[Newbie Needing Help] About heal in general and clutch heal ?

vichado

Hey guys,

After playing a bit of everything, I'm looking into the Devoted Cleric.
The thing is I dislike the idea of HoT and would like a character relying on big one-shot heals... So I guessed I should look into the Faithful tree but then I saw that "Agent of the Divine" end of the tree and was like meh...

I really don't want automatic healings like that, and tend to stay far from HoT. I'd like something that needs me to be on edge and responsive at any moment to save my teammates : so once again, clutch heals.

Of course Virtous would be the opposite of what I am looking for, but I don't know about Righteous.

I'm looking for something PvE/PvP, and squishiness is not a problem. I want challenge in playing my characters haha

I don't know if anything like that would exist in Neverwinter, or if I look more into the Oathbound Paladin (no idea) but that's why I ask you guys who know way more !

deanblockley89

Try not to see the end faithful tree as "automatic heals". You still need big heals to keep them alive and gift of faith won't do that by itself. What it simply allows you to do is over heal, by storing some of the heal for when you cannot get to them. It does lose its effect though once someone soulforges, needing you to heal them back up for the gift of faith to reactivate.

Want clutch healing? go faithful. Some of the nicest feats there are for clutch healing - desperate restoration, shared burden, etc. Use skills like bastion of health for massive aoe healing. Anyone can heal someone back up from low health after they have been hit. The skill is knowing when the red aoe attacks are going to hit and preventing one shots. That's where the skill comes into it.

I went faithful cleric as more often than not its spike damage that causes a wipe in pve dungeons and so prefer instant heals. I use bastion of health, divine glow and astral shield. Damage mitigation + instant aoe heals + damage buff + damage de buff. The 4 things any healer needs.

deanblockley89

I don't run pvp but think faithful would be the way to go there too. Having ran a pve valindra dungeon with no tank there are times when you get rooted and dazed. You cannot do any attacks, break free, use any skills or even health pots. You are a sitting duck hoping your teammates break you free before you die. That's where the end of the faithful tree really shines. You could sit there taking damage and it automatically heals you after you get below 40% health. It's the difference between life and death and since pvp half of it is all about control effects I can see it having its merits there too

rapo973

HoTs can generate big one-shot heals.
Now let's separate the two things.
big heals: you need power/crit and the right talents.
Clutch: can be generated both by the faithful and the virtuous, but the mechanic is different. For the virtuous this is not very explicit. Look at the talents of the virtuous: most of them has to do with heals. Combine them togheter in a single build and you will discover that the virtuous is a very good healer with the features you're looking for (no automatic heal).
My experience:
I'm a virtuous healer with 22K power, 6K crit and the right talents: I heal up to 180K HP in one shot (even too much). The regenerative effect is so high that it looks like a clutch heal and keep on healing for some seconds with different intensity along the time.
This effect is not very visibile at the beginning, but it starts being interesting after 2.4/2.5K as soon as the power increases.

dfnce

Faithful is ideal for < 2.0-2.3k IL DC and similar party without Paladin tank. I recommend to start with Faithful, take +Virtuous Gift Of Haste feat granting AP on healing.

Low gs Virtuous healer is weak. I think it is getting better somewhere at 2.8-3.0 to begin a comfort playing. With some tweaks, if you take 3 feats from Faithful, then you certainly have burst heal (Desperate Restoration) and faster divinity refill.

Righteous is most extreme and unforgiving type. No backup healing. What is worse, if you take some great feats in Faithful to to improve burst healing, this cuts you off from Gift Of Haste. If you pick Gift Of Haste, you do it by expense of Faithful feats.

sharonious

Even with the big auto-clutch capstone on Faithful, you'll find yourself needing a lot of big heals unless you have an overgeared party. In T2 dungeons and on stronghold dragons, the hits come hard and fast enough that you'll need to think fast and heal well, and the capstone will only save a party member some of the time (even with agent of the divine, your party is going to go down if you're not active and strategic in your healing).

