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Elf's guide on DC's Powers (Renamed to be clearer since lazy to update)
jazzfong
Member Posts: 1,079 Arc User
Disclamer: The author of this guide (Jazz Fong) has no responsibility on any negative user experience nor have to guarantee the accuracy of this guide in the future. If this guide is no longer suitable for your current module, please refrain from using.
Index
1.1 Class mechanic: Divinity
Generally, Divinity can only be generated by at wills. Divine encounters will give a stack of empowerment which lasts for 10 secs (max 3 stacks). Casting encounters with empowerment stacks will gives empowerment effect to encounters. Under normal conditions, divine encounters does not generate AP. Exceptions applied to [Chains of Blazing Light] and [Searing Light].
Extra divinity gain can be gained from a few sources. Old PvP sets gives 20-30%, heroic feats gives 3-15%, faithful feats gives 5-25% and class feature [Divine Fortune] gives 5-20%.
The Basic Formula of Divinity as below:
[1+0.05a]*[1+(0.03b+0.05c+d/100)]
where
a= rank of [Divine Fortune]
b= rank of Bountiful Fortune
c= rank of Gift of the Gods
d= bonus from pvp set in %
The raw divinity gain per at will is as below:
Lance of Faith (normal hit): 40.8%
Lance of Faith (third hit): 68%
Astral Seal: 68%
Sacred Flame (normal hit): 40.8%
Sacred Flame (third hit): 47.6%
Brand of the Sun (initial hit): 54.4%
Brand of the Sun (each DoT tick*): 9.067%
Blessing of Battle: 95.2%
Use these data to manually calculate the best at will combo to get full 3x pip of divinity.
1.2 Class definition and role
Devoted Cleric, or in short, DC is a very flexible class. There are too many builds and playstyle that suits someone in this world but all of them can be summarised into 3 major path: The Healer, The Tank, and The DPS.
<<<The Healer>>>
"I saw a group of weaklings with their hp turning red. I walked towards them and nuked a few skills on them. At last, they survived... I gave them a grin and continue my adventure..."
Healer is very common in hard dungeon content or to carry low skill/gear lvl ppl. There are 2 types of healer, The Virtuous and The Faithful.
<<Virtuous>>
"I prefer mitigation buffs and supportive buffs than pure healing. My healing may looks weak, but when I shield you with 10 layers of HoT, you are immortal. OP likes me the most, and seconded by all those who need to spam daily for kills."
<<Faithful>>
"I prefer power healing than stacking up buffs one by one. As long as I am not controlled, you dont have a single chance to die. I grant you your second life if you are heavily injured. However, if you insist to stand in reds, sorry thats not my fault."
And we goes to the second major path:
<<<The Tank>>>
"While most cleric hates threat, I purposely went over-threat to aggro all mobs to me. I gave up the power and crit for high healing numbers and build as defensive I can. I sit in my permanent sanutuary zone, laughing at those ''0''s dealed to me. If any lucky ones damaged me, I quickily heal myself and give them a grin." "Hit me!! Hit me!! Come back!! Dont run!!!"
This path is usually for pvp, where everyone hates and aim you first. If you still alive, it is very hard to kill the others. Your perma empowered astral shield makes them mad and the only way to counter you is perma daze. In pve, this is much more simple. If your team dont have a tank, then you will be that off-tank. You gain tons of threat and just be the dummy for all mobs around. Anointed Army is your best friend, negate a few one-shot-hits when the situation goes wrong. Stand in your 100% uptime circle till all of your enemies are killed by your allies.
Finally it is the last major path:
<<<The DPS>>>
"I smile at my enemies, tossing my nukes continuously without any brief pause. I sacrifice my own defense and half of my health points to curse all foes of mine. My flames burn on the mobs, weakening them to their death. Dont underestimate me, or you die."
The true end game solo DC. No more "DC no heal omg nub", no more " DC where is your AP? WTF!!! ". Just dps and dps and dps. You take one of the dps slot, multiplying yout team dps by a big number and still can provide some moderate heals if needed. Dailies and grind is not a problem, you will do all stuffs as fast as a dps classes.
"If the tank went down, it is his fault. If dps died, it is his fault. If I died, it is all you guys fault. Cant you either aggro all of them or kill all of them in a few swipe?? My aggro is higher than tank and dps higher than dps classes. L2P pls."
