You have on your hand a show stopper with the cleric's encounter and daily nerf.
First thing first: Reduce divinity cost by half and increase the divinity regen/gain 3x. If I'm not mistaken, tab should regen divinity? Doesn't appear to be working. However if the sole purpose is to manually convert fire pips gained from at-wills to divinity by pressing tab then it this mechanism is simply tedious and not fun at all. At the very least the conversion rate should be increased 3x. Waiting for encounters to be available while firing weak at wills for eternity is unfun. And this waiting game is simply just the start of the problem. You would expect that those encounter powers after such long wait will be impactful. They are not. The dps output from these encounter are just too low when compared to the wait we need to go through. The effective cooldowns of our abilities have just been increased.
Do the changes I suggested first and I'll come back to test again. I'd suggest you do it fast this time round, pun intended.
I was on CN Heal Build on DC and I do not feel that heal was enough as second last passive which give only 1% this is not to much and the last feats we must chose . Dmg for party which is 3% or more heal .And 3% is no to much buff .
(Sorry for the long post ahead.) I confess I have mixed feelings about the whole buff/debuff concept being thrown out of the window, but this way is probably better than the craziness from before. That being said, I feel like the rework needs small tunings in a lot of places to really come together. Arbiter seems a lot better than Devout overall. Here's what I think about this rework.
- Divinity
Divinity takes too long to fill up at the moment, but it also feels slow to spend. It doesn't flow very well, so I believe speeding up both its recharge and spenditure rate would make it flow better. Arbiters can get around this by spamming Sacred Flame for stacks and converting with divinity, but Devouts have nothing similar.
Thanks for all the excellent feedback, I won't be responding to everything, but know that I did read it!
I know this feeling about divinity is going to be pretty common, especially initially, coming from the pace of building divinity before. However, let me start by saying that it is by design that divinity doesn't 'flow well' for healers. The faster we make it move up and down, the less of an actual fail state running out of divinity becomes.
If you've ever healed in an MMO before, you may be familiar with MP management playing a large role in playing a healer, that's really what divinity is doing now, and has to do, so that groups can wipe if they fail enough to burn their healer's resource pool.
I understand that this is definitely a bizarre change to come after so many years. Its something that was missing since launch, and a core tenant of trinity-based design that was, honestly, carelessly discarded by people who did not understand what they were doing.
Without this natural fail state to rely on, opportunities to let players mess up in group content without just killing them outright disappear, unless specifically shoe-horned in through unintuitive enemy specific mechanics like stacking vulnerability debuffs on players who mess up.
That being said, as you point out, Arbiter is overpowered at the moment. Not in terms of DPS, but specifically, because they are balanced around a divinity pool that moves up and down quickly for DPS purposes, their ability to actually heal via bastion of health is far too strong. We're going to be making adjustments to healing spells for non-healers such that they won't be able to play a healer role effectively. That said, we still want them to be able to bring heals for solo and group utility, so expect adjustments like, the spell costing much more divinity for arbiter, not that we will make it so the heal is too weak to be worth using.
Sacred Flame: Fine as is. Feels good to use now that you can move a bit while using it. Great job! Scattering Light: Is this the final animation? It looks a bit incomplete, but otherwise it's fine. I suspect it could use a small magnitude buff.
Lance of Faith: I'm pretty sure Sacred Flame outdamages this because it's that much faster. Needs a magnitude or an animation speed buff to be on par.
Blessing of Battle: Its effect seems to be too situational... I'd add something more to it. Maybe critical avoidance?
I can't test the other two at-wills so I can't comment on them.
Some last minute changes broke the FX for scattering light, they should be updated in a future build. On the comparison between lance of faith and sacred flame—one thing that isn't happening currently is a display of the total cast time of all the components of a combo, so its very difficult to compare at-wills to one another that have multiple swings, as you're only seeing the first swing. (The magnitude for all the attacks is the same though.)
Those two should be in par with one another, but ultimately which you use and when will depend on your rotation.
Divine Glow: It's very good on Arbiter with the trait, feels bad to use on Devouts though. I'd rather bake the threat reduction into Channel Divinity and give it something else.
Prophecy of Doom: Exaltation is just better overall. It should at least have the same cooldown as exaltation since you're only getting damage out of this.
Healing Word: Feels like HAMSTER compared to Bastion. Seems to tick every 3 seconds, so its total heal would be 300 + 560 over 21 seconds, compared to Bastion's instant 800 with half the divinity cost... ehh. I know you can stack the duration, but the heal over time aspect really needs a buff.
Exaltation: Buff seems potent, but also seems to be on the wrong path. I'd change this by reducing its buff to 10 or 15% and allowing it to buff a party member as well, so it better resembles its live counterpart.
In regards to divine glow, note that this power also grants you a divinity regeneration effect, so for Devout its actually quite worthwhile in situations where divinity management is an issue.
In regards to Prophecy vs Exaltation and whether or not Exaltation is in the wrong tree: I've seen this feedback a few times about various powers in tank or healing trees that enhance damage. Let me say that, it's not the case that we intend for healers or tanks to never deal damage. I should hope this would be obvious for tanks, but its just as true for healers.
If you're not healing, you should be dealing damage, and depending on your groups healing needs, you should be able to do respectable damage. Exaltation enhances healing and damage, so it serves double duty. Its worth taking for the healing boost in situations where you really need the extra oomph, but it also can help you out during the easier pulls or during DPS checks where you need or want to contribute to damage.
With that in mind, yes, the damaging effect is quite high, and not as complicated to take advantage of as Prophecy of Doom, but its so high and easy to use because it is on a healer tree. We would not put a power with such a potent and straightforward DPS boost like that on a DPS tree.
