The BEST SUPPORT CLERIC in Baldur's Gate 3 - Shadowheart Build Guide

welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide my friends I hope you're all doing well today I'm going to be covering my pick for the best support cleric in Boulders Gate 3 I previously did a build that was a more allrounder character and that ended up as a tank and damage dealer and support hybrid for a cleric but a lot of people had the question what if I want my cleric to be more of a full-time support for my party and so that's the build that we're going to cover today I'm of course using shadowart as the example character because she's the party cleric but if you wanted to build this as a custom character it's of course Very viable as a main character and can be used to support any party no matter what the makeup is unlike the other build this is going to be a lot harder to play solo with because it's a more support oriented build although not impossible but I would definitely recommend the Tempest cleric version if you wanted to play a cleric solo through tactician mode as always to start with with Shadow heart or any orig character the first thing that we have to do is fix their stats Shadow Hearts actually are not as bad as many of the origin characters by default this is pretty close to a decent stat spread for what you want but there's definitely some improvements we can make namely getting rid of the three odd numbers you never want odd numbers in D and stats so let's fix that we also don't need any intelligence so we can drop that down get ourselves to 16 Constitution and unlike my other character where I recommended 14 strength because that one would be mixing it up more often in melee this character is playing more of a supporting role and so we go with 14 dexterity because the initiative is very important and also because you will be in medium armor for most of the game and so the extra dexterity really comes in handy most medium armor caps your AC bonus at from dexterity at two so 14 dexterity gets you there if you were building this as a main character and choosing your race from the beginning I would not recommend High half Health like Shadow heart because it's actually one of the weakest cleric races in the game unfortunately the reason for that is that the canant trip that you get from being a half elf is based on your intelligence score which we want to lower as much as possible to put those points elsewhere and the armor and shield proficiencies that you get from being a half human are wasted on the cleric because cleric already has shield and light armor proficiency so you don't get any bonuses from that as usual the most powerful character if you are going to most power race to choose for this character if you're building it from the ground up is wood elf for the extra movement speed or gith Yankee for the once per day Misty step which is a very powerful Mobility tool we also of course are going to need to fix her spell selection but first let's talk about domains Shadow Heart by default is a trickery domain which is unfortunately the weakest of the seven cleric domains I believe there are three cleric domains that stand out uh above the others as being the most powerful those three are life domain for healing light domain because it has one of the most powerful defensive tools in the game and Tempest domain which I talked about extensively in my other guide and is the best allrounder cleric build because of the heavy armor proficiency and extra damage that you get from Tempest domain life domain gives you the very powerful disciple of Life healing feature and you get that at level one and it increases the healing out put of any spells that you heal with by uh the spell level plus two this especially on something like healing word almost doubles the spell output and so you might think that the Natural Choice for a support cleric is to go life domain however we're actually not going to do that the reason for this is that what life domain gives you you get no spells that aren't on already on the cleric spell list so you you don't actually get anything from your domain spells that gives you additional utility beyond what what a cleric offers so you only get the heavy armor proficiency and the class the subass features no new spells from going life domain and the subass features while very powerful for low-level healing spells get worse and worse as you level up because you never want to spend turns healing in combat to sort of illustrate this let's imagine uh cure wounds which heals 1d8 plus 3 or 1d8 plus 6 with the life domain feature at level one that's average healing of 10 and2 from a d8 which averages 4 and 1/2 plus 6 an incoming Greatsword attack from an opponent is going to do on average 10 damage seven from the 2d6 that it rolls plus three from 16 strength which is pretty typical at that level you can see that we're barely breaking even on healing and we're spending our entire turn for the enemy spending their entire turn this is usually a bad trade because typically you're going to be outnumbered in this game and also it costs you a spell slot every time you do this whereas the fighter that's hitting you can just keep they're not going to run out of great sword attacks so usually you don't want to spend your turns healing in combat it's a very inefficient use of your actions therefore I think that actually the best uh support cleric class is the light domain cleric even though it is considered a damage oriented subass it provides you with one of the best defensive tools in the game warding flare warding flare allows you to use your reaction to gain to impose disadvantage on an enemy attack