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Solving the cleric aggro issue
hauwlyn
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 11 Arc User
Bear with me as I state the "issue" first to make it clear, I'll then explain what I think is wrong and how to fix it easily.
As many clerics will tell you, healing gets you aggro on tons of adds in big fights. Because of it, the best devoted clerics learned how to kite and control them efficiently while still doing their job. This is an example of the cleric carrying your group.
Now, lots of people coming from an MMO where the holy trinity is the rule blame the tank. It is true than in many other games, add aggro must go to the tank most of the time. This isn't true in here. Good tanks can keep aggro on adds while killing trash, that's for sure, but comes the big boss fight, they cannot possibly hold aggro on everything, and thus the cleric has more work than he should have, sometimes ending with a cleric death, then a wipe.
Now, I tell you, why would the devs call a role "Controller", other than to simply copy it over from 4th edition D&D?
Because their job is to control those overwhelming adds. Yes, that means sacrificing single target dps, it means keeping your cooldowns to handle those adds, but you wizards out there, try and do exactly that, and see how much easier the fight becomes for your cleric. I play CW, and even though they took tons of aggro, playing my cooldowns well, I let those reckless pug clerics stand there and survive just mindlessly spamming, and noone in the team helped me take care of the adds most of the time. If adds really started overwhelming the team, a good old Arcane Singularity into AoE combo would take care of most if not all of them. I never saw a limit to how many targets it can affect.
Even just one "Striker" in the team focusing on the boss is enough, and you can easily afford 2 of them. After all, I never saw any hard enrage mechanic, as of now the only growing danger from fights getting longer is adds, and if you do your job well, that's not a problem anymore.
This game has CC effectiveness depending on stats, a role called Controller, a class even called Control Wizard. It's about time we stop thinking of CWs as just "the ranged pewpew". When we look at other roles, the cleric is called "Leader" instead of healer, now if you were a random mook against a team of adventurers, wouldn't it seem like "strategy 101" to go for the leader?
tl:dr Cleric's dead from adds: blame the Wizard, not the Guardian.
As many clerics will tell you, healing gets you aggro on tons of adds in big fights. Because of it, the best devoted clerics learned how to kite and control them efficiently while still doing their job. This is an example of the cleric carrying your group.
Now, lots of people coming from an MMO where the holy trinity is the rule blame the tank. It is true than in many other games, add aggro must go to the tank most of the time. This isn't true in here. Good tanks can keep aggro on adds while killing trash, that's for sure, but comes the big boss fight, they cannot possibly hold aggro on everything, and thus the cleric has more work than he should have, sometimes ending with a cleric death, then a wipe.
Now, I tell you, why would the devs call a role "Controller", other than to simply copy it over from 4th edition D&D?
Because their job is to control those overwhelming adds. Yes, that means sacrificing single target dps, it means keeping your cooldowns to handle those adds, but you wizards out there, try and do exactly that, and see how much easier the fight becomes for your cleric. I play CW, and even though they took tons of aggro, playing my cooldowns well, I let those reckless pug clerics stand there and survive just mindlessly spamming, and noone in the team helped me take care of the adds most of the time. If adds really started overwhelming the team, a good old Arcane Singularity into AoE combo would take care of most if not all of them. I never saw a limit to how many targets it can affect.
Even just one "Striker" in the team focusing on the boss is enough, and you can easily afford 2 of them. After all, I never saw any hard enrage mechanic, as of now the only growing danger from fights getting longer is adds, and if you do your job well, that's not a problem anymore.
This game has CC effectiveness depending on stats, a role called Controller, a class even called Control Wizard. It's about time we stop thinking of CWs as just "the ranged pewpew". When we look at other roles, the cleric is called "Leader" instead of healer, now if you were a random mook against a team of adventurers, wouldn't it seem like "strategy 101" to go for the leader?
tl:dr Cleric's dead from adds: blame the Wizard, not the Guardian.
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Comments
It's quite fun, that i have to kite them, run from every red spot, and heal but sometimes it's impossible to handle it all and do your job.
Indeed, a CW CAN be played Striker, but the amount of team sync needed to compensate for not having a Control focused member in your party seems to be what differentiates bad teams and good teams right now. With a pure Controller, problem solved, might just need a bit of AoE help here and there at worst. Nothing wrong with 1 striker CW if you have 2 CWs in the team though.
That much is only needed if everyone plays Controller second, Striker first. While it can work, I say it makes the thing a bit harder. And nothing I've seen thus far justifies having 3 players focused mostly on single target dps. Is there a hard enrage anywhere?