Baldur's Gate 3: Cleric Build - Terror Of Tiamat

[Music] foreign what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you my cleric build for Baldur's Gate 3 that I used for my second playthrough on tactician mode which I am calling the terror of Tiamat I'm going to be playing through this game many times for The 100 Review though realistically I only need like one more playthrough for the achievements but that is hardly everything when it comes to this game but that said I'm trying to make build videos of each of my playthroughs as people have asked me to do and today I've got a particularly interesting one because I of course used it for the hardest difficulty the game has to offer but it combined a lot of parts of the game to come up with a build that was really fun though it is very much so a bit power gamy in comparison to my previous build video that we did for the first run and while it's not completely Min maxed it was more than enough for tactician mode so let me give an overview of what I had in mind here initially I was just planning on playing the game as a cleric however in the Early Access version you could play as a cleric of one of the Dead 3 in the launch version they removed those three Gods so I was just trying to play a cleric of an evil deity for my evil playthrough and I settled on Tiamat an evil dragon God and then I rolled with a blue Dragonborn Tempest cleric just trying to make use of all of the lightning damage there but a couple levels into it that morphed into something much more specific kind of on accident and the general gist of it is we're going to be combining multiple abilities and effects to load all of our power into a single melee strike that we can do once per long rest initially but twice in the later game that crits for anywhere from about 100 to 250 damage depending on the resistances of the enemy and even on tactician throughout acts 1 and 2 that's usually enough to One-Shot bosses however we can only do that a couple of times per long rest so in every other fight what you're basically doing is being an AOE spellcaster courtesy of our Tempest cleric domain which is going to give us access to all sorts of AOE damage and in general being a cleric is a good way to go thanks to all of their ingrained support spell casting on top of that so that's kind of a general overview of how this worked now to get into the weeds of it a little bit and start being much more specific first I want to talk about multi-classing a little bit this build utilizes two levels of Paladin however thanks to the fact that we are a tempest cleric as well I would say the one drawback of this really is that we're only going to get one big melee attack per turn and we have some ways to pretty much guarantee that it's a hit and thanks to the massive critical damage we're doing that felt worth it to me however because we're relying on that melee attack some people might want to take an extra attack but in order to do that we would have to take Paladin to level 5 which is simply a lot more levels than we need to do what we're doing however if you wanted to play clerics 7 and Paladin 5 you could do that but you're gonna lose a lot of the later game spells for our cleric domain and that's a problem because two levels of Paladin and 10 levels of cleric will actually to get you six level spells I'll be at one cast per day outside of using an item or something to recharge it so to be clear what we're doing with this build is pouring a bunch of resources to make that one gigantic critical and then again possibly later two in the late game and then the rest of the time we're pretty much an AOE spell Caster so if you want to do the five levels in Paladin for extra attack you can do that and you should be okay for the most part but because what we are doing here is limited per day anyway I much preferred the spell casting so I would not recommend it and I just wanted to touch on that at some point in the video here which is what this is from there though let's talk about character creation I went with a blue Dragonborn to get their lightning breath which I thought was very thematic to what we were doing however if you want the absolute min max option technically what you would want here is a half work thanks to their Savage attack racial passive which gives them extra dice rolls on melee weapon criticals and since we're going to be guaranteeing those criticals you would get good use out of that so even with my power game build I decided to be a little more role play focused and go with the blue Dragonborn but thanks to the fact that both Tempest cleric and Paladin both get pretty much every Proficiency in terms of weapons and armor the only thing that really matters for the race is what you want to pick but technically half Fork would give us a little more damage to the specific thing we are doing but I didn't find it super necessary with that in mind though we are going Tempest cleric that is incredibly important as this is going to give us our heavy armor proficiency as well as melee weapon proficiency though we will just be using a mace throughout most of the game as we are going sword and board I guess Mason board technically but you know what I mean right away at level one Tempest clerics are going to be able to as a reaction hit people with lightning or thunder damage which is just a nice ability in the early game but realistically you won't be using it a ton later but the other big thing Tempest cleric domain gets is their domain spells which for the most part are large sort of storm-based aoes things like Thunder Wave ice storm sleet storm insect swarm just to name a few which are fantastic aoes will be making a lot of use of later so Tempest domain is everything we want for this now when it comes to our can trips for the most part you could choose whatever you wanted here but sacred flame and guidance are always the way to go on a cleric in my opinion with the third one being whatever you want now when it comes to deities well I chose Tiamat because I was doing an evil dragon run if you wanted to play this with a more good aligned character you could just pick a different God like Bahamut or Talos even they would