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Versatile support cleric build (dio's build)
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
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I've seen a lot of pvp or pve specific builds, but so far, no versatile build. This is, however, in no way "the ultimate cleric build". It's mine, and it's working great for me.
This build is also a bit different from other ones i've seen on the forums. There will be a High GS and a Low GS part in each subsection. You'll not play your cleric the same way with 9k or 14k GS. This seems a bit obvious but gear, enchantments, spells and abilities choices won't be the same! With a high GS, if you keep the low GS options, you're just going to do overhealing.
A critical based build.
I often read that crit isn't reliable. Actually, it is if you get your crit chance high enough. Crit is the most versatile way to increase your damage and heals. With a crit build, you'll get more of everything. It may not be the easiest choice to play in pvp but it works well if you play actively and have reliable team mates.
Since it is a team focused-build, we'll also mainly focus on offensive stats, while maintaining the bare minimum amount of damage resistance we need to successfully play all PvE content, including the most exotic one, from the cloak tower to epic dread vault or castle never 50 mobs pulls.
You will of course not be a tanking cleric but it's not required. It's a team-focus build. You'll play a support role in most situations, but the high crit chance will also allow you to switch to a full damage encounter bar whenever you need to.
If one day there is a STR-WIS race then go for it, it's going to be the master race for this build.
Step 1: chosing a starting race.
Pick whatever race you like. For real. This is in no way a big issue, as long as you can pick +2 wisdom. I picked half-elf for the +1 Int extra bonus, but wood elf, sun elf, dwarf, or even drow work too, if the devs one day ever decide to fix the drow debuff applied to allies though heals. I'm not convinced at all by the human racial choice (at least in-game:)), because all crucial elements may be picked by any other race.
Step 2: ability scores:
- Low GS:
WIS-CHA. Wisdom is a mandatory choice if you play a support cleric. You're here to deliver heals, and they better be strong. CHA is interesting at low GS because lower cooldowns on encounter spells and some more AP are relevant when your power and crit stats are low. Since your heals may not be 'OMGWTF awesome', some daily spells like divine armor can make the difference between a victory and a wipe,
- High GS: WIS-STR.
When you're more comfortable with the game and feels you've geared enough not to slot 3 healing encounter spells (let's say, above 13k with at least 5000 power & 2500 crit), a significant amount of
your heals will come from feats – repurpose soul & deepstone blessings. Something between 15 and 20%. So, let's just chose more crit.
Everything below this line but images is completely optional. You may skip text if you're not interested in why I made this choice and why I think it works best,
Step 3: feats choices for a lvl 60 cleric.
What other builds may recommend: virtuous or faithful. What I'm using: Divine oracle faithful.
Even if being virtuous and cleaning a T2 dungeon 1 min faster may seem fun, I'm mostly not playing with people who say they don't need a cleric. Thus, I have to perfom well in healing, while maintaining a sufficient level of buffs to ease runs as much as I can. Consequently, faithful isn't even an option, it's a no-brainer.
Why divine oracle?
I'm lazy. On a more serious notes, both parangon paths are relevant choices. Annointed champion will focus more on mitigation while divine oracle will offer more buffs. Divine oracle is, on the other hand, easier to use, foresight may be triggered by the useful and forgiving sun burst spell, and prophecy of doom is a nice although extremely situational damage buff with no downtime.
Heroic feats highlights:
Repurpose soul: 10% of my current healing output. This is a constant stream of heals, working on your and your team (affected by righteousness).
Cleanse 1/3: removes debuffs on allies. Bugged and may remove the revive sickness one on rare occasions (I have yet to determine how).
Bountiful fortune: We can't have enough divinity. While it may seem 'lowbie' to chose such a feat instead of templar's domain, spamming divine mode divine glow/divine mode healing word may have to be done while keeping astral shield up.
Domain synergy: Honnestly I don't know why I picked this one. I must have had a brainfart. It's plainly bad. The buff is insignificant (100 recovery). Add the extra pt in toughness instead.
