I mean using healing from Divine mode from more than one spell, is a waste of the classes potential, imo. DC's main strengths are in buffing and damage reduction, plus a bit of utility. Changing the balance of that and into healing in general is just... well, for me it goes against the intent of the class and makes the class less fun too.
So, I would never run with more than one source of Divinity healing unless an encounter explicitly required it or I was undergeared, which none do and nor am I, respectively.
The factor you are not considering there is overhealing. Don't worry, you'll get it eventually!
yeah like the clerics I see using bastion of health when everyone is already at full health.... or divinity astral shield when everyone is at full health, or healing word when someone doesn't need it....
If you over heal you won't have those skils up for when you actually need to use them.
Riiiiight, so because astral shield now heals for less (because it doesn't stick around as long) we're apparently overhealing more.
I really don't quite know where you're going with this.
as in casting astral shield in divinity mode when no one is needing healing is a waste of divinity. Overhealing is when you heal someone who doesn't need it and then when they do need it your skills are on cooldown because you used them at a bad time.
Basically don't heal someone who isn't hurt. Casting a divinity astral shield under someone who isn't hurt is overhealing. You don't have to be healing every second, you can't prop up a group of bad players that make friends with with red circles. Maybe try preventing some of that damage instead of trying to heal it after it occurs.
I don't see how overhealing has any relevance to this, other than "we're even less likely to accidentally overheal because there's less AS healing and damage reduction happening."
What I am saying is that prior to the patch, AS could be effortlessly maintained 100% of the time, so that's 100% maintenance of a pretty impressive amount of damage reduction and healing. In any combat situation, maintain AS. Job done.
Unless your party was all for splintering out of the blue every chance they got, you really didn't need another heal, so you could bring a FUN power. And if you were unfortunate enough to have an utterly terrible pug, you could always grab another heal and you'd probably still be able to carry them through.
Contrast with now, when AS cannot be maintained 100%, and yet is still unarguably the very very best encounter we can bring, bar none. Players have become accustomed to working with constant AS uptime, and indeed a lot of the monster attacks seem to have been designed around constant AS uptime (those blademasters again), but constant AS uptime isn't a thing anymore.
AS drops, bad things happen, people die. It can happen in seconds (and the clerics get the blame first, usually). Hence, another heal is generally a Good Thing To Bring, now.
Sure, players need to learn to stay out of the red etc etc etc, but if you have a choice between:
>letting everyone die so they learn to stay out of the red, getting a party wipe, having some <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> quit because 'nub haeler' and then losing half an hour of your very limited playtime, and
>healbotting through the stupid and actually completing the dungeon
I'm gonna go with the latter. Doubling up on heals seems like a much better idea postpatch than it did prepatch, the complete opposite of what fondlez was saying. Hence my confusion.
(and finally, as an aside: you're forgetting that sticking down a non-divine AS still puts AS on cooldown, so you're not just "preventing overhealing", you're making a judgement call that nobody in your party is going to need healing in the next 15 seconds -unless you have another heal, of course. I generally feel that casting blue AS is always, always the best thing to do unless you're actually out of divinity, because it's a magic instantly recognizable "here be safety and healz, peeps" signal. It can take a huge chunk out of my party micromanagement, coz even crazy off-piste TRs can spot the magic blue and come running back to heal up. I can then use the time to spam actual attacks and build up divinity again)
I don't see how overhealing has any relevance to this, other than "we're even less likely to accidentally overheal because there's less AS healing and damage reduction happening."
What I am saying is that prior to the patch, AS could be effortlessly maintained 100% of the time, so that's 100% maintenance of a pretty impressive amount of damage reduction and healing. In any combat situation, maintain AS. Job done.
Unless your party was all for splintering out of the blue every chance they got, you really didn't need another heal, so you could bring a FUN power. And if you were unfortunate enough to have an utterly terrible pug, you could always grab another heal and you'd probably still be able to carry them through.
Contrast with now, when AS cannot be maintained 100%, and yet is still unarguably the very very best encounter we can bring, bar none. Players have become accustomed to working with constant AS uptime, and indeed a lot of the monster attacks seem to have been designed around constant AS uptime (those blademasters again), but constant AS uptime isn't a thing anymore.
AS drops, bad things happen, people die. It can happen in seconds (and the clerics get the blame first, usually). Hence, another heal is generally a Good Thing To Bring, now.