also fit the theme here really well and truth be told the only thing deity actually affects in the game is various dialogue choices and even some of those overlap so I wouldn't be super concerned about it now for our background this is again mostly dealer's choice I personally went with folk hero because I like animal handling and survival but what you're actually picking here is essentially what skills you're going to be good at so pick whatever lines up with wisdom or strength as those are going to be our main focus and you'll be good to go but again personally I liked folk hero now that brings us to our ability scores technically you have some wiggle room here but important thing to note right away is that as we're leveling up because we are taking two levels of Paladin we are only going to get two ability score improvements but for the most part our stats are going to be split between strength and wisdom we need strength because we are using a mace and we actually do need that attack roll to hit and wisdom is for all of our spell casting so to start with here at character creation we're going to take Charisma down to eight we don't need it for anything wisdom should be up to 17 with our plus two intelligence can be a base 10 Constitution at 13. dexterity at 10 because we are not using it for anything and strength for 16. now the downside to this spread is that we're not putting anything in dexterity because we're not going to get any extra AC from it as we will be using heavy armor however dexterity is also used as a bonus to your initiative which means that many times we can be going last or close to last or further down the initiative order than you might like there are ways to buff this outside of your stats such as potions certain items or just anything that gives you an initiative bonus really so this isn't the only thing to manage here but do keep in mind if you don't buff that in game you'll be starting pretty low on the pecking order in terms of turn-based combat but then we have it strength at 16. again this is to make our melee weapons connect as we do actually have to make our attack rolls in a lot of cases and with our ability score improvements later we should still have like an 80 to 90 percent chance to hit most of the time and then for our initial spells as a cleric guiding bolt and healing words are the main one I would suggest but it's not wildly necessary to worry about that just yet because as we move to the leveling up portion of this video the main I would say concern when it comes to leveling up is this character is that the first four levels can be a little rocky because in order to get everything we need to do the thing we want to do we need to hit level four which is going to require us for this build to take two levels in cleric and two levels in Paladin I'm going to explain how I went about doing that but realistically as long as you have two in each by level four it really doesn't matter but because of this the early levels on tactician might be a little rocky depending on what your party composition is and how you're approaching it because the main thing this build is going to do does not work until you hit level four but for level two I went with another cleric level this is going to give us destructive wrath from our Tempest domain which is a channel Divinity ability which allows us to with a channel Divinity charge maximize the thunder or lightning damage we deal in an attack this is very important and Beyond just our big gigantic melee critical we're setting up for is useful for so many of our spells and things so important to understand how that works but that is the main thing we're going to pick up at level two however later on once we get more cleric levels you'll get another Channel Divinity charge which is going to let us do this twice per rest now at level three is where I picked up my first level of Paladin one level in Paladin is mostly going to get you lay on hands for this and lay on hands for us is still very useful because that scales off of your character level and not your Paladin level so that will stay relevant throughout the game which is nice and for your Paladin oath I chose Vengeance because I was going for an evil oriented playthrough but truthfully the oath does not matter so if you get oath breaker don't even worry about it because what we are picking up Paladin 4 is what we get at level 2 which is divine Smite which brings us to character level four Paladin level 2. we get a few really good things for two levels of Paladin for starters Divine Smite this is one of our main abilities that we're going to be using for this build and it allows us to deal extra radiant damage on a hit however this does extra damage to fiends and Undead and anything vulnerable to radiant damage will take double damage from it and because we are fighting a lot of Undead and fiends in this game this is very very useful but it is just one piece of the puzzle ultimately level 2 Paladin also gets us thunderous Smite which is a level one spell that does thunder damage on a hit which we can combine with Divine Smite and our regular melee hit to deal a bunch of damage in a singular hit and that's the Crux of how we are going to pull off our giant melee attack however we're still not done yet we'll get to the rest of that later second level Paladin also gets to pick a fighting style we're gonna pick up dueling as we are going sword and board so this will just give us extra damage on our hits which is exactly what we're after now levels 5 through 12 we are switching back to cleric I'm only going to talk about the important levels as the bulk of them just give you extra spells as you level up as a cleric and we'll cover that shortly so at level six we're going to pick up our first ability score Improvement thanks to our multi-classing you're going to put a single point in wisdom and a single point in Constitution to bring those up to even numbers and get an extra bonus for both then once we get to level eight we are going to pick up thunderish strike as part of our Tempest cleric domain when we hit with thunder or lightning damage we can knock enemies prone and knock them back a little ways which can