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A [Guide] to explicit Cleric Mechanics
lanlin
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 40
Hi everyone,
looking at all those "guides" around here displaying what u should do in terms of
- Character creation and stats
- Powers (including some theory)
- Heroic&Paragon Feats
- Value of Basestats (Power, Recovery, Crit)
- Usage of certain Skills
- ...
it is obvious that so far most of those are based on assumptions, no real theorycrafting included. Many things in this game can be verified just by "try and error" and i certainly don't claim to be the only one that wrote a correct guide so far, yet probably the only one that reasearched every detail on why things turn out the way they are.
The reason I am doing this is because i looked at some guides and a part of them (not all ofc!) contained some really awkward numbers...
While indepth theorycrafting may seem overkill for Neverwinter, a game that doesn't (hopefully: yet) have any difficult or diverse content, being a hardcore player to the limit i actually feel uneasy about not knowing everything behind the scenes everytime i play a MMO...
So everyone feeling the way i feel that's missing out on time to do it yourself - this is for you guyz!
First things first - Character Creation
Creating a character is always a pretty hard choice for some people...
Should u go for the most stylish one? Or maybe the most useful one for the class? But then again which is the most useful? And how much bonus do i get from choosing it?
To make things easier i will shortly display the advantage of choosing the 2 more useful races - for clerics:
Rank 1: Human
Those 3 additional heroic Feat points are very useful for a cleric. Effective Gains from choosing this:
+ 2 Wisdom
+ 3% Defense (ratingbased)
+ 3% maxHP
+ 6% Divine Power gained
Rank 2: Half-Elf
This time the bonus gained is more obvious since it doesn't depend on the feats u choose. Gains:
+ 2 Wisdom
+ 2 Constitution
+ 1 Intelligence
+ 1% Critical Severity (effective bonus, not related to ratings)
+ 1% Deflection Chance (effective bonus, not related to ratings)
Dwarf is semi-useful as well and excels in PvP environment... Everything else lacks in a competitive sense. However for min-maxing Human or Half-Elf is definately the way to go while the difference between those 2 is SO small it doesn't even really matter.
As for the Ability Score Rolls go for the 20 Wisdom 13 Strength 13 Charisma Roll with the 8 on Dexterity (as a Halfelf delete and recreate your Character until u get the +1 Intelligence addition since this can't be seen in the scorerolls...).
As for leveling up put +1 into Wisdom and +1 into Charisma each time you get the choice.
Powers and Theory
To keep things "short" i will just focus on building a cleric that focuses on PvE healing and supporting rather than DPSing or PvPing. Still u can quite usefully DPS with this choice as well since there aren't too many powers u can choose from anyway... Rather than listing every possible power i will just focus on the powers u WILL be using and give some additional information - those that the awesome *cough* tooltips are missing out on.
When skilling make sure to put at least 1 point in every encounter-power or on-will-power... the bonus you receive on skilling more points into 1 thing is only marginal, thus it's good not to miss out on any ability that might come in handy in the future.
Of course every number of Divine Power, Action Points gained or Cooldowns that's written in here is the Basevalue - unmodified by any Feats or Stats.
Skills you should put 3 points into:
At-Will Powers:
Astral Seal:
Autohitting with this is a loss in every aspect - damagewise as well as a loss in divine power generation... However it grants a tremendously useful debuff on the target you use it on. Still you want to use it as little as possible, while still having a high uptime of the debuff on the maintarget your party focuses on. By using 2 additional points into this, you increase the duration of the debuff from 8 to 10 seconds; this increases the interval u need to cast the spell by 25%.
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 1.5% Action Points on every hit.
Hittimer: 1s.
Duration: 10s.
Sacred Flame:
This is the Autohit u will obviously use most of the time - while Lance of Faith would be stronger damagewise, the Buffeffect every 3rd hit grants is a nice addition. This buff grants 50(?)% of the damage dealt with the last blow as temporary hitpoints to all targets in range.
[Not quite sure of the exact percentage here yet - but it definately scales with the damage u deal]
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power on every hit as well as 1% Action Points on the first and 2nd hit, 1.5% on the final hit.
Hittime: 0.75s, 0.75s, 1s.
Encounter Powers:
Sun Burst:
This spell does an average amount of damage and healing... What's awesome about this spell is the amount of divine power and Action Points it generates. Both - divine power generation and Action Point generation - depend on the amount of targets hit by this spell. Although theoretically 10 Targets can be hit with 1 Cast (5 people healed and 5 Monsters dpsed), still the "cap" for Action Point and Divine Power gains is 5.
Thus you gain the full amount if you only hit 5 Monters while not healing anyone in your party with it. You don't get the full amount though by healing you and your 4 party members with the spell though, because it excludes the caster himself from the targetcap.
