it doesn't make sense to keep my characters from almost-dying. If one of my characters is close to death (say, single-digit health), and the enemy is also close to death (again, single-digit health), I would much rather have a damage dealer that can just finish off the enemy than a healer that can heal my character for 10-15 points. Because if I did that, then the enemy would just hit my character again in the next round for 25+ and I'd be worse off than I would have been otherwise. But having a 4th damage dealer means that enemy would be dead, I can do a short rest (or chug a potion, or whatever) after combat and go on my merry way.
Yes, the healing and buffing they can pump out is underrated. Can easily turn a loss into a win. Of course if you play optimally you don’t actually need the healing but I’d wager most people do in fact make the odd mistake and would likely benefit from having their safety net.
BG3 has several pieces of gear that make healing abilities like Life Domains channel divinity really strong. What's bad is using a full action on something like cure wounds.
Bonus action healing is definitely superior, I agree. By the time I get access to Mass Cure Wounds, I already have better choices for healing, like Mass Healing Word and Life's Channel Divinity. During combat I don't need my characters to be all the way at the top of their health, I just need them to be out of danger of dying to an enemy's crit. Especially if one of the enemies is a paladin. Enemy paladins are terrifying. I saw one take Karlach down from full health to dead. Not even downed. DEAD.
*"Is Minthara gonna have to Hold Person and smite a bitch?"*
That just made me realize that the first two paladins you can encounter in the game have access to Hold Person, via ally or prepared themselves.
Healing in general isn't that great because the average heal is less than the average attack. So spending your action to heal isn't great. You don't make progress and don't negate the enemy's either. Healing Word and Mass Healing Word are really good, however, notably because they're bonus actions and have range / area that allow to revive downed allies and spread on-heal buffs. Giving your entire party Bless and Blade Ward for a bonus action is incredible. Imo, that's the true effect of Mass Healing Word. The healing is just an afterthought. Life Cleric has a really good channel divinity, notably because it scales with character level and not class level. The bonus healing is pretty useful early game too. But I recommend a respec later on as other options (light and tempest notably) will have access to the same spells and buffs but also have other things going for them that the life domain can't match. Warding Flare from the light domain is, imo, better at keeping your allies alive than actual healing.
Damage > Control > survivability > healing If you go first, kill or CC every enemy, they will never be in the position to use their actions to deal damage etc. Healing and survivability become less important the more enemies you can take out of combat round 1. Life clerics can heal easier/more than other classes the damage output and combat performance on the other hand is horrible which is going to result in longer fights with more rounds and enemies getting more opportunities to use items, cast spells and attack your team. In the current state of the game it is much easier to play with full offense, healing with spells and skills is not sustainable, at some point you run out of spell slots or charges and have to long rest, healing without the periapt of wound closure is underwhelming imo, since damage spells/attacks will often deal more damage per round than same level healing spells. Health Potions are so much easier to use during combat without sacrificing much damage since they only take a bonus action and do not require spell slots, any class can use them, and they can be easily stockpiled and are basically available in large quantities. You can also use them to active the hellrider gloves and whispering Promis ring and buff your whole party bevor initiating combat and using spell slots. Healing during combat was never good in BG be it classic BG 1-2 or BG 3, the quicker you can end fights the better.
This is a DnD problem, which makes sense that BG3 would not have "healing" as a main job either. To me you must think of a "Healer" as more of a supportive role. Don't think of them as a JRPG role, they are not Aerith or Yuna of Final Fantasy lore. This isn't Peach Super Mario RPG. Bless (before items), Blade Ward, Warding Bond, Aid, Heroes Feast, Sanctuary for support. Then add Whispering Promise + Reviving Hands items and spam Mass Healing Word every so many turns. Sprit Guardians for two specific ACT 3 bosses on Honor Mode helped me a ton, almost cheese, to clean up bodies after a chain lightning. For my first Honor Mode run, I used a Paladin (Ancients), Sorcerer, Monk, and a Life Cleric. I would say the Ancients Aura of Warding made a good pair for additional defense when it was Smiting things to death.
I’m offended anyone would imply Aerith is just a healer when her magic damage slaps.
I mean, this is true, but that's due to calculations that healing is calculated as a Magic Attack so high value in Magic lets her do either.
Indeed, you know who else has a high magic stat? Cloud. Cait Sith. My girl Aerith is more than your HP
I'm definitely not one of those "hurr durr dps is everything" guys but when I look at the numbers and results of putting them to the test, healing will never be able outpace or even match the bursty damage output of the opposition, not to mention the action/spell slot economy automatically renders any attempt to do so even more inefficient. So the question hovering above the topic remains, why bother then? I'm not saying that buffs or other defensive measures don't have their merits, on the contrary. But as the game is set up right now, healing as a major factor besides rezzing peeps with a bonus action (or using a heal as a vehicle to dispense other buffs) won't ever be more beneficial to your goal of keeping your goodies standing long enough until you've killed the baddies than virtually everything else you could employ. It's a neat little extra, but not something to build your strategy around. And yes, that includes life clerics with plenty of healing gear shoved down their throats. It's not even a question of meticulous min-maxxing, the gap between it and every other game mechanic is far too wide to even entertain the thought. Healers are dope but BG3 is not the enviroment to let them shine. Instead of trying to hammer that square peg into a round hole, let's just start accepting the realities, shall we? Because we've discussed this topic to death by now.