Parangon feats highlights:
Deepstone blessing: probably one of the most powerful cleric parangon feats. Since we'll be using sacred flame a lot, our allies will often have some temporary Hps. Makes divine armor a better life saver. Extremely interesting to keep people alive when choked by valindra in Valindra's tower or Malabog's castle too.
Linked spirit: this is a quite controversial feat. Some don't like it, but it's mostly because they don't know how great it is. Since our build is very offensive, linked spirit will share a lot of power, depending on your current power stat. Mine shares up to 2,000 power, which means it's a straight 8% damage increase when it's up. Also shares defense (hello, trickster rogue), crit (hey, wizard), and 25% of all of the weird stats you have. Will be triggered by astral shield when module 3 is released, so it will be even better.
Benefit of foresight: mandatory. You have to have it if you're divine oracle. This is an easy way to grant your allies extra damage resistance (7%) suffering no diminishing returns. The tooltip is misleading, it's not 7% defense but 7% mitigation (base 2 + feat 5). This is how divine oracle clerics give their allies extra tanking, and it's in my opinion easier to trigger than the annointed champion feats and class features. Will work best with sunburst, but works with healing word or bastion of health.
Mark of mending (instead of feating hallowed ground): more power, your heals will be buffed by healer's lore and it's mathematically better than a 5k heal on every ally when you use Hallowed Ground. This doesn't mean you won't use hallowed ground, it just means mark of mending will improve your constant stream of heals by 20%, including heals from repurpose soul, and that's awesome. It's also more versatile, it's less of a dilemma when your team needs divine armor for whatever reason. You use divine armor and don't rely on a slow heal to keep everyone alive. Last, but not least, hallowed ground is only for buffs and we don't need anything else from that spell.
Divine advantage: we're constantly surrounded by hostile monsters, and astral seal triggers it. No need to explain this further, it's good.
Rising hope: crucial in this build. Great power buff, and it will greatly alleviate the recovery needs on gear (see below).
Bad parangon feats with no redeeming qualities:
Since you may want to experiment other feats, here are the worst faithful ones:
Enduring Relief: Effect is too short and isn't triggered by astral shield. Garbage feat.
Invigorated healing: happens too late and the healing effect is pathetic (average 500 hps). Don't even try it, except for the lulz.
Boons*: TBA.
If you see something wrong in this post (due to bugs), feel free to let me know, and I will likely ninja edit my post and report your comment for trolling (or edit my post with credits if I'm in a good mood). Please note that bugs happen constantly and that I am never considering bugs when making a build. Eventually, it will get fixed and buying a respec token every time is not worth the hassle. So if you say me something is currently bugged I may add a small note but won't chane the build because of that.
This guide will probably evolve with the game, so stay tuned!
2000-2200 defense. That's all you'll ever need for pve. This is enough in pvp if your team is watching your back while you heal them to insane levels.
At least 2500 to 3500 crit. 2500 is the bare minimum. With 3500 and linked spirit, ACT says I have 41% crit chance on all spells. Not bad.
2500 recovery. You may get up to 3k if you're very keen on it. With rising hope and linked spirit, you will anyway be way over the pretty steep stat cap with 2500. 3000 is only good when linked spirit and rising hope are both down.
Power*: as much as you want/can. No diminishing returns, effects heals and damage. Good stat, but not a priority at low GS. Get crit first.
Armor penetration*: If you get some from gear and boons, that's fine. Not a priority but can't hurt when all other needs have been met.
Deflect and regen: see above, same comment.
Lifesteal: not really useful unless you focus on heals. Not useless though. Can be shared via linked spirit (1000 lifesteal will grant your team members 2% damage gained as HPs), and if you do a lot of damage, may alleviate the pressure on potions, but I don't recommend focusing on it. Probably a better choice than regen though in a purely pve environment.
Gear options:
What other builds will recommend: miracle healer (T2), or maybe High prophet (T1). What I use*: Fabled Ilyaburen (from Malabog's castle).
