I've played Arbiter to 80 in solo content, almost entirely in the new areas. No dungeon feedback to provide yet, but some first impressions:
- It feels powerful and has a fairly rapid pace of engagement from group to group compared to some other classes I've tried thus far. It doesn't one-shot the entire map with a single encounter the way the M15 DC does, but I have to admit that it's more fun to benefit from my core class mechanics in normal gameplay vs. completely ignoring them like I do when running solo content on live.
- Sacred Flame allowing limited movement while attacking is actually very enjoyable and makes the At-Will portion of the rotation feel much less wooden. I don't know if this was intended or not, but it would be nice for it to stay and for Lance of Faith to have the same functionality.
- Arbiter does need an Outgoing Heal self debuff if it's going to be incentivized to use Bastion of Health+Mendicant's to generate Divinity for DPS. I've seen it acknowledged elsewhere that Arbiter is far too good of a healer, so I know it's being looked at.
- It could be my personal play style preference and/or lack of experience with the class so far, but I find that I'm getting basically no use out of Burning Judgment stacks. In AoE situations I've been using Daunting Light almost exclusively because I haven't needed much of anything else. Weaker mobs are likely to die to something as simple as a (Heavy) Sunburst regardless of whether or not I have Burning Judgement up, so cleaning up the stragglers if I miss them with the buffed DL is no big deal. And that's if I didn't kill them most or all of the way with the Sacred Flame spam I used to build up Radiant stacks in the first place.
- Flame Strike losing its knock-up is unfortunate, because it was just fun.
- While the BoH+Mendicant's mechanic isn't bad when you get used to it, I think it's still thematically odd that the Cleric DPS path gets saddled with casting Bastion of Health in order to support its DPS rotations. I would have guessed it to be something like Sunburst being a Divinity-consuming encounter that generated Judgement stacks based on enemies and allies within its radius, but not a massive healing spell.
- Chains not being a DPS encounter feels very bad. Not only is Divine Glow converted to an entirely different function (removing another beloved splat AoE), Chains of Blazing Light is now a completely ineffectual control spell with 0 damage. Root is not a useful form of crowd control in general, certainly not useful enough to warrant sacrificing one of 3 encounter slots for it. Further, high-level enemies resist CC to such a degree that the duration is far shorter than advertised in the tooltip. In its current incarnation it might as well be deleted from the game, and I'm not speaking hyperbolically. If we're trying to reduce or eliminate the number of false choices players have, I would extend that philosophy to Cleric encounter selection and fix Chains.
Thank you, I greatly appreciate the feedback and am delighted you've been mostly enjoying your time playing as Arbiter! I wanted to briefly address Mendicant's. Not only is the heal too strong, as you say, it is also in the bizarre spot of putting a heal into the Arbiter's primary DPS rotation.
That column of feats was ultimately meant to be a utility column, with the option to take Bastion of Health to provide support if needed, and a minor reward for using it. Due to the low cost of Bastion of Health and other factors though, it is far too strong. That feat will be reworked.
If bastion will be reworked think of some sort of shield that a mage has that can absorb some damage . Otherwise we are glass cannons in pvp ! And thatd really important to take into consideration. As of now, we got nothing but the bastion to protect us in pvp
Why do we have nothing to reduce incoming damage but other classes have. E.g. mage a shield, rogue has total damage mitigation skill, tanks have again endless shield again etc...
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josiahiyonMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 396Arc User
Not fully fleshed out, but nonetheless, here are a couple suggestions that try to address issues mentioned:
Suggestion 1: make Mendicant’s Judgement talent also cause the heal from bastion to decrease. Suggestion 2: give some damage reduction when using the tab mechanic
Why do we have nothing to reduce incoming damage but other classes have. E.g. mage a shield, rogue has total damage mitigation skill, tanks have again endless shield again etc...
THIS! Since Divine Glow no longer gives a damage reduction, Bastion is the only best option we have for survivability.
Also, can we please get a tweak on divinity gain? It's still too slow. I noticed it's a bit faster, but it's still kind of slow. I'm spending too much time jumping around trying to survive with all of the mobs attacking me at once and all I really have are my at wills to attack in the time being. With monsters knocking us around and we're downed for so long it's a lot harder to really do anything because I'm waiting. At least make at-wills gain some kind of divinity back. Would really appreciate that!
Power:
On a more positive note, I am really enjoying the new power Celestial Prominence. I love everything about it. It's like I'm placing a sneaky bomb on the bombs to detonate. Good job on that one.
Prophecy of Doom, I've only really used once so far on the test server. I don't necessarily have any feedback on this yet, but it seems to work nicely.
Searing Light is impractical to use because Break the Spirit and/or Geas will be the better option since not many enemies are really in a straight line. This makes this power pretty much useless.
Sun Burst is kind of weird to work into my rotation. Most of the powers that deal high damage are radiant, so I'm more focused on building Radiant Judgment vs Burning Judgment. If I were to use Sun Burst it would just mess up my stacks in the middle of my rotation. I'm not exactly sure what to say to make this a bit more useful, but I just wanted to bring up how it's not that much of any use to me. Also the feat Heavy Sun doesn't proc Burning Judgment like it says in the tooltip. Instead it gives more Radiant Judgment.
I also want to say the tooltip for Inquisitor's Benediction needs a rewrite. It says healing spells heal for 20% more, but we only have one healing spell.
I've played Arbiter to 80 in solo content, almost entirely in the new areas. No dungeon feedback to provide yet, but some first impressions:
- It feels powerful and has a fairly rapid pace of engagement from group to group compared to some other classes I've tried thus far. It doesn't one-shot the entire map with a single encounter the way the M15 DC does, but I have to admit that it's more fun to benefit from my core class mechanics in normal gameplay vs. completely ignoring them like I do when running solo content on live.
- Sacred Flame allowing limited movement while attacking is actually very enjoyable and makes the At-Will portion of the rotation feel much less wooden. I don't know if this was intended or not, but it would be nice for it to stay and for Lance of Faith to have the same functionality.
- Arbiter does need an Outgoing Heal self debuff if it's going to be incentivized to use Bastion of Health+Mendicant's to generate Divinity for DPS. I've seen it acknowledged elsewhere that Arbiter is far too good of a healer, so I know it's being looked at.
- It could be my personal play style preference and/or lack of experience with the class so far, but I find that I'm getting basically no use out of Burning Judgment stacks. In AoE situations I've been using Daunting Light almost exclusively because I haven't needed much of anything else. Weaker mobs are likely to die to something as simple as a (Heavy) Sunburst regardless of whether or not I have Burning Judgement up, so cleaning up the stragglers if I miss them with the buffed DL is no big deal. And that's if I didn't kill them most or all of the way with the Sacred Flame spam I used to build up Radiant stacks in the first place.
- Flame Strike losing its knock-up is unfortunate, because it was just fun.
- While the BoH+Mendicant's mechanic isn't bad when you get used to it, I think it's still thematically odd that the Cleric DPS path gets saddled with casting Bastion of Health in order to support its DPS rotations. I would have guessed it to be something like Sunburst being a Divinity-consuming encounter that generated Judgement stacks based on enemies and allies within its radius, but not a massive healing spell.
