@highropes
Thanks for your support... as for the STR vs WIS thematic, i elaborated on this in a post yesterday i believe so for anyone curious on how they differ in "worth" i will just politely send you back some pages to read the details on this. What i will state again though - from a mathematical PoV wisdom does grant a more effective Healing Gain and a generally more balanced, less bursty healing output...
The advantage strength does grant is the gain on Stamina-Recovery, which is not really needed for current Fights - might turn out differently in the future in other content but then again in my opinion it is more probable not to.
OF course its a nice Passive. But I cant imagine running a dungeon without Sooth. So there is no place for it unfortunately.
So far I've not noticed any difference in using sooth to not using it and others have indicated it is bugged, however cleric threat is bugged over all. Some people have suggested in some threads that it's becoming less of an issue but I haven't really run an dungeons since. I'd actually say that foresight is better for survival than sooth even if it did work properly just because taking less damage = longer life. Cleric being pretty much near a full on AoE class is always going to pull a lot of mobs more so considering that most other classes don't have a plethora of spamable AoE abilities.
Thank you, lanlin, for the most interesting thread I've read on these forums! Great work you've done assembling all of the mathematical underpinnings for your assertions, and defending them.
A note to all my esteemed Cleric colleagues, especially those who have guided me with their wisdom (small "w"), like unspecifiederror and desilyk. I read all their guides and watched all their videos and learned a lot in the process. But one thing that struck me about the early guides is that they were all based on anecdotal observations. That will always be true in the absence of a better way to sample large volumes of data in the early days of a game, but what lanlin has done seems to me a first. He's verified the numbers underlying the assumptions and laid them out for all to see and evaluate on their own what's important, from a PVE healing perspective. This can only help the community. I get the feeling that English is not his native language and so his tone may come across as unduly harsh to some, but I don't think it's intended as offensive. He simply asserts himself pretty directly.
It's common in the early days of a game for great players like unspecified and D to put out guides that reflect their successes, without having the benefit of a complete understanding of the underlying mechanics that would help clarify how much of a contribution is played by their playing skill vs. their numbers and builds. Eventually, someone comes along and does the math and shows how the numbers work and people adjust and then we have the benefit of reducing the variability of the builds and numbers and looking at player skill as the primary contributor to success. I think that's what's happening here and I look forward to the ongoing evolution of the theorycrafting.
Bravo to all of you guys for the most enlightening discussion I've read about this game.
"Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
0
cwiyk13Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 5Arc User
Thank you, lanlin, for the most interesting thread I've read on these forums! Great work you've done assembling all of the mathematical underpinnings for your assertions, and defending them.
...
Bravo to all of you guys for the most enlightening discussion I've read about this game.
Yeah, what regnorvex said! I really appreciate all of the guides and discussions in this forum. They answer the questions that I never knew I had until someone asked and answered them for me.
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).
There are more power clerics in game than you imagine.
@beldukil
I can do that as soon as i get home to login to the game - won't be home before saturday afternoon though (CET timezone) so this has to wait a little, sorry.
As for you other guys thanks for the ongoing support, i will of course try to make this guide better as time progresses, as for now it pretty much only lists pretty simple things i have researched - which should be included in the tooltips of the spells to be honest (like i already mentioned somewhere; yet that seems to be too much work on the Devs' side ) - as well as equally simple conclusions...
While i still have more information to share, i don't yet have figured out a way of conveying that information in an easily understandable way, since listing how people should act in dozens of different cases would be way more likely to create confusion rather than to benefit anyone. Also i don't have much time to continue on this guide anyways in the next 2 days to come since I'm not even at home due to work.
First of all I must say I really love your guide, and it is so far my favorite guide in the forum. I am a big fan of theorycrafting myself, and I quite agree with you on most of your points.
One thing I am not sure about is whether 1 point of Wisdom is always better than 1 point Strength (1% critical) in terms of maximizing HPS. Since critical % suffers from diminishing return, 1% of critical could be better than you think when your gear is good enough. For example, 1% of critical is equal to 140 critical rating when you have 2000 rating, while 1% of critical is worth about 170 rating when you have 3000 rating, according to your spreadsheet. The better your gear, the more powerful 1 Strength point. Critical % is the stat that suffers the most serious diminishing return, which justify rolling a high initial Strength character.
Another thing I wonder is how Power scales to our spells. Spells have their initial damage (that is, even you don’t have any equipment you still deal some damage). This implies that the damage of a spell might have a form of a+b*power, where a and b are positive numbers (I don’t think it is linear, but let’s assume it does for demonstrative purpose). If the number a is large enough, this spell favors critical over Power. Therefore I think it is very important to find out how Power scale with spells before we start the theorycrafting.
All in all, I really enjoy your guide. I hope you can keep updating it if you find anything new. Keep up the good work!
Stamina regeneration is more important than you realize....
It saves my life everyday.
If I majored in Wisdom..... I'd only gain 6% healing increase...
I never been out healed by a Wisdom cleric.
BiS DC Seyfried - PvP / CN farm (Dragon Server) 1st Degree Burns
twitch.tv/redeclipze
0
naamapeikkoMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 25Arc User
edited May 2013
Nice thread here. Made me reconsider burning my respec token to get str/cha instead of wis.
I'm thinking of respecing feats to get rid of that Repurpose Soul which apparently doesn't work with anything but At-Wills at the moment. But probably better to just keep it around in case it gets fixed.
