Are Priest Spiritual Weapons good enough to be used from beginning to start?

[Stardusk78]

After many episodes of restartistis I considering rolling a melee/attack Priest, either going Magran or Berath. Are spiritual weapons good enough such that you can use them throughout the game?

[Retro1210]

You can try, but my attempts weren't that fun. Aside from Spiritual weapon, which is decent at best, priest spells are generally not that great. You just end up spamming devotions of the faithful because its OP, and better than 90 of the other spells on the list. Multi with paladin if you want to do more melee I suppose.

[Bamsmacked88]

If you go as a Paladin/Priest Berath combo I guess the weapon goes well with the whole fire damage theme. I haven't tried it yet myself though.

[Odd Hermit]

No definitely not.

 

Wael for the wizard illusion spells is the best choice for any priest / melee multiclass, and I'd never bother with a pure priest with the state of the class at the moment. I just take Xoti as Monk/Priest 'cause her unique items are good and the execute spell she gets is decent enough.

[Gromnir]

You can try, but my attempts weren't that fun. Aside from Spiritual weapon, which is decent at best, priest spells are generally not that great. You just end up spamming devotions of the faithful because its OP, and better than 90 of the other spells on the list. Multi with paladin if you want to do more melee I suppose.

non empowered pillars of fire were doing +700 damage for Gromnir, and salvation of time were adding an extra 20 seconds to effects such as lightning strikes ('cause swift flurry is too exploitive) while the various heal spells were literal life savers for a number o' our glass cannons.  seal spells could be cast before combat (and even empowered) so as not to count towards per encounter usage... and am thinking warding seal interrupt quality is overlooked.  minor avatar and cleansing flame is as good as folks would expect from the description.  curious, but am suspecting something is wrong with pillar of faith as it all too frequent hits and crits for no damage, but it has nice damage and effects as well as a highly useful range.

 

it is true the litany for _______ spells is far too situational for any save specific multiclass builds to choose (e.g. a shaman berserker taking litany of the spirit) and am trying to figure out the thinking behind the tier 9 abilities as they do not appear proportional useful.  however, there is many useful priest spells and we got considerable use from our spiritual weapon choice.  sure, the blast rod for a priest o' wael is silly powerful, but our priest o' eothas contemplative got more than a little use outta the flail.  yeah, now that Gromnir knows the location o' ideal weapons for our projected priest builds, there is less motivation to choose a spiritual weapon, but for our first playthrough (and most folks only play these games once) the spiritual weapon were undoubted worth the investment. 

 

our biggest gripe with priests is we do not foresee much variation o' priest play.  there is good priest spells, and there is also bad priest spells.  unfortunate, the priest spell catalog ain't deep enough to result in hard choices at level-up.  am always gonna take the same abilities save for the case o' a few unique multiclass builds.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Myrtillo]

After many episodes of restartistis I considering rolling a melee/attack Priest, either going Magran or Berath. Are spiritual weapons good enough such that you can use them throughout the game?

 

They are going to be inferior to legendaries because of the lack of effects. (Some uniques weapons have insane effects).

They will however deal great damage thanks to the 50% lash. It is not the optimal min-max way of playing your characters, but it will be more than sufficient to take on what the game throws at you, while looking badass and having a ton of fun.

 

And playing a single class priest is exactly the same: there will be some suboptimal stuff, however you gain access to the awesome incarnate spell, and that alone justifies the class in my opinion.

For Berath, you summon the Pallid Knight and the Usher. aka a decent frontliner and a priest that can cast all the good spells of berath with as many casts as you. Which means you can have 4 symbols of Berath out at the same time.

I assume Magran's incarnate is at least as cool, didn't test it.

 

This forum is full of powerbuilders trying to talk people out of playing fun options, you don't have to listen to them. To answer your question: A priest of Magran or a Priest of Berath will complete the game without issue in Veteran and PotD if you play it properly. It will not steamroll as much as some classes, but will do great and provide a fun experience.

[NocturnalTrance]

I absolutely loved playing a priest of Magran for my first and main playthrough, PotD. Cannot recommend it enough. The spiritual weapon did not lose much of its effectiveness, although fighting with Magran's favor later in the game was a little more effective. In early to middle late levels it is amazing however.

[Boeroer]

From beginning to start? Sure! That's only a very limited span though.

 

The unique weapons in the game are pretty hilarious when it comes to their enchantments.

 

But the spiritual weapons are still good. They scale with level, sparing you a lot of money and resources and the 50% lash is very good. And I guess we'll see a lot of (badly needed) item nerfs while the spiritual weapons might stay untouched.

 

Although pure priests can use very powerful spells later on, pure melee priest is a bit boring (for me) because there are no special attack abilities. Also Minor Avatar is a bit disappointing atm. I didn't use Magran's Favor yet.

 

Paladin/Priest is more fun for me just because of FoD (lashes stack and the bonus ACC helps a lot) - or basically any class with some nice melee abilities. Rogue's high dmg bonuses pair very well with the 50% lash of the spiritual weapons. Had some testing fun with a Priest of Berath/Streetfighter.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Boeroer

[drchocapic]

The spiritual weapons are fine honestly (and they look pretty cool), it's just that you'll find unique weapons that are far more powerful pretty quick in the game.

 

As for playing a melee priest, I found it pretty boring to be honest. They have some good spells but you rarely feel like you're doing yourself a favour by casting them in melee. I'd go with a multi-class in that case so that you'd get some fun melee focused abilities to use in combat, but to each their own honestly.

[Lokithecat]

If the summoned weapons are Universal, there might be build gimmicks that can shine with it... that said very niche, and wouldn't be some OP thing, more a neat gimmick.