Should I retire my DC again?

tyrtallow

That's because the lower the base encounter cooldown, the smaller the effect of recovery. 100% Recharge Speed Increase (from Recovery) is a 50% total reduction to skill CD.
Essentially, to make the most out of RSI you want to slot encounter powers with long cooldowns.

aerinise

I've noticed something strange and I write about the circumstances as well, beacause maybe they cause all the trouble. But I didn't have this complication before, and I didn't change my way of playing. I play virtous/faithful DO DC since the beginning of the game, but I'm only a "weekend warrior". So I don't have enough time to play as much as I want, but when I have the opportunity, I choose this game. Because of this, I play only PVE (without raiding) and have only 1700 IL. I have an OP (devotion) alt as well. I know they are different classes, but both of them can be leader (healer).

After the hp improvment of the mobs, it was a hard time for me as DC or OP, but since this issue is solved I noticed that I die almost every time with my DC, when I have to face against more than 5 enemies or 2 mid and 1 strong enemies (lvl 71-72, f. e. in Ghost stories quest). I've tried to play in Icewind Dale, but it is impossible because of the lvl 73 mobs. No matter what combination of skills or companions I make, I can't reach progression.

So I had to realise that OP (beside that they have more AC and damage resistance) can somehow make the healing with spells in a more faster way, the healing skills of the OP are "faster" heals. I mean that a DC can heal and damage at the same time in a more complex (but I really enjoyed this) way. As a DC I had to procc shield, avoid damages, keep my companion alive, place debuffs on my enemy or do damage to get healed. So between these acts should a DC heal himself/herself which I think hardly possible without a high level gear. I think the amount of damage and healing is OK, but some small improvement in this indirect way of healing or just one aspect from that I listed before would be worthly (for example the Sacred Flame's effect or the Astral Seal's duration). Or due the spells animation or activation time do I have the feeling that I cant heal fast enough or as much as I used to?

So I'm really upset, since I'm stuck in a circle which I can't exit: I don't have enough IL to play, but the style I liked the game is unable to give me a chane to have new gear.

putzboy78

have you considered getting a good dps companion and focusing on protecting him and yourself? i.e. let him do the killing

or a good tanker companion that can deal with the agro (yeti maybe)\\

Honestly DC is not ideal for solo play. 3-4 dodges isnt enough to kite mobs and self heals are meh

Also get in a guild and get the stronghold armor. You can do that without doing dungeons using guild marks as currency

Another option is to participate in demonic hes for the elemental seals for gear, if you do this in large groups like in WoD, your ilvl wont matter

What weapons are you using? the enscrolled weapons are good, they have a decent base damage

How much armor pen do you have? 40% damage resistance ignored is a good amount for people not doing group content

Honestly without knowing your build or rotation its hard to say exactly what to change. But those are a few things to look at first

*also note that some guild, like mine, have unlocked several guild boons. Getting into those guilds may help you as its an easy stat boost

tyrtallow

DCs are actually among the classes that can reliably solo as long as your character IS geared/specced for solo play.

To solo reliably, you need three things: the right gear/stats, the right powers and the right approach. ILvL basically only exists to keep the -really- undergeared/unskilled players busy and is (at best) only a rough estimate of an experienced character's gear level.

As pointed out above, the right gear/stats matter. Any DC with Tier 1-2 Righteous feats and ~30% ArP should be able to handle solo content reliably. I know this because I have several non-Righteous DCs below 2k ILvL.
It doesn't have to be T2s or end game gear, it just has to be the RIGHT gear. Companions count - even a level 20 (white) tank/healer companion can buy you precious seconds against solo content mini-bosses.
Note that the difference between most T1 and T2 gear is trivial, and you get a LOT of T1 gears/seals just from running skirmishes. You should really be more worried about upgrading your artifact gear and your weapon enchantment.

Using the right powers for solo is obviously very important. One power that you should always have slotted for solo content (at your gear level) is Divine Glow (preferably maxed). Spam normal mode Divine Glow and divine mode Divine Glow for damage/debuffs/self-buffs. You'll notice that if you keep doing this mob damage starts to drop dramatically and they become a lot squishier. Spend your empower stacks on powerful nukes like Chains of Blazing Light or Daunting Light. For long battles, use Hallowed Ground as your go-to daily. 15 seconds worth of HG-buffed nukes gives higher total damage than a single Flame Strike/Hammer of the Gods.
If your mitigation is still too low for some reason, drop a normal Astral Shield. Astral Shield + 3 stacks of divine mode DG + normal mode DG pretty much trivializes all but the strongest solo content nukes in the game.
Your solo content class features should include Divine Favor, unless you're killing mobs too fast and you don't need the extra divinity gain. Use whichever at-will that gives you the highest divinity gain.
Against particularly problematic mobs (and even bosses), note that you can use Geas to temporarily take them out of the fight while you deal with their allies.

Finally, the right approach counts. If your character is specced to be a healbot, then you can't exactly complain if you're struggling with solo content. For the record, it IS possible to find a balance between solo and group PvE though, hell it's even possible to juggle a PvE/PvP build if you have the skills, and given enough time of course. You just need to spec for it. This may seem harsh, but it's what the playerbase wanted. Yes, I remember the days when ALL DCs were basically jack-of-all-trades buff specialists and you can spec for solo/group/PvP just by switching powers/gear, but when people demanded Cryptic for a "real" healer there were very few of us who defended the "traditional" DC. So now we have 2 healer paths, and 1 striker/leader hybrid path. Playstyles were also "simplified" so that paragon path (Righteous, Faithful, Virtuous) feats played a MUCH bigger role in determining character performance.
Basically, by picking only Faithful/Virtuous feats you hit the "confirm" button on the "Are you sure you want to make your character a healbot?" option.