be handy in certain instances but it's nothing we specifically need then at level 10 we'll get our last ability score Improvement and we're going to use this to bring strength up to 18 because again we do need to guarantee that our melee attacks actually connect in certain instances so the bigger the bonus there the better and then lastly at level 12 we pick up divine intervention as our cleric class ability every cleric gets this and it allows them to call on their deity for a very powerful Boon that they get to use one time it can heal and restore everyone around you it can give you a bunch of supplies it can deal a massive damage wave so you have a few options there but do remember you only get to use that once now those are the important things to know as you level up but we were gaining a lot of spells on the way and I wanted to talk about those a little bit separately so the nice thing about this particular build is that the bulk of the cleric spells we are going to be using all the time are actually the domain spells which means we don't have to worry about preparing them because they are our domain spells they are always ready to cast as long as we have the spell slots to do so and thanks to our multi-class into a paladin we will still get a sixth level spell slot which means we will get almost as many spells as all of the other casters but as we level up we can look forward to things like Thunder Wave shatter sleet storm call lightning ice storm insect swarm and destructive wave most of these are really big aoes so when we can't do our big melee wind up we're usually going to be laying down these aoes though do remember you can hit your allies with this which is to be avoided beyond that though clerics also get a fantastic spell list otherwise with things such as the ability to heal guiding bolt is a fantastic early damage Spell spiritual weapon a level 2 spell helps out with the action economy by summoning a weapon to attack your enemies as a bonus action and that's to say nothing of spells like Mass healing word which can get all of your characters up from the downed state revivify which can revive people Spirit Guardians as a favorite at level three spell level three that is so there's a lot of stuff and then on the Paladin side of spell casting really the only spell we're concerned with there is thunderous Smite which will be always prepared by lieu of the fact that it's the only spell we will be able to prepare as a paladin thanks to our low level so again you're going to be getting a lot of spells thrown at you but the main stuff is the stuff that will be from our domain and always prepared anyway and then just pick and choose what you want from the cleric spell list now from there in order to really bring this Build Together We have to talk about illicit powers and gear there is a single illicit power we need but to get it we have to take two illicit Powers total so if you are trying to do a run without taking any illicit Powers I wouldn't recommend this build to you because while you can still do it it won't be possible until the end of act two whereas if we take the illithid power we'll be doing this towards the end of Act One depending on some of your exact choices but the two specific abilities I would recommend are favorable Beginnings which makes our first attack roll and ability check against any Target get a bonus equal to our proficiency bonus this is fantastic because a it's going to mean we hit a single enemy more often and when you're trying to just nuke one of them that's essentially just a huge bonus to hit which we very much so need but realistically we're only taking favorable Beginnings to pick up luck of the far Realms right after it this is going to on a successful attack roll give us the ability to once per long rest force a critical hit so basically whenever we make a successful attack roll it will ask us if we want to use luck of the far Realms which we are going to say yes to on Boss enemies and the like to force a critical on thunderous Smite which will then trigger Divine Smite for maximum damage on its critical on top of thunderous Smite getting maximized from either the critical or destructive wrath either or and then the weapon attack itself thanks to all of these stacking effects you will hit for about a hundred at a minimum and if the enemy is weak to the thing you are doing that is to say it's Undead or a fiend and takes extra radiant damage from the attack you're looking more like 150 to 250 and even on tactician that's enough to One-Shot bosses until you get towards the very end of the game so that Massive Attack is before we even start slinging AOE spells once we're done with it now in order to take that a little bit farther we do need some good gear though I am going to focus on the gear that is necessary to pull this off because other than the gear we're about to talk about really all you need to do is watch out for the best stuff you can find which should be obvious so for instance we want the best heavy armor we can find we want the best Shield we can find because we are using those things purely for the extra AC but in particular I like Reaper's Embrace which drops off of a boss fight later in the game and then for our boots those ones actually are pretty important because we can get a pair of disintegrating night walkers from the underdark portion of the game which also drops off a boss of sorts this gives us a free cast of Misti step and because we are relatively low Mobility with most of this class Misty step is going to allow us to close range if we are far away and get our big attack in and this also keeps us from being in webbed entangled and snared or slipping on Grease or ice which is also incredibly useful some of the best boots in the game in my opinion but then we have our weapon for our Shield it's really just the best you can find but for a weapon there's a very specific one you want which you can find in the mountain pass area of the game called the blood of lathander this one is hidden behind some puzzles in the mountain pass so I don't want to spoil it too much for people but explore around there and you should find it this mace is ridiculous once per long