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Min-Maxing (Link 1) #December 2015
jazzfong
Member Posts: 1,079 Arc User
Just wanted to start a discussion on min-maxing our DC in terms of potential and efficiency. What is the best race, roll, paragon, feats, loadout and gear choice etc in your opinion to maximise your DC potential in PvE environment? I believe there are tons of experienced DC players who are knowledgeable enough about DC. Hope you guys can share your opinion to build the best DC together.
In my opinion, the best DC in PvE should be a solid striker while carrying all sorts of debuffs for his allies when is taken into a team. In terms of heal, OP gives more heals than DC and still can tank fairly well. Thus, i think DC should pass all healing jobs to OP and be a debuff/buff leader. However, after i respec into different paragon with different path and feats, i discovered no matter DO or AC, if you take all debuff and buffing feats, your existence in team is still very weak. Thus, aside from debuff and buff provided from our feats, DC should also dish out a fairly high amount of damage in battle. This sums up the situation of high IL DC goes for full or partial righteous to increase the efficiency of every runs they are involved.
In my experimental plays, Gift of Haste is basically a useless feat to have if you are not virtuous. We dont have enough good HoT skills to maximise this feat. In short, go full Righteous will be better. The best race for DC is probably Sun Elf and Tiefling, absolutely not dragonborn. Trust me, i race reroll from halfling into sun elf into human into dragonborn and finally back to halfling again. Dragonborn has nothing special aside from +2% crit or dps/hps, and it is extremely ugly. I keep my old DC with legendary Vanguard Banner as sun elf while another one to halfling with DC sigil. Both Righteous atm.
My character stats are as below:
Roll: 16 STR 16 WIS, all points into STR/WIS
Path: DO Full Righteous
Loadout: LoF, Bots, Bts, DG, Chains, HG, FS, HF, Sooth
Boons: All offensive
Weapon set: AP Fire
Primary Artifact: DC sigil
Artifact set: Old Tiamat Set (cuz i pvp heavily as Faithful AC last time, will change if possible)
Gear: HP set + PPF (if i am not mistaken, Terror is still weaker than PF even though it is buffed last time)
Kindly comment on my DC or how you min-max your DC. Other suggestion or discussion on DC powers etc are also welcomed. TY.
In my opinion, the best DC in PvE should be a solid striker while carrying all sorts of debuffs for his allies when is taken into a team. In terms of heal, OP gives more heals than DC and still can tank fairly well. Thus, i think DC should pass all healing jobs to OP and be a debuff/buff leader. However, after i respec into different paragon with different path and feats, i discovered no matter DO or AC, if you take all debuff and buffing feats, your existence in team is still very weak. Thus, aside from debuff and buff provided from our feats, DC should also dish out a fairly high amount of damage in battle. This sums up the situation of high IL DC goes for full or partial righteous to increase the efficiency of every runs they are involved.
In my experimental plays, Gift of Haste is basically a useless feat to have if you are not virtuous. We dont have enough good HoT skills to maximise this feat. In short, go full Righteous will be better. The best race for DC is probably Sun Elf and Tiefling, absolutely not dragonborn. Trust me, i race reroll from halfling into sun elf into human into dragonborn and finally back to halfling again. Dragonborn has nothing special aside from +2% crit or dps/hps, and it is extremely ugly. I keep my old DC with legendary Vanguard Banner as sun elf while another one to halfling with DC sigil. Both Righteous atm.
My character stats are as below:
Roll: 16 STR 16 WIS, all points into STR/WIS
Path: DO Full Righteous
Loadout: LoF, Bots, Bts, DG, Chains, HG, FS, HF, Sooth
Boons: All offensive
Weapon set: AP Fire
Primary Artifact: DC sigil
Artifact set: Old Tiamat Set (cuz i pvp heavily as Faithful AC last time, will change if possible)
Gear: HP set + PPF (if i am not mistaken, Terror is still weaker than PF even though it is buffed last time)
Kindly comment on my DC or how you min-max your DC. Other suggestion or discussion on DC powers etc are also welcomed. TY.
