Hmm. A lower Astral Shield time combined with it not being able to crit, will pretty much cripple my ability to heal dungeons as a non-Faithful cleric. And I don't see any changes in there that will help a cleric DPS spec to get competitive with actual DPS classes unless you get an AE-friendly group. That may be reasonable overall (making it so only the heal-spec priest can be the sole healer) but it does make me wonder why they need 3 Paragon feat trees.
I can assure you that the developers are considering the PvE side of things when choosing not to allow 100% uptime on a defensive ability as horrifyingly strong as Astral Shield.
AS is literally so strong right now that you can run a mostly DPS-built cleric that uses AS as its sole healing ability and still do most dungeon content without much trouble, assuming that the rest of your team (particularly your CW) plays smart. A large part of what makes double cleric parties so broken right now is the fact you can have one of the clerics focus on damage with just the second AS on the side rendering the party all but immortal as long as they stand in it.
People need to understand that Astral Shield as it currently stands is an Encounter ability that has a stronger impact on battles than most Dailies in the game, and it can currently be kept up 100% of the time with no effort or skill beyond equipping your character properly and making sure you aren't stun/prone/dazed at the moment it comes off cooldown. It absolutely needs to not have 100% uptime in order to be anything but boring, from a gameplay standpoint.
Right now AS is being used as a crutch so that we can keep walking with our broken leg (our broken aggro). Once the aggro is fixed, we shouldn't need the crutch anymore. And GWFs and GFs will finally have a job again, which is a good thing for the health of the game.
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vinnersMember, NW_CrypticDev, Neverwinter Beta Users, Cryptic Developers, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Cryptic Developers ›Arc User
edited June 2013
Idk guys, I'm taking this a bit differently.
People actually have to DODGE now. Plus, with the ****ty returns on recovery for this CD, I'd take this as an opportunity to swap out some recovery for other stats like power or defense.
The question becomes "can your party survive 5 seconds without blue?"
EVERYONE has to play smarter now. Your party members have to use pots (which they should be doing anyway) and dodge a bit more.
YOU will have to pay attention to fights and know when the best time to put down the shield. That's going to take more concentration, and more skill. And we're a skillful bunch, yo.
So let's use the Preview to test out if parties can survive that 5 seconds. If you swap out some of that recovery for power, your heals should "hit" a bit harder to make up for it. Drop down to 3.5k recovery and then jack up your Power/Defense and see if it's really that much harder.
Also, I would expect that DPS clerics aren't supposed to be fully competitive compared to pure DPS classes... because a DPS cleric is also buffing, debuffing, and incidentally healing the party -- through feat selection and through built-in effects on many of the powers. Once another healing class is added to the game sometime down the line, I suspect that type of cleric will see more use than it does now. (As it stands, we're kinda expected to heal if we're the only cleric.)
Anyway, I'm fully healing speced and still pull very respectable DPS numbers when I'm trying to AoE, so I don't think we're really in a bad place on DPS as-is -- although I'm in T1 and T2 epic dungeon runs at the moment and have no idea how things look once one gets to CN.
But yeah... hopefully, once the bugs with Prophecy and Divine Glow are fixed, our usefulness in DPS (and in adding attributable DPS to our teammates) should be even better.
Surviving 5 (or more) seconds without astral shield would be fine if clerics had decent skills to cast in that downtime.
Name a heal that:
1) Heals us for a decent amount to keep ourselves alive
2) Heals other people for a decent amount to keep them alive
3) Has a reasonable cooldown
The main gripe is not totally to do with astral shield's nerf.
It's to do with the other cleric skills not being up to par for what's needed in dungeons (pvp is a lost cause) to keep party members alive.
Although people are testing linked spirit at the moment, which may potentially be what saves everyone (but in the end, damage reduction doesn't equate a heal).
We shall see over the next few days after more testing
Rift ftp - timed just about right - back to Chloro - now that's what I regard as fun. And strummin' my way through with a Bard. Going to happen, and bb for this Cleric.
...............vote for your favourite expansion.......... "Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity". ..............not this one then.............
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yoichinoyumiMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Idk guys, I'm taking this a bit differently.
People actually have to DODGE now. Plus, with the ****ty returns on recovery for this CD, I'd take this as an opportunity to swap out some recovery for other stats like power or defense.
The question becomes "can your party survive 5 seconds without blue?"
EVERYONE has to play smarter now. Your party members have to use pots (which they should be doing anyway) and dodge a bit more.
YOU will have to pay attention to fights and know when the best time to put down the shield. That's going to take more concentration, and more skill. And we're a skillful bunch, yo.
So let's use the Preview to test out if parties can survive that 5 seconds. If you swap out some of that recovery for power, your heals should "hit" a bit harder to make up for it. Drop down to 3.5k recovery and then jack up your Power/Defense and see if it's really that much harder.
