I'm interested in getting the relatively new Heroes expansion and I have been taking a look at each of the hero types. To me, the most underpowered hero looks like the cleric. His skill to ignore a hit as a champion seems useless as I can't see him battling with his 1 die mace too often. His other abilities are nice, but they seem too expensive in lore cost to sustain for very long. What are all of your impressions?

I'm not sure if this forum lets you edit your posts as I can't see a button around anywere so I'll jsut post again.

I just wanted to also know if anyone is playing with any house rules regarding the cleric as well.

I haven't delved into heroes much yet (still champing at the bit to get Goblin and Dwarf armies fleshed out and CtA decks all around), but I do have an opinion about the relative strengths of the Heroes. Rightly or wrongly, the Cleric is the consensus most powerful Lore Master (I believe it is the Wizard by a significant margin - though that is tempered if Battle Savvy rules are in place), and therefore it makes sense in a game balance manner to have the cleric hero be the weakest of the five. Having the Warrior be the strongest also makes sense as the Warrior is considered the weakest of the Lore Masters (neck and neck with the Rogue, likely).

Quick and possibly unnecessary adendum: When I say weakest of the Lore Masters, I am taking into account reasons for placing tokens/increasing the level of the lore master as well. There is little incentive to take additional levels in the Warrior. I consider Assault the most powerful card in the lore deck, and Mass Shield is very solid as well, but even taking those cards into account, the offerings of the Warrior, in my opinion, are below those of the other three card-based Lore Masters.

I agree with Toddrew about the reason the cleric hero is weaker. It does provide incentive to use other heroes, and therefore build a different Lore Council. Before heroes, someone would always play a 3rd level Cleric on their Lore Council. Now, with heroes, we hardly ever choose the cleric. That may or may not be a good thing, but at least it mixed things up. Keep in mind, if you are able to keep your cleric hero alive and survive long enough to ascend to the Lore Council, that would be a very great advantage.

The thing I like about heroes is that before I started using a wizard, I assumed I would pick certain skills. For instance, I thought I would use Ball Lightning first. But when I drew my first artifact, I drew a very powerful potion. So I choose Alchemist instead. It has worked out great for my hero. As to the cleric, it does seem that the cost for most of his cards are too high. But maybe the answer is to supplement his skill cards with some of the generic skills.