Post edited by jazzfong on
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Comments
In party i don't typically use chains, instead favoring PoD
In party i would switch out FS for Hammers. While this may lower your dps I find hammer effective on single target focus which is typically what I'm doing if not using HG. It's all situational however and sometimes i do use FS instead.
sooth is useless, if your party can't keep the agro off of you... get a better party
In party i use HF and Foresight to increase damage resistence from DG
I agree with the best PVE weapon being fire (but I chose twisted because it was easier to farm and has more utility)
Best artifact set is lostmauth (like for anyone else in PVE)
I try to build for utility and cannot afford multiple weapon enchantments so I use Trans Vorp. Solid cases can be made for plague/terror as a debuff dc, but i like the extra healing power when i have to use it.
SF is still king for the armor, especially in HP armor since the lower health will make keeping negation harder to keep stacked
2. PoD although it is good in theory, but since it is bugged we cant get the AP back. Its casting animation and limited target makes this power underpowered. Using chains we can always ensure we get one small bar of AP back, and it helps to burst and lock down the enemies in a large aoe especially in ToDG etc.
3. Yup, i do admit sooth is useless, but in pug, i was forced to swap my TI to sooth as not always a tank, and/or a dedicated tank in your party. Premade party only applies to guildies, but my guild is not so big and most of them inactive.
4. I was once figured about foresight, then after a few weeks i decided to throw this useless feat away. Defensive buff is not so useful in this meta as it is either one shot in red or full hp with enough LS. HF+sooth guarantee your pug run to be smooth when u play at anytime without relying heavily on your party.
5. Do high IL DC still heal? I tried to party with some 3k+ IL dpser and their hp although sometimes turn low but they will LS it back in a few seconds. Thats why i abandon faithful and virtuous and turn into righteous.
6. Does AC be better buffer than DO if both of them go full righteous? I not quite sure the always-up minor buff from AA can compete with short but powerful HG. BotS is also a good tool when you are generating DP, you can just hit till 2.5 bar then spam D.DGx3, it will on time when you need to spam the third DG.
I changed some time ago to what is called the Action Point build. There is alot that goes into this, and there is not one perfect path, but for PVE, I find it to be great. Generally speaking you will end up with Annonited Champion and Virtous path for the most part.
My advice for this game is to adjust to the meta. I have re-specced probably 30 times since the game started. I have also had to spend alot of Astral Diamonds on different gear and artifacts in order to adapt. Thats just the way it is if you want to try to be the biggest help to the party.
**Notice, I did not use any acronyms in my post. I suggest everyone does this as well if you really want to be helpful to newcomers to the class***
I'm not much of a min/maxer however, and my gear isn't over 3K.
(Un)Academic Field Work Foundry Campaign: NWS-DAPZB2CTZ
Vorpal also helps with dishing out that damage you mentioned :-)
Anyhow its a personal choice really. Also you can replace foresight with Terrifying Insight for an additional 8% personal damage if you have a team to support it.
Plague is much better equiped on a CW because of the higher attack speed and aoe repertoire. If i were building an elite group I would have the plague on the CW unfortunately unless you run with the same team all the time you can't count on that. Of course the counter argument can be made that debuffs aren't needed on trash so focus on helping to eliminate the enemy tank/boss and the trash typically takes care of itself anyhow (at the very least hit them once and leave Fire of the Gods to finish your dirty work while you turn on the tank).
So is this AP build good in PvE? I was one of the first guy who design this AP rush build in preview before our DC is revamped, but that time i just focused on faithful + gift of haste to protect and buff my allies in PvP. In PvE, this build is kinda underperforming unless your other allies are 3-4k IL with powerful daily.
@putzboy78, is nothic helm, old metallic looking profound set and old T2 valindra set is nice looking enough for you? hehe...
