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Needed, improvements to DC class.
silverkelt
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,235 Arc User
The game has changed and some things are just not working with the DC class, I propose the following changes to be implemented at Underdark. Please bear in mind, that I think the DC is NOT in a bad position, but it needs some updating to make it a little more valid for todays game. In addition , Ive rolled and spent some considerable time playing a Paladin since the launch of Mod 6.. I do not feel the DC is built correctly for the variation of the game you have released.
1. Biggest issue, spot mechanics of what should be party wide buffs, in short the following should be moved to PARTY wide , not spot issues, Ashield and Warding Flare, please make BOTH of these just party wide buffs, TODAYS game has changed dramatically, plopping down Ashield is almost worthless overall. There is too many shifting parameters and what should be our most powerful protection spell, is no longer worthwhile to slot. I still believe warding flare is too weak to be worth slotting. (most dcs are now using the DG, Bastion and BtS set up).
2. Damage on DC class in general, is just too low, a paladin can do about 20-30% more dps while healing for just as much, im not complaining about the DCs heals, just the damage, it should match roughly the paladin level of damage dealing. Overall soloing things even with a well geared DC is taking too long. THIS WOULD provide two benefits..
A.) By increasing the base damage for the DC , it will be more beneficial for overall parties , solo better and
B.) the righteous class, can hang with other DPS classes a little better.
You can do this by either FIXING the horrendous heroic DC encounters, or upping base damage on DPS skills for the DC.
Please understand, I have almost a 3k dc, with 50% arp, 15k power, 6k crit and a trans Plague, Ive also tested out pure vorp many times (i just get tired of swapping things around) Even with this set up, my early in the mod 2k gwf, could kill things much quicker, a 1k amount of GEAR difference, SHOULD = a non dps class roughly the same amount of killing ablity in my opinion. Ive been as high as almost 20k power, but it killed both of my arp and my crit at the time, I will continue to try to get it back to that level, but after much testing, my damage is reduced with that much power, if I lose over 1k crit and that much arp. (was down to around 33% arp, with 20k power. ) Even with the addition 12.5% addition to damage, I do not believe a equally geared DC vs a equally geared Pally is in the same level. In addition alot of the pally buffs, are just class features, just sitting around and doing nothing helps out the party, where the DC has to use active skills to do it. Im not complaining about that, but I do not believe the Spot mechanics should be on some of these skills, AT least make them party wide!
3. These skills, have almost no use in the game. Warding Flare (its protection is pathetic, for a finishing end game skill) Gaes, it has some 1 vs 1 application in pvp, and thats it, ADD a buff.debuff for pve or something.. , Exhultation, ITS so freaking short, WHY not make this a party wide application? It used to be a good CC prevention a mod or two ago.. now , I no longer slot it for anything. . Healing word.. heals, should be revamped to be a little more powerful, it is almost never used, other then to spam for Gift of Haste and /or a place like VT where you might need a range heal that isnt a spot mechanic. But you can get more gift of haste with divine SB in place. HW used to be the go to healing skill, now I almost never, NEVER slot it.
Overall, if we just moved Ashield to party wide buff/debuff, I would be happy, its time to revamp the DC a little to make it a little more current friendly with the game you designed.
Thank you,
Please refrain from the "DCS are fine, MY SW sucks posts" Post your own feedback about your class please.
PLEASE do not just post (meh, my dc is fine) if we DO not keep on top of needed changes, it just falls back into areas where it shouldnt be.
With some proper tweaking right now, the class will just remain more relevant, without a need of massive changes later on.
1. Biggest issue, spot mechanics of what should be party wide buffs, in short the following should be moved to PARTY wide , not spot issues, Ashield and Warding Flare, please make BOTH of these just party wide buffs, TODAYS game has changed dramatically, plopping down Ashield is almost worthless overall. There is too many shifting parameters and what should be our most powerful protection spell, is no longer worthwhile to slot. I still believe warding flare is too weak to be worth slotting. (most dcs are now using the DG, Bastion and BtS set up).