<<<Conclusion>>>
There isnt a strict way how a DC should be played. You can be a tank/healer in righteous, or a super buffing machine in virtuous or faithful. It may not be optimal, but at least you can be something else without spending on a respec, with exception on DPS DC, no one can match its dps numbers with a virtuous or faithful. Therefore DPS DC is the endgame goal all of us are going for after reaching certain level of playing. Cross-path feat matching is one of the main feature of DC, where you can alter your build to match your own playstyle. Neither path is bad, it is just good or better, depending on which field you are playing. HE based, Tiamat/Demo based, pvp dps or tank, skirmish based, dungeon based etc... each results in a different build for optimal result. Thats why advancing as a cleric requires tons of effort and tons of respec token. Even different skirmish has different best build. In short, goodluck and have fun on exploring DC's potential.
Now we proceed to the next part: Ability roll and race.
Index
- Introduction
1.1 Class mechanic: Divinity
1.2 Class definition and role
1.3 Ability roll & race - Skill discussion
2.1 Power
2.2 Feat
2.3 Boons - Gear & Stat distribution
3.1 Gear set
3.2 Artifact equipment
3.3 Artifact - Enchantments
4.1 Weapon enchant
4.2 Armor enchant
4.3 Offense slot
4.4 Defense slot
4.5 Reinforcement kit - Companions
5.1 Augment
5.2 Bonding
Elf's Comprehensive guide for DC (Mod 9)
1.1 Class mechanic: Divinity
Generally, Divinity can only be generated by at wills. Divine encounters will give a stack of empowerment which lasts for 10 secs (max 3 stacks). Casting encounters with empowerment stacks will gives empowerment effect to encounters. Under normal conditions, divine encounters does not generate AP. Exceptions applied to [Chains of Blazing Light] and [Searing Light].
Extra divinity gain can be gained from a few sources. Old PvP sets gives 20-30%, heroic feats gives 3-15%, faithful feats gives 5-25% and class feature [Divine Fortune] gives 5-20%.
The Basic Formula of Divinity as below:
[1+0.05a]*[1+(0.03b+0.05c+d/100)]
where
a= rank of [Divine Fortune]
b= rank of Bountiful Fortune
c= rank of Gift of the Gods
d= bonus from pvp set in %
The raw divinity gain per at will is as below:
Lance of Faith (normal hit): 40.8%
Lance of Faith (third hit): 68%
Astral Seal: 68%
Sacred Flame (normal hit): 40.8%
Sacred Flame (third hit): 47.6%
Brand of the Sun (initial hit): 54.4%
Brand of the Sun (each DoT tick*): 9.067%
Blessing of Battle: 95.2%
Use these data to manually calculate the best at will combo to get full 3x pip of divinity.
1.2 Class definition and role
Devoted Cleric, or in short, DC is a very flexible class. There are too many builds and playstyle that suits someone in this world but all of them can be summarised into 3 major path: The Healer, The Tank, and The DPS.
<<<The Healer>>>
"I saw a group of weaklings with their hp turning red. I walked towards them and nuked a few skills on them. At last, they survived... I gave them a grin and continue my adventure..."
Healer is very common in hard dungeon content or to carry low skill/gear lvl ppl. There are 2 types of healer, The Virtuous and The Faithful.
<<Virtuous>>
"I prefer mitigation buffs and supportive buffs than pure healing. My healing may looks weak, but when I shield you with 10 layers of HoT, you are immortal. OP likes me the most, and seconded by all those who need to spam daily for kills."
<<Faithful>>
"I prefer power healing than stacking up buffs one by one. As long as I am not controlled, you dont have a single chance to die. I grant you your second life if you are heavily injured. However, if you insist to stand in reds, sorry thats not my fault."
And we goes to the second major path:
<<<The Tank>>>
"While most cleric hates threat, I purposely went over-threat to aggro all mobs to me. I gave up the power and crit for high healing numbers and build as defensive I can. I sit in my permanent sanutuary zone, laughing at those ''0''s dealed to me. If any lucky ones damaged me, I quickily heal myself and give them a grin." "Hit me!! Hit me!! Come back!! Dont run!!!"
This path is usually for pvp, where everyone hates and aim you first. If you still alive, it is very hard to kill the others. Your perma empowered astral shield makes them mad and the only way to counter you is perma daze. In pve, this is much more simple. If your team dont have a tank, then you will be that off-tank. You gain tons of threat and just be the dummy for all mobs around. Anointed Army is your best friend, negate a few one-shot-hits when the situation goes wrong. Stand in your 100% uptime circle till all of your enemies are killed by your allies.
Finally it is the last major path:
<<<The DPS>>>
"I smile at my enemies, tossing my nukes continuously without any brief pause. I sacrifice my own defense and half of my health points to curse all foes of mine. My flames burn on the mobs, weakening them to their death. Dont underestimate me, or you die."
