@realr3sistance
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...
I thought Ability Scores are Cumulative. So that +5% Damage from Wisdom would be 105% and not 105.1% (or 105.10100501 to be more precise). By a +10 you've already lost over 4% of the effect from diminishing returns. On the flip side recovery is the reverse effect, so that you are subtracting from a base number, if it were a cumulative effect by +5% you've actually decreased your cooldown by 5% but if it were recalculated for every 1% you'd only lose ~4.9%. So again from it be a gain of over 4% by the time you got to +10.
To try and put that into more simple words as that isn't a clear explanation. The difference between 100 to 101 is 1% but the difference between 200 to 201 is only 0.5%. That is a diminishing return whereas on the flip side the difference between 50 and 51 is 2% however by the point of 25 against 26 that is a difference of 4% and so that is an exponential gain.
EDIT:
another way to think about this is if you had a base heal of 100 and you had a 10% modifier you would heal for 110 and if you had a 20% modifier you would heal for 120% but the difference between 100 to 110 and between 110 and 120 is not the same in terms of actual percentage healed since 110 is 10% larger than 100 but 120 is around ~9.2% larger than 110. Even tho the amounts increase constantly the actual return is a diminishing improvement in the end. It is not a +10% and then another +10% which would actually be 121 rather than 120.
The reverse of the above is that while 90 is a 10% loss from 100, 80 is actually a ~11.1% loss from 90.
@realr3sistance
What i think you are talking about is not the "deminishing returns" that is used generally used as an MMO-specific term.
Of course you got a single calculation for all points on wisdom at the same time so going with 26 wisdom does not grant you 1.33% more healing than going with 25 wisdom but 1.33% more of the basehealing unaffected by wisdom - as for every point beyond 10 before. If it was not like this it would multiply within itself, completely braking any scalings...
It's not like you are "losing out" on something - it's just scaling on a single inquiry with the basevalue.
If i do get what you wanted to say - I already implied this kind of scaling in my theorycrafting and therefore the outcome is correct.
If that is not what you meant i don't really understand yet what you are trying to explain...
@beldukil
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.
Assuming there is something worth cleansing, wouldn't cleanse have a chance to proc every time you hit a mob with astral seal, every time D astral shield healed, every time you cast sunburst. That seems like plenty of chances for it to proc on a boss fight.
Nevermind. I see this was discussed and they do proc cleanse (except first AS heal only).
@beldukil
Of course there are plenty of chances to actually dispell something (as soon as the spell works correctly though as pointed out a few posts earlier because of that current bug), the problem lies within it being a chance...
Think about it - you get a Debuff on a partymember; for a "safe" dispell (meaning 99%+ chance of having it removed) you need close to 30 spells and/or autohits with Astral Seal applied...
You can't effectively cleanse something you want to cleanse that way - ok maybe you get lucky but if you are not? Nothing happens.
As long as the only way to remove debuffs is implemented that way, the devs can't give any PvE Monster a debuff that actually hurts. Consequently with no dangerous debuffs existing you don't need the talent.
Also Astral Shield only can cleanse with the initial tick when setting it up, every follow-up tick cannot proc it.
I've been thinking about this for a while but instaid of stacking defense as "defensive" stat wouldn't stacking max hp reap more benefit?
As far as i'm aware, damage *reduction* works with diminishing returns, meaning the more you have, the less impactfull your hallowed ground/astral shield and foresight become. If you'd stack hp on the other hand which has no diminishing returns(as far as i'm aware), you'd increase your own survivability while increasing the healing on yourself(concidering current threat mechanics, not a bad idea) aswell as with 4p miracle healer set, increase your overall throughput on everyone WHILE increasing your survivability.
I'd even dare to say(concidering the above logic as i haven't been able to test this out myself), it'd potentially be better then stacking recovery/crit aswell as power above certain breakpoints(aka 15 second AS cd through recovery and about 2200 crit) and whatever power you get is nice but it should never get a benefit over maxhp/defense because of diminishing returns with a high wisdom roll which does have diminishing returns.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this subject as it seems your trying to look at "best stats" from a mathematical standpoint which i can appreciate ^_-
you need close to 30 spells and/or autohits with Astral Seal applied...
A previous poster wrote "It also considers astral seal as heal and will proc every time you do damage to the target." So even if the 100% bug is removed, every hit will have a 30% chance to cleanse.
I've been thinking about this for a while but instaid of stacking defense as "defensive" stat wouldn't stacking max hp reap more benefit?
I can think of two reasons to go for defense, the 1st is that Higher HP but lower defense is harder to heal than Higher Defense but lower HP. The 2nd is that the effectiveness of Damage reduction increases the more you have of it and so while the defense stat may have diminishing returns the effectiveness of it may not actually be reduced by that. Say you have 25% damage reduction and you get an effect that increases your total damage reduction by 25% (so you have 50% total this is) you have cut your total received damage by a 1/3rd. However if you gained a total damage reduction of 25% when you had a total of 50% damage reduction already (taking you to a total of 75% damage reduction), you'd cut your total received damage by half!
The one thing I can see going in the favor of MaxHP is there are a few abilities that by-pass or reduce armor... thinking mainly of a certain Rogue Daily attack.
@realr3sistance
What i think you are talking about is not the "deminishing returns" that is used generally used as an MMO-specific term.
Maybe, even so, each point of wisdom is basically weaker than the proceeding point in terms of how it all scales where as a point of Charisma is stronger than the previous point.
If you wanted to choose hp gear for a boss fight, you would need to increase hp enough so that the amount of additional hp was more than total loss in damage mitigated during the entire fight. In other words, if you gain 1000hp, but lose 1200hp in mitigation over the course of the fight then more hp was not a good choice. If you gain 1000hp and lose 800hp in mitigation over the entire fight then it was a good choice.
@beldukil
yeah - i wrote that... still it's only a chance.
@tabisia
Your theory is basically correct, as gear will gain more and more stats you will eventually go for some maxHP from a defensive point of view. For now though i dont consider it useful on any other slot than the belt.