2. Damage on DC class in general, is just too low, a paladin can do about 20-30% more dps while healing for just as much, im not complaining about the DCs heals, just the damage, it should match roughly the paladin level of damage dealing. Overall soloing things even with a well geared DC is taking too long. THIS WOULD provide two benefits..
A.) By increasing the base damage for the DC , it will be more beneficial for overall parties , solo better and
B.) the righteous class, can hang with other DPS classes a little better.
You can do this by either FIXING the horrendous heroic DC encounters, or upping base damage on DPS skills for the DC.
Please understand, I have almost a 3k dc, with 50% arp, 15k power, 6k crit and a trans Plague, Ive also tested out pure vorp many times (i just get tired of swapping things around) Even with this set up, my early in the mod 2k gwf, could kill things much quicker, a 1k amount of GEAR difference, SHOULD = a non dps class roughly the same amount of killing ablity in my opinion. Ive been as high as almost 20k power, but it killed both of my arp and my crit at the time, I will continue to try to get it back to that level, but after much testing, my damage is reduced with that much power, if I lose over 1k crit and that much arp. (was down to around 33% arp, with 20k power. ) Even with the addition 12.5% addition to damage, I do not believe a equally geared DC vs a equally geared Pally is in the same level. In addition alot of the pally buffs, are just class features, just sitting around and doing nothing helps out the party, where the DC has to use active skills to do it. Im not complaining about that, but I do not believe the Spot mechanics should be on some of these skills, AT least make them party wide!
3. These skills, have almost no use in the game. Warding Flare (its protection is pathetic, for a finishing end game skill) Gaes, it has some 1 vs 1 application in pvp, and thats it, ADD a buff.debuff for pve or something.. , Exhultation, ITS so freaking short, WHY not make this a party wide application? It used to be a good CC prevention a mod or two ago.. now , I no longer slot it for anything. . Healing word.. heals, should be revamped to be a little more powerful, it is almost never used, other then to spam for Gift of Haste and /or a place like VT where you might need a range heal that isnt a spot mechanic. But you can get more gift of haste with divine SB in place. HW used to be the go to healing skill, now I almost never, NEVER slot it.
Overall, if we just moved Ashield to party wide buff/debuff, I would be happy, its time to revamp the DC a little to make it a little more current friendly with the game you designed.
Thank you,
Please refrain from the "DCS are fine, MY SW sucks posts" Post your own feedback about your class please.
PLEASE do not just post (meh, my dc is fine) if we DO not keep on top of needed changes, it just falls back into areas where it shouldnt be.
With some proper tweaking right now, the class will just remain more relevant, without a need of massive changes later on.
Post edited by zebular on
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Comments
Different mechanics for different classes.
The BASE damage for a DC does absolutely need an increase. Right now it is horribly horrible to solo anything as a Faithful DC, regardless of gear level. Like silverkelt my Faithful DC has about 50% Arpen, perfect plaguefire, and a IL of about 2.7k, and even doing Arcane Reservoir is a headache that takes forever. I can do it, and I'm never in much danger of dying due to self-heals, but it just takes forever.
Another suggestion would be to change one of the passives that no DC ever uses (such as Soothe perhaps?) into one that increases the DC's personal damage. A healbot DC wouldn't use this in dungeons because the opportunity cost would be too high, but it would go a long way towards helping DCs solo daily content.
Another suggestion would be to rework some of the DC heroic feats (which I agree are atrocious) to do something like what was done to the CW's "Focused Wizardry" feat: create a tradeoff between damage and healing, such that if the feat is selected, healing is decreased by a certain amount but damage is increased by a certain amount. My DC would take that feat, and then in dungeons select healing-focused passives to make up for the loss in healing created by the feat, but while soloing, when heals aren't really needed so much, I could really use the damage boost.
For those concerned about Righteous DC's becoming DPS monsters, I would be content if the Righteous feats were toned down a bit, such that the net result of a base damage increase and the DPS boosts from Righteous feats left the Righteous DC overall mostly unchanged.