I find it pretty amusing how you don't support using a bugged cleanse while switching encounter powers during combat is fine? :-D
I have a strong feeling they did ability slots so players need to choose ahead which skills to use. Could be wrong ofcourse.
@willytest
In fact like i explained an enormous number of times by now wisdom is always stronger than strength in terms of healing output, deminishing returns does not change anything with that, even if crit had deminishing returns to the point that you need 5000 rating per % of crit, it is still more useful to go for wisdom. It's just indifferent of that.
Btw you are one of the first people to understand this spreadsheet correctly
(although i admittedly have to add it is easy to misunderstand if you don't do a lot of theorycrafting...)
I can tell you how power scales though - its the most simple scaling ever found in a game.
A spells base-formula is basically constructed like this:
[(Weapon-minimum-damage + Weapon-maximum-damage) + average Damage added by power] {*(1+ critical severity)} *X
while X represents a single number with 1 fractional digit at max...
Of course that term {*(1+ critical severity)} only applies to crits...
Also THIS is the reason you can't even cast a single spell without a weapon equipped, as well as the reason that your weapon is like worth 80% of your whole gear in terms of offensive scalings - kinda idiotic imo but well that's how it is.
Also like i said already power is not a strong stat... it gets "strong" eventually though since every other stat is hit by a too hard DR when stacking it while power does not have any DR.
@beldukil
I don't intend to do videos sorry, my vocal english is way too bad to explain something in a non-written way.
@redeclipze
I dunno if those 5% more regeneration really do save you all too often... the difference is barely noticable, also since the stamina bar does not feature a number at all and therefore you don't see as soon as you are able to use the dodge right away and more or less have to guess when it is "ready".
@naamapeikko
I don't understand your reasoning there on both points sorry... I do support skillswapping because it is possible in the game and obviously not a bug, else there wouldn't be a reason to implement that you can't change skills while they are on cooldown.
Also i do not understand that you are thinking about respeccing your ability scores if you went for the correct choice Oo
0
glowyrmzMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Here's a thing that I've been always wondering about: Why does a cleric need crit (other than damage increments)? Does it increase healing powers as well by, say 'crit healing' or something? Sorry for this very basic question but I just started my cleric thus lacking sound gameplay experience to judge from.
Yes heals can Crit. If you hover over your Crit chance it states this. If you look at your feats there is also stuff that increases Crit and also stuff that Procs on Crit.
Question/clarification on the Toughness feat (+ Max HP). It doesn't affect +HP from gear? That's kind of lame, especially since the way it's worded on gear is "+X Maximum HP".
I have 3/3 Toughness for +9% Max HP. If I take off a belt that has +98 HP I lose exactly 98 HP, meaning the Toughness didn't affect it. In other games that have similar mechanics, I would have lost more than 98 because of the feat.
They should reword it to "Increases BASE HP", which would mean whatever you HP is BEFORE gear.
Side note, I think Toughness is more like 10% Max HP, not 9% like it says. Without any HP gear or any buffs, I'm always getting +~10% HP (calculated by hovering over the HP bar on the character sheet.
@willytest
In fact like i explained an enormous number of times by now wisdom is always stronger than strength in terms of healing output, deminishing returns does not change anything with that, even if crit had deminishing returns to the point that you need 5000 rating per % of crit, it is still more useful to go for wisdom. It's just indifferent of that.
The problem I have with your assessment is that it assumes we have heals worth augmenting through Wisdom. We don't.
Your single best "heal" is Astral Shield, we all know that. The thing is that around 350 health per tick is enough to keep anyone inside the AS alive unless they get hit by red stuff. Adding even an extra 5 health per tick to AS isn't going to make ANY significant difference.
What does make a HUGE difference is having AS at a less than 15 second CD, you need reasonable Charisma/Intelligence to get this easily. You need a 33% recharge speed increase to get a 15 second CD. I typed it out in another thread but here's a copy/paste:
With 13 int and 20 cha for a base 13% CD reduction you have to stack up to around 2,500 recovery to get AS down to 15 seconds. The more Int/Cha you have the less item stats you have to devote to recovery to achieve a 32.5% recharge rate and get AS to 100% up-time.
With 12 Int and 15 Cha for a base of 7% recharge rate you would have to stack up to around 4,600 recovery to get the same 32.5% recharge rate. Yes you have to stack an additional 2,100 recovery to make up for a 6% loss in stats even though the first 2,500 gives you 20% recharge rate. As I said, DR hits HARD.
(Btw thank you again for that table showing the DR!)
That's 2,100 stats I could put into something else that I have to devote to recovery just to get the magic recharge rate for 100% up-time on AS which is WAAAAYYYYY more important than any amount of Wisdom could ever be. 2,100 stats could be put into defense, deflect, power, crit, or regeneration (well up to around 1,500 can be) and those stats will be a HUGE boon to you because the RoI is much greater than what you get trying to fix bad base stats.
Edit: Charisma is also responsible for AP gain. Achieving 100% up time on Hallowed Ground is a BIG deal and should be something you strive for. Stacking Wisdom will not help you with this. If you get Hallowed Ground up 100% of the time and feat Moontouched then the 5% heal per 3 seconds trumps your wisdom stacking as well.
Strength has a similar situation with Crit. You seem to vastly underestimate the value of Repurpose Soul. It DOES proc off Sun Burst (not sure about other encounters) and that alone is a really big deal. Repurpose Soul actually makes up a pretty significant amount of the healing a cleric can do in a dungeon.
