Personally I do pure Righteous as DO, bypassing Power of the Sun and Living Fire.
I don’t take Gift of Haste in a DO build for two main reasons: AC most likely has it, and you have to spend 10 points on junk prerequisites. AC is spending those first 10 points regardless for Battle Fervor.
Someone who really wants Gift of the Gods could always drop more damage feats from Righteous and invest a bit in Faithful; it’s just not my choice because I don’t think it’s worth picking up 10 points in trash feats first (Benefit of Foresight is a matter of taste, I suppose, but I prefer Hastening Light over Foresight, so the feat does nothing for me).
On a side note, I appreciate your point that the two paths should aim to complement each other when paired together in a party. However, no matter how much I try to polish the turds that are most of the DC feats, I can't come up with a solid rationale for taking those that are either so very niche that they need their own special loadout for a very rare situation or are simply so bad that it's difficult to imagine them being of any use...ever.
Even if we accept a bit of redundancy with Condemning Gaze and admit that AC personal damage is pretty much never going to make or break the party, we're still left with a fairly clear choice in my view. Bringing extra heals just for the sake of bringing something that the Righteous DO doesn't have doesn't automatically make good sense.
but you argue that wasting 10 points on faithful path to reach Gift of the Gods is a bad investment while wasting 10 points to reach righteous capstone is a good one. The Righteous capstone is more for personal dps than free recovery at end game. A up and coming DC may use it for that purpose because they haven't reached the End Game. In a 2 DC format your AC selections of piercing light and the capstone are only for personal dps, the condemning gaze is pure waste since its duplicated by the DO.
Anyhow, whatever you do, I would coordinate with your favorite running mate to ensure your not overlapping needlessly.
If you all are talking end game builds having 1 or 2 more loadouts should not be an issue
Didn't say it would be an issue. The point I was going for was that most feats outside of Righteous are so niche (read: useless for end game parties) that you would rarely if ever want or need them. For example, I do have non-Righteous loadouts for my DC, but I haven't needed to use them since I was 8k ilvl and freshly returned to NW.
but you argue that wasting 10 points on faithful path to reach Gift of the Gods is a bad investment while wasting 10 points to reach righteous capstone is a good one. The Righteous capstone is more for personal dps than free recovery at end game. A up and coming DC may use it for that purpose because they haven't reached the End Game. In a 2 DC format your AC selections of piercing light and the capstone are only for personal dps, the condemning gaze is pure waste since its duplicated by the DO.
Anyhow, whatever you do, I would coordinate with your favorite running mate to ensure your not overlapping needlessly.
Again...the points in Righteous are not a waste, though I did acknowledge the potential for overlap with Condemning Gaze in a 2-DC situation. Here are your options:
1. You "waste" a total of 11 points with Piercing Light, Condemning Gaze, and Avatar of the Divine. 2. You arguably waste a total of 15 points with whichever terrible tier 1 and 2 Faithful feats you take + your investment in Gift of the Gods.
Option 2 is not unviable, but I haven't felt need enough for Gift of the Gods that it justifies the required investment. Others' mileage may vary, though.
Further points reiterated:
- Personal DPS contributes to party DPS, no matter how small. A tiny contribution (e.g. a small damage increase) is preferable to no contribution (e.g. a boost to healing when healing requirements are already comfortably met).
- Avatar of the Divine is more beneficial than you acknowledge. Looking at it exclusively as a crutch for low-ilvl DCs or as a tool only for DPS-focused DO is incorrect. It also is not a deal-breaker that it does not have 100% uptime; the significant uptime that it does have is enough to provide for additional encounter usage throughout a dungeon, which generates more damage and resources than you would have without it. Just because Avatar isn't necessary to function doesn't make it worthless, especially when you're comparing it to other capstones.
putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
If your doing your job, your personal dps contribute almost nothing (less than 10%) to the party dps.
I think your confusing your builds or at least I hope you are. Your saying taking Piercing light, condemning gaze, and avatar of divine vs gift of the gods?
The AC debate as best I can make from your argument is
Piercing Light, Condemning Gaze, and Avatar of Divine - i.e. the benefits are personal 10% armor pen and a 42% up-time on a dps increase of 40% while providing a backup of Condemning Gaze in case your DO is unavailable.
vs
Purity, Have Faith , and Shield of Divine - i.e. 20% HOT buff, 5% increase to party Damage Resistance, and a passive HOT which helps to spread Gift of Haste.
