The BEST CLERIC in Baldur's Gate 3 - [Updated] Shadowheart Honour Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well today we're covering my pick for the best cleric in balers Gate 3 this is an update video to the my previous video of the same name which is the most popular video on my channel but was done almost 6 months ago and contained some information that is no longer true because of patches and various other things that I wanted to update so I wanted to cover this topic again in order to really modernize that build guide and bring it into the honor mode era as well as updating it for things that we've learned over the last six months of balder's gate this will be a guide to my pick for the best cleric build and the best Shadow heart build in balers Gate 3 should be excellent for your honor mode playthroughs as well as for any lower difficulty playthroughs that you're intending to do this is also important I think because I of course have been building honor mode party guides for everyone and I wanted a build guide to link to for a cleric build because spoilers clerics feature pretty heavily in optimized honor mode parties before we begin let's talk a little bit about cleric as a class because I think cleric is actually pretty widely misunderstood at first glance it looks like it's purely intended to be a support class you have healing you have supporting spells and that is an element that clerics bring to the table but they actually do so much more than that clerics are one of the most well-rounded and Powerful classes in Dungeons and Dragons providing just about everything that a character needs to a party you get to tank you get to do damage you get to control enemy movement you get to support your allies and you do also do indeed get to heal but all of those things together make clerics an incredibly powerful uh character that brings basically everything that a party could need in a single package Shadow heart gets a little bit of a bad rap I think because her default setup is somewhat weak but we can optimize that and make her a core member of an optimized Party by increasing the power of her build so let's get into that and make one of the most powerful characters in the entire game the cleric I'm of course using shadowart as the example character here but clerics also make excellent main characters of course so if you want to build a custom character as a cleric then some of the best races that work with clerics are some of the ones that work best for just about any character build wood elf or half wood elf give you bonus movement speed which is incredibly powerful for a cleric especially because one of the things that we will be doing is Mo is dealing damage to enemies just by moving next to them so the additional move movement speed is very helpful halfling can allow you to roll ones which lets you maintain concentration on your spells much more easily as well as of course just not fail saves or Miss attack roles and gnome gets advantage on mental saving throws which means thanks to your high wisdom you'll almost never P fail a wisdom saving throw so you'll basically never be mind controlled or frightened or anything if you're a gnome um other options are also all viable it doesn't make an enormous difference so I would recommend going with whatever you think is most flavorful but those are some that are more optimal from a mechanical standpoint for shadow heart unfortunately High half elf isn't amazingly Synergy synergistic with a cleric because her bonus cant trip that she gets from being a high half health is based on her intelligence rather than her wisdom and we're going to want to reduce our intelligence this Firebolt doesn't actually do anything for us and the proficiencies that she gets from being a high half Health High half health are duplicated by her cleric levels in general anyways so her race doesn't fit extremely well with her class luckily that's not an enormous penalty but just a minor anti- Synergy to the character that exists that being said we can still make her an incredible uh Powerhouse so let's go ahead and do that the first things that we need to do are to pick our domain because that's the most important thing with cleric is choosing what kind of cleric you're going to be unlike almost every other class cleric gets their subass at level one which gives you an enormous amount of front-loaded power because you get both the powerful class abilities of cleric and the extremely powerful subclass abilities some of these subclasses are better than others though and so which one we pick will have a significant impact on how our character is going to come together these sub classes give you two different things they give you abilities which you can see from like the trickery clerics blessing of the trickster ability and then she'll get more as you level up and they also give you access to Unique spells uh many of which are not normally available to clerics so when you're looking at your subass your domain for a cleric you need to take into account two things one is how good the abilities are and two is how good the Spells you get are do does it give you spells that clerics don't normally get and how powerful are those spells unfortunately trickery domain Shadow heart's default cleric domain is the weakest of the seven domains because the abilities are quite weak and the Spell access is okay but not amazing but I think that there are really two domains that stand Head and Shoulders above the others so I'm going to talk about those two in particular and those are light domain and Tempest domain both of them get incredible Spell access giving you access to a bunch of offensive spells so they add damage that clerics normally uh don't get access to but also a ton of utility spells and both have incredibly powerful subass abilities as well light domain lets you defend yourself with warding Flare and Tempest domain lets you maximize lightning damage as well as wear heavy armor and use Marshall weapons I think