On healing word—you are correct that healing word's HoT effect is every 3 seconds. All class HoTs and most DoTs should now be ticking on 3 second intervals. That being said, I'd urge you to give healing word more of a chance in group play. Keep in mind that healing word has a large radius, so it can be effective to heal up group wide damage, and keep people topped off, as everyone is not always going to be stacking up.
During internal playtests, our clerics have been toying around with divinity efficient builds that make heavy use of powers like healing word to be able to spend more time dealing damage in trash pulls.
It looks that now DC will be able to queue as DPS. But what's our role as dps? Are we supposed to be equal match to other classess - let's say TR, CW, GWFs? Because now it feels like we're still not there yet.
Yes, you should be able to DPS just as well as any other class with only DPS pargons, e.g. WIZ, ROG, RGR, etc. Keep in mind that Barbarian (Formerly GWF) can play as a tank now, so they're not a class with 2 DPS paragons either.
I'd withhold judgement (badum tsss) about whether or not Arbiter is on par with other DPS until people have had a chance to put all the paragons through their paces. Some of the classes, especially Arbiter, have some reasonably complex rotations that can take a bit of getting used to. We've seen them performing fairly well internally, but obviously we'll be continuing to make adjustments.
Bastion of Health does not heal the AC dc. When I first started learning to play a healer, I was told that as healer, I needed to be inside the ring, too. The allies are healed, but not me. I would call this a bug.
The Holy Ground circle was much much smaller. To give the tank as much benefit as possible, I had to be standing right beside him to make sure he was inside the circle. But then, any dps outside of the circle got zero benefit.
The Astral Shield mechanic was confusing at first. Once I got used to using it, I queued for a Castle Never. I could not prevent the other members inside of the Astral Shield while I was channeling from being one-shotted by the giant balor after the beholder.
The Bastion of Health was always ready within seconds as long as I had divinity. But I ran out of divinity before we ran out of mobs. Part of my re-training will be to learn how to be economical with the divinity encounters so they are always ready.
Still not clear on the best rotation of encounters. I seriously miss my Lance and the Break the Spirit in the AC build. Thank you for the Cleansing Hands encounter that will remove poison.
By the way, the zombies at the green sphere before the second boss of Castle Never were next to impossible to kill before they reached the sphere. I was useless as an AC in there. Same was true of the rifts at the beginning of Castle Never. I could throw some heals for sure, but being separated from the group made me feel like dead weight.
There are some fairly egregious scaling issues in some content, so I'd like to apologize personally for how frustrating this can be. Know that, you shouldn't expect other players who are properly geared to be being one shot by normal enemies once the fixes are in, certainly by the time we go live.
Not sure if this is class-specific or not, but enemies in Lost City of Omu will randomly oneshot my (geared) Arbiter cleric for a whopping 500,000-900,000 damage when all other hits deal just 2,000-3,000 to her. The oneshots aren't even telegraphed attacks, just regular "ranged attacks". This makes soloing painful when my character just drops dead fighting a pack of trash mobs.
Thanks for letting me know, I've passed this along to the designer working on enemies. There are a lot of outliers like this in older zones that we're working on catching.
If you do happen to remember which enemy family you were fighting when it happened, e.g. Yuan-ti, Batiri, etc. that would be super helpful!
Is it at all possible to make channeling Astral shield not root you in place? Maybe include that in the feat to that allows you to channel divinity while moving?
Astral Shield should be renamed to "DC killer" or something. While I might understand the idea behind the whole rework on Devout, with the new "animations" that make us look like Linu La'neral, I find Astral Shield to be the worst encounter to use. With our AP gain as Devout being so slow (no Ap gain from healing), Astral Shield would be a good tool for us to mitigate damage while waiting for Hallowed Ground and make me feel a little better and more valuable than a Healbot.
Too bad we have a high chance of getting killed while casting it... "Hold on mobs! Im casting my astral shield, go away!"
So eithermaybe give us some AP gain by healing (because thats the only thing a Devout is doing) and also change this Astral Shield mechanism. I dont see myself using it much in the future.
Sorry in advance if this got said already, a little overwhelmed with all the changes. I mean, with this new game.
You can interrupt astral shield at any time with shift, or by casting any other spell.
Ok, I've played the Arbiter just a few mins ago or so. So far, I've only tested my sun elf on the Tuern weekly quest, so decide for yourselves how much being said is... well, reliable.
The feats are... well, a horrible mess. The problem lies in the third tier where you have to choose between the BoH divine judgement increase and the Geas-BtS combo. Assuming I choose Geas-BtS option, it means I've effectively locked down two encounters. This creates the scenario where I have to choose between Searing Light and DG due to the feat tree. The only way to make decent sense out of the Geas-BtS feat would be the what-if scenario where you have two Arbiters in the party. One with Geas and the other with BtS. Otherwise, every Arbiter is going to choose the BoH divine judgement feat. That'd defeat the purpose of throwing in the Geas-BtS feat.
Which now comes to the fact that the feat tree is too encounter-centric. While I can understand the need to focus on the scales damage system, the Geas-BtS feat was clearly not a good idea from the start. A saltier gamer would have used some seriously salty language by my guess. The devs really need to take a serious re-look on the Arbiter feats.
As for Divinity, it seems from the feedback that the only way to make things work for the Arbiter is using the self damage reduction class feature (forgot its name) and Holy Fervor. Otherwise, the dps pace can easily kill the Arbiter. In fact, BoH was the only reason why I managed to clear the Tuern weekly despite trying to make sense of how the Arbiter should work. As of now, my sun elf is running with an Apparatus of Gond augment comp, so I assume using BoH with it inside circle would proc the BoH-divine judgement feat.
