test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Post patch alternative feats discussion
marzattakz
Member Posts: 48
Hi there fellow clerics. Not much to be said post patch, we all know the situation facing us. While there are arguments that the changes are good and that the changes are bad, at least we all agree that our class is fundamentally altered.
My usual pre-amble isn't going to list my gear score and achievements, who really cares? I don't care if you're uber-leet or just a casual, we're all clerics in this together. The only thing I'm going to say is that for me personally gameplay has become a fairly standard rotation now and feels less dynamic which saddens me. It is great that threat was reduced along with some very nice quality of life improvements to the game but something had been taken away from our class.
So onto the actual reason for this post. Well before I respec I wanted to get some feedback on viable alternate builds post patch.
I think the majority of us agree that a standard skill layout has always been Sunburst, Astral Shield, your choice of a filler, pre-patch either Healing Word (don't laugh), ForgeMaster's Flame, Prophecy of Doom, Divine Glow or Bastion of Health (you may laugh now) along with Hallowed Ground, Divine Armor or a dps daily of your choice.
Post patch our choice is fairly limited if we want to maintain any semblance of consistent coverage so we're left with Sunburst, Astral Shield, Forgemaster's Flame, Hallowed Ground and Divine Armor.
Talking about at-wills I've always preferred Sacred Flame over Brand of the Sun unless I'm having to kite excessively. AStral Seal NEVER leaves my loadout.
Pretty standard stuff.
From a feat perspective I borrowed from both Deistik's Crit build and UnspecifiedError's earlier Hallowed Ground/Moon touched build. However I believe that the majority of clerics agree that a paragon feat distribution of 2/20/9 with small personal variations was the norm.
But is that still optimal post patch? Taking into account that we are going to be filling gaps and responding to situations with our dailies I do think that Hallowed Ground remains important BUT is Moon Touched and Invigorated Healing still mandatory?
Why am I asking this? Well as much as I loved that feat allocation, in the back of my mind was always an idea formed around temporary hit points and how certain feats and skills could build on the concept. So let's have a look at what revolves around those...
Allow me to preface this concept by stating that the primary purpose is to mitigate, not to top up hit points, the actual healing comes from our standard tools but by increasing mitigation, providing a buffer via temp. hitpoints and healing via our usual means I *think* the effective hitpoint gain will be better.
Sacred Flame - The third hit of this power deals additional damage and you or allies near your target will receive a small amount of Temporary Hit Points. Rank II & III: Damage +10%, Buff Radius +5ft per rank
Divine Armor - Call down an angel to cast a protective ward over allies in the targeted area for a long duration. While encased in divine power, your allies have enhanced defenses and are granted portion of their max hit points as Temporary Hit Points. Rank II & III: Damage Resist Buff +5%, Temporary Hit Points +5% per rank.
Strength of the Gods - You and your allies affected by Guardian of Faith or Divine Armor take 1/2/3/4/5% less damage and deal 1/2/3/4/5% more damage for seconds. Sadly I feel this feat is too deep into the Virtuous path to be of any practical use unless you're willing to divorce yourself from the Faithful path.
Deepstone Blessing - When your target is affected by Temporary Hit Points your heals are 2/4/6/8/10% more effective.
Benefit of Foresight - Defense bonus from Foresight is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%
Power of Life - Astral Seal now heals for 2/4/6/8/10% more and Sacred Flame now grants 2/4/6/8/10% more Temporary Hit Points.
Power of Oppression - Targets affected by Astral Seal deal 1/2/3/4/5% less damage.
If you're still reading kudos! With that out the way the question really is how does this synergize? Previously I stated that Astral Seal never leaves my bar and it becomes the anchor point combined with Sacred Flame for the build.
ASeal when combined with Power of Oppression & Power if Life will be healing 10% more and providing a 5% mitigation increase on every mob tagged. I hope that Deepstone Blessing can further buff the healing provided. Furthermore feats like Repurposed Soul and Benefit of Foresight will enhance this effect. We've all recently been in situations where our skills are on cooldown and the party is split, we need to get heals on somebody and have nothing to use other than our at-wills, hopefully the above combination will provide some relief by allowing you some healing and mitigation by retagging the mob with ASeal and Sacred Flaming the mob on the player in question. Will it be enough though?