It's that simple, and if your party believes your dps contribution out weights the dps contribution from Gift of Haste and uptime from the additional survive-ability then I'll grant you that your ideology could be correct, but I personally don't feel that is the case.
I will not concede that an "End Game" cleric gets more rotations off as a result of Avatar.
As @grrouper said, being an "End Game" cleric entails using loadouts for specific scenarios. As a minimum I imagine most "End Game" clerics will have a solo DPS loadout, a single DC loadout (AC or DO depending on their preferences), an AC dual DC loadout, and a DO dual DC loadout.
optional loadouts could be Dom PVP, GG PVP, Open World PVP, having both single DC AC and DO builds, and of course content specific loadouts that could include optimizing for things like fighting dinos or dragons. DC are pretty fortune in that we don't really need to switch feats/boons for single target vs multiple target fights.
I've gone into exhaustive detail as to why I find most other feats (largely regardless of path) to be suboptimal, so I'll mostly refrain from repeating myself.
Can you make a good case for taking on healing buffs? You're touting Purity, Have Faith, Shield of the Divine as if they were somehow useful, and I'm wondering how this is supposed to be. Just because they aren't contributing to an AC's small personal damage numbers doesn't meant that they have value.
Divine Glow alone is sufficient for proccing Gift of Haste. Trash encounters are whatever; boss encounters tend to have parties grouped tightly together; and you have so many opportunities to cast DG with Divinity that correcting your placement if necessary is not a problem.
Concede or not as you wish, but the fact is that an end-game DC will cast more abilities with Avatar than without. It's not really up for debate; it's a math issue. Also remember that it's not just about doing the bare minimal "rotation." If we stop caring about min/maxing, we can all drop these discussions, select most of our feats by dart throw, and be content with spending Divinity, casting an empowered FF/BTS, hitting a daily, and otherwise phoning it in.
You keep saying that going deep into Righteous as AC isn't a good idea because AC personal damage is so low and because you can end up with some redundancy with DO, but I'm not seeing where you explain how the alternatives are appealing other than, to paraphrase, "they're different from what DO is likely to bring." How is it beneficial to pile on even more healing when the average end-game party needs more healing buffs about as much as it needs +gold gain?
^^ I have never ever seen any player die on a end game run it just does not happen ^^ Using Heavy Sarcasm
That's cute, but it doesn't say much. I see most players die due to having failed mechanics or having positioned themselves poorly. I don't see people dying frequently when bigger green numbers would have made the difference.
Think of it this way: with barely any healing feats or other bonuses you can leverage DC's base healing encounters to enormous effect. If you find yourself needing to slot something like BoH, why would you need to buff it even more? It's already ridiculously powerful.
Let's also remember that many end-game parties are either extremely self-sufficient with healing or are depending on SW or healadin to be the healing workhorse, often making DC healing quite redundant.
Divine Glow alone is sufficient for proccing Gift of Haste. Trash encounters are whatever; boss encounters tend to have parties grouped tightly together; and you have so many opportunities to cast DG with Divinity that correcting your placement if necessary is not a problem.
Divine glow only works on characters within 20' of the target. For CW, SW, and HR (outside of combat) they are typically not recipients of this buff. Some would argue the ranged play of dps CW, SW, and HR is heavily hurt because of not being the beneficiary of many of the dc buffs/debuffs do to not maintain the close proximity to the mobs.
Concede or not as you wish, but the fact is that an end-game DC will cast more abilities with Avatar than without. It's not really up for debate; it's a math issue.
The math is what proves you wrong. Either you stack enough recovery/AP gain to cast the powers you need when you need them or you don't stack enough recovery and leverage Avatar to provide that benefit 42%. In which 58% of the time there are gaps in your optimal buffs/debuffs. If your an "End Game" DC you have the stat flexibility to remove the 58% non-optimal period.
You keep saying that going deep into Righteous as AC isn't a good idea because AC personal damage is so low and because you can end up with some redundancy with DO, but I'm not seeing where you explain how the alternatives are appealing other than, to paraphrase, "they're different from what DO is likely to bring." How is it beneficial to pile on even more healing when the average end-game party needs more healing buffs about as much as it needs +gold gain?
Pretty certain I spelled out the advantages as being more up time on Gift of Haste and increased party survive-ability. I would put your personal dps on par with the gold gain.
Have you considered that increased survive-ability also impacts your parties behaviors? How often the need to break their rotation through dodges, Your tanks ability to focus more on positioning and buffing instead of protection.