As for DG, while I've yet to test run the raiding loadout, it seems that the tooltip description for the DG feat is pointing towards a maxed out Radiant or Burning gauge. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Ultimately, Arbiter is definitely a case of uncharted territory. I messed around with the system and it seemed that it's far better to opt for two dailies plus one encounter of the same scale damage type (i.e. either both radiant or both fire). I ran my sun elf with Sun Burst, Searing Light, and BoH in the Q-E-R key order. That plus choosing the feats for 100% crit SL, fire stacking SB, and radiant stacking BoH. The dps felt very jarring when I bound Sun Burst to E and Searing Light to Q. My execution style is using E as my primary encounter and Q as my third priority encounter. Once I switched the order around, the dps felt much smoother. Although it's not saying much due to this being the Tuern weekly quest instead of the Tuern raid.
Right now, my style of execution is focused on using Lance of Faith and Scattering Light for fire stacking and using Sun Burst, Flame Strike, and Hammer of Fate as the finishing nuke. So the order should look like something like this: Scattering Light>Lance of Faith>Searing Light>Sun Burst/Daily (note that I'm using Searing Light as my primary encounter due to the 10% chance to 100% crit feat via Lance spamming).
Then there's BoH. Which I realized is decently good get-out-of-jail move. But this also means the Arbiter's dps momentum is very prone to disruption in solo running (note that my cleric is running with Indestructible mount bonus of 2K defense)
Ideally, Arbiter dps game should be focused on either building the radiant or fire damage stacking until the max amount. After that, just chuck in the big one. So far, that's the only way for me to make sense out of the dps. Of course, this would be the most optimal situation. Once the opponent(s) started upping the dps momentum, you wouldn't have much time to store up the stacks (which in turn made the Sun Burst feat very useful as it adds to the fire damage stacks). It's like you'll have to trigger the stacks while it's at 2-3 circles (red for fire, yellow for radiant).
As for the boons, I went for all the defensive ones plus power. Comp effect bonuses wise, I opted for armor penetration and defense. For the comp triggered effect (for the lack of a better way to put it), I went for the Armor Breaker (or something like that) which gave me chance to gain 2000 arpen upon hit. So you can see plenty of DRI in play here.
Ultimately, my impression of the Arbiter seemed to be leaning towards a dps plus heal support. Which means you'll need either the DG feat, BoH feat, or both. But I'll have to say the buffing is effectively non-existent. The dailies are like damage, damage, and more damage unlike the current mod. Which means the Arbiter may have to play healing support to feature decently well in any party setup.
Lastly, I have to say the placement of the fire/radiant circles is very visually jarring. It's like one column of circles obscuring part of the screen. Is there any way to realign and resize them? Like maybe placing them along the outer edge of the Divinity gauge?
P.S: I didn't use Channel Divinity for a reason. Solo play is definitely a case of dealing with a breakneck pace for the clerics now.
Edit: Forgot to mention this. You'll need Wisdom to survive in solo due to the incoming heal. Intelligence for damage should be a no-brainer.
Lastly, I have to say the placement of the fire/radiant circles is very visually jarring. It's like one column of circles obscuring part of the screen. Is there any way to realign and resize them? Like maybe placing them along the outer edge of the Divinity gauge?
Not sure if this is class-specific or not, but enemies in Lost City of Omu will randomly oneshot my (geared) Arbiter cleric for a whopping 500,000-900,000 damage when all other hits deal just 2,000-3,000 to her. The oneshots aren't even telegraphed attacks, just regular "ranged attacks". This makes soloing painful when my character just drops dead fighting a pack of trash mobs.
Thanks for letting me know, I've passed this along to the designer working on enemies. There are a lot of outliers like this in older zones that we're working on catching.
If you do happen to remember which enemy family you were fighting when it happened, e.g. Yuan-ti, Batiri, etc. that would be super helpful!
i can agree that some mobs do 500k damage instantly. Mostly mobs called Snipers, Daggers and maybe others...
I dont really see how we can regain divinity in pvp. Its extremely slow as well as we get very little divinity even if we use scales of judgment in order to trade our pips for an extra divinity.
IMO divinity gain should be improved. Otherwise its really unplayable in pvp. ( i mean i was testing 1v1 with a mage, all i can do is hit 3 FF's either i kill him or he survives through healing and then its just a pain to fight him back, becuz im rinning and i got no divinity regeneration whatsoever.) Even if i use Divine Glow feated to give me full pips that then i can trade for divinity thats barely enough for anything..... and eventually i end up running with at wills mot of the fight ....
Many people underestimate new Divine Glow mechanic with tipping scales feat. It instantly gives us full amount of pips resulting in a burst damage that could be done by forgemasters flame.
Consider COST of FF to be reduced from 300 to 200.
Also we got AOE issues. Skills have to be looked at.
Change Searing Light into cone effect instead of damage in line that could help alot.
hi, I have put a lot of time into my toons farming out boons; I play as a op and dc... I play these classes because I enjoy them.. what if after mod 16 drops, I do not like them anymore... dose this mean i'll have to go back and start grinding out boons, or buy them, on another class; that I like? The changes that are being made to the game are BIG... will you be compensating us in any way for this? e.g. giving us a full unlock token (for each maxed out character we have on our account) to create a new toon of a different class?.... Or, Just a thought, there could be a feature that would unlock boons, and all, account wide, after complete that content on 1 or 2 toons... this would allow people to try new classes if they do not like the ones they have (being stuck with) and put a lot of money/time into... has this been thought about or is something like this in the works? thank you for your time..
Astral Shield should be renamed to "DC killer" or something. While I might understand the idea behind the whole rework on Devout, with the new "animations" that make us look like Linu La'neral, I find Astral Shield to be the worst encounter to use. With our AP gain as Devout being so slow (no Ap gain from healing), Astral Shield would be a good tool for us to mitigate damage while waiting for Hallowed Ground and make me feel a little better and more valuable than a Healbot.
Too bad we have a high chance of getting killed while casting it... "Hold on mobs! Im casting my astral shield, go away!"
