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Devoted Cleric BW3
moxiel
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 1 Arc User
My opinions about devoted cleric. This is group content oriented.
Stats
I rolled human with highest wisdom I could get as +2 wisdom and +3 heroic feats sounded good.
Which ment 20 WIS, 13 STR and CHA. While others being DEX 8, INT 10, CON 10.
Attributes do not seem to mean much. You can't really ruin your character by picking the worst attributes. There's probably difference of 5% in healing if you pick worst attribute rolls.
Spec
At higher levels in PVP / PVE trying to be "full healer" (Sun Burst, Healing word, Bastion of Health) feels quite meh.
I was focusing purely on healing spec while trying to stack power + recover to heal effectively and often without crit rng.
The middle paragon tree was my choice as it seemend to support my idea of healer. Picked up damage reductions for everyone who were touched by my heals and increased healing x% stuff.
I didin't have enought astral diamonds to try respeccing into more damage oriented spec, sadly. But I did try different gear variations over the levels.
Gear
They kinda just have minimal effect shifting 5% cooldown reduction into crit or ~25 more damage / healing. So at lower levels it really doesn't matter what you use just roll with something that's highest lvl requirement you can use. Probably once you get to lvl 50-60 it's time to start thinking items a bit more as over 10% cooldown reduction starts to be noticeable.
PVE
50% healing reduction debuff on yourself seems quite insane later on. At lower levels up to ~25-30 I didn't notice it at all. I can't remember using much potions in fights and everything was more or less faceroll.
Heals do not seem to scale properly and they draw aggro.. alot of it, feels like you're using taunt when you use them.
If there's no guardian in your group, have fun being "main kite-tank" for the fights. Even if there is it's really difficult for him or her to keep them away from you, then again it's a good thing also.. collecting all monsters in same place for nice AoE spam, but I feel like that shouldn't be healers job.
(I played Guardian Fighter aswell, when in doubt run to your healer and taunt. There's good chance that you will taunt all the adds and boss as well who're after the healer.)
Lair of the Mad Dragon, now the dragon boss is probably first place where you start to have serious issues. Even basic imps hitting 400-500 dmg while your hot ticks almost no HP at all for yourself.
Spamming all the healing spells nets you about 20% of your hp pool because of the healing reduction debuff and they have 10-20s CDs. Daily powers like Hallowed Ground and Divine Armor give some breathing room but their up time is limited.
It's a lot better just avoid the damage completely than trying to heal through it even from normal monsters. You don't have any "oh snap" buttons except your potion which you'll have in any case.
Using Chains of Blazing Light and rooting most of the monsters which follow you is superior for your survivability compared to healing. Not to mention throwing Daunting Light into it deals quite nice aoe damage, small monsters will die to that combo. Then you can throw the big adds off with Divinity Sun Burst, run away and hope rest of the group deals / CCs the remaining big adds which are still following you. In one group we did have 2 clerics and it was much better for us to kite adds together with Chains of Blazing Lights and deal damage rather than spam heals, it did work quite well.
Having those heals didn't seem to make much difference, if someone got pummeled by too many aoes which they failed to avoid they would die anyways. Or it would put too much pressure on you trying to get next to them to get aoe heals on you and them while avoiding enemy aoes. Because you for sure did need every heal on yourself which you threw out.
As a healer it was more of providing constant small amount of heal & damage reduction through the battle than saving lifes with your abilities, like bringing your mate from brink of death to back into battle again. Potions were the "oh snap" life savers.
PVP
50% healing reduction debuff on all the time, it's enought for one dps class focus on you and you're done quite soon. If two are focusing on you there's no chance. Healing others didn't feel rewarding either.. Sure your friend would get some HPs back and most likely win that 2vs1 fight, but mostly it just felt like you're slowly patching those bars up after the fight while capping your point.
When I was playing rogue and surely it was fun to be full hp after I killed enemy or few and think that it's cool that our team finally has a cleric who heals. But after getting some glory and PVP potions it didn't really make difference, I did wish for another DPS to CC and kill the enemies quicker then just take drink that HP potion and be ready to next fight. Because whenever I did see cleric I could just go for him as I knew there was no way he could over heal my damage.
It was far more profitable to focus on DPS as a cleric and if your abilities happen to heal others, good for them. Catching few guys with Chains of Blazing Light -> Divinity Daunting Light combo was quite devastating, then just throwing them off with Sun Burst and running away while waiting for new CC felt way to go.
Overall I did still enjoy playing the game, as I enjoy the challenge. And there haven't been many RPGs around where you can play as a healer with your friends and to though games content. Going dungeons a bit lower level ensured the challenge.
TL;DR
Beta Weekend 3 with 50% healing reduction on yourself and Heal taunts was surely challenging as "Full Healer" but not practical. I kinda still enjoyed it, only if other classes had it as challenging as the healers.
Hopefully going for "full healer" will be more rewarding in the future in PVE and PVP. Because now it just felt that I wasn't really needed and it would've been better to be more DPS / CC oriented with small amount of healing.
Stats
I rolled human with highest wisdom I could get as +2 wisdom and +3 heroic feats sounded good.
Which ment 20 WIS, 13 STR and CHA. While others being DEX 8, INT 10, CON 10.
Attributes do not seem to mean much. You can't really ruin your character by picking the worst attributes. There's probably difference of 5% in healing if you pick worst attribute rolls.
Spec
At higher levels in PVP / PVE trying to be "full healer" (Sun Burst, Healing word, Bastion of Health) feels quite meh.
I was focusing purely on healing spec while trying to stack power + recover to heal effectively and often without crit rng.
The middle paragon tree was my choice as it seemend to support my idea of healer. Picked up damage reductions for everyone who were touched by my heals and increased healing x% stuff.
I didin't have enought astral diamonds to try respeccing into more damage oriented spec, sadly. But I did try different gear variations over the levels.
Gear
They kinda just have minimal effect shifting 5% cooldown reduction into crit or ~25 more damage / healing. So at lower levels it really doesn't matter what you use just roll with something that's highest lvl requirement you can use. Probably once you get to lvl 50-60 it's time to start thinking items a bit more as over 10% cooldown reduction starts to be noticeable.
PVE
50% healing reduction debuff on yourself seems quite insane later on. At lower levels up to ~25-30 I didn't notice it at all. I can't remember using much potions in fights and everything was more or less faceroll.
Heals do not seem to scale properly and they draw aggro.. alot of it, feels like you're using taunt when you use them.
If there's no guardian in your group, have fun being "main kite-tank" for the fights. Even if there is it's really difficult for him or her to keep them away from you, then again it's a good thing also.. collecting all monsters in same place for nice AoE spam, but I feel like that shouldn't be healers job.
(I played Guardian Fighter aswell, when in doubt run to your healer and taunt. There's good chance that you will taunt all the adds and boss as well who're after the healer.)
Lair of the Mad Dragon, now the dragon boss is probably first place where you start to have serious issues. Even basic imps hitting 400-500 dmg while your hot ticks almost no HP at all for yourself.
Spamming all the healing spells nets you about 20% of your hp pool because of the healing reduction debuff and they have 10-20s CDs. Daily powers like Hallowed Ground and Divine Armor give some breathing room but their up time is limited.
It's a lot better just avoid the damage completely than trying to heal through it even from normal monsters. You don't have any "oh snap" buttons except your potion which you'll have in any case.
Using Chains of Blazing Light and rooting most of the monsters which follow you is superior for your survivability compared to healing. Not to mention throwing Daunting Light into it deals quite nice aoe damage, small monsters will die to that combo. Then you can throw the big adds off with Divinity Sun Burst, run away and hope rest of the group deals / CCs the remaining big adds which are still following you. In one group we did have 2 clerics and it was much better for us to kite adds together with Chains of Blazing Lights and deal damage rather than spam heals, it did work quite well.
Having those heals didn't seem to make much difference, if someone got pummeled by too many aoes which they failed to avoid they would die anyways. Or it would put too much pressure on you trying to get next to them to get aoe heals on you and them while avoiding enemy aoes. Because you for sure did need every heal on yourself which you threw out.
As a healer it was more of providing constant small amount of heal & damage reduction through the battle than saving lifes with your abilities, like bringing your mate from brink of death to back into battle again. Potions were the "oh snap" life savers.
PVP
50% healing reduction debuff on all the time, it's enought for one dps class focus on you and you're done quite soon. If two are focusing on you there's no chance. Healing others didn't feel rewarding either.. Sure your friend would get some HPs back and most likely win that 2vs1 fight, but mostly it just felt like you're slowly patching those bars up after the fight while capping your point.
When I was playing rogue and surely it was fun to be full hp after I killed enemy or few and think that it's cool that our team finally has a cleric who heals. But after getting some glory and PVP potions it didn't really make difference, I did wish for another DPS to CC and kill the enemies quicker then just take drink that HP potion and be ready to next fight. Because whenever I did see cleric I could just go for him as I knew there was no way he could over heal my damage.
It was far more profitable to focus on DPS as a cleric and if your abilities happen to heal others, good for them. Catching few guys with Chains of Blazing Light -> Divinity Daunting Light combo was quite devastating, then just throwing them off with Sun Burst and running away while waiting for new CC felt way to go.
Overall I did still enjoy playing the game, as I enjoy the challenge. And there haven't been many RPGs around where you can play as a healer with your friends and to though games content. Going dungeons a bit lower level ensured the challenge.
TL;DR
Beta Weekend 3 with 50% healing reduction on yourself and Heal taunts was surely challenging as "Full Healer" but not practical. I kinda still enjoyed it, only if other classes had it as challenging as the healers.
Hopefully going for "full healer" will be more rewarding in the future in PVE and PVP. Because now it just felt that I wasn't really needed and it would've been better to be more DPS / CC oriented with small amount of healing.
Post edited by moxiel on
0
Comments
The self heal reduction feels unfair to me, especially as you level. After level 25+ you will notice in groups your health bar is always low while everyone else is full and healthy. Out of combat it is not really feasible to heal yourself-- it takes a long time to self heal.
Fortunately you should have plenty of potions saved up from the previous levels where you didn't need them. And potion drop rate is pretty good.
Also, the aggro thing is way ridiculous. Heal = taunt. Cleric ends up tanking and kiting, and there is nothing any other class can do to pull it off (for more than a few seconds). It becomes a race between the boss dps and your ability to spam dodge and slamming potions between cool downs. You can't heal or dps while this happens... and if you survive it, at the end you will see cleric takes the most damage by a wide margin.
Did 130k heals in the very short Helm's Hold skirmish. People needed to really effective use their AoE, since they knew 100% of the time where the mobs would be .. pretty easy. One Div+Daunting and a 2nd from party was all it took to clear the adds, which by the way do most of the damage in those fights. Respawns aren't immediate and everyone can focus on the boss dps (and u drop Forge to heal party up)
They need to fix the aggro bug, and the bug that increased the personal healing debuff, then have another evaluation imho.
I had some seriously easy runs, and a few that were pretty bad. Party comp, and they people in it, factor very heavily.