- Chains not being a DPS encounter feels very bad. Not only is Divine Glow converted to an entirely different function (removing another beloved splat AoE), Chains of Blazing Light is now a completely ineffectual control spell with 0 damage. Root is not a useful form of crowd control in general, certainly not useful enough to warrant sacrificing one of 3 encounter slots for it. Further, high-level enemies resist CC to such a degree that the duration is far shorter than advertised in the tooltip. In its current incarnation it might as well be deleted from the game, and I'm not speaking hyperbolically. If we're trying to reduce or eliminate the number of false choices players have, I would extend that philosophy to Cleric encounter selection and fix Chains.
Thank you, I greatly appreciate the feedback and am delighted you've been mostly enjoying your time playing as Arbiter! I wanted to briefly address Mendicant's. Not only is the heal too strong, as you say, it is also in the bizarre spot of putting a heal into the Arbiter's primary DPS rotation.
That column of feats was ultimately meant to be a utility column, with the option to take Bastion of Health to provide support if needed, and a minor reward for using it. Due to the low cost of Bastion of Health and other factors though, it is far too strong. That feat will be reworked.
Thank you for your response to my feedback. I actually have been enjoying Arbiter, and I appreciate the work you've put into realigning Divine Oracle to this DPS-focused path.
Considering that the Bastion of Health + Mendicant's mechanic was not intended to be a core one (and players appear to be largely treating it as such), might I suggest instead dramatically increasing the rate at which Arbiter generates Divinity while Channeling?
My understanding is that the overall more methodical pace of combat in M16 is an intentional shift away from the insta-gib pace of M15 and prior mods, and I generally support this design choice, but I have to admit that standing still holding down Tab for lengthy periods of time between rotations is not engaging or enjoyable. This is less of an issue with standard AoE soloing with a geared character because of the decreased need for Divinity expenditure, but for a sustained single-target rotation and/or for a less geared character that requires more casts to clear content, there is an arguable problem.
It would also be both a nice bonus and a way to further distinguish Arbiter from Devout if Arbiter's Channel Divinity had a secondary effect like minor PBAoE damage or gradually building Judgment if the Arbiter began Channeling with at least one stack of either type filled.
I haven't played Devout very much, but I feel that Arbiter as a DPS path should not be subject to the same degree of "fail state" danger in terms of Divinity since Devout's goal is going to be efficiency of healing vs. Arbiter's goal of ramping up Judgment to use Divinity as frequently as possible.
Okay, so I have returned due to curiosity when some people mentioned what was happening to the classes in Neverwinter. I must say, my initial impression of the changes to everything (including DC) are quite positive. I haven't gotten the chance to try it out much, but here are my initial impressions of the DC class (especially compared to what I remember of the live one).
Note that 100% of my feedback here is for Arbiter, and that I understand that both clerics share some of their powers, and must be balanced around that.
Bugs:
Sun Burst and Heavy Sun are opposite types (burning vs. radiant) and therefore the feat doesn't seem to work at all, although it might be immediately consuming the stacks (I haven't checked)
There is often a delay when using at-wills to generate pips, which I believe is just communication lag between the client and server, but it makes it very easy to waste pips on the wrong power or without full pips, since your character won't gain the pip and will continue doing the at-will animation a second time. An example of this is using at-will (try with sacred flame, it is the most noticeable) -> immediately cast feated DG to generate 5 free stacks. If the delay happens, you use DG before gaining the stack from the at-will. It may be possible to fix by preventing DG from canceling at-wills.
Hammer of Fate magnitude doesn't seem to be correct. I haven't 100% confirmed it yet, but I believe it hits for 500 magnitude 3x but only lists itself as 500 with no added effects. Yes, the flavor text says "threefold attack" but IMO this is not clear enough. If it is in fact a 500 magnitude power, I believe that in itself is worthy of a bug report anyways.
I have not yet reached the level to use it, but the Celestial Prominence daily tooltip is completely blank.
Thoughts:
As others have stated, it is silly that DCs aren't allowed to take the primary stat that they might actually want. CHA/INT are clearly better for the class, but due to how primary works on the roll tables, can't be chosen, however, unlike others have stated, the benefit seems very minimal compared to what it used to be (0.25% per point rather than 1% per point), so it's not a dealbreaker for me.
Okay lets talk about that stack/pip mechanic. I like the concept, although it is basically just a more complicated version of the previous system with a more distinct limitation on how fast you can regenerate it and which powers can be used to empower other powers. You are constantly given the choice: do I want to use 6 stacks to gain ~300 divinity and cast FF (800 magnitude) again or do I want to empower DL to do more damage (120 magnitude)... oh wait did that not seem like a choice? My bad... it's not. I will go over later which powers I think need their radiant/burning stack values adjusted because I do believe most of them are wildly off the mark. Basically, unless consuming the stacks is worth more than an entire power, it's useless due to how the stack conversion to divinity works.
The feats seem to be more well thought out in general compared to the previous version, with very specific rotations planned behind some of them, however, that basically means that there is one optimal rotation when using specific feats. Why are the feats so specific? "If you use at-will A, encounter B is better" just means that you now must always use at-will A and encounter B. Most other classes use feats that are more or less described like "If you use paragon power A, all powers of XYZ type are empowered" which leaves some form of customization after taking that feat. An example of this would be something more like "Your lance of faith now has a 10% chance to make your next radiant power have 100% crit chance"
The first two feats (Lightspeed and Piercing Light) IMO should be "after every X hits with" rather than chance. Chance just feels bad when compared to the "the last hit of X" feats of the other classes.
As much as I like how good Lightspeed feels, it basically can be reworded to "Your scattering light has a 10% chance to make Daunting Light feel better" not an impressive feat. I like the feeling of old divinity DL on normal DL, but realistically it doesn't add much, especially when it forces you to use a specific at-will repeatedly trying to "chance" at stacks. I would much prefer a more clear bonus such as damage, AoE size, half divinity cost, or something.
Mendicant's Judgement now this feat is um... I don't know if it was intended that this feat be this good, but this feat is either the only reason DC can output consistent DPS, or it's the reason DC isn't allowed to output consistent DPS. What I am trying to say is that this feat is so disproportionally powerful that if it is nerfed, it cuts out like half (guesstimate) of a cleric's DPS, or it is intended to be this powerful and because of its utility prevents the cleric from having more of their "power budget" be placed into damage. Either way, I would approach this feat with caution, since it is obvious it needs adjusted, but is like half (still guesstimate) of a cleric's overall power currently on preview. You will not see the full benefits of this feat unless you have at least 2 allies nearby (your companion counts)
Random Thoughts and Oddities:
Does foresight mechanically add 2500 crit, or does it add 5% over the normal limit?
Does pilgrim's light work if I am near my companion?
Why is DL so weak in comparison to FF? Is the divinity cost really justifying the difference?
Why doesn't BoH naturally give 1 pip and feated give 2?
Does holy fervor effect all divinity regeneration or just passive regeneration?
Why doesn't divine glow have a consume effect? Maybe reduce the cooldown if it consumes?
Why doesn't chains have a consume effect? Maybe increase duration? Maybe debuff enemies?
Is Radiant Swordbreaker supposed to be a DPS feat or a useless one? I know which one I consider it.
The level 70 feats seem like weird filler. They do something, but like... not really
Why would you ever use Hammer of Fate (instant 1500 magnitude) when you could use Guardian of Faith (instant 2500 magnitude plus stun)
Because of the targeting method of Searing Light and the AoE size, it is basically single target in most situations, but seems balanced around hitting 2+ targets. Seems odd. Might actually be a fairly powerful skill if you could aim the beam with a ground based AoE (like old HW) instead of targeted line. With no other changes.
