Would you rather have a Cleric, Alchemist, Bard or Witch in the party?

[Grandlounge]

I like the figure out what I am doing for three rounds of combat. Healing, though important, is an out of combat role in pathfinder without some specialized builds. Buffing is good but your not normally buffing late into a fight so you need a second thing to do. Build 1 and 3 are super general if you build those ways you will be fine. 2 is more unique but is a very different version of a body guard healing build.

Build 1

Reach Cleric. Pick a 2 good melee domains grab a reach weapon, divine favor, power attack, combat reflexes. Mithril breast plate will be good especially if you pick the travel domain. The build is straight forward.

Build 2

This is a support build I rather like. Play a separatist cleric. This gives you access to an other domain beyond what your god offers. Take the feather domain and the eagle domain (or any other domain combo that give a familiar and animal companion). The familiar is a protector and the animal is bodyguard. Use shield companion on your animal companion and shield other on softer pcs. Now you're sharing damage 4 ways ally, animal companion, yourself, familiar and you have 2 extra channel targets. There are feats like fey fondling to improve healing.

Build 3

Pick 2 domains with good offensive spells. Have high wisdom. Buff spell round 1 offensive casting round 2 and 3. Finally heal outside of combat.

[DeathlessOne]

Grandlounge wrote:

Build 2

This is a support build I rather like. Play a separatist cleric. This gives you access to an other domain beyond what your god offers. Take the feather domain and the eagle domain (or any other domain combo that give a familiar and animal companion). The familiar is a protector and the animal is bodyguard. Use shield companion on your animal companion and shield other on softer pcs. Now you're sharing damage 4 ways ally, animal companion, yourself, familiar and you have 2 extra channel targets. There are feats like fey fondling to improve healing.

I KNEW there was a reason I liked the idea of a separatist cleric. Just could not put my finger on it till now.

[Grandlounge]

Glad you like it. This build is really fun. Drastically reducing the ability of the enemy to focus fire, making good use of immediate actions, boosting AC with aoos, move action quicken channels, standard for whatever makes for really impressive action economy that helps the whole team.

[Merellin]

So, We keep fighting our way through the dungeon getting closer and closer to the end, After wich my Cavalier will depart for home and every session I find myself thinking "Man, I realy should have been a cleric so I could patch up the party after this, so I can fix this level drain, So I can cure this disease, So I can heal this guy so he dont die.." so yeah.. Cleric it is. Now to think of a good fun idea. I might give that Reach Cleric idea a try, So I can stay back behind the other melees and still strike and heal and such.

[Kimera757]

Merellin wrote:

As the title asks, What one of the four classes would you rather have in your party?

The cleric is flat-out best at condition relief. Not even the oracle can match it (one level behind, and might not know the spell in question, and might not have an available scroll).

In terms of emergency healing, the cleric is the best of the four, but the witch is really close. I've found Channel Energy to be quite good at healing, but it takes feats and Charisma to work properly. My last cleric character gave up Strength (using spellcasting instead) for higher Charisma, so I could dish out some emergency heals, plus the AoE makes the after-combat healing pretty efficient.

In terms of between combat healing, all you really need is a Wand of Cure Light Wounds. An evil arcane caster is actually slightly better at this, if your DM likes certain non-core rules.

In terms of other spells, clerics don't have enough of a "theme". There's too much option paralysis. I found picking spells somewhat easy for my cleric only because I was picking the types of spells a 4e devoted cleric would use. I avoided buffing and self-buffing spells, but a more "standard" cleric could have done a lot with those.

I guess I don't find bards all that useful prior to 8th-level. I like Inspire Courage, but the bonus is basically invisible to me until it reaches +2. Bards have a lot of other spells and abilities, but I focus on Inspire Courage because it's unique, unlike the other abilities which are basically sorcerer with a lot of enchantment, illusion and light-effect spells.

I find alchemists more self-focused than clerics or bards, and I find the witch very useful at "hard control" (Sleep Hex is probably too useful) but I keep thinking that a wizard could still easily replace one. They just have a somewhat broader spell list but no healing.