My first items:
As soon as you reach lvl 60, it's time to buy grear. If you want to learn to play the hard way, get +5 blue gear. If you have some spare diamonds, though, I highly recommend to buy some Divine Conduit gear on the auction house. Most items are sold under salvage price, they have good stats, it's purple, and will give you a headstart. Then you might start doing T1 to make sure you know how to play your character, for a week or so. T1 glory PvP gear is also a good and completely free of charge choice.
Please do yourself and other players a favour, if you start a new cleric character, play T1 dungeons for a week. They are very forgiving and you'll see there is room for improvement. Do not start doing T2s before you feel confident enough with your new cleric character (which means you can heal people who do a few mistakes and sometimes stand in red).
Endgame set choice:
See here for a comprehensive list of DC sets: http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Devoted_Cleric_Sets
* Miracle Healer is a good set for starters. It's quite easy to acquire as soon as you have 9k GS or so. The 4 parts bonus is good and reliable, but this set has one downside and it's not by a small margin: there's way too much recovery on it, especially if you use BiS jewelry on it (there's always recovery on power/crit rings, belts and necklaces).
* Fabled Ilyiaburen: Vastly overlooked by the cleric community, this doesn't really serve the class. You may equip BiS offensive jewelry with offensive enchantments slots without going beyond any stat cap, and the set bonus works pretty well. While the set bonus seems inferior to the Miracle Healer one, I mostly have the same healing output with both sets.
The set bonus isn't triggered on allies with full HP, it will be triggered AFTER your initial heal (typically sunburst/healing word), thus, it will only rarely do overhealing, and the design of all endgame content consists in a succession of small groups of npcs (the fabled bonus won't be triggered) and bigger groups (then you need the set bonus). The 60s cooldown is less dramatic than most cleric think, and armor penetration works fine with sunburst/divine glow, chains of blazing light and flame strike (if you're just doing damage).
* High prophet: while some players try to convince clerics that heals aren't required, people saying they don't need heals are pretty often the worst black holes I have ever seen. Don't trust someone saying he doesn't need heals. He does. This set is good if you plan to farm easy content such as dwarf king, but the lack of power and the ridiculous amount of defense and recovery on this set makes it really lackluster in any other area.
Furthermore, the set bonus is mostly useless with the low target cap on most of the cleric spells – thus the set bonus is mostly unnoticed and uneeded if you pull more than one pack of npcs at once. The only mob you may stack high prophet stacks on it is a boss, and you won't speed up the fight incredibly if the rest of your team is already good. It's a nice option and works well in pvp, but definitely not a relevant main set choice. You will do better allowing your team to do larger pulls with better heals. You may want to use it sometimes, so it's interesting to have it in your inventory.
Enchantments:
* Weapon enchantment: vorpal. Since we've been stacking crit, a vorpal is a good choice. Your crit heals will be even better, and your crit damage will be improved. Again, this may not be the most popular choices, since dps class players tend to like bigger red numbers and may ask clerics to use a plaguefire enchantment, but it's the most versatile choice and it will alleviate the solo grind pain.
Other relevant choices: Holy avenger, plaguefire, and to a lesser extent, feytouched.
* Armor enchantment: Tunderhead. Unless you plan to die often, or unless you play with lousy players, a soulforge is mostly superfluous. Although this is a very anti-mainstream choice, I have never felt the need to use a soulforge in any kind of content, and only have a lesser one on my second fabled armor just for Valindra's tower final fight, just because it may be optimal for the team to let me die when I'm grabbed in a hand. Thunderhead will add extra control, and even if you never decide when it procs, it helps everyone in the team with a 2s stun on surrounding mobs or players. Fun against GWFs or TRs in pvp.
Other relevant choices: soulforge, negation, barkshield, bloodtheft. Keep in mind that none of them will directly help the team.
Here is my current gear choice & stats:
With augment pet. (35.3 crit chance).