If we actually had GOOD heals I might be inclined to favour wisdom more but as it stands now I think the standard 'healer' bar is Sun Burst, Forgemaster's Flame, and Astral Shield. Sun Burst is almost a guaranteed crit -> Repurpose Soul in a crowd with decent crit rate. Forgemaster's Flame has healing connected to damage dealt, so the extra +healing from wisdom is irrelevant (+damage still counts), and Astral Shield is about damage reduction before healing. Our other major heals are Astral Seal which is barely affected by wisdom and scales terribly, Invigorated Healing which is max health % based and doesn't care about your wisdom, and Moontouched which is the same % based heal and doesn't care about your wisdom.
You are simply vastly over estimating the real in-game worth of even +5% healing. It really doesn't make much difference to way things play out.
What DOES make a difference is getting ~33% crit and 33% recharge speed and still having gear slots and sockets available to jack up your defense stats so you can handle getting hit.
Theory crafting is great, but you have to go out and test it when you're done. You also have to test alternatives and see what works better.
One more reason for crit/STR: you can do more damage. Healing/dmg reduc outside of Astral shield, seal, and Hallowed Ground is overkill atm. And besides, you can't heal a one shot anyway (Castle Never). Why not speed up the dungeon grind for your group? In most dungeons, I end up doing as much damage as the CWs. While almost every cleric I've played with ends up with half or 1/3 my end damage.
@laccotte
Wisdom also increases damage dealt, so unless you use a greater vorpal enchantment, wisdom also grants you more damage than crit does...
Also having cleared the content by legitimately clearing all bosses there currently exist in the game, i cannot imagine you dealing close to the damage of a CW that is worth running a dungeon with, sorry.
@unspecifiederror
I see your point! - that being said it only makes sense if you in fact are trying to build a cleric with ~2200-2600 defense to be able to soak up some damage...
It is true that the healing a DC gains from wisdom isn't that huge overall (while i still say it grants more healing than any other stat there is... stop discussing on that "strength-roll" finally please - all of you) and you are able to neglect that for now - if you want to that is.
Yet i only see a plausible sense in changing like 2 skillpoints from wisdom to intelligence IF you want to go for that route. I already said you should go for max-out Wisdom/Charisma, so with what my guide displays (being what i use myself ofc) you get to 13 Int 18 Charisma, that is 2 points less than your total in both of these stats.
I do not say you should roll for less wisdom at character creation though, since this way to build a cleric might be an ok-way for now, but will definately become worse as time passes and new content gets added (because you will need every inch of healing - at least i hope that since i hope for difficult content).
Also - like i already said in the answer to lacotte - i have cleared every content that currently exists without using any bug or cheesy method... While i am not the only one to achieve this by now of course, it should definately be enough "testing" it.
So i could waste like 20 million AD (i dont even have close to that much) to try EVERY spec there is you say? No need...
That is the whole point why people do theorycraft in the first place and not try everything out you know? Because it does safe you tons of time not needing to test what you already proved to be worse.
Moreover i really hope for the next content they will release to be not only hard (and less add-dependant), but also free of bugs and ways to exploit...
I did not really enjoy the "race" to kill the boss in Castle Never after all. Leaving aside all the ways to kill it with cheesy tactics, there were groups that did it legit long before us anyways. Yet with being able to start 5 days later and not knowing whether those other groups used hard exploits to gear up, stuff ended frustrating in this content.
Thus, if the next one delivers what i hope for, i will enjoy proving the viability of my way to spec a cleric!
@lanlin: I've been impressed with your data but, in the end, I think that for a guy who appears to be so data driven, you rely too much on your own anecdotal experience to support your arguments. You seem to be arguing that your build will be best for "future content" that you hope for. That's all fine and good, but we have to spec for what is here now, not what *might* come.
Having cleared all content is fine, but doesn't prove anything except that your build is viable. As you yourself point out, many others before you have done it and most without your build. If you would claim that your build is a viable alternative, that's fine. But to insist that your build is "best" and that you have "proven" the point is overstating the case. At the end of the day, I found unspecified's arguments far more compelling and based on existing content and (more importantly) existing mechanics, which are less likely to change over time.
You've made a great contribution to the community and I thank you for that. Your numbers, your provocative and helpful post. I don't think you intended this result, but your biggest contribution has been to confirm the benefits of the builds promoted by Deistik and Unspecified. I'm sticking with my balanced STR-WIS-CHA because it supports existing game mechanics and content, and probably will for a while. And if things change, I will re-spec.
The most compelling argument you made was regarding the difference between consistent healing throughput and burst healing, and that would be more persuasive if crits were too unreliable or if more of our work depended on consistent healing throughput. But, as unspecified eloquently points out, that's NOT the world that NV Clerics live in, and the uptime and procs behind the Deistik/Unspecified approach are more reliable in the end than the more consistent healing throughput of a WIS-focused build.
But thanks for a helluva conversation!
"Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
0
glowyrmzMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
So in a Recovery/STR/CHA centric build, is Healer's Lore useless?
Maybe a silly question but you never know, does any spell that has a healing effect count as a "Healing Spell" in regards to the "Sooth" Class Feature Power? (reduces threat from healing spells by X%, I would assume that means Sun Burst, Forgemaster's Flame, and the like?)
I know it hasn't been recommended because threat is a little wonky when it comes to building it (for tanks) but if it does affect all spells with heals, I feel like we would barely get hit if our threat is lower than everyone else, even if they can't build it well.