and you can do this an unlimited number of times clerics normally do not have very good uses for their reaction so adding a a reaction into your cleric build is extremely valuable um every character in combat has every round of combat five resources that they can use they're action bonus Action Reaction movement and concentration clerics have excellent uses for their concentration and excellent uses for their action but they typically don't have very good bonus actions or very good reactions so the light domain cleric gives you a ton of uses for those action economy resources that would otherwise be going to waste as well as giving you a bunch of Spell access that's not on your spell list even though those are mostly damaging spells getting access to new spells is better than doubling up on spells you already have so for that reason we're going to be picking light domain at level one this gives you fairy fire which is also an excellent supporting spell because giving all of your allies advantage on their attacks is very powerful the enemies do have to fail the save but also having access to fairy fire lets you break invisibility on enemies which is extremely valuable throughout the entire game so you definitely want to have this available on a character and having it always available through it being a domain spell is very powerful for our can trip selection we are going to take guidance of course it's the best spell in the game um and for a support character makes a lot of sense as well you definitely still want sacred flame even for support character just some turns you're going to have nothing to do and this is a good way to spend your turn also radiant damage it being radiant damage is quite useful against some enemy kinds and for your third spell I actually strongly suggest blade Ward you can use this before combat starts to gain two turns of damage resistance to all incoming damage which is extremely powerful you can also use this when two groups of NPCs are fighting one another to tip the battle in favor of one of them or the other without AGG gring any of the participants which can be funny in certain circumstances um and while it's not usually a good use of your turn in combat for the same reason that healing isn't uh having the damage of two attacks for one can trip is the same as negating the damage of one attack in terms of total damage by casting cure light wounds so if you cast blade Ward on a character and then they get attacked twice you are effectively doing the same thing as if you had cast cure light wounds but not spending a spell slot on it so while you usually will not want to use this in combat it does come up sometimes I'm going to also talk through what we will typically have prepared in our spell list at each level as we level up this is a these are going to be rules of thumb um and one thing to keep in mind is that in Boulder's Gate you can change what spells you have prepared anytime you're not in combat so you can and should frequently change what these spells are based on the situation because we are a support character and just a character a cleric in the game our number one spell selection is going to be bless your typical turn is going to uh in the early game and even on through the mid game your typical combat is going to open with you casting bless as your concentration spell on three allies who are going to be attacking spending the rest of your turns spamming out sacred Flames or crossbow attacks uh with the occasional command if you want to remove an enemy from combat command is an extremely powerful single use spell and with your bonus action you are going to be using healing word on anybody who needs it healing word is extremely powerful because it doesn't take your turn and one thing to keep in mind is that with this kind of healing spell what you really want to do with it is use it on an ally who has already gone down to an attack before they fail their death saves or are killed by an enemy because that gets them back up uh at full health and so you can use this it's it's exactly the same spending healing word on that character as spending any healing spell that takes a full action um so it's very a very efficient use of AC action should your allies be going down in combat finally for our last two spells these are less important I guess at level one you'll only have access to four I do like having guiding bolt equipped sometimes you do just need to hit stuff but you could also have consider a Creator destroy water is very powerful I also quite like Sanctuary it has a lot of uses similarly it's a bonus action that doesn't take concentration and you can use it to like block a doorway with an invincible Ally and do all kinds of really fun stuff with this um ability I highly recommend playing around with it and seeing what cool combos you can do with it when you have Sanctuary up at level three we get access to second level spells and the light domain gives us two damaging spells but flaming sphere is actually one of the better support spells in the game as well um it does take your concentration and you do have some redundancy with it but anything that summons an ally can block doorways can uh divert enemy attacks and preventing an enemy from attacking your actual Ally is just as good as healing that damage or anything else so it's it summons are a form of support by stopping an enemy from uh acting um you also just get scorching Ray which means you can take guiding bolt off your prepared spell lists because you now have a really good uh direct damage spell if you want to spend your turn just damaging something my advice for this spell selection is we're going to