The DR on damage reduction that you mentioned there is effectively not a DR, just a mathematical mislead... Damage reduction stays at the same level of usefulness - how much of it you stack is completely irrelevant. If you gain another 10% damage reduction and you are already at 90% damagereduction, your overall damage reduction only increases from 90% to 91%; this may seem useless... However it is still 10% less damage received than you would without that 1% additional overall-reduction.
See the catch? :P
What does have a DR though is the "defense" stat itself, which is why as soon as you get hit too hard by its DR you will switch to getting maxHP over defense at some point... with current gearlevels though you can't quite reach that point yet.
@realr3sistance
I would appreciate if you read what i did write there... I might have misunderstood what you were initially referring to, still what you are saying now is just wrong. It is not "weaker" or "stronger" at any time - it definately stays the same bonus for every point you get... you are making assumptions of how it could scale; but just because it effectively does scale differently it does not change the value of it obviously. What was the same stays the same...
@beldukil
That assumption you are making would only be correct if for the whole fightduration you would never ever get back to 100% HP - a very unlikely scenario. MaxHP is a viable defensive stat, just not as strong as defense as long as it doesn't deminish hard enough.
Thank you for taking the time to generate the numbers on the DR of different stats! Also for putting together the exact numbers on Divinity/AP gain and the buffs on HG and others.
Most of what you said I agree with 100% but there's a few things I'm not so sure about.
Race: I still say tiefling is a good choice. The +2 cha/+2 Int is fairly potent, it's 4% recharge speed. Aslo the debuff when you get hit is quite strong. Finally the extra damage on enemies below 50% seem useless but it would directly affect Repurpose Soul.
Stats: I'm just not a fan of stacking wisdom that high. Especially not at the expense of strength/charisma. The crit, but more importantly the stamina regeneration, from strength is valuable. As is the AP gain and recharge speed from charisma, which is unaffected by DR. I'll have to wait and see the results on the my 'build in progress' before I really make any absolute statements about stats though.
Abilities: Divinity cast Divine Glow is bugged and reduces damage you and your party do. I'm also not a fan of Prophecy of Doom but that may be down to my failings in its use rather than the ability itself. It is situational at best though since many boss fights in T2s you simply aren't killing that many, or any, adds.
Feats:
- Domain Synergy: I'm really not a fan of this at the moment. 5% more recovery isn't actually that useful because of the way DR works. It's pretty much guaranteed to never get you even a full 1% recharge speed increase.
- Templar's Domain: I've never tried this because I always assumed it added XX% to your existing armor pen and I keep my armor pen at 0. If it adds 30% armor penetration (like flat % of armor penetration rather than adding a % of your stats, didn't occur to me this might be the case) that would be great. Perhaps you could shed some light on this?
- Divine Advantage: Sounds good on paper, doesn't proc off Forgemaster's Flame, Astral Shield, Astral Seal, or Sun Burst when I tested it a few weeks ago. The fact that it doesn't proc off any of our GOOD AoE heals led me to conclude it's a waste of 5 points because the up-time is next to zero.
- Rising Hope: Requires 2 points for near 100% up time.
Otherwise as I said I think it all looks great and thank you for producing those math-y numbers. I may have some other comments to make about cleric builds soon, but for now more testing is required!
Not only because I love my crits, but because even with 25 STR, I still can't count the number of times I need 2% more stamina to make that much needed dodge. Like Unspecified, I really appreciate all your mathematical input, but I feel real fights differ from theoretical scenarios.
As for Domain Synergy.... I know it's a minimal gain, but the only other choice is points into Healing Action, which may or may not work on anything but Healing Word, and may or may not add 5% AP.
@unspecifiederror
Personally i am not a fan of tiefling; while it is not bad it is missing out on a little of the power Humans and Halfelfs got. Won't elaborate on this much more since i did overall mathematics on this; for overall offense-only stats it is the strongest by a very small magin, once again the reason for this is that you can't effectively make use of the full bonus you get from that rechargespeed. Taking everything those races offer into consideration though you get back to Halfelfs and Humans.
What you said about stats - Wisdom definately is strongest compared 1:1 to both of the other Mainstats. I elaborated on this in some other post 1 or 2 pages back.
In terms of abilities - my Divine Glow works fine Oo I'm serious on this... Your other point - I am aware of those super-cheesy tactics some PUGs are running on those bosses and I am still sad those things are possible because this game would actually be a challenge for most groups it wasn't for those Bugs... Doing all Bosses the way they are intended though, i only found our group not killing too many adds in "The Frozen Heart" Endboss - everywhere else we kill adds in enormous amounts.
About the feats, as far as Domain Synergy is concerned - it is not an awesome feat that's for sure yet it is still the best possible choice of those available.
Templar's Domain effectively does increase by a percentage of your actual stats - which is why it may not seem THAT useful right now... Still i wanted to provide a Spec that doesn't HAVE to be changed with the next contentrelease, since the benefit from not using that single point right now is very small.
Divine Advantage does proc off Sun Burst - just not on urself... Sadly it does not proc on all those other spells you listed since they aren't directly counted as "healing spells".
You could think about that 2nd point in rising Hope though for omitting "Greater Divine Power", yet I'm not too sure if i actually want to do that - i will take some time checking this and maybe update in the mainpost if it proves more useful.
@deistik
Actually i had a look on your guide and was very unhappy with the way you chose to build a cleric because it seemed heavily intuition based and not based on too much mathematical input - which i can't agree with the way i chose to approach things in this game as well as WoW before. IMO for example that critbuild does not serve any purpose at all in terms of pushing healing-output, nor does it increase uptime on Hallowed Ground or anything else you mentioned if you play theoretically perfectly in the first place.
Since everything i do calculate and finally state as proven always implies the one using my guide to do exactly that - play perfectly - it might not fit for everyone though.
Thus just let our guides coexist and let people choose what approach they want to take instead of getting in each others way, agree?
We can agree to disagree. You've mentioned how you have problems sometimes using FF with Divinity. I never have an issue having enough Divinity. 4th pip is a waste of a point, as I now know from experience. I have 100% or very close to 100% uptime on HG. I won't get in your way, but putting down my build (which performs very well) is a slap in my face
@beldukil
yeah - i wrote that... still it's only a chance.