In essence the real question I'm asking is it viable to drop Invigorated Healing and Moon Touched in favour of increased mitigation and healing from Astral Seal and attempting to buff the benefits derived from Sacred Flame and Divine Armor taking into account the fact that we have to kite less and are no longer so reliant on Brand of the Sun?
My apologies if I wasn't able to clearly communicate the ideas in this post, hopefully you get the gist of what I'm saying. I'd greatly appreciate any input from people who have done tests using feats like Power of the Sun, Power of Life and Power of Oppression.
Regards, Lhylyth the naked Cleric (Dragon).
My usual pre-amble isn't going to list my gear score and achievements, who really cares? I don't care if you're uber-leet or just a casual, we're all clerics in this together. The only thing I'm going to say is that for me personally gameplay has become a fairly standard rotation now and feels less dynamic which saddens me. It is great that threat was reduced along with some very nice quality of life improvements to the game but something had been taken away from our class.
So onto the actual reason for this post. Well before I respec I wanted to get some feedback on viable alternate builds post patch.
I think the majority of us agree that a standard skill layout has always been Sunburst, Astral Shield, your choice of a filler, pre-patch either Healing Word (don't laugh), ForgeMaster's Flame, Prophecy of Doom, Divine Glow or Bastion of Health (you may laugh now) along with Hallowed Ground, Divine Armor or a dps daily of your choice.
Post patch our choice is fairly limited if we want to maintain any semblance of consistent coverage so we're left with Sunburst, Astral Shield, Forgemaster's Flame, Hallowed Ground and Divine Armor.
Talking about at-wills I've always preferred Sacred Flame over Brand of the Sun unless I'm having to kite excessively. AStral Seal NEVER leaves my loadout.
Pretty standard stuff.
From a feat perspective I borrowed from both Deistik's Crit build and UnspecifiedError's earlier Hallowed Ground/Moon touched build. However I believe that the majority of clerics agree that a paragon feat distribution of 2/20/9 with small personal variations was the norm.
But is that still optimal post patch? Taking into account that we are going to be filling gaps and responding to situations with our dailies I do think that Hallowed Ground remains important BUT is Moon Touched and Invigorated Healing still mandatory?
Why am I asking this? Well as much as I loved that feat allocation, in the back of my mind was always an idea formed around temporary hit points and how certain feats and skills could build on the concept. So let's have a look at what revolves around those...
Allow me to preface this concept by stating that the primary purpose is to mitigate, not to top up hit points, the actual healing comes from our standard tools but by increasing mitigation, providing a buffer via temp. hitpoints and healing via our usual means I *think* the effective hitpoint gain will be better.
Sacred Flame - The third hit of this power deals additional damage and you or allies near your target will receive a small amount of Temporary Hit Points. Rank II & III: Damage +10%, Buff Radius +5ft per rank
Divine Armor - Call down an angel to cast a protective ward over allies in the targeted area for a long duration. While encased in divine power, your allies have enhanced defenses and are granted portion of their max hit points as Temporary Hit Points. Rank II & III: Damage Resist Buff +5%, Temporary Hit Points +5% per rank.
Strength of the Gods - You and your allies affected by Guardian of Faith or Divine Armor take 1/2/3/4/5% less damage and deal 1/2/3/4/5% more damage for seconds. Sadly I feel this feat is too deep into the Virtuous path to be of any practical use unless you're willing to divorce yourself from the Faithful path.
Deepstone Blessing - When your target is affected by Temporary Hit Points your heals are 2/4/6/8/10% more effective.
Benefit of Foresight - Defense bonus from Foresight is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%
Power of Life - Astral Seal now heals for 2/4/6/8/10% more and Sacred Flame now grants 2/4/6/8/10% more Temporary Hit Points.
Power of Oppression - Targets affected by Astral Seal deal 1/2/3/4/5% less damage.