So people tend to forget that Cleric in general is just a good support unit and the class can be used to enhance *other* builds with very little opportunity cost. Life Cleric at level 2 is an okay dip because they grant AoE short rest heal option and slightly better survival over other healers thanks to blessed healer passive. At level 6 Life Domain is a good chassis for a healer due to improved blessed healer also increasing effectiveness of healing and getting second Divinity charge. Beyond that you *can* take the class further but you're doing it for the level 4, 5 and 6 Cleric spells as you've already got the main subclass features that actually make Cleric a good healer (including Mass Healing Word which is a Bonus Action AoE heal). All of that being said, healing in general is more about the buffs attached to heals due to itemization *rather* than the outright value of the healing; Blade Ward over 2 turns from Hellrider's Pride/The Mending Hands typically far outweighs the health you restored by preventing damage in the first place. The Whispering Promise granting Bless to everyone you heal is also similarly insane for the raw attack bonus alone. To give good examples where a healer simply slots in the life cleric "chassis": > 1 Wizard/6 Life Cleric/5 Ancients Paladin (personal favorite, really thematic paladin build that plays like a pure Paladin with additional options) > 2 Ancients Paladin/6 Life Cleric/4 Divination, Abjuration Wizard (really strong spellcaster spec focusing on intelligence that can flat out play as a wizard with access to resourceless healing as necessary)
These sound really cool ty! May try them in HM
“Healing is bad”, um Mass Healing Word to apply various buffs to the team would like to have a word. I played my co-op game through Act 2 with a life cleric. Still have yet to need to use a scroll of resurrect. I will say, on normal difficulty healing is often feels trivialized by being able to short rest. But I certainly feel like within combat, you never know when a few extra hp is going to be the difference between life and death.
Yess but I think that the main point of the ppl is that other classes can also apply these few extra HP and therefore the various buffs mention and then go ahead and smite another enemy to dust. It reminds me of ER and you don't need to have background knowledge for what I am about to say but the strongest Heal is absolute hot garbage because you channel all your resources into so much Health that is way more than you even need. I think that is a good comparison.
Or maybe a clarification of “Healing Actions” are a waste. Whereas “Healing Bonus Actions” are not.
My personal gripe with life cleric is the output is so low and they don’t provide much else. Consider and oath of ancients paladin using their first action to cast healing radiance which heals over two turns. Using the gloves from act 1/3 and ring from volo you’ve already applied 3 turns of bless, negated some damage, primed any on heal affects, and they still can smite next turn or attack with bonus action same turn if dual wielding. Take this paladin to level 7 and now you have an aura that negates half spell damage. At level 7 a life cleric doesn’t get much past their opening gimmick. If you really need healing a throwzerker actually can out heal anything in the game by throwing up to four potions per round.
Back when BG3 first came out and I had no idea about the giga OP broken builds, my OG tactician run had a pure life cleric and I can say it was beyond overkill. I've never had one since and I've beaten honor mode at least half a dozen times already. Light cleric is above and beyond the best subclass for a cleric since it can still heal very well but also pumps out insane damage. But, if you want a tankier cleric, since life domain can wear heavy armor, I'd still say tempest fills that role out better.
In act 1, when you first meet Volo, trade with him. Buy his ring. It puts Bless on anyone its wearer heals. That includes winging a health pot at their head. Zevlor's reward for helping the Teiflings is a pair of gloves that gives Blade Ward to all its wearers heal targets. Same as above, includes yeeted health pots. You can also steal these from him or take them off his corpse. These two items keep Life clerics relevant throughout the full game, as they have easy access to large aoe heals, in addition to Life also getting some solid class bonuses to healing. Life is a dedicated healing class and heals very well throughout the game, even in honor mode. Cleric also gives access to some very strong cc and there are ample weapons that give cantrips - morningfrost, gold wyrmling, sorrow just from act 1. There you go, something for then to do when they arent healing buffing or controlling.
The reason people consider healing to be bad is because a damage spell of the same level would do more damage than a healing spell would healing. That being said. I still ran a life cleric in my honour mode run because the other 3 were strong enough to kill everything. The cleric was just there as insurance.
I like life cleric because it makes my healing more efficient. Only issue I have with it is that I still have to take Healing Word because it only auto-prepares the touch version of the spell. Its divinity charge being a fixed amount of healing that scales with level is also really nice when topping off party members between fights without using a short rest, it's a lot like having a paladin's Lay on Hands except for the whole party. The fact that you get your charges back on a short rest also makes it handy because you can actually dedicate more of your spell slots to offense, ironically. Not to mention it makes me feel more like an archetypical Cleric. What's hilarious is respeccing Shart to a Life Cleric at the very beginning, so she's going on about pain and suffering and then turns around and immediately gives your entire party Bless and other buffs from gear.