@tabisia
Your theory is basically correct, as gear will gain more and more stats you will eventually go for some maxHP from a defensive point of view. For now though i dont consider it useful on any other slot than the belt.
The DR on damage reduction that you mentioned there is effectively not a DR, just a mathematical mislead... Damage reduction stays at the same level of usefulness - how much of it you stack is completely irrelevant. If you gain another 10% damage reduction and you are already at 90% damagereduction, your overall damage reduction only increases from 90% to 91%; this may seem useless... However it is still 10% less damage received than you would without that 1% additional overall-reduction.
See the catch? :P
What does have a DR though is the "defense" stat itself, which is why as soon as you get hit too hard by its DR you will switch to getting maxHP over defense at some point... with current gearlevels though you can't quite reach that point yet.
I see what you mean and i guess for pure survivability purposes its true, i was just looking at it from an "endgame geared" point of view which would value the healing output aswell as the bonus in survivability with the same stat where as defense would only increase survivability
@deistik
Ok I might have expressed myself a too harshly there so sorry on that one - still i don't see the theoretically proven viability of the build you displayed.
In fact i am reconsidering that 4th pip myself, but for now i do like it in some fights because you can build 1/3 more of Divine Power to burst it out when needed.
That of course is only interesting for heavy usage of Prophecy of Doom in Divinity Mode in those fights because you are kiting around at times and cant afford to be casting that spell too often.
I don't know where i stated though to have problems on using FF with Divinity...
@tabisia
"Endgame Geared" is a very dependable term... while Miracle Healer 4p is the best thing to get right now, maxHP probably won't benefit your healing with Gear to come. At current gearlevels though the greater defensive benefit from defense over maxHP outweighs the small bonus on the healing in my opinion.
Well, I feel like the build you describe will have more base healing, but mine will have more burst healing (crits), and also more Divinity gain (crits).
I feel like the ultimate goal of a cleric is to be able to cast whatever you want in Divinity, whenever it's off cooldown, which I can do. I'm not knocking your build, but I also feel like mine is perfectly viable (as backed up by experience), even if it's not "perfect" on paper.
I honestly find I have so much Divinity, sometimes I can actually use Soothing Light for the hell of it (each crit procs Repurpose Soul).
Does damage from item increase healing as the skills tooltip says or does it follow the numbers on your character stats? Because when I equipped a higher damage weapon . The tooltip of the healing skill increased but the number on my character stats which stats the approx damage/healing decreases.
@realr3sistance
I would appreciate if you read what i did write there... I might have misunderstood what you were initially referring to, still what you are saying now is just wrong. It is not "weaker" or "stronger" at any time - it definately stays the same bonus for every point you get... you are making assumptions of how it could scale; but just because it effectively does scale differently it does not change the value of it obviously. What was the same stays the same...
I think I said it pretty clearly, the difference between 100 to 101 is not exactly the same as the difference between 101 and 102 when looked at as percentages. Recovery reduces cooldown timers and so it works in the reverse fashion. While the gain as a simply number is consistent, the gain as a percentage from one point to the next is slightly diminished for Wisdom but is slightly more exponential for recovery. essentially it is the fact that the bonus is a consistent flat number gain that weakens from one point to the next when looked at in terms of percentages.
In the end I just don't see Wisdom as being all that important, too many things do things by a specific % (after all we are mainly into damage mitigation and not healing which AFAIK Wisdom has no real effect on) and recovery speed is far more important until the point you no longer need additional recovery in my honest opinion and it's easier to get recovery bonus from CHA than the recovery stat as far as I see it. I also see feats tending to favor recovery speed and critical and not power which drives me a bit more into that direction.
1.)
The stat-thing is wrong. Its STR-WIS-CHA, since Crit---->Rest.
That makes dwarf a viable choice, besides playing the coolest race there is
2.)
You want to put Astral Seal on every stronger mob, since most of your partymembers will AoE.
3.) @Sunburst, you should add that you dont use it with Divine Power active. Knockbacks are a pain in the rear in dungeons.
4.)
I wouldnt recommend Healing word at all. Your swap-idea effectively locks an encounterslot for 20 seconds every minute.
5.)
Astral Shield isnt overpowered, in my opinion its one of the few spells actually well balance. I think the rest of our heals just underperform.
6.)
Your thought on Healers lore is right, unless you specced into middle tree.
7.)
Foresight, Im not a big fan of it. I dont think it does what it should. Definitely not as useful as Divine Fortune or Sooth with Threatfix-solution.
8.)
Not 1 point in cleanse? Your kidding me, right?
@deistik
I see that your guide provides a higher chance on healing being bursty, not more bursthealing in a given timespan in general - that being the point you aimed for i can agree with it obviously.
The problem then again lies with it being a chance that is always below 100% and thus being completely uncontrollable. So in the worst case you always do crit if you don't need it as well as don't crit when you are struggling to keep your party alive. Thus stacking all that crit won't help you AT ALL at healing your party once you get unlucky at the wrong time.
The other side of the coin is of course that you might get lucky every time you struggle at healing, making stuff incredibly easier that way.
But then again - can you rely on that?
That's the whole problem with Crit for a Healing Class in any MMO out there - it is just unreliable and may turn on you when you fear it the most. Which is exactly why in my opinion you should not aim for it too much.
I see your point on the Divinity Gain... still like i said, playing the theoretically correct way u should not need it in 95% of all cases; the only cases my statement fails on, is if you want to use Soothing Light a lot (........) or use SunBurst to knock adds away on Cooldown - that is not possible without sacrificing the ability to effectively use Forgemaster's Flame on the 3rd Encounter-Power slot (together with this and AS).
Yet i don't feel like a Cleric kicking adds on CD is a viable option in many cases; plus I really hope that in the next content of this game there won't be any ways to cheese bosses anymore... Kicking adds off every platform is just plainly lame, but since i don't do randomdungeons, i myself at least can thankfully so far clear everything without using cheesy bugs/exploits/tactics.