Great point, I will probably still stack recovery, as I'm already stacking power also. If the threat issues are really fixed, as long I'm not standing in reds, I'll be okay.
I can assure you that the developers are considering the PvE side of things when choosing not to allow 100% uptime on a defensive ability as horrifyingly strong as Astral Shield.
AS is literally so strong right now that you can run a mostly DPS-built cleric that uses AS as its sole healing ability and still do most dungeon content without much trouble, assuming that the rest of your team (particularly your CW) plays smart. A large part of what makes double cleric parties so broken right now is the fact you can have one of the clerics focus on damage with just the second AS on the side rendering the party all but immortal as long as they stand in it.
People need to understand that Astral Shield as it currently stands is an Encounter ability that has a stronger impact on battles than most Dailies in the game, and it can currently be kept up 100% of the time with no effort or skill beyond equipping your character properly and making sure you aren't stun/prone/dazed at the moment it comes off cooldown. It absolutely needs to not have 100% uptime in order to be anything but boring, from a gameplay standpoint.
Right now AS is being used as a crutch so that we can keep walking with our broken leg (our broken aggro). Once the aggro is fixed, we shouldn't need the crutch anymore. And GWFs and GFs will finally have a job again, which is a good thing for the health of the game.
is that overpowered? or is it because the result of combining reduce damage potential with healing that have superb cleanse not too mention it is stack-able? I doubt without the constant cleanse, which is already nerf to 20 sec per debuff (not entire debuffs) plus the healing point reduced too HoT which cut the power if self usage, and still get reduce in uptime? let see how far it goes ...
Wow like what... 5 whole seconds of downtime? OH NOOOO WE CLERICS CANT DO ANYTHING NOWWWW QQQQQ. Jesus Christ. This community will cry over the smallest things. If you can't go 5 seconds without your OP fuqwidit AS then you don't deserve to be doing T2s.
Wow like what... 5 whole seconds of downtime? OH NOOOO WE CLERICS CANT DO ANYTHING NOWWWW QQQQQ. Jesus Christ. This community will cry over the smallest things. If you can't go 5 seconds without your OP fuqwidit AS then you don't deserve to be doing T2s.
Thank you for your helpful and constructive post. As has been pointed out, it's not so much about the nerfing of AS, it's about the not having anything good to use when it's down.
I think everyone has missed the point of these changes.
They don't want you to play in dungeons any more they want us all to play in foundry quests, at least there people know how to do encounters not just spawn 50 adds. To be honest i have done 1 or 2 foundry quests (5 man) and i think they were better laid out than the official dungeons.
Turslo - the only thing I am being assured of at the moment is the Developers have not a got a clue what they are doing with this healing class. It's as though the all the skills have been stuck on a wall and they play pin the tail on the donkey to see which ones to mess with.
Have they ever done a similar healing class before? This is not the time to start day one at school with this class. Do not say the mechanics of this healing class are unique - they are not, end of.
I have played - well basically you name it and I've healed in it. EQ (+2) - WOW - Aion - RIFT - SWTOR - SW - AoC - LotR - FF(s) - Tera etc etc
I've seen class builds come and go, lost count of respecs, cookie cutter builds, contributed to many class builds, created more, the whole works.
So please listen - the way the devs are handlng this class is truly terrible. The apparently ad hoc adjustments will drive people away from playing this class, and if they want to just play a healing role they will go elsewhere. That's not any kind of chest out threat, I've seen similar things happen before over the years.
And then what? How do others run groups when they cannot get a healer? Spending hours in lfg queues waiting for one? No, then you have the familiar knock on effect of their frustration - and off they go as well. It's a domino exit pattern.
They need to listen to the playerbase. It is not the devs who will populate this game.
It is not the devs who will spend money in the cash shop.
It is only the players - their customers.
Arguing against, and ignoring the most knowledgeable of these is a sure path to player desertions.
...............vote for your favourite expansion.......... "Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity". ..............not this one then.............
Wow like what... 5 whole seconds of downtime? OH NOOOO WE CLERICS CANT DO ANYTHING NOWWWW QQQQQ. Jesus Christ. This community will cry over the smallest things. If you can't go 5 seconds without your OP fuqwidit AS then you don't deserve to be doing T2s.
Guardian fighter is just butthurt cos clerics get picked over him for T2s. Who's really crying here, hmm???
Idk guys, I'm taking this a bit differently.
People actually have to DODGE now. Plus, with the ****ty returns on recovery for this CD, I'd take this as an opportunity to swap out some recovery for other stats like power or defense.
The question becomes "can your party survive 5 seconds without blue?"
EVERYONE has to play smarter now. Your party members have to use pots (which they should be doing anyway) and dodge a bit more.