Also: Overhealing does not count towards the targetcap as well. So you can't push divine power and/or action points with it without effectively healing with the spell (ok u can push divine power anyways by using the talent "Ethereal Boon", but u get the point).
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 5% Action Points for every target hit like explained above.
Casttime: 1s.
Basecooldown: 14s.
Healing Word:
This spell is the best Single-Target Heal we currently got... Still its usage is quite situational. The worst thing about this power is that it does not scale with increased Recharge Speed at all! You can swap this skill out in combat after using 2/3 stacks of it though and it continues to recharge while it is not active in ur Hotkey-Bar, so the best way to use it is to swap it in and out while in combat to use 2 charges every 30 seconds.
This spell grants 12% of a Divine Power Bar (while using a 3p Divine Fortune passive) and 2% Action Points on each usage.
Casttime: 0.5s.
Basecooldown (constant): 15s/charge.
Forgemaster's Flame:
The by far strongest HPS skill that currently exists - hands down. Of course it only heals in Divinity Mode and it almost shouldn't ever be used while not in Divinity Mode, since the amount of Divine Power or Action Points it grants is neglectable. Used in Divinity Mode it radiates twice the base-damage dealt by the DoT as healing for every player standing relatively close to the target. The debuff lasts 5 seconds ticking once per second.
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar and 5% Action Points per usage.
Casttime: 1.5s.
Basecooldown: 18s.
Duration: 5s.
Prophecy of Doom:
An awesome spell to get Action Points. If used correctly in a Fight with many adds (so yeah - always?) and combined with Sun Burst a single Cleric can achieve a 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground - which is more beneficial than anything else u could possibly do.
Only put it on adds though that you are sure of to be dead while the debuff is running - u don't ever want to proc its damage or use the weak debuff cause its Cooldown is way too long for a "normal" usage. If u have enough Divine Power to spare it is useful on this spell, but it's not required. This one is also an awesome Switch-In for Healing Word once in a while.
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar on usage as well as 12.5% Action Points if a Monster dies while debuffed with it (25% Action Points if cast with Divinity Mode).
Casttime: 1.5s.
Basecooldown: 28s.
Divine Glow:
The best support spell there is for the cleric. Really! This one is awesome! It can be used diversely; for once it is a useful Divine Power builder if it hits enough targets and passively reduces defenses of every target hit by 15% for 8 seconds. If u spend Divine Power on it instead of trying to build it up, this is where it really gets awesome... If ur party positions well u can hit ur primary target as well as every Damagedealer with it, effectively granting both, a 20% damage Buff on your party for 8 seconds as well as the -15% defense on the target; all while dealing a quite moderate amount of damage - what more can u ask for?
If used out of Divinity Power Mode this spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 3% Action Points for each target hit (up to 5).
Casttime: 1s.
Basecooldown: 18s.
Astral Shield:
Currently an immensely overpowered spell, never to leave the Hotkeybar... It grants 24% damage reduction for every person within the circle as well as providing a healing effect that ticks once a second if it is used in Divinity Mode - which should be the case 100% of the casts on this, since the heal is very strong... Additionally each tick of the heal provides the Foresight passives Damage Resist Buff to everyone.
This spell grants 10% Action Points on every use in Divinity Mode.
Casttime: 1s.
Duration: 15s
Basecooldown: 22s.
Passive Powers:
Healer's Lore:
Since it plainly increases your healing not too bad of a choice, but i personally don't always use it since more protection from damage is stronger than more healing in general.
Divine Fortune:
A must-have in some Skillsets to build up enough Divine Power, else neglectable.
Foresight:
An all-time use passive as a healer just put it in ur Hotkeybar and never switch it out again. It provides flat 11% damage reduce currently - maybe bugged, maybe intended, u can't know for sure on this game anyways...
Just use it for now.
Sooth:
Maybe useful once threat gets fixed... but since u don't need much else just get this and save money for a respec in the future when u might need it.
Daily Powers:
Hallowed Ground:
This provides a 30% Buff to Damage dealt and makes your whole party receive 30% less damage for 15 seconds in a very large area, all while healing 5% to everyone in it every 3 seconds... Bring ur uptime on this as high as possible.
Divine Armor:
An "emergency" spell or recommended if u play with 2 clerics for overkill damagereduce. Casting this grants every ally affected by the spell 40% damagereduce for 18 seconds. It also grants 30% of your maxHP as temporary Hitpoints to everyone, but this is almost neglectable when using this... Since everything on Damagereduce stacks further and further this is where it gets <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>! With double Astral Shield, 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground as well as 100% uptime on Divine Armor u almost can't die to anything...
Other Points:
Spend everything else that's left with the points in personally preferred Powers, but like i already said it is really useful to give every At-Will or Encounter Power at least 1 Point to not completely miss out on it if u want to use it in a certain situation for once...