Luckily, content has been scaled down a bit lately and the older areas are getting more traffic. We're also getting lots of new gear. The meta is going to change, and you may no longer need to dip into Righteous to do respectable damage.
As things stand, you can simply move some stats around so your ArP goes to 30-40%. The easiest way would be to buy cheap companion gear with ArP and equip them on a Ioun Stone. Joining a good guild (for boons and allies) also helps. Without Righteous feats though you''ll still be doing (at least) 20% less damage, so to speed things up I'd suggest making the most of your feat selection and spamming LFG every few minutes.
DCs are a lot better off than several classes IWD/WoD-wise, and a lot of people would love having a DC along while doing their dailies.

putzboy78

tyrtallow said:

Joining a good guild (for boons and allies) also helps.

The guild boons create interesting possibilities. If you get into a guild with Stables (BIS for utility slot) and Barracks (basically BIS for DPS/heals unless your crit chance is over around 76%) you get power and armor pen for offensive boons. This allows you to not stack or equip much armor pen. You can simply turn on armor pen while soloing and switch to power when in group content (if your healing and personal dps doesn't matter). My guild has both and I also switch to armor pen for PVP and power for PVE. This lets me be a little less worthless in PVP since I'm really a PVE player with PVP gear (I don't stack more armor pen than what's needed in PVE).

rapo973

Finally, Should we retire our DCs again?
It seems to me that the answer is "NO".

Clearly some things should be improved, but that's true for all classes.
IMO, playing the DC requires a lot of experience and patience: it's a very flexible class and it takes time to discover all the capabilities and options. DC matches many different playstyles, but I believe that the most important thing is specialization.

I always wanted and I want to be healer. Healers are always requested, so there's always space for me. I don't care if today heals are needed less: tomorrow it may change again. But that's not the point. I join a team because they want heals, but I give them even more...and sadly many players are not aware of it.

When Mod 6 was introduced, I immediately recognized that the cooldown of the encounter powers were increased for a given amount of recovery.
My first reaction was to have the same cooldown I was used to have in Mod 5: that's why I started increasing recovery. I've always been a virtuous, because I love regeneration more than clutch heals.
With the introduction of Gift of Haste, I started looking more into the AP gain feature and I've invested a lot in it. Everything started with cooldowns and regeneration, but after two months I discovered that my first real specialization was my AP gain stats which give me a lot of flexibility. That has nothing to do with Gift of Haste and it's true the opposite: GoH is just a tool for me, empowered by my AP gain stat. I use GoH mostly for me and for the team of course , but the latter is given anyway. Many V-Clerics uses GoH to increase the AP of the team (the OP case is well known), but I use it mainly to have my dailies ready.
Casting AA at high rate in PvE had the consequence to forget powers like astral shield, becoming a surrogate of the OP bubble. Even today I've to spend time to convince 4 dps that we can complete eToS with no GF/OP, because they don't know such a feature of the cleric.
So...on top of my desire to be a healer, I discovered that I could do much more without loosing anything.

Then I met another cleric at WoD and we started chatting about our builds: at that time I was 100% virtuous. He told me: "hey look! Why don't you use these righteous feats to increase your power buff". I was concerned about it because I had to leave some heal feats, but today I thank GoD for having that exchange of experience. Now I've a second strong specialization: power buff. Even in full heal mode, I can buff up to 6K power with BoB and that's why I keep my power high. Stronger heals are just a secondary effect, because my real purpose is to buff power. And I discovered that I can be an overpowered healer and a quite good buffer at the same time.

Finally, my build is the result of a process along a learning curve and this process is still on-going for me, even if I'm at 3.6k IL.

All the above just to tell that the DC is so adaptable that you can shape and specialize it as you like but in order to do it, you have to study, learn and test a lot...it's not free. Even if you have the best build, you must learn how to play it.
That's why I'm open to share my build, collect feedbacks from other DCs...because there's always something new to learn. For the same reasons, I'm not very open to discuss silly assumptions like: "Heals are not needed anymore, the DC is going to die".
Only a DC without experience would say it and I'm happy that this topic is read 2.1K times, so we don't have to repeat it again and again.

aerinise

Since my last post, I have collected the Lathander's Cloack and Belt, and refined them into blue quality. Everything is fine again.

illhora

DC is so flexible and really fun to play, no way i retire mine
This evening we made a internal event in "my guild" where we are going to run ETOS only with DC's.
Looking forward

putzboy78

make sure you record it and post it :-)

clericalist

illhora said:

DC is so flexible and really fun to play, no way i retire mine
This evening we made a internal event in "my guild" where we are going to run ETOS only with DC's.
Looking forward

Should be doable, but probably slow. I am guessing that 1 virtuous, 1 faithful and 3 righteous would work best, and everyone slotting sunburst for those nasty spitting spiders for the last boss.

putzboy78

What would the faithful be for?

rapo973

I did succesfully CN with 5 clerics....good old times.

tyrtallow

Pre-mod 5 we finished MC in less than 15 minutes with a 5 DC group.
I suppose these days though you need to stack ArP to do something similar, back then ArP was optional what with all the mobs and stacking debuffs.