With rising hope & link spirit active. (Game says 36-37% crit chance, ACT says 41).
This is no way what you should do. This is what I'm using. I would probably recommend different jewelry and items based on your current set choice and GS.
Artifacts choices:
Your first priority should be the pvp artifact. Not for the unneeded recovery bonus, but for some extra defense and stamina regeneration. Since you will spend half of your dungeon delving time right in the middle of your astral shield, with the ground more or less entierly covered by overlapping red AoEs, stamina is a key factor in your survival strategy. Much more than deflection and regen, the latter being mostly wasted in a crowded dungeon environment.
My second choice has been the waters of Elah'zad. This is mostly a pvp choice, and for a purely PvE cleric you may want the lantern instead for even more offensive stats and for the debuff.
My third choice is the emblem of the Seldarine. This artifact is so OP, so much game-breaking, it's a no brainer and a non-choice item if you can afford it. The active stats are either useless or currently bugged (the active companion bonus doesn't work at all), but this is 15s of guaranteed God mode for your team when it's up. Alternatively, you may want to equip the catalogue for some extra deflection and movement (remember, moving out of red) if you can't get the Seldarine.
Companions selection:
There is only one ideal choice for cleric - ideal meaning there's a synergy between our role in a party and the pet: the Rust monster. While it's not providing a direct damage increase or buffing something related to dps, which is why it's overlooked and cheap, it provides extra damage mitigation, reducing the subsequent need for stronger heals when your party is taking damage. This Rust monster will however cater you even more in the frontline cleric role you will have to endorse anyway.
There are no other synergistic choice. Since there are 3 remaining active companion slots to fill once you have your augment pet and your rust monster, acceptable choices are:
* the Sprite: more action point.
* a Pseudodragon. Between acceptable and good. Procs often, you may be even more tanky without more defense and deflection. The downside is the price. It's one of the most expensive companions.
There are also several common wrong choices:
* the Phoera. If you plan to die that's your business. An active bonus working for maybe 20-30s during a 30 mins run isn't my idea of efficiency though.
* +stat pets. The weakest ones. While they may be very cheap, better companions should be your first priority once you have rank 7s enchantments and blue to purple artifacts for cost efficiency reasons. If you have enough astral diamonds to upgrade a +stat companion to purple level, there are better and cheaper choices.
There are some other lackluster but ok companions and I'm still wondering which 5th active pet I should get. Galeb Duhr needs to be tested but might work if it's buffing astral seal and sun burst heals, and the issue about the wild hunt rider is mostly the same.
Currently, the pig, swashbuclker or orc wolf are free 5th slot fillers with a "could be worse" tag on them. Waiting on Cryptic for ok pets for clerics!
The freebie pets pack - not worth spending ADs on them but if you get them, it's better than the white ones:
* pig
* orc wolf
* swashbuclker
* renegade evoker (interesting to keep some aggro on you)
* helmite ghost
Spells and rotations:
WIP.
TBA.
1.Taking Power of Life instead of Moon Touched is a bad choice.
2.Enduring Relief is NOT BAD!! You maybe inexperienced enough with this feat but ER does proc with Astral Seal, which means 200% uptime if you have 2 or 3 sealed targets.
3. Feated Foresight gives 11% DR.
Update your pvp session asap. I am waiting for that.
Then you're backtabbing when using astral seal, which means you're using a bug. Like I said, this build doesn't rely on bugs. This one will get fixed when module 3 is released by the way.
Side note about Recovery on armor sets: this is only a problem when you choose accessories that also boost Recovery. There are several BiS options that have no Recovery at all. Also worth mentioning that the effectiveness of the MH set bonus scales with the DC's max HP, so undergeared or glass cannon DCs are not going to make optimal use of it.