Like I said, you can do what works for your group dynamic, if you run with the same people every run, then you know what they need and what to expect so maybe your additional contribution of .1% of party dps from avatar/piercing light may warrant it.
That's cute, but it doesn't say much. I see most players die due to having failed mechanics or having positioned themselves poorly. I don't see people dying frequently when bigger green numbers would have made the difference.
How about increased damage resistance and more frequent green numbers?
Think of it this way: with barely any healing feats or other bonuses you can leverage DC's base healing encounters to enormous effect. If you find yourself needing to slot something like BoH, why would you need to buff it even more? It's already ridiculously powerful.
- I'm aware of how DG works. Players should not be attacking at range given that AA is limited to a fairly small radius centered on the caster. If players want to attack from across the screen, not receiving the AC's Gift of Haste will be the least of their problems.
- Because there is no set rotational requirement, there is no reason not to use additional (read: beyond the minimum required to expend Divinity and apply desired buffs) encounters. The more encounters you use, the more damage (and healing) you put out, the faster your AP builds, the more frequently you trigger HL (which in turn slashes your own expended CDs along with the party's), and so on. It's a rather tidy feedback loop while it's active.
- The increased damage resistance you mention is negligible with the arguable exception of DO's Benefit of Foresight if they go that route. Which of course requires that they actually slot Foresight and that it actually helps the party. For AC there isn't much going on in this department.
Maybe I haven't been clear enough on this point, or we simply have an irreconcilable difference of opinion, but this is my stance on mitigation and healing: Mitigation and healing beyond what is necessary to allow the party to function smoothly is wasted. Does your party need more support in that department? Great, you can easily have a loadout prepared for that. In my own experience end-game parties tend to function fine without these DC feats. If they are not functioning well, it's for reasons other than needing more frequent or larger green numbers.
The bottom line is that +.1% of party DPS is preferable to 100% more of something your party has no use for.
The point was that DC healing powers are already extremely potent and fill their functions just fine without additional +healing%. A party that isn't somehow healing-deficient doesn't really care about the healing from your DG, anyway, since they are getting the bulk of what they need from their own Life Steal, the OP, the SW, and so on.
for DO its perma up time on HG, empowered BTS or FF, POD, Bear Your Sins, and Condemning Gaze. You can argue about foresight since its a healing spell and some don't think that's important.
For AC your looking at perma up time of WOL, AA, empowered BTS or FF, BoB, and Exhault and some would argue Hastening Light/HOTs.
you can't have perma up time on hg. there is a CD. I don't have my dc right now so i can't quote numbers but you can't do it.
You can have perma HG; the CD is affected by recovery and recharge boosting effects, and in party with another DC you will likely benefit from their Hastening Light to take periodic chunks off of the CD.
@ vorphied Still makes 0 sense to overlap powers and never hurts to have more ways to clutch heal if need be. As game changes so must builds even if 95% of the time those heals are not needed it sure is nice the 5% of the time they are there. Must be nice to always have a smooth runs never see anyone in group slip up on agro . Never any lag that would cause a player to get stuck in the red never have a player out of distance to recover with his life steal or get hit with DG. You talk like all runs are perfect so must be nice i guess.
We're talking about a single potentially overlapping feat, not an entire tree's worth. Not a bad tradeoff in the event that you have no use for the additional healing feats you would otherwise be taking.
You seem to think that I'm always running with perfect groups or that I exaggerate my ease of completion, but it's equally reasonable to suggest that your groups are unusually difficult. I help a lot of friends complete tong who would never be permitted to join a public group because of their chosen classes and/or ilvls. I still consider it a luxury when I run with a group that has an optimal mix of classes at fair ilvls and with experienced players at the helm.
At the very least I'd suggest that you honestly examine cases of failure and consider how many of them would have been successful with just a bit more healing and such. Your experience may well vary, but in my experience the healing factor is almost never the difference. There is no healing buff that is going to be very successful at saving your average DPS when a tank spins Ras Nsi before a flaming sword strike; no healing of yours is going to save someone who fails to avoid red areas and gets crazy debuff stacks. And so on.
putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
@vorphied HR must be ranged to buff the party with longstriders. Squeeshies don't often want to play within 20' of the boss because guess what, they are squeeshy. Your argument basically says that the rest of the team needs to conform to you build/playing style.