So eithermaybe give us some AP gain by healing (because thats the only thing a Devout is doing) and also change this Astral Shield mechanism. I dont see myself using it much in the future.
Sorry in advance if this got said already, a little overwhelmed with all the changes. I mean, with this new game.
You can interrupt astral shield at any time with shift, or by casting any other spell.
Oh I know that. But the shield disappears. And thats divinity wasted. And its not like we are refilling our bar easily.
My point is that the dmg mitigation encounter we can use aside of being healbot is useless imho.
i'd like to add that I spent ~3 years fine tuning a build and gear for my cleric, only to have you developers completely change the game in a way that makes having a unique build impossible and also makes the game not even fun anymore. going from preview for 2 days then back to live for a while i almost wanted to cry. It's horrible what you've done to this class and this game. unless something major changes before mod 16 comes out I am going to stop playing this game and take down my guide on mmominds.
thanks
Stop crying on what u have spend and invested into your char. We all did. Its an mmo rpg kjust like WOW, where u get your gear wiped with every expension / mod.
Thanks for letting me know, I've passed this along to the designer working on enemies. There are a lot of outliers like this in older zones that we're working on catching.
If you do happen to remember which enemy family you were fighting when it happened, e.g. Yuan-ti, Batiri, etc. that would be super helpful!
It doesn't seem to be any enemy in particular. Sometimes random attacks in Omu will just hit like a truck.
Here's a Skeletal Archer's normal damage range and then the sudden cheapshot:
Same with Thayan Servitor:
Other examples:
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
i'd like to add that I spent ~3 years fine tuning a build and gear for my cleric, only to have you developers completely change the game in a way that makes having a unique build impossible and also makes the game not even fun anymore. going from preview for 2 days then back to live for a while i almost wanted to cry. It's horrible what you've done to this class and this game. unless something major changes before mod 16 comes out I am going to stop playing this game and take down my guide on mmominds.
thanks
Stop crying on what u have spend and invested into your char. We all did. Its an mmo rpg kjust like WOW, where u get your gear wiped with every expension / mod.
Name me another non-PWE MMO where they rebooted the game to a primitive alpha state with pretty much no options?
Well, I love the look and feel of the Arbiter. I'm going to post a basic rotation that will hopefully be effective at getting people used to powering up your encounter powers. First, I start with Lance At-Will to build fire pips. After I have a couple (or filled, your preference) I drop a Forgemaster's Flame encounter on the strongest mob. That will, in turn, give a radiant pip. So then I build radiant stacks by using the Sacred Flame [i think] At-Will. When full, I drop a Daunting Light on all the weaker mobs that have no doubt surrounded me by now. That gives me a pip of Fire. At this point, I liked using Divine Glow with the Feat 'Tipping the Scales' which gives full pips as long as you have at least 1 pip in fire or radiant. This would fill up my fire stacks and allow another fully maxed out Forgemaster's.
Keeping in mind those Encounter powers will also fill pips, but with the Divinity management, it seemed like an 'expensive' way of gaining pips, when At-Wills will do so for free.
So here is the critical feedback. 1) Divinity regeneration is slow. I foresee groups waiting in between battles for the Cleric to refill divinity. What it is from a D&D standpoint: "Following the harrowing battle, the Cleric grasps her holy symbol and prays for more divine inspiration." What it really is: "Wait a minute, I have to hold down tab for 20 seconds..." Perhaps increasing the rate of recovery outside of battle would help. 2) I love that At-Wills GENERATE pips. I hate the At-Wills USE pips. After running through River District Dig Sites (good mix of strength of enemies in there) for a couple hours, I NEVER wanted my At-Will to do 20 more Magnitude by using all the stacks. All it did was frustrate me when I misclicked or got out of rotation slightly.
Thanks for the updates to the class! Now I just need to find a group willing to let the Cleric learn to to heal so I can post comments on that!
Post edited by savrai on
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Somewhat feel like bts should be in the devouted tree. As dps ur not going to want to turn to old Habits to sacrifice Personal dps to stack buffs for groups first dps.
Is there any change coming soon to allow mounts from characters already bound to be swapped with other characters? I feel no need to maintain my dps class anymore and wish to only play healer at this point.
Astral Shield should be renamed to "DC killer" or something. While I might understand the idea behind the whole rework on Devout, with the new "animations" that make us look like Linu La'neral, I find Astral Shield to be the worst encounter to use. With our AP gain as Devout being so slow (no Ap gain from healing), Astral Shield would be a good tool for us to mitigate damage while waiting for Hallowed Ground and make me feel a little better and more valuable than a Healbot.
Too bad we have a high chance of getting killed while casting it... "Hold on mobs! Im casting my astral shield, go away!"
So eithermaybe give us some AP gain by healing (because thats the only thing a Devout is doing) and also change this Astral Shield mechanism. I dont see myself using it much in the future.
Sorry in advance if this got said already, a little overwhelmed with all the changes. I mean, with this new game.
I also wandered about that animation, holding your Symbol like "The Statue of Liberty" placing a shield that avoids 10% damage with an aoe of an apple My fist instinct was a bigh laugh, my second thought was "I never gonna use it" I´d say keep Astral Shield as it was/is like: put it down on the floor, spending 10% DR and increasing incoming healing..please no animation even tough it looks pretty funny
Is it Working as intended that NONE of the Devout healing spells actually give action points if you use them? That makes using dailies as a working healer nearly impossible. Also- Is there an intent to add a divinity mechanic for healing like there is for DPS?
That certainly shouldn't be the case, healing spells should generate AP, but I will look into it. Additionally, channeling divinity also generates AP. All powers, including channeling divinity should be generating the same AP per second. So with that in mind, if a power is nearly instant, it won't be generating a lot of AP.