I like that you mentioned Thunderhead; it's one of my favorite underused enchantments. Having some kind of Soulforged is still great insurance, of course, but it's nice to have options.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Halfling - Devoted Cleric - Divine Oracle
Neverwinter Tribunal
<Genocidal Tendencies>
www.genotendencies.enjin.com
Also, no righteous rage of tempus seems strange, given the crit-heavy focus: spamming seals on everything gets a lot of crits, so more DP from that is always good (especially since as you get more endgamey the focus shifts from heals+mitigation to buff/debuff+mitigation), though possibly the gain isn't enough to be worthwhile? A few points in this + divine advantage and you unlock ethereal boon, which is yet another DP-gain wunderkind (specially since it seems to proc off HW charge cooldowns now).
Power of life I never really liked (used the points for RRoT and EB, as above), since it effectively locks down your two at-wills, but now I think about it, I've almost never used any other at-wills anyway, so clearly I'm an idiot. Question though: the 10% extra tempHP from sacred flame: I'm assuming that's 10% of the crappy tiny sliver it usually gives? I've never actually measured it, but going by the size of the slice, the tempHP can't be more than 100-200 hp, so even at 5/5 you're looking at maybe 20 extra tempHP?
Basically: do you have this feat almost entirely for the extra seal heals? Seal heals are certainly a sizeable chunk of a total heal output, so I can see how this might be nice.
Holy resolve: "Has a 5 minutes cooldown". Meh. Toughness isn't that bad, I just don't feel the need to play a more tanky DC (=I've never seen a failure because I'm too squishy). Sure, healing action isn't the best feat ever, but heroic points have to be used somewhere, and since i can't pick templar's domain and bountiful fortune at the same time, then healing action is my choice. Definitely not my first choice, that's why I haven't highlighted it. Pick more HPs if you want, it can't hurt.
I used to play with rigtheous rage of tempus. I might get it back at some point, but the divinity gain isn't that great and I'm rarely short on divinity, unless I'm really under extreme pressure for extended period of time.
I have picked power of life during my last respec. I've been testing every single faithful feat for months and it's the best choice among the "don't want but have to pick this" feats. It's not that bad and astral seal never leaves my spell bar, because it's often 15-20% of my total healing output (closer to 15 since I'm using the Fabled set, with repurpose soul). I can't say no to something buffing my 2nd-3rd best heal. I couldn't care less about 50 more HPs from sacred flame, I don't need more than 1 temp HP to trigger deepstone blessing, although I can't complain about the welcome albeit limited synergy between both feats.
If I had to remove it I'd max rising hope to get 2 points into restoration mastery, but I'm not convinced I should waste 10% more heals from astral seal for a 2% damage resistance bonus.
Restoration Mastery is utterly awful. It grants actual Defense stat, not Damage Resistance. Cryptic tooltips tend to be ambiguous when talking about defense, but I tested it to be sure.
I'm with you on Righteous Rage of Tempus. I'm not convinced that it's extremely helpful. I need the points because I build further into Righteous, but I tend to put 3 into Divine Advantage just for the extra uptime (I don't feel that 5 points are strictly necessary since it's constantly being reapplied).
From my perspective, extra HP are not just about being tanky. A decent selection of DC powers and feats operate off of max HP pool, so that's something to consider as well.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
its basically a healer stat guide.
you have very nice stat, don't you feel you do over healing sometime?
few comments, I use soulforge, its not only 4K HP once you die, if you plan your death you can do nice things with it
as for enchantments, for beginners I suggest to buy +6 straight from the market, its half of the price of mark of potency.
for the long run, you need to make your own Brutal and cruel enchantments
Thanks.
I don't think i'm doing overhealing. Well, when I am, all the spells I use aren't only heals. I didn't post my rotation yet because that part isn't ready, but sunburst is for linked spirit and foresight, and astral shield for mitigation. I also like running ahead and pulling 3 to 5 groups at the same time. I guess heals aren't wasted then.
I don't use healing word anymore most of the times, except when valindra is in the vincinity. I'm using divine glow, and any repurpose soul heals from that spell is just bonus free heals for the team.
