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AS Nerf not the end of the world
radlack
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 12 Arc User
I just ran a pug Spell Plague with one of each class. Myself and GWF were both 12k+ GS while the others were sub 10k. First off, I gotta say its nice to see the warriors again. I have done way too many CN's in the last month without one.
Patch Impressions
First thing you have to get over is the feeling that you are some how failing because AS is not down. The next thing you do is watch the Melee go SPLAT because they are DPSing in red circles when AS is not down. That was worth a good chuckle. And then you notice the really big difference, the adds are not on you. They are on the warriors and what a pleasant change that was.
I found that the big rotation change is you now need to make sure you have something for the (4.6 seconds for me) that AS is not down. For me this really was just FF. Hit an elite with FF as soon as your shield disappears and there is no problem. You have a lot more time to take in what's going on with the fight now that your not running from one red ground effect to another. I still use sunburst on CD pretty much.
Honestly the biggest change with the patch is your melee DPS need to learn to pay attention to when AS is up and down. There are plenty of (Super Elites if you will) in each dungeon that will one shot you without the significant DR of AS. And they can no longer blame you for failing to have their beloved blue circle down. Time to stock up on potions melee
Now yes, I have 12.3K GS with full Miracle and weapon set, so obviously this will be more challenging for a fresh 9k cleric. The days of face rolling content with double AS are gone. Before the patch went live I was trying to solo heal everything I did. I did CN solo healer, and yes its not easy. It's going to be a ***** now. But I would rather the game be a little more difficult then the total joke it was.
Patch Impressions
First thing you have to get over is the feeling that you are some how failing because AS is not down. The next thing you do is watch the Melee go SPLAT because they are DPSing in red circles when AS is not down. That was worth a good chuckle. And then you notice the really big difference, the adds are not on you. They are on the warriors and what a pleasant change that was.
I found that the big rotation change is you now need to make sure you have something for the (4.6 seconds for me) that AS is not down. For me this really was just FF. Hit an elite with FF as soon as your shield disappears and there is no problem. You have a lot more time to take in what's going on with the fight now that your not running from one red ground effect to another. I still use sunburst on CD pretty much.
Honestly the biggest change with the patch is your melee DPS need to learn to pay attention to when AS is up and down. There are plenty of (Super Elites if you will) in each dungeon that will one shot you without the significant DR of AS. And they can no longer blame you for failing to have their beloved blue circle down. Time to stock up on potions melee
Now yes, I have 12.3K GS with full Miracle and weapon set, so obviously this will be more challenging for a fresh 9k cleric. The days of face rolling content with double AS are gone. Before the patch went live I was trying to solo heal everything I did. I did CN solo healer, and yes its not easy. It's going to be a ***** now. But I would rather the game be a little more difficult then the total joke it was.
Post edited by radlack on
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Beware, oroness is comming here to explain, how bad you are.
I think I am going to chill slightly until I see how things smooth out, maybe start a new character. I am going to have a huge learning curve, so I think I will play my rogue, who will probably never see a group again, and see how other clerics are healing. If the group fails, almost always the cleric is going to get the blame.
MY GS is 10K + an Ioun stone.
I wonder if the Devs give the mobs the same restrictions on huge cd timers and nothing really stacks? Probably not.
I don't think a respec will be necessary for me. I noticed the the healing word/divine fortune combo is more useful than before. And I have a ridiculous excess of divinity, as I'm able to stand still and use abilities rather than tank/kite the mobs.
Melee classes seemed to manage the aggro ok, but wow those CWs were getting shredded, particularly with the AS downtime. I really think that's going to be a big metagame shift. CWs will have to play/gear much more defensively. I switched over to Healing Word since they tended to not be in range of Forge Flame but it only helped so much. Honestly, I did feel kinda useless since there's only so much healing that can be done, still don't have any real DPS potential and now I can't even pull the aggro to protect the squishies. In theory, I don't really have any problems with the DC ability nerfs, but the aggro changes are going to be a rough transition for a lot of players and more so than the direct nerfs, it really hurts the usefulness of the cleric.
But SC isn't a that good example for looking at the difficulty of boss fights. 1st & 2nd got mainly slow attacking ranged adds - don't stand still and they barely hit you. For last its almost the same..
Spider last is a lot harder regarding that and even Gray Wolf Den or Lair of the Mad Dragon as T1s are probably harder.
Do CN first. If you can't do the normal T2's...you or your group is bad (not an insult just truth).
It's just not fun, they took the AS, which I don't mind overly much, but they didn't buff anything else. Oh well, I'm done. Back to Rift, where healers actually do stuff like a legit MMOARPG
Regarding what was said about feeling a little useless, I get the same feeling. Our biggest role in a group is Damage Resistance, then healing. Our heals:
AS is not like a super healing spell, it just seriously reduces damage. The healing is more of a bonus then anything.
Divine Forgemasters is by far our best heal. It heals for a ton, scales very well, and if it crits, forget it. And with warriors being welcomed back into groups and taking the majority of damage its a perfect heal for them.