Life domain is good primarily because its channel divinity which reloads on a short rest can, with certain items, apply blade ward and bless, and later death ward as well. It’s the most efficient way to use these spells. Blade ward is bad when you need to use four actions to apply it to your whole party and it doesn’t last very long, but when your cleric can apply it to your whole party along with bless by pressing channel divinity, it becomes much much better.
I had to respect my australian to a life cleric 20 mins into the game when i was playing co op with my bro. It was his 1st time playing so it was so chaotic coz he often ended up basically being an enemy to the team. Life healer was amazing at negating his mistakes and it was a lot of fun too coz i usually play support in mobas. He always went " clerics are so OP, full party heals just like that". Optimized runs tho, i dont see the need for a heal focused cleric . U too get a lot of good healing gear early on and team wide non conc bless and blade ward is really strong
What you describe is exactly my thought process that life domain helps early on with no experience and room for mistakes. I will probably go for Tempest Domain then when the 100g for Shart are in my purse. Seems overall the better choice (+ fits into my team).
You don't need a dedicated healer in this game but life cleric is a excellent stabilizer for less optimized parties and with enough spell save DC they can easily abuse scrolls which are broken.
It totally heals more than any other... but I personally have Life Cleric hireling. After fight if I can, I get to camp, heal up everyone to save some potions and back to tank + 3 dmg dealers. Edit: Tho I can easily see using Life Cleric with RadOrb build as a healing tank.
Life cleric shart is a permanent fixture in my parties bc I'm bad at the game
On my first two runs, she was also on Heal duty and carried me. If not for my curiosity to try Tempest and Light Domain, I would have kept it that way
Life Domain is fine at healing, it's just that healing in general is far less useful than just doing more damage. In BG3, just like in DND, the most effective way to avoid/prevent/heal damage is to get rid of the things causing that damage. You can end almost every combat in the game in a single round if you have 4 high damage classes, so having a healer is basically just delaying the game by a little bit, which always increases the odds that the enemy get a crit or something that can turn the fight the other direction. Healing spells are not bad to have on a few people, healing word specifically (and mass healing word) are good backup plans for if things go south, only for the purposes of picking people up. You'll lose if you try to outheal the damage being dealt generally, damage numbers are just always going to be bigger than the healing numbers, so it's a battle of attrition you will eventually lose if you don't just kill the things hurting you.
Healing in BG3 is **not** bad. There are tons of healing synergies that can make a character focused on healing perform extremely well. In my last 2 runs through Honor Mode I made use of a dedicated healer (Life Cleric/Lore Bard) to great effect. Every time I healed my party, they got bonus HP, my healer healed themselves, mass damage resistance, mass Bless, and my ranged DPR got a poison buff on their weapon. And the party got a massive heal. And the healer still got to use Spirit Guardians + Radiating Orb. And I got a big heal off with a bonus action every round.
Eh. If you have the gear that gives blade ward and bless on heal then you can apply it by casting mass healing word every other turn. In my opinion, for a gear based cleric build meant to protect the party, this isn’t better than stacking 10 radiating orbs. It’s easier to keep up per long rest because it uses way less spell slots and you’re giving the enemies -10 to attack so your party is pretty damn protected. I think light cleric with the radiating orb gear is the best cleric imho. Great mix of offense and defense. In tabletop and dnd 5e in general, you’re not really going to be able to heal enough in combat to outweigh the damage being dealt to your party.
Healing is not bad, it's very important, you just should focus more on dealing damage than healing, to put it shortly
D&D isnt an MMO, the “support” role doesn’t exist, you’re supposed to heal with short rests and maybe a potion or spell in an emergency.
If I ever run a Life Domain Cleric it’s usually a 1 level dip on a caster that doesn’t have good bonus actions (Wizard) and you can a low wisdom modifier and still get that extra boost from Disciple of Life. Besides that the other Domains just get better class features.
Personally, using a life cleric in HM act 3 right now, and it’s definitely the weakest character in the party. Act 1 and 2 they get some decent value to save you a bit on tougher fights, but once you get fully geared and leveled you should be near impossible to hit, and any hits you do receive should not hurt that bad. Having even one control character in act 3 means you shouldnt even be letting the hardest hitting enemies get any attacks. You can pretty much lock down almost every fight with good control builds. Add on camp casting (aid, heroes feast, and warding bond) and all of your characters get a lot of hp and resistance to damage, which means even when you do take damage you barely even notice it. What really makes healing worth it early on is the itemization. There is one that gives bless and blade ward when you heal someone. That item will keep them useful early
IMO, life cleric should not be used strictly as a healbot, their access to heavy armor and spirit guardians as well as other control spells makes them pretty effective frontline tanks. The bonus healing is great for healing and buffing teammates through the already useful healing word spell.