The true end game solo DC. No more "DC no heal omg nub", no more " DC where is your AP? WTF!!! ". Just dps and dps and dps. You take one of the dps slot, multiplying yout team dps by a big number and still can provide some moderate heals if needed. Dailies and grind is not a problem, you will do all stuffs as fast as a dps classes.
"If the tank went down, it is his fault. If dps died, it is his fault. If I died, it is all you guys fault. Cant you either aggro all of them or kill all of them in a few swipe?? My aggro is higher than tank and dps higher than dps classes. L2P pls."
<<<Conclusion>>>
There isnt a strict way how a DC should be played. You can be a tank/healer in righteous, or a super buffing machine in virtuous or faithful. It may not be optimal, but at least you can be something else without spending on a respec, with exception on DPS DC, no one can match its dps numbers with a virtuous or faithful. Therefore DPS DC is the endgame goal all of us are going for after reaching certain level of playing. Cross-path feat matching is one of the main feature of DC, where you can alter your build to match your own playstyle. Neither path is bad, it is just good or better, depending on which field you are playing. HE based, Tiamat/Demo based, pvp dps or tank, skirmish based, dungeon based etc... each results in a different build for optimal result. Thats why advancing as a cleric requires tons of effort and tons of respec token. Even different skirmish has different best build. In short, goodluck and have fun on exploring DC's potential.
Now we proceed to the next part: Ability roll and race.
Post edited by jazzfong on
0
Comments
There are few viable paths for choosing your ability roll. STR = crit, WIS = power and CHA = recovery. From this statement we can see two ways of allocating points. The first one is STR/WIS, which is the high power/crit for healer and dps, the second one is WIS/CHA for more AP gain and faster cooldown for encounters.
Personally, i prefer STR/WIS more than WIS/CHA. This is because unless you really want to reach a point of maximum AP gain, stacking stats with gear is much more efficient. I only need put 200 points in recovery (equates to 1 CHA) if i need 1% of recharge speed increase, but for STR, every points of it equals to 400 crit. The larger the difference between STR and CHA means more stat loss. In order to get the highest crit, 16 STR/WIS is the best roll we can go for for highest primary and secondary stat choice.
In terms of race, for min-maxing you should go for drow if you play debuff cleric or dragonborn for DPS/Healer DC. The boost from race is minimal but if you really need that little boost then go for it. Bear in mind if you care about character appearance but you respec into dragonborn, you may lost interest to your character as it is really very ugly. I go for halfling for its adorableness and its free 1200 deflect + 10% cc resist. You can even go for drow for that tiny piece of extra debuff. Some classes still have their race bonuses bugged like dwarf, which may not appear as good as its tooltip. Make some research before you go for your race.
Here comes the Skills Discussion part:
2.1 Powers
At-will:
<<Lance of Faith>>
DPS S, Tactical A
This is the main at-will you are going to spam 99% of your playing time. It gives roughly 25% dps boost in comparison to Sacred Flame but lesser divinity per sec and slower animation per cast. It is also the only main at-will that can be boosted by artifact weapon in terms of damage. At lower level, using LoF is better than SF.
<<Astral Seal>>
Tactical A, Healing B
Your bread-and-butter pseudo team lifesteal skill. Just cast and forget about it, so easy to use. The animation and divinity gain isnt that great, but is still decent for healer DC, especially in major team fight such as edemo. Proc many feats and class feature including foresight, cleanse etc.
<<Sacred Flame>>
DPS B, Tactical A+
This one although gives 25% dps lesser than LoF, coupled with Divine Fortune and your feats SF does deal more dps than LoF given that there are enough mobs for you to nuke with divine chains. Moreover, the faster casting animation means you can jump cast with ring of ambush, easier to stack PF+HP and it is harder to be interrupted. In pvp, LoF will reveal your position, but SF directly land on their head, gives you some time to hit and hide if they arent aware about your position.
<<Brand of the Sun>>
DPS S, Tactical S
DO specific at-will. This is the one of the best at-will as it gives huge dps, decent divinity over time and very short cast animation in one cast. With specific at-will + divinity gain combo, you can reach full divinity and nuke 3x divinity chains in 3 to 4 seconds, maintaining your 3x plaguefire, high prophet and terrifying insight on your targets in a big aoe.
<<Blessing of Battle>>
DPS C, Tactical A, Buff S
AC specific at-will. This is the main at-will for power buffer DC. Not to mention its DR boost, it gives 15% of your power to your allies nearby when feated. I used to love this at-will when i was an AC. The only downside is its long cast animation and it wont apply buff until you shoot your projectile.