We had actually considered making AP regenerate passively in combat (instead of on action use), but we didn't go forward with that change. However, there are some concerns with AP generation for healers. I haven't found it to be a big problem, but I've had a long time to get used to the changes. If you're just standing there between heals, you won't generate much AP.
I'm considering high end content with boss phases where things are untargetable and thus I have only one at will that heals anything that I can use.
I'm thinking from the perspective in which a healer, lets say in a dungeon like Castle Ravenloft is currently where the first and third boss is untargetable for periods of time and there are huge AOE damage sources that you presumably have to keep people alive. I then have the choice between Praying as my party quickly dies or twinkle at will healing them. If I'm not gaining AP from healing which I can't cast at wills while I'm using bastion ect how do I expect to mitigate damage in a prolonged instance for enough time for me to pray a bit and get the party back on track? Also- I can't very well pray and stand still because then I'll be the one who is dead so I'd have no choice but to take the move/pray option.
I have since played the new dungeon as a healer and I see that things don't hit as hard as the do in mod 15 but my concern still remains. I get that daily powers are supposed to be more strategic but honestly it doesn't feel as fluid as the DPS DC in terms of divinity management or AP generation and it's quite more difficult to test outside of a queued instance.
Relmyna - AC/DC Righteous + Haste| Nadine - CW MoF (working on it)|Buffy - GF SM Tact| Hrist - Justice Tankadin|Healadin (Wannabe Tank)| Lena -MI Sabo TR (Farmer) | Jeska - GWF SM Destroyer (Farmer) | Maggie - HR PF Trapper (Wannabe DPS)
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I'll never retrace my steps.
What's made it harder ? - (Teamwork) Buffs, to make the right hit into right time.
With M16 - no more buffs/timing or whatever.
How it will make it harder !? will be no reason to wait for ppl . to use voice. You can easily go with random pt.Only choose them by iLVL.Seems like with new system, the game will be dead in about 1 months after release.(for high-end players). There will be no any choice to boost your team and etc. To make life harder and interesting , mobs should be really harder , much harder...but from last expiriance, what's gonna do low iLVL players !? leave the game.Of course you can't afford it.
No hard mehanics = no high-end game. No boost, again = no hihg-end.
Now about clerics.
Let's image together , when reasonable to take DC in pt. ?(but again we would talk only about high-end content)
As a healer - No.Cause at high end , as we do understand would be huge amount of stats , and i would bet 99% if the whole pack there wouldn't be so huge income dmg , wher pally in tank would be easy tank+heal , the rest ppl would use stones/bottles (in that case no reason to spend another space for healer)
As a dps -No. Cause he can't do anything with 1)mobs. (skills a bit slow(and area) if to compare with other dps classes).Also you can't afford to use any high dmg skill on mobs (cause in that case you will be out of divinity) as we are talking about high-end game, you have no those 3 sec to restore additional divinity cause aim of any high-end pack = speed. 2)bosses, the skills are much more lower dmg then other dps classes(why? if the magnitude of skills almost near to dps classes?) - right , cause of divinity (if we would take pure dmg skills with no any restoration of divinity , you would be able to use 3-4 skills) if for that time boss didn't die you will loose HUGE amount of time (like 15sec) to restore full divinity. in that case , dmg should be almost 3 times higher. To make dmg skill+restore divinity equal to other dps classes (who shouldn't restore divinity).And even in that case if skills would have 2/3 times higher dmg , after boss you have to spend apromox.10sec to restore it, or you will be totally useless on mobs up to next boss.
As a half dps/healer.- Probably - if there would be a chance as a Pal. would be as a Tank + still huge amount of inc. dmg...it would be possible to make Half dps healers usefull, with healing on mobs , and do some dmg at bosses on a safe time.But even with this build dmg should be much more higher....(why?) Inn this style , it would be most hardest class in game , cause would req healing+dmg, and your dmg should be nearly to top DPS , otherwise if it would be 10-15% of it...would be no reason to take a risk and play too hard to get nothing instead.
Let's quickly have a look at most dmg skills over the classes. (i'll take just 2 classes for example , but sure 100% if to check all classes we will find apromox. the same story.
GF-Anvil(1600+27s CD)+Mow Dawn (3000)Shield Throw(600)Bull charge (600) = 1 round of cast (10-15sec), if boss didn't die then another quick one for 7sec and rotation will continue = 5800, after 1200, after 5800 and etc. At the end we will have . Magnitude 5800/1200/5800 (every 10-15sec) with run non stop.
HR -Slashers Mark(2500)Commanding shot(490)Longstrider shot+Gushing Wound(950)Constricting Arrow(490) , all skills have apromox. 13sec cd. means your rotation will be almost always the same exept Daily skill. At the end we would have. Magnitude 4430/1930/4430 and etc. (every 15sec) also with non stop run.
DC-Guardian of Faith (2500)(only every 3-4th time)Forgemaster(800x3) after need restore full divinity (apromox 20sec) At the end we would have 2800 magnitude every 26sec.
What is 700 less and 10sec longer from GF and 500 and 10sec less from HR.
What probably will be apromox. 4200 less then GF and 3680 less then HR.
DC2(dps+heal)-Daunting Light(550) Searing light(300? not sure)Bastion of Health x2. = rotation always the same would take around 11sec. In that case we would have very poor healer(cause you need to choose everything for dps) and do only 850 magnitude over 11-12sec....what is 15% of fast boss killing to compare with GF or 25% (if boss die long time) and 19% from HR and 26% if boss lasts long time.
I'm so sorry for such a rude calculations , but it still will show the overall things how it goes. and to make DC comparable with other classes , their (most dmg skills) should have 3 times more magnitude. In that case , as a DPS you will make a bit more dmg then rest(but have to spend time to restore divinity)/ as a dps+healer you will be able to achieve at least 75-85% of their dmg +a bit of healing (in perfect environment) but as we know , sometimes you need extra healing and etc. what will reduce your dmg to 65-70% to other DPS classes.