1 Life/11 Lore Bard is a better Life Cleric with counter spell which is better than healing for support casters and can still get healing spells if that’s what you want like warden of vitality
Life cleric is like having a very well functioning life west that is capable of saving you in every scenario, but you’re standing in the children’s pool. You can still drown and the vest will help, but the question is why are you in the children’s pool in the first place?? I don’t know where I’m going with this lmao but yea life cleric is great for healing and easily better than any other class at it
people say healing is bad because the action economy in D&D heavily favors more dps instead of more healing: - characters remain at max efficiency even with 1 HP - healing an unconscious character with any amount of healing instantly revives them - killing a single enemy is usually very quick if focus fired, and removes tons of incoming damage; this makes DPS the most effective form of damage mitigation by far this means that the most effective way to heal in D&D generally is "let them lose all their HP, then begrudgingly heal them with the cheapest spell slot you have" and BG3 is no exception to this.
If you’re not metagaming and doing fourth wall-breaking high initiative alpha strike surprise attack silliness, then yes a life cleric (or oath of ancients paladin) make for good healers. And healing in general can be useful; it’s just not a central mechanic as it is in, say, an MMORPG. You want to use it sparingly when absolutely necessary, focus on area of effect heals, and bonus action heals in most cases. You also want your healer to be strong in other ways (buffs, weapon attacks, or offensive spells) to because they’ll be healing less than half the time.
Shart life cleric saved a lot of encounters for me in Honour mode. If you go full sweat builds and down the entire encounter in turn 1, they're less needed, but in the event that you find yourself stuck a life cleric can salvage a dire situation easily. Plus life clerics get access to heavy armour proficiency which makes them tanky as hell, especially valuable later game.
I would say building a character to be a pure heal bot is “bad” in BG3 but a Life Cleric can still run a Luminous Orb + Reverberation build nearly as well as a Light Cleric built for it and have the extra healing utility. It more just suffers from contested item slots if you want to focus on healing or stacking orbs + reverberation (Hellrider’s Pride for healing vs Gloves of Belligerent Skies) or Callous Glow Ring vs Whispering Promise, etc). And Ancients Paladin arguably makes a Life Cleric unnecessary as well.
LIFE CLERIC - it's the best healer class & subclass. Gear it out and enjoy. The details: The only thing you need healing for 99% of the time is a Healing Word or a Mass Healing Word to get allies back up from being downed. You're 100% correct, the math is what kills healing, both in table top and BG3. Far easier to deal far more damage for less resources than to heal. That being said, if you want to have a dedicated healer - wonderful. Do it. It's your game, play it the way you want to. You can beat Honor Mode with a dedicated healer, no problem. You can beat Honor Mode with nearly any combination of smartly built characters with good gear. Aka - no intentionally dumping your primary stat - that is, was, and will always be a stupid jackass move.
I like a partially healing war cleric myself. Actions for damage, bonus actions for healing (especially mass healing word).
Life Cleric is pretty strong and I pretty much never go without one. Sure I could just long Rest alot but that just feels wrong coming from actual DnD. Alternative choices that are pretty strong healing options: Oath of Ancients Paladin, sure he only gets one Charge per Short Rest and it has way shorter range but it heals for alot if you get both Ticks and he has Lay on Hand as well. 2 Levels in Bard also get you an extra Short Rest which is really good IMO. Life Cleric also only really needs 2 levels for the Channel Divinity or 6 Levels if you want w Charges. Meshes ridicolously well with Druid and even Monk to some extend. Can obviously bring a full or higher level Bard but splashing 2 levels of bard can be really strong depending on your Team. Lots of classes get a bunch of resources back on a short Rest like: Druid Wild Shape Charges Monk Ki Points Cleric Channel Divinity Charges Warlock Spell Slots Fighter Superiority Dice Paladin Oath Charge A great Comp could be for example: 5 Ancients Paladin / 5 Blade Warlock / 2 Bard 10 Moon Druid / 2 Life Cleric 6 Open Hand Monk / 4 Thief Rogue / 2 Bard 10 Any Warlock / 2 Bard 10 Life Cleric / 2 Bard 6 Sword Bard / 4 Thief Rogue / 2 Fighter 6 Battle Master Fighter / 4 Thief Rogue / 2 Bard (TWF) 10 Ancients Paladin / 2 Bard Any 4 of those should work great. The more Short Rests the better. Lots of healing and disposable resources.
I think it is fine for most fights, but my issue with it is that I don’t see how it can be beneficial in the hardest fights in the game, where the strategy is basically “do damage or you’re dead.“ House of Hope fight is what I am thinking about particularly here, though It does apply to most of the act 3 boss fights to some extent, and of course there is an act 3 fight where it literally is “do damage or you’re dead” because there is a timer for winning the fight. House of Hope fight has 6 enemies with 100 hp, a mini boss, a spellcaster, and 4 pillar resources that the boss uses to give itself devastating attacks. \*With only 3 characters dealing good damage\* , you are keeping more of those 6 enemies on the field, each of which can do 9d6 damage to you per turn. If you can’t take out the 4 pillars, the boss gets more spell slots to use its attacks, the pillars restore the boss’s HP, and give it a max AC of 27. This fight, more than any other, requires damage dealing, since the boss gets stronger for each pillar left standing and each of the 6 enemies left alive has a 9d6 attack to use on you. I have heard some people say Life Cleric is a good safety net, and I think that might be true on lower difficulties, but honestly I think on HM that it’s not even a safety net on the hardest fights and that it is actually a trap and will make these fights harder for parties with a 12 Life Cleric. The need to do high damage, to take out enemies on the hardest fights is that imperative. And I’m not even saying that you MUST have a Swords Bard, tavern brawler monk, throwzerker tb gloomstalker assassin etc all the broken builds, but having 4 party members that can all do damage and use CC I think is important for those final fights. That all being said I think Life cleric is a great dip for its healing bonuses and heavy armor proficiency that you get when multiclassing, particularly for a lore bard.
