Draw Steel Censor Class Guide: In-Depth Tactical Analysis

Introduction

Hey folks, Aestus here. This article is the first in a series covering each of the nine base classes in Draw Steel’s Heroes book with an in-depth tactical analysis. If you’re more of a fan of my video game CRPG content, Draw Steel is a tactical tabletop RPG that is fantastic. I am obsessed with it. If you enjoy my CRPG content, you’d probably love playing this game, and there’s really no better time to get into it than right now at the beginning of this series.

A note on what this series is and isn’t. It is not a tier list. I won’t be ranking each class against the others. Rather, I’ll be looking at each class individually, analyzing its abilities, and giving my opinions on how it plays tactically and how you can build it to get the most out of the role you want. It’s also not exactly a build guide, although you’ll definitely get build advice. My main goal is to make learning these classes more digestible. If you’re like me, I get a lot of value and have a lot more fun in tactical games when I have real system mastery. But actually learning the classes can be a slog, especially in a game where learning mostly means reading rules. So the plan is to read through all of the abilities and explain them to you in a more fun and digestible way.

That said, I’m not aiming this at a beginner audience. I’ll be referencing terms like the slowed condition, heroic resource, and triggered actions, and I expect you to understand the basics. If you don’t, you can always look them up in the Draw Steel rules compendium, and I’ll be linking helpful beginner guide videos made by other creators in the video description.

Summary Opinion

Today we’re covering the Censor, Draw Steel’s holy warrior class. It’s a lot like Draw Steel’s version of a D&D paladin: a holy warrior trained in arms and armor so they can smite the enemies of their church or creed.

From a tactical perspective, I consider the Censor to be a frontline alternative to the Conduit, offering necessary reactive healing and cleansing while actively locking down and grinding down single-target priority enemies. In general, it’s hard for the Censor to compete with the Conduit, which I consider one of the most powerful classes in the game (we’ll talk about that more in the next article), but the Censor fills the healing and cleansing role well enough for most compositions and in a sufficiently different way to be tactically interesting.

Build-wise, the most exploitable strategy I’ve found centers around the class’s starting five-cost ability, Purifying Fire, combined with holy damage proccing on Judgment. Team compositions can also build around this by stacking fire damage. You get as many instances of fire damage as possible, and the result gives both the Censor individually and the Censor’s team a very strong damage strategy for killing bosses and solos.

At Echelon 3 and 4, Censors do get more tantalizing and exploitable options, but these occur late enough that I can’t consider them primary draws of the class.

In terms of subclasses, the Censor offers three sufficiently unique options. That said, I greatly prefer the Oracle. It’s the most tactically interesting of the three, with the Paragon being a close second and the Exorcist a distant third. We’ll talk about that in more detail as we go through the class.

Starting Stats and Wrath

Censors are a Might and Presence based class, so these stats will progress to maximum as you level for free. I find these to be pretty good defensive attributes to max out, especially Might. In my experience, a lot of monsters — both in the official monsters book and the kind a Director would homebrew — tend to have a lot of Might-targeting abilities. There’s really no way to avoid it. So, good defensive starting attributes.

The Censor also has great starting Stamina: 21 base Stamina + 9 per level. This is a standard Stamina progression for tanky classes (the Fury, for example, also starts with 21 and gains 9 per level). But what sets the Censor apart is their 12 starting recoveries. The Fury and other tanky classes usually start with 10. The Censor is the only class to get 12, and this is incredible. Recoveries are exceptionally valuable on this class for reasons we’ll discuss shortly, but just in general, this makes the Censor a tankier base class than anything else in the game except maybe the Tactician depending on kit choices.

Wrath as a Heroic Resource

Wrath is the Censor’s heroic resource. Like all heroic resources, you have a base generation of roughly 2 per round. There are Law heroic resource classes and Chaos heroic resource classes. Law classes like the Censor get a flat +2 each turn. Chaos classes roll a 1d3 at the beginning of their turns. A 1d3 averages 2, so in theory these are equivalent — but one has a chance to spike while also having a chance for a drought.

To be frank, I consider the flat +2 for Law classes to just be tactically better. Predictability is a tactical value on its own. It’s always better to have something predictably happen than to chaotically and unpredictably happen. So I’m already liking Wrath for the fact that it’s a Law flat +2.