@annoyingmushroom
Damage from your mainhand does affect your amount of healing by the by far greatest deal on your entire gear - just like with DPS likewise. The tooltip on your healing skill realises that - that being said that tooltip is still useless and displays wrong stuff at times. The number on your character stats though is soloely based on the bonus average weapon-damage that power as a stat grants you and is not the value your spells actually scale from. Instead combine that value displayed with (MinWeaponDamage + Maxweapondamage)/2 to get the basic value that all of your Powers actually scale from (with each spell having a different formula of course).
@realr3sistance
This does not lead us anywhere as long as you either don't get what i am saying or don't acknowledge it. Still i will say it one more time to hopefully end this...
Of course the difference between 100 and 101 is more of a difference than between 101 and 102. YET this is completely irrelevant for the case of determining the value of wisdom.
Look at this here ok?
Let's take you have 20 Wisdom overall. That' a 13.30% overall bonus on healing; so overall you got 113.3% healing of the original value with each single point contributing the same 1.33% as it does not scale consecutively.
Now let's take you have 26 Wisdom. That's a 21,28% overall bonus, again with each single point contributing the same 1.33% to the overall 121.28% healing.
Each point does grant you the perfectly same effect, just the relative effect to a lower overall Widomstats [like comparing 26 to 25 (or 23, 16, whatever)] gets smaller with each point (which is what you pointed out), but that relative value is completely indifferent of each statpoint's "worth".
Also the second point you are making in that last post does not make sense. While damage mitigation is definately the more important part over healing, you can't just plainly neglect the bonus on healing in terms of statpoints since no statpoint helps you increase the damage mitigation you are offering to your party.
So you are suggesting to reach the softcap on recovery by ability scores alone... So what do you do with all that recovery that is packed on AT LEAST every cleric Weapon and set? Erase recovery and get something else for it? That's not possible bro...
I really don't see much benefit to Powerful heals over number of heals, while the bonus is only a consistent improvement I see Wisdom as a diminishing stat since the +1.33% on top of 13.3% isn't a +1.33% over the previous point of Wisdom spent, it is less by that point whereas recovery is giving in my opinion more than a 1% improvement over the previous point spent once you get past 11 Charisma.
I think in the end we are just going to have to agree to disagree. Personally I find bigger benefits from CHA and STR than Wisdom, more so when you get into feats and that's the way I am going to spec because I see number of heals as more important than strength of heals. More heals gives more crit chances and gives several bonuses from feats such as +Divine on encounter recharges and faster action point gain. If you think the larger heals are really beneficial then that's the way you'll stat but it's not the way I am going to stat.
@uvirith1
1) Why do you guys keep running in my post, stating something is wrong when it isn't. Come back once you did the maths on it.
2) You can consider doing this ofc, but in most cases u won't get a high uptime of Astral Seal on more than 2 targets that are finally hit by cleave-abilities, so i prefer to just use it on a target that is sure to be hit and not run the chance on wasting it by applying it on monsters that are not hit by anything in the end.
3) You DO use it in Divinity Mode if u want to use the kick - you don't in every other case... No error here.
4) No it does not - try it and come back after that instead of just stating whatever comes to your mind.
5) I do think the way it does work is overpowered - for example the Damagereduce stacking with a doubled-up zone. Also i don't think our healing does underperform at all... Were it stronger content would be even more trivialised.
6) Well you shouldn't spec that 5 points into Healer's Lore since the other option there is way more viable...
7) Foresight is incredibly strong right now due to the 11% effectiveness (be it bug or not - i don't know), but even if it did exactly what the tooltip said - increase defense by 5% and granting a flat damage reduction of 6% - i'd still recommend using it most of the time.
8) If you want to use it for now cause it is bugged - go for it. I'm not a fan of hugely exploiting things, didn't know of that bug until i wrote the guide and didn't care to update because I'm not a fan of other people using the exploit as well.
Thus - no this thread is very well researched and definately not flawed concerning those issues.
@realr3sistance
How you spec is up to you in the end...
Also i give up on explaining that the statvalue won't change no matter how much points you invest into one because your approach on calculating it is wrong and you won't see that mistake of yours. Relative increases have nothing to do with real values.
Thus i only agree with the suggested agreement to disagree to finish this discussion.
@uvirith1
1) Why do you guys keep running in my post, stating something is wrong when it isn't. Come back once you did the maths on it.
I dont think so....
2) You can consider doing this ofc, but in most cases u won't get a high uptime of Astral Seal on more than 2 targets that are finally hit by cleave-abilities, so i prefer to just use it on a target that is sure to be hit and not run the chance on wasting it by applying it on monsters that are not hit by anything in the end.
The chance of a mob not getting hit is very slim. I definitely like spreading AS as wide as possible.
3) You DO use it in Divinity Mode if u want to use the kick - you don't in every other case... No error here.
I didnt say you made an error here. I just said you should mention that knockbacks are the most anoying thing in dungeons right now and are only to be used in very specific scenarios. Definitely not for building more AP and DP.
4) No it does not - try it and come back after that instead of just stating whatever comes to your mind.
Dont know how your DC works, but mine gets a lock on the HW-Slot when i swap it for FF while the coolown runs.
Besides. Battleswapping skills is way too annoying to be a regular part of gameplay.
5) I do think the way it does work is overpowered - for example the Damagereduce stacking with a doubled-up zone. Also i don't think our healing does underperform at all... Were it stronger content would be even more trivialised.
Your definitely right that Stacking shield is overpowered. But AS with one DC in group is perfectly fine.
6) Well you shouldn't spec that 5 points into Healer's Lore since the other option there is way more viable...
No big fan of moontouched. But thats personal preference.
7) Foresight is incredibly strong right now due to the 11% effectiveness (be it bug or not - i don't know), but even if it did exactly what the tooltip said - increase defense by 5% and granting a flat damage reduction of 6% - i'd still recommend using it most of the time.
OF course its a nice Passive. But I cant imagine running a dungeon without Sooth. So there is no place for it unfortunately.