the best by default for just sort of a a standard cleric that you really just want to do cleric stuff with is to take Tempest domain this gives you access to some of the most powerful spells in the game in addition to cleric's already incredible spell list and gives you access to a bunch of extra damage while giving you heavy armor so you can be as as defensively minded as possible something that clerics really want to do Tempest domain clerics get access to some of the be very best spells in the game and almost all of their spells are not already on the cleric spell list so you really widen your array of options by taking Tempest domain so I'm going to recommend that we take Tempest domain for uh shadowart as her domain and then we are also going to need to fix her ability scores because she starts with a very bad ability spread with a bunch of odd numbers and a bunch of points put in sort of nonsensical areas so we definitely need to fix that we want for her to have at least 16 wisdom because that's what clerics are based on and at least 16 Constitution because that increases your hit points and your concentration saves which are extremely important to have we also want at least 14 dexterity because dexterity uh while it you won't be able to use it for Armor class because we're going to be wearing heavy armor we will use it for Rolling initiative roles going first is incred powerful so almost every character wants extremely high dexterity and you're going to need to increase this as much as possible in fact you can actually get really greedy with Shadow heart's stat attribute selection here and take 17 wisdom and 15 dexterity to start with this doesn't give you an initial bonus but this allows you to at level four go up to 16 and 18 and is almost certainly the most optimized way to play if you really just want to minmax everything if you don't though and for this build which is sort of more intended as a general purpose uh guide um I recommend putting 12 points in strength because that will give you more carry weight and jump distance and make your playthrough just like more fun and smoother if you're not having to constantly move items off of your cleric because she's wearing heavy armor and is getting tired all the time so it for a just to reiterate that really quickly for a purely mid maxed attribute spread you want 15 16 17 and for a more general purpose spread you want 12 14 16 8 16 8 we're going to go with that our skill selection uh mostly doesn't matter for clerics although it is worth if you are building a custom cleric taking a background that gives you or race or background that gives you perception checks clerics by default don't get these and perception is very important and also is based on your wisdom roles so cleric with naturally incredible wisdom will benefit very highly from their High perception attribute and will allow your party to spot hidden enemies and traps much more easily if you can get access to perception other than that it doesn't really matter what you take because your cleric is unlikely to be your main conversationalist and is not going to be uh starting conversations so you don't really need the Charisma skills and otherwise doesn't get access to things like stealth or slight of hand that you'd be using outside of combat so you can take skills mostly based on Flavor finally we have to select our cantrips because these are some of the most important things that you are going to do with your spellcaster at level one this is our main combat option as well as our uh main utility and one of the best things about clerics is the incredible can trips that they get the first and foremost among these and basically mandatory for every party is guidance what plus 1 D4 to skill checks ability checks that you can make and you can do this uh out of combat it's free so every conversation you're in every skill check you're in you can use Guidance the game will prompt you to roll it will add to it and this will convert hundreds of failed roles into successes over the course of the game guidance may be the single best spell in Boulders Gate 3 and is absolutely mandatory for every party in my opinion it's incredibly fun to use as well so you definitely want guidance we also need a main combat spell and so we're going to choose between either sacred flame or produce flame um if you're on Console I recommend taking sacred flame because the produce flame casting interface on console is terrible uh but on PC you should probably take produce flame because it's just a little bit more powerful it gives you a light as well as a weapon so it means that you then don't have to take light um but on Console I think sacred flame works better because the casting interface for produce flame is apparently awful on console that being said produce flame slightly better as a pick and will be your main damage Source this is going to be your main weapon you throw the fire using your wisdom so it's going to hit pretty regularly let you set the ground on Fire Light the area so it also has a ton of utility for our third cantrip slot we actually have a a couple choices you can take resistance because there's some story events where it's pretty good or you can take blade Ward for times when you get into an emergency and just need to defend yourself for a couple turns or times when you're trying to protect um temporary hit points and stuff you might have I'm going to suggest taking blade Ward but don't use this as a default action in combat use it only when you need your character to survive for an extra turn so that reinforcements can show up or if you have gotten yourself in a bad position and are surrounded by a lot of enemies normally this is a bad action if you're just uh compared to just doing damage but there are times when blade Ward comes up so I think it is and when it's good it's very good so it's worth having in those circumstances all right that is our level one build for a cleric let's move on to level two at character level two clerics