Thanks, I didn't know that feat was so useless. The tooltip is very similar to foresight, so, yes, that's confusing. Indeed, people sticking to miracle healer should pick toughness. That's a relevant option, among other possibilities.
Moon Touched is better than Mark of Mending.
Power of Life is the worst faithful feat.
Etc
And good info and guide.
Raist Torilrocker | Dwarf | DC/AC
Waterdeep Dungeon & Salvage LLC
Twitch
Firstly. I really don't see any reason not to take toughness. Free HP is great, even in PVE, and there's really nothing better to take. The reason I say this, is as you've already said, Domain Synergy is terrible, and we don't really need more recovery. You have 5 points in Healing Action, but this spell only affects HW and BoH. It doesn't sound like you use the second at all, and the first only situationally now. So is it really worth it for spells you almost are never using? Also, if you still want to take it. It turns out that having 1 point is the same as 5. If you do the math the amount you gain is mere decimals and the way rounding works in this game it will always round up, even if your decimal is less than 0.5. the only thing is that if you're HW is say giving you 7 AP, that may already be rounded up. Either way, the max AP gain you are looking at is 1%. So you could keep 1 or 2 points there just fine and move the rest to toughness, don't even have to take Holy Resolve, which is of course nothing special with it's build in 5 min CD, but for me it's worth it to have it there for when it's useful, seems better than any of the other options.
I think you may be overvaluing Deepstones Blessing a bit, with this build you don't exactly pump out the temp HP. Sure Sacred Flame gives some, but not for a long time and in my experience, using the same power set up you do, you don't get to spam it that much because I spend most of my free time slapping ASeals on mobs. Also, Enduring Relief procs from none divine heals, contrary to what the tooltip says. This make's it easy to have up a lot, because of reaply, but it's still not great. In my view neither are anything special and just get you deeper into the tree. Deepstones definetly gains if you often run with a GF who grants temp HP or more for the AC path. It does make DA an even better saving spell, as you said, if you actually ever use it, I don't, never even put it on my bar anymore.
Since you talked about Templar's Domain and how you thought it would be nice to have, you should know it has a built in 5 min CD. so it's pretty much trash, you could put 1 point in it if you really wanted and pretty get as much utility out of it as possible.
I have Invigorated Healing, not Power of Life, which I never though sounded very good at all. I don't need Invigorated Healing, but I'm lazy like you, and it's free healing procced from spells I normally use, so whatever. Lately though since I'd been thinking about what I could do to shift to more buffing and less healing, as people can keep themselves alive so much more these days, I'd been wondering if Power of Life could be worth it just to buff ASeal healing. I would be very interested if you have any numbers in regards to the diference with and without it.
I have moontouched, and love it. I slap down HG all the time (53% AP gain) just a great all around buff for the party and I love free passive healing from it. I tried Mark of Mending, but I ended up discarding it because I just never use Healer's Lore. I really didn't feel like I noticed it that much, or maybe it's just because I didn't need it. I seem to manage fine without. Also, since you use Fomorian, that power gain is less since you have less recovery, you only get like 130 power from that. I feel like this kind of hits back to the point of you not using HW as much anymore either, that's the spell it most greatly affects. If you're just completely in love with Healer's Lore then it makes perfect sense, if not I don't feel it justifies those 5 points.
I don't view Greater Divine Power as really being very useful at all due to the nature of how divine power is used continously. You don't really have enough points to get deeper into any other tree though, although you could pull that point, one out of Divine Advantage and one from Rising Hope and put into Righteous Rage. Although you've said you don't need more DP I feel like you can never have to much DP generation, since the more often you can cast divine spells the more useful you are.
I currently use MH and it's great, it synergizes really well with some of the feats, and gear we can get. Fomorian is a great set too. I don't have it, otherwise I would for sure give it a try for sure since I don't need all my Recovery and would be fun to try. Provides similar healing, gives you some APen for a little more dmg, can be shared via LS and helps for DP generation. I find High Prophet to be a very good set, but as you stated, on trash it's not nearlly that great, since a lot of our spells have caps on how many mobs they can hit, and people like to do mega pulls to go faster so more healing if often needed. It is very useful for boss fights though, it can really speed up the fights if you are interested in that. More of an end game kind of thing for fast farming is the way I see it, but for anybody who wants to use and doesn't have any issues on their runs then go for it, perfectly good option.