take guiding bolt off and we're going to take um get rid of cure wounds cuz that shouldn't have been on there in the first place the most important spell is also spiritual weapon because this is a summon that doesn't take your concentration and is a bonus action so you could summon a flaming sphere and a spiritual weapon in the same turn or and this is going to be your most common play pattern throughout most of the game cast bless and summon a spiritual weapon in your first turn of combat and then spend the rest of the game peppering in scorching Rays or commands or just uh can trips or crossbow bolts as appropriate while continuing to defend your allies also remember that you are a shielded medium armor character so you can very much get in the face of enemies and because you have your reaction warding flare you are actually better defended than most um heavy armor characters at this point or just about any other character at this point warding flare against most common DCS the is going to be about a minus 4 or minus 4 and a half to your enemy's attack role and so it is almost the same as a shield spell but doesn't cost you a resource to use so it's extremely powerful to just put yourself in the way of enemies and force them to waste an attack against you especially at low levels where they often won't get multiple attacks a turn turn and your reaction can be used to negate their entire turn's worth of actions finally you probably want um hold person although I personally am not a tremendous fan of this spell it can be very powerful but often I think you just would rather use command the reason that hold person I think is weaker than command overall is that it takes your concentration and the enemies get two saves before it costs them a turn once when you cast it and once at the beginning of their turn so overall um I would steer clear of hold person typically and uh mostly just take spiritual weapon and your domain spells as level two spells and we'll stick with what we have from level one just to give us a bunch of optionality at level four we get our first feat and because we are a cleric our feat is just going to go straight into improving our wisdom the only other option here I think for this character is I guess there are two other options one is alert because going first on a support character is extremely powerful if you go first and alert will basically guarantee that you go first in every combat you can cast bless ahead of your allies acting which is very valuable also keep in mind that if your whole team wins initiative you get to choose the order in which they act so you can have your cleric cast bless followed by someone moving up to create a threatened area followed by your Rogue attacking and gaining sneak attack back um make sure that you are acting in the optimal order of your characters not just the order that they're presented to when you all win initiative you get to act you get to choose the order that you act in so high initiative is really good and I highly recommend taking alert if you don't want to take uh bonus wisdom the other option here is warcaster to prevent yourself from losing concentration clerics are going to be concentrating on spells all the time but for the most part I think you are better off either with alert if you want to really focus in on your supporting role and not worry about casting spells with save DCS or just wisdom which is probably the best choice because one of the best things you can do is cost opponents a turn with command also bear in mind with command that you can upcast it at a higher level to cause multiple enemies to lose a turn which is extremely powerful and valuable at this level I would probably select resistance here it doesn't really matter what you have but resistance can be useful in some conversations because whenever you're asked to make a saving throw in conversation it can come up the same way that guidance does whenever you're asked to make a skill check at level three we get fireball another valuable option so scorching Ray and Fireball from the light cleric domain are both really valuable for clerics because clerics normally don't have a good thing to spend their turn on that isn't a concentration spell um so scorching Ray and Fireball let you add some damage and while also providing the the powerful support spells that clerics normally do bless um spiritual weapon and healing words and so on which are very valuable at this point I am going to suggest that you take I really quite like having Mass healing word just the ability to get everyone uh some health back on your team is really very powerful you also almost certainly want you should be using Scrolls for revivify if it comes up so don't worry about taking revivify but you know you can prepare it and cast it if it's like the last thing you're going to do before you take a long rest I quite like having animate dead the zombies are extremely valuable sometimes you can get really clever with their positioning and even though you're a support cleric you probably still want Spirit Guardians just because you can get in there and mix mix it up this is more because you don't have a lot of other like really important options at this level um and sometimes the best thing to do is just get in in their face face and do damage you are slightly less good at this than the Tempest cleric version of the build but you are also less likely to be sustaining concentration on call lightning or something like that so Spirit Guardians is a really good damaging option and there's some fights where this is just the best possible way to deal with enemies just turn on Spirit Guardians and run around