Thank you for starting this conversation silverkelt.
Terrifying Insight does this, but that only helps Divine Oracle builds.
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Yeah my DC is AC, because I just can't give up Anointed Army (it is awesome in eLOL), but Terrifying Insight and Foresight do sometimes make me wish to switch back to DO.
But on the topic of dps, this a big issue for the support classes and soloing, many people say they should separate pvp and pve, I wish they could separate party play and solo play as well. Imagine one could be righteous solo and virtuous/faithful in dungeons.
I figure people will just pull out what they want not to hear and deride it.
but it WOULDNT be! IT would be a active skill only for DC, not a aura, it would still have to be slotted and used, plus the empowered, divine and regular versions would have to be played with it.
It DOES need this change 100%, nothing else will make it useful again. The only semi useful amount you get out of this now is in pvp.. and any control can knock you out of it.
I think you can clearly see , what is mean to be the most powerful skill in the DCs arsenal, not being used is a issue.
Before my DC needs any kind of small buff in his damagetree, warlock has to be fixed
Compared to that class leveling and soloplay with my DC is a cake
DC is a supporterclass and never needs to outdamage anything, otherwise play a pure damage class
Its a never needed call for improvement
I spent alot of time in several builds on LIVE with my current gear (not just going to testing slotting all BiS and saying everything is grand.. )
Ive done righteous DO build, Ive done DO virt , AC virt and AC faithful builds. DC is my favorite class, but it suffers tremendously, from being the weekest dps class in game. You literally give up 50% of your healing ability by going dps build and IT DOESNT even make a dent in a real dps class. Something is wrong when you give that much of your base ability up and do not get something back for it.
Im not asking for this class to be really on par with per se with striker, but it could use a little love on base mechanics a bit.
Also there ought to be some greater incentive for DPS players to actually stand in the shield! Yes they get some damage reduction for standing in the shield but with the mobs the way they are, even a DPS player standing in an Empowered Astral Shield can still get one-shot by archers. The "old" Astral Shield would heal players, I'd be in favor of bringing something like that back.
ashield give a dps buff and double the radius.. these things would at least work better and you could stand around reds a little easier, right now, you plop it down and bam, red, covers the entire thing.. whats the point and hence why it is almost never used.
Faithful and Virtuous DC's are support, Righteous DC's are not.
I am mainly interested in seeing Faithful and Virtuous DC's getting a damage boost. I agree that I don't think Righteous really needs a buff right now.
I leveled my DC in the EE zones as DO Righteous. I agree, it was mostly a piece of cake, just long and tedious. It was actually easier to level my DO Righteous DC than my SM Destroyer GWF.
But then when it came time to do the epic dungeons, I switched to AC Faithful so that I could fulfill my proper role in these very difficult dungeons, and lo and behold, most of my damage went away...
I don't think that being Righteous should make one win paingiver all the time, but compare a BIS righteous dc to a BIS cw dps build. The "c" in cw stands for control, yet they will win paingiver by orders of magnitude. If a class that is supposed be a control class (which means its a support class) can become a monster dpser - why not provide that option to every class ?
Charo , no offense, but I have tested at 70, every dd, every line on live. Your ok on righteous soloing basically while leveling.. or in a advanced group that only wants dcs to buff.
To stay righteous and only be a buff bot basically, you lose roughly 50% of your healing ability and it stays all active all the time to do that.
Get to 70 and run a Egwd while righteous or Ecc and see how you handle healing a t2 party, or drop in a dom match, see a EoA opponent CW and see what you think of that build. It only really works for powerful groups (all 3.2k+ ) who barely needs your healing and all want just buffing for dps.
IF you go with ANY mixed group that need heal supporting, you give up a TON of healing for that extra dps/buffing line.
HEALING DCS need a valid way to do solo dailies as well.. what a pita pain to do them with this class. Even with very good gear on (the same gear that would make everything a 1-2 button kill for some of the dps classes. Still take 10-20x as long as a healing dc.. It just seems scaled wrong.