YOU will have to pay attention to fights and know when the best time to put down the shield. That's going to take more concentration, and more skill. And we're a skillful bunch, yo.
So let's use the Preview to test out if parties can survive that 5 seconds. If you swap out some of that recovery for power, your heals should "hit" a bit harder to make up for it. Drop down to 3.5k recovery and then jack up your Power/Defense and see if it's really that much harder.
You already have to dodge when in the shield.
I wish they'd just kill this toxic ability completely, give us active healing please, like good MMO's.
Wow, they're nerfing one of the only things that makes clerics viable? They better a) keep it the way it is currently, or b) give us a FULL respec; powers AND traits..
We don't deserve having a skill that we spent our valuable points on, built our whole characters - Starting stats, powers/feats, as well as our BoE gear around, to have it nerfed, AND have to PAY MONEY to fix THEIR change.
If they don't do either of these things I'm done with this game. No looking back, no referring friends to try it, no zen purchases, nada.
Surviving 5 (or more) seconds without astral shield would be fine if clerics had decent skills to cast in that downtime.
Name a heal that:
1) Heals us for a decent amount to keep ourselves alive
2) Heals other people for a decent amount to keep them alive
3) Has a reasonable cooldown
The main gripe is not totally to do with astral shield's nerf.
It's to do with the other cleric skills not being up to par for what's needed in dungeons (pvp is a lost cause) to keep party members alive.
Although people are testing linked spirit at the moment, which may potentially be what saves everyone (but in the end, damage reduction doesn't equate a heal).
We shall see over the next few days after more testing
This is so true people, its not just about the AS Nerf. We have hardly anything that is up to par to support ourselves while AS is down...
That is a valid point, if they starting making such big changes in classes and then we have to pay to respect things will go down hill fast. Also, I agree, DC does not have a lot of healing ability as is. This game was meant to be like GW2 (more than traditional mmos healers) when they said you did not need full healing, yet in T2 with so many adds you in fact need the healing, and right now AS is the best way to heal when you are not on a kite mission like Frozen Heart.
lyaise -- I don't know how else to say it -- I think you're being way too sensationalistic and way too eager to compare healing in NW to healing in other MMOs.
Healers in this game are not intended to be the sole saviors of the entire party's health bars at all times forever and ever, which is why, throughout most of the game, our ability to carry bad/lazy players is honestly fairly limited. It's only at level 50 with Astral Shield that we suddenly gain the ability to perma-sustain people and enable their bad play by allowing them to stand in red without feeling punished for their actions -- but as the game stands, we HAVE to do that because we need the mitigation for ourselves so that the add swarm doesn't tear our faces off.
If you look at the upcoming changes all together, you should notice some trends:
(1) Enabling fighter classes to do their jobs (protect dem squishies) by fixing bugged threat abilities and (in the case of the GF) increasing base threat generation, period
(2) Enabling clerics not to get swarmed by adds as badly by making Sooth(e) actually work and making healing threat less insane in general.
(3) Improving viability of some other CW skills besides the ones we see used all the time, allowing greater diversity of crowd control (this is what my CW friend tells me anyway; I haven't looked at their class-specific changes closely yet).
In a Neverwinter where the tanking classes can do their jobs, there's no need for a spell that safety-nets bad play as much as 100% uptime Astral Shield currently does. I'm sorry. I really don't know what else to tell you. We aren't a pure healing class and this game isn't designed for such a class to exist. If you came to NW looking for that, I expect that you're going to be disappointed as the developers continue tweaking things.
p.s.: For those wondering, the balance notes state that a free respec is being given with the changes. I hope (and suspect) that will also be the case in the future in other cases of major class balancing/changing.
Yeah you know when you're solo healing Spider last boss and she wipes your astral shield and you instantly die to blademaster GAPCLOSERS being spammed on you?
Yeah, enjoy that happening 33% of the time now lol.
It's extremely clear they balanced the entire game around this stupid ability.
lyaise -- I don't know how else to say it -- I think you're being way too sensationalistic and way too eager to compare healing in NW to healing in other MMOs.
Healers in this game are not intended to be the sole saviors of the entire party's health bars at all times forever and ever, which is why, throughout most of the game, our ability to carry bad/lazy players is honestly fairly limited. It's only at level 50 with Astral Shield that we suddenly gain the ability to perma-sustain people and enable their bad play by allowing them to stand in red without feeling punished for their actions -- but as the game stands, we HAVE to do that because we need the mitigation for ourselves so that the add swarm doesn't tear our faces off.
If you look at the upcoming changes all together, you should notice some trends:
(1) Enabling fighter classes to do their jobs (protect dem squishies) by fixing bugged threat abilities and (in the case of the GF) increasing base threat generation, period
(2) Enabling clerics not to get swarmed by adds as badly by making Sooth(e) actually work and making healing threat less insane in general.