Wrath Riders

Every class has two “riders,” which are additional ways to generate heroic resource each round. You want riders that are reliable and within your control. This allows you to control the rate at which you build your heroic resource, which is good from a tactical perspective but also just from a fun perspective — the game is more enjoyable when you have more choices and more currency to buy awesome abilities.

The Censor’s two riders are:

The first time each combat round that a creature judged by you deals damage to you, you gain 1 Wrath.
The first time each combat round that you deal damage to a creature judged by you, you gain 1 Wrath.

Notice that the second rider is completely within your control. You attack your judged target on your turn, you get +1 Wrath. Simple. However, the first rider is not within your control — it depends on the enemy (or your Director) choosing to attack you. The monster could choose to run away and attack a different creature, and then you don’t get that +1 Wrath per round that you’re counting on.

All of this is to say that Wrath is slightly subpar as heroic resources go. It’s mostly in your control, but there’s this one element that’s technically outside it. Now, some of you might be thinking: practically speaking, it kind of is in your control because the whole point of this class is locking down enemies so they can’t move away, and if they can’t move away, they’re forced to attack you. That’s true, but you also have to spend Wrath to lock targets down that way. You’re spending Wrath to get Wrath. Overall, it’s a net disadvantage compared to other heroic resources in the game.

Judgment

Since both Wrath riders involve judged creatures, let’s talk about Judgment, the Censor’s class maneuver.

In summary, you use a maneuver to mark a target with Judgment. While the target is marked, every time it uses a main action within your line of effect, you can use a free triggered action to deal holy damage equal to twice your Presence score (so 4 damage at Echelon 1). Effectively, you’re putting an uncleansable damage-over-time effect on a single enemy. Over a long fight, you will grind them down. It’s also holy damage, which is critical for synergy with Purifying Fire.

When a creature judged by you is reduced to 0 Stamina, you can use a free triggered action to transfer Judgment to a new target. So you use one maneuver at the beginning of a fight, and as long as you’re focusing targets down one at a time (which is usually what you want to do), you only ever spend that one maneuver.

Judgment Bonus Effects (1 Wrath Each)

There are four additional effects you can unlock by spending 1 Wrath:

Lockdown: When an adjacent creature judged by you starts to shift (a special movement that normally avoids attacks of opportunity), you make a melee free strike and their speed becomes 0. This is one of the few ways to get positional lockdown in Draw Steel, a game where you don’t get that capability by default. I value this extremely highly for 1 Wrath.
Bane: You can apply a bane to a judged creature’s roll. Not worth the cost unless it’s the second bane on the target. Banes are strong when you have two on a target, not so much with just one. Situational.
Potency Reduction: A creature judged by you within 10 squares that uses an ability with a potency — you can reduce the potency by 1. This is reactive, but when it triggers, it’s potentially fight-saving. You can turn a crippling effect into a whiff.
Taunt: If you damage a creature judged by you with a melee ability, the creature is taunted by you until the end of your next turn. I consider this worth 1 Wrath. Combined with the lockdown effect, you can lock a target down, force them to attack you, and get your Wrath back through your rider. That’s how this class plays.

Judgment Order Effects (Subclass Bonuses)

Each subclass adds an additional free effect to Judgment whenever you cast it — no Wrath cost required.

Exorcist: Teleport a number of squares equal to twice your Presence score (4 at Echelon 1, scaling up to 10). This is primarily a gap-closer — you need to get on the target to lock them down. There’s also a hidden benefit: teleport movement cleanses certain conditions like prone and restrained. Very good.

Oracle: Deal holy damage equal to twice your Presence score to the judged creature. This effectively applies an initial tick of the damage-over-time whenever you cast the ability. It might seem the weakest of the three, but it becomes the strongest if you run a Purifying Fire build, because every instance of holy damage feeds that engine.

Paragon: Vertically pull the judged creature a number of squares equal to twice your Presence score. This works as a gap-closer (you’re pulling them to you), displacement, and a source of fall damage since it’s a vertical pull. You can angle them upward as you pull, guaranteeing they fall 4+ squares for extra damage. This might seem like the best of both worlds — displacement, gap-closing, and damage — but because the damage isn’t holy, it’s not as exploitable with Purifying Fire.

The key takeaway: all three are excellent uses of a maneuver. You can legitimately spam Judgment every round just for these free effects, and that’s awesome.

Kits

I won’t discuss kits for every class in this series, but I want to highlight the valuable options for the Censor.