8) If you want to use it for now cause it is bugged - go for it. I'm not a fan of hugely exploiting things, didn't know of that bug until i wrote the guide and didn't care to update because I'm not a fan of other people using the exploit as well.
What bug? Im not aware of any bug. I just know that cleanse is the most powerful tool of a DC, since most of the mobs use burn or bleed-effects. With the sheer amount of small healing you do through Seal and Shield its simply incredible.
Thus - no this thread is very well researched and definately not flawed concerning those issues.
Flawed may be a strong word. The word I would have said is "subjective". Sory, english is not my native language.
@uvirith1
Ok don't go running into my post then claiming something is wrong when you think it is... because this one is not.
Also 2) may be opinion based, i already stated that i don't see it being beneficial that much. Well i don't write things in my guide that pure logic can add to a person's knowledge so 3) is not my concern. As 4) may seem awkward to use, there definately are situations where u can use this strategy for a grand benefit... Also i would not swap this in for FF, but mostly combined with PoD as i originally stated in my first post, and i dont get a CD on the swap-in. 5) is resolved. With a 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground in Bossfights 6) should be an obvious choice - "Moontouched" all the way. I currently don't use Sooth like you stated in 7) because it does not seem to make any difference, since not only threat generated by the cleric but the whole threatsystem is broken right now. As for 8) read a few pages ahead i already explained cleanse there.
Also a little bit of subjectivity is contained in every guide out there i suppose... Although mathematics stay the same, the conclusions drawn may differ a little, but i do think i only used a well-understandable reasoning on all of my choices.
Moreover i am not a native english speaker myself so if i should express myself wrongly sometimes i apologize for it as well.
Allright, all solved
Except the STR->WILL-thing. As of now you are the only one who says Will is better then Strength. Players even reroll their DCs for more Srength.
Allright, all solved
Except the STR->WILL-thing. As of now you are the only one who says Will is better then Strength. Players even reroll their DCs for more Srength.
This is because everyone is obsessed with those crit builds, which of course they are good, but in no way they are proven to be best, reliable, comfortable to play or easy to get going. It might suit you, or it might not.
This guy is the first one here (I believe) to try different approach and he got some real data and serious research behind his statements (not saying others are just speaking their asses off, but mostly they are).
But lets see how it works out.
I'd say there might be slightly higher heal effect going crit, but for me, it's way more comfortable not to focus on crit so heavily. I like to be well balanced and I like to control the flow of battle. I feel like I can't do this properly using crit focus build...
Comments
I thought Ability Scores are Cumulative. So that +5% Damage from Wisdom would be 105% and not 105.1% (or 105.10100501 to be more precise). By a +10 you've already lost over 4% of the effect from diminishing returns. On the flip side recovery is the reverse effect, so that you are subtracting from a base number, if it were a cumulative effect by +5% you've actually decreased your cooldown by 5% but if it were recalculated for every 1% you'd only lose ~4.9%. So again from it be a gain of over 4% by the time you got to +10.
To try and put that into more simple words as that isn't a clear explanation. The difference between 100 to 101 is 1% but the difference between 200 to 201 is only 0.5%. That is a diminishing return whereas on the flip side the difference between 50 and 51 is 2% however by the point of 25 against 26 that is a difference of 4% and so that is an exponential gain.
EDIT:
another way to think about this is if you had a base heal of 100 and you had a 10% modifier you would heal for 110 and if you had a 20% modifier you would heal for 120% but the difference between 100 to 110 and between 110 and 120 is not the same in terms of actual percentage healed since 110 is 10% larger than 100 but 120 is around ~9.2% larger than 110. Even tho the amounts increase constantly the actual return is a diminishing improvement in the end. It is not a +10% and then another +10% which would actually be 121 rather than 120.
The reverse of the above is that while 90 is a 10% loss from 100, 80 is actually a ~11.1% loss from 90.
What i think you are talking about is not the "deminishing returns" that is used generally used as an MMO-specific term.
Of course you got a single calculation for all points on wisdom at the same time so going with 26 wisdom does not grant you 1.33% more healing than going with 25 wisdom but 1.33% more of the basehealing unaffected by wisdom - as for every point beyond 10 before. If it was not like this it would multiply within itself, completely braking any scalings...
It's not like you are "losing out" on something - it's just scaling on a single inquiry with the basevalue.
If i do get what you wanted to say - I already implied this kind of scaling in my theorycrafting and therefore the outcome is correct.
If that is not what you meant i don't really understand yet what you are trying to explain...
Assuming there is something worth cleansing, wouldn't cleanse have a chance to proc every time you hit a mob with astral seal, every time D astral shield healed, every time you cast sunburst. That seems like plenty of chances for it to proc on a boss fight.
Nevermind. I see this was discussed and they do proc cleanse (except first AS heal only).
Of course there are plenty of chances to actually dispell something (as soon as the spell works correctly though as pointed out a few posts earlier because of that current bug), the problem lies within it being a chance...
Think about it - you get a Debuff on a partymember; for a "safe" dispell (meaning 99%+ chance of having it removed) you need close to 30 spells and/or autohits with Astral Seal applied...
You can't effectively cleanse something you want to cleanse that way - ok maybe you get lucky but if you are not? Nothing happens.
As long as the only way to remove debuffs is implemented that way, the devs can't give any PvE Monster a debuff that actually hurts. Consequently with no dangerous debuffs existing you don't need the talent.
Also Astral Shield only can cleanse with the initial tick when setting it up, every follow-up tick cannot proc it.
As far as i'm aware, damage *reduction* works with diminishing returns, meaning the more you have, the less impactfull your hallowed ground/astral shield and foresight become. If you'd stack hp on the other hand which has no diminishing returns(as far as i'm aware), you'd increase your own survivability while increasing the healing on yourself(concidering current threat mechanics, not a bad idea) aswell as with 4p miracle healer set, increase your overall throughput on everyone WHILE increasing your survivability.