<<D. Punishing Light>>
DPS A, Tactical A
Your main OMG panic at-will. PL is the dps at-will with the highest frequency of hits and it can be cast during walking. In places such as edemo where u need to run to sanity wells but you dont want to lost your stack of PF and HP on the boss this is the one you will want to use. Although this skill may looks interesting with a few enchants (bile, lightning etc), since those weapon enchant doesnt perform well, just avoid from trying them with this at-will.
<<D. Soothing Light>>
Healing C
Your clutch healing skill, but it does not look rewarding enough for its cost of divinity.
Encounter:
<<Sunburst>>
Tactical A
This is the only HoT skill in divinity for cleric. It applies a small repel effect to surrounding enemies, damaging and healing all allies beside. When empowered, its repel magnitude increases dramatically. The main purpose of this skill is to provide Gift of Haste in divine mode, knock some nerds out of pvp node, throw adds away from cliff and for some clutch protections to the cleric, or some special npc (ToDG etc). Be cautious when using skill in pve as it disorientates your enemies, making those aoe nukes from your team hard to land. Overally, i rank it as rank A skill, should be maxed if u can.
<<Healing Word>>
Tactical A, Healing B
Your first healing skill and it is without any target cap. You can use this skill till endgame if you want, with this skill healing in demo and tiamat is so easy as it heals the whole path you aim at. For virtuous, this is one of the AP giving skill you will be using. The only cons of this skill is its divine counterpart is so weak in comparison to other DC skills. Still is a nice skill to be maxed.
<<Searing Light>>
DPS C
One of the most useless skill for DC. Single target, low damage. No one will be using this after reaching lvl 20. However, it is bugged and gives AP in divine mode so you can take advantage of it in lvl 10-19 pvp, if u successfully get queue inside.
<<Chains of Blazing Light>>
Tactical S, DPS A+
Max this, it provides a combination of damage, large AOE nuke, AP gain in divine mode and also fast cast animation in divine mode. Even you missed the skill u can still place a trap on your target location and wait for someone to walk on it. Unfortunately, this skill has little problem, it sometimes will malfunction and leave its sign on floor without triggering, that is the main reason i rank it as A+ for DPS, not S. For me if i am using HG and it is going to expire i will build 3x divinity and cast some D.Chains on floor so the moment HG expired and someone passed by i will instantly regain a big bar of AP. Also, its mechanic is a bit different from other encounters. When you cast empowered or divine version of chains, it will not cost nor grant you your empowerment until it hits your target. Same applies for your AP gain, so managing this skill well improves your personal skills as a DC by alot.
<<Daunting Light>>
DPS A-
This is the most misunderstood skill in DC skill tree. Many thought this skill is the best nuke DC possessed so they spam it in divinity and follow up with an empowered daunting light. Somehow they are right but that is in theoretical only. Unless there is a super aggro magnet so the mobs always stack in a small area without moving, or else this skill practically miss almost 100% of the time, dealing 0 damage per normal cast. Even if there is someone who group the mobs together, it is your job to debuff and speed up the kill, making this skill useless in group content. Unlike chains that can lay a trap down hoping someone will step and retrigger it when missed, daunting light mostly will just expired after its long long animation without hitting any walking targets. In addition, in divine version, Chains provide AP and rooting effect with the same aoe size and same casting speed at the cost of little damage reduction while daunting light is so easy to miss and have no additional effect. In short, Chains is a better alternative to use if you can only slot one aoe skill, however, daunting light will still be your main nuking skill when soloing campaign or clearing DR lairs.
<<Forgemaster’s Flame>>
Buff A, Tactical A, DPS B
15% dps buff with one second delay when casted in empowered, with a medium sized aoe centered from you around 50' but not from target. If someone is using Break the spirit then this is what you are going for. In HE and pvp, the slow from this skill helps a lot. In short, this is a situational skill with high impact but Bts is much more superior due to its bigger buff magnitude.
<<Prophecy of Doom (DO)>>
Buff C, Tactical C
10% base debuff, 17.5% at rank 4 and 32.5% when fully empowered. Currently bugged to do nothing except a debuff. Due to its pathetic cd and short uptime without empowerment, it is better to cast normal PoD and empowered BtS for maximum debuff. Although it deals no damage at the first tick, still proc one stack of high prophet debuff.
<<Exaltation (AC)>>
Buff C, Healing C
Sadly, this skill has also no practical usage in pve and pvp. Just ignore it.