Shining Armor might seem like the default: a shield, heavy armor, sword-and-board knight. Kits give you stats and a signature ability. The signature for Shining Armor is a taunt, which is something you can kind of do anyway through Judgment. The real draw is the +12 Stamina bonus. Stamina is very good on Censors because more Stamina increases your recovery value, and as we’ll see, recovery value is critically important for this class.

However, I really feel Warrior Priest is the standout choice — probably the kit you want 95% of the time. It gives +9 Stamina (less than 12, but still a lot for a kit), plus a fantastic signature ability that deals holy damage (synergizing with Purifying Fire) and marks the target with a damage weakness, which is a team-wide damage buff when you focus the target. Notice how even the damage weakness from the kit synergizes with Judgment’s damage-over-time. All around, a very powerful kit.

You could also consider a ranged kit (Rapid Fire, Ranger, Sniper, etc.) since Censors don’t get many ranged options and having at least one ranged attack is important. But Warrior Priest is my strong default recommendation.

My Life for Yours

My Life for Yours is the Censor’s triggered action, and it’s really interesting. It’s a ranged trigger for yourself or one ally. It procs whenever the target starts their turn or takes damage. The effect: you, the Censor, spend a recovery, and the target regains Stamina equal to your recovery value. Then you can spend 1 Wrath to also cleanse an effect on the target.

Your recovery value is likely higher than your allies’ and you have more recoveries than they do, so this is a strong situational heal. There’s also a meta-tactical value: over the course of an adventuring day, it’s common for some party members to take heavy damage and burn through recoveries while others have six left. The teammate with six recoveries has to take a Respite to keep the group safe, but it feels like those recoveries were wasted. You are never in that situation as a Censor. Every recovery you have, every Respite, will be put to use. Recoveries are just worth more on you.

This also means your teammates can make riskier builds. A Fury, for example, can build around taking a lot of damage to deal a lot of damage — a strategy normally gated by recovery limits. Having a Censor jailbreaks that hard gate. It’s a big reason to pick this class.

The Spammability Problem

While My Life for Yours is very strong, it has one weakness: it’s not spammable. You want a triggered action that’s likely to trigger every round and always provides value. If you don’t use your triggered action in a round, that’s a whole action slot wasted. My Life for Yours isn’t spammable because (1) there might be rounds where nobody needs healing, and (2) you can run out of recoveries, at which point you have no triggered action at all.

For this reason, it’s good to build alternative triggered action options through your ancestry:

Devil (Glowing Eyes): A spammable triggered action. Whenever you take damage from a creature (something you want to happen for Wrath generation anyway), you deal 1d10 + your level in psychic damage. Great for 1 ancestry point.
High Elf (Glamour of Terror): Whenever you take damage from a creature, that creature is frightened until the end of their next turn. More situational, but particularly strong on an Exorcist Censor, which has abilities that stack effects on top of the frightened condition.
Human (Staying Power): Two additional recoveries. Incredibly powerful because Censors use every recovery they have and are already incentivized to maximize recovery value.
Hakaan: Also makes a great Censor. There are so many strong ancestry choices here that I’m honestly not sure which is optimal.

You can also pick up triggered action heroic abilities as you level, which I’ll highlight as we continue.

Domain Features

Domains function like a secondary subclass element, representing your church or creed. They give you features at multiple levels. I have a separate detailed spreadsheet ranking all of the domain features (linked in the video description), since these features are shared with the Conduit class and we’ll reference them in that analysis as well.

The best option for the Censor is the Life domain. It gives healing boosts that increase your recovery value, which is exactly what this class wants for all the reasons we’ve discussed. If you really want to optimize, Life is my recommendation, but it’s not so critical that you can’t pick whatever domain appeals to you from a roleplay perspective.

Other strong options:

War — quite strong, especially in the early game, though a bit boring in practice
Storm — really fun and interesting, offering flight (which is very hard to get and extremely strong)
Sun — can be quite good
Trickery — really good late game

1st Level Abilities

Signature Abilities

You get two signatures: one from your class and one from your kit. The point of a signature is that it’s the most efficient way to spend your main action without spending heroic resource. Sometimes you have no Wrath to spend, or you’re saving it for an ultimate ability. That means you want your signatures to be broadly useful.

My method for selecting signatures: pick one that’s spammable (useful in 80-90% of turns), then use your second slot for a more niche but situationally powerful option.

