Which cleric subclasses are best and what are they good at?
The 2024 Player’s Handbook has gifted us 4 refreshed cleric subclasses to play with (with more coming in the future). These are:
- Life Domain – Possess enhanced healing powers.
- Light Domain – Blessed with greater illuminating magic including higher damage spellcasting and information gathering.
- Trickery Domain – Can create an illusory double to distract and cause havoc.
- War Domain – Combat specialists trained for war.
But the question is, which should you choose and which one is best? While much of that may depend on the character you want to build, below I’ve given advice on which subclasses work best for which roles, how they work and how good they are as well assessing which I think is the best of the bunch.
Life Domain
What are they?
Preservers of life and vitality, life domain clerics are expert healers, capable of healing more often and more powerfully than other clerics. They are also adept at removing problematic conditions.
Key abilities
- Disciple of life (lv3) – Grant a small amount of extra healing with your healing spells.
- Preserve life (lv3) – Expend a use of your channel divinity to heal bloodied creatures.
- Blessed healer (lv6) – Heal yourself a little bit when you heal others.
- Supreme healing (Lv17) – Grant maximum healing from spells and channel divinity features.
What are they good at?
Healing better than any other subclass. They’re also pretty good at keeping themselves topped up with hit points with self-healing. Life clerics also get spells that can remove problematic conditions.
How effective are they?
Prolific healing is a powerful, but often underutilised ability in D&D. The life domain takes this a step up from your average cleric and makes you a more powerful healer with some top healing spells and enhancements to your healing.
Unfortunately, the impact of these features is only OK until you hit level 17. The spell options are strong, but preserve life feels needlessly restrictive, disciple of life is decent, but small in impact and requires very frequent healing spells castings to be of worth and blessed healer is decent, but again, small in impact each time.
Supreme healer however, is an outstanding feature, but as it only kicks in at level 17, many players simply won’t experience it.
For me, while the light domain is perhaps your best healer subclass out there, all of this only makes it decent compared to other subclasses.
Score: 3/5
Light domain
What are they?
Clerics that receive the powers of illumination from their gods. This might involve the physical illumination through light or fire, but could also be mental illumination through knowledge. Light domain clerics tend to be more powerful spellcasters, capable of dealing more spell damage than most clerics.
Key abilities
- Radiance of the dawn (lv3) – Use your channel divinity to create a burst of light that gets rid of darkness and harms enemies.
- Warding flare (lv3) – Use your reaction to cause disadvantage on an attack roll.
- Improved warding flare (lv6) – Restore warding flare uses on a short rest now and grant temporary hit points when using it.
- Corona of light (lv17) – Cause enemies to have disadvantage on saving throws against your spells that cause fire or radiant damage.
What are they good at?
Gathering information and dealing high damage from their spells. They can also protect others as well.
How effective are they?
The light domain is a pretty good subclass. The spell options are strong and fullfil some areas ordinarily lacking in the cleric’s wheelhouse (specifically fireball or a similar AoE spells). Warding flare is also a solid protective spell too which by level 6, can be an almost continuously used feature.
All of this makes for an effective, spellcasting damage dealer that can also provide healing and buffs on the side.
Score: 4/5
Trickery domain
What are they?
Worshippers of secretive, discreet or mischievous deities. Trickery clerics can create an illusory double to aid them in combat.
Key abilities
- Blessing of the trickster (lv3) – Grant advantage on stealth checks.
- Invoke duplicity (lv3) – Create an illusory double of yourself than can move, distract and have spells cast from its space.
- Trickster’s transportation (lv6) – You can swap places with your illusory double.
- Improved duplicity (lv17) – Your illusory double can now help allies get advantage on attack rolls too. When invoke duplicity ends, it also grants healing.
What are they good at?
Staying safe, sneaking around and utilising some of your more powerful, close range spells in better and safer ways.
How effective are they?
I fully expected to not think much of the trickery domain subclass. The 2014 needed some upgrades and stealth and mischief really didn’t feel like a good fit for a cleric. Thankfully, I was wrong.
The trickery domain is a good, solid subclass that enables decent stealthiness. But its main appeal is through your illusory double, which if used right, can be highly effective.
Imagine being able to use spirit guardians without having to throw yourself into harm’s way. Or even, extend its influence by being able to both move and teleport in the same turn. You can also use it as a distraction in stealth segments or simply giving advantage on attack rolls.
I think the trickery domain is a solid subclass with some really unique mechanics that, if used well, can be really impactful on the game.
Score: 4/5
War domain
What are they?
Worshippers of gods of war and battle, these clerics are combat-ready, capable of combining spellcasting with weapon attacks.
Key abilities
- Guided strike (lv3) – Add +10 to a creature’s miss, potentially turning it into a hit.
- War priest (lv3) – Make attacks with your bonus action.
- War god’s blessing (lv6) – Expend a use of your channel divinity to cast shield of faith or spiritual weapon without using concentration.
- Avatar of battle (lv17) – Gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage.
What are they good at?
Dealing more damage than other clerics and surviving a bit longer.
How effective are they?
The war domain is pretty good at what it does, managing to be both more durable and deal more damage than other clerics. Your bonus action should often be occupied making weapon attacks while you’ll usually want to be using your action on spells.
The ability to use shield of faith and spiritual weapon without concentration is a big buff. It means you can either make bonus action attacks at distance, or benefit from greater protection while still being able to activate some of your best spells (like spirit guardians). It also means shield of faith won’t deactivate when you get hit. It also means you can cast these spells with your bonus action and, because you didn’t use a spell slot, still cast a levelled spell with your action.
All of this makes the war domain a solid subclass and your most battle-ready cleric available.
Score: 4/5
Which Cleric subclass is best?
The cleric subclasses are some of the most closely balanced in the 2024 Player’s Handbook with little separating them in power. As such, for the most part, I’d suggest simply playing whichever cleric fits your play style and character best.
Having said that, I do think that the war domain edges it for me slightly with better durability and easy to come by extra damage, I think it’s the best cleric subclass for D&D 2024 so far, but only just.
Which cleric subclass do you think is the best? Let me know about it in the comments below.
Spotlight on D&D 2024
All the latest updates on what’s changing with the 2024 rules revision.