Love the new tooltips
Some of the cooldowns seem like 10-25% longer than I would expect them to be considering there is no way to shorten them.
The ~0.9s cooldown on divinity powers is actually infuriating after using the old cleric that could burn all of their divinity instantly. As far as I can tell, it makes the cleric more complicated to play optimally without really serving as much of an actual limiter.
Burning/Radiant pip consumes:
Forgemaster's Flame: Gives more damage than the power itself, which costs slightly more than the divinity you gain from consuming the stacks with channel divinity. Honestly is one of the only powers that seems to have a balanced consume effect.
All at-wills: I am not sure what your plan behind these was, but it seems unrealistic (especially considering the feats) to use any of the at-will's consume effects. What are you gunna do? Alternate at-wills every other hit, so that you cannot generate any divinity and do 13-20% more damage with your at-wills? Potentially useful or at least "feelsgood" effects would be more like "increased movement speed per stack" or "amplify your next channel divinity" or "generate AP" or "debuff enemy" y'know, something that might actually be worth completely halting your divinity generation for.
Daunting Light: Uh... is this a joke? I laughed not gunna lie. Why is the consume effect of DL so bad that it is more efficient to press tab and cast DL twice than it is to use it? It's actually so disproportionally bad that it's funny.
Searing Light: Same as DL, but nowhere near as bad. It still has the same issue though, pressing tab to just use the stacks for divinity and recasting Searing Light has considerably higher value than using the consume power.
Sunburst: Same as Searing Light except you can't recast it, so it is just bad.
Geas: Actually I can't really complain about this one. This has the same effect as Forgemaster's Flame. It's just boring because it has the same effect as Forgemaster's Flame.
Break the Spirit: Not terrible, but is likely objectively worse than using the consume effect on Geas or just channeling the stacks into more divinity.
Guardian of Faith: Okay, I can see why you might not put big consume effects on dailies, but hear me out on this. You must actively manage your pips to play the new cleric optimally. The best way to manage them is to get the most damage out of them. Period. Now if you have to choose between: A) deal 1200 damage, в) deal 600 damage, and C) deal 800 damage + 1 pip, are you ever going to use option B? That's what Guardian of the Faith is, option B. If the daily consume effect can't beat the effect of normal encounter powers, or even better just the effects of channeling divinity and recasting an encounter power, it will never be used. These dailies should have the most powerful consume effects, since they have a double limitation on casting them (you must have the AP, and the stacks).
Been playing Arbiter some now also. My complaint about divinity Regen still stands. A small increase would make it more forgiving. I know you want there to be fail error and skill requirement, but it still needs to be friendly to play. A little room for error in rotation goes a long way. It is significantly easier to build ap in this build however. I pretty much never got my daily up in devout. I was able to refill it about every 3-4 mobs as Arbiter. Something is off. Also, playing Arbiter you are rewarded for providing heals by using bastion with pips, which can be used to increase damage or eaten for divinity making the play easier, smoother, and more rewarding. Devout has no such. I'm expected, as you have said, to provide damage between my heals, but I have no mechanic to make this largely feasible. It eats too much divinty for not enough return, especially since devout does not have an instant divinity return like Arbiter can do by consuming pips.
Thanks for the feedback. The healing mechanic on Arbiter is far too strong right now. I know there's a very strong feeling that the divinity mechanic is not forgiving for Devout right now, so it is something that we are looking at. That being said, in group play, once you get even a little used to it—it's actually very uncommon to run out of divinity. So we don't want to overcorrect.
The unintuitive thing about asking for more divinity regeneration is, that the game will actually be less forgiving. Which was the whole problem with group content in the first place that resourced based healing will help to solve. Let's say you regenerate your divinity as fast as Arbiter on your Devout, we now assume you can get your divinity back extremely quick. Mistakes in content now need to happen on a timescale that your group can wipe quickly in the few seconds it takes for you to get back to a full bar.
On the other hand if divinity regenerates slowly, and you spend it slowly, we can allow for continued mistakes to be made, as you dip deeper and deeper into your reserves, because we know you can't get it back quickly, and if you run out completely, then you'll wipe.
That said, we don't want it to be miserable to play solo either—so we're going to keep an eye on things and adjustments are still very much on the table.
Thank you for engaging with us. First time in years I feel like we're not going to be saddled with absolute garbage. Just to be clear, I'm not asking for a large increase to divinty regeneration. It doesn't need that, just a SMALL tweak. When I'm running picture perfect on rotation on Arbiter, I'm not having any trouble, but if they start fanning around me and I'm not able to get a good judgement AoE on them, I'm in serious trouble. I run out of divinty trying to spam a mix of DPS and heals and find myself trying to kite and survive on atwills. I don't want an infinite divinity pool so there's no skill level. But, soloing a middle geared character through the solo content feels a little too harsh with the current divinty regeneration rate. In teams, I didn't have any problems.
On devout, my complaint is related, but not the same. I don't have any divinty issues if I'm just healbotting really. It's simple. A little boring but effective. It's when I try to throw that DPS I to the mix you say I should be able to. That eats my divinity like candy, and then I find myself shortchanged on heals without the time to stand there like an idiot holding tab.
The Arbiter as not bad ... not flawless, but it works well enough for solo play. I do have a few complaints - one being that "hold Tab down for 20 seconds between fights" is, well..a bit boring.
I find it much faster to BoH myself+comp + any player nearby, tap tab, repeat, than to hold tab.
I also note that this has already been remarked on as "maybe not WAI"
Ive had full evening of pvp duels 1v1 ...and im surprised how chains are useless. Tank can just pick his shield up and backpedal like a boss as if nothing happened.
On the other note : Have you seen Tanks Shield Throw???? Thats just a joke 3 sec STUN control that can be followed by an anvil and 1 shot there u go. Nothing can be done vs that. And it seems there is a bug with the Shield Throw as well, Elven battle does not reduce its 3 sec duration whatsoever. It feels that i stay more then 3 sec more like 4..... PLAIN STUN CONTROL
Can we have similar control effect instead of useless chains?
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!
Thanks for the feedback! I am truly happy to hear that you're having some fun with the Arbiter's mechanics!
I'd like to comment on two things: first, for the Arbiter, you can actually consume your pips to restore a huge chunk of divinity. Channeling divinity when you have pips consumes them to restore divinity. Give the a shot and after you've played with it for a while, let me know if you still feel like its too slow. How you work this into your rotation will depend on your build and power choices.
Second, on the topic of at-wills consuming pips. Please note that dailies can also be empowered by radiant or burning judgement. I did consider not allowing at-wills to consume pips, however, as using the opposite element would have to switch you to the other side of the scale anyway (because you can't have both burning and radiant judgement) I saw no reason not to let the at-wills benefit from judgement. In reality, yes you probably never want to actually consume pips with an at-will, but its better that if you make that mistake, at least your at-will did get some boost.
Yep, those at-will pip mechanics make sense, good call.
As for consuming the pips to restore divinity, it certainly makes pip and divinity Regen an interesting mechanic during battles, but I’m still not sold on out-of-battle divinity regeneration. It looked like the most I got was about 1/3 of the bar refilled with full pips. Maybe almost half. That still feels a little slow.
My 2 cents! Thanks!