AP buff is a niche position that lies between groups that need clutch heals and groups that can survive off their own lifesteal.
Righteous builds with AP buff is possible but will far under perform as an AP buffer compared to a virtuous and comes at a significant decline in buff/debuff or personal dps.
Link: http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/382-kaelac’s-guide-to-damage-tenacity-reisistance-and-debuffs-in-neverwinter/#3
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1208244/should-i-retire-my-dc-again
If you cannot do anything except giving AP to your allies only, you're not playing it at its full potential: for example, the rotation you've reported is not the best because you focus only on the AP generation without mixing GoH with buff encounter powers. Just put Break the Spirit instead of SB, and you will see the difference (what differences? this is an interesting point and that's not only empowered break the spirit - I will explain how it works hereunder).
I still see a lot of confusion about GoH because it's considered as a stand-alone feature linked to heals only and never linked with your AP gain stat: GoH is just a "tool" while the AP gain stat is definitely more important for a full AP build. With a low AP gain stat (< +60/65%), GoH is just a trivial spam of AP points and its benefit is very limited. Being at +95% AP gain, I just need 1 HoT power, usually BoH or HW, to use my dailies as encounter powers with a 5 seconds cooldown or even less in some situations.
My real rotation is Hallowed Ground (or Anointed Army when needed), Divine Glow, Break the Spirit supported by only 1 HoT power (which is always appreciated by every team as an AP source) + 6250 power buff: this is a full buff/debuff setup and it's quite powerful. While I don't have a benchmark my build VS righteous (but I expect the righteous to be better), I clearly see the effect of my rotation in T2 dungeons and even in Tiamat.
Recovery plays an import role: if you lack recovery, you're missing a fundamental ingredient in terms of buff/debuff generation and AP gain stat.
As you can read, I'm not talking about heals at all, but I'm still a powerful healer. I can switch whenever it's needed and believe me it's still needed: few teams run a T2 without making mistakes - in particular without an OP - and my cleric is very useful in case of unexpected events.
Concerning the dragonborn race, it also gives you +3% power which is important for me because I spam power with blessing of battle + some feats (at the moment I spam up to 25% of 25K power = 6250 power buff = SH barracks rank 6+) and crit is very welcome in a power\recovery based build.
In conclusion, the AP build (which is not GoH only) is still great in PVE and I'm not talking about heals: currently heals are just a secondary feature for a high IL DC.
Concerning solo, I don't dps and I will never, but I can live with it
Finally, the current DC build mainstream goes rigtheous today: it makes perfectly sense and you will not do it wrong.
I'm only saying that there are other valuable and flexible options.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
24/21/21/13/13/13
Dragonborn
Path: AC Full Righteous
Loadout:
Solo or with nice group/guild mate - going for DPS: Chains,DL,DG.
BUFF end boss or weaker grp: HW (for AP/heal),BTS,DG
Boons: Almost all offensive
Weapon set: AP Fire
Primary Artifact: Tactician's Banner
Artifact set: lostmauth
Gear: dragon flight + T.PF/T.vorpal (using most PF for the buff and AP)
Mount : snail
Companion summoned Zhentarim Warlock
AA up all time mount + weapon set
Doing all lot of DPS and massiv power buff.
in combat my Dc is always between 24k and 60k power depending companion gifts (sometime even more, depending the group)
Feats: with WoL,ByS and CG ennemy just disapper in group. Added AA is a massacre.
And the gameplay is just amazing, making solo content easy and droping a lot of RP too (massiv DOT).
When everyone says use your banners and lanterns for XYZ... they aren't talking about us
I've a purple vanguard banner and it's my intention to upgrade it as soon as I've the resources to do it: the cooldown is too long at purple level.
For a righteous build, I understand that a different compromise must be found: more HGs using the DC artifact vs banner. In my case HG and the vanguard banner work togheter.