I am well aware that you need to spend additional points to "reach" those skills i mentioned, but there as well just take whatever you think might be useful for your style when soloing stuff or PvPing.
Heroic&Paragon Feats
After starting to write like 2 pages of theroycrafting to this and being far from finishing i decided to redo this and shorten it up by an enormous amount.
Why?
Because the choices of what to skill are quite obvious and it doesn't matter that much to know why u are skilling it in the end (at least until other Paragon trees are released - maybe i will redo this section by then)...
For now i will just list how to use those Feat-Points as a human and non-human likewise, just like XX people did before me (although some guys' guides had some obscure choices there up to now Oo).
Heroic Feats:
Greater Fortune 3/3
Toughness 2/3 [3/3 human]
Weapon Mastery 3/3
Domain Synergy 5/5
Repurpose Soul 3/3
Bountiful Furtune 3/5 [5/5 human]
Templar's Domain 1/5
Paragon Feats:
Enduring Relief 5/5
Benefit of Foresight 5/5
Invigorated Healing 5/5
Moon Touched 5/5
Greater Divine Power 1/1
Divine Advantage 5/5
Ethereal Boon 4/5
Rising Hope 1/5
Some words to those choices:
- 1 point in Templar's Domain may seem awkward, yet the procchance multiplies with the number of target's hit, resulting in a decent uptime on the buff - which is therefore more beneficial than 3% Divine Power Gain once you start getting some ArmorPenetration on your Gear.
- 1 point in Rising Hope is very useful - it has a ~60% uptime with a single point - awesome.
- HP is definately way more benificial than the Feat "Healing Action".
- Divine Advantage is to be preferred over Righteous Rage of Tempus, since Monters can gain Combat Advantage on players by them being knocked down for example. The additional divine power may seem cool, but you usually u don't run out of divine power anyways if u play correctly (definately not as a human), so this possibility is the better one.
Basestat Values
As far as Statvalues are concerned i created a little Spreadsheet on scalings...
All those values ofc aren't 100% correct because rounding is a serious issue if the game can only display a single fractional digit ( ... serious stuff... ).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArQraPDl2LqgdG5sT1JPRFlQeHFXdmR3NHFGeTNzZHc#gid=2
What can easily be seen is that deminishing returns kicks in VERY early and quite "strong"... therefore most stats are viable until like ~2200-2600 rating and then start to lose their effectiveness extremely rapidly.
The goal for a Cleric focussing on pure "offensive" stats right now is this:
Softcap Recovery > Crit up to ~2200 > Power > more Recovery >/= more Crit
The "Softcap" for Recovery is my definition for being able to have a 100% uptime on Astral Shield. To be able to get that safely you need ~34% Recharge Speed. The amount of Recovery u need for that is of course heavily dependant on the ability scores you have chosen...
Easy Formula: ( Charisma + Int - 20 + [Rechargespeedincrease by Recovery] ) >/= 34
After that "Softcap" and getting ~2200 Crit u should focus on Power. Then you could stack more Crit or Recovery while the values on both stats should increase by around the same amount from there on to keep the deminishing returns as "low" as possible.
Also you could decide on focussing on a bit more of defensive stats after getting the softcap and enough crit. Personally i even like that style more; playing a Cleric with the broken Threatlevel, a few hundred points of flat "defense" are useful as well on slots like Amulet, Rings or Belt instead of Crit or Recovery.
I will write more information on how to play as a Cleric in PvE in the days to come... (might update PvP later if PvP gets interesting....)
So far,
Lanlin
<genuine>
looking at all those "guides" around here displaying what u should do in terms of
- Character creation and stats
- Powers (including some theory)
- Heroic&Paragon Feats
- Value of Basestats (Power, Recovery, Crit)
- Usage of certain Skills
- ...
it is obvious that so far most of those are based on assumptions, no real theorycrafting included. Many things in this game can be verified just by "try and error" and i certainly don't claim to be the only one that wrote a correct guide so far, yet probably the only one that reasearched every detail on why things turn out the way they are.
The reason I am doing this is because i looked at some guides and a part of them (not all ofc!) contained some really awkward numbers...
While indepth theorycrafting may seem overkill for Neverwinter, a game that doesn't (hopefully: yet) have any difficult or diverse content, being a hardcore player to the limit i actually feel uneasy about not knowing everything behind the scenes everytime i play a MMO...
So everyone feeling the way i feel that's missing out on time to do it yourself - this is for you guyz!
First things first - Character Creation
Creating a character is always a pretty hard choice for some people...
Should u go for the most stylish one? Or maybe the most useful one for the class? But then again which is the most useful? And how much bonus do i get from choosing it?