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Hi.. i hv play with both arbiter and devout paragon in preview and would like to suggest devout path has similar ''scale of judgment' mechanic but instead of giving 2 type of judgment instead only give one type. the benefit of having this mostly for divinity regen in combat and also make dc's healing in devout path more prominence. Just my suggestion. Ty.
arbiter Feats: i find that the first tier is missplaced since u dont get acces to searing light much later while lvling. instead it beeing at lvl 40 it would make much more sence to at 50 and vice versa
Then again lance of faith paired with sl just makes sence if sl gets a true single target rework And the other option the at will paired with dl getting 50% magnitued
At first I was so excited about this new mod. but now I find the Cleric too easy to play. No skill or thought is really needed to and I personally feel this game had taken a back step for AC DC (sound like all classes and the method of playing) In my opinion my 5 year old granddaughter could play the test sever and I feel we have no choice but to become cookie cutter players. Hopefully some changes come or they put this mod on the back burner and re evaluate it. I'm not going to just stand there and throw a skill here and there BORING. How to fix this, I'm not sure except go to another game and that will very upsetting. tears. We are at the a certain level of skill and game playing. I don't feel this mod will continue the evolution or a positive improvement to the mmropg gaming community. Sorry my opinion.
I see some other players offering comments like this, but what specifically is the issue? How is M16 Cleric gameplay less complex than that of M15 AC DC, which is decidedly cookie-cutter if you are playing optimally? Seriously, you don't even have to care what you're attacking as long as you're hitting your powers in the appropriate sequence and casting AA constantly; you don't even need to really attempt to heal anyone and have no expectation at all of dealing meaningful damage.
I don't ask these questions to be belligerent; I'm genuinely curious as to why players feel that meaningful choices have been taken away and/or that their classes have become dumbed-down. To use Cleric as an example again, almost all of the Cleric feats were terrible in M15, but many of them looked decent upon casual observation...like Initiate of the Faith and almost the entire Virtuous and Faithful trees.
Im adding to the post of arazith07 in an other thread that its also the fluidity and the variety of encounters. We have a cleanse encounter now. Its great, really great. Its like the feat cleanse. But as an encounter. Awesome. I was using Cleanse as a heroic feat, it was needed in some situations despite the rage of former dps gf and survivor's wraps. But then we have different encounters that heal, thats all. And 1 mitigation encounter, astral shield. And its horrendous so far to use. I take it, we need practice.
But playing an AC like arazith07 mentioned was all about the pace. It felt quite intense to be able to get those 2 dailies up at same time, the exaltation on dps, and break the spirit empowered. Granted i was not often playing in groups one phasing bosses because most of my friends in NW dont belong to this category,but even with my friends, playing my AC was pleasant. It was intense. It was fun. Sometimes with weaker groups from alliance i even had to heal but it was still fun. I even had to dust off my faithful loadout for some K Team,specially the CR one. Still, it was fluid.
So since Terramak mentionned on stream that we need to insist on forum on the reasons why we are feeling bummed about the changes, im posting again.
I do not complain about losing powershare, about losing recovery,or investment into my character because its part of mmorpgs, i do complain because:
-I heal but it seems like my healing doesn't count towards any action points gain -I want to protect my tank, my melee dps but astral shield is tedious to cast and use (i mean, compare it to circle of power of Oathkeeper, now we talk about fluidity, why not doing something similar for us???) -I want to experience some rythm, some activity in my healing actions but for now, i almost bore myself to death when playing as devout in dungeon. -the divinity gain is somewhat off for a devout playing in group content.
On the other side, playing an Arbiter has some "rythm". Some kind of combos in it. The radiant/burning mechanisms is great. It takes a little to get used to but its great. I feel active, i feel not stuck on the ground...I dont feel thick or heavy. I dont know how to say it better. So promised its the last time im writing about it, still being hopeful for next weeks patches.
It didn't have to be cookie cutter to be good. I had three builds, one for each tree. Each one had a use depending on who I was running with. Each one was good enough to maintain sufficient buffs to even run one phases, though i only did that at request of friends since I personally find it kind of boring. All of them active builds that use powers and daily a lot. I have about 5 encounters I like to run and chose from situationally. So yeah, being reduced to choosing from what is essentially two premade characters where even your encounters are dictated by the devs by feat design is a significant loss of choice and customization. And being reduced to nothing more than an at-will spamming healbotting is a total bummer. I like playing a healer. It's my role in every game I play. But to stand there using at wills while i wait for someone to need bastion or holding tab or channeling astral shield is slow and boring.
The game needed to be reworked. Multiplicity was WAY out of control. But you can't slow the pacing and feel and take away so many choices and think people are going to get the same fun out of it. I'm not going to threaten to leave because I don't hate everything that's been done, but people who are complaining this have a valid point. If they had wanted a game that was pick a stock character, take a nap on your mouse button to kill mobs, and wake up long enough to hit R when your friend yells at you they need a heal, they wouldn't have been in NW.
On the other side, playing an Arbiter has some "rythm". Some kind of combos in it. The radiant/burning mechanisms is great. It takes a little to get used to but its great. I feel active, i feel not stuck on the ground...I dont feel thick or heavy. I dont know how to say it better.
So much this. I really hope the devs do something about it. Even though Arbiter have some "meh" feats and class features, the combat feels fun. Devout, on the other hand, is not fluid and have no interesting mechanics at all. Even worse, combat feels like you are chained to the ground most of the time.
I really think an "empowerment" system for Devout would be great. A little more divinity gain, and faster paced combat would be great too. This is an action game, after all.
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silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
QUESTION: Does Critical Strike increase the chance of a Critical Heal, and if so does that mean that 22,500 Critical Strike gives us the max 50% Critical Chance on all heals? In other words, is it "opposed" by some hidden value? And does it use the same Critical Severity Rating as damaging attacks?
SUGGESTION: Make the Wisdom stat give its Healing bonus to both incoming and outgoing healing.
Why do we have nothing to reduce incoming damage but other classes have. E.g. mage a shield, rogue has total damage mitigation skill, tanks have again endless shield again etc...
Currently, I believe Cleric is in a fine place in terms of its ability to survive. Classes like Wizard need a spell like shield more as they do not have access to healing spells. Tanks will naturally be more survivable than other classes, but they'll also be a bit slower in dealing damage.
That said, please let me know how you feel as you continue to test things out on preview, we'll continue to keep an eye on Cleric's survivability.
Not fully fleshed out, but nonetheless, here are a couple suggestions that try to address issues mentioned:
Suggestion 1: make Mendicant’s Judgement talent also cause the heal from bastion to decrease. Suggestion 2: give some damage reduction when using the tab mechanic
Mendicant's Judgement is getting a nerf in this week's build. (Sorry!) As many have pointed out, it's far too powerful. I've also mentioned in a few posts that it was meant to be a utility choice, where if you decided to take Bastion to help your party survive better, you could get a little offensive buff out of it. It was never meant to be a part of your main DPS rotation, when the feat was first designed, there was not a way to dump judgement into restoring divinity.
That said, as I've mentioned, I do want Arbiters to have some utility to help heal in an emergency (healer is down, or having a hard time with a boss fight.) But we also don't want Arbiter to ever be able to replace a dedicated healer, so we're playing with how that will work. This week's build will see the base divinity cost of daunting light reduced, and then the scales of judgement mechanic will increase the divinity cost of existing pre-paragon spells.