If you picked Warrior Priest, you already have Weakening Brand as your kit signature. It deals holy damage (synergizing with Purifying Fire), marks a damage weakness (buffing your whole team’s damage on the focused target), and even synergizes with Judgment’s damage-over-time since that damage also benefits from the weakness. This is your spammable bread-and-butter.

That frees you up to pick something niche, and for that I recommend Every Step Death. It’s a ranged ability (I like having at least one ranged signature), deals decent psychic damage for type variety, and applies a condition where the next time the target willingly moves, they take 1 psychic damage per square moved. If you force-move or teleport a target to a position where they have to walk back, that could be 10 damage on a signature. You won’t hit that situation every time, but you don’t need to — just use it at those key moments and spam Weakening Brand the rest of the time.

If you want a more spammable second option instead, both Back Blasphemer and Your Allies Cannot Save You are solid choices. Both deal holy damage and push targets in an AoE. Back Blasphemer is probably the more optimal pick, but it’s a minimal difference.

Heroic Abilities: 3-Wrath Options

The standout at this cost is Repent. It’s a single-target, range 10 ability dealing holy damage with an Intuition-targeting dazed condition. Dazed is probably the best base condition in the game. Being able to apply it to Intuition-weak enemies for 3 Wrath is an extremely efficient use of resources. It’s situational, but the situation comes up in most combats. The Censor doesn’t have many strong crowd control abilities, so picking one this good at 3 Wrath is an important choice.

If that’s not what you want, Driving Assault is also strong — it deals damage, pushes a target, and gives you more movement to close distance and lock down a position. Very solid for 3 Wrath.

Heroic Abilities: 5-Wrath Options

This is where we get to the ability I’ve been building toward this entire analysis.

Purifying Fire is the most exploitable ability on the Censor at early levels. I rank it S tier. It’s the kind of ability that should shape your entire build.

For 5 Wrath, it’s a melee 1 or ranged 5 ability targeting one creature. You deal holy damage and then, Might-targeting, apply a condition that grants the target fire weakness scaling at 3, 5, or 7 depending on the tier you land. Furthermore, while the target has this fire weakness, you can choose to have your abilities deal fire damage to the target instead of holy damage.

This is why I’ve been highlighting holy damage throughout this analysis. Every time in the Censor’s kit that you deal holy damage — if you’re dealing it to a target with the Purifying Fire debuff — you swap it to fire and increase the damage by that weakness value.

Let’s walk through how this plays out:

You hit Purifying Fire on a target, applying fire weakness (let’s say tier 3: +7).
You use Judgment as a maneuver to mark them. Now every time they use a main action, they take 4 base holy damage + 7 fire weakness = 11 damage for free on their turn.
If you’re an Oracle, you deal an initial burst of holy damage when casting Judgment, getting another tick.
On subsequent rounds, Weakening Brand deals holy damage — another proc.
Repent deals holy damage — another proc.
If your teammates have abilities that deal fire damage, they capitalize on that weakness too.

Altogether, this gives you and your team a damage strategy against leaders and solos that is incredibly powerful. It becomes your central method of dealing damage, and it’s what you should build your character and your team composition around.

The caveat: Purifying Fire targets Might, which is a commonly high attribute, especially on bosses, solos, and leaders. Landing it can be difficult. If you’re building around this, encourage your teammates to build ways to give you surges so you can boost the potency.

If you don’t want to build around Purifying Fire, or your team doesn’t have buy-in to the concept, a good backup is Censored. For 5 Wrath, it deals some damage, and if the target is not a leader or solo and is made winded (reduced to half health), they are killed outright. Against elite-style enemies, this is extremely high value and very evocative of what the Censor is supposed to be.

2nd Level

Second level is heavily subclass-dependent. You get two order features (one combat, one out-of-combat) and a choice between two 5-Wrath abilities based on your subclass.

Order Features

Oracle — It Was Foretold: At the start of an encounter, you can take one main action before any other creatures and before your first turn. This is the standout feature at this level, and it’s where your build choices really pay off.

If you took Every Step Death as a signature, you’re locked and loaded. Since you’re only getting a main action (no movement, no Wrath generation), you want a ranged signature. Every Step Death delivers — it deals damage at range, and then when the enemy moves toward you on their turn, they take even more damage. Fantastic synergy.

Even without a ranged signature, you can always downgrade a main action into a maneuver (to cast Judgment), or downgrade it into a move action to close distance. There’s always something useful to do with It Was Foretold, but if you specifically build around it, you get exceptionally efficient opening actions. It’s a straight injection into your action economy, and that is always incredible.