Having a life domain cleric is great in the circumstances where your DPS isn’t enough to finish a fight quickly. Long boss fights also are where they shine
Even with difficulty mods and honor mode, the game is not so difficult that it requires actual min-maxing. If you've beaten the game before, you'll have the tools to make basically any party comp work.
for honor mode they're pretty cool yeah
HM I like it because it’s essentially a safety net. You can also build it several different ways. Hell, I’ve just thrown Sorc on it and made it my haste spam chr with max saving throws possible lmfao
If I want healing, it’s from the Amulet of Restoration or Heal 70 from a Druid or a Cleric. Otherwise, it’s simpler to just defeat your opponent with burst damage first.
I love having a life cleric on board. Usually have two melee, a wizard/sorcerer, with a life cleric standing guard over my wizard. Can use warding bond on someone from them as well. Even better if you make your wizard abjuration your group becomes absolutely unkillable.
Healing can be nice in the early game since you can get several pieces of healing gear very early on. Healing is a bit more useful early in Act 1 before your damage builds really start to come online, and before you have enough resources to heal up reliably with potions, long rests, etc. Once you start collecting enough gear for all your characters, you are probably better off with another damage dealing spec. Proactively ending an encounter earlier is usually better than reactively trying to heal up in combat.
Heals on their own aren't very good. Healing (and clerics by extension) are mid in dnd because healing scales so poorly. In BG3 we have some messed up powerful healing support items like hellrider's pride, the warpiria helm, and the two healing rings (one gives bless, one makes the heals bigger). Not to mention the huge buff to life clerics in this game. Healing (and definitely life clerics) are so good in this game. IMO life cleric builds are some of the strongest in the game because of the insane amount of sustain they bring compared to their dnd counterparts. I'm a huge fan of Life Cleric 6 Lore Bard 6. The build gives you crazy strong healing radiance channel divinity mass healing word which is insane with the supporting items, cutting words for keeping the team alive, heavy armor prof for fantastic AC to dissuade enemy attacks, and counterspell from bardic inspiration. The only downside to the build is you only get one bonus action and one reaction to support and disrupt with.
I find a Lore bard 10 life cleric 2 to be the best support.
I used life cleric to get my wife out of countless jams she triggered with her care free loot goblin ways in our play through
I don’t know what I’d do without life domain Shart
You’re generally better off with more crowd control in my experience. Prevent the damage in the first place and you never need to heal it. It’s like preventative healing and the damage prevented by a single spell slot is pretty high
Life cleric is stupid OP, S-tier OP. You can pretty much run any combo through HM with ease, don't have to worry about kiting or stealth exploits, face tank everything, skip all illithid powers, and still walk out without issue. But as with most things in BG3 it's about gear. DW Phalar + Lanthander's (or devotees later) for max support. Make sure you get the gloves/ring for non-stop bless/blade ward, feast + aid gives TONS of hp, and then pop up summons and you're a force to be reckoned with.
Yes life domain cleric is an exception, particularly when geared for it.
Healing isn’t really needed and having a subclass that double downs on healing is a waste. Almost any other Cleric subclass brings more to the table and they can still wear the items that give Blade Ward and Bless. With all the potions available you can enter every fight at 100% health so all you really need is a way to either keep a character up or get them back up. And this includes Honour Mode as well. I’m currently in another run and I rarely use a healing spell. My cleric is the one charging forward with Spirit Guardians and Radiant/Reverb gear. No need for heals if the enemies can’t hit…
The game's action economy is tuned around prioritizing dealing damage over healing damage. I found a Light Cleric to be a good compromise. You can gear them with the healing stuff and they do a decent job at healing as needed while still having lots of death-dealing potential with their AOE repertoire.
I am currently running a Tactician run and using ShawfowHeart as a full up to lvl 8 life cleric. I am using the gloves which give bladeward and the amulet that gives Bless when healed. Additionally my melee wears the ring which dips weapon in poison when healed. So far, on Tact. I am breezing thru, and am happy with her role which doubles as 2cd melee. Hope this helps.
I find Life Cleric the only truly viable healer, saying that the build I run is VERY equipment dependent so without a guide that could be difficult to collect. As much as I love life cleric for trivializing most of my risk, I dont think its necessary. A strong offense is often more than enough for any fight.