In other words, daunting light will get cheaper for Devout, and Bastion of Health will get more costly for Arbiter, a lot more costly. Because Arbiter can restore their divinity quickly, you should still have no issue using it solo or in a pinch in group play, but you won't be able to spam it. In addition, Mendicant's Judgement will receive three changes: first, you won't receive any judgement for healing yourself; second, bastion must restore a target's hit points in order for you to receive judgement (i.e. the target needs to be missing health, so that bastion actually heals them); third, it will now grant stacks of burning judgement.
I know that because this feat was so great, it's probably become a staple of everyone's build on preview, so I appreciate your patience when this change goes through. I will be looking at Cleric feats in general a bit more soon, hopefully with changes in time for next week's build.
I'd like to see stronger feats, making the decision between the two of a pair harder and more combinations viable.
I want to say the same. Its a Feedback.
Feats are really silly. And I disappointed that most of them are about certain powers. It makes us to be must use the only certain powers.
4 from 5 pairs are strongly bound to At-wills or Encounters or Dailies. if i choose one I should use this Daily almost all the time, Because If not using this, so what the point?
Why dont make feats more powerful or common or usefull at least? for example:. Decrease divinity cost of daunting light by 10% -> decrease divinity cost for all damage dealing encounters?
now almost all feats are useless for me. for example: duration of exultation for 4 sec longest. - What if I dont need it at all, so you leave me without choice.
now about Class features. Piligrim's light - no allies is almost impossible thing. Divine action - I dont see any effect of this feature (should it give 100% divine scale?)
Smoldering light and Rising light - if it works like old feats (you healing more when below 30%) So if you receive faster divinity regeneration when your divinity is below 30% - when it pass over 30% double regeneration will stops. And If we choose another feat we will regen divinity from 75 to 100% only.
now about AP and Divinity regen, I think OP have much better AP and divinity gain. Its more easily, i think. so we can have a situation when DC joined party but hear ''Sorry, we need OP''.
"sometimes the world doesn't need another hero, sometimes what it needs is a monster"
Can you comment on the intent of how a Devout is supposed to recover divinity? I can see the ticks over time if I want to hold tab, and possibly losing a (valuable) encounter slot for DG. Am I missing something else? The feats that give divinity don't feel like they do much.
I think the problem I'm encountering is that Devout feels really unsatisfying not being able to do anything about divinity. On the Arbiter side, you can spend your pips to get divinity. Admittedly this allows for dramatic divinity gain that would overpower Devout's healing. But the distinct lack of any option to do "anything" active when your divinity drains feels really unsatisfying. Throwing your hands up to the sky and slowly walking around feels really depressing.
Pfft, the only way to survive in PVP vs anyone at the moment is to spam Bastion, becuz current state of pvp damage is rediculous, Either u 1 shot something or you get shotted. Almost nothing in between.
Dear Asterdahl, could you pls justify why on earth you have given TANKS (GF) a SHIELD THROW that is buged and stuns for more then 3 sec IGNORING any reducing control effects. such as Elven battle does not reduce stun duration by any means.
With GF Shield Throw we are basically 1 shotted by anvil. Plain as that.
Also have you seen HR's Daily? That could be executed 6 times in a row ?
I haven't played Devout very much, but I feel that Arbiter as a DPS path should not be subject to the same degree of "fail state" danger in terms of Divinity since Devout's goal is going to be efficiency of healing vs. Arbiter's goal of ramping up Judgment to use Divinity as frequently as possible.
I appreciate the continued feedback! Are you aware that channel divinity converts stacks of judgement into divinity for the Arbiter? As an Arbiter you really shouldn't be using channel divinity for longer than a second to dump your judgement. In that sense, the Arbiter is very much not subjected to the same restrictions as Devout.
When low on divinity, you mostly want to be using at-wills, and dumping your judgement into divinity. In terms of actual DPS efficiency. Actually sitting and holding channel divinity as an Arbiter will probably be limited to stages of boss fights where there are no targets, or between solo pulls if you really want to start the next pull with full divinity. (But that said, you really don't need to do this, and it's the same as waiting for all your cooldowns on a non-divinity based class, except that channel divinity and an increased out of combat regen for divinity means you can get them back at an accelerated rate.)
If you didn't know about using judgement to restore divinity, I hope you get a chance to give it a try and let me know if you still feel the same way.
I haven't played Devout very much, but I feel that Arbiter as a DPS path should not be subject to the same degree of "fail state" danger in terms of Divinity since Devout's goal is going to be efficiency of healing vs. Arbiter's goal of ramping up Judgment to use Divinity as frequently as possible.
I appreciate the continued feedback! Are you aware that channel divinity converts stacks of judgement into divinity for the Arbiter? As an Arbiter you really shouldn't be using channel divinity for longer than a second to dump your judgement. In that sense, the Arbiter is very much not subjected to the same restrictions as Devout.
When low on divinity, you mostly want to be using at-wills, and dumping your judgement into divinity. In terms of actual DPS efficiency. Actually sitting and holding channel divinity as an Arbiter will probably be limited to stages of boss fights where there are no targets, or between solo pulls if you really want to start the next pull with full divinity. (But that said, you really don't need to do this, and it's the same as waiting for all your cooldowns on a non-divinity based class, except that channel divinity and an increased out of combat regen for divinity means you can get them back at an accelerated rate.)
If you didn't know about using judgement to restore divinity, I hope you get a chance to give it a try and let me know if you still feel the same way.
Thank you for pointing that out - I am aware of the mechanic to convert Judgment to Divinity, but when I offered that comment, I think I was fixated on the feated Bastion of Health method for generating Judgment more quickly and was forgetting to consider the core method of building stacks through At-Wills.
If the net effect is similar to the encounter cooldowns that impact other DPS classes, then Arbiter may be in a good spot in that regard. If it ends up being too slow in comparison, I'm guessing it would be fairly simple to tweak to increase the amount of Divinity restored per stack, but I agree that the core mechanic is fine.
On an unrelated note, I forgot to mention that Celestial Prominence is a lot of fun. Love the flexibility to time the detonation and the added utility.
I've been playing some more on preview today and i finally got the arbiter scales mechanic figured out. I had to start from level 1 to get a feel for the changes to dc and i really like what is going on so far. I've been focusing on solo testing mostly, so i can't say much about group play.
I did test out the differences between arbiter and devout, which made a few things very clear to me.
In some ways - the dc plays as a poor man's cw that can occasionally toss out a heal. Arbiter fixes that with the scales mechanic and i feel the mechanic should be extended to the devout
i would like to suggest the following: Scales of Hope.
this uses radiant and protection, stacking as before ( i believe to 7). this allows us to use the tab mechanic to it's full potential, and makes the dc different than the cw. I suggest all divine characters (paladins and any future additions should have a similar divine mechanic in place)
when 7 stacks are consumed i would add an extra effect: radiant fury => autocast exalt to increase the devout dps. Protector's intercession => autocast geas on target to protect the party.
this gives us some more choice on how to use our divine stacks and makes us choose whether we want to use a partial stack or wait for a full stack.
using protection stacks on an atwill will increase damage output, the bonus autocast at 7 stacks.
perhaps the number i'm suggesting are too high, too much uptime, but it's meant to provide the framework of an idea.
i'm gonna go check on cw forum to see if there is a resource management including to them.
deals radiant damage to enemies at target location magnitude
added effect: increases burning judgement by 1
Edit:
i also don't understand how we have changed so much with the stat bonuses from dnd. With the current choices, the best pick would be int and dex to increase magical damage and crit damage. Those are very strange choices for a dc. It makes sense for wis to improve divine damage and i have no idea why con improves armour pen in the first place. Charisma could improve divinity regeneration.
or have some things be a combination of a physical and mental trait - crit avoidance is dex + wis
EDIT: as an example Paladins should be forced to make a choice between the physical and mental realms of stats, to support teh dual nature of their roles and powers.