in the middle of all of them uh if it's a bunch of low Health enemies also bear in mind that Spirit Guardian still works when you're jumping so because we have 12 strength we have a Okay jump distance you can gain qu uh quite a few additional spirit Guardians hits if you jump through enemies and make sure that that you're gaining additional movement speed that way if you don't have another use for your bonus action that turn cleric level six we get the whole reason that we're in light cleric or one of the reasons we're in light cleric which is that now we can use Warden flare on allies as well for all the reasons it's good on us not costing a resource being an enormous uh pain for enemies this is incredibly powerful when cast on allies this is especially powerful in combination with a Wizard's Shield spell you can use both of them at the same time and this can keep your Wizards or or whatever squishy allies you have alive very well for our prepared Spells at this level no major changes I would suggest taking kind of whatever you like at this point um you could take like I actually quite like having move curse prepared just because I don't like unprepared pick at this point that you think is cool uh protection from energy does come up sometimes in some encounters you know that you're going into like an enemy group that's all fire and you could do that um lesser restoration also does have its uses in some combats and Aid is an okay action just to give your ally a little bit of extra maximum health but don't use it as a healing tool in combat I would typically avoid spending spell slots on that though so my pick here because we already have most of our tools that we're going to be using in every fight I would just take something that you uh kind of think is fun or that you want to have available bearing in mind that if there's a particular spell you really want you can always prepare it at level s we get access to level four spells as well as wall of fire which is an excellent spell to have access to again um another very powerful damaging spell but one that can really be used to break up fights enemies will try to move around it so you can block them off uh there's a couple Encounters in the game that this spell just solves by itself so keep an eye out for those if you're like defending a hallway from a group of low Health enemies who are rushing towards you a wall of fire across the doorway will end that encounter immediately that said we probably want to have a couple good combat options prepared I actually quite like having freedom of movement prepared not because we want to cast it it lasts all day don't cast it at the beginning of the day but more because we don't have a lot of uses for our level four spell slots at this point um and this can be in an emergency a really good option breaking an ally out of a stun can be very powerful because a stun is such a powerful effect and there are some enemies common enemies in this game that's done very frequently so you won't ask this as a dayong buff or at the beginning of the day and you won't cast it that option but when you want it you really want it so I quite like having it prepared and banishment is just an excellent spell overall it's basically a think of it as a double command so command is they fail a save they lose a turn banishment is they fail a save they lose two turns um sometimes you're going to want to command four enemies with that level four spell slot rather than one big enemy but having both options available is good at level eight we don't make any particular changes and we take the same feat that we did before at level 9 we get access to a few new spells although these spells are less valuable than previous spells we get uh destructive wave which I said in my previous video was unique to Tempest clerics it turns out it's actually unique to Tempest and light clerics so you get both of this and you get flame strike which is the best one of the better damaging spells in the game as well both of these spells are really good to have access to as damaging options um and again remember that while we're getting all these damaging spells from being a light cleric we still have all of the support spells that clerics normally get so it's not like we're giving up support spells to have access to these damaging options you still just get the damaging options and the Support options at level five though in terms of which ones are good I think insect plague is the only one that's particularly powerful these options like uh greater restoration you are going to use freedom of movement because that removes stuns the same way that greater restoration does and charms and petrification are much rarer so you wouldn't really need to prepare that typically um there's a couple fights in the game that planer binding can be useful but you are going to know which ones those are in advance and you can prepare it appropriately insect plague causing difficult to rain is very valuable and I will say that another way you could build this character is with the nature cleric because they get plant growth which gives you no concentration difficult to Rin that's a very powerful effect and worth uh keeping an eye out for but then of course you're giving up on warding flare which is incredible at level 10 you get access to your divine intervention and the mace that you get from casting divine intervention is really good for this character it's got a healing Aura attached to it so definitely keep in mind that you can use that um get another can trip which it doesn't really matter what we pick and our prepared spells don't change in particular just slot in whatever you