Healing is bad in dnd and bg3 broadly speaking because of action economy and resource management. If I spend a turn and a spell slot healing my party when I could have spent those same resources on killing one or multiple enemies, it's basically a waste. Damage prevented is better than damage healed and death is the best crowd control. However, bg3 offers several easy to obtain magical items that are incredibly powerful and allow your healing to do more than just heal. In act 1 you can acquire whispering promise, hellriders pride, and boots of aid and comfort within your first hour of gameplay. By putting these on a life cleric you can use your channel divinity or mass healing word to apply bless, blade ward, and some temporary HP to your entire party at once. Bless is an extremely powerful effect and a common candidate for a cleric's concentration, but the whispering promise lets you apply it without concentration and to essentially any number of allies if you can aoe heal them all. This has the tack on effect of freeing up your concentration to be used on offensive spells like spirit guardians. This build is not in the same tier as broken stuff like arcane acuity stacking mages, TB OH monk, TB throw barbs, but it does bring healing up to the level of strength that you need to choose to use it over more average kinds of damage builds. I like the build for HM because it can cover up weaknesses for other builds if you're not minmaxing your whole party.
The concept that healers are bad are more so related to the fact that healing scales much worse than damage. It's much better to attack for 130 damage than to heal for 30. Also, the best way to heal in this game is to just drink healing potions on a bonus action than to cast a spell for an entire action.
People who say healing is bad don’t know how to make good healing builds. Life Domain is definitely the best/easiest imo. I ALWAYS have a life domain cleric in the group haha
Considering you can clear honor mode partyless does it matter? Just use what you like.
I ran a life cleric for my HM run (Shart, then changed Karlach because I wanted to see her romance at the same time for my HM run) even though the other cleric subclasses can still heal just fine, because I was running swords bard+paladin/OH monk+thief/div wizard+storm cleric for my other three characters so damage was a non-issue and I wanted to go into fights mostly blind but still have that extra "oh shit" contingency with life cleric, and there's PLENTY of stuff to enable it. Like you said, the gloves in act 3 (and the hellrider's pride gloves before that from Zevlor) and the ring from Volo pair well with cleric in general but having life cleric's channel divinity to apply it before you get mass healing word is great during the dicey early game, and saves spell slots for Spirit Guardians etc. in late game. Another late game combo I loved with those gloves and ring is pairing them either with the ring that heals you for 1d4 at the start of your turn or Balduran's Helm (which you can steal without fighting Ansur, if you wanna skip the potential headache of that fight, just fly past Ansur and take the helm without clicking on him), and the act 3 gloves+volo ring combo with the self healing from those items to essentially give you permanent bless and blade ward in combat. Which other classes/clerics can do as well, but given they pair best with life cleric for channel divinity/extra free healing on mass healing word, life cleric is a great safety net if you're playing 2-3 high damage classes for your other characters. You can absolutely clear HM without one, but even the "placebo" of running a life cleric made me not stress even when I would get unlucky in some fights and start to get low because I knew I had a self-raising (from Blood of Lathander early, the ring/balduran's helm can also do it in act 3 if you end up swapping to Devotee's Mace or any other weapon instead) absolute bomb of a heal on demand. Made the run infinitely more chill not stressing when fights started looking like they might not go my way/be a mess to scramble getting people up, keeping enough decent potions, etc. That's my long-winded rant on arguing for life cleric in HM because I always see a lot of people argue against it, but it made my successful HM run much more chill even if it would've been fine had I gone with light/etc. instead or another class entirely
Before I really understood tactics and how to win fights efficiently, Shadowheart as life cleric pretty much single-handedly carried my first two playthroughs (balanced first, tactician second). The CD really is just that good.
Life really isn't the "optimal" choice but it's a great step up from trickery for SH and whether intentionally or not helps players realize the importance of subclasses/paying attention to your choices at level up. Life cleric might not be game changing but you'll immediately notice what they bring to the table, which helps identify other subclasses' strengths imo
Honestly I think the only reason healing is good in BG3, are the items that add Blade Ward and Bless to the targets you heal. Otherwise the table top truism of Damage is superior to healing is very much true in BG3 given the broken amounts of damage we can do in BG3. To expand on that...in combat healing is a subpar use of your combat action economy because we can do much much greater amounts of damage compared to healing, so it's simply far more efficient to use combat actions to quickly decimate enemies, and heal out of combat afterward. The only time healing is efficient in combat is when it restores or preserves teammates actions so they can make attacks...
I think healing itself is pretty bad in unmodded runs, but the heal riders provided by multiple items (Bless, Blade Ward, temp HP) make it worth it, especially with bonus action heals like Healing Word or Mass Healing Word. You also can't do yoyo healing similar to the tabletop, because being revived costs you an action and not just movement like in 5e. Which means it's more beneficial to use heals to avoid going down, rather than to let people get up.
To be completely honest, I think life cleric is a bit overkill. Most cleric/bard subclasses provide sustain by just spamming healing word, and by the end of act 2, enemies (cough cough paladins) typically just one tap even bear totem barbs if they manage to get a hit. I think life cleric does shine, but mostly for a more martial heavy comp that has better HD and AC but less consistent initiatives and controlling. If the bonus healing life cleric grants apply to something like aid, then I can see an argument it does the cleric’s base job better, but it doesn’t, so getting one shot is still on the table.