get additional class and subclass abilities in this case because we're a tempest cleric we get uh destructive wrath so whenever we roll thunder or lightning damage we can use our Channel Divinity which we get one of per short rest currently um to deal maximum damage instead this is good for two reasons one it increases our damage when we're doing thunder and lightning damage and two it makes our damage very reliable so we know exactly how much damage we're going to be dealing with a spell or effect that deals uh this type of damage and can plan accordingly an enemy at eight hit points you know you have have an exactly eight damage attack that is very useful to be able to guarantee that you take them out of the fight for our spell list and I should mention of course what our default prepared spells are going to be uh you are going to want to go with healing word which is a bonus action that allows you to heal allies this is especially useful if an ally has dropped to zero hit points in combat and is making death saves it'll get them back on their feet instantly and doesn't cost you your action we also want bless which is one of the best things for us to be doing in the early game concentrating on bless on ourselves and our allies whichever allies are making attack roles bless is incredible remember when I said guidance is going to convert hundreds of skill checks to uh skill check failures to successes bless is exactly the same thing for attack roles and is going to massively improve the effectiveness of your party if you spend your turns concentrating on it in the early game so we want those two as great Support options we also want command because command is one of the best uh control spells in the entire game it will remain relevant all game for clerics because if you command an enemy to drop uh if you use command drop on an enemy they will fall to the ground and lose their next turn which is going to give your allies advantage on uh attacks against them and also is going to prevent them from spending a turn trading your turn for an enemy turn is typically a pretty good trade because you can decide decide when to use it and so being able to do this with command means that you can take powerful bosses out of the fight and uh completely one shot encounters because you're going to take an enemy out of the fight have advantage on all your attacks and they by the time they get their next turn they're going to be dead next up we are going to want to have Sanctuary which is also a bonus action like healing word and uh prevents enemies from attacking the targeted Ally this isn't concentration which is not because it means you can have it while concentrating on bless so you can use it to protect your bless concentration or you can just use it to protect an out of position Ally and it's a great panic button uh if somebody gets into trouble finally we want a good combat spell and we're going to take guiding bolt guiding bolts a great ranged attack and if you just really want one enemy dead it does the job reasonably well it's not as good a nuke as you will have from other characters at this level but it's a pretty solid uh damaging element to add to party I like guiding bolt more than inflict wounds even though inflict wounds does more damage just cuz I think that the range adds a little bit more uh flexibility to the spell at cleric level three we get access to level two spells and we also get shatter and gust of wind from our Tempest cleric levels these spells will always be prepared these two aren't going to be ones that come up that often although shatter when you can maximize the damage uh is going to do 24 damage with shatter uh plus your channel Divinity charge and 24 damage in an AOE is a pretty solid amount of damage that you can really use to bring down low enemies or uh take down a group pretty easily for our other prepared spells we are going to the only one that we're adding from level two at this level is going to be spiritual weapon which is another bonus action so you can use it and another thing in the uh and command or use it and bless in the same uh turn which is incredibly useful spiritual weapon is great for blocking doorways distracting enemies adding a little bit of extra damage to your party its disadvantage is that it's slow but if you can place it next to enemies who can't attack anything else they'll often get distracted by it or if you can place it next to enemies who are uh trying to go through a doorway or blocked up by an entangle or some other spell that's stopping them from moving it's going to add solid DPS and absorb hits that otherwise your party would be taking by default your of normal combat mode in um for a cleric is going to be to spend turn one of a fight casting bless and spiritual weapon or even casting bless before combat starts and then spending turn one casting spiritual weapon and command and then you'll command an enemy and then you will just plink with your produced flame for the rest of combat while your spiritual weapon beats down enemies cleric's play pattern is going to be to use a powerful concentration spell to win the fight and then spend the rest of the time playing cleanup and helping out their allies who are doing damage with weapon attacks that's one of the things that makes this character so powerful is that you get to do that uh unload all of your best spells in the first turn of combat by having all of those options available at cleric level four we get our first feat which is going to allow us to increase our wisdom and this is great because it's just going to increase the saf DCS that enemies are rolling against so our Command will be more effective we'll hit more often with our attack and so on um if you took the 15 16 17 split then you would even those out and have 16 dexterity at this point um but just increasing our wisdom is going to be the best pick here as well a couple other options if you are looking for something else to do although I do think that increasing your wisdom is