- The increased damage resistance you mention is negligible with the arguable exception of DO's Benefit of Foresight if they go that route. Which of course requires that they actually slot Foresight and that it actually helps the party. For AC there isn't much going on in this department.
you forget have faith? The DR argument would come with the coordination of AC and DO DR buffs
Your assuming that the value of healing and damage resistance increases is simply a life or death calculation. As stated before, it can also impact your parties necessity to behave certain ways, breaking rotations to dodge for example or GF going more protector than tactician or dps.
your free to do what you want. If personal dps is your goal, then we have no real discussion to make. But the question was "WHAT'S THE CORRECT 2 DC SETUP FOR TONG / END GAME?" and your argument simply doesn't hold up to the litmus test.
- Have Faith is 5%. I didn't mention it because it's already a shoe-in for AC since you need the first tier to access Battle Fervor, and on the DO side not a must by any means.
- If we're talking about what's best for the party, you can't simply choose to ignore the metrics you don't like or think shouldn't be considered because they aren't large. The fact remains that more DPS is always welcome, while more mitigation and healing are welcome only to the point where your run can be executed smoothly. Please note the key word "smoothly," as I am not making a purely binary argument as you suggest. My position is that DC's base healing and mitigation tools are almost always enough to get the job done in a functional end-game party. I've had many successful runs without dedicated healers and with DPS-specced tanks, and the worst thing that happened was that we may have had pay slightly more attention to mechanics rather than completely ignoring them. At best, party DPS was so high that mechanics were still whatever.
- Playing from range is not optimal thanks to the direction Cryptic took with buffs, buff ranges, and our collective over-reliance on buffs. It's absolutely unfair to ranged-spec HRs, but it doesn't appear to be high on the devs' priority list. The HR who is nice enough to give their party Longstrider needs to get right back into position. CW is already functionally a melee class since it needs to be at close range to maximize its AoE.
The point stands that all of the good stuff is happening right in the middle of the fight, and characters on the outskirts are missing buffs and healing. It's more dangerous for squishies to run away from their friends than it is for them to hold the line unless they absolutely must break to perform mechanics or avoid nasty AoEs.
You seem to think that I'm always running with perfect groups or that I exaggerate my ease of completion, but it's equally reasonable to suggest that your groups are unusually difficult. I help a lot of friends complete tong who would never be permitted to join a public group because of their chosen classes and/or ilvls. I still consider it a luxury when I run with a group that has an optimal mix of classes at fair ilvls and with experienced players at the helm.
At the very least I'd suggest that you honestly examine cases of failure and consider how many of them would have been successful with just a bit more healing and such. Your experience may well vary, but in my experience the healing factor is almost never the difference. There is no healing buff that is going to be very successful at saving your average DPS when a tank spins Ras Nsi before a flaming sword strike; no healing of yours is going to save someone who fails to avoid red areas and gets crazy debuff stacks. And so on.
.
I seem to think you talk like you are always running with perfect groups .Yet from my experience the ones that talk the most many times is just talk . I run with all sorts of groups and helps to keep the repetition at bay. But even some of the top groups i have run with (14/15 min runs) still have fallen from something that could have been avoided . If it was standing in red or shadows grasp or a DC that did not want to heal . Then things that can not be avoided like lag, charms or heavy dots and all reasons that more heals wont hurt . In fact it might just speed up the run but i doubt overlapping the same powers will. If you are on PC look me up @grrouper and you can save me from all the unusually difficult runs i am in But hey if you want to clash powers so be it maybe we can both run with BTS and use dread along with a GF and HR, Just sad that you don't see that sometimes it is the little things that make the difference.
From reading your reply it doesn't look like you've actually read much into what I've said here. If you think I'm telling everyone to go for full overlap between their DCs or that I'm completely discounting the possibility that DCs may need additional healing or mitigation, then we're not on the same page.
What I've suggested is that most end-game parties have enough mitigation and healing already built-in and that the only meaningful contribution a DC can bring beyond that is more DPS, however minimal.
For those rare instances where normally superfluous healing and mitigation feats are useful, there's a loadout for that as well.
Kindly keep your comments to game mechanics and refrain from implying that I'm making things up simply because you disagree with me or because your experience in the game differs from mine. Besides, from what you describe, it sounds like your party members are dying to exactly the sort of thing that healing and a few % of mitigation alone don't tend to solve. All the ++ healing% in the world will not save someone who isn't getting healed in the first place, nor is healing sufficient to prevent deaths in most of the usual lethal situations in tong; if players are steadily losing health and then dying, that may be a healing opportunity; if they are messing up and getting deleted by specific mechanics or massive hits, that's another story.