@regnorvex
Well i think there will always be guys that just want to argue for the sake of doing it... I won't say all too much, because a definately negative trait i got is that I am not used to being patient with stuff like this.
So you are stating crit is more reliable now than a permanent healing increase?
Oo woot?
So you are stating i am wrong for looking out on future content?
I see - you can do your character creation and level to max/gear again for new content cause you rolled the character wrong then?
Dunno the sense in this... I am not overstating anything for now, because almost nothing i wrote up to here is based on subjective intuition but soloely based on mathematical truths.
I'm pretty sure with this statement i seem like an arrogant ******bag to some, but i never intended this to be the way everyone follows anyway; I just wanted to give those people that really care about absolute min-maxing a place to go, not having 100 people wander in here explaining me stuff that isn't correct.
If you have your opinions - yeah that's perfectly fine;
if you like other approaches or guides more - go for them!
But don't come in here stating things again and again that i already unmisunderstandably contradicted xx times. If you don't acknowledge my contradictions for whatever reason, posting stuff a 100th time won't change reality...
And yeah, that is proven!
One point where we definitely agree, you don't have the patience for this. Very gracious of you to throw insults at those who try hard to argue their points with reason while you just repeat back that you have proven your point and everyone who disagrees is simply wrong.
"Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Thank you, lanlin, for the most interesting thread I've read on these forums! Great work you've done assembling all of the mathematical underpinnings for your assertions, and defending them.
A note to all my esteemed Cleric colleagues, especially those who have guided me with their wisdom (small "w"), like unspecifiederror and desilyk. I read all their guides and watched all their videos and learned a lot in the process. But one thing that struck me about the early guides is that they were all based on anecdotal observations. That will always be true in the absence of a better way to sample large volumes of data in the early days of a game, but what lanlin has done seems to me a first. He's verified the numbers underlying the assumptions and laid them out for all to see and evaluate on their own what's important, from a PVE healing perspective. This can only help the community. I get the feeling that English is not his native language and so his tone may come across as unduly harsh to some, but I don't think it's intended as offensive. He simply asserts himself pretty directly.
It's common in the early days of a game for great players like unspecified and D to put out guides that reflect their successes, without having the benefit of a complete understanding of the underlying mechanics that would help clarify how much of a contribution is played by their playing skill vs. their numbers and builds. Eventually, someone comes along and does the math and shows how the numbers work and people adjust and then we have the benefit of reducing the variability of the builds and numbers and looking at player skill as the primary contributor to success. I think that's what's happening here and I look forward to the ongoing evolution of the theorycrafting.
Bravo to all of you guys for the most enlightening discussion I've read about this game.
regnorvex im seriously jealous at the level at which you can articulate your thoughts, ive always had trouble expressing myself and that post was just extremely well written. Cheers
@lanlin while i basically do agree with your ideology on building a cleric i do think that you are underplaying the importance of crit in order to support your own arguments. The fact is you keep saying that crit is 'bursty ' and unreliable yet you being someone, who is probably better at math then i am for sure, should know that crit is extremely reliable over a large enough data set, and tends to normalize to the average crit listed on the character sheet.
So while crit may be unreliable given a small data set, say a 1 minute fight, it is very reliable over a larger set, say the length of an entire dungeon. If you have 30% crit over the length of a full dungeon you WILL reach 50% more healing on 30% of your heals, whatever that is. (like i said not great at math).
0
zzahhMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited May 2013
Thanks for the info lanlin. I am going to us my respec token and was wondering if you found out anything new or if you can upload a picture of you power/feats. This has been very helpful.
...
So while crit may be unreliable given a small data set, say a 1 minute fight, it is very reliable over a larger set, say the length of an entire dungeon....
omfgvexer's point is one that maybe (I don't have the math to know) you addressed already, but it's a good point.
Thank @lanlin for attempting to reach objective proofs in the middle of a ton of anecdote. It absolutely is appreciated by many people, many of whom likely won't post. Don't be discouraged.
0
mjperkinsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 21Arc User
Best write up (with good follow up) of any class guide on this site. You don't need to explain yourself to any future "nay sayers". The debate is burst versus consistent output. You're build is very similar to mine and your theorycraft revealed a few tweaks I can make to further improve. Keep up the good work for the community.
Sorry for anyone hoping for any updates on this but i decided to ignore this thread for now, maybe i will come back extending it once playworthy content is released and not every randomguy that thinks to be awesome has a guide posted...
This forum is overflowing with guides right now, most of them based on nothing but randomness.
One tells you to aim for 33% crit.... Why even name randomnumbers?
Another one tells you to go full strength.... Why insist on a less-rewarding distribution of stats?
Next one ignores Prophecy of Doom in Powerskills............ What the heck?
...
..
.
I seriously don't know why in this game everyone feels entitled to make their own guides making other people do the same incorrect decisions they made beforehand. Probably because the game so far lacks unexploitable and hard content...
For those who care though - what i wrote in here up to this point is correct so you really don't need to distrust it.
This is not arrogance but plainly a fact; people coming in here sadly may be more versatile in language and express themselves better than me since i am not a native speaker, yet in the end noone can contradict what can be concluded from basic logic.
To me this feels like people are running here trying to convince me 5 is larger than 100 - of course anyone is free to believe that but i'm not sure if it is the wisest choice to make.