the best uh you could take War cter if you're losing concentration on Spells a Lot by getting hit warter saves you from doing that and you could take alert so to guarantee that you go first in combat this is especially useful on honor mode although I tend to like doing that at level uh at later levels but alert even at level four can be extremely powerful as well we also get an additional Kent trip and we're just going to take resistance which is very useful in certain story events in uh late act one and in act two so it's just very nice to have that available at character level five we get access to third level spells and this is what makes cleric and especially Tempest clerics so powerful cleric's third level spells are incredible some of the best in the game and uh that's saying a lot because third level spells in general are where a lot of characters really H hit their power Spike we get some of the best control spells and some of the best damage spells and as well as the best support spell in the game all at once at this level by being a tempest cleric we get access to call lightning which we can concentrate on and just do very solid damage just great consistent damage um every turn of combat so if combat's going to go long this is a a great one to use and you'll usually want to do this if you want to stay away from enemies we also get sleet storm which is a 30ft radius AOE an enormous AOE that makes an ice surface ice surfaces in balder's Gate are incredibly powerful because if an enemy Falls over um they lose their turn if they are walking on the ice surface and fall over they just skip the rest of their turn this makes it a gigantic AO e stun that you can apply to every enemy in a combat for turn after turn after turn by concentrating on sleet storm as well as interrupting uh enemy spell cter cast there's also a lot of really cool tricks you can do with sleet storm but the big thing is just that it knocks over every enemy and completely wipes encounters all on its own we also get to prepare a couple great spells and the Spells that we are going to prepare at this level it's going to be Glyph of warding which you can cast directly onto an enemy it looks like it's supposed to be be a sort of trap but you can cast it onto an enemy it'll trigger immediately this lets you do Elemental damage of any type or put a bunch of enemies to sleep so it's both control and damage in the same spell uh we also want Mass healing word which is great because we will probably have items that buff our allies when we heal them and this lets us apply those Buffs to every Ally at once and we want Spirit Guardians Spirit Guardians is some of the best uh sustained damage in the game it just does constant damage to every enemy that's surrounding the cleric and when you move around the battlefield every enemy will take damage which is why move uh movement options are so helpful and that's going to be one of the best things to concentrate on just constantly dealing damage at this level your play pattern is going to shift a little bit to um choosing between your three super powerful concentration spells in spirit Guardians if you want to do damage up close call lightning from your Tempest cleric levels if you want to do damage uh at a distance or SLE storm if you want to control a large group of enemies and of course the play pattern of casting bless and supporting your allies is still extremely powerful as well at this point you have a ton of different options and you can adopt different strategic postures depending on the encounter to do exactly what you want to do at cleric level six we get a thunderbolt strike which allows us to push enemies and Ally uh to push enemies if we do thunder or lightning damage to them the cool thing about this is that this doesn't take an action of any kind and works from any source of lightning damage we do including a pool of water that we've electrified so if you leave if you have a big pool of water on the ground which you can make cuz you're a cleric with create water um and then hit it with electricity damage then this this damage will count for the Thunderbolt strike and enemies walking in that pool of electricity will get ping ponged all over the map preventing them from doing anything at all it's also very funny um so this is actually a an extremely powerful ability it also works really well with your retaliation damage that you have from being a tempest cleric so when you get attacked you can uh do the reaction damage to them push the enemy backwards you can also use it to push enemies off of cliffs if they're standing near Cliff edges uh get additional push distance from stuff like Thunder Wave it's just a super powerful and versatile ability and because it's passive and always on it's extremely helpful for prepared Spells at this level we are probably going to add in a utility spell like create water which is very useful to have as well one thing to note as well on a cleric is that you have the ability to swap out your Spells at any point out of combat so you can um trade out your spell list based on what you think the scenario is going to be when you're going into a fight or a social encounter or whatever if you know there's a skill check you really want to make you can prepare enhance ability if you know that you need to remove a a disease or poison you can prepare lesser restoration you can swap those out during the day and do all kinds of things as a result if you're going up against spellcasters you can bring silence to that encounter I'm just giving you kind of a a solid default spell list but um there's lots of different options and cleric spells are so good that you should definitely experiment with using different ones at cleric level seven we get access to some more incredible spells freedom of movement is great to have just uh always prepared because it's not one that you're going to use all the time but when an ally gets stunned it's a great panic button to have to break them out of it we also get ice storm