Exorcist — Saint’s Vigilance: Any creature judged by you can’t use the hide maneuver. Against creatures that exploit hiding (like Wels), this is very good, but most fights won’t feature those enemies. Powerful when relevant, but very situational.

Paragon — Lead by Example: While you’re adjacent to a creature, your allies gain the benefits of flanking against that creature. This is nice, but getting into standard flank position isn’t that difficult on a team with decent mobility. You’ll get value every fight, but it’s pretty low value.

Hopefully you can see why I strongly prefer It Was Foretold here.

Order Abilities (5-Wrath, Subclass-Specific)

Exorcist — It Is Justice You Fear: Single-target magic ability dealing damage with a Presence-targeting frighten. If the target is already frightened, you instead deal additional psychic damage equal to twice your Presence score. This is the ability that stacks with Glamour of Terror from the High Elf ancestry — frighten them with your triggered action, then follow up with this for real damage. I’m probably overselling the damage somewhat (there are better damage strategies in the game), but it’s a cool way to build your Exorcist if that’s the direction you want.

Oracle — Prescient Grace: A triggered action (which is inherently valuable on Censors who lack a spammable one). Triggers when an enemy within 10 squares starts their turn. You get the full healing value of My Life for Yours, plus you or an ally take your turn immediately before the triggering enemy. Several features in the game allow acting outside standard initiative order (Tacticians get This Is What We Planned For, Shadows get Hesitation Is Weakness), and all of them are powerful. This is one of the weaker versions at 5 Wrath for just one person, but in the right circumstance, moving out of turn order can decide a fight. If you already have a Tactician or Shadow on your team, this might be redundant — take With My Blessing instead.

Oracle — With My Blessing: Targets yourself or one ally within range 10. That target can use a free triggered action to use a signature or heroic strike ability with a double edge. If they use a heroic ability, you reduce its cost by 3. So in the math, you spend 5 to give them 3, which might sound like a net loss. But they’re also getting a double edge, and handing an ally enough heroic resource to use an ability before they normally could is extremely valuable in the right moments. Some abilities in this game are essential to fire off as early as possible, and With My Blessing lets you jailbreak the timing.

The caveat for both Oracle abilities: because they’re expensive, you can definitely use them at the wrong moment and get negative value. If you’re not confident in your ability to judge the right tactical moment, Oracle might not be the best subclass choice.

Paragon — Sentenced: Melee ability that potentially applies the restrained condition, but with the ability to still force-move the restrained target. If you have other ways to move a target on your maneuver (like knockback), you can restrain the target, push them away, and if they’re melee-only, they’ve potentially wasted multiple turns. Lots of creative potential here.

3rd Level

The last level of Echelon 1 is a big one for Censors.

Look On My Work And Despair

All Censors get this regardless of subclass — it buffs Judgment. Now you can spend 1 Wrath and if the target has Presence average, they are frightened of you (save ends). Additionally, whenever a judged creature is reduced to 0 Stamina and you transfer Judgment to a new target, if the new target has Presence less than strong, they are frightened of you (save ends).

If the target is already frightened of you, they instead take holy damage equal to twice your Presence score. You can see a meta forming here: applying frighten and then stacking “take holy damage while frightened” effects from It Is Justice You Fear and now this. Combined with Purifying Fire, that holy damage converts to fire with bonus weakness damage.

Frightened is a strong condition. Being able to apply it for 1 Wrath at Presence average is very good. A solid A-tier ability.

7-Wrath Edicts

You choose one 7-Wrath ability, and all of them are excellent. Edicts function like auras, all with a 2-aura radius, dealing holy damage over time based on various trigger conditions. You can’t really go wrong — just pick whichever one your team composition is most likely to trigger.

I do want to flag Edict of Stillness because of a potentially broken interaction. The effect: whenever a target moves or is force-moved out of the 2-aura, they take holy damage equal to twice your Presence score. If the target is judged by you and moves willingly, they take an extra 2d6 holy damage.

Under normal circumstances, this might be the weakest edict because you have the least control over it. However, if you have a high-value slide (and Censors can get up to a 15-square slide on a maneuver at level 10), you can slide a target out of the aura, back in, out again, back in — potentially proccing the forced-movement damage multiple times per slide. Your allies can do this too, since the aura persists until the end of the encounter. If your team builds around Edict of Stillness, the math suggests truly broken damage output.