One last response to the two latest comments:
While it is correct that a percentage steadily evens out to a consistent bonus if you further and further increase the samplerate, healing is not about "overall" healing (in this game even much much less than in other games), but you have to deliver healing exactly when it is needed;
for instance IF one of your partymembers gets hit by that red zone, it may be awesome to have 5% more crit (if you are lucky that is) or completely useless if you aren't. Also even while looking at "overall" healing Crit is still by far less powerful to aim for than my advice, as i pointed out just a while ago.
I have to apologize to regnorvex though before closing this - you were not the culprit of the anger i built up, just the one that finally received the blow - sorry for my bad personality on this one m8.
lethizorMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
I wish you wouldn't have quit. I was really enjoying this thread, I hadn't posted because I'm not level 60 yet but as a theorycrafter from other games (I was pretty much the first pve disc priest and wrote the disc PVE FAQ in early wotlk for wow when I was fighting people who still believed disc was 'pvp only' [holdover from TBC]) I was looking forward to theorycrafting in this game and I really loved what you had done with your spreadsheeting so far. This was a great project, and I'm sorry about the naysayers Lanlin - your language barrier when expressing yourself was negligible, in no way did you fail to convey your intentions or research. By all means this was a success, a first step in the right direction towards the goals of those of us who want to minmax healing for PVE purposes.
@lanlin: thank you for the gracious apology, I appreciate it and no hard feelings here. I can only imagine the frustration of trying to communicate subtle points of logic in a foreign language and then have to defend them. I could never do it and I applaud your willingness to stand in the arena and fight. It is your passion for truth that drives you, that cannot be a bad thing! I hope you decide to stick around and keep up the debate, it's still the best read in the entire forum. While other people are arguing about wipes and rollbacks, your thread challenges conventional wisdom and strives for truth using mathematics and logic. What a refreshing change!
"Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
One tells you to aim for 33% crit.... Why even name randomnumbers?
Another one tells you to go full strength.... Why insist on a less-rewarding distribution of stats?
Next one ignores Prophecy of Doom in Powerskills............ What the heck?
Since I feel like 2 of those are probably aimed at me I just want to point out, you never asked why. Not once did you come and ask me why I say the things I do. Not once did you ask why my build is the way it is. You seem to have simply decided that your arm-chair theory crafting trumps respeccing and regearing multiple times and running and rerunning every T2 with multiple group comps to test and compare everything I could.
33% is not a random number. It's 1/3 hits is a crit. It is also an easily achievable amount of crit without heavily sacrificing anything else. Again, it's not random at all and Repurpose Soul is amazingly useful and you seem to disregard it completely because you decided wisdom stacking is better.
Prophecy of Doom is a good on paper, bad in practice ability. It is also bugged and doesn't do what it's supposed to. Divine Mode doesn't do more damage. Defense reduction doesn't work. AP gains are marginal and Sun Burst does the same thing only better and more reliably. At which point you are better off having AS and FF on your bar to keep people alive. PoD has no place in practice, only in theory.
As I said several pages back. Theory Crafting is great, but you have to go out and test. You argued you don't have millions of AD to test things. Some of us do, and did. I've respecced probably around 15 times since launch. I've theory crafted, experimented, tested, and retested by running multiple specs and gear loadouts through every T2 with multiple group comps. I may not have the on-paper-awesome of theory crafting to throw around, but I do have experience actually running things and I know what works, what doesn't, and what just produces better results.
Comments
Thanks for your support... as for the STR vs WIS thematic, i elaborated on this in a post yesterday i believe so for anyone curious on how they differ in "worth" i will just politely send you back some pages to read the details on this. What i will state again though - from a mathematical PoV wisdom does grant a more effective Healing Gain and a generally more balanced, less bursty healing output...
The advantage strength does grant is the gain on Stamina-Recovery, which is not really needed for current Fights - might turn out differently in the future in other content but then again in my opinion it is more probable not to.
Fair enough, I just hope there is no hard feelings.
So far I've not noticed any difference in using sooth to not using it and others have indicated it is bugged, however cleric threat is bugged over all. Some people have suggested in some threads that it's becoming less of an issue but I haven't really run an dungeons since. I'd actually say that foresight is better for survival than sooth even if it did work properly just because taking less damage = longer life. Cleric being pretty much near a full on AoE class is always going to pull a lot of mobs more so considering that most other classes don't have a plethora of spamable AoE abilities.
Can you post screenshots of your powers and feats for easy reference? Thanks!
A note to all my esteemed Cleric colleagues, especially those who have guided me with their wisdom (small "w"), like unspecifiederror and desilyk. I read all their guides and watched all their videos and learned a lot in the process. But one thing that struck me about the early guides is that they were all based on anecdotal observations. That will always be true in the absence of a better way to sample large volumes of data in the early days of a game, but what lanlin has done seems to me a first. He's verified the numbers underlying the assumptions and laid them out for all to see and evaluate on their own what's important, from a PVE healing perspective. This can only help the community. I get the feeling that English is not his native language and so his tone may come across as unduly harsh to some, but I don't think it's intended as offensive. He simply asserts himself pretty directly.
It's common in the early days of a game for great players like unspecified and D to put out guides that reflect their successes, without having the benefit of a complete understanding of the underlying mechanics that would help clarify how much of a contribution is played by their playing skill vs. their numbers and builds. Eventually, someone comes along and does the math and shows how the numbers work and people adjust and then we have the benefit of reducing the variability of the builds and numbers and looking at player skill as the primary contributor to success. I think that's what's happening here and I look forward to the ongoing evolution of the theorycrafting.