I find the ways powers unlock as you level to be very strange. I unlocked daunting light, then bastion of health before i found out i had a divine meter level or 2 later. I feel the divine tab should be unlocked at level one. we should have a basic divine pip that stacks up to 4 that carries us through to level 30 when we pick our paragon class which alters and adds to the pip rules.
we should start with small divinity spells, one healing and one attack so we can learn how to handle our divinity bar while managing our resources with the basic pips and our tab ability.
maybe be able to stack one extra pip for every 20 levels
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seraphimrushMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10Arc User
edited March 2019
So, I have a question about Chains:
Why remove the damage?
Using a purely DPS class to compare: I get that Chains is a control power, but so is Steal Time, and ST still does damage (unless that's been changed?). I haven't touched Arcane Singularity since it was nerfed several years ago, but that, while primarily useful for controlling mobs, still did damage. Icy Terrain does damage. You can explode Shield and do damage.
What I'm getting at here is... no, a DC isn't a CW, but you don't give CW a big AOE and then take away the damage. Nobody would use it. There might even be crying. Chains-as-only-control isn't as useful as it used to be, and it pales in comparison to similar types of powers employed by other classes. (Frontline Surge: control + damage, to pull from another class/list.)
Having a nicely-sized AOE isn't too much to ask, is all I'm saying. DL isn't much of an AOE, and Sun Burst... just no, please no.
.
The only thing I'm really bitter about so far is that you've taken away my flashlight. Channel Divinity will never again help me avoid tripping over corpses in dark rooms. I will never forgive.
Comments
That column of feats was ultimately meant to be a utility column, with the option to take Bastion of Health to provide support if needed, and a minor reward for using it. Due to the low cost of Bastion of Health and other factors though, it is far too strong. That feat will be reworked.
Suggestion 1: make Mendicant’s Judgement talent also cause the heal from bastion to decrease.
Suggestion 2: give some damage reduction when using the tab mechanic
Iyon the Dark
Also, can we please get a tweak on divinity gain? It's still too slow. I noticed it's a bit faster, but it's still kind of slow. I'm spending too much time jumping around trying to survive with all of the mobs attacking me at once and all I really have are my at wills to attack in the time being. With monsters knocking us around and we're downed for so long it's a lot harder to really do anything because I'm waiting. At least make at-wills gain some kind of divinity back. Would really appreciate that!
Power:
On a more positive note, I am really enjoying the new power Celestial Prominence. I love everything about it. It's like I'm placing a sneaky bomb on the bombs to detonate. Good job on that one.
Prophecy of Doom, I've only really used once so far on the test server. I don't necessarily have any feedback on this yet, but it seems to work nicely.
Searing Light is impractical to use because Break the Spirit and/or Geas will be the better option since not many enemies are really in a straight line. This makes this power pretty much useless.
Sun Burst is kind of weird to work into my rotation. Most of the powers that deal high damage are radiant, so I'm more focused on building Radiant Judgment vs Burning Judgment. If I were to use Sun Burst it would just mess up my stacks in the middle of my rotation. I'm not exactly sure what to say to make this a bit more useful, but I just wanted to bring up how it's not that much of any use to me. Also the feat Heavy Sun doesn't proc Burning Judgment like it says in the tooltip. Instead it gives more Radiant Judgment.
I also want to say the tooltip for Inquisitor's Benediction needs a rewrite. It says healing spells heal for 20% more, but we only have one healing spell.
Considering that the Bastion of Health + Mendicant's mechanic was not intended to be a core one (and players appear to be largely treating it as such), might I suggest instead dramatically increasing the rate at which Arbiter generates Divinity while Channeling?
My understanding is that the overall more methodical pace of combat in M16 is an intentional shift away from the insta-gib pace of M15 and prior mods, and I generally support this design choice, but I have to admit that standing still holding down Tab for lengthy periods of time between rotations is not engaging or enjoyable. This is less of an issue with standard AoE soloing with a geared character because of the decreased need for Divinity expenditure, but for a sustained single-target rotation and/or for a less geared character that requires more casts to clear content, there is an arguable problem.
It would also be both a nice bonus and a way to further distinguish Arbiter from Devout if Arbiter's Channel Divinity had a secondary effect like minor PBAoE damage or gradually building Judgment if the Arbiter began Channeling with at least one stack of either type filled.
I haven't played Devout very much, but I feel that Arbiter as a DPS path should not be subject to the same degree of "fail state" danger in terms of Divinity since Devout's goal is going to be efficiency of healing vs. Arbiter's goal of ramping up Judgment to use Divinity as frequently as possible.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Note that 100% of my feedback here is for Arbiter, and that I understand that both clerics share some of their powers, and must be balanced around that.
Bugs:
- Sun Burst and Heavy Sun are opposite types (burning vs. radiant) and therefore the feat doesn't seem to work at all, although it might be immediately consuming the stacks (I haven't checked)
- There is often a delay when using at-wills to generate pips, which I believe is just communication lag between the client and server, but it makes it very easy to waste pips on the wrong power or without full pips, since your character won't gain the pip and will continue doing the at-will animation a second time. An example of this is using at-will (try with sacred flame, it is the most noticeable) -> immediately cast feated DG to generate 5 free stacks. If the delay happens, you use DG before gaining the stack from the at-will. It may be possible to fix by preventing DG from canceling at-wills.
- Hammer of Fate magnitude doesn't seem to be correct. I haven't 100% confirmed it yet, but I believe it hits for 500 magnitude 3x but only lists itself as 500 with no added effects. Yes, the flavor text says "threefold attack" but IMO this is not clear enough. If it is in fact a 500 magnitude power, I believe that in itself is worthy of a bug report anyways.
- I have not yet reached the level to use it, but the Celestial Prominence daily tooltip is completely blank.
Thoughts:- As others have stated, it is silly that DCs aren't allowed to take the primary stat that they might actually want. CHA/INT are clearly better for the class, but due to how primary works on the roll tables, can't be chosen, however, unlike others have stated, the benefit seems very minimal compared to what it used to be (0.25% per point rather than 1% per point), so it's not a dealbreaker for me.
- Okay lets talk about that stack/pip mechanic. I like the concept, although it is basically just a more complicated version of the previous system with a more distinct limitation on how fast you can regenerate it and which powers can be used to empower other powers. You are constantly given the choice: do I want to use 6 stacks to gain ~300 divinity and cast FF (800 magnitude) again or do I want to empower DL to do more damage (120 magnitude)... oh wait did that not seem like a choice? My bad... it's not. I will go over later which powers I think need their radiant/burning stack values adjusted because I do believe most of them are wildly off the mark. Basically, unless consuming the stacks is worth more than an entire power, it's useless due to how the stack conversion to divinity works.