(3) Improving viability of some other CW skills besides the ones we see used all the time, allowing greater diversity of crowd control (this is what my CW friend tells me anyway; I haven't looked at their class-specific changes closely yet).
In a Neverwinter where the tanking classes can do their jobs, there's no need for a spell that safety-nets bad play as much as 100% uptime Astral Shield currently does. I'm sorry. I really don't know what else to tell you. We aren't a pure healing class and this game isn't designed for such a class to exist. If you came to NW looking for that, I expect that you're going to be disappointed as the developers continue tweaking things.
Actually it is our job, and it's extremely clear, just look at how much unavoidable dmg is thrown at you, you need astral shield down, it's very binary, you're in the shield you're alright, you step out, you die.
This is a pseudo-action RPG and dodge is very unreliable in this game.
With massive amounts of mobs thrown at you that are spamming homing ranged attacks and SPAMMING instant gap closers that do a billion dmg, etc you're not dodging that. Dodge is just a neat little mobility tool to assist with avoiding red circles that you can't otherwise avoid because the **** game locks you down with clunky animations that you can't cancel with normal movement, it's stupid. There is a FEW (very few) instances where the actual tiny tiny iFrame from dodge can actually help avoid something nasty, but again that's rare, most of the time it's just the mobility itself that's saving you.
If minion type mobs didn't do SOO much friggin dmg, and there were more threatening mini-boss ish mobs, and bosses were ACTUAL bosses and didn't just spam overpowered adds at you it'd be a completely different story. You would be able to avoid most dmg just from player skill, like an actual action-rpg.
The balancing notes said that AS getting wiped by projectiles is a bug and is getting fixed, so that argument doesn't really hold up on its own. The idea now is that you're supposed to have the AS off cooldown when she's about to summon the adds, and then use it when they're starting to dogpile you. By the time it fades, your party needs to have dealt with them. And best of all, the shield won't randomly poof on you because a boss happened to shoot some purple goo through it. That set of changes seems reasonable to me.
Remember, the massive amount of mobs are supposed to be getting tanked by GFs/GWFs and managed by CWs (and even managed by us to some degree, depending on the situation); that just isn't happening yet because the fighters can't hold threat. Healing will be a different world once they can.
I do completely agree with the general sentiment that the devs overused "HEE HEE ADD SWARM" as a fight mechanic, but I have to point out that the adds are supposed to be there so that the fighters and CWs have a job other than whaling on the boss. It's just that so far, only the CWs can actually do their aspect of the mob-controlling job properly.
The balancing notes said that AS getting wiped by projectiles is a bug and is getting fixed, so that argument doesn't really hold up.
The massive amount of mobs are supposed to be getting tanked by GFs/GWFs and managed by CWs; that just isn't happening yet because the fighters can't hold threat. Healing will be a different world once they can.
I do completely agree with the general sentiment that the devs overused "HEE HEE ADD SWARM" as a fight mechanic, but I have to point out that the adds are supposed to be there so that the fighters and CWs have a job other than whaling on the boss. It's just that so far, only the CWs can actually do their aspect of the mob-controlling job properly.
No, i used the AS dispel bug as an example of what the downtime of AS feels like. Lol.
And really, fighter classes aren't that much tankier than my cleric, they go squish pretty easily w/o my aShield making them one.
Yeah, and the add spam makes it so CW is really the only player in the group that actually matters, because the ENTIRE boss fight IS the add spam, that's all it is. We lay down all our passive HAMSTER on cooldown then run around and hope the CW isn't bad, then the rogue just casually 1v1's the boss.
If there were no adds, anyone could solo every boss fight lol. And there's no reason to spam literally 30 mobs to make CW/GWF useful, and let's be honest, the only thing CW's are doing is rotating Singularity and Shield to instantly kill everything, that's it.
They could easily just spawn adds like the Mad Dragon fight, a few groups of minions to clean up once in a while, and a few stronger elite mobs and maybe 1 or 2 really strong mobs once in a while. CW would get to actually make use of single target CC then.
Appreciate all the helpful perspectives in this thread!
I just wonder if the elimination to AS stacking and nerf to AS duration would actually encourage more parties to run with 2 DCs (obviously not a must, depending on party comfort/ ability). Firstly to counter the righteousness 40% penalty as before, and secondly staggering the timing of AS casts mean you can still have 100% uptime between the two DCs. Of course, a lot of it will depend on the opportunity cost of missing out on another class and what they can bring to the party, depending on their new tweaks and especially add/aggro management.
No idea on this yet, but maybe the DC may struggle to build and maintain divinity at healthy levels over add heavy fights due to a) decreased divinity gain from ethereal boom and b) 5 more seconds of running around when AS expires (instead of tanking and building divinity with brand/sacred flame etc) c) more babysitting/clutch healing because party is not used to fighting without AS, and d) D-mode linked spirit buffs.