However, I think most Directors would consider this an exploit. I would. I wouldn’t allow it at my table — I’d rule only one proc per instance of forced movement. I haven’t actually tested this in play; I just started crunching numbers and the math gets out of hand, especially by late game. If your Director rules the way I would, Edict of Stillness probably isn’t your best option.

Edict of Perfect Order is really good as an alternative. You put it on a judged creature, and each time they use Malice, they take holy damage equal to three times your Presence score, plus an additional 2d6 if judged by you. Against a solo monster (who is guaranteed to be spending Malice), this plus Judgment will deal massive holy damage. Definitely worth the 7 Wrath.

4th-6th Level (Echelon 2)

4th Level

The beginning of Echelon 2 brings the typical Echelon increases: your Might and Presence go up, you get a perk and more skills. The key features here:

Wrath Beyond Wrath: The first time each combat round that you deal damage to a creature judged by you, you gain 2 Wrath instead of 1. This doubles the value of your second rider — the one you actually control. Overall, very good.

Blessing of Life (Life Domain): Whenever an ally within the range of My Life for Yours regains Stamina, they regain additional Stamina equal to your Presence score. This boosts the value of My Life for Yours and all heals within range 10. Extremely strong. It stacks with all your other bonuses, making you one of the best burst healers in the game. If you want to know what I think about the other domain features at this level, check my domain feature spreadsheet.

5th Level

You get subclass order features and a choice of 9-Wrath abilities.

Oracle — Prophecy: If you’ve played D&D 5e or Baldur’s Gate 3, this is a lot like the Divination Wizard. Each time you earn victories, you roll a number of 2d10 equal to the victories earned and record each result. Then, whenever a creature within 10 squares makes a power roll, you can use a free triggered action to replace that roll with one of your recorded results. No potency check — it just works. You can guarantee tier 3 results on yourself, guarantee tier 1 results on enemies, and bank crits to deploy at the perfect moment. One of the most powerful features in the game.

Exorcist — Evil Revealed: Automatically see through disguises and illusions from creatures at or below your level, plus an edge on tests against more powerful creatures’ illusions. Mostly out-of-combat and quite situational in combat.

Paragon — Stand Fast: At the start of each turn, spend 1d6 Stamina to end one save-ends or end-of-turn effect on yourself (or an ally). Good cleansing that you’ll use often, but not even close to the value of Prophecy.

9-Wrath Abilities

Righteous Judgment: For 9 Wrath, a melee strike dealing solid damage. Until the end of the encounter, whenever an ally deals damage to a target judged by you, that ally gains 1 surge. Strong surge generation — surges add damage, but more importantly, they boost potencies. Note that it’s when an ally deals damage, not you, so you can’t benefit from these surges yourself. You’ll need to get surges for your own Purifying Fire another way.

Shield of the Righteous: Melee 1, deals damage, and you and each ally adjacent to you gain 10, 15, or 20 temporary Stamina depending on tier. If you cluster together and guarantee a tier 3 result (perhaps through Prophecy), this provides an enormous durability boost. Unlikely to ever be redundant, unlike surge generation which other sources might cover.

6th Level

Implement of Wrath: Each time you finish a Respite, choose one hero’s weapon (including your own) to become an implement of your deity’s wrath. The weapon becomes magic and gains all of the following until your next Respite:

Strikes deal extra holy damage equal to the wielder’s highest characteristic score (+3 at this level). Holy damage, so it stacks with Purifying Fire.
Any creature struck who has holy weakness or has Presence less than strong is frightened and weakened (save ends).
Any minion targeted by a strike dies, and that minion’s Stamina is removed from the squad pool before damage applies. You become a minion-killing machine.
The weapon’s wielder can’t be made frightened.

What makes this an incredible feature: it costs no action economy, no heroic resource, and no opportunity cost. You don’t pick this instead of something else — every Censor gets it for free. It’s pure upside. Technically even better on a teammate. This could be S-tier except that none of these benefits are individually worth building around. Still, 10 out of 10 for me.

6th Level Order Abilities (9-Wrath, Subclass-Specific)

Exorcist gets two strong options:

Be Gone: 3-burst AoE dealing psychic damage and sliding all targets. AoE damage + slide is a strong, broadly useful combination.
Pain of Your Own Making: A free triggered action. Whenever you or an ally gains a condition or save-ends effect, that effect ends on the target and is applied to the creature who imposed it. Plus the creature takes damage equal to three times your Presence score. This turns a monster’s most debilitating abilities against them. I haven’t done a full audit of the monsters book with this in mind, but I know there are some devastating effects out there. This is the kind of ability where you can get creative, especially with homebrew monsters. I’d take this every time.