think is going to be valuable to you at this point in the game level 11 we get access to level six spells which include um blade barrier which is an excellent damaging spell that also does difficult terrain which is very valuable for slowing out uh slowing enemies create Undead and planer Ally I like planer Ally a little more I think the diva is a little more useful than the create Undead and I think typically what you're going to spend your level six spell slot on is the planer Ally although another good use of the level six spell slot is just a level six um spiritual Guardians so that you can just do a ton of damage in an AOE around you but what you're going to want most of the the time is just the extra Ally there's just a lot you can do with a a summon and you can heal these guys and stuff too so it's very much worth picking up there are also some fights where immunity to frightened is good and you might consider preparing and casting Heroes Feast ahead of that I typically would not prepare heal even though it's a huge amount of healing and is one of the better ways to spend an action on healing just cuz it's so action efficient you get so much healing out of it I think it is worse overall than preventing that damage from coming in by having a summon tank it instead and for our final level we have two choices we can either take a feet um which I would again recommend that your feet be alert or warcaster depending on whether you're finding yourself needing to win initiative more or needing to maintain concentration more personally I prefer alert um overall I think winning initiative is going to matter more than not losing concentration a lot of the time what you're concentrating on is something like a bless that you can just recast uh for not a huge cost if you happen to lose concentration so warcaster I think is less important on this character than it is on many characters and alert is very valuable another option that you could take if you wanted to is uh you could Respec your or you could take another level and you could take a level of Paladin or fighter I would suggest taking Paladin for the oath of the Ancients healing Radiance because it is a decent support option it's just because it's a bonus action and it gives you a little bit of healing it's useful for getting up downed allies mostly um and adding a little bit of lay on hand healing is very valuable as well if you do this you will need to Respec and take Paladin as your first character level and then all of your levels of cleric because if you go level 11 cleric if you go cleric 11 Paladin 1 you won't get heavy armor proficiency but if you start as a paladin and then take your 11 cleric levels you'll get heavy armor proficiency so your choices here for your last level are basically between alert as a feat heavy armor proficiency from a paladin level or heavy armor proficiency and some minor healing uh from a paladin level um or warcaster I would as a as another feat personally I think that alert is the best bet um there's lots of medium armors in the game that will give you almost the same AC as a heavy armor character but alert is incredibly difficult to duplicate so I would highly recommend going with that for items you are just going to be wearing the best medium armor and shield that you can find your weapon doesn't matter in particular um because you're mostly going to be casting spells in combat so just take whatever decent one-handed melee weapon you can find and make sure you have a crossbow equipped with 14 dexterity you won't be doing a ton of damage with um with your crossbow attacks or a ton of or hitting that often with your crossbow attacks but if you check whether you're more likely to hit with a crossbow attack or a sacred flame then you can get g a little value there just alternating between the two at early levels also of course as with any spellcaster anything that increases your spell DC is incredibly valuable and you should equip those whenever you find them finally I do have to mention one item that I mentioned in my previous cleric guide uh that actually does not work quite the way I think I thought it did so I'm issuing a correction here on the staff of Arcane blessing I said that this doubled your bless because that's what the tool tip says uh it bless grants an additional 1 D4 to saving throws and weapon attack roles and add and an additional 2 D4 to spell attack roles I read that as it adds that those to it it you know gives you an additional but actually what this means is it replaces the effect of your bless with that so it only increases your spell attack roles it's still a very valuable tool with a warlock Ally or wizard Ally casting scorching rays and you can use it with this character you can use it on yourself to increase your scorching Ray uh accuracy and so I still think that you should keep this staff around and keep it equipped but it is not as broken as I thought it was still very valuable for you with scorching Ray for warlocks with eldrich blast and so on but uh just thought I should get that correction out there into the world all right my friends I hope that you have enjoyed this look at the best support cleric in Boulders Gate 3 if you have then of course feel free to leave a comment and uh hit like on the video because that helps me a ton with the algorithm and you can subscribe to my channel for more balers Gate 3 build guides and other strategy game content cheers my friends and I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 7,299

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

Id: _ie5L9hoCBw

Length: 29min 11sec (1751 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023