If you're still reading kudos! With that out the way the question really is how does this synergize? Previously I stated that Astral Seal never leaves my bar and it becomes the anchor point combined with Sacred Flame for the build.
ASeal when combined with Power of Oppression & Power if Life will be healing 10% more and providing a 5% mitigation increase on every mob tagged. I hope that Deepstone Blessing can further buff the healing provided. Furthermore feats like Repurposed Soul and Benefit of Foresight will enhance this effect. We've all recently been in situations where our skills are on cooldown and the party is split, we need to get heals on somebody and have nothing to use other than our at-wills, hopefully the above combination will provide some relief by allowing you some healing and mitigation by retagging the mob with ASeal and Sacred Flaming the mob on the player in question. Will it be enough though?
In essence the real question I'm asking is it viable to drop Invigorated Healing and Moon Touched in favour of increased mitigation and healing from Astral Seal and attempting to buff the benefits derived from Sacred Flame and Divine Armor taking into account the fact that we have to kite less and are no longer so reliant on Brand of the Sun?
My apologies if I wasn't able to clearly communicate the ideas in this post, hopefully you get the gist of what I'm saying. I'd greatly appreciate any input from people who have done tests using feats like Power of the Sun, Power of Life and Power of Oppression.
Regards, Lhylyth the naked Cleric (Dragon).
Post edited by marzattakz on
0
Comments
nice read. I'm actually trying almost all of those feats (1/15/15) with Power of Life and Power of Oppression and it seems to be working great so far.
I skipped Moon Touched and HG completely (obviously) and I don't miss them so far. DA seems a bit better defensively.
I'm not sold on not having Invigorated Healing active, some additional testing is required here. But I still heal for a lot and mitigate a lot of damage.
I think someone "unspecified" with science approach here is needed to really clarify how things are. :-)
People are mostly going for:
(Righteous path) Righteous Rage of Tempus: Critical damage generates an extra 2/4/6/8/10% more divine power.
Wouldn't for more mitigation oriented builds:
(Righteous path) Divine Advantage:Allies Healed by you resist 80% of bonus damage from Combat Advantage for 1/2/3/4/5 seconds
work better as most/all bosses just spam amounts of adds which easily get combat advantage?
I have been running
5 5 0 0
0 0 5 5 1 -faithful
0 5 - righteous
5 0
I did the math on Invigorated Healing and decided it's actually, pretty crappy! Look at someone who has 25000 hp, even though most ppl have 20 and few have 30ish. 2.5% of 25k is only 625 hp, every 6 seconds. Granted you can get it from both AS and sunburst so it's a bit more then that, but still weak. I would have to say feating Astral seal is probably much better then this as I can put it on many mobs at once and it's ticking very often per mob.
I still think Moontouched is very valuable as it's double that much hp, in half the time so effectively quadruple Invigorated. Also I still run with both Hallowed/Divine Armor and use them for different reasons at different times.
When I respecced I was actually planning to not take Moontouched, and instead take Restoration Mastery.. I ended up changing my mind mostly because I wanted to try out the 4th pip as I had never used it in any of my builds.
I think Restoration Mastery or Divine Advantage would both be good choices if you aren't running Hallowed Ground, you obviously don't need Moontouched ( and I'm here to tell you, you won't even notice not having Invig Healing - its weak!). As for that 4th pip, I don't need it nor thing anyone does.. But it is a quality of life thing that lets you be a little more careless with your Div
I run with Healer's Lore and Foresite.
My Hero feats:
0001
3530
3305
(human)
All in all I pretty much love this build post-patch and haven't had any problems healing. I've even ran with some under-geared and under-experienced groups lately and managed to keep them up.
Hmm, it makes sense, but for me, it's crucial to cast both AS and FF in divine mode now that there is this gap where AS is on cooldown. And by skipping Righteous Rage of Tempest, I think I might have some problems.
Build one (divine link):
0
1 - Virtuous
5 5 0
0 5 5 - Faithful
5 5
0 0 - Righteous
Build 2 (power of opression):
0
1 - Virtuous
5 5 0
0 0 5 - Faithful
5 5 0
0 0 5 - Righteous
Or if someone else is testing that already please let us know how it goes.