Oracle gets two powerful but hard-to-evaluate options:

Burden of Evil: Range 10, targets up to three enemies. Slide them, plus Intuition-targeting dazed. AoE dazed + slide is excellent crowd control. Note it overlaps somewhat with Repent (our 3-Wrath pick from level 1), as an AoE version of that ability.
Edict of Peace: Another edict with a 3-aura radius. Until the end of the encounter, whenever any target takes a triggered action or free triggered action within the aura, that action is negated and the target takes holy damage equal to your Presence score. I rate this S-tier, and a lot of people I consulted disagreed with me. Their argument: the monsters in the official book don’t tend to have powerful triggered actions. If that’s your experience, Edict of Peace is overcosted at 9 Wrath. However, in principle, this negates an entire piece of enemy action economy for the rest of the encounter with no potency check — it just always happens. If your Director designs monsters that use a lot of free triggered actions (as I do), this is insane value. For most games using official monsters, take Burden of Evil. But I have my reasons.

Paragon — Congregation: Melee 1 strike dealing damage, then allies within 10 squares of the target can use signature strike abilities against the target as free triggered actions. At tier 3, two allies can each make a signature strike with an edge, and each ally can shift up to 2 squares and gain 2 surges before striking. Good surge generation and a lot of single-target damage, especially if you’ve applied a damage weakness first. Strong but lacks the ceiling of some of the other options at this level.

7th-9th Level (Echelon 3)

7th Level

The beginning of Echelon 3. Characteristic scores increase, and you get:

Focused Wrath: You gain 3 Wrath at the start of each turn instead of 2. A straight +1 Wrath consistently, always. Nice.

Font of Grace (Life Domain): Each time you use My Life for Yours, you gain 1 Wrath that must be spent that same turn (or it’s lost). Additionally, the target of My Life for Yours gains 10 temporary Stamina. This is another massive increase to the healing output of your triggered action and effectively another Wrath rider. An injection of +1 Wrath each time you use My Life for Yours is excellent.

8th Level

I’ll be honest: this is a weak level. Each order gets an order feature, but they’re all out-of-combat features with nothing tactical to discuss. And the 11-Wrath ability options are lackluster.

Pillar of Holy Fire deals damage and applies a single-target Intuition-weak dazed, but you probably already have this covered elsewhere in your build for less than 11 Wrath. The supposed standout effect — at the end of each of your turns, the dazed target deals holy damage to enemies within 2 squares — is just hard to control since it happens at the start of your turns, not the enemy’s.

Your Allies Turn On You applies Intuition-targeting slowed (a worse condition than dazed), and while slowed, surrounding enemies must make free strikes against the target. You can control this better by pushing enemies into range, but for 11 Wrath and how fiddly it is to extract value, I just can’t see myself using this often.

This is the best the level offers, and it’s simply not the strongest level. Moving on.

9th Level

All Censors get Improved Implement of Wrath, boosting the earlier feature: allies adjacent to the weapon’s wielder get +2 to saving throws, the wielder can give allies extra saving throws, and the wielder gains corruption immunity 10. All nice, but none of it is reliable enough to feel impactful at this stage of the game (+2 to a save doesn’t guarantee anything). Still, it’s all free upside with zero cost, so we won’t say no.

The 11-Wrath subclass abilities are where the real interest lies:

Exorcist — Banish: Single-target melee, dealing damage and potentially banishing the creature. A banished creature disappears from the map until they make a saving throw — it’s effectively a hard stun that cancels potentially multiple turns. While banished, the target takes 10 holy damage each time they make a saving throw. The ability also gains an edge against demons, devils, undead, and extraplanar creatures (double edge if you know their true name). Very powerful for 11 Wrath against a priority target. It competes with Terror Manifest (range 10, psychic damage, Presence-targeting frighten, kills non-leaders/solos outright when winded, deals 25 extra psychic damage to winded leaders/solos). Both are excellent. I lean toward Banish, but it’s genuinely close.