Bravo to all of you guys for the most enlightening discussion I've read about this game.
Yeah, what regnorvex said! I really appreciate all of the guides and discussions in this forum. They answer the questions that I never knew I had until someone asked and answered them for me.
There are more power clerics in game than you imagine.
I can do that as soon as i get home to login to the game - won't be home before saturday afternoon though (CET timezone) so this has to wait a little, sorry.
As for you other guys thanks for the ongoing support, i will of course try to make this guide better as time progresses, as for now it pretty much only lists pretty simple things i have researched - which should be included in the tooltips of the spells to be honest (like i already mentioned somewhere; yet that seems to be too much work on the Devs' side
While i still have more information to share, i don't yet have figured out a way of conveying that information in an easily understandable way, since listing how people should act in dozens of different cases would be way more likely to create confusion rather than to benefit anyone. Also i don't have much time to continue on this guide anyways in the next 2 days to come since I'm not even at home due to work.
One thing I am not sure about is whether 1 point of Wisdom is always better than 1 point Strength (1% critical) in terms of maximizing HPS. Since critical % suffers from diminishing return, 1% of critical could be better than you think when your gear is good enough. For example, 1% of critical is equal to 140 critical rating when you have 2000 rating, while 1% of critical is worth about 170 rating when you have 3000 rating, according to your spreadsheet. The better your gear, the more powerful 1 Strength point. Critical % is the stat that suffers the most serious diminishing return, which justify rolling a high initial Strength character.
Another thing I wonder is how Power scales to our spells. Spells have their initial damage (that is, even you don’t have any equipment you still deal some damage). This implies that the damage of a spell might have a form of a+b*power, where a and b are positive numbers (I don’t think it is linear, but let’s assume it does for demonstrative purpose). If the number a is large enough, this spell favors critical over Power. Therefore I think it is very important to find out how Power scale with spells before we start the theorycrafting.
All in all, I really enjoy your guide. I hope you can keep updating it if you find anything new. Keep up the good work!
It saves my life everyday.
If I majored in Wisdom..... I'd only gain 6% healing increase...
I never been out healed by a Wisdom cleric.
twitch.tv/redeclipze
I'm thinking of respecing feats to get rid of that Repurpose Soul which apparently doesn't work with anything but At-Wills at the moment. But probably better to just keep it around in case it gets fixed.
I find it pretty amusing how you don't support using a bugged cleanse while switching encounter powers during combat is fine? :-D
I have a strong feeling they did ability slots so players need to choose ahead which skills to use. Could be wrong ofcourse.
In fact like i explained an enormous number of times by now wisdom is always stronger than strength in terms of healing output, deminishing returns does not change anything with that, even if crit had deminishing returns to the point that you need 5000 rating per % of crit, it is still more useful to go for wisdom. It's just indifferent of that.
Btw you are one of the first people to understand this spreadsheet correctly
(although i admittedly have to add it is easy to misunderstand if you don't do a lot of theorycrafting...)
I can tell you how power scales though - its the most simple scaling ever found in a game.
A spells base-formula is basically constructed like this:
[(Weapon-minimum-damage + Weapon-maximum-damage) + average Damage added by power] {*(1+ critical severity)} *X
while X represents a single number with 1 fractional digit at max...
Of course that term {*(1+ critical severity)} only applies to crits...
Also THIS is the reason you can't even cast a single spell without a weapon equipped, as well as the reason that your weapon is like worth 80% of your whole gear in terms of offensive scalings - kinda idiotic imo but well that's how it is.
Also like i said already power is not a strong stat... it gets "strong" eventually though since every other stat is hit by a too hard DR when stacking it while power does not have any DR.
@beldukil
I don't intend to do videos sorry, my vocal english is way too bad to explain something in a non-written way.
@redeclipze
I dunno if those 5% more regeneration really do save you all too often... the difference is barely noticable, also since the stamina bar does not feature a number at all and therefore you don't see as soon as you are able to use the dodge right away and more or less have to guess when it is "ready".
@naamapeikko
I don't understand your reasoning there on both points sorry... I do support skillswapping because it is possible in the game and obviously not a bug, else there wouldn't be a reason to implement that you can't change skills while they are on cooldown.
Also i do not understand that you are thinking about respeccing your ability scores if you went for the correct choice Oo
Yes heals can Crit. If you hover over your Crit chance it states this. If you look at your feats there is also stuff that increases Crit and also stuff that Procs on Crit.
Question/clarification on the Toughness feat (+ Max HP). It doesn't affect +HP from gear? That's kind of lame, especially since the way it's worded on gear is "+X Maximum HP".
I have 3/3 Toughness for +9% Max HP. If I take off a belt that has +98 HP I lose exactly 98 HP, meaning the Toughness didn't affect it. In other games that have similar mechanics, I would have lost more than 98 because of the feat.
They should reword it to "Increases BASE HP", which would mean whatever you HP is BEFORE gear.
Side note, I think Toughness is more like 10% Max HP, not 9% like it says. Without any HP gear or any buffs, I'm always getting +~10% HP (calculated by hovering over the HP bar on the character sheet.
The problem I have with your assessment is that it assumes we have heals worth augmenting through Wisdom. We don't.
Your single best "heal" is Astral Shield, we all know that. The thing is that around 350 health per tick is enough to keep anyone inside the AS alive unless they get hit by red stuff. Adding even an extra 5 health per tick to AS isn't going to make ANY significant difference.