Concerning min-max, I don't have the final solution: in my experience the party composition is the real key factor where the DC is an ingredient. The best experience I had was with a debuffer GF, my DC (buff mode), an OP Tank and 2 SWs Damnation (they were around 2.7K). OP providing protection, DC+GF buffing and debuffing, 2 SWs dps-ing. We killed the boss at eGWD in 2 minutes. I still don't know how the SWs could do such amount of damages: 1/3 boss life down in just two shots. Astonished.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
have a pet that put my power easily over 40k-50k, and with weapons of light i really buff the team.
My AA is up all time in combat dont think for my rotation and the group HG will be better.
Note: by using another Artifact then DC sigil, i m adding extra buff to the team with the main artifact too...
I'm just 2.4k IL but i'm aiming for something like this :
Race : +2 WIS/STR Dragonborn
Roll : 18/18 WIS/STR
Feats : Full righteous
Boons ; All offensive
Gears: HP / Twisted weapons (or Fire, what's the proccrate ?) / lostmauth set
Artifact : sigil of the devoted (lantern/sigil of the controller/horn)
Enchants : offensive Brutal r12 / Defensive radiant r12 / SF / perfect+ Terror or GPF switch to Trans feytouched when Terror & GPF already in party
Mount : Snail (if it's work with HG, I don't have one so I don't know)
Daily : HG / FS
Encounter : DG / BtS / (DL/Chain/POD)
AW : LoF (artifact power) / BotS
Feature : TI / HF (artifact power)
Companion : black dragon ioun stone or any fast r12 bonding stacking pet
Active : Air archon / Fire Archon / Erynies of Belial / Cambion Magus
I still don't really know about twisted vs fire weapon, snail mount and companions setup
Anyway, i prefer using vanguard banner and HG together, i sure my team prefer 30 sec of extreme dps than longer uptime of HG. If possible, it is better to kill boss or mini boss in that 30 sec than casting another HG. But this apply to the highest tier of pve players with extreme dps only.
with correct OP reflecting power, mine goes 60k+. so it s 6k+ pwr to allies
Will be happy that you give the maths anyway
(new power multiplier/old power multiplier)-1 expressed as a %
What this means is that the more power you have to start off with, the more power you need to add to achieve the same dps increase from the base line. This means that, in order to calculate how much you boosting your allies dps by, you need to take into account how much power your allies already have when you use AA. In comparison, HG is just a 1.35 multiplier. So, for the sake of comparison, you need to calculate how much power you need to boost your allies by in order to equal HG, bearing in mind your allies power varies as a base line. To make this easier, I have drawn up some reference tables for you:
This is looking at allies base power fluctuating over all from 0 to 60k, its less accurate then the second picture, but if you want to look outside the range of the second picture, it still helps. The first column shows how much power your allies have before the AA buff. The second column expresses how much their dps is increased by as a multiplier as a base line and the third expresses how much power you need their current base line power to increase to in order to increase their damage by the same as HG. The 4th column, expresses how much power you need to boost their power by, it is the difference between their new power and their old power. If you increase their power by any less then that, its less effective then HG and if you increase it by any more then that, it is more effective then HG, however, at that point, it is equal to HG.
This table is looking at a more likely power range, from 10k power to 22k power which is more likely what your allies have. It is also more accurate, increasing in increments of 1%.
The formula, in case you wondering, for working out their "new power" is
x=[1.35*BasePowerAsmultiplier-1]*40000
Hope that helps.
The downside of AA is, in heavy combat it will go off in a split second, while HG does not.
Now the crazy idea: with my AP full, all the HoT powers ready, snail, burning weapon set , I can cast AA and 3 seconds later HG.
The overall effect looks great...I've to test it. It's evident that it would be a short time peak.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
decided to put some screenshots and shows my power with Pet and AA
AA + 0 comp gift
AA + 1 gift
AA + 2 gifts
AA + 3 gifts
Guild Event buffed
AA + 3 gifts dragon flight
in DG with normal group my PWR average is around 45k+ so not sure that HG is better ^_^