< honestly it doesn't feel as fluid as the DPS DC in terms of divinity management or AP generation and it's quite more difficult to test outside of a queued instance.
That. I just tried OP healer and thats fluid, aside of one daily that might take me some time to get used to.
But its exactly what is described here. Devout isnt fluid at all. It feels tedious.
As it is now, this Devout is just working toward enhancing my guilty healer feeling when i see someone dead in my party.
Comments
First thing first: Reduce divinity cost by half and increase the divinity regen/gain 3x. If I'm not mistaken, tab should regen divinity? Doesn't appear to be working. However if the sole purpose is to manually convert fire pips gained from at-wills to divinity by pressing tab then it this mechanism is simply tedious and not fun at all. At the very least the conversion rate should be increased 3x. Waiting for encounters to be available while firing weak at wills for eternity is unfun. And this waiting game is simply just the start of the problem. You would expect that those encounter powers after such long wait will be impactful. They are not. The dps output from these encounter are just too low when compared to the wait we need to go through. The effective cooldowns of our abilities have just been increased.
Do the changes I suggested first and I'll come back to test again. I'd suggest you do it fast this time round, pun intended.
I know this feeling about divinity is going to be pretty common, especially initially, coming from the pace of building divinity before. However, let me start by saying that it is by design that divinity doesn't 'flow well' for healers. The faster we make it move up and down, the less of an actual fail state running out of divinity becomes.
If you've ever healed in an MMO before, you may be familiar with MP management playing a large role in playing a healer, that's really what divinity is doing now, and has to do, so that groups can wipe if they fail enough to burn their healer's resource pool.
I understand that this is definitely a bizarre change to come after so many years. Its something that was missing since launch, and a core tenant of trinity-based design that was, honestly, carelessly discarded by people who did not understand what they were doing.
Without this natural fail state to rely on, opportunities to let players mess up in group content without just killing them outright disappear, unless specifically shoe-horned in through unintuitive enemy specific mechanics like stacking vulnerability debuffs on players who mess up.
That being said, as you point out, Arbiter is overpowered at the moment. Not in terms of DPS, but specifically, because they are balanced around a divinity pool that moves up and down quickly for DPS purposes, their ability to actually heal via bastion of health is far too strong. We're going to be making adjustments to healing spells for non-healers such that they won't be able to play a healer role effectively. That said, we still want them to be able to bring heals for solo and group utility, so expect adjustments like, the spell costing much more divinity for arbiter, not that we will make it so the heal is too weak to be worth using. Some last minute changes broke the FX for scattering light, they should be updated in a future build. On the comparison between lance of faith and sacred flame—one thing that isn't happening currently is a display of the total cast time of all the components of a combo, so its very difficult to compare at-wills to one another that have multiple swings, as you're only seeing the first swing. (The magnitude for all the attacks is the same though.)
Those two should be in par with one another, but ultimately which you use and when will depend on your rotation. In regards to divine glow, note that this power also grants you a divinity regeneration effect, so for Devout its actually quite worthwhile in situations where divinity management is an issue.
In regards to Prophecy vs Exaltation and whether or not Exaltation is in the wrong tree: I've seen this feedback a few times about various powers in tank or healing trees that enhance damage. Let me say that, it's not the case that we intend for healers or tanks to never deal damage. I should hope this would be obvious for tanks, but its just as true for healers.
If you're not healing, you should be dealing damage, and depending on your groups healing needs, you should be able to do respectable damage. Exaltation enhances healing and damage, so it serves double duty. Its worth taking for the healing boost in situations where you really need the extra oomph, but it also can help you out during the easier pulls or during DPS checks where you need or want to contribute to damage.
With that in mind, yes, the damaging effect is quite high, and not as complicated to take advantage of as Prophecy of Doom, but its so high and easy to use because it is on a healer tree. We would not put a power with such a potent and straightforward DPS boost like that on a DPS tree.
On healing word—you are correct that healing word's HoT effect is every 3 seconds. All class HoTs and most DoTs should now be ticking on 3 second intervals. That being said, I'd urge you to give healing word more of a chance in group play. Keep in mind that healing word has a large radius, so it can be effective to heal up group wide damage, and keep people topped off, as everyone is not always going to be stacking up.
During internal playtests, our clerics have been toying around with divinity efficient builds that make heavy use of powers like healing word to be able to spend more time dealing damage in trash pulls.
I'd withhold judgement (badum tsss) about whether or not Arbiter is on par with other DPS until people have had a chance to put all the paragons through their paces. Some of the classes, especially Arbiter, have some reasonably complex rotations that can take a bit of getting used to. We've seen them performing fairly well internally, but obviously we'll be continuing to make adjustments.
Thanks for letting me know, I've passed this along to the designer working on enemies. There are a lot of outliers like this in older zones that we're working on catching.
If you do happen to remember which enemy family you were fighting when it happened, e.g. Yuan-ti, Batiri, etc. that would be super helpful!
The feats are... well, a horrible mess. The problem lies in the third tier where you have to choose between the BoH divine judgement increase and the Geas-BtS combo. Assuming I choose Geas-BtS option, it means I've effectively locked down two encounters. This creates the scenario where I have to choose between Searing Light and DG due to the feat tree. The only way to make decent sense out of the Geas-BtS feat would be the what-if scenario where you have two Arbiters in the party. One with Geas and the other with BtS. Otherwise, every Arbiter is going to choose the BoH divine judgement feat. That'd defeat the purpose of throwing in the Geas-BtS feat.
Which now comes to the fact that the feat tree is too encounter-centric. While I can understand the need to focus on the scales damage system, the Geas-BtS feat was clearly not a good idea from the start. A saltier gamer would have used some seriously salty language by my guess. The devs really need to take a serious re-look on the Arbiter feats.