I made my point extremely clear regarding DPS. You're just reading what you expect to read at this point and are arguing against points I never made (e.g. that AC DC should build with a DPS mindset, etc.).
I made my point extremely clear regarding DPS. You're just reading what you expect to read at this point and are arguing against points I never made (e.g. that AC DC should build with a DPS mindset, etc.).
i've been reading all your previous comments and to be honest by all means you lost argument here so save some face as for what i wanted to say you are forgetting your role in the party is your role to do DPS ? LMO i don't think it is and even the DO isn't "MAINLY" for DPS but they do have more DPS output than the AC so they should keep righteous as for the AC the DPS is almost non existant so it's best to have extra healing / deffences than having buffs that overlap and give party no benefit no one here have anything against you and you can run anyway you want but the question this thread is about dosn't support your "NON End Game" style and you have yet to come with any argument to counter that.
Guess i care not to give you the last words as you have yet to give your handle seeing as you have such devotion for your build and player base ? But it sounds like you run with low DPS if you need to be adding to the DPS with your AC :* And you thinking that by your dc giving a very very small amount of damage will help the run . That is worse than a few extra sources of heals that might or might not get used . Only difference is AC has the stats to heal and therefore is the better choice . But unless you stack some arp and crit good luck with any dps that will help the group and if you do stack arp n crit well that just takes away from a power share DC . I think the issue is you run a hybrid and that is not optimal for dual DC comp and the talk here is about getting the most out of dual DCs and you fail to understand this .
My handle is my forum name. I was under the impression we were debating game mechanics, not forum-trolling each other, but by all means keep poking if it pleases you. I suppose it keeps an otherwise dry discussion from putting too many people to sleep.
I'm a DO main who sometimes has to moonlight as AC with lower ilvl DCs or in 1-DC parties. Nowhere have I suggested that AC mains build for damage.
DO can easily match or exceed AC's healing output if using Repurpose Soul and built properly as DO (e.g. with offensive stats). And healing OP and SW both think healing DCs are cute.
Any DPS increase, no matter how tiny, is preferable to unnecessary healing boosts if we are talking about min/max. Those healing boosts can be filed away in separate loadout for the party that actually does seem to benefit from them.
Anything else at this point would be further reiteration of the previous pages of discussion.
I made my point extremely clear regarding DPS. You're just reading what you expect to read at this point and are arguing against points I never made (e.g. that AC DC should build with a DPS mindset, etc.).
i've been reading all your previous comments and to be honest by all means you lost argument here so save some face as for what i wanted to say you are forgetting your role in the party is your role to do DPS ? LMO i don't think it is and even the DO isn't "MAINLY" for DPS but they do have more DPS output than the AC so they should keep righteous as for the AC the DPS is almost non existant so it's best to have extra healing / deffences than having buffs that overlap and give party no benefit no one here have anything against you and you can run anyway you want but the question this thread is about dosn't support your "NON End Game" style and you have yet to come with any argument to counter that.
You and certain other posters are reading "DPS" and leaving out the context. If you think I've been saying what you just posted there, you did not actually read all of my comments.
In any case, if players do want to pile in to Virtuous or Faithful healing feats because it makes them feel better as an AC, that's their choice. It's certainly not going to hurt their parties, but that was never the point. It's about adding more benefit to an end game party, and if your party already has healing covered, why bring more of it? That's where I've been coming from, not from any sort of "AC should deal lots of DPS" strawman argument that's been attributed to me.
DO drops Weapons of Light, possibly Condemning Gaze as well. AC drops ByS, since DOs usually use Brand and BtS.
Everything else is the same as Module 12.5 and prior. HG for the DO, AA for the AC, pick one of the Emp buffs, etc.
WoL on a DO could still be a good thing. WoL has a limited range and due to this, by having both DC using WoL the group improves the odd that power is being shared if a DPS is out of range of the AC but in range of the DO. I thought about removing WoL from my DO build for mod 13 but the more I thought about the more I realize that there are time when a DPS is closer to me and out of range of the AC, meaning they would lose some damage from power sharing loss. With the DO having WoL the out of range DPS or companion would still get some type of power buff.
As for the other ones, as rjc9000 stated, that is on point.