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Well, as far as class design goes, GF and GWF both have active (and reactive) tankiness boosts that are (supposed to be) important parts of their play. GF has the obvious Block mechanic, and the GWF has Unstoppable (which provides a major mitigation increase, CC immunity, and heightened DPS in a single press of Tab).
Honestly, I don't know what GFs you're using as a measure, but I can't imagine your claim that GFs aren't that much tankier than you (unless you keep AS on them) being legitimate -- or at least, not substantially exaggerated because of how much you hate AS. GFs are very frigging tanky if they're actually tank spec'd and using their block correctly/not-buggily (it's just they can't actually hold threat to show off this fact...). There may be some ludicrous DPS in CN or something that I don't know about yet that melts even GFs, but I haven't heard of it yet.
GWFs are are indeed relatively tanky (and able to maneuver through Bad Stuff if necessary) when Unstoppable is turned on. Without it? Yeah, they tend to go squish, but that's kinda the point. Their fundamental game mechanic is that they need to build up Determination during times when burst damage isn't in the process of melting their faces, and then be ready to turn it on when burst damage is about to start melting them. Then they chug a potion, shrug off the burst of damage and maneuver through all the bad stuff to keep whaling on whatever needs whaling on. That's rather evidently the idea; the implementation is just really poor at the moment. (And I mean REALLY poor.)
I say all of this with utmost respect for your posts in general, knoteskad. You are obviously an important voice of reason against AS on this forum (I think too many people are too content to crutch on it). I do think, however, that the ability can be tuned in such a way that it is no longer a toxic mess, without just removing it from the game. I think it has its place; its place just shouldn't be "always on all the time during all phases of all boss fights OR ELSE THE WORLD ASPLODES" (which it currently very nearly manages to be).
No surprises in this thread, we already knew it had been severely nerfed.
Seeing the dev's trend at destroying the only useful cleric abilities what i expect to see next on the list of nerfes:
- Daunting light: Damage reduced by 60%
- Sunburst: AP and DP generation capped at 5% per cast instead of target.
- Forgemasters Flame: Fixed an issue where it healed twice as much as it was intended.
- Searing light: Fixed an issue where it could hit more than 5 targets in divine mode.
I just saw in General Discussion that Astral Shield duration has been nerfed, reduced to 66%.
Ohhhhhhhhhh boy. That is bad news, folks.
Dunno what else to say, I'm kind of speechless. Cleric is my main and I can say with near certainty that I won't be playing it, or this game, unless something is done about that.
The balancing notes said that AS getting wiped by projectiles is a bug and is getting fixed, so that argument doesn't really hold up on its own. The idea now is that you're supposed to have the AS off cooldown when she's about to summon the adds, and then use it when they're starting to dogpile you. By the time it fades, your party needs to have dealt with them. And best of all, the shield won't randomly poof on you because a boss happened to shoot some purple goo through it. That set of changes seems reasonable to me.
Remember, the massive amount of mobs are supposed to be getting tanked by GFs/GWFs and managed by CWs (and even managed by us to some degree, depending on the situation); that just isn't happening yet because the fighters can't hold threat. Healing will be a different world once they can.
I do completely agree with the general sentiment that the devs overused "HEE HEE ADD SWARM" as a fight mechanic, but I have to point out that the adds are supposed to be there so that the fighters and CWs have a job other than whaling on the boss. It's just that so far, only the CWs can actually do their aspect of the mob-controlling job properly.
Well said!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Character is what a man is in the dark
I have a rogue and a CW, but cleric is what I want to play. No point playing this game at all, or giving it any money, if I can't play the class I love.
Here are two clerics that have been here since before launch and watching clerics evolve. I see that I'm not alone in thinking that this will just about sound the death knell for this class. Until I discovered this new change, I was perfectly content with my class. Now, I'm seriously considering quitting altogether.
Can't wait to talk to all my cleric friends in game. This will cause an uproar, no doubt about it.
No surprises in this thread, we already knew it had been severely nerfed.
Seeing the dev's trend at destroying the only useful cleric abilities what i expect to see next on the list of nerfes:
- Daunting light: Damage reduced by 60%
- Sunburst: AP and DP generation capped at 5% per cast instead of target.
- Forgemasters Flame: Fixed an issue where it healed twice as much as it was intended.
- Searing light: Fixed an issue where it could hit more than 5 targets in divine mode.
Just wait, I sense this comming.
QQ much?
Seriously Drama Queen over on the WoW forums, lets have a test before we go all Lindsey Lohan on the Devs.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Character is what a man is in the dark
I think I must have been playing mmo's too long. I remember when players who struggled where just called newbie's. Sure they may have been what you call Bad, but other people, myself included where able to help them through and support them with their learning curve.