I'd even dare to say(concidering the above logic as i haven't been able to test this out myself), it'd potentially be better then stacking recovery/crit aswell as power above certain breakpoints(aka 15 second AS cd through recovery and about 2200 crit) and whatever power you get is nice but it should never get a benefit over maxhp/defense because of diminishing returns with a high wisdom roll which does have diminishing returns.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this subject as it seems your trying to look at "best stats" from a mathematical standpoint which i can appreciate ^_-
A previous poster wrote "It also considers astral seal as heal and will proc every time you do damage to the target." So even if the 100% bug is removed, every hit will have a 30% chance to cleanse.
I can think of two reasons to go for defense, the 1st is that Higher HP but lower defense is harder to heal than Higher Defense but lower HP. The 2nd is that the effectiveness of Damage reduction increases the more you have of it and so while the defense stat may have diminishing returns the effectiveness of it may not actually be reduced by that. Say you have 25% damage reduction and you get an effect that increases your total damage reduction by 25% (so you have 50% total this is) you have cut your total received damage by a 1/3rd. However if you gained a total damage reduction of 25% when you had a total of 50% damage reduction already (taking you to a total of 75% damage reduction), you'd cut your total received damage by half!
The one thing I can see going in the favor of MaxHP is there are a few abilities that by-pass or reduce armor... thinking mainly of a certain Rogue Daily attack.
Maybe, even so, each point of wisdom is basically weaker than the proceeding point in terms of how it all scales where as a point of Charisma is stronger than the previous point.
yeah - i wrote that... still it's only a chance.
@tabisia
Your theory is basically correct, as gear will gain more and more stats you will eventually go for some maxHP from a defensive point of view. For now though i dont consider it useful on any other slot than the belt.
The DR on damage reduction that you mentioned there is effectively not a DR, just a mathematical mislead... Damage reduction stays at the same level of usefulness - how much of it you stack is completely irrelevant. If you gain another 10% damage reduction and you are already at 90% damagereduction, your overall damage reduction only increases from 90% to 91%; this may seem useless... However it is still 10% less damage received than you would without that 1% additional overall-reduction.
See the catch? :P
What does have a DR though is the "defense" stat itself, which is why as soon as you get hit too hard by its DR you will switch to getting maxHP over defense at some point... with current gearlevels though you can't quite reach that point yet.
@realr3sistance
I would appreciate if you read what i did write there... I might have misunderstood what you were initially referring to, still what you are saying now is just wrong. It is not "weaker" or "stronger" at any time - it definately stays the same bonus for every point you get... you are making assumptions of how it could scale; but just because it effectively does scale differently it does not change the value of it obviously. What was the same stays the same...
That assumption you are making would only be correct if for the whole fightduration you would never ever get back to 100% HP - a very unlikely scenario. MaxHP is a viable defensive stat, just not as strong as defense as long as it doesn't deminish hard enough.
Most of what you said I agree with 100% but there's a few things I'm not so sure about.
Race: I still say tiefling is a good choice. The +2 cha/+2 Int is fairly potent, it's 4% recharge speed. Aslo the debuff when you get hit is quite strong. Finally the extra damage on enemies below 50% seem useless but it would directly affect Repurpose Soul.
Stats: I'm just not a fan of stacking wisdom that high. Especially not at the expense of strength/charisma. The crit, but more importantly the stamina regeneration, from strength is valuable. As is the AP gain and recharge speed from charisma, which is unaffected by DR. I'll have to wait and see the results on the my 'build in progress' before I really make any absolute statements about stats though.
Abilities: Divinity cast Divine Glow is bugged and reduces damage you and your party do. I'm also not a fan of Prophecy of Doom but that may be down to my failings in its use rather than the ability itself. It is situational at best though since many boss fights in T2s you simply aren't killing that many, or any, adds.
Feats:
- Domain Synergy: I'm really not a fan of this at the moment. 5% more recovery isn't actually that useful because of the way DR works. It's pretty much guaranteed to never get you even a full 1% recharge speed increase.
- Templar's Domain: I've never tried this because I always assumed it added XX% to your existing armor pen and I keep my armor pen at 0. If it adds 30% armor penetration (like flat % of armor penetration rather than adding a % of your stats, didn't occur to me this might be the case) that would be great. Perhaps you could shed some light on this?
- Divine Advantage: Sounds good on paper, doesn't proc off Forgemaster's Flame, Astral Shield, Astral Seal, or Sun Burst when I tested it a few weeks ago. The fact that it doesn't proc off any of our GOOD AoE heals led me to conclude it's a waste of 5 points because the up-time is next to zero.
- Rising Hope: Requires 2 points for near 100% up time.
Otherwise as I said I think it all looks great and thank you for producing those math-y numbers. I may have some other comments to make about cleric builds soon, but for now more testing is required!
Not only because I love my crits, but because even with 25 STR, I still can't count the number of times I need 2% more stamina to make that much needed dodge. Like Unspecified, I really appreciate all your mathematical input, but I feel real fights differ from theoretical scenarios.
As for Domain Synergy.... I know it's a minimal gain, but the only other choice is points into Healing Action, which may or may not work on anything but Healing Word, and may or may not add 5% AP.
Personally i am not a fan of tiefling; while it is not bad it is missing out on a little of the power Humans and Halfelfs got. Won't elaborate on this much more since i did overall mathematics on this; for overall offense-only stats it is the strongest by a very small magin, once again the reason for this is that you can't effectively make use of the full bonus you get from that rechargespeed. Taking everything those races offer into consideration though you get back to Halfelfs and Humans.
What you said about stats - Wisdom definately is strongest compared 1:1 to both of the other Mainstats. I elaborated on this in some other post 1 or 2 pages back.
In terms of abilities - my Divine Glow works fine Oo I'm serious on this... Your other point - I am aware of those super-cheesy tactics some PUGs are running on those bosses and I am still sad those things are possible because this game would actually be a challenge for most groups it wasn't for those Bugs... Doing all Bosses the way they are intended though, i only found our group not killing too many adds in "The Frozen Heart" Endboss - everywhere else we kill adds in enormous amounts.
About the feats, as far as Domain Synergy is concerned - it is not an awesome feat that's for sure yet it is still the best possible choice of those available.