I gonna check that AC virtous, loadouts are cheap. But in general I will stick with rightous, Do or AC doesn´t matter, same as I stick with all those feats like WoL and CG, BYS, because I am simply to lazy to discuss my build into detail with every french, greek, mexican DC I run with to extend (honestly I can´t) The occasions where extraheal is needed like that are rare same as I witnessed enough runs where that other DC simply died, leading to an instant dps drop. But in case the raid/group lacks in heal I gonna chat: "I got that Virous build, hold on guys we gonna get it done." The AP gain is another aspect, and might be from interest in fights where teammates are spread across the map, not that many atm.
I think this discussion really does come down to the difference between the theoretical perfect groups, and typical actual runs.
Do the theoretical peferct groups that need no mitigation or healing exist? Absolutely and in those groups I'd agree with vorphied that avatar regardless of how little bonus it is is probably better than going full virtuous.
However, from my experience anyways, in the typical non-communicated end game runs people don't always stay grouped for various reasons, or maybe the AC misses a divine glow on someone in the heat of combat (very possible in 10 person combat), or whatever else.
The point is, stuff can go wrong. Maybe not majorly wrong, but wrong enough that a full virtuous build would have been beneficial.
I also believe those runs are by and far more common for most people than the "perfect" runs.
As a squishy CW I have to say that the arguments being made here are about us as givens are wrong. As a CW I am in range of my DC as close to 100% of the time as possible. We don't play outisde of the range of divine glow, and dodge out of danger only when absolutely necessary. The HRs I play with in end game drop back to use long striders and then come straight back in to benefit from the buffing as well. The tighter the groups are in all the end game content, generally the faster and easier it is, as buffing from the DCs and OPs both benefit from that strategy.
I have no dog in the fight as to which build the DCs use. ..but debates regarding the dog I do have should at least be looking at reality.
Comments
Anyhow, whatever you do, I would coordinate with your favorite running mate to ensure your not overlapping needlessly.
1. You "waste" a total of 11 points with Piercing Light, Condemning Gaze, and Avatar of the Divine.
2. You arguably waste a total of 15 points with whichever terrible tier 1 and 2 Faithful feats you take + your investment in Gift of the Gods.
Option 2 is not unviable, but I haven't felt need enough for Gift of the Gods that it justifies the required investment. Others' mileage may vary, though.
Further points reiterated:
- Personal DPS contributes to party DPS, no matter how small. A tiny contribution (e.g. a small damage increase) is preferable to no contribution (e.g. a boost to healing when healing requirements are already comfortably met).
- Avatar of the Divine is more beneficial than you acknowledge. Looking at it exclusively as a crutch for low-ilvl DCs or as a tool only for DPS-focused DO is incorrect. It also is not a deal-breaker that it does not have 100% uptime; the significant uptime that it does have is enough to provide for additional encounter usage throughout a dungeon, which generates more damage and resources than you would have without it. Just because Avatar isn't necessary to function doesn't make it worthless, especially when you're comparing it to other capstones.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
I think your confusing your builds or at least I hope you are. Your saying taking Piercing light, condemning gaze, and avatar of divine vs gift of the gods?
The AC debate as best I can make from your argument is
Piercing Light, Condemning Gaze, and Avatar of Divine - i.e. the benefits are personal 10% armor pen and a 42% up-time on a dps increase of 40% while providing a backup of Condemning Gaze in case your DO is unavailable.
vs
Purity, Have Faith , and Shield of Divine - i.e. 20% HOT buff, 5% increase to party Damage Resistance, and a passive HOT which helps to spread Gift of Haste.
It's that simple, and if your party believes your dps contribution out weights the dps contribution from Gift of Haste and uptime from the additional survive-ability then I'll grant you that your ideology could be correct, but I personally don't feel that is the case.
I will not concede that an "End Game" cleric gets more rotations off as a result of Avatar.
As @grrouper said, being an "End Game" cleric entails using loadouts for specific scenarios. As a minimum I imagine most "End Game" clerics will have a solo DPS loadout, a single DC loadout (AC or DO depending on their preferences), an AC dual DC loadout, and a DO dual DC loadout.
optional loadouts could be Dom PVP, GG PVP, Open World PVP, having both single DC AC and DO builds, and of course content specific loadouts that could include optimizing for things like fighting dinos or dragons. DC are pretty fortune in that we don't really need to switch feats/boons for single target vs multiple target fights.
Can you make a good case for taking on healing buffs? You're touting Purity, Have Faith, Shield of the Divine as if they were somehow useful, and I'm wondering how this is supposed to be. Just because they aren't contributing to an AC's small personal damage numbers doesn't meant that they have value.