Oracle: Both options are, sadly, pretty bad. A Blessing and a Curse is a triggered action that gives an ally a tier 3 and an enemy a tier 1 for 11 Wrath — good in effect, but far too expensive. Fulfill Your Destiny lets an ally act out of initiative order with a double edge and full cleanse, but again, a Shadow gets essentially this same ability at level 1 for 1 heroic resource. For 11 Wrath, it’s just too expensive. This, combined with the weak 8th level, means Oracle players hit a rough patch at late game. But the preceding levels were so strong that Oracle is still my recommendation overall.

Paragon — Apostate: This is incredible. Melee 1 strike dealing a lot of holy damage, and then until the end of the encounter (or until you’re dying), the target has damage weakness 10. All instances of damage against the target — not just holy, everything — deal an additional 10 damage. No saving throw. No potency check. It just always goes through. They cannot cleanse it. This will melt bosses. One of the strongest abilities in the game. It makes me want to go Paragon instead of Oracle just to get this at 9th level. But it comes so late that it’s hard to call it a primary draw of the class.

10th Level

You’ve made it to max level. 10th level counts as its own Echelon in Draw Steel, and there are features in every class that let you keep playing past level 10. Some really cool things here.

Templar

Whenever you use your Judgment ability, you can use a free triggered action to use a Conduit domain prayer effect associated with your chosen domain (or a domain you access with Virtue). If the effect uses an Intuition score, you use your Presence score instead. If it uses a Conduit level, you use your Censor level instead.

To see how powerful this is, you have to look at the Conduit’s domain prayer effects. Remember, you get one of these on a maneuver, for free, every round:

Life Prayer: Choose yourself or one ally within 10 squares. That creature can spend a recovery, end a save-ends effect, or stand up from prone. Alternatively, you or an ally gains temporary Stamina equal to 2x your score (10 temporary Stamina at level 10). Pretty good, but not the most exciting.
Trickery Prayer: Slide one creature within 10 squares up to 5 + your level squares. That’s a 15-square slide on a maneuver. Think about how hard it is to build 15 push on a knockback. This is 15 slide, which is even better, and you get it for free as part of your Judgment maneuver. Absolutely insane.
War Prayer: Choose up to three allies within 10 squares (or yourself instead of one ally). Each gains 2 surges. At this level, each surge is worth 5 extra damage, so 2 surges = 10 damage across 3 allies = 30 extra damage on a maneuver with zero Wrath cost. And spending surges on damage isn’t even their most valuable use — you could funnel surges to yourself for Purifying Fire potency boosts.

Browse through all of these prayer effects and let your imagination run. Getting one of these every round, Wrath-free, on a maneuver is extraordinary.

Virtue

At level 10, you’re max level, so XP is replaced by Virtue. When you’d normally convert victories into XP, you get Virtue instead. You can spend Virtue as bonus Wrath, or spend 3 Virtue to access one of your deity’s domains that you don’t normally have.

This is how you bypass the fact that you picked Life domain (for its excellent recovery bonuses) but want access to Trickery or War prayer effects for your Templar feature. Spend 3 Virtue to grab Trickery. Spend 6 for a third domain. You’re not gated to one choice.

My recommendation: Trickery and War are two of the strongest secondary domain picks. Storm and Sun are also very good. Read through the list and pick whatever excites you.

Wrath of the Gods

When you gain Wrath at the start of each turn, you gain 4 instead of 3. Combined with your controlled rider (which gives +2 thanks to Wrath Beyond Wrath), that’s a guaranteed 6 Wrath per turn. If you trigger the uncontrolled rider too, you max out at 7 Wrath per turn. At that rate, you can fire off major abilities almost every round. 10th level for Censors is extremely rewarding.

Closing Thoughts

That’s the Censor in full. A frontline holy warrior that grinds down priority targets with Judgment, supports allies with reactive healing through My Life for Yours, and — if built around correctly — weaponizes the Purifying Fire engine to give your entire team a devastating damage strategy against bosses and solos.

The class has a clear power curve: strong foundational tools in Echelon 1, a meaningful Wrath generation spike at Echelon 2, a rough patch at levels 8-9 (especially for Oracle), and then an extraordinary payoff at level 10 with Templar, Virtue, and Wrath of the Gods turning the Censor into a truly terrifying force.

My recommendation: Oracle subclass, Warrior Priest kit, Life domain. Build around Purifying Fire. Encourage your team to bring fire damage. And if you make it to level 10, pick up Trickery or War as your Virtue domain and enjoy the 15-square slides.

The next class in this series will be the Conduit. Stay tuned.