<<Bastion of Health>>
Tactical A, Healing S
The skill every DC should maxed regardless of paragon and feat choice. This is the main health nuking skill which makes your team immortal. For faithful, you can cast D.BoH thrice and keep your team immortal. For virtuous, your HoT from this will top up your team 99% of the time and give AP per normal cast. For righteous, if you have to use this, your team is very weak and need a true healer. Slot this skill and maybe Healing word or Divine Glow to impersonate a good healer with ease.
** Reached the word cap, next post.
Buff S, DPS A, Tactical S
The most overpowered skill in DC skill set. 30% team dps increase in empowered mode with 100% uptime as it has a very short cd and very easy to use. Its buff area is 50', similar to Hallowed Ground (from michela123). It also applies a stun and burst damge when casted in divine mode, making it one of the best pvp loadout for kills. Though it reduce threat in pve, but there is something you need to know. It reduce threat by percentage but not by flat amount. For example, if you have 100% threat on a mob while your tank has 70% threat, when you cast bts it will reduce your threat so your tank will become a higher priority. If your target has 0 threat on you but you cast bts on him, you will produce an amount of threat and then reduced by bts effect, resulting in a positive amount of threat, means you aggro-ed him. Beware of some chain threat mob packs, one bts will pull all to you before your tank aggro them.
<<Divine Glow>>
Buff A, DPS B, Healing B
Another overpowered skill if it is not bugged. Currently it doesnt apply weapon enchantments effect in all 3 modes and doesnt stack in divine mode. However, it is still a decent skill to use as it applies huge debuff and buff for team and can heal while dpsing. Take note: in normal mode apply DG on your target, in divine mode apply it on your allies, dont mess them up as both version has different effect. It does give AP in normal mode out of combat like BoH, so spam it when it is off cooldown. Since during HG and DA we cant get any AP points from our skill and feats, there are no need to spam D.Chains during the first 10 seconds, use D.DG instead. When HG going to expired, spam D.Chains beside a mob pack to regain your AP fast.
<<Astral Shield>>
Tactical A, Protection A
The skill GF like most for free damage to them and for team. However i do not like this skill in pve, for me DG, Bts and Chains dps and debuff better than using AS when we got a GF in team. In both pve and pvp, this is the main skill you are going to use if your team need extra protection. At 120k HP, it is like 10k damage shield per empowered AS. Bear in mind you can have a 100% uptime of empowered AS with specific loadout so with this skill you can be a good immortal tank without serious investment in pve and pvp. Dont ask me whats the way to do it i wont tell you hehe, figured it out yourself.<<Warding Flare>>
Tactical C, Protection C
This is a weaker version of AS, typically has zero usage despite its long cd. Please fire the guy who design this as epic post 60 encounter pls. Dont put any points into this skill.
<<Geas>>
Tactical C (S)
This skill has a special usage. In paper when we meet dual boss we can shut one down and focus on the other, however, in these mods there arent any dual boss with high dps for this skill to shine. I will hold off my opinion on this skill till the next few mods, maybe it is useful, but usually not.
Daily:
<<Guardian of Faith>>
Tactical B, DPS/Heal C
The first cc daily you have but it is too situational to use. It is a hybrid skill that deals minor single target damage and aoe heal to allies near the target and ranking up this power doesnt seems rewarding in terms of its damage/healing magnitude. It however, apply a prone effect of 1 sec on your target immediately after 1.75 sec of casting animation regardless of your target positioning as long as he is still in 60', making it a good skill in pvp if you willing to sacrifice your damage for short solid cc. Its only counter is cc-immune from dodge and several skills. I would say, one point in this skill will do.
<<Hallowed Ground>>
Tactical S, Buff S
No doubt to this as the best daily in NW in terms of increasing team dps. It provides 35% team wide dps in a real large aoe (50') while boosting team DR by same amount. The real cons is, devs included a AP penalty on this skill so any power and feat from DC will not grant AP during HG is up. Items and equipments are excluded anyway. In order to use this skill effectively, i will recommend u guys to use chains. I managed to get my second HG up without any mount bonus, holy fervor nor burning artifact weapon set in roughly 8 sec after HG expired. My HG up time is 65%, with snail and legendary arti neck it should be faster. The other cons of this skill is it can only lay one a place so if you rush along very fast, FS and AA is much more better.
<<Flame Strike>>
DPS A, Tacitical B
Your main AoE damaging daily with a knockup and a prone after, total up into 2 sec cc for targets in middle. It does apply a very small repel effect on the outer radius of FS so it might me helpful if you need a little bit more to push some mobs away from cliff. Same with Daunting Light, this is an unreliable skill so if you want to get the maximum damage, get a tank or tank it yourself or cc them in place before casting FS on them. FS also instantly apply full stack of High Prophet onto all the targets affected. Doesnt proc repurpose soul unfortunately.