To make things easier i will shortly display the advantage of choosing the 2 more useful races - for clerics:
Rank 1: Human
Those 3 additional heroic Feat points are very useful for a cleric. Effective Gains from choosing this:
+ 2 Wisdom
+ 3% Defense (ratingbased)
+ 3% maxHP
+ 6% Divine Power gained
Rank 2: Half-Elf
This time the bonus gained is more obvious since it doesn't depend on the feats u choose. Gains:
+ 2 Wisdom
+ 2 Constitution
+ 1 Intelligence
+ 1% Critical Severity (effective bonus, not related to ratings)
+ 1% Deflection Chance (effective bonus, not related to ratings)
Dwarf is semi-useful as well and excels in PvP environment... Everything else lacks in a competitive sense. However for min-maxing Human or Half-Elf is definately the way to go while the difference between those 2 is SO small it doesn't even really matter.
As for the Ability Score Rolls go for the 20 Wisdom 13 Strength 13 Charisma Roll with the 8 on Dexterity (as a Halfelf delete and recreate your Character until u get the +1 Intelligence addition since this can't be seen in the scorerolls...).
As for leveling up put +1 into Wisdom and +1 into Charisma each time you get the choice.
Powers and Theory
To keep things "short" i will just focus on building a cleric that focuses on PvE healing and supporting rather than DPSing or PvPing. Still u can quite usefully DPS with this choice as well since there aren't too many powers u can choose from anyway... Rather than listing every possible power i will just focus on the powers u WILL be using and give some additional information - those that the awesome *cough* tooltips are missing out on.
When skilling make sure to put at least 1 point in every encounter-power or on-will-power... the bonus you receive on skilling more points into 1 thing is only marginal, thus it's good not to miss out on any ability that might come in handy in the future.
Of course every number of Divine Power, Action Points gained or Cooldowns that's written in here is the Basevalue - unmodified by any Feats or Stats.
Skills you should put 3 points into:
At-Will Powers:
Astral Seal:
Autohitting with this is a loss in every aspect - damagewise as well as a loss in divine power generation... However it grants a tremendously useful debuff on the target you use it on. Still you want to use it as little as possible, while still having a high uptime of the debuff on the maintarget your party focuses on. By using 2 additional points into this, you increase the duration of the debuff from 8 to 10 seconds; this increases the interval u need to cast the spell by 25%.
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 1.5% Action Points on every hit.
Hittimer: 1s.
Duration: 10s.
Sacred Flame:
This is the Autohit u will obviously use most of the time - while Lance of Faith would be stronger damagewise, the Buffeffect every 3rd hit grants is a nice addition. This buff grants 50(?)% of the damage dealt with the last blow as temporary hitpoints to all targets in range.
[Not quite sure of the exact percentage here yet - but it definately scales with the damage u deal]
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power on every hit as well as 1% Action Points on the first and 2nd hit, 1.5% on the final hit.
Hittime: 0.75s, 0.75s, 1s.
Encounter Powers:
Sun Burst:
This spell does an average amount of damage and healing... What's awesome about this spell is the amount of divine power and Action Points it generates. Both - divine power generation and Action Point generation - depend on the amount of targets hit by this spell. Although theoretically 10 Targets can be hit with 1 Cast (5 people healed and 5 Monsters dpsed), still the "cap" for Action Point and Divine Power gains is 5.
Thus you gain the full amount if you only hit 5 Monters while not healing anyone in your party with it. You don't get the full amount though by healing you and your 4 party members with the spell though, because it excludes the caster himself from the targetcap.
Also: Overhealing does not count towards the targetcap as well. So you can't push divine power and/or action points with it without effectively healing with the spell (ok u can push divine power anyways by using the talent "Ethereal Boon", but u get the point).
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 5% Action Points for every target hit like explained above.
Casttime: 1s.
Basecooldown: 14s.
Healing Word:
This spell is the best Single-Target Heal we currently got... Still its usage is quite situational. The worst thing about this power is that it does not scale with increased Recharge Speed at all! You can swap this skill out in combat after using 2/3 stacks of it though and it continues to recharge while it is not active in ur Hotkey-Bar, so the best way to use it is to swap it in and out while in combat to use 2 charges every 30 seconds.
This spell grants 12% of a Divine Power Bar (while using a 3p Divine Fortune passive) and 2% Action Points on each usage.
Casttime: 0.5s.
Basecooldown (constant): 15s/charge.
Forgemaster's Flame:
The by far strongest HPS skill that currently exists - hands down. Of course it only heals in Divinity Mode and it almost shouldn't ever be used while not in Divinity Mode, since the amount of Divine Power or Action Points it grants is neglectable. Used in Divinity Mode it radiates twice the base-damage dealt by the DoT as healing for every player standing relatively close to the target. The debuff lasts 5 seconds ticking once per second.
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar and 5% Action Points per usage.
Casttime: 1.5s.