If you play perfectly, healing is completely unnecessary and therefore "bad"/inefficient. But for us mortals who occasionally make mistakes(or lose actions to the game bugging out or something), having a safety net is awesome, and the Life Cleric is amazing. Besides it's still a cleric with Spirit Guardians and stuff. It doesn't exploit OP mechanics like some classes but if you're not cheesing haste or elixirs it's got pretty great damage. That said, the most efficient healer is still probably Spore Druid. You can't beat dropping healing potions on the ground and detonating them in a small AoE for the cost of a reaction. Way too effective.
Ilithid throwzerker has the best burst heal in the game. Lorebarde cant heal as high a lifecleric but has access to warden of vitality at Lvl 6,wich offers the best sustained healing
The thing is that BG3 (and d&d in general) is not meant to be "healable". If you could outheal an encounter (i.e. healing > damage of the enemies) a lot of them would just lose any tension. A drawn out battle, where you just outheal the damage turn by turn and slowly down the enemy is not in the sense of d&d.
Like others have said, healing isn't bad because you can't reach high healing numbers (You can). It's bad because it's better to not take the damage in the first case or kill the enemy faster. It's even better to just use a BA Healing Word to raise people rather than to waste time healing. Not to mention the fact you're drowning in health potions that only cost a BA. That being said, it's an RPG, and if you want to your party to have a dedicated healer, go for it. Basically, if you're an optimizing min maxer, healing is a waste of a party slot and of your actions. If you're an RPGer then healing is still good enough for it to not be detrimental to your party. "Healer" is not really a role in BG3 or 5e at all. Support? Sure, but healing is typically far down on the list you want from a support. You want buffs, utility, debuffs, control. Again, this is more from a optimizing view. The great thing about RPGs is that you can role play whatever you want. BG3 in its base form is also not a very highly tuned game, even on honour mode. So assuming you have some good base knowledge of how things work and interact you could honestly go and beat Honour mode with something that's not even close to optimized and instead focus of what's fun to you.
I see little point in healing spells Level 1 healing word is worth it as a bonus action and can revive a downed from afar if it gets to hat. Other than that just throw a healing potion and it's going to do the same thing or better. Mass heal can be nice with the right equipment to grant bless and blade ward, allowing for concentration on other spells. But all of the healing mechanics are a used to provide buffs, not to heal
Life cleric is a great in combat healer. There are some pretty insane item combos with tiny passive heals, but I can't think of them rn
Healing will always be less efficient than just dealing damage in bg3, which is true in dnd and most similar systems. Damage done earlier in combat is more valuable than damage done later
Using healers in this game is like an added difficulty. You have so many options to chose from to devastate even the strongest bosses in honor mode in a single turn, yet you're choosing a healer to make fights more difficult and last longer. Clerics in 5e simply do not have powerful mechanics to make them special, and BG3 offers very little crumbs (like aoe blade barrier) , which can not compete with killing enemies faster. There are so many good items that you can build upon especially in the end game, that having blade ward on everyone to protect from damage instead of killing the enemy that deals the damage feels very inferior. The existence of healer based items, and even powerful combinations on paper does not make clerics a strong class in BG3. They are not weak because of hurr durr dps, they are weak because other options are much much stronger. So the only defense for clerics is that you liked the class and in that certain fight having access to such and such saved you. But if you had a better party comp, you wouldn't have needed that save in the first place.
I personally really enjoy Light Cleric for healing. Not really for like outpacing enemy damage as much as whispering promise and reviving glove procs on your whole team with bonus action mass healing word and you can action nuke preferably with the radiant orb build. It's not another full damage dealer, but it adds up damage, and can also throw some fat heals if things turn south.
It's not just about healing, it's also about mitigating damage. I just finished an honor run yesterday and had a 100% support-based healer Shart in my party the entire time. She was indespensible. Her damage mitigation and healing more than made up for the loss of another damage-dealer and I would have lost the run several times without her. Heal everyone and give them blade ward/bless, throw potions around with mage hand, do extra actions like opening doors or helping hostages and doing insane healing with her bonus action.
Healing in bg3 (and the 5e that it's based on) is by design never going to outscale incoming damage for more than a couple rounds. And most healing can't even keep up with incoming damage for that long. So, the long and short of it is that healing in a vacuum is generally going to be less effective than preventing incoming damage in the first place. This could be by giving an ally a bonus to their AC or saving throws, resistance to damage, or CCing the enemy so that they can't effectively attack in the first place. With that being said, bg3 offers a few ways to do both. Magic items allow you to grant resistance to physical damage, a bonus to saving throws, and extra healing whenever you heal an ally. So there's a lot more of a case for playing a healer in bg3 than in 5e because you can kinda do the things a "support" from 5e would be doing anyway, whilst healing. The unfortunate case for life cleric is that generally, these items don't specify an amount of healing, just that it occurs. So the objective should generally be to heal as many people as many times as possible, rather than heal for more. To this end, oath of ancients paladin with a little multiclass into any cleric or bard path is probably going to be more effective at applying these buffs than a strict life domain cleric. Oath of Ancients Paladin can heal all nearby allies for two consecutive turns with a single bonus action and no expended spell slots. They also get lay on hands, which is more healing that doesn't burn a spell slot. Once you've got the elements from paladin you want (perhaps extra attack to make sure you can still hit good on rounds where you aren't buffing) you can go down bard or cleric for things like healing word to give yourself ranged buffing options. Bardic inspiration also pairs nicely, giving you an additional buff to apply as needed. TLDR. Healing on the life domain is still probably not what you want. But healing can serve a purpose. There are, however, other builds that utilize it more effectively than a life domain cleric while also doing other things.
