Reasonable tanking, damredux, and healing all in one.

Admittedly, if you want full power, you definitely want to follow a religion, but you can also manage the PvE game w/o empowerment. Given there's a handful of pretty open and active religions, I don't think priests are too difficult right now, and if you HAPPEN to manage not to catch your Imm, you're not horribly crippled in the meantime.