So, I think we're screwed in terms of adapting via feats, tbh.
Anyone who has done tougher T2's knows the silliness of relying on ASeal to save anyone on boss fights (other than on the boss itself, ofc). And speccing into temporary healing requires a significant or large sacrifices for small benefit.
I don't know.. I've been finding that I don't ever need Divine FF save for a very few rare occasions. I build AP fast enough that I pretty much always have DA or HG up when I need it during a rough time while AS is on cooldown. I use HG when we are fighting a lot of things but nobody has really gotten spiked.. I use DA as an oh **** someone got spiked keep them up till AS is ready type thing, or when I expect a large spike to be possibly incoming.
I'm here to tell you once again, as I already mentioned. The boost of feating ASeal offers more reward then the meager heal boost of feating AShield.
And the bonus heal for temp HP is amazing coupled with Divine Armor as a savior combo.
Oh btw in case you misunderstood my previous post, I ONLY do t2 - and I do them all.
I do agree, that Ethreal Boon is still an amazing feat even after the downgrade on this patch.
Temporary hitpoints could work if only there were more abilities that granted temporary hitpoints and for bigger amounts. If im not mistaken sacred flame gives people like 1% temporary hitpoints meaning someone with 20.000 health still only gets 200 temp hitpoints (i hope i'm wrong but that is what it looks like). If you feat for it and it would give 11% temporary hitpoints that could make it more interesting, 20.000 would mean 2200 health bonus but i leave testing that for other people.
Even feated, the Temp HP is very small. But with our loss of aggro, it's easier to reapply it often. Divine Armor gives a ton of it though, and thats where it really shines helping to recover from spike damage.
The only problem with that is 'very small' as you cant benefit from the +10% healing unless you pop DA. The very small amount of temp hit points people gain are gone in a blink of an eye most of the time. I like the idea behind the healing with temp health but i dont think its consistant enough.
All of our heals are constantly ticking.. The more often you apply the temp HP the more often it gets the benefit.. It doesn't have to stay on them forever if you are constantly applying it while the heals are already ticking.. That said, a lot of times I still run with Brand/Seal and still like having the feat for the DA oh **** moments for a faster recovery from them. I've had many times a rogue or wiz get hit for 75% of their hp in one hit when AS was down, quickly popped DA and then AS when it came back up (5 seconds isn't that long
The feat you give up to take this is Enduring Relief.. Which is in my opinion effective much less often then it. The temp HP from DA almost always lasts much longer then 3 seconds plus this feat gives 10% rather then 5%.. And it has the potential to be used for every heal and way more often if your using Sacred Flame. Where as Enduring is only effective for the first 3 seconds of AS and Divine FF, unless for some reason youre using soothing light.
I was thinking similarly, but doesn't ER works almost always since you "permanently" heal someone with AS in divine mode? Every thick would then re-apply ER? Is that correct? If it is not that case, I'm going to drop ER immediately.
The green highlighting of 'healing' in the texts leads me to believe its affected by" Divine - Healing word, Sunburst, FF, Bastion and Soothing Light, as those are the spells that contain 'heal' highlighted in green in the description. At this point I am only guessing whether it works for 3 seconds after casting or for 3 seconds after each tick of the HOT's. Logic dictates that it would be 3 seconds after casting, but a lot of logic is lost in this game so who knows without solid testing.
Now the text of Deepstone Blessing says your 'heals' instead of the very specific green HEAL text.
At any rate, 10% is better then 5%.
I still haven't used my free respec, so when I get around to it, I'm going to make some copies on the test server and get to the bottom of this.
Yeah, I'm gonna run some tests too.. Next thing I'm not sure is, how long those yellow temporary hp last. Like, are those first to be eaten while taking dmg? I'm bit confused, because sometimes I see them even if someone gets hit hard and sometimes they are gone really quickly.
Thank you for those insights! Looking forward to your thoughts after giving things a go on the PTS.