rest when we die it will just Auto revive us and heal people around us for a little bit it also just sheds Holy Light naturally which fiends and Undead can then be blinded by and things like vampires even will take a debuff from this and because that's again the bulk of what we're fighting that's incredibly good but if that wasn't enough we also get a Sunbeam enchantment which allows us to use a level 6 spell well for free ones per long rest which does a bunch of radiant damage just adding that much more to what we can do I used this mace from the time I got it through the rest of the game and you can get this pretty early as the mountain pass is towards the end of act one cannot be overstated how amazing this mace was and then last but not least while not strictly necessary an item that will make our lives much easier and force a second critical for our big melee attack which is Killer's sweetheart this was used in my last build as well where I had forgotten where I picked it up from but you can pick this up towards the end of Act 2 in a story related dungeon specifically one that involves some trials and I don't want to spoil it from there but actually pretty easy to find it's kind of directly in your path but this is amazing because when we kill the creature our next attack roll will be a critical hit but again we can only use this effect once per long rest so essentially this means if we use our big Hefty melee critical in the later game kill something with it we can then activate execute fusioner which is going to let us almost immediately do it again the next time our turn rolls around very very useful item everything Beyond those I would say is really just dealer's choice but those are the things I would consider crucial to how this works and all of that finally brings us to the combat section where if everything has been set up properly you should just kind of annihilate everyone now the main drawback to this is if you do not have anything buffing your initiative you're likely going to be pretty far down the turn order because we don't have any dexterity giving us a bonus to our initiative roles so a way to offset that before you even start combat would be recommended anything that might just buff your dexterity on its own or an item that boosts your initiative of which there are a few would be a good idea however in combat basically what you want to do is use our gigantic critical on the biggest enemy and try to take it down very very quickly and again what we're going to do here is we're actually going to pick thunderous Smite as the ability we attack with and then if you use your destructive wrath Tempest cleric ability you can guarantee the maximized damage on the Thunder damage there though usually the critical hit is enough for that so you might want to save destructive wrath for your other thunder or lightning based spells but thunderous strike when we use it is going to trigger our divine Smite which will then deal a bunch of radiant damage dependent on the spell slot we use to cast it whether or not the enemy is a fiend or Undead and then if they are vulnerable to radiant damage the radiant damage portion of this attack is the most variable because it really just depends on what the enemy is and what it is weak to so in some cases you might only do like 20 to 30 radiant damage even on the critical and then in other cases I've seen it do over a hundred and that's before are just even regular melee weapon attack damage and all of those sources of damage combined are going to give you again about a minimum of a hundred damage assuming they aren't weak to what we are doing if they are weak to what we are doing 200 to 250 is usually around where it would hit but again this is is just what we're doing to take out the biggest enemies we are fighting towards the late game with all of our effects and everything we can potentially do this up to twice when we are done with that ability and can't do anything else then we shift our Focus to AOE spell casting both as a cleric and a tempest domain cleric we are going to get a bunch of AOE spells this is what you're going to be doing in basically every other instance and this relies off of our wisdom so spells like ice storm insect swarm or even just call lightning which can get maximized damage off of our destructive wrath Channel Divinity ability can do some really solid damage but also don't forget we'll have a bunch of support Spells at our disposal which is going to allow us to do things like cast Mass heal word or revive other characters which means in addition to all of our fantastic damage dealing spells buffed by destructive wrath we can also support our party as necessary which means this build tends to oscillate between just annihilating the boss and then supporting our group afterwards while we wipe up the trash mobs and I found this to be incredibly effective most enemies on tactician don't seem to be set up with this in mind there's only a few bosses which are usually just immune to damage period until certain circumstances are met that this doesn't work against so while it does take a fair bit of setup to pull this off I found around the end of act 1 this got incredibly rewarding and it was really really fun and while it's not even Min maxed as far as it could be I still dominated tactician difficulty with it so I hope other people get the enjoyment out of it that I did but either way it was a ton of fun so I hope you enjoyed this video if you did like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz let me know what you think about the build down below of course and let me know any classes you in particular would love a build for in the meantime though just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 290,334

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, bg3 gameplay, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 review, baldurs gate 3 review, baldur's gate 3 combat, baldur's gate 3 review, bg3 cleric, bg3 cleric builds, bg3 cleric guide, bg3 cleric build, bg3 cleric gameplay, baldurs gate 3 cleric, baldurs gate 3 cleric guide, baldurs gate 3 cleric domains

Id: RtNF_qBivhU

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2023