Divine Glow alone is sufficient for proccing Gift of Haste. Trash encounters are whatever; boss encounters tend to have parties grouped tightly together; and you have so many opportunities to cast DG with Divinity that correcting your placement if necessary is not a problem.
Concede or not as you wish, but the fact is that an end-game DC will cast more abilities with Avatar than without. It's not really up for debate; it's a math issue. Also remember that it's not just about doing the bare minimal "rotation." If we stop caring about min/maxing, we can all drop these discussions, select most of our feats by dart throw, and be content with spending Divinity, casting an empowered FF/BTS, hitting a daily, and otherwise phoning it in.
You keep saying that going deep into Righteous as AC isn't a good idea because AC personal damage is so low and because you can end up with some redundancy with DO, but I'm not seeing where you explain how the alternatives are appealing other than, to paraphrase, "they're different from what DO is likely to bring." How is it beneficial to pile on even more healing when the average end-game party needs more healing buffs about as much as it needs +gold gain?
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Think of it this way: with barely any healing feats or other bonuses you can leverage DC's base healing encounters to enormous effect. If you find yourself needing to slot something like BoH, why would you need to buff it even more? It's already ridiculously powerful.
Let's also remember that many end-game parties are either extremely self-sufficient with healing or are depending on SW or healadin to be the healing workhorse, often making DC healing quite redundant.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Have you considered that increased survive-ability also impacts your parties behaviors? How often the need to break their rotation through dodges, Your tanks ability to focus more on positioning and buffing instead of protection.
Like I said, you can do what works for your group dynamic, if you run with the same people every run, then you know what they need and what to expect so maybe your additional contribution of .1% of party dps from avatar/piercing light may warrant it. How about increased damage resistance and more frequent green numbers? Why would you slot a BoH when a DG will do?
- Because there is no set rotational requirement, there is no reason not to use additional (read: beyond the minimum required to expend Divinity and apply desired buffs) encounters. The more encounters you use, the more damage (and healing) you put out, the faster your AP builds, the more frequently you trigger HL (which in turn slashes your own expended CDs along with the party's), and so on. It's a rather tidy feedback loop while it's active.
- The increased damage resistance you mention is negligible with the arguable exception of DO's Benefit of Foresight if they go that route. Which of course requires that they actually slot Foresight and that it actually helps the party. For AC there isn't much going on in this department.
Maybe I haven't been clear enough on this point, or we simply have an irreconcilable difference of opinion, but this is my stance on mitigation and healing: Mitigation and healing beyond what is necessary to allow the party to function smoothly is wasted. Does your party need more support in that department? Great, you can easily have a loadout prepared for that. In my own experience end-game parties tend to function fine without these DC feats. If they are not functioning well, it's for reasons other than needing more frequent or larger green numbers.
The bottom line is that +.1% of party DPS is preferable to 100% more of something your party has no use for. *sigh*
The point was that DC healing powers are already extremely potent and fill their functions just fine without additional +healing%. A party that isn't somehow healing-deficient doesn't really care about the healing from your DG, anyway, since they are getting the bulk of what they need from their own Life Steal, the OP, the SW, and so on.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
You seem to think that I'm always running with perfect groups or that I exaggerate my ease of completion, but it's equally reasonable to suggest that your groups are unusually difficult. I help a lot of friends complete tong who would never be permitted to join a public group because of their chosen classes and/or ilvls. I still consider it a luxury when I run with a group that has an optimal mix of classes at fair ilvls and with experienced players at the helm.
At the very least I'd suggest that you honestly examine cases of failure and consider how many of them would have been successful with just a bit more healing and such. Your experience may well vary, but in my experience the healing factor is almost never the difference. There is no healing buff that is going to be very successful at saving your average DPS when a tank spins Ras Nsi before a flaming sword strike; no healing of yours is going to save someone who fails to avoid red areas and gets crazy debuff stacks. And so on.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Your assuming that the value of healing and damage resistance increases is simply a life or death calculation. As stated before, it can also impact your parties necessity to behave certain ways, breaking rotations to dodge for example or GF going more protector than tactician or dps.
your free to do what you want. If personal dps is your goal, then we have no real discussion to make. But the question was "WHAT'S THE CORRECT 2 DC SETUP FOR TONG / END GAME?" and your argument simply doesn't hold up to the litmus test. Maybe you can't, but I can and any "End Game" DC should be able to with the only exception being due to stuns that will delay your rotations.