In regards to enchantments. For weps I'd say it's definetly Vorpal>Plaguefire>Holy Avenger and Feytouched is actually pretty bad. I have my soulforged and love it. Nothing wrong with a get out of jail free card and I hate having to run in a dungeon or something. Keeps runs moving along and for boss fights it sure can be useful for preventing wipes. Especially at lower levels when people are struggling more with gear, tactics, etc. I've never used a thunderhead and I'm sure it could be plenty of fun
With all that said this game doesn't require you to really spec a certain way or anything. You can pretty much do whatever you want as long as it works, and once you're geared enough, almost anything works. I'll be looking forwards to what else you post about your build/character. Nice Emblem of Seldarine btw, great artifact, both for PVP and PVE
No he isn't. ER procs off seal regardless of divine mode. In fact it procs from a lot of things regardless of divine mode. Always has. The only "bug" being that the tooltip description is wrong.
No you don't.
Divine Oracle Faithful. Yea, maybe.
Regarding high prophet, I've honestly not looked back since I tried it out. I worked my *** off getting a full MH set, and by the time I finally had it, I didn't really need it. I've tried it, sure, and my god: it's hilariously hard to die in that stuff, but I've still not felt the need for that much tankiness (haven't been back to visit Val in a while, so this could easily change).
The thing is that people tend to view "this stacks up to three times" as "I MUST GET MAX STACKS", and then disregard that as being unfeasible, since when do you have time to sit and spam attacks?
You don't need three, though: each hit is 10% extra damage to that target, and 10% is still a hell of a lot. Since you'll almost always be sealing as many monsters as possible, combined with a divine glow (probably) and some sacred flame spam, you'll be maintaining a good 10-20% damage increase on a crapton of dudes. If I stick a DG on a bunch of monsters, it's even more effective if it also brings a prophet debuff with it.
I like to think of it as "reverse foresight".
As for High Prophet, it's a great little set to have for speeding up dungeon runs. It's true that maintaining max stacks on multiple targets is unfeasible, but some debuffing doesn't hurt if everything is otherwise going fine.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
HP set + arcsing + divine searing light followed by Divine Divine glow = a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>%# load of mobs with a pretty strong debuff on them
ohhh and feel free to start it off with a HG!!! might as well summon the sun to burn the mobs!!
I'd swap the order of use for searing light and DG there but other than that yeah, that's how I run CN trash. Minus the HP set because my CW's like pulling 4 packs at once, etc
Thats why they need to put the soulforged enchant back to the way it was before!! id bet you wouldnt see as much CW jumping in like warriors anymore
Soulforged has very little to do with it. It's all about the Life Steal in PvE :P
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
And please dont get us started on lifesteal......
I'd say it's more the Lifesteal. Actually if they set Soul the way it used to be, it would be even easier for them because they would simply become immune for several seconds one their HP dropped below 25%. Jump in, get dropped below 25% become immune for 4 seconds and heal back up full, no issue at all there. It also depends how many CW's there are. I run a lot with 3 CW's, lot of CW friends and they like running together. With less CW's we tend to pull smaller packs. With that being said I hardly see the CW's die when jumping in, usually it's from some red they didn't avoid or getting caught up in a mob stun train or something, then soul activates and you keep on rolling.
There are many changes to come for modules 3 and most of them haven't been made yet. IMO tenacity needs to be tested a lot more. I'm not sure yet it's better than deflection but 26% seems "low" to me compared to the standard DR tenacity gives. It forces classes into one set bonus use. Not that I mind, ours is quite good, but regen builds will be mostly worthless (about time), and to pull sufficient healing from your spells with depression you're going to have to get crazy amounts of power. Which "naturally" pushes clerics towards a more pve-ish playstyle in pvp.