What does make a HUGE difference is having AS at a less than 15 second CD, you need reasonable Charisma/Intelligence to get this easily. You need a 33% recharge speed increase to get a 15 second CD. I typed it out in another thread but here's a copy/paste:
(Btw thank you again for that table showing the DR!)
That's 2,100 stats I could put into something else that I have to devote to recovery just to get the magic recharge rate for 100% up-time on AS which is WAAAAYYYYY more important than any amount of Wisdom could ever be. 2,100 stats could be put into defense, deflect, power, crit, or regeneration (well up to around 1,500 can be) and those stats will be a HUGE boon to you because the RoI is much greater than what you get trying to fix bad base stats.
Edit: Charisma is also responsible for AP gain. Achieving 100% up time on Hallowed Ground is a BIG deal and should be something you strive for. Stacking Wisdom will not help you with this. If you get Hallowed Ground up 100% of the time and feat Moontouched then the 5% heal per 3 seconds trumps your wisdom stacking as well.
Strength has a similar situation with Crit. You seem to vastly underestimate the value of Repurpose Soul. It DOES proc off Sun Burst (not sure about other encounters) and that alone is a really big deal. Repurpose Soul actually makes up a pretty significant amount of the healing a cleric can do in a dungeon.
If we actually had GOOD heals I might be inclined to favour wisdom more but as it stands now I think the standard 'healer' bar is Sun Burst, Forgemaster's Flame, and Astral Shield. Sun Burst is almost a guaranteed crit -> Repurpose Soul in a crowd with decent crit rate. Forgemaster's Flame has healing connected to damage dealt, so the extra +healing from wisdom is irrelevant (+damage still counts), and Astral Shield is about damage reduction before healing. Our other major heals are Astral Seal which is barely affected by wisdom and scales terribly, Invigorated Healing which is max health % based and doesn't care about your wisdom, and Moontouched which is the same % based heal and doesn't care about your wisdom.
You are simply vastly over estimating the real in-game worth of even +5% healing. It really doesn't make much difference to way things play out.
What DOES make a difference is getting ~33% crit and 33% recharge speed and still having gear slots and sockets available to jack up your defense stats so you can handle getting hit.
Theory crafting is great, but you have to go out and test it when you're done. You also have to test alternatives and see what works better.
Wisdom also increases damage dealt, so unless you use a greater vorpal enchantment, wisdom also grants you more damage than crit does...
Also having cleared the content by legitimately clearing all bosses there currently exist in the game, i cannot imagine you dealing close to the damage of a CW that is worth running a dungeon with, sorry.
@unspecifiederror
I see your point! - that being said it only makes sense if you in fact are trying to build a cleric with ~2200-2600 defense to be able to soak up some damage...
It is true that the healing a DC gains from wisdom isn't that huge overall (while i still say it grants more healing than any other stat there is... stop discussing on that "strength-roll" finally please - all of you) and you are able to neglect that for now - if you want to that is.
Yet i only see a plausible sense in changing like 2 skillpoints from wisdom to intelligence IF you want to go for that route. I already said you should go for max-out Wisdom/Charisma, so with what my guide displays (being what i use myself ofc) you get to 13 Int 18 Charisma, that is 2 points less than your total in both of these stats.
I do not say you should roll for less wisdom at character creation though, since this way to build a cleric might be an ok-way for now, but will definately become worse as time passes and new content gets added (because you will need every inch of healing - at least i hope that since i hope for difficult content).
Also - like i already said in the answer to lacotte - i have cleared every content that currently exists without using any bug or cheesy method... While i am not the only one to achieve this by now of course, it should definately be enough "testing" it.
So i could waste like 20 million AD (i dont even have close to that much) to try EVERY spec there is you say? No need...
That is the whole point why people do theorycraft in the first place and not try everything out you know? Because it does safe you tons of time not needing to test what you already proved to be worse.
Moreover i really hope for the next content they will release to be not only hard (and less add-dependant), but also free of bugs and ways to exploit...
I did not really enjoy the "race" to kill the boss in Castle Never after all. Leaving aside all the ways to kill it with cheesy tactics, there were groups that did it legit long before us anyways. Yet with being able to start 5 days later and not knowing whether those other groups used hard exploits to gear up, stuff ended frustrating in this content.
Thus, if the next one delivers what i hope for, i will enjoy proving the viability of my way to spec a cleric!
Having cleared all content is fine, but doesn't prove anything except that your build is viable. As you yourself point out, many others before you have done it and most without your build. If you would claim that your build is a viable alternative, that's fine. But to insist that your build is "best" and that you have "proven" the point is overstating the case. At the end of the day, I found unspecified's arguments far more compelling and based on existing content and (more importantly) existing mechanics, which are less likely to change over time.
You've made a great contribution to the community and I thank you for that. Your numbers, your provocative and helpful post. I don't think you intended this result, but your biggest contribution has been to confirm the benefits of the builds promoted by Deistik and Unspecified. I'm sticking with my balanced STR-WIS-CHA because it supports existing game mechanics and content, and probably will for a while. And if things change, I will re-spec.
The most compelling argument you made was regarding the difference between consistent healing throughput and burst healing, and that would be more persuasive if crits were too unreliable or if more of our work depended on consistent healing throughput. But, as unspecified eloquently points out, that's NOT the world that NV Clerics live in, and the uptime and procs behind the Deistik/Unspecified approach are more reliable in the end than the more consistent healing throughput of a WIS-focused build.