which does a bunch of damage and creates another ice surface just like with uh sleet storm and that is going to again knock over a bunch of enemies while doing very solid damage to them for our prepared Spells at this level we get to add in a couple more powerful spells and the one that I'm going to recommend bringing is Guardian of Faith because guardian of Faith makes an enormous uh summoned Ally with 60 hit points that does damage every time an enemy enters its area the big thing about this is that it's big and it can really block doorways and prevent enemy movement very effectively as well it's just a great ratio of damage to spell level it's a level four spell and it'll do 60 damage and you can also uh increase its longevity by casting Aid or warding Bond on it uh spells that we get at level two to keep it alive for longer but for the most part it's just going to do amazing damage and block up enemy movement very well it doesn't take your concentration so you can cast it before combat or cast it uh during combat as well as concentrating on something else it also can't uh fall over or anything like that so you can have it in a sleet storm and just be hitting prone enemies with it every turn it's got a lot of very powerful abilities at cleric level eight we get access to another feat as well as divine Thunder um we are not going to be making melee attacks that often cleric's uh this version of a cleric is much more spellcasting oriented so the Divine strike is not going to come up that often uh because you would much rather be using your cantrip spells or your just normal spells in order to do damage uh then make weapon attacks um so I I wouldn't recommend using this too frequently although it is worth noting that clerics do can can use a crossbow in the early game if you have a light crossbow you can use that and you'll have okay dexterity so you'll hit sometimes it'll be better to do that than to use uh your canant trip spell for our feat here I am going to say if you're on honor mode you should definitely get alert it's very it's extremely useful you maybe should have gotten it at level four um but certainly by level eight you should pick up alert because going first is so important on honor mode if you aren't on honor mode I'm going to recommend taking warcaster at this level uh our save DCS should be pretty decent with 18 wisdom and we should have some gear that improves our safet DC at by this point so we don't need the plus two wisdom as much and if you are finding that you're dropping concentration a lot warcaster will solve that problem by giving you advantage on the rooll alongside your 16 con and so for players who are a little newer to the game and and not used to just winning fights before enemies get to act warcaster is incredibly valuable there as well so it's between those two Feats depending on sort of whether you find you're dropping concentration a lot or not um but by default we're going to take warcaster here uh not tough warcaster at cleric level 9 we get two more amazing SP or one more amazing spell from Tempest cleric and this one is only available to Tempest or light clerics which is one of the reasons that those are are uh some of the most powerful domains destructive wave is a great spell because it does great damage just 5d6 Thunder plus 5d6 radiant in an AOE and it doesn't hurt your allies you can cast it in the middle of a melee and it won't hit your allies just enemies and it knocks enemies prone while doing Thunder and radiant damage those are very relevant damage types because you can maximize the Thunder damage and radiant damage will apply radiating orbs which is a super powerful item effect that you can get on a cleric as well as Thunder applying reverberation um something else that you can use so these are incredibly relevant damage types as well almost nothing resists Thunder damage so it's just very useful to have access to that as well um and it's just good damage knocks enemies prone which is an extremely powerful effect doesn't hurt your allies just a great spell overall uh an excellent action if you have a fifth level spell prepared a fifth level spell available for your other fifth level spells you're mostly going to be using those to cast higher level versions of lower level spells so your other fifth level spell slots other than destructive wave are mostly going to go into casting Spirit Guardians at this point because a fifth level Spirit Guardians is tons of damage and it is going to really improve the damage similarly you can do the same with call lightning to improve the damage of that effect as well you're also likely going to want Aid on this character you can use a character that stays in Camp to cast aid but Aid is just a nice boost to your whole party and if cast with a fourth level spell slot gives you plus 20 hit points on everyone which is just a great boost to your survivability also if you found good safety C gear you can use hold person there's a lot of encounters where if you can land this it just instantly wins because of the automatic critical hits that it grants to your allies another option here is banishment because banishment is a spell that targets an enemy's Charisma saving throw a lot of bosses have very low Charisma saves and so targeting them with banishment means that you're basically guaranteed to hit them and some bosses if you can remove them for two turns and kill their allies you win the encounter outright uh with banishment there so those are a couple spells that are worth keeping in mind at this point in the game at cleric level 10 we get access to divine intervention once per game your cleric can use this to gain a super powerful effect you can cheese this by respecing and stuff but um it at least in theory it's once per game the mace that this gives you is very useful for your cleric because the healing aura that that mace grants you is actually pretty nice and will probably be your best in slot weapon to have um throughout the the game at this point just