<<Divine Armor>>
Tactical B, Buff B
Another big daily with AP penalty of 15 secs, it provides the same DR buff as HG and a small little bar of temp hp at a faster casting animation. However, since the meta doesnt need DR too much as it is either one shot or barely tickles us, DA is not as useful even compared to FS. You can still rank this skill up and set it as second clutch daily, though i prefer FS more in my bar.
<<Hammer of Fate (DO)>>
DPS B, Tactical C
OMG it looks so cool!!!!! But seriously, useless in practical.... It throws 3 hammers to a single target in 3 sec+, having temporary cc-immune but if shifted in middle of the animation, it ends and consume whole bar of AP. Moreover, you are rooted and exposed to damage in the meantime if you didnt cancel your skill. In terms of damage FS is better, in terms of cc, GoF is better, in terms of cc-immune, AA is better, so why bother to get and use this skill?? If you are attracted by the free AP when killing someone, nah you wont get the last hit with that tiny slow projectile, dont even rank this skill, maybe one point is ok if you have spare power points.
<<Anointed Army (AC)>>
Tactical S, Buff S
The high power DC favorite. This skill has too many usage. Firstly, negate a full hit from the next few attacks. Secondly, provide 50% of your power as buff to all your allies including you. And finally, cc immune!!!! This skill although will expire in less than 5 seconds if exposed to enemy, it has the potential to transfer and build up you and your allies power to a crazy amount. (150k power hohohoho....) There is some threads about building insane amount of power using this skill in temple forum, search and check it out. When feated, provides 5% AP and some tiny heal when expired by time or exceeded the maximum hit of protection. This is one of my favorite skill when i was a ACDC, spam it like nobody business in pvp if i feel a big hit is coming. The only cons of this is it doesnt shield you against Shocking Execution, and it runs out too fast. Even with these problem it is still the best short daily for DC.
Bear in mind, this skill can never compete with HG in terms of increasing team dps unless you can spam AA once in a few seconds and have high rank bonding stones on your pet, then you may stand a chance to win against HG.Class Feature:
<<Healer’s Lore>>
Healing S
This, despite its tooltip say 20% more at rank 4, it actually multiplies your outgoing healing by 1.2, means your healing is (skill magnitude + buff + feat + outgoing healing bonus) multiplied by 1.2, making your healing even stronger. If you need strong heals without serious investment, slot this.
<<Divine Fortune>>
Tactical S
This skill follows the multiplier rule. It boost your total divinity gain by 20% more and the formula is at post above. DF is the main feature of DC for more divine encounter, at rank 4 + 5 points in Bountiful Fortune (Heroic Feat), you can get full divinity in 4 sec with SF + BoB and LoF + ASeal. For me who are using LoF + Bots, i only need roughly 3 sec to build up my divinity and start spamming chains for aoe debuff and dps. Max this first if you are concern about your divinity recharge time.
<<Sooth>>
Tactical C
This skill follows the multiplier rule too. But since threat management is kinda pointless in solo and not a big deal in party if you have a tank, there are no more needs to slot this skill.
<<Holy Fervor>>
Tactical A
Similar to those written above, this skill follows the multiplier rule. It basically shortens your daily recharge by a few seconds, if you think you need to cast your HG or AA as soon as possible, go for it. It also boost dps by 5% when feated in artifact offhand.
<<Foresight (DO)>>
Tactical B
I am not fond of damage mitigation especially this skill only gives 8% DR or 13% DR when feated. For me, as V/F DC Healer's Lore, Divine Fortune or even Holy Fervor is much better than this one. Righteous DC wont even touch this skill.
Since the pve meta is die or alive, dumping points into damage mitigation is useless unless you are carrying a weak team.
<<Anointed Action (AC)>>
Tactical C, Buff C
When DC got a AP penalty and the GoH nerf, this is not a good skill to bother. Besides, the triggering condition is too bad and the uptime of the buff is too low. Many DC skills have long casting animation, consuming more time after casting the daily. You may only cast a few skills in the buff duration. Not worth to rank it up even only one point in it. Ignore it pls.
**Reached the word cap, next post.
DPS S
Your best dps skill to slot, at max rank gives you 20% extra damage and when feated in offhand, +5% crit severity. It may looks not much but if your crit is 100%, its 5% dps increase like HF, total up into 25% dps boost just from ONE class feature. Max this as soon as possible, speed up your solo content by a tons. Recommendation: 5 Stars.