As for Divinity, it seems from the feedback that the only way to make things work for the Arbiter is using the self damage reduction class feature (forgot its name) and Holy Fervor. Otherwise, the dps pace can easily kill the Arbiter. In fact, BoH was the only reason why I managed to clear the Tuern weekly despite trying to make sense of how the Arbiter should work. As of now, my sun elf is running with an Apparatus of Gond augment comp, so I assume using BoH with it inside circle would proc the BoH-divine judgement feat.
As for DG, while I've yet to test run the raiding loadout, it seems that the tooltip description for the DG feat is pointing towards a maxed out Radiant or Burning gauge. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Ultimately, Arbiter is definitely a case of uncharted territory. I messed around with the system and it seemed that it's far better to opt for two dailies plus one encounter of the same scale damage type (i.e. either both radiant or both fire). I ran my sun elf with Sun Burst, Searing Light, and BoH in the Q-E-R key order. That plus choosing the feats for 100% crit SL, fire stacking SB, and radiant stacking BoH. The dps felt very jarring when I bound Sun Burst to E and Searing Light to Q. My execution style is using E as my primary encounter and Q as my third priority encounter. Once I switched the order around, the dps felt much smoother. Although it's not saying much due to this being the Tuern weekly quest instead of the Tuern raid.
Right now, my style of execution is focused on using Lance of Faith and Scattering Light for fire stacking and using Sun Burst, Flame Strike, and Hammer of Fate as the finishing nuke. So the order should look like something like this:
Scattering Light>Lance of Faith>Searing Light>Sun Burst/Daily (note that I'm using Searing Light as my primary encounter due to the 10% chance to 100% crit feat via Lance spamming).
Then there's BoH. Which I realized is decently good get-out-of-jail move. But this also means the Arbiter's dps momentum is very prone to disruption in solo running (note that my cleric is running with Indestructible mount bonus of 2K defense)
Ideally, Arbiter dps game should be focused on either building the radiant or fire damage stacking until the max amount. After that, just chuck in the big one. So far, that's the only way for me to make sense out of the dps. Of course, this would be the most optimal situation. Once the opponent(s) started upping the dps momentum, you wouldn't have much time to store up the stacks (which in turn made the Sun Burst feat very useful as it adds to the fire damage stacks). It's like you'll have to trigger the stacks while it's at 2-3 circles (red for fire, yellow for radiant).
As for the boons, I went for all the defensive ones plus power. Comp effect bonuses wise, I opted for armor penetration and defense. For the comp triggered effect (for the lack of a better way to put it), I went for the Armor Breaker (or something like that) which gave me chance to gain 2000 arpen upon hit. So you can see plenty of DRI in play here.
Ultimately, my impression of the Arbiter seemed to be leaning towards a dps plus heal support. Which means you'll need either the DG feat, BoH feat, or both. But I'll have to say the buffing is effectively non-existent. The dailies are like damage, damage, and more damage unlike the current mod. Which means the Arbiter may have to play healing support to feature decently well in any party setup.
Lastly, I have to say the placement of the fire/radiant circles is very visually jarring. It's like one column of circles obscuring part of the screen. Is there any way to realign and resize them? Like maybe placing them along the outer edge of the Divinity gauge?
P.S: I didn't use Channel Divinity for a reason. Solo play is definitely a case of dealing with a breakneck pace for the clerics now.
Edit: Forgot to mention this. You'll need Wisdom to survive in solo due to the incoming heal. Intelligence for damage should be a no-brainer.
IMO divinity gain should be improved. Otherwise its really unplayable in pvp. ( i mean i was testing 1v1 with a mage, all i can do is hit 3 FF's either i kill him or he survives through healing and then its just a pain to fight him back, becuz im rinning and i got no divinity regeneration whatsoever.) Even if i use Divine Glow feated to give me full pips that then i can trade for divinity thats barely enough for anything..... and eventually i end up running with at wills mot of the fight ....
Many people underestimate new Divine Glow mechanic with tipping scales feat. It instantly gives us full amount of pips resulting in a burst damage that could be done by forgemasters flame.
Consider COST of FF to be reduced from 300 to 200.
Also we got AOE issues. Skills have to be looked at.
Change Searing Light into cone effect instead of damage in line that could help alot.
My point is that the dmg mitigation encounter we can use aside of being healbot is useless imho.
RIP My R14s Radiants and Silveries.
Dead🔪Here's a Skeletal Archer's normal damage range and then the sudden cheapshot:
Same with Thayan Servitor:
Other examples:
Keeping in mind those Encounter powers will also fill pips, but with the Divinity management, it seemed like an 'expensive' way of gaining pips, when At-Wills will do so for free.
So here is the critical feedback.
1) Divinity regeneration is slow. I foresee groups waiting in between battles for the Cleric to refill divinity. What it is from a D&D standpoint: "Following the harrowing battle, the Cleric grasps her holy symbol and prays for more divine inspiration." What it really is: "Wait a minute, I have to hold down tab for 20 seconds..." Perhaps increasing the rate of recovery outside of battle would help.
2) I love that At-Wills GENERATE pips. I hate the At-Wills USE pips. After running through River District Dig Sites (good mix of strength of enemies in there) for a couple hours, I NEVER wanted my At-Will to do 20 more Magnitude by using all the stacks. All it did was frustrate me when I misclicked or got out of rotation slightly.
Thanks for the updates to the class! Now I just need to find a group willing to let the Cleric learn to to heal so I can post comments on that!
Heather - Ranger
James - Paladin
Jet - Warlock
Royal - Cleric
Gray - Rogue
Red - Wizard
Ios - Barbarian
As dps ur not going to want to turn to old Habits to sacrifice Personal dps to stack buffs for groups first dps.