Basecooldown: 18s.
Duration: 5s.
Prophecy of Doom:
An awesome spell to get Action Points. If used correctly in a Fight with many adds (so yeah - always?) and combined with Sun Burst a single Cleric can achieve a 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground - which is more beneficial than anything else u could possibly do.
Only put it on adds though that you are sure of to be dead while the debuff is running - u don't ever want to proc its damage or use the weak debuff cause its Cooldown is way too long for a "normal" usage. If u have enough Divine Power to spare it is useful on this spell, but it's not required. This one is also an awesome Switch-In for Healing Word once in a while.
This spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar on usage as well as 12.5% Action Points if a Monster dies while debuffed with it (25% Action Points if cast with Divinity Mode).
Casttime: 1.5s.
Basecooldown: 28s.
Divine Glow:
The best support spell there is for the cleric. Really! This one is awesome! It can be used diversely; for once it is a useful Divine Power builder if it hits enough targets and passively reduces defenses of every target hit by 15% for 8 seconds. If u spend Divine Power on it instead of trying to build it up, this is where it really gets awesome... If ur party positions well u can hit ur primary target as well as every Damagedealer with it, effectively granting both, a 20% damage Buff on your party for 8 seconds as well as the -15% defense on the target; all while dealing a quite moderate amount of damage - what more can u ask for?
If used out of Divinity Power Mode this spell grants 10% of a Divine Power Bar as well as 3% Action Points for each target hit (up to 5).
Casttime: 1s.
Basecooldown: 18s.
Astral Shield:
Currently an immensely overpowered spell, never to leave the Hotkeybar... It grants 24% damage reduction for every person within the circle as well as providing a healing effect that ticks once a second if it is used in Divinity Mode - which should be the case 100% of the casts on this, since the heal is very strong... Additionally each tick of the heal provides the Foresight passives Damage Resist Buff to everyone.
This spell grants 10% Action Points on every use in Divinity Mode.
Casttime: 1s.
Duration: 15s
Basecooldown: 22s.
Passive Powers:
Healer's Lore:
Since it plainly increases your healing not too bad of a choice, but i personally don't always use it since more protection from damage is stronger than more healing in general.
Divine Fortune:
A must-have in some Skillsets to build up enough Divine Power, else neglectable.
Foresight:
An all-time use passive as a healer just put it in ur Hotkeybar and never switch it out again. It provides flat 11% damage reduce currently - maybe bugged, maybe intended, u can't know for sure on this game anyways...
Just use it for now.
Sooth:
Maybe useful once threat gets fixed... but since u don't need much else just get this and save money for a respec in the future when u might need it.
Daily Powers:
Hallowed Ground:
This provides a 30% Buff to Damage dealt and makes your whole party receive 30% less damage for 15 seconds in a very large area, all while healing 5% to everyone in it every 3 seconds... Bring ur uptime on this as high as possible.
Divine Armor:
An "emergency" spell or recommended if u play with 2 clerics for overkill damagereduce. Casting this grants every ally affected by the spell 40% damagereduce for 18 seconds. It also grants 30% of your maxHP as temporary Hitpoints to everyone, but this is almost neglectable when using this... Since everything on Damagereduce stacks further and further this is where it gets <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>! With double Astral Shield, 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground as well as 100% uptime on Divine Armor u almost can't die to anything...
Other Points:
Spend everything else that's left with the points in personally preferred Powers, but like i already said it is really useful to give every At-Will or Encounter Power at least 1 Point to not completely miss out on it if u want to use it in a certain situation for once...
I am well aware that you need to spend additional points to "reach" those skills i mentioned, but there as well just take whatever you think might be useful for your style when soloing stuff or PvPing.
Heroic&Paragon Feats
After starting to write like 2 pages of theroycrafting to this and being far from finishing i decided to redo this and shorten it up by an enormous amount.
Why?
Because the choices of what to skill are quite obvious and it doesn't matter that much to know why u are skilling it in the end (at least until other Paragon trees are released - maybe i will redo this section by then)...
For now i will just list how to use those Feat-Points as a human and non-human likewise, just like XX people did before me (although some guys' guides had some obscure choices there up to now Oo).
Heroic Feats:
Greater Fortune 3/3
Toughness 2/3 [3/3 human]
Weapon Mastery 3/3
Domain Synergy 5/5
Repurpose Soul 3/3
Bountiful Furtune 3/5 [5/5 human]
Templar's Domain 1/5
Paragon Feats:
Enduring Relief 5/5
Benefit of Foresight 5/5
Invigorated Healing 5/5
Moon Touched 5/5
Greater Divine Power 1/1
Divine Advantage 5/5
Ethereal Boon 4/5
Rising Hope 1/5
Some words to those choices:
- 1 point in Templar's Domain may seem awkward, yet the procchance multiplies with the number of target's hit, resulting in a decent uptime on the buff - which is therefore more beneficial than 3% Divine Power Gain once you start getting some ArmorPenetration on your Gear.