I'm currently playing on live with divine glow/SB/AS. Works great so far and I can do fun stuff like 20k crit hammer of fate hits sometimes. Not sure it will matter when mod 3 is released, but I don't see how not using tenacity gear in pvp would be optimal. AFAIK There's one T2.5 set for more tankiness, but it relies on HPs, not deflection.
A lot of good stuff here. Just allow me to say that I made this build two weeks after shadowmantle and that at that time I was still struggling with VT. So my goal was to get as much healing as I can while maintaining debuffing and some damage as options. That's why I've feated healer's lore, it's definitely not for the small power gain, it's only because healer's lore fits well to my playstyle in T2s (pulling as much as i can and keeping the party alive) and is a great help when serious healing is required, even when the team is going at snail pace.
I've never considered my own survivability as an issue, because it has never been an issue. Sure I could probably get rid off healing action, and I would probably see some improvements, I'm not denying that, I'm just on standby for now, waiting for module 3. If there's no harder content I'm not even sure to keep a faithful build on the long run, and will probably tweak a few elements in my heroic feats, just not now.
I'm still using healing word during VT runs by the way (from the start to Valindra), it doesn't directly make runs any faster but at least people don't die and can do more mistakes or take more risks. All in all, i'm not sure divine glow would make a significant enough difference not to just heal and make my team's runs feel smoother. Stuff hits a bit hard in there if you stand in red.
Just to answer you about the temp HPs issue, I just like deepstone blessing for spike heals. I rarely have to use divine armor anymore but sacred flame temp HPs are handy when the rest of the job has been done. I certainly don't spam astral seal on every single target, it's imo completely pointless, and stuff died by the time you're done, just on the biggest ones, and a couple of smaller ones, then switch to other spells, and that might be sacred flame is the rest of my spellbar is on CD.
On a side note, and this is my answer to people praising High Prophet, I'm still not convinced at all by this set. I'm not sure I could pull as much as I do to help CWs to get the best benefits from oppressive force, sudden storm and the blue meatball, because when you pull one maw + 4 brains, a dozen of frogs and a 4-5 other weird NPCs in spellplague (not counting minions), you better not force the team to enter survival mode, it would make the run longer.
The "pull more vs debuff more" debate could lead us to fun although kinda pointless moot arguments, and I'm just assuming without taking too much risks that both have the same overall efficiency, which makes IMO healing builds competitive in an endgame environment, provided you're on the same line with the rest of your team and that they understand what you're doing and why. There's a point from which more debuffs are just pointless, except boss fights of course. I'm all for High Prophet use when you can't do crazy pulls or when it's all about an easy boss fight (The Dwarf King's crypt comes to my mind). That doesn't mean the current (legit) metagame, revolving around stacking debuffs, has to be followed without any second thought for clerics. It's just a matter of balance, but at least, healing builds can just focus on just doing that if and when your team struggles.
Then it's clearly a bug and I'm surprised you're actually advocating for using it in a build instead of reporting it.
Yeah, Soulforged is merely an increased margin for error or technical difficulties (lag, invisible red, etc.).
I actually prefer not to run with other CWs unless it's to help a CW friend with a specific dungeon. Having more CWs can certainly make content even easier, but it can also make the actual gameplay less enjoyable in that it's like having too many directors in the orchestra. Getting the mobs to move exactly as you desire and predict is more difficult when multiple CWs are stepping on each other's toes.
To get somewhat back on topic, I understand lutz086's frustration with Life Steal, but I don't think that it needs to be nerfed since it provides a satisfying game mechanic for players wanting their characters to be more independent and self-sustainable. There are a number of ways Cryptic might go about ensuring that DCs remain valuable party members at end-game that don't involve direct nerfs. Besides, your average party is not full of players with amazing self-sustain, so this DC desirability issue only exists in a very small population.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
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