But thanks for a helluva conversation!
Maybe a silly question but you never know, does any spell that has a healing effect count as a "Healing Spell" in regards to the "Sooth" Class Feature Power? (reduces threat from healing spells by X%, I would assume that means Sun Burst, Forgemaster's Flame, and the like?)
I know it hasn't been recommended because threat is a little wonky when it comes to building it (for tanks) but if it does affect all spells with heals, I feel like we would barely get hit if our threat is lower than everyone else, even if they can't build it well.
Well i think there will always be guys that just want to argue for the sake of doing it... I won't say all too much, because a definately negative trait i got is that I am not used to being patient with stuff like this.
So you are stating crit is more reliable now than a permanent healing increase?
Oo woot?
So you are stating i am wrong for looking out on future content?
I see - you can do your character creation and level to max/gear again for new content cause you rolled the character wrong then?
Dunno the sense in this... I am not overstating anything for now, because almost nothing i wrote up to here is based on subjective intuition but soloely based on mathematical truths.
I'm pretty sure with this statement i seem like an arrogant ******bag to some, but i never intended this to be the way everyone follows anyway; I just wanted to give those people that really care about absolute min-maxing a place to go, not having 100 people wander in here explaining me stuff that isn't correct.
If you have your opinions - yeah that's perfectly fine;
if you like other approaches or guides more - go for them!
But don't come in here stating things again and again that i already unmisunderstandably contradicted xx times. If you don't acknowledge my contradictions for whatever reason, posting stuff a 100th time won't change reality...
And yeah, that is proven!
regnorvex im seriously jealous at the level at which you can articulate your thoughts, ive always had trouble expressing myself and that post was just extremely well written. Cheers
So while crit may be unreliable given a small data set, say a 1 minute fight, it is very reliable over a larger set, say the length of an entire dungeon. If you have 30% crit over the length of a full dungeon you WILL reach 50% more healing on 30% of your heals, whatever that is. (like i said not great at math).
omfgvexer's point is one that maybe (I don't have the math to know) you addressed already, but it's a good point.
Thank @lanlin for attempting to reach objective proofs in the middle of a ton of anecdote. It absolutely is appreciated by many people, many of whom likely won't post. Don't be discouraged.
Best write up (with good follow up) of any class guide on this site. You don't need to explain yourself to any future "nay sayers". The debate is burst versus consistent output. You're build is very similar to mine and your theorycraft revealed a few tweaks I can make to further improve. Keep up the good work for the community.
This forum is overflowing with guides right now, most of them based on nothing but randomness.
One tells you to aim for 33% crit.... Why even name randomnumbers?
Another one tells you to go full strength.... Why insist on a less-rewarding distribution of stats?
Next one ignores Prophecy of Doom in Powerskills............ What the heck?
...
..
.
I seriously don't know why in this game everyone feels entitled to make their own guides making other people do the same incorrect decisions they made beforehand. Probably because the game so far lacks unexploitable and hard content...
For those who care though - what i wrote in here up to this point is correct so you really don't need to distrust it.
This is not arrogance but plainly a fact; people coming in here sadly may be more versatile in language and express themselves better than me since i am not a native speaker, yet in the end noone can contradict what can be concluded from basic logic.
To me this feels like people are running here trying to convince me 5 is larger than 100 - of course anyone is free to believe that but i'm not sure if it is the wisest choice to make.
One last response to the two latest comments:
While it is correct that a percentage steadily evens out to a consistent bonus if you further and further increase the samplerate, healing is not about "overall" healing (in this game even much much less than in other games), but you have to deliver healing exactly when it is needed;
for instance IF one of your partymembers gets hit by that red zone, it may be awesome to have 5% more crit (if you are lucky that is) or completely useless if you aren't.
Also even while looking at "overall" healing Crit is still by far less powerful to aim for than my advice, as i pointed out just a while ago.
I have to apologize to regnorvex though before closing this - you were not the culprit of the anger i built up, just the one that finally received the blow - sorry for my bad personality on this one m8.
Beholder
What Class Are You?
Since I feel like 2 of those are probably aimed at me I just want to point out, you never asked why. Not once did you come and ask me why I say the things I do. Not once did you ask why my build is the way it is. You seem to have simply decided that your arm-chair theory crafting trumps respeccing and regearing multiple times and running and rerunning every T2 with multiple group comps to test and compare everything I could.
33% is not a random number. It's 1/3 hits is a crit. It is also an easily achievable amount of crit without heavily sacrificing anything else. Again, it's not random at all and Repurpose Soul is amazingly useful and you seem to disregard it completely because you decided wisdom stacking is better.
Prophecy of Doom is a good on paper, bad in practice ability. It is also bugged and doesn't do what it's supposed to. Divine Mode doesn't do more damage. Defense reduction doesn't work. AP gains are marginal and Sun Burst does the same thing only better and more reliably. At which point you are better off having AS and FF on your bar to keep people alive. PoD has no place in practice, only in theory.
As I said several pages back. Theory Crafting is great, but you have to go out and test. You argued you don't have millions of AD to test things. Some of us do, and did. I've respecced probably around 15 times since launch. I've theory crafted, experimented, tested, and retested by running multiple specs and gear loadouts through every T2 with multiple group comps. I may not have the on-paper-awesome of theory crafting to throw around, but I do have experience actually running things and I know what works, what doesn't, and what just produces better results.