<<Anointed Armor (AC)>>
Protection A
PvP power, gives you AC (DR that cannot be debuffed) and hard to stack deflect chance (half cc, half damage) but took one class feature slot from you. Quite nice if you build your DC as tank for pve but usually people use this in pvp more.
<<Prophetic Action (DO)>>
Protection C
Passively block a hit regardless of its magnitude at every 30 sec at rank 4. A poison dot with 10 damage will disarm this skill. A big one shot hit can be blocked by this skill. Depending on how you use it it can be the best or worst class feature for you. For me, i dont like it.
<<Anointed Holy Symbol (AC)>>
Tactical C
Since the nerf (or fix) of temporary hit points, the higher temp hp overshadows the other and thus, this skill becomes useless as its temp hp magnitude is low. Do not bother to rank it up.
<<Light of Divinity>>
Healing C, Tactical B
Poor heals, one astral seal heal more than its tick. The more people you heal, the lesser the heal will be. However, you can use it to apply foresight to allies nearby. I dont recommend this unless you maxed all skills.
<<Hastening Light>>
Tactical A
4 sec cd reduction is good when you can spam your daily. By the time this guide is finished, it will be fixed on live to work on every rank. Perma astral shield is easy with this skill if you can cast daily once per 10 sec. However, its offhand bonus still not working.
2.2 Feat
Heroic Feat
<<Healing Action>>
5% AP gain multiplicative for only three healing skills: Healing Word, Bastion of Health and Exaltation. I personally dont recommend this as it requires 5 points and are restricted to 3 powers only. Since my playstyle is more dps and debuff oriented, my single D.Chains gives more AP than 5% of all three mentioned skills above, however, if you really need that piece of AP and really cast these skill a lot, you can take it, but for me i will never take it, even i am virtuous or faithful healer.
<<Greater Fortune>>
By tooltip it gives 3% outgoing healing bonus, but in my memory when Kaelac (one of the best DC, theorycrafter and mathematician in NW history) tested it, it should be 2% when your WIS is lower than 20 but 4% when WIS is over 24. The bonus isnt much but there arent any better feat to take. Max this.
<<Toughness>>
9% HP extra, happy? Dont be fooled, based on tooltip pattern it should be total HP multiplied by 1.09, but this time it is not multiplicative bonus anymore. Similar to CON, toughness is based on your base HP without any buff or stat gain from items and boons and then add 9% of it to your final HP. The bonus is quite small, and yet we have no better choices. Max this.
<<Holy Resolve>>
Despite its 5 min cd, it is still one of the best heroic feat we have. Typically a real clutch lifesaver for you to press a pot or dodge and heal yourself. Its cd should be reduced imo. Max this.
<<Domain Synergy>>
Ah, junk feat. 5% of recovery at 5 points. Even a 400 points from boon is much better than it. Ignore this.
<<Weapon Mastery>>
Free 3% crit additive, 1200 points in crit with ease. Max this.
<<Initiate of the Faith>>
How many stat points you have to stack to make this useful?? At huge amount of power (100k power) it is only 1000 stat points or approximately 2.5% crit, worth? Another junk feat for DC, ignore it.
<<Repurpose Soul>>
You crit, you heal. Max this as it gives your team free healing as long as you are attacking or using your skills. However, it is not working on daunting light and flame strike since beta. Rest power are not affected (i think so).
<<Battlewise>>
When we not even need sooth, why should be get this one?? Ignore it.
<<Cleanse>>
If you are human, put 3 points in this, otherwise ignore this. In current meta there isnt any dot painful enough to force us remove it as soon as possible. Since the cleanse nerf we cant remove cc debuff from us anymore, this skill can be ignored for 99% of your game play. I had abandoned this since a few mods ago and have no problem with any content.
<<Templar’s domain>>
Nice in theory, but even im a righteous DC i wont take this. FYI it has a 5 min cd per proceed and it is multiplicative bonus, making it even worse. Stacking Arp is important but it can be done by having LoL set and a good augment/ bonding pet. Dont waste your points in this.
<<Bountiful Fortune>>
15% divinity gain additive. Max this, it will allow you to have shorter divinity recharge time so more heals and dps coming for you. Must put 5 points in it or else with some at-will combo you will find out you need an extra hit more to get full 3 pips of divinity. If you dont want to max this but want to put a point in cleanse, use the divinity formula above to calculate your divinity gain combo and its respective recharge speed first. For me, my recharge time is approximately 3 sec with LoF + Bots and 4 sec with LoF + ASeal. I do slot rank 4 Divine Fortune though. Get your own combo for maximum dps and recharge speed. Very important calculating your divinity gain first imo.