One other factor I'd like to throw out there, we aren't the only class able to throw out temporary HP. Guardians are able to provide temp. HP to both themselves and members of the party adding a further benefit to feats that gain advantage from their presence. Unfortunately our guild guardian is offline (**** weekends) so I can't get into our usual end game discussions.
Yep GF has Into the Fray which grants party members temp hp, I also play GF and that is one of my staple skills. I *think* GWF might have one too as I was in a party earlier and got some temp hp that I didn't apply and it was 2 cw, tr, me, gwf.
I actually did exactly that. and i tell u i dont miss it at all. I use BOS and since u cant spam FF anyway, but have to time it with window of death i end up with surplus of divinity. i was with a rather noobish party in FH to test it out and the only time i missed it, was after wipe on boss( they really had to wipe 2 times before they wanted to belive me how its done
i think the 4 points spent in Mark of Mending were worth it. AS ticks went up from 450-485 to 465-500 --ish
Ah ediit couse i forgot to mention. Sunburst crits went way up. I think it works like that. sunburst power is counted as heal for mechanics. If you dmg an enemy, the value form heal still applays.+4% i use vorpal so cirt severity is 100%. the more u got the more u get.
Nice! Thanks for the info.
I think I might have some really old logs where I used sacred flame + astral seal as my main at wills, but this is before I respecced sacred flame to 0 points, and that is like 1 month+ ago. There might be ninja nerfs since then and also it could be hard to determine how much shield gain more the astral seal actually gives.
I still find it useless, Long casting, long cd, weak heal, and usually the one who needs a quick heal is the one who runs away and my BoH misses. Its bad enough that people run out of Ashield rather than kite around it when they need healing and some dmg mitigation.
If BoH had a much shorter CD then maybe i'd use it, i could care less about it being weak.
temp HP also 100% do stack.
http://nwcalc.com/dc?b=p6n:4zim4:b65s,1li3305:66000:6uuzu:6u000&h=0
The basics really don't change. Divine Armor/Flame Strike and Hollowed Ground, Sunburst/Astral Shield/Forgemaster's Flame, and Brand of the Sun/Astral Seal. Slot Healing Action Holy Fervor unless using Healing Word, then swap it for Divine Fortune. Feats ignore Foresight (because the buff really doesn't seem to help), cleanse (nerfed into oblivion) and hate reduction (because you don't get any anymore). I personally love Moon Touched because I run with a lot of people who seem to be allergic to my circles. I skip the +recovery feat as well, because the bonus is tiny and you easily hit the softcap without it. I also skip the temp HP feat because I don't use Sacred Flame, and I would never use Divine Armor to get a small healing boost.
That looks to be fairly solid, thanks for sharing!
Personally I'm on the fence with BotS, just feels to me like something is missing from the skill. Maybe if it ticked faster I'd like it more, the crit. rate also feels fairly low. In a perfect world, errr, in a optimal world, Astral Seals cast time would be as fast as Brand of the Sun, Brand of the Suns dot would tick faster and Sacred Flame would do actual splash damage in a radius like Forgemaster's heal.
Thing is, and this is me being cynical, with the death debuff gone or cleansed there's very little incentive for people to buy resurrection scrolls. Ditto with our healing, less incentive to buy health stones. They wanna make more cash, so they nerf the healer.
If they actually wanted to make more money they should drop prices on USEFULL items in the zen shop... for example: who in their right mind would pay 40-50 euro just to get 4 of the 'best' bags you can get for just ONE character? I wouldnt be surprised if more people would actually pay for that if it was like half the cost...
Back on topic:
I too am wondering if foresight is actually working... even though i have it 'equiped' theres no where to be found that it gives the damage reduction. There is no 'buff' showing up on people i heal. I'll have to see if i can test it somewhere, damage being taken without it and then what i get with it...
Personally i hate giving up daunting light (for solo reasons) but other then that, nice solid build.
*edit* Done some testing and (at least for me) foresight does give me like 10% damage reduction. Not sure if it extends to the whole party, got no one to test it with.