My fist instinct was a bigh laugh, my second thought was "I never gonna use it"
I´d say keep Astral Shield as it was/is like: put it down on the floor, spending 10% DR and increasing incoming healing..please no animation
I'm thinking from the perspective in which a healer, lets say in a dungeon like Castle Ravenloft is currently where the first and third boss is untargetable for periods of time and there are huge AOE damage sources that you presumably have to keep people alive. I then have the choice between Praying as my party quickly dies or twinkle at will healing them. If I'm not gaining AP from healing which I can't cast at wills while I'm using bastion ect how do I expect to mitigate damage in a prolonged instance for enough time for me to pray a bit and get the party back on track? Also- I can't very well pray and stand still because then I'll be the one who is dead so I'd have no choice but to take the move/pray option.
I have since played the new dungeon as a healer and I see that things don't hit as hard as the do in mod 15 but my concern still remains. I get that daily powers are supposed to be more strategic but honestly it doesn't feel as fluid as the DPS DC in terms of divinity management or AP generation and it's quite more difficult to test outside of a queued instance.
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I'll never retrace my steps.
Some of my best friends are Imaginary.
Can some1 explain if i missed something !?
New content M16 for high-end players.
What's made it harder ? - (Teamwork) Buffs, to make the right hit into right time.
With M16 - no more buffs/timing or whatever.
How it will make it harder !? will be no reason to wait for ppl . to use voice. You can easily go with random pt.Only choose them by iLVL.Seems like with new system, the game will be dead in about 1 months after release.(for high-end players). There will be no any choice to boost your team and etc. To make life harder and interesting , mobs should be really harder , much harder...but from last expiriance, what's gonna do low iLVL players !? leave the game.Of course you can't afford it.
No hard mehanics = no high-end game.
No boost, again = no hihg-end.
Now about clerics.
Let's image together , when reasonable to take DC in pt. ?(but again we would talk only about high-end content)
As a healer - No.Cause at high end , as we do understand would be huge amount of stats , and i would bet 99% if the whole pack there wouldn't be so huge income dmg , wher pally in tank would be easy tank+heal , the rest ppl would use stones/bottles (in that case no reason to spend another space for healer)
As a dps -No. Cause he can't do anything with 1)mobs. (skills a bit slow(and area) if to compare with other dps classes).Also you can't afford to use any high dmg skill on mobs (cause in that case you will be out of divinity) as we are talking about high-end game, you have no those 3 sec to restore additional divinity cause aim of any high-end pack = speed. 2)bosses, the skills are much more lower dmg then other dps classes(why? if the magnitude of skills almost near to dps classes?) - right , cause of divinity (if we would take pure dmg skills with no any restoration of divinity , you would be able to use 3-4 skills) if for that time boss didn't die you will loose HUGE amount of time (like 15sec) to restore full divinity. in that case , dmg should be almost 3 times higher. To make dmg skill+restore divinity equal to other dps classes (who shouldn't restore divinity).And even in that case if skills would have 2/3 times higher dmg , after boss you have to spend apromox.10sec to restore it, or you will be totally useless on mobs up to next boss.
As a half dps/healer.- Probably - if there would be a chance as a Pal. would be as a Tank + still huge amount of inc. dmg...it would be possible to make Half dps healers usefull, with healing on mobs , and do some dmg at bosses on a safe time.But even with this build dmg should be much more higher....(why?) Inn this style , it would be most hardest class in game , cause would req healing+dmg, and your dmg should be nearly to top DPS , otherwise if it would be 10-15% of it...would be no reason to take a risk and play too hard to get nothing instead.
Let's quickly have a look at most dmg skills over the classes. (i'll take just 2 classes for example , but sure 100% if to check all classes we will find apromox. the same story.
GF-Anvil(1600+27s CD)+Mow Dawn (3000)Shield Throw(600)Bull charge (600) = 1 round of cast (10-15sec), if boss didn't die then another quick one for 7sec and rotation will continue = 5800, after 1200, after 5800 and etc.
At the end we will have . Magnitude 5800/1200/5800 (every 10-15sec) with run non stop.
HR -Slashers Mark(2500)Commanding shot(490)Longstrider shot+Gushing Wound(950)Constricting Arrow(490) , all skills have apromox. 13sec cd. means your rotation will be almost always the same exept Daily skill.
At the end we would have. Magnitude 4430/1930/4430 and etc. (every 15sec) also with non stop run.
DC-Guardian of Faith (2500)(only every 3-4th time)Forgemaster(800x3) after need restore full divinity (apromox 20sec)
At the end we would have 2800 magnitude every 26sec.
What is 700 less and 10sec longer from GF and 500 and 10sec less from HR.
What probably will be apromox. 4200 less then GF and 3680 less then HR.
DC2(dps+heal)-Daunting Light(550) Searing light(300? not sure)Bastion of Health x2. = rotation always the same would take around 11sec.
In that case we would have very poor healer(cause you need to choose everything for dps) and do only 850 magnitude over 11-12sec....what is 15% of fast boss killing to compare with GF or 25% (if boss die long time)
and 19% from HR and 26% if boss lasts long time.
I'm so sorry for such a rude calculations , but it still will show the overall things how it goes. and to make DC comparable with other classes , their (most dmg skills) should have 3 times more magnitude. In that case , as a DPS you will make a bit more dmg then rest(but have to spend time to restore divinity)/ as a dps+healer you will be able to achieve at least 75-85% of their dmg +a bit of healing (in perfect environment) but as we know , sometimes you need extra healing and etc. what will reduce your dmg to 65-70% to other DPS classes.
Thank you.
But its exactly what is described here. Devout isnt fluid at all. It feels tedious.
As it is now, this Devout is just working toward enhancing my guilty healer feeling when i see someone dead in my party.