I recall player held classes in WOW (yes that so called awful community) where class experienced players (we referred to them as Class Mentors) would call out in-game for other players to meet them so they could listen and learn from these guys. And you know, now and again the Devs would be there as well, contributing to the class discussion and really listening to the in-game players
But now people who are learning or struggling are just given the umbrella description of Bad, Lazy.
As for sensationalism? Forget my feedback on the PTS trial, I will say no more then. Proceed with these changes, history will prove the accuracy one way or another.
...............vote for your favourite expansion.......... "Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity". ..............not this one then.............
Comments
AS is literally so strong right now that you can run a mostly DPS-built cleric that uses AS as its sole healing ability and still do most dungeon content without much trouble, assuming that the rest of your team (particularly your CW) plays smart. A large part of what makes double cleric parties so broken right now is the fact you can have one of the clerics focus on damage with just the second AS on the side rendering the party all but immortal as long as they stand in it.
People need to understand that Astral Shield as it currently stands is an Encounter ability that has a stronger impact on battles than most Dailies in the game, and it can currently be kept up 100% of the time with no effort or skill beyond equipping your character properly and making sure you aren't stun/prone/dazed at the moment it comes off cooldown. It absolutely needs to not have 100% uptime in order to be anything but boring, from a gameplay standpoint.
Right now AS is being used as a crutch so that we can keep walking with our broken leg (our broken aggro). Once the aggro is fixed, we shouldn't need the crutch anymore. And GWFs and GFs will finally have a job again, which is a good thing for the health of the game.
People actually have to DODGE now. Plus, with the ****ty returns on recovery for this CD, I'd take this as an opportunity to swap out some recovery for other stats like power or defense.
The question becomes "can your party survive 5 seconds without blue?"
EVERYONE has to play smarter now. Your party members have to use pots (which they should be doing anyway) and dodge a bit more.
YOU will have to pay attention to fights and know when the best time to put down the shield. That's going to take more concentration, and more skill. And we're a skillful bunch, yo.
So let's use the Preview to test out if parties can survive that 5 seconds. If you swap out some of that recovery for power, your heals should "hit" a bit harder to make up for it. Drop down to 3.5k recovery and then jack up your Power/Defense and see if it's really that much harder.
Anyway, I'm fully healing speced and still pull very respectable DPS numbers when I'm trying to AoE, so I don't think we're really in a bad place on DPS as-is -- although I'm in T1 and T2 epic dungeon runs at the moment and have no idea how things look once one gets to CN.
But yeah... hopefully, once the bugs with Prophecy and Divine Glow are fixed, our usefulness in DPS (and in adding attributable DPS to our teammates) should be even better.
Name a heal that:
1) Heals us for a decent amount to keep ourselves alive
2) Heals other people for a decent amount to keep them alive
3) Has a reasonable cooldown
The main gripe is not totally to do with astral shield's nerf.
It's to do with the other cleric skills not being up to par for what's needed in dungeons (pvp is a lost cause) to keep party members alive.
Although people are testing linked spirit at the moment, which may potentially be what saves everyone (but in the end, damage reduction doesn't equate a heal).
We shall see over the next few days after more testing
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
Great point, I will probably still stack recovery, as I'm already stacking power also. If the threat issues are really fixed, as long I'm not standing in reds, I'll be okay.
is that overpowered? or is it because the result of combining reduce damage potential with healing that have superb cleanse not too mention it is stack-able? I doubt without the constant cleanse, which is already nerf to 20 sec per debuff (not entire debuffs) plus the healing point reduced too HoT which cut the power if self usage, and still get reduce in uptime? let see how far it goes ...
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Thank you for your helpful and constructive post. As has been pointed out, it's not so much about the nerfing of AS, it's about the not having anything good to use when it's down.
They don't want you to play in dungeons any more they want us all to play in foundry quests, at least there people know how to do encounters not just spawn 50 adds. To be honest i have done 1 or 2 foundry quests (5 man) and i think they were better laid out than the official dungeons.
Have they ever done a similar healing class before? This is not the time to start day one at school with this class. Do not say the mechanics of this healing class are unique - they are not, end of.
I have played - well basically you name it and I've healed in it. EQ (+2) - WOW - Aion - RIFT - SWTOR - SW - AoC - LotR - FF(s) - Tera etc etc
I've seen class builds come and go, lost count of respecs, cookie cutter builds, contributed to many class builds, created more, the whole works.
So please listen - the way the devs are handlng this class is truly terrible. The apparently ad hoc adjustments will drive people away from playing this class, and if they want to just play a healing role they will go elsewhere. That's not any kind of chest out threat, I've seen similar things happen before over the years.