- 1 point in Rising Hope is very useful - it has a ~60% uptime with a single point - awesome.
- HP is definately way more benificial than the Feat "Healing Action".
- Divine Advantage is to be preferred over Righteous Rage of Tempus, since Monters can gain Combat Advantage on players by them being knocked down for example. The additional divine power may seem cool, but you usually u don't run out of divine power anyways if u play correctly (definately not as a human), so this possibility is the better one.
Basestat Values
As far as Statvalues are concerned i created a little Spreadsheet on scalings...
All those values ofc aren't 100% correct because rounding is a serious issue if the game can only display a single fractional digit ( ... serious stuff... ).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArQraPDl2LqgdG5sT1JPRFlQeHFXdmR3NHFGeTNzZHc#gid=2
What can easily be seen is that deminishing returns kicks in VERY early and quite "strong"... therefore most stats are viable until like ~2200-2600 rating and then start to lose their effectiveness extremely rapidly.
The goal for a Cleric focussing on pure "offensive" stats right now is this:
Softcap Recovery > Crit up to ~2200 > Power > more Recovery >/= more Crit
The "Softcap" for Recovery is my definition for being able to have a 100% uptime on Astral Shield. To be able to get that safely you need ~34% Recharge Speed. The amount of Recovery u need for that is of course heavily dependant on the ability scores you have chosen...
Easy Formula: ( Charisma + Int - 20 + [Rechargespeedincrease by Recovery] ) >/= 34
After that "Softcap" and getting ~2200 Crit u should focus on Power. Then you could stack more Crit or Recovery while the values on both stats should increase by around the same amount from there on to keep the deminishing returns as "low" as possible.
Also you could decide on focussing on a bit more of defensive stats after getting the softcap and enough crit. Personally i even like that style more; playing a Cleric with the broken Threatlevel, a few hundred points of flat "defense" are useful as well on slots like Amulet, Rings or Belt instead of Crit or Recovery.
I will write more information on how to play as a Cleric in PvE in the days to come... (might update PvP later if PvP gets interesting....)
So far,
Lanlin
<genuine>
Post edited by lanlin on
0
Comments
/10 char
1. Forgemasters debuff does not last 10 seconds. It lasts 5 seconds and ticks each second.
2. ARP scales incredibly well comparatively and we have a feat to increase it by 30%. I was surprised when you didn't rank it under your offensive suggestions.
Other than that, very informative post. Well done.
Hum, yeah i got mixed up on that one should have read this one or two times before posting wrong stuff...
Thanks on the close read though ./updated on Forgemaster's Flame.
While ARP has good scaling overall since a cleric can't even stack enough of it to get hit hard by the DR (at least while wearing "useful" gear), in terms of healing it only buffs FF. In fact like i wrote at start this guide is not about DPSing with a cleric, so i ignored heavy ARP-Stacking for now. Also ARP scales incredibly awkward on low values (<1000) so having very little of it doesn't achieve much...
Still with the way stats scale in this game it should be way more interesting with some more gear (in next contentpatch maybe), which is why i recommend that single Heroic Feat point in Templar's Domain.
@surged28
While maxing brand of the sun is a viable option in some cases, so are other Power-Choices in other cases. I intentionally only listed those that no Cleric should miss out on maxing; everything else depends on the player and personal preferances.
True that - IF it would do what the Feat says... Currently it does not and is yet another bug that needs fixing (which could be both... maybe the tooltip is uselessly written OR it doesn't do what it is supposed to do).
For now it effectively does reduce incoming damage by 11% though.
Also, have you used astral shield since whatever was the last patch? If so, is the duration still 15 seconds? or is it 10 seconds?
Cleanse is actually incredibly useless in the current state of the game... just don't use a point on that.
Also i don't know what patch you are talking about Astral Shield hasn't been changed at all.
@wixxgs1cht
Crit is like you said for one part a damage increase (not what you aim for generally but not bad either), on the other part though it also increases Critchance with your healing spells. While AS for instance can't crit - HW, FF and SB can... therefore it does boost cleric healing by a good amount until the heavy DR kicks in. What's in fact bad about crit is it being unreliable, but since there currently is no secondary stat besides Recovery and Crit, that our healing actually benefits from you just take it - easy as that.
power increases healing, but, its very minor. iirc, 25 points of power is 1 more point of healing, or, somewhere around there.
and to whoever asked about crit: DoT/HoTs (and spells) work differently in this game. if one part of your DoT/HoT or AoE crits, the ENTIRE thing crits. that means if the first tick of healing word, for example, crits, every single tick over the duration will crit, 100%; every enemy effected by flamestrike/daunting light will be crit, etc.
that makes crit very useful.