- If we're talking about what's best for the party, you can't simply choose to ignore the metrics you don't like or think shouldn't be considered because they aren't large. The fact remains that more DPS is always welcome, while more mitigation and healing are welcome only to the point where your run can be executed smoothly. Please note the key word "smoothly," as I am not making a purely binary argument as you suggest. My position is that DC's base healing and mitigation tools are almost always enough to get the job done in a functional end-game party. I've had many successful runs without dedicated healers and with DPS-specced tanks, and the worst thing that happened was that we may have had pay slightly more attention to mechanics rather than completely ignoring them. At best, party DPS was so high that mechanics were still whatever.
- Playing from range is not optimal thanks to the direction Cryptic took with buffs, buff ranges, and our collective over-reliance on buffs. It's absolutely unfair to ranged-spec HRs, but it doesn't appear to be high on the devs' priority list. The HR who is nice enough to give their party Longstrider needs to get right back into position. CW is already functionally a melee class since it needs to be at close range to maximize its AoE.
The point stands that all of the good stuff is happening right in the middle of the fight, and characters on the outskirts are missing buffs and healing. It's more dangerous for squishies to run away from their friends than it is for them to hold the line unless they absolutely must break to perform mechanics or avoid nasty AoEs.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
What I've suggested is that most end-game parties have enough mitigation and healing already built-in and that the only meaningful contribution a DC can bring beyond that is more DPS, however minimal.
For those rare instances where normally superfluous healing and mitigation feats are useful, there's a loadout for that as well.
Kindly keep your comments to game mechanics and refrain from implying that I'm making things up simply because you disagree with me or because your experience in the game differs from mine. Besides, from what you describe, it sounds like your party members are dying to exactly the sort of thing that healing and a few % of mitigation alone don't tend to solve. All the ++ healing% in the world will not save someone who isn't getting healed in the first place, nor is healing sufficient to prevent deaths in most of the usual lethal situations in tong; if players are steadily losing health and then dying, that may be a healing opportunity; if they are messing up and getting deleted by specific mechanics or massive hits, that's another story.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
no one here have anything against you and you can run anyway you want but the question this thread is about dosn't support your "NON End Game" style and you have yet to come with any argument to counter that.
I'm a DO main who sometimes has to moonlight as AC with lower ilvl DCs or in 1-DC parties. Nowhere have I suggested that AC mains build for damage.
DO can easily match or exceed AC's healing output if using Repurpose Soul and built properly as DO (e.g. with offensive stats). And healing OP and SW both think healing DCs are cute.
Any DPS increase, no matter how tiny, is preferable to unnecessary healing boosts if we are talking about min/max. Those healing boosts can be filed away in separate loadout for the party that actually does seem to benefit from them.
Anything else at this point would be further reiteration of the previous pages of discussion. You and certain other posters are reading "DPS" and leaving out the context. If you think I've been saying what you just posted there, you did not actually read all of my comments.
In any case, if players do want to pile in to Virtuous or Faithful healing feats because it makes them feel better as an AC, that's their choice. It's certainly not going to hurt their parties, but that was never the point. It's about adding more benefit to an end game party, and if your party already has healing covered, why bring more of it? That's where I've been coming from, not from any sort of "AC should deal lots of DPS" strawman argument that's been attributed to me.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
As for the other ones, as rjc9000 stated, that is on point.
But in general I will stick with rightous, Do or AC doesn´t matter, same as I stick with all those feats like WoL and CG, BYS, because I am simply to lazy to discuss my build into detail with every french, greek, mexican DC I run with to extend (honestly I can´t)
The occasions where extraheal is needed like that are rare same as I witnessed enough runs where that other DC simply died, leading to an instant dps drop.
But in case the raid/group lacks in heal I gonna chat: "I got that Virous build, hold on guys we gonna get it done."
The AP gain is another aspect, and might be from interest in fights where teammates are spread across the map, not that many atm.
Do the theoretical peferct groups that need no mitigation or healing exist? Absolutely and in those groups I'd agree with vorphied that avatar regardless of how little bonus it is is probably better than going full virtuous.
However, from my experience anyways, in the typical non-communicated end game runs people don't always stay grouped for various reasons, or maybe the AC misses a divine glow on someone in the heat of combat (very possible in 10 person combat), or whatever else.
The point is, stuff can go wrong. Maybe not majorly wrong, but wrong enough that a full virtuous build would have been beneficial.
I also believe those runs are by and far more common for most people than the "perfect" runs.
I have no dog in the fight as to which build the DCs use. ..but debates regarding the dog I do have should at least be looking at reality.