Paragon feats
When i was typing this section, i feel like it is useless as there is already a nearly up to date one to refer. Please refer to Kaelac's DC guide on paragon feats. I will just skip this.
1. Min-maxing your DC
2. Power stacking with AA and bonding stones
3. Kaelac's wall-of-text on DC (down)
4. Kaelac's Damage, Resistance and Debuff Guide (also temporary down)
5. The ACT guide (down also
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
dCoBL and dDL both have a fairly large radius, so hitting moving mobs is not too bad. Yes, the DL animation is slightly slower, and not leaving a mark on the ground means you can miss altogether. But the flexibility of just having to slot DL to do damage in all three modes cannot be ignored, and you can't match eDL damage with anything other skill.
Also worth noting is that you don't have to drop eDL on a mob's head. With some practice, I haven't found it too hard to cast eDL between mobs and clip multiples with a single cast. It will never be as good as a real AoE skill, but it's enough to view as a single-target+.
I haven't tested dSB thoroughly, but if the DoTs stack, this looks like the best AoE DPS power we have in d mode -- just eyeballing it it seems to do about 1.5 more damage overall over the full time span. But then again, need to check whether you can indeed stack it x3, and how long the DoT lasts.
the divine mode doing serious damage and heal if there are many adds. for rightuous DC its nice for some dungeons and even solo. its also good way to proc your feats and enchants all over the place (by some reason it used to have high crit rate and did small knock back in the past, bit less today)
the normal and empower modes are not impresive, but i used it couple of times in GG PVP and was suprised of the empower damage. it was probably the highest damage i could produce, but i only had 2K ArP and its probably depend on the opponent DR.
anyway, if you chose rightuous path i advice you to check it (you will need to max some things to rank 3 anyway and consider its location its not bad)
Astral shiled - as many said before. only regular mode add DR or only in regular mode it add GF a DR. so in PVP or PVE you need to know what and when to cast it. it can make your team imortal or increase damage by big numbers
BtS - somehow i have the same feeling like astral shield. regular reduce damage while empower only increase damage (i never managed to verify). in PVP its importanat encounter due to its control effect
Geas might work in PVP due to the big damage reduce and long hold at divinity mode. i tried it couple of times but its not easy and i never managed to master it. havn't seen many use it as well...
AA is 50% base power buff
For AS, I'm pretty sure the empowered version give the DR buff too
Edit: 50% is the correct amount, my bad. I reupdated it on top with bold. TY for correcting me.
It will allow you to survive the shockwave from the blue dragon in Dragon Flight (it is a two hit attack though, so not with full HP).
It can allow you to block Orcus' shockwave (easily happens more than 30 seconds apart)
It can allow you to easily kite one of the Twin Fire Scorpions with far less worry than normal (similar to CW shield)
It is completely useless against bosses like Lostmauth and Demogorgon due to DoTs always being present
Obviously in most cases, the tank should be taking the hits, and in a perfect fight they will be, but if that were always the case, why would we need Soulforge?
It is extremely situational, I agree, but at the same time, it is S rank in some boss fights. I probably would rate it C or B overall too, but I would also max it to be used in during hazardous boss-fights. It might be hard justifying it against DPS and Divinity gain, but depending on the party, it could just be better to stay alive.
PS: First-Strike Shocking Execution Rogues will hate you for slotting it in PVP.
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
PS: SE can be dodge easily if you are not cc-ed. If you are cc-ed, the shield gone on you also. No point slotting except for that passive control resist from arti offhand.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
whold you take dwarf if you like PVP from time to time? the 20% knock back resist works?
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
Seriously, my Righteous AC/DC is human. My third character, back when leveling a DC was painful (mod 2 I think). I won't change now but agree that the 3 points are just a placeholder currently.
I still am not 100% about how eBtS works; I have wondered this for some time and usually prefer eFF because at least then I know which members of my team have been affected. With eBtS, I have no indication about who has been affected by the buff or not.
If I understood the qualification you made here: I should stand in a position such that a maximum number of team-mates are either:
(1) Close to me (but how close is this AoE?)
(2) or between me and a target enemy, ie: if my eBtS "flies over" my team-mates, then they will also be affected (any idea of the "vertical distance AoE" ?)
(3) or close to the target enemy (again, how close is this AoE?)
Please correct me if I am wrong about this understanding too. Thanks!
Aelan Icebleed (CW)