Power DOES increase the healing power - but nevertheless power is not that strong of a stat ain the beginning...
It gets stronger with the more Gearscore you get because your overall stats will rise, yet everything but power has deminishing returns kicking in. Power (for now) does not deminish at all, which is why once you have those 2 "softcaps" (ok Crit isn't really a softcap but whatever, let's just name it one) on the secondary stats you should definately focus on raising power over other stats.
I will do a Spreadsheet on powerscaling soon, so it will become more obvious to everyone interested why this distribution of stats makes the most sense (again - as the game is currently... may change after "open beta" - won't elaborate on this here because i don't want this thread to be another one soaking up all that hate but definately one thing is for sure: The meaning of the term "open beta" has changed for the worse in these last 2 years in general - not only this game).
Sorry i was just about writing an answer myself and didn't refresh to see yours in between. In fact powerscaling works a little different, since every spell is connected to scale off weapondamage and power itself increases weapon-average-damage.
To your explanation about crit though - the one-time initial inquiry of whether a crit has been invoked or not is a different mechanic of course and changes the playstyle...
What it does not though is make Crit stronger or better directly; the only thing that is changed is that both, healing and damage, from HoTs or DoTs respectively is conveyed rather "bursty".
While it may seem awesome to experience a rolling spellcrit, if u do not crit initially with it you are missing out on the chance to crit with following ticks.
In total that makes crit a little worse stat for healing (cause you don't want your healing to occur "bursty" without being able to control it) and a little better stat for DPSing (cause Monsters sometimes die before the last ticks occur [excluding PVP - there it just is 10x better for DPSing since it raises your Burstdamagelimits enormously]). The difference PvE-wise is marginal though.
Yet most importantly: The average value in healing or dpsing does NOT change mathematically.
Last but not least - i like your accountname
One thing I am curious about is, is WIS really worth it? Both STR and CHA give other bonuses that aren't their main stat whereas Wisdom gives what on the side? Control Resistance? I don't think I've ever seen that do anything/be useful.
What you are stating is correct, the bonus by Charisma and Intelligence on the CD-Reduce is independant from Recovery.
That being said Wisdom is still the strongest Basestat by far...
@two30
I will clarify this in my post thanks for your support!
Is there a quick way (hotkey) way to do this? It seems like it would take too much time to open up the powers screen and drag a new power in and then drag this back in.
So any advice on a good set of armor would be great
Could you explain how it is better?
As far as I know the stats break down as such
Wisdom gives
+1% damage (diminishing returns)
+1.33% healing (diminishing returns)
+1% Control Bonus (not sure if this even does anything)
+1% Control resistance (not sure if this even does anything)
Strength gives
+1% Critical Chance (~flat)
+1% DoT defense (Exponential)
+1% Stamina Regeneration (Exponential but not useful unless you can really out sprint who is behind you)
Charisma gives
+1% Recharge Speed (Exponential)
+1% Action Points (?, either way more dailies which includes Hallowed Ground, very significant daily)
+1% Combat Advantage (Diminishing returns and less constant than damage)
+1% Companion Stat Bonus (... pointless in PvP and Skirmishes of course)
So what I don't get is how is 1.33% healing which is a diminishing effect better than recharge speed which isn't. And action points in my opinion is going to be better than damage hands down. I get that additional recharge is pointless when you hit one of two points, the first as you said that you are capable of handling 100% uptime on major abilities like Astral Shield and the second being that you aren't able to build divinity fast enough to keep up with recovery. But up until that point I don't see how Wisdom is better? My earlier point was that if you are stating Charisma that you need less recovery.... by the work shown on those spreadsheets that's saving a lot of recovery that could instead going into critical or power.
That's quite a lot of things at once there
1. Cleanse is utterly useless right now in PvE and only marginal useful in PvP (if you get some luck) because in PvE those "negative effects" don't even exist for most Fights so far - so there's nothing to remove as well.
Now let's assume the case it does exist though; for now every single DoT or Debuff in this game (PvE-wise) that can be applied to a player does neither last longer than 8 seconds nor seems to be very dangerous... Thus the need of them being dispelled is just not there.
Now let's even assume there was a Debuff that is truly detrimental to a player in PvE; Cleanse uses the same initial inquiry that Crit does, therefore you only got the chance of removing a Debuff once with every Spell, not for every tick (excluding Heal done by Soothing Light since every Tick from the channel is considered a "spell" itself). With the chance for a dispell being at 30%, in order to dispell the debuff with >80% chance u would already need 5(!) spells cast on a target and then it is still possible u didn't dispell the debuff yet...
What u can obviously see is that even with all those assumptions it still is not viable since the target would already be dead before you can dispell it, if there was a debuff that is actually dangerous -> useless.