- The feats seem to be more well thought out in general compared to the previous version, with very specific rotations planned behind some of them, however, that basically means that there is one optimal rotation when using specific feats. Why are the feats so specific? "If you use at-will A, encounter B is better" just means that you now must always use at-will A and encounter B. Most other classes use feats that are more or less described like "If you use paragon power A, all powers of XYZ type are empowered" which leaves some form of customization after taking that feat. An example of this would be something more like "Your lance of faith now has a 10% chance to make your next radiant power have 100% crit chance"
- The first two feats (Lightspeed and Piercing Light) IMO should be "after every X hits with" rather than chance. Chance just feels bad when compared to the "the last hit of X" feats of the other classes.
- As much as I like how good Lightspeed feels, it basically can be reworded to "Your scattering light has a 10% chance to make Daunting Light feel better" not an impressive feat. I like the feeling of old divinity DL on normal DL, but realistically it doesn't add much, especially when it forces you to use a specific at-will repeatedly trying to "chance" at stacks. I would much prefer a more clear bonus such as damage, AoE size, half divinity cost, or something.
- Mendicant's Judgement now this feat is um... I don't know if it was intended that this feat be this good, but this feat is either the only reason DC can output consistent DPS, or it's the reason DC isn't allowed to output consistent DPS. What I am trying to say is that this feat is so disproportionally powerful that if it is nerfed, it cuts out like half (guesstimate) of a cleric's DPS, or it is intended to be this powerful and because of its utility prevents the cleric from having more of their "power budget" be placed into damage. Either way, I would approach this feat with caution, since it is obvious it needs adjusted, but is like half (still guesstimate) of a cleric's overall power currently on preview. You will not see the full benefits of this feat unless you have at least 2 allies nearby (your companion counts)
Random Thoughts and Oddities:- Does foresight mechanically add 2500 crit, or does it add 5% over the normal limit?
- Does pilgrim's light work if I am near my companion?
- Why is DL so weak in comparison to FF? Is the divinity cost really justifying the difference?
- Why doesn't BoH naturally give 1 pip and feated give 2?
- Does holy fervor effect all divinity regeneration or just passive regeneration?
- Why doesn't divine glow have a consume effect? Maybe reduce the cooldown if it consumes?
- Why doesn't chains have a consume effect? Maybe increase duration? Maybe debuff enemies?
- Is Radiant Swordbreaker supposed to be a DPS feat or a useless one? I know which one I consider it.
- The level 70 feats seem like weird filler. They do something, but like... not really
- Why would you ever use Hammer of Fate (instant 1500 magnitude) when you could use Guardian of Faith (instant 2500 magnitude plus stun)
- Because of the targeting method of Searing Light and the AoE size, it is basically single target in most situations, but seems balanced around hitting 2+ targets. Seems odd. Might actually be a fairly powerful skill if you could aim the beam with a ground based AoE (like old HW) instead of targeted line. With no other changes.
- Love the new tooltips
- Some of the cooldowns seem like 10-25% longer than I would expect them to be considering there is no way to shorten them.
- The ~0.9s cooldown on divinity powers is actually infuriating after using the old cleric that could burn all of their divinity instantly. As far as I can tell, it makes the cleric more complicated to play optimally without really serving as much of an actual limiter.
Burning/Radiant pip consumes:Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
On devout, my complaint is related, but not the same. I don't have any divinty issues if I'm just healbotting really. It's simple. A little boring but effective. It's when I try to throw that DPS I to the mix you say I should be able to. That eats my divinity like candy, and then I find myself shortchanged on heals without the time to stand there like an idiot holding tab.
I also note that this has already been remarked on as "maybe not WAI"
On the other note : Have you seen Tanks Shield Throw???? Thats just a joke 3 sec STUN control that can be followed by an anvil and 1 shot there u go. Nothing can be done vs that.
And it seems there is a bug with the Shield Throw as well, Elven battle does not reduce its 3 sec duration whatsoever.
It feels that i stay more then 3 sec more like 4..... PLAIN STUN CONTROL
Can we have similar control effect instead of useless chains?
As for consuming the pips to restore divinity, it certainly makes pip and divinity Regen an interesting mechanic during battles, but I’m still not sold on out-of-battle divinity regeneration. It looked like the most I got was about 1/3 of the bar refilled with full pips. Maybe almost half. That still feels a little slow.
My 2 cents! Thanks!
Heather - Ranger
James - Paladin
Jet - Warlock
Royal - Cleric
Gray - Rogue
Red - Wizard
Ios - Barbarian
i find that the first tier is missplaced since u dont get acces to searing light much later while lvling.
instead it beeing at lvl 40 it would make much more sence to at 50 and vice versa
Then again lance of faith paired with sl just makes sence if sl gets a true single target rework
And the other option the at will paired with dl getting 50% magnitued
We have a cleanse encounter now. Its great, really great. Its like the feat cleanse. But as an encounter. Awesome. I was using Cleanse as a heroic feat, it was needed in some situations despite the rage of former dps gf and survivor's wraps. But then we have different encounters that heal, thats all. And 1 mitigation encounter, astral shield. And its horrendous so far to use. I take it, we need practice.
But playing an AC like arazith07 mentioned was all about the pace. It felt quite intense to be able to get those 2 dailies up at same time, the exaltation on dps, and break the spirit empowered. Granted i was not often playing in groups one phasing bosses because most of my friends in NW dont belong to this category,but even with my friends, playing my AC was pleasant.
It was intense. It was fun. Sometimes with weaker groups from alliance i even had to heal but it was still fun. I even had to dust off my faithful loadout for some K Team,specially the CR one. Still, it was fluid.
So since Terramak mentionned on stream that we need to insist on forum on the reasons why we are feeling bummed about the changes, im posting again.
I do not complain about losing powershare, about losing recovery,or investment into my character because its part of mmorpgs, i do complain because:
-I heal but it seems like my healing doesn't count towards any action points gain
-I want to protect my tank, my melee dps but astral shield is tedious to cast and use (i mean, compare it to circle of power of Oathkeeper, now we talk about fluidity, why not doing something similar for us???)
-I want to experience some rythm, some activity in my healing actions but for now, i almost bore myself to death when playing as devout in dungeon.
-the divinity gain is somewhat off for a devout playing in group content.
On the other side, playing an Arbiter has some "rythm". Some kind of combos in it. The radiant/burning mechanisms is great. It takes a little to get used to but its great. I feel active, i feel not stuck on the ground...I dont feel thick or heavy. I dont know how to say it better. So promised its the last time im writing about it, still being hopeful for next weeks patches.
The game needed to be reworked. Multiplicity was WAY out of control. But you can't slow the pacing and feel and take away so many choices and think people are going to get the same fun out of it. I'm not going to threaten to leave because I don't hate everything that's been done, but people who are complaining this have a valid point. If they had wanted a game that was pick a stock character, take a nap on your mouse button to kill mobs, and wake up long enough to hit R when your friend yells at you they need a heal, they wouldn't have been in NW.
I really think an "empowerment" system for Devout would be great. A little more divinity gain, and faster paced combat would be great too. This is an action game, after all.
SUGGESTION: Make the Wisdom stat give its Healing bonus to both incoming and outgoing healing.
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That said, please let me know how you feel as you continue to test things out on preview, we'll continue to keep an eye on Cleric's survivability. Mendicant's Judgement is getting a nerf in this week's build. (Sorry!) As many have pointed out, it's far too powerful. I've also mentioned in a few posts that it was meant to be a utility choice, where if you decided to take Bastion to help your party survive better, you could get a little offensive buff out of it. It was never meant to be a part of your main DPS rotation, when the feat was first designed, there was not a way to dump judgement into restoring divinity.
