Advice needed for Devoted Cleric

glowember

Hi all! Loving Neverwinter so far. I've been playing as a Cleric and I really cannot seem to enjoy any other class as much as this one. That said, I would like to ask for a little bit of advice.

I'm currently level 38. I seem to be doing ok on my own up to this point, but since starting Ebon Downs, things have become a little bit harder.

Honestly, I'm not sure that I've gotten the right gear on or focused on the correct feats for what I want to do. I created the Cleric with the intention of healing people. I mean, that's what Clerics are supposed to do, right?!

I read through the different class builds that were stickied for Clerics, but I honestly couldn't make sense of them, nor did I find anything that would help me as a sub-60 character.

Up to this point, I'm stacking up Power and Critical Strike. All of the gear drops seem to be "Recommending" gear with stats like Recovery or Defense. So I'm confused at what stats I should be focusing on prior to level 60.

I've also bounced around with different powers. Right now, I am using Brand of the Sun followed by spamming Lance of Faith for my At-Will powers. My Encounter powers are Sunburst, Healing Word, and Daunting Light. I very rarely go into Divinity, if at all. For my daily powers, I am mostly using Flamestrike. I have Guardian of Faith slotted, but I don't use it.

Again, I seem to be doing ok... but I am finding that I am spending more time healing myself in between encounters. I'm willing to bet that I need to re-evaluate my gear and stats.

Any advice you can give would be great. Thank you!

blaueblume1

casting your encounters in divinity will go a long way towards not letting the mobs live long enough to hurt you. Recovery is much needed here. The more recovery, the faster your encounters are ready again. And it just seems to me that a quick recast of Chains of Blazing Light and Daunting Light in and w/out Divinity work wonders over the single target cast of the At-Wills.

izatar

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fondlez

Questing: Divine Armor/Guardian + Flamestrike; Sunburst + Chains of Blazing/Divine Glow + Daunting Light; BotS + Astral Seal; Holy Fervor + Foresight. Once you get Divine Armor you can forget about Guardian.

Healing: Divine Armor/Guardian + Hallowed Ground; Sunburst + Forgemaster's Flame/Healing Word + Astral Shield/Bastion of Health; Sacred Flame/BotS + Astral Seal; Healer's Lore + Foresight. Once you get Astral Shield, you can forget about Bastion of Health without a specialist build. Holy Fervor is a good alternative to Healer's Lore at later levels and Divine Fortune is good substitute while kiting.

All heals should be from Divinity mode, except Sunburst or very occasionally Forgemaster's if you need the Divinity while kiting.

Unfortunately, unless you are well geared and especially if you do not have the Best in Slot Tier 2 level 60 set called Miracle Healer, you will always have a need for potions for upfront healing sometimes (much more often than you would expect from other MMOs). There are no Cleric healing spells that can replicate such a burst heal consistently.

Around the mid 30s and 40s is where the difficulty increases significantly, but without any new healing spells to match high incoming damage. So, just hang in there and put your crowd control spells to good use.

For gearing I use a Six-Three system on all my alts. Six levels for whole new gear set and buy three weapons ahead at the time I renew my gear (since you can only get a weapon on even levels the weapon and armor gearing syncs up). Cleric is the cheapest to gear in that it is the least gear-dependent, least in demand (other than GF) and good gear can last you for tens of levels sometimes.

wholyhandgrenade

glowember wrote: »

Hi all! Loving Neverwinter so far. I've been playing as a Cleric and I really cannot seem to enjoy any other class as much as this one. That said, I would like to ask for a little bit of advice.

I'm currently level 38. I seem to be doing ok on my own up to this point, but since starting Ebon Downs, things have become a little bit harder.

Honestly, I'm not sure that I've gotten the right gear on or focused on the correct feats for what I want to do. I created the Cleric with the intention of healing people. I mean, that's what Clerics are supposed to do, right?!

I read through the different class builds that were stickied for Clerics, but I honestly couldn't make sense of them, nor did I find anything that would help me as a sub-60 character.

Up to this point, I'm stacking up Power and Critical Strike. All of the gear drops seem to be "Recommending" gear with stats like Recovery or Defense. So I'm confused at what stats I should be focusing on prior to level 60.

I've also bounced around with different powers. Right now, I am using Brand of the Sun followed by spamming Lance of Faith for my At-Will powers. My Encounter powers are Sunburst, Healing Word, and Daunting Light. I very rarely go into Divinity, if at all. For my daily powers, I am mostly using Flamestrike. I have Guardian of Faith slotted, but I don't use it.

Again, I seem to be doing ok... but I am finding that I am spending more time healing myself in between encounters. I'm willing to bet that I need to re-evaluate my gear and stats.