because it heals you constantly it it can allow you to apply the uh buff on heal items to your whole party without spending a spell on it so it's very useful to do that as well there's a bunch of other weapons that are good but honestly cleric weapons are not the most important things uh in general what weapon you use is going to impact you significantly less than your other itemization and also cleric is just such a powerful character in it just the base class is so powerful that items are not critical to cleric success anyways um but I think that the divine intervention for the weapon is still going to improve your party overall uh pretty significantly for a cantrip selection by this point you should definitely have sorted out like your light sources and everything so it doesn't really matter what we take here just take whatever you want for flavor and then at level 11 we we get access to six level spells uh which are some of the obviously most powerful spells in the entire game and clerics have three I think two that are really good and three that are worth mentioning uh in terms of six level spells the best of the six level spells for clerics is Heroes Feast when cast on your whole party it makes them all immune to frightened gives them additional hit points and these hit points stack with the hit points that you get from Aid and uh and gives you advantage on wisdom saves this protects your part from some of the most dangerous Encounters in the late game uh there are encounters that you just will instantly lose if you don't have immunity to fear and failure wisdom saves and heroes Feast totally solves that problem all by itself it lasts all day absolutely a great use of a six level spell slot however you can have a camp follower cast Heroes Feast um and so another option is to use planer Ally the Thea that you get from planer Ally is one of the best effects in the game uh as well one of the best summons in the game it's not as powerful as the elemental meridon that Wizards and Druids get but still the second most powerful summon in the game uh is the daa and it is going to give you a ton of extra damage and tanking for your party the Genny that you can get as well is also very good just cuz it has a massive amount of hit points so it will survive pretty easily as well finally if you want a damage option blade barrier okay I think in general you're better off with one of these other two planer Ally will typically do more damage but if you know there's an AOE fight that you have that's coming up you can use blade barrier by default the best option is going to be heroes Feast but if you're getting that elsewhere or refreshing your spell slot with an item that lets you cast two six level spells in a day then the daa is going to be really good as well and finally at cleric level 12 if you're staying monoc class um we are going to pick up our last two points of wisdom maximizing our wisdom and making sure that our safety C's are as high as possible for our final prepared spell list we're going to again drop cure wounds and death ward those spells are pretty bad and bring back in some more situational spells that we might need for various situations uh lesser restoration is often good to have around and maybe we want to go all the way back and pick up something like um uh or we don't currently have hold person prepared it's also useful to have enhanced ability prepared at this point because at level 12 there's a couple story events that you're really going to want to pass skill checks for so having enhanced ability prepared can let you use that if if it comes up I think that people tend to cast this spell a little too often because there's not a lot of skill checks in the game that are worth spending a level two spell slot to slightly improve your chance at succeeding on but there are some that are really really worth it so having it available is always uh good this is our cleric build and I will talk about potential multiclassing and items but overall what clerics give you are an enormous amount of control and utility as well as great tanking abilities thanks to their extremely high armor class and distraction distracting enemies using spiritual weapon and guardian of Faith so you can lock down a whole group of enemies with your various spell selection deal incredible damage and also debuff enemies in some of the most powerful ways in the game this spell selection allows you to do that and I think is a great spell list to have by default for items for our cleric there's a lot that you can benefit from and I'm going to give you both some specific items that I think are really powerful on clerics as well well as general rules for when you're picking items obviously the game has thousands of items so your your Loadout is going to change significantly over the course of your playthrough and so it's best that you have the tools to pick good items for yourself first up we're going to talk about one of the best item sets for clerics the buff on heel items this is the Hell Riders Pride the whispering promise and the boots of Aid and comfort all available early in act one and when worn this will allow your party to gain blade Ward bless and uh three temporary hit points every time you cast a healing spell on them with mass healing word this is your entire party and is going to be an enormous amount of buffing for your party members um over the course of the game bless is going to make sure they hit more regularly and blade Ward will make them take half damage from just about everything thing and so that is going to be a significant boost to your party this item set is incredible for cleric secondly another item a type of item that is really good for clerics is going to be anything that does radiating orb you'll be doing a lot of radiant damage because you're going to be casting Spirit uh spirit Guardians on radiant damage and doing radiant damage with it every single turn when you do radiant damage and stack radiant orb on an enemy they take a minus one