I think that food makes clerics more fun and relevant. You get to use your spells proactively instead of having to save up to healbot between encounters. Now I can use aggressive spells and buffs way more freely than I could without food. It feels as good as a Pathfinder cleric where healing is basically a separate resource from spells.
As far as advantage goes, yes bless is slightly worse but its still absolutely amazing. +1d4 is still a huge increase to the chance of succeeding a roll and you get to apply it to many many rolls per casting. I think it's just hard to notice because we don't see every roll we're making. Bringing downed teammates backup is the best use of healing word by a ton anyways.
Shadowheart is very far from optimal, but I still found her incredibly useful.
Hard agree. I think someone pointed out in another thread that she uses the default half-elf cleric stats that are in the CC if you pick that class/race so hopefully later on Larian actually gives her an appropriate stat roll that makes more sense for her domain and backstory. But like, besides that, I take her everywhere, I find Bless and Aid to be immensely useful. Also Guiding Bolt does a crapstack of damage if it lands? Like holy crap. I gave her an axe that does fire damage too so if she does end up in melee with someone she can actually do some damage to them. That's just me, though. I like it. Some of the food could probably weigh a bit less but other than that? I dig being able to eat and potion. More wiggle room that way.