Bastion of Health just has a stupid long CD and you have to target it. People can move out before it goes off, and until we have a 4th (hell maybe even 5th) encounter ability it wont be on my bar unless it is seriously changed.
Sunburst is a nice little heal, it procs Miracle Armor, but lets be honest, its on the bar to build combo points for...
Hallowed Ground if you are specced for it provides a small HoT but what it really does is provide more much needed DR and a very nice DPS boost to the party.
Healing Word, a single player targeted regen with these game mechanics? Really? If any spell in this game needed some smart targeting, it's this one. Is your target behind another player? Sucks to be them. Did your target move off your targeting circle as your casting it? Sucks to be them because I just got -40% regen. This spell works OK in PVP, but it sucks in PVE.
This game put the Oh HAMSTER I am about to die heal in your hands in the form of a health potion.
The hardest person in the group to keep alive was the full glass cannon thief. The CW's got one shotted by big red circles once or twice, but other then that it was all pretty smooth - and for me a lot more enjoyable actually having to THINK about what I was doing.
The very little aggro - was freaking awesome.
Feats
Powers
Companion
Just healed a few skirmishes, eh..no real earth shattering change I guess. Like you said, time your FF now to go after your ashield disappears. That way you have at least some constant healing going on around the tank/boss.
With the added aggro fix, it might be a bit easier than before.
Team:2-Tr;1-GF;1-CW;1-DC
DC build:
active:foresigth(feated),divine forune
Encounter: sunburst(feated),HW,AS(feated)
At-will:sacred flame/astral seal(feated)
daily:hollowed(feated),flamestrike.
Dc equip:
T1 mix 2 power/reco set 9.9k GS; 3.2k pow,1.3k crit,2.6k reco,2.1k def
On the travel for the final boss, AS wasn't require at engage most of the time nor feel the need to be 100% up, few passage was still rough to negociate mostly the dridder/bladmaster/spider's flooding(had to use hallowed as half-assed divine AS to barely cover the 5 sec gap)
healing stress was the Tr standing in front with the GF and eating cone dmg, the CW sometime was drawing the aggro.
The treat change make it relatively safe for me to move around and drop heal assist without the worry of packing all the adds on me.
The boss figth.
Nothing really changed out there and it went as I expected, less aggro on me but party slowly depleted with the 5 sec gap on AS Blademaster= **** on progress...
Revive sickness is now persistant so have to wait for it to go down before start another try(forgot and went in ,got for some reason aggro by bm and HAMSTER).
So AS nerf not the end of the world?...maybe.Just a little help from the other class to cover the downtime gaps(smoke bomb?, singularity?etc?), also have consideration of positioning during the battle to avoid unnecessary dmg(TR in front with GF,standing in red circle instead of walk/dodge away).
PS:
Astral seal still have heal mitigation not for only the DC(can be understand with the debuff) but for the teammate(do i have to penetrate his armor or something ?)
Sacred flame temporary hit point seem to last longer when i don't spam it up to 3rd strike, still add too low pool of hit point and don't seem to stack in intensity.
You mustn't lose sight of who this game is aimed at - the casual player who isn't very good, doesn't have very good gear, and only does dungeons with PUGs.
That's the type of player who flocks to F2P games. If this type of player can't complete the content, there will be an exodus.
I personally don't mind more challenging stuff (I'm in a guild with a voice chat server, good players), but I realize I'm not the target audience for this game.
There are other, more difficult/challenging games out there if that's what you want. This game was designed as F2P, and aimed at casual people who don't really know what they're doing.
That's why its easy. Or was.
Casual does not mean "not very good". Where do you get that notion from? Why enter a conversation on the offensive against people you don't even know? This is not "Cryptic Studio's Game For Kid's Who Can't Play Good and Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good To". It is free to play to lower the barrier to entry to the game.
History lesson:
When Blizzard built it's World of Warcraft game it intentionally went with a game engine that would allow people who had older hardware to have a good experience while at the same time Sony Online Entertainment decided that they would require higher end hardware for people to really get a good experience with EverQuest 2. Both games launched at roughly the same time in 2004. Which one did better? The one that had the lower barrier to entry.
Why have so many AAA MMO's been forced to convert from the traditional P2P model to the F2P model? I can tell you with certainty that it has nothing to do with attracting people who aren't very good, doesn't have good gear, and only does dungeons with PUGs. All of these games need a challenging high end game that takes a while to get through. The fact that everything in the game to date was easily defeated by stacking broken classes was not an intended thing and has dramatically hurt the overall health of the game.
It's completely okay if fixing the classes chases off people. The goal was never to retain people month over month in the first place. They want a solid game that they can continue to expand. Constantly improving the game service will attract new players and give folks who played it before a reason to come back and try new things. It's a better game for the next wave of people who are picking up the game and that's what's most important. That said, I'm sure they will need to look at certain encounters closer now that classes have been rebalanced and that's normal.
All Out Assault
I hope you're not even serious about this claim? AS does heal as much as FF, if FF isn't crit. The only difference is Miracle healer set, that can proc from each heal tick on FF, where as it does it only once on AS.