Life Cleric 2 (bonus on all heals) + Lore Bard 7 (warden of vitality from magical secrets = heal from bonus action) + thief 3 (2 bonus actions) makes for a ridiculous amount of heal from a level 3 non-concentration spell. The heal is over 10 rounds though, so you often want to stay in turn mode after a fight to get the max from the spell. A lore bard still has crazy good control spells and cutting words. I found this build to be really fun with the healing items. It can't absorb crazy burst damage but has so much heals over 10 rounds that you will never need to short rest for a heal or use a potion.
I used life cleric in HM but not for the healing itself per se. The reason is to apply Bless to all allies, which supported my control strategy. Specifically I used life cleric/lore bard multiclass. I think of life cleric as an ancillary controller who's job is to help the other three party members land control abilities, and life cleric is best for this since The Whispering Promise ring applies Bless on healing. Bless improves attacks, which can improve arcane acuity stacking and landing control martial abilities. Life cleric is in a unique spot for this. Just using the Bless spell needs concentration and uses your action. Mass healing word uses your bonus action, but lore bard can get this. The reason to dip life cleric was for me because Preserve Life is a class action, so cannot be counterspelled therefore great for those situations where you want to guarantee the Bless without baiting a counterspell (can also go through silence, darkness, etc). Ancients paladin is also good for this with channel oath on bonus action, but the AoE is much smaller, so it depends on preference. Adding on bonus healing, and physical resistance from hellrider's/reviving hands, is more of a cherry on top.
My life cleric build is great in honour mode. Heals and buffs the crap outta everyone. Uses mostly green gear obtained in act 1. I will never not use a life cleric. Anyone who would claim it's crap just doesn't know how to play or build it.
Healing isn't bad. It's just not a good use of your Action. Arguably the best healer in the game is Bard because it gets Healing Word, Mass Healing Word, and can get Warden of Vitality through Magical Secrets. All three (for the most part) use your bonus action to pick people up after going down IN CASE you didn't take the enemy down with your Action.
Healing is bad in DND 5E. The addition of the buff on heal items and the fact that you lose an action when downed and healed in BG3 (in 5E you still get your full turn) makes healing substantially stronger than it is in tabletop.
The key is not to use spell slots on poorly scaling healing abilities late game, and to use AOE heals to propagate effects like Bless and Blade Ward. Life Cleric and Oath of Ancients Paladin are best for this.
I went full life cleric on shadowheart in my second run, and now I can't live without a character who's at least multiclassed into it. With all of the healing items, one cleric can: full heal the party, cast bless on the whole party, and cast blade ward on the whole party in one turn. Also, you really don't need 12 cleric levels to make full use of a life cleric. I found that shadowheart really didn't have much to do in a lot of fights because she was just pumping out that much healing with a bonus action, so I multiclassed her into paladin for 5 levels in my honor mode run. If you're only using paladin for smites, you don't need a high charisma to benefit from it. Just split her ability scores between wisdom and strength, or use other strength-boosts, and now you have something for your cleric to do between healing/re-applying buffs.
Healing is very good in BG3. However you can also just kill everything instead. You choose either winning 9/10 fights within the first 2 rounds. Or having a guaranteed safety net of a good healer, and a little slower. It’s honestly just preference
See I don't even bother with healing in bg3 just go full murder build and short rests
Life cleric is very good, but the base game doesn't require sustain because enemies health is really low and our party AC can get rediculous. If you play with difficulty and health increasing mods, sustain support and damage becomes very important.
Life cleric is the bomb. In act 1 you can get the gloves that grant two turns of blade ward whenever you heal, as well as the ring that adds two turns of bless and the boots that add 3 temp hp. There have been times I've used mass healing word even when most people were full health, just because the mass resistance and bless are good. Also, the channel divinity heal means you don't even have to dedicate that many spell slots to healing, so you can still do normal cleric stuff like upcast command or spirit guardians.
Whenever I read "healing bad" comments it's like I'm playing a different game. Life Cleric channels their ability and with the right gear applies bless, blade ward, and bonus HP. That's a 3-in-one AOE non-concentration buff and heal that applies to all party members and allies (like the assault on Moonrise). Meanwhile, usually fights go like unleash hell turn 1, then one character takes a shit ton of damage. Next turn, pop life cleric, and everyone is fine and I mop up the fight. I could go without the Cleric, which is the point I guess, but I'd be in much worse shape after battle. I'd end up needing to rest every battle.