Templar's Domain effectively does increase by a percentage of your actual stats - which is why it may not seem THAT useful right now... Still i wanted to provide a Spec that doesn't HAVE to be changed with the next contentrelease, since the benefit from not using that single point right now is very small.
Divine Advantage does proc off Sun Burst - just not on urself... Sadly it does not proc on all those other spells you listed since they aren't directly counted as "healing spells".
You could think about that 2nd point in rising Hope though for omitting "Greater Divine Power", yet I'm not too sure if i actually want to do that - i will take some time checking this and maybe update in the mainpost if it proves more useful.
Actually i had a look on your guide and was very unhappy with the way you chose to build a cleric because it seemed heavily intuition based and not based on too much mathematical input - which i can't agree with the way i chose to approach things in this game as well as WoW before. IMO for example that critbuild does not serve any purpose at all in terms of pushing healing-output, nor does it increase uptime on Hallowed Ground or anything else you mentioned if you play theoretically perfectly in the first place.
Since everything i do calculate and finally state as proven always implies the one using my guide to do exactly that - play perfectly - it might not fit for everyone though.
Thus just let our guides coexist and let people choose what approach they want to take instead of getting in each others way, agree?
Ok I might have expressed myself a too harshly there so sorry on that one - still i don't see the theoretically proven viability of the build you displayed.
In fact i am reconsidering that 4th pip myself, but for now i do like it in some fights because you can build 1/3 more of Divine Power to burst it out when needed.
That of course is only interesting for heavy usage of Prophecy of Doom in Divinity Mode in those fights because you are kiting around at times and cant afford to be casting that spell too often.
I don't know where i stated though to have problems on using FF with Divinity...
@tabisia
"Endgame Geared" is a very dependable term... while Miracle Healer 4p is the best thing to get right now, maxHP probably won't benefit your healing with Gear to come. At current gearlevels though the greater defensive benefit from defense over maxHP outweighs the small bonus on the healing in my opinion.
I feel like the ultimate goal of a cleric is to be able to cast whatever you want in Divinity, whenever it's off cooldown, which I can do. I'm not knocking your build, but I also feel like mine is perfectly viable (as backed up by experience), even if it's not "perfect" on paper.
I honestly find I have so much Divinity, sometimes I can actually use Soothing Light for the hell of it (each crit procs Repurpose Soul).
I think I said it pretty clearly, the difference between 100 to 101 is not exactly the same as the difference between 101 and 102 when looked at as percentages. Recovery reduces cooldown timers and so it works in the reverse fashion. While the gain as a simply number is consistent, the gain as a percentage from one point to the next is slightly diminished for Wisdom but is slightly more exponential for recovery. essentially it is the fact that the bonus is a consistent flat number gain that weakens from one point to the next when looked at in terms of percentages.
In the end I just don't see Wisdom as being all that important, too many things do things by a specific % (after all we are mainly into damage mitigation and not healing which AFAIK Wisdom has no real effect on) and recovery speed is far more important until the point you no longer need additional recovery in my honest opinion and it's easier to get recovery bonus from CHA than the recovery stat as far as I see it. I also see feats tending to favor recovery speed and critical and not power which drives me a bit more into that direction.
The stat-thing is wrong. Its STR-WIS-CHA, since Crit---->Rest.
That makes dwarf a viable choice, besides playing the coolest race there is
2.)
You want to put Astral Seal on every stronger mob, since most of your partymembers will AoE.
3.)
@Sunburst, you should add that you dont use it with Divine Power active. Knockbacks are a pain in the rear in dungeons.
4.)
I wouldnt recommend Healing word at all. Your swap-idea effectively locks an encounterslot for 20 seconds every minute.
5.)
Astral Shield isnt overpowered, in my opinion its one of the few spells actually well balance. I think the rest of our heals just underperform.
6.)
Your thought on Healers lore is right, unless you specced into middle tree.
7.)
Foresight, Im not a big fan of it. I dont think it does what it should. Definitely not as useful as Divine Fortune or Sooth with Threatfix-solution.
8.)
Not 1 point in cleanse? Your kidding me, right?
All in all interesting read, but flawed.
kind regards,
Uvi
I see that your guide provides a higher chance on healing being bursty, not more bursthealing in a given timespan in general - that being the point you aimed for i can agree with it obviously.
The problem then again lies with it being a chance that is always below 100% and thus being completely uncontrollable. So in the worst case you always do crit if you don't need it as well as don't crit when you are struggling to keep your party alive. Thus stacking all that crit won't help you AT ALL at healing your party once you get unlucky at the wrong time.
The other side of the coin is of course that you might get lucky every time you struggle at healing, making stuff incredibly easier that way.
But then again - can you rely on that?
That's the whole problem with Crit for a Healing Class in any MMO out there - it is just unreliable and may turn on you when you fear it the most. Which is exactly why in my opinion you should not aim for it too much.
I see your point on the Divinity Gain... still like i said, playing the theoretically correct way u should not need it in 95% of all cases; the only cases my statement fails on, is if you want to use Soothing Light a lot (........) or use SunBurst to knock adds away on Cooldown - that is not possible without sacrificing the ability to effectively use Forgemaster's Flame on the 3rd Encounter-Power slot (together with this and AS).
Yet i don't feel like a Cleric kicking adds on CD is a viable option in many cases; plus I really hope that in the next content of this game there won't be any ways to cheese bosses anymore... Kicking adds off every platform is just plainly lame, but since i don't do randomdungeons, i myself at least can thankfully so far clear everything without using cheesy bugs/exploits/tactics.
@annoyingmushroom
Damage from your mainhand does affect your amount of healing by the by far greatest deal on your entire gear - just like with DPS likewise. The tooltip on your healing skill realises that - that being said that tooltip is still useless and displays wrong stuff at times. The number on your character stats though is soloely based on the bonus average weapon-damage that power as a stat grants you and is not the value your spells actually scale from. Instead combine that value displayed with (MinWeaponDamage + Maxweapondamage)/2 to get the basic value that all of your Powers actually scale from (with each spell having a different formula of course).