And then what? How do others run groups when they cannot get a healer? Spending hours in lfg queues waiting for one? No, then you have the familiar knock on effect of their frustration - and off they go as well. It's a domino exit pattern.
They need to listen to the playerbase. It is not the devs who will populate this game.
It is not the devs who will spend money in the cash shop.
It is only the players - their customers.
Arguing against, and ignoring the most knowledgeable of these is a sure path to player desertions.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
Guardian fighter is just butthurt cos clerics get picked over him for T2s. Who's really crying here, hmm???
You already have to dodge when in the shield.
I wish they'd just kill this toxic ability completely, give us active healing please, like good MMO's.
We don't deserve having a skill that we spent our valuable points on, built our whole characters - Starting stats, powers/feats, as well as our BoE gear around, to have it nerfed, AND have to PAY MONEY to fix THEIR change.
If they don't do either of these things I'm done with this game. No looking back, no referring friends to try it, no zen purchases, nada.
This is so true people, its not just about the AS Nerf. We have hardly anything that is up to par to support ourselves while AS is down...
Healers in this game are not intended to be the sole saviors of the entire party's health bars at all times forever and ever, which is why, throughout most of the game, our ability to carry bad/lazy players is honestly fairly limited. It's only at level 50 with Astral Shield that we suddenly gain the ability to perma-sustain people and enable their bad play by allowing them to stand in red without feeling punished for their actions -- but as the game stands, we HAVE to do that because we need the mitigation for ourselves so that the add swarm doesn't tear our faces off.
If you look at the upcoming changes all together, you should notice some trends:
(1) Enabling fighter classes to do their jobs (protect dem squishies) by fixing bugged threat abilities and (in the case of the GF) increasing base threat generation, period
(2) Enabling clerics not to get swarmed by adds as badly by making Sooth(e) actually work and making healing threat less insane in general.
(3) Improving viability of some other CW skills besides the ones we see used all the time, allowing greater diversity of crowd control (this is what my CW friend tells me anyway; I haven't looked at their class-specific changes closely yet).
In a Neverwinter where the tanking classes can do their jobs, there's no need for a spell that safety-nets bad play as much as 100% uptime Astral Shield currently does. I'm sorry. I really don't know what else to tell you. We aren't a pure healing class and this game isn't designed for such a class to exist. If you came to NW looking for that, I expect that you're going to be disappointed as the developers continue tweaking things.
p.s.: For those wondering, the balance notes state that a free respec is being given with the changes. I hope (and suspect) that will also be the case in the future in other cases of major class balancing/changing.
Yeah, enjoy that happening 33% of the time now lol.
It's extremely clear they balanced the entire game around this stupid ability.
Actually it is our job, and it's extremely clear, just look at how much unavoidable dmg is thrown at you, you need astral shield down, it's very binary, you're in the shield you're alright, you step out, you die.
This is a pseudo-action RPG and dodge is very unreliable in this game.
With massive amounts of mobs thrown at you that are spamming homing ranged attacks and SPAMMING instant gap closers that do a billion dmg, etc you're not dodging that. Dodge is just a neat little mobility tool to assist with avoiding red circles that you can't otherwise avoid because the **** game locks you down with clunky animations that you can't cancel with normal movement, it's stupid. There is a FEW (very few) instances where the actual tiny tiny iFrame from dodge can actually help avoid something nasty, but again that's rare, most of the time it's just the mobility itself that's saving you.
If minion type mobs didn't do SOO much friggin dmg, and there were more threatening mini-boss ish mobs, and bosses were ACTUAL bosses and didn't just spam overpowered adds at you it'd be a completely different story. You would be able to avoid most dmg just from player skill, like an actual action-rpg.
Remember, the massive amount of mobs are supposed to be getting tanked by GFs/GWFs and managed by CWs (and even managed by us to some degree, depending on the situation); that just isn't happening yet because the fighters can't hold threat. Healing will be a different world once they can.
I do completely agree with the general sentiment that the devs overused "HEE HEE ADD SWARM" as a fight mechanic, but I have to point out that the adds are supposed to be there so that the fighters and CWs have a job other than whaling on the boss. It's just that so far, only the CWs can actually do their aspect of the mob-controlling job properly.
No, i used the AS dispel bug as an example of what the downtime of AS feels like. Lol.
And really, fighter classes aren't that much tankier than my cleric, they go squish pretty easily w/o my aShield making them one.
Yeah, and the add spam makes it so CW is really the only player in the group that actually matters, because the ENTIRE boss fight IS the add spam, that's all it is. We lay down all our passive HAMSTER on cooldown then run around and hope the CW isn't bad, then the rogue just casually 1v1's the boss.