Sure, players need to learn to stay out of the red etc etc etc, but if you have a choice between:
>letting everyone die so they learn to stay out of the red, getting a party wipe, having some <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> quit because 'nub haeler' and then losing half an hour of your very limited playtime, and
>healbotting through the stupid and actually completing the dungeon
I'm gonna go with the latter. Doubling up on heals seems like a much better idea postpatch than it did prepatch, the complete opposite of what fondlez was saying. Hence my confusion.
(and finally, as an aside: you're forgetting that sticking down a non-divine AS still puts AS on cooldown, so you're not just "preventing overhealing", you're making a judgement call that nobody in your party is going to need healing in the next 15 seconds -unless you have another heal, of course. I generally feel that casting blue AS is always, always the best thing to do unless you're actually out of divinity, because it's a magic instantly recognizable "here be safety and healz, peeps" signal. It can take a huge chunk out of my party micromanagement, coz even crazy off-piste TRs can spot the magic blue and come running back to heal up. I can then use the time to spam actual attacks and build up divinity again)
First off if I am in a public group and someone yells at me or tries to tell me how to play my class I will just leave (unless it is before the first boss and I have lead then I kick said person). If they ask nicely I might stay and take the time to explain to them to avoid the red circles.
I have completed dungeons on my dps specced cleric as the only cleric and have no one die, when this does fails it is because someone is trying to make friends with red circles. Same goes for my healing spec cleric. If someone is making friends with red circles they are on the bottom of the priority list for healing.
The presence of a cleric is not a replacement for potions. If someone is yelling at me in a group and laying all blame on me I'm not going to stay. Why should I put up with that kind of behaviour? Anyways I usually run with friends or guild members who actually know what they are doing because I know I'm not going to get yelled at for no reason (or for others mistakes).
Also about astral shield in non divine mode when no one needs healing is to not waste the divinity (so you can use it for soothing light if you need to). And yes both my clerics make great use of soothing light and use this channelled at will frequently.
Leveling and playing a Cleric was much more fun at early levels than what it became in the late levels.
Clerics at low level have good damage, good heal, can substain themself, good armor, overall a very decent class.
Once in the high levels, you have low damage, can't heal yourself, armor doesn't do anything and whenever something is useful, they nerf it or simply put it on a half an hour invisible cooldown to make sure you don't spec it.
We scale like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, armor scale like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Add that to the rage of having to manage your team because people stand in the red and they don't keep the add's off you and you've got yourself a winner class.
Might as well go play a GF and press 3 buttons to kill a Cleric.
^^This^^
Leveling was fun until level 45 or so. I have hated my DC since and I finally got to level 59 and am thinking about hanging it up. It takes forever to level a cleric from 45-60. I feel way under powered and my heals can not keep me up.
I do feel like I can very easily heal a dungeon but the problem is I refuse to queue for them as I level because you do not get anything worthwhile for the effort, you don't get the quest for the dungeon until you almost outlevel it and you queue and do not get in before you outlevel it. If you do get into a dungeon someone always quits after the first wipe or right before the last boss, so now I have just wasted and hour or so and the run is over.
My CW is much more fun to play, they need to fix Cleric leveling or I think a lot of people are quitting because it gets way to hard to solo level, or maybe not hard as much as boring. It takes a long long time to kill even one mid level trash mob. And $#*! assains, god forbid you have to fight more than one and they 2 shot your tank companion and you run around fighting them for a half hour. Soooo frustrating leveling a cleric in this game, it really turns me off to it. In every game I level a dps caster and a healer and never have I had so much trouble leveling a heal class.
Comments
I mean using healing from Divine mode from more than one spell, is a waste of the classes potential, imo. DC's main strengths are in buffing and damage reduction, plus a bit of utility. Changing the balance of that and into healing in general is just... well, for me it goes against the intent of the class and makes the class less fun too.
So, I would never run with more than one source of Divinity healing unless an encounter explicitly required it or I was undergeared, which none do and nor am I, respectively.
"We have less healtime per spell! It's thus even stupider to heal more, then!"
This does not compute, to me.
O_o
The factor you are not considering there is overhealing. Don't worry, you'll get it eventually!
yeah like the clerics I see using bastion of health when everyone is already at full health.... or divinity astