With 12 classes and 46 subclasses, creating your character in Baldur’s Gate 3 requires careful consideration.
A few weeks ago, Larian released statistics on the popularity of every class and what each class’ most popular subclass is. The game’s least popular class is the cleric, and the cleric’s most popular subclass is the Tempest cleric.
The most popular classes, meanwhile, are the paladin, sorcerer and fighter. The popularity of paladin could be one of the reasons why cleric is so unpopular with the perception of paladin being “a cleric who does damage.” While paladin is a powerful choice, the cleric should not be underestimated.
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Clerics are very adaptable, with seven different subclasses to choose from. Though everything is viable, the best cleric domains are likely life and light. The Life domain focuses on healing, gaining early access to Revivify and Mass Cure Wounds.
Light, meanwhile, has devastating offensive abilities like Fireball. The core feature of Light, Warding Flare, is extremely powerful as it allows the cleric to impose disadvantage on attacks made by an enemy. The improved version of this spell allows the cleric to use their reaction to impose disadvantage on an enemy attacking an ally.
Both Light and Life gain free access to Spirit Guardians, an amazing zone control spell. The most popular subclass, the tempest cleric, is still strong but not quite as powerful as the above two.
Tempest is all about offence, so it should come as no surprise that players gravitate towards it. This variation of cleric uses the power of the elements, with powerful area-of-effect spells like Call Lightning and Ice Storm that can control an entire battle.
RPG players don’t tend to pick support or healing classes, preferring instead to do large amounts of damage which could explain the unpopularity of clerics. Another contributing factor could be that 51.3% of players choose to romance Shadowheart who herself is a cleric.
If you’re thinking about playing a cleric on your next playthrough, why not check our dedicated cleric build guide?
Baldur’s Gate 3
23 years on from the release of the seminal RPG, Baldur’s Gate 2, the third game in the series has been developed by Larian Studios (of Divinity: Original Sin fame). Set over 120 years after the events of the last game, Baldur’s Gate 3 tasks you and your party of heroes to fight off a mind flayer invasion of Faerun, while seeking a way to remove the tadpole in your brain that’s slowly turning you into the enemy…