That said, as I've mentioned, I do want Arbiters to have some utility to help heal in an emergency (healer is down, or having a hard time with a boss fight.) But we also don't want Arbiter to ever be able to replace a dedicated healer, so we're playing with how that will work. This week's build will see the base divinity cost of daunting light reduced, and then the scales of judgement mechanic will increase the divinity cost of existing pre-paragon spells.
In other words, daunting light will get cheaper for Devout, and Bastion of Health will get more costly for Arbiter, a lot more costly. Because Arbiter can restore their divinity quickly, you should still have no issue using it solo or in a pinch in group play, but you won't be able to spam it. In addition, Mendicant's Judgement will receive three changes: first, you won't receive any judgement for healing yourself; second, bastion must restore a target's hit points in order for you to receive judgement (i.e. the target needs to be missing health, so that bastion actually heals them); third, it will now grant stacks of burning judgement.
I know that because this feat was so great, it's probably become a staple of everyone's build on preview, so I appreciate your patience when this change goes through. I will be looking at Cleric feats in general a bit more soon, hopefully with changes in time for next week's build.
Feats are really silly. And I disappointed that most of them are about certain powers.
It makes us to be must use the only certain powers.
4 from 5 pairs are strongly bound to At-wills or Encounters or Dailies. if i choose one I should use this Daily almost all the time, Because If not using this, so what the point?
Why dont make feats more powerful or common or usefull at least?
for example:. Decrease divinity cost of daunting light by 10% -> decrease divinity cost for all damage dealing encounters?
now almost all feats are useless for me. for example: duration of exultation for 4 sec longest. - What if I dont need it at all, so you leave me without choice.
now about Class features.
Piligrim's light - no allies is almost impossible thing.
Divine action - I dont see any effect of this feature (should it give 100% divine scale?)
Smoldering light and Rising light - if it works like old feats (you healing more when below 30%) So if you receive faster divinity regeneration when your divinity is below 30% - when it pass over 30% double regeneration will stops. And If we choose another feat we will regen divinity from 75 to 100% only.
now about AP and Divinity regen, I think OP have much better AP and divinity gain. Its more easily, i think.
so we can have a situation when DC joined party but hear ''Sorry, we need OP''.
I think the problem I'm encountering is that Devout feels really unsatisfying not being able to do anything about divinity. On the Arbiter side, you can spend your pips to get divinity. Admittedly this allows for dramatic divinity gain that would overpower Devout's healing. But the distinct lack of any option to do "anything" active when your divinity drains feels really unsatisfying. Throwing your hands up to the sky and slowly walking around feels really depressing.
Dear Asterdahl, could you pls justify why on earth you have given TANKS (GF) a SHIELD THROW that is buged and stuns for more then 3 sec IGNORING any reducing control effects. such as Elven battle does not reduce stun duration by any means.
With GF Shield Throw we are basically 1 shotted by anvil. Plain as that.
Also have you seen HR's Daily? That could be executed 6 times in a row ?
When low on divinity, you mostly want to be using at-wills, and dumping your judgement into divinity. In terms of actual DPS efficiency. Actually sitting and holding channel divinity as an Arbiter will probably be limited to stages of boss fights where there are no targets, or between solo pulls if you really want to start the next pull with full divinity. (But that said, you really don't need to do this, and it's the same as waiting for all your cooldowns on a non-divinity based class, except that channel divinity and an increased out of combat regen for divinity means you can get them back at an accelerated rate.)
If you didn't know about using judgement to restore divinity, I hope you get a chance to give it a try and let me know if you still feel the same way.
If the net effect is similar to the encounter cooldowns that impact other DPS classes, then Arbiter may be in a good spot in that regard. If it ends up being too slow in comparison, I'm guessing it would be fairly simple to tweak to increase the amount of Divinity restored per stack, but I agree that the core mechanic is fine.
On an unrelated note, I forgot to mention that Celestial Prominence is a lot of fun. Love the flexibility to time the detonation and the added utility.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
I did test out the differences between arbiter and devout, which made a few things very clear to me.
In some ways - the dc plays as a poor man's cw that can occasionally toss out a heal. Arbiter fixes that with the scales mechanic and i feel the mechanic should be extended to the devout
i would like to suggest the following: Scales of Hope.
this uses radiant and protection, stacking as before ( i believe to 7). this allows us to use the tab mechanic to it's full potential, and makes the dc different than the cw. I suggest all divine characters (paladins and any future additions should have a similar divine mechanic in place)
when 7 stacks are consumed i would add an extra effect:
radiant fury => autocast exalt to increase the devout dps.
Protector's intercession => autocast geas on target to protect the party.
this gives us some more choice on how to use our divine stacks and makes us choose whether we want to use a partial stack or wait for a full stack.
using protection stacks on an atwill will increase damage output, the bonus autocast at 7 stacks.
perhaps the number i'm suggesting are too high, too much uptime, but it's meant to provide the framework of an idea.
i'm gonna go check on cw forum to see if there is a resource management including to them.
Tool tip Layout
Daunting light
encounter
cost cooldown divinity cost
deal radiant damage to enemies at target location
magnitude
added effect: increases burning judgement by 1. radiant judgement increases magnitude by 20
everything is bunched together and radiant is mentioned so many times that burning gets lost in the wording.
Daunting light
Radiant encounter type, pip magnitude 20
cost cooldown divinity
deals radiant damage to enemies at target location
magnitude
added effect: increases burning judgement by 1
Edit:
i also don't understand how we have changed so much with the stat bonuses from dnd. With the current choices, the best pick would be int and dex to increase magical damage and crit damage. Those are very strange choices for a dc. It makes sense for wis to improve divine damage and i have no idea why con improves armour pen in the first place. Charisma could improve divinity regeneration.
str - better physical damage
dex - better crit chance,
con - better health, better physical resource management ( ability cds, anything physically or natural based)
int - better magic damage, combat advantage avoidance
wis - better divine damage, crit avoidance
cha - better resource management (magic, mana, soul sparks, anything supernatural)
or have some things be a combination of a physical and mental trait - crit avoidance is dex + wis
EDIT: as an example Paladins should be forced to make a choice between the physical and mental realms of stats, to support teh dual nature of their roles and powers.
we should start with small divinity spells, one healing and one attack so we can learn how to handle our divinity bar while managing our resources with the basic pips and our tab ability.
maybe be able to stack one extra pip for every 20 levels
Why remove the damage?
Using a purely DPS class to compare: I get that Chains is a control power, but so is Steal Time, and ST still does damage (unless that's been changed?). I haven't touched Arcane Singularity since it was nerfed several years ago, but that, while primarily useful for controlling mobs, still did damage. Icy Terrain does damage. You can explode Shield and do damage.
What I'm getting at here is... no, a DC isn't a CW, but you don't give CW a big AOE and then take away the damage. Nobody would use it. There might even be crying. Chains-as-only-control isn't as useful as it used to be, and it pales in comparison to similar types of powers employed by other classes. (Frontline Surge: control + damage, to pull from another class/list.)
Having a nicely-sized AOE isn't too much to ask, is all I'm saying. DL isn't much of an AOE, and Sun Burst... just no, please no.
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The only thing I'm really bitter about so far is that you've taken away my flashlight. Channel Divinity will never again help me avoid tripping over corpses in dark rooms. I will never forgive.
Co-Leader of Call of Mystra