2. There is always a way to do stuff by makroslots on your keyboard of course - still the usage of those 3rd party programs is not really legit. Personally i do change it manually and it works fine if u get some routine into doing it.
3. Foresight DOES stack but not for double the damage reduction. Damagereduce is calculated consecutively of course, not everything just stacking up.
So let's say you got 35% damagereduce by defense, another 24% by AS, another 24% by a 2nd AS, 30% by Hallowed Ground, 11% for Foresight 1, 11% Foresight 2 and 40% by Divine Armor (thus everything you should almost constantly have with 2 Clerics in a party), you will receive ~12.5% of the original Damage - pretty overpowered huh? :P
@edwardloxar
To start things off you should get 2 of those 2piece sets.
So for example the cheapest way to do this is to wear the 2p PvP set including Helm and Boots as well as the 2p T1 set "Sacred Hand" including Gloves and Boots. As you progress in Gearlevel u should aim for a second T1 2p for example with the "Divine Emissary" set, or aim directly for a T2 2p set (while not losing the other T1 setbonus ofc).
With T2 go for "Miracle Healer" 2p preferrably right away and finally finish up the 4p on the "Miracle Healer" set, since that one is stronger than the stats in the end.
You should refrain from wearing anything but setitems in those slots in general, since the stats from that 2p/4p setbonus are just too strong to ignore.
Cleanse is currently bugged and incredibly strong. Put 1 point into it. Put plaguefire on your weapon. Go to target dummy. Cast Astral seal on target dummy and then auto attack. You will get cleansed immediately of the Plaguefire as it is applied.
It makes it incredibly frustrating in pvp since we have incredibly strong dots.
Ok for one thing I'd gladly know how you get the idea that Ability Scores are affected by any kind of DR - those are static values, unaffected by whatever stats you aim for.
A single point of Wisdom constantly grants you 1% damage and 1.33% healing...
One point of Strength nets out in 1% more Crit and therefore is a theoretical gain of 0.75% heal and 0.75% damage (being a non-Halfelf and not using a vorpal enchantment). IMO other benefits of strength are neglectable.
The bonus from Charisma being 1% Recharge Speed & 1% Action Point Gain is a bonus that can't be simply netted out in percentages; since every ability you can effectively heal with is an Encounter-Power 1% Recharge Speed theoretically equals 1% healing if u spam those CDs...
Just there is 2 concerns with this,
the first one being that our strongest spell AS can already be spammed with the softcap - so what you are achieving is lowering the softcap on a stat that you should have on almost every single part of equipment anyways. Thus you will outgear this softcap in T2 gear easily, even if you are not even aiming for it specifically.
The second concern is that i personally don't always find myself spamming every spell right when it gets off cooldown except AS; thus the net gain further decreases a little below the 1% mark.
Effectively i'd say 1 point of Charisma equals about 1 point of Strength in terms of net healing increase. What it does additionally though is increase Divine Power Gain indirectly as well as increase Action Point Gain directly AND indirectly.
While these additions are nice to have - which is the reason why 1 point of Charisma is stronger than 1 point of strength - you should not need that additional Divine Power (which also is extremely marginal) and you can't use that increased Action Point Gain in Bossfights usefully if you (and your group of course) are playing correctly since you already got that 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground just by stacking enough Recovery for the "softcap" like explained in my original post.
Thus Wisdom is still the greatest benefit for a single Ability Score Point.
Sorry but i don't know about this bug and i also don't understand what you are trying to state. Care explaining this a little more lenghty?
I'll try. Basically it procs at 100% despite how many points you put into the cleanse feat. It also considers astral seal as heal and will proc every time you do damage to the target. Since there is no range check on the AS heal, your entire team will be cleansed instantly if they are attacking. Or you can manually cleanse with 100% chance using sun burst. The initial application of astral shield also works, but not the subsequent heals.
You may be correct there are not a lot of debuffs that need to be cleansed, but there are enough and especially in pvp.
I've pretty much dropped the ability because I hate bugged mechanics, but have reconsidered it as a means to cleanse the high prophet armor shred debuff that is bugged and gets applied to me. Kind of a bug canceling out another bug situation.
Oh, and one more thing. The astral seal heal procs on dots, so you will get cleansed passively as well if you put up dots.
Since i didn't do a lot of PvP i missed out on this bug, yet i still think Cleanse isn't really useful PvE-wise. For PvP i have to say i hate people using bugs to an unfair advantage may it be a setbonus, ability, whatever...
Like when everyone knew those Gamecrashes that appeared with the use of smokebomb i literally hated every rogue for using it - that's like an unspoken rule imo; if you completely ruin the game experience for others (and by making their client crash you really do exactly this) by using something, just don't...
Same goes for this, not to the same extent maybe but yeah you get the point.