penalty to attack rolls for each remaining turn so if you have multiple of these items that give radiating orb and can stack it up see pretty quickly enemies will almost instantly lose their ability to do anything because they will have such enormous penalties to their attack roles that they will never be able to land hits in this way you can walk next to enemies with Spirit guardians or use other sources of radiant damage like destructive wrath to do a massive amount of debuffing as well as the great damage that you're doing consistently as well for our Tempest cleric we're also just going to want a great uh just the best suit of heavy armor that we can find um pretty much just whatever has the highest Armor class is going to be good although I'm also quite partial to this Dwarven splint mail I think this is one of the best suits of armor in the game and will last you throughout most of the game because the bonus to Constitution gives you extra hit points as well as keeping your concentration spells uh be more reliable you also want a shield again you're looking for the highest Armor class in the game but you're also looking for Shields with cool special effects like increasing your save DCS uh like this one or increasing your initiative like this one any items that increase your save DCS or your initiative are premium value for clerics because those are some of the most important things that they will have uh the most important stats that they can possibly use and so any items that do that are going to benefit your clerics massively so basically to sum up you're looking four um the buff on heal items are great specific items and then you want the armor with the highest armor class the shield with the highest armor class and any other items that improve your armor class because your cleric will just be able to then just not get hit which is obviously great especially when you're running around in melee a lot of the time you also want items that improve your spell DC so that your spells are more reliable and you want items that improve your initiative so that you can land your spells before enemies go if you use the divine intervention uh to gain a weapon you get the devotees mace which gives you this healing incense Aura this gives you as a bonus action and gives you basically a healing word a mass healing word every turn for 10 turns which works incredibly well with these items to apply all of these effects every turn for 10 turns which is obviously awesome and another specific kind of item that you should be looking for is something that gives you access to Misty step because Misty step is a spell that clerics normally do not get and it's a get out of jail free card if you get into a bad situation or just need to get up onto High Ground I think every character in the game should try to get access to Misty step if it all feasible because it's just such a powerful effect and will make your character much safer so overall Armor class save DC and initiative those are the things that you care about on clerics as well as the very powerful buff on heal items and radiating orb if you want to cheese out bosses by reducing their attack roles to zero finally just a quick word on multiclassing if you want to stay mostly a cleric there is still one one level dip that is extremely worth mentioning um and that is taking your very first level of your character in sorcerer the reason for this is that Sorcerers get Constitution save proficiency which means that you can then skip warcaster on your cleric because you'll have way better concentration saves um and you get access to a bunch of sorcerer utility including the very powerful Shield spell and magic Missile which are both very useful to have on just about every character and some great additional can trips as well uh stuff like minor illusion and Mage hand are very useful as well and you can take true strike to annoy everyone in the YouTube comments which is always extremely valuable plus if you take storm sorcery then whenever you cast a spell you get to fly as a bonus action which gives you an enormous amount of Mobility so if you really want to optimize this build and are looking and would have taken warter of the Feats um that I mentioned then it can almost always be correct to take sorcerer as your first level instead and then build this cleric build with the next 11 levels in cleric using exactly the same setup that I mentioned uh as well you'll still hit 20 wisdom you'll still get heavy armor and shield proficiency because those actually come from your cleric subass not your cleric class so as soon as you take Tempest cleric you'll still get the armor and shield proficiencies and so you won't lose anything from taking sorcerer it's a very powerful dip and allows you to fly as well as defend yourself even better because you have the Shield spell and that can increase your already very high AC up into the stratosphere all right my friends I hope that you've enjoyed this look at the Tempest cleric the best cleric in Boulders Gate 3 in my opinion and a Mainstay in many many honor mode parties as well as every other party and if you've been looking to get shadowart to really uh start kicking butt then this is the place to start as always if you've enjoyed the video of course feel free to leave a comment uh and like the video both those things help me out a ton with the algorithm and I do read every comment I get and appreciate people who take the time to do that I wish I could still answer them all but um unfortunately I just or fortunately I now get enough that I can't always answer them all but I do read them all and really appreciate everyone who takes the time and of course you can subscribe to my channel for more build guides and other strategy game content cheers my friends I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 51,250

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial

Id: 8t8Tmo2IAQ4

Length: 40min 23sec (2423 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024