If there were no adds, anyone could solo every boss fight lol. And there's no reason to spam literally 30 mobs to make CW/GWF useful, and let's be honest, the only thing CW's are doing is rotating Singularity and Shield to instantly kill everything, that's it.
They could easily just spawn adds like the Mad Dragon fight, a few groups of minions to clean up once in a while, and a few stronger elite mobs and maybe 1 or 2 really strong mobs once in a while. CW would get to actually make use of single target CC then.
I just wonder if the elimination to AS stacking and nerf to AS duration would actually encourage more parties to run with 2 DCs (obviously not a must, depending on party comfort/ ability). Firstly to counter the righteousness 40% penalty as before, and secondly staggering the timing of AS casts mean you can still have 100% uptime between the two DCs. Of course, a lot of it will depend on the opportunity cost of missing out on another class and what they can bring to the party, depending on their new tweaks and especially add/aggro management.
No idea on this yet, but maybe the DC may struggle to build and maintain divinity at healthy levels over add heavy fights due to a) decreased divinity gain from ethereal boom and b) 5 more seconds of running around when AS expires (instead of tanking and building divinity with brand/sacred flame etc) c) more babysitting/clutch healing because party is not used to fighting without AS, and d) D-mode linked spirit buffs.
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Well, as far as class design goes, GF and GWF both have active (and reactive) tankiness boosts that are (supposed to be) important parts of their play. GF has the obvious Block mechanic, and the GWF has Unstoppable (which provides a major mitigation increase, CC immunity, and heightened DPS in a single press of Tab).
Honestly, I don't know what GFs you're using as a measure, but I can't imagine your claim that GFs aren't that much tankier than you (unless you keep AS on them) being legitimate -- or at least, not substantially exaggerated because of how much you hate AS. GFs are very frigging tanky if they're actually tank spec'd and using their block correctly/not-buggily (it's just they can't actually hold threat to show off this fact...). There may be some ludicrous DPS in CN or something that I don't know about yet that melts even GFs, but I haven't heard of it yet.
GWFs are are indeed relatively tanky (and able to maneuver through Bad Stuff if necessary) when Unstoppable is turned on. Without it? Yeah, they tend to go squish, but that's kinda the point. Their fundamental game mechanic is that they need to build up Determination during times when burst damage isn't in the process of melting their faces, and then be ready to turn it on when burst damage is about to start melting them. Then they chug a potion, shrug off the burst of damage and maneuver through all the bad stuff to keep whaling on whatever needs whaling on. That's rather evidently the idea; the implementation is just really poor at the moment. (And I mean REALLY poor.)
I say all of this with utmost respect for your posts in general, knoteskad. You are obviously an important voice of reason against AS on this forum (I think too many people are too content to crutch on it). I do think, however, that the ability can be tuned in such a way that it is no longer a toxic mess, without just removing it from the game. I think it has its place; its place just shouldn't be "always on all the time during all phases of all boss fights OR ELSE THE WORLD ASPLODES" (which it currently very nearly manages to be).
Seeing the dev's trend at destroying the only useful cleric abilities what i expect to see next on the list of nerfes:
- Daunting light: Damage reduced by 60%
- Sunburst: AP and DP generation capped at 5% per cast instead of target.
- Forgemasters Flame: Fixed an issue where it healed twice as much as it was intended.
- Searing light: Fixed an issue where it could hit more than 5 targets in divine mode.
Just wait, I sense this comming.
I want this class in NW.
Ohhhhhhhhhh boy. That is bad news, folks.
Dunno what else to say, I'm kind of speechless. Cleric is my main and I can say with near certainty that I won't be playing it, or this game, unless something is done about that.
Well said!
Character is what a man is in the dark
Here are two clerics that have been here since before launch and watching clerics evolve. I see that I'm not alone in thinking that this will just about sound the death knell for this class. Until I discovered this new change, I was perfectly content with my class. Now, I'm seriously considering quitting altogether.
Can't wait to talk to all my cleric friends in game. This will cause an uproar, no doubt about it.
QQ much?
Seriously Drama Queen over on the WoW forums, lets have a test before we go all Lindsey Lohan on the Devs.
Character is what a man is in the dark
I think I must have been playing mmo's too long. I remember when players who struggled where just called newbie's. Sure they may have been what you call Bad, but other people, myself included where able to help them through and support them with their learning curve.
I recall player held classes in WOW (yes that so called awful community) where class experienced players (we referred to them as Class Mentors) would call out in-game for other players to meet them so they could listen and learn from these guys. And you know, now and again the Devs would be there as well, contributing to the class discussion and really listening to the in-game players
But now people who are learning or struggling are just given the umbrella description of Bad, Lazy.
As for sensationalism? Forget my feedback on the PTS trial, I will say no more then. Proceed with these changes, history will prove the accuracy one way or another.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............