Any advice you can give would be great. Thank you!

I've made two clerics, and here is what I suggest:
1. don't use brand of the sun unless you took the first path, the starting at wills are so much more useful and more powerful
2. defense for clerics suck, but they need it so you need to get it as high as possible
3. power and critical are both needed, power is your strength and critical is your chance to activate your critical healing activated bonuses (you could however try to forego these and just pump recovery but you aren't going to be recovering any faster in PvP when you are being quickly killed)
4. The second cleric path plays well in PvE
5. The third cleric path plays better than the second in PvP but you will likely shy away from using AS in favor of healing word
6. The recovery bonuses to divinity and action points by placing 10 points into the third tree helps quite a lot when it comes to having power
7. I use sunburst, chains of light, healing word (or astral shield)... flame strike and hammer or holy ground (great for group play in both PvE and PvP)... lance of faith is always my primary at will attack, the secondary at will doesn't matter too much to me (I often won't use my right click at will button as lance of faith will trump over it damage wise but it doesn't hurt to put a healing leaching affect upon something)
8. Play under level 60 should be relatively easy without having to slot up, just upgrade your gear cheaply at the auction house every two to ten levels (a level 1 gem slotted into equipment will make it play as strong as equipment 10 higher than its level that isn't slotted with anything and I never slot equipment under level 60 unless I don't want to use the AH to upgrade it when leveling)
9. divinity is necessary to get used to turning on and off upon just about every cast... sunburst will toss stuff back, chains of light is also very effective when used with divinity, healing word works butter with divinity but still sucks as a heal

clerics need major work.. they have been nerfed to the ground and given nothing in turn

dullsmile

I've got a 48 cleric right now. The feat trees can be a little overwhelming with the cleric, while most are labeled well some don't really describe what physically happens. If you have feats into the middle paragon tree, just make sure you get linked spirit 5/5. While questing I use BotS and Astral Seal, popping every mob with both, then using Daunting Light (in divine mode) to mop up the remainder. If any trash mobs survive that (which is few) then I pop sunburst. That is all I tend to use out in the world, I keep Healing Word on me or my companion at all times, even random people running by since it helps you build divinity (or Action Points if you have feats there). Divine Armor and Flamestrike for solo content, I switch Flamestrike for Hallowed Ground in groups, I keep Holy Fervor and Foresight on my bar, switching Fervor for Healer's Lore for dungeons with lots of adds. In dungeons I keep Sunburst and Healing Word and swap Daunting Light for Forgemaster's Flame, I also Switch BotS for Sacred Flame. At this level I haven't had need for any other changes, dance around and avoid the red like everyone else is doing (we pray). And keep Healing Word on people, it should almost always be on cooldown for the passive divinity gain more than the actual healing it does. As more abilities open up changes will need to be made, and clearly level 60 healing is going to be vastly different. Just understand you may need to respec your feats and powers to balance yourself back out in the future.
As far as I can tell up to this point recovery, defense and power have been the most important things, in that order. Critical strike is a nice thing, but if you have to sacrifice defense or recovery at this point, don't. Most gear at end game has enough crit to allow your abilities to process, and at low levels stacking it leads to early diminishing returns with no real advantage gain. As someone else said, it truly is better to hit more often than to hit harder. Try using divinity more, it makes a huge difference! In divine mode Searing Light deals damage to all creatures near the one you hit, Daunting Light strikes a much larger area instantly, Forgemaster's Flame heals allies nearby, etc, etc. Just avoid using your left and right click mouse buttons while in divine mode, the attack and heal functions really aren't worth while yet (hopefully this gets fixed at some point) and your divinity pips are better used killing or healing something. You must have run a few dungeons by now, and maybe you've caught on that in this game a cleric really doesn't restore HP's like in other mmo's, healing is more about damage mitigation. Look at your feats and determine which ones will help you stop your allies from taking damage, not necessarily the ones that restore health. As I said, keeping Healing Word going full time helps to keep people topped off, I always hit the tank and rogue before battle even starts, then keep it going as often as possible on those two and CW if we have one.
Things don't get easier from here on out, but don't give up it's worth investing some time into .

*EDIT: I just realized today that a much more effective rotation for a large group of weak enemies goes like this: run into group of enemies so they bunch up near you and pop sunburst and enter divinity as soon as you hit Q so that when the universal cooldown comes down you can pop Daunting Light from divine mode, that combo kills everything in about two seconds. Just dance around the big guys for a second hitting them with BotS and Astral Seal and enjoy easy mode for a little bit. With 1292 recovery at 46 I have 23.6% recharge and 33.8% action point gain without buffs and potions, 33% recharge and 50(ish)% is optimal to avoid diminishing returns.