3x Divine BoH --> empowered astral shield or BoH, depending on how dire the HP situation is. This combo is your best friend as a clutch healer.

bitt3rnightmar3

I'm a heal over time cleric. My suggestion -Get to 40% Crit and 12k+ power on a virtuous capstone and healing word can clutch heal even the tank. I use Urgent Prayers and desperate restoration from faithful path. I spec'd into gift of the gods in the faithful tree because if you really want clutch healing remember that you can insta-cast Bastion with no wind up in divinity. I stack as much ap gain and divinity production into my character as possible. With Divine armor it gives me a nice buffer of temp HP to help pretty much even the squishiest party member tick back up to full health in no time even in t2 boss fights. In 3 swings with Sacred Flame and my divinity is up- temp hit points are applied to whomever is standing near whatever I attacked and I have 3 huge clutch heals prepped but I usually use healing word for ap buffing/dr buffing.

- My two copper.

putzboy78

lol, go high crit, high power righteous. Every heal becomes a clutch heal without passives. lol

rapo973

Reading these posts, the good news are that there are different strategies to get the same effect.
My build is Virtuous + some Righteous with high AP gain. I spam clutch heals with no problems and it's clear that the IL makes the difference for me (currently I'm 3.4K)....so maybe I'm not the best benchmark for clerics with lower IL.

vichado

Wow thank you guys for these answers, it indeed looks like there are many ways to achieve this one goal.
The thing that made me get my ideas about the different paths of the DC is this post from angrysprite :

angrysprite said:

• Righteous: Mostly DPS-oriented (as Clerics go); very little automatic healing, somewhat good with manual clutch-heals, great DPS, very squishy, low tankiness.
• Faithful: Automatic burst-healing, great for manual clutch-heals (burst-healing) decent DPS, a medium squishy, medium tankiness.
• Virtuous: Automatic slow-cooker heal-over-time, manual maintenance of slow-cooker heal-over-time, low DPS, least squishy, most tankiness.

These are the three branches of the paragon trees. The OP obviously wants to be a healer: look closely and compare. It *is* easier to play Faithful than Virtuous, but Virtuous allows a lot more flexibility in play styles, whereas Faithful is more like "automatic transmission vehicle: no need for a clutch, just press accelerator and go". Virtuous is more like "Standard transmission, high-torque, massive towing power 18-wheeler truck with balz". LOL
Oh and I guess Righteous would be: "Lamborghini Countach" - as Cleric go, anyway.

So... looking for challenge would be Virtous, but I'm afraid of the HoT making things easy mode... (having heals popping ? being more tanky ? ... you see what I mean)

rapo973

Well....Concerning Virtuous, it's a generic summary which can be true for an "avarege" cleric. It's not true anymore at higher IL, in particular when you have high recovery. The rate of the manual maintenance of the HoTs is not very high: under Shield of Divine, you can forget to heal for the next 12 seconds.
[OFF TOPIC]
With a specific build, the virtuous is not only a "tank", but it's also a good power buffer. You may want to test other features of the cleric.
To understand what I mean, watch this video from the GWF POV - I'm the cleric in this video.
Video description: "YO guys its karma i did eTOS with "lfg"chat i found a party with 3 Support a insane DC, OP and a tank they had insane debuff so its was a nice smooth run"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtaNxVe--qQ
[/OFF TOPIC]

vichado

Thank you guys, I just had an extra question, which might sound stupid and off-topic but I really have no answer about it... : what is the difference between a Devoted Cleric and a Devotion Paladin ? What does each one bring to the table ?

Thank you

sharonious

I think the cleric brings more offensive buffs/enemy debuffs and the paladin brings more damage mitigation. SO a cleric for faster runs, a pally for safer runs.

dfnce

Anointed Army daily complements well KV, it also can secure team when there is time gap between DP dailies.

I recommend do some ETOS run without tank. AA and Virtuous healing makes it more smooth. And not a single time i had GF tanks which refused to enable KV or OP which appeared to be Devoted paragon.

Another example - Lostmouth laser attack (ETOS red laser from spider too). Active AA "dodges" such kind of attacks - 3 or 4 times (depends on points invested), another analogy is fox shift of HR but with 3/4 charges.