@realr3sistance
This does not lead us anywhere as long as you either don't get what i am saying or don't acknowledge it. Still i will say it one more time to hopefully end this...
Of course the difference between 100 and 101 is more of a difference than between 101 and 102. YET this is completely irrelevant for the case of determining the value of wisdom.
Look at this here ok?
Let's take you have 20 Wisdom overall. That' a 13.30% overall bonus on healing; so overall you got 113.3% healing of the original value with each single point contributing the same 1.33% as it does not scale consecutively.
Now let's take you have 26 Wisdom. That's a 21,28% overall bonus, again with each single point contributing the same 1.33% to the overall 121.28% healing.
Each point does grant you the perfectly same effect, just the relative effect to a lower overall Widomstats [like comparing 26 to 25 (or 23, 16, whatever)] gets smaller with each point (which is what you pointed out), but that relative value is completely indifferent of each statpoint's "worth".
Also the second point you are making in that last post does not make sense. While damage mitigation is definately the more important part over healing, you can't just plainly neglect the bonus on healing in terms of statpoints since no statpoint helps you increase the damage mitigation you are offering to your party.
So you are suggesting to reach the softcap on recovery by ability scores alone... So what do you do with all that recovery that is packed on AT LEAST every cleric Weapon and set? Erase recovery and get something else for it? That's not possible bro...
I really don't see much benefit to Powerful heals over number of heals, while the bonus is only a consistent improvement I see Wisdom as a diminishing stat since the +1.33% on top of 13.3% isn't a +1.33% over the previous point of Wisdom spent, it is less by that point whereas recovery is giving in my opinion more than a 1% improvement over the previous point spent once you get past 11 Charisma.
I think in the end we are just going to have to agree to disagree. Personally I find bigger benefits from CHA and STR than Wisdom, more so when you get into feats and that's the way I am going to spec because I see number of heals as more important than strength of heals. More heals gives more crit chances and gives several bonuses from feats such as +Divine on encounter recharges and faster action point gain. If you think the larger heals are really beneficial then that's the way you'll stat but it's not the way I am going to stat.
1) Why do you guys keep running in my post, stating something is wrong when it isn't. Come back once you did the maths on it.
2) You can consider doing this ofc, but in most cases u won't get a high uptime of Astral Seal on more than 2 targets that are finally hit by cleave-abilities, so i prefer to just use it on a target that is sure to be hit and not run the chance on wasting it by applying it on monsters that are not hit by anything in the end.
3) You DO use it in Divinity Mode if u want to use the kick - you don't in every other case... No error here.
4) No it does not - try it and come back after that instead of just stating whatever comes to your mind.
5) I do think the way it does work is overpowered - for example the Damagereduce stacking with a doubled-up zone. Also i don't think our healing does underperform at all... Were it stronger content would be even more trivialised.
6) Well you shouldn't spec that 5 points into Healer's Lore since the other option there is way more viable...
7) Foresight is incredibly strong right now due to the 11% effectiveness (be it bug or not - i don't know), but even if it did exactly what the tooltip said - increase defense by 5% and granting a flat damage reduction of 6% - i'd still recommend using it most of the time.
8) If you want to use it for now cause it is bugged - go for it. I'm not a fan of hugely exploiting things, didn't know of that bug until i wrote the guide and didn't care to update because I'm not a fan of other people using the exploit as well.
Thus - no this thread is very well researched and definately not flawed concerning those issues.
How you spec is up to you in the end...
Also i give up on explaining that the statvalue won't change no matter how much points you invest into one because your approach on calculating it is wrong and you won't see that mistake of yours. Relative increases have nothing to do with real values.
Thus i only agree with the suggested agreement to disagree to finish this discussion.
Besides. Battleswapping skills is way too annoying to be a regular part of gameplay. Your definitely right that Stacking shield is overpowered. But AS with one DC in group is perfectly fine. No big fan of moontouched. But thats personal preference. OF course its a nice Passive. But I cant imagine running a dungeon without Sooth. So there is no place for it unfortunately. What bug? Im not aware of any bug. I just know that cleanse is the most powerful tool of a DC, since most of the mobs use burn or bleed-effects. With the sheer amount of small healing you do through Seal and Shield its simply incredible. Flawed may be a strong word. The word I would have said is "subjective". Sory, english is not my native language.
Ok don't go running into my post then claiming something is wrong when you think it is... because this one is not.
Also 2) may be opinion based, i already stated that i don't see it being beneficial that much. Well i don't write things in my guide that pure logic can add to a person's knowledge so 3) is not my concern. As 4) may seem awkward to use, there definately are situations where u can use this strategy for a grand benefit... Also i would not swap this in for FF, but mostly combined with PoD as i originally stated in my first post, and i dont get a CD on the swap-in. 5) is resolved. With a 100% uptime on Hallowed Ground in Bossfights 6) should be an obvious choice - "Moontouched" all the way. I currently don't use Sooth like you stated in 7) because it does not seem to make any difference, since not only threat generated by the cleric but the whole threatsystem is broken right now. As for 8) read a few pages ahead i already explained cleanse there.
Also a little bit of subjectivity is contained in every guide out there i suppose... Although mathematics stay the same, the conclusions drawn may differ a little, but i do think i only used a well-understandable reasoning on all of my choices.
Moreover i am not a native english speaker myself so if i should express myself wrongly sometimes i apologize for it as well.
Except the STR->WILL-thing. As of now you are the only one who says Will is better then Strength. Players even reroll their DCs for more Srength.
This is because everyone is obsessed with those crit builds, which of course they are good, but in no way they are proven to be best, reliable, comfortable to play or easy to get going. It might suit you, or it might not.
This guy is the first one here (I believe) to try different approach and he got some real data and serious research behind his statements (not saying others are just speaking their asses off, but mostly they are).
But lets see how it works out.
I'd say there might be slightly higher heal effect going crit, but for me, it's way more comfortable not to focus on crit so heavily. I like to be well balanced and I like to control the flow of battle. I feel like I can't do this properly using crit focus build...