In addition, doing major hes, that have little need of healing (so ya right now dragonflight, you do ok) but others, everything dies and you get zippo points, because no ONE takes damage) take iwd, you literally have to get there first and get damage taken, or you wont get great success.
Actually to be honest, I don't see any reason why a DO Righteous DC with Lostmauth Set/Vorpal/60+% crit chance, wouldn't be competitive with a similar CW for paingiver. But that is a separate discussion.
I agree that WF needs some love, however I have no problem with AS as it currently is. As soon as I put AS down everyone runs to get inside it; this is an important "leader" class spell because when I place it, I decide where the fight takes place. Lets not forget that a fully empowered AS gives incredible DR, and to just give that to the entire party as a buff would be, in my opinion, overpowered.
AS never leaves my hotbar, there is nothing better for soaking up the damage from the initial pull. This is something that high-geared DCs who never run PUGs can easily forget.
I have to fully agree here. When my sub-2k GWF can farm stronghold content almost twice as fast as my 2.7k DC, something is wrong. I constantly find myself making excuses not to grind solo content on my DC, and getting bored easily when I do. A small buff to base damage would be most welcome.
Geas has another use in a certain PvE encounter in ECC, however it will be against the rules to discuss how it is used so I won't. It can also be useful on the final boss of GWD, depending on how your party chooses to handle that fight. However, it is a very situational spell, it could be improved if nothing would break the freeze until it was done, because as of now, there's too much AoE going on for it to last longer than a few seconds. I never use WF, it's a waste of an encounter slot.
Personally, I am not taking a side in this argument, I know from past experience the class is more difficult to play then most and I can see that because of this difficulty, you might feel the class under performs.
I know of no normal group nowadays, that would run to ashield.
It has no real use for dps classes, because if they get hit with anything, they would be dead anyways even in a empowered ashield. TRS, HRS, GWF,sws have zero use in game for this skill at the current time. GF, pally, maybe, depends how strong they can take a hit, most of the time, they can take some damage, outside of reds, that damage I can insta heal back.
Ive found its better to just use BtS at most places.
IF A skill is being used in a NON legit way, count me out.. The exploits need to stop.
I disagree. Righteous is a terrific support character. Running Stronghold HEs with a Righteous DC guildie was awesome because he was buffing the snot out of the other two of us.
Not a strong clutch healer, but I think "support" is too broad a term. Some classes are poor at party support simply because they lack team buffs, but no DC is utterly lacking in this department.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
but guess it needs 1000s complaints first like gwfs.
But I dont want this to be just about the dps.. I still think the #1 issue here is fixing ashield to be a more party wide use.
I WOULD be ok to double the radius and add a small buff for dps classes to use it.
Please pass that suggestion on to the devs if you would , good community poeple
The actual buff of empowered astral shield is stronger then the paladin devotion daily shield of faith. The thing that makes astral shield not over powered is the clunky targeting. I would be fine with it becoming an automatic buff to the whole party, on the condition that it was made weaker. The same gos for shield of faith, atm it is too strong and needs rebalancing. Atm shield of faith is a 50% dr buff, which acts as an independent layer of dr and stacks with itself. Because of this, you can actually exceed the dr cap with this ability, as it gets calculated separately from ordinary dr.
Im ok with several different varations of what is being suggested, its all a improvement on what is currently a tank only skill, when it USED to be a GREAT party wide skill.
EVEN then a good tank doesnt really need it in most places.
frankly for t1s, its to the point, you dont "need" a tank, and a bad tank makes it worse, a good tank makes it easier. I would rather do elol, vt and kr all tankless then have a mediocre tank <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> things up nowadays. Ive done a few no tanks, no heals runs on some alts, (though the random heal on CW can heal some of these t1s, its much harder, but doable!)
In t2s, I frankly like it best when the CW engages trash mobs with control first, then your tank wades in. But to each their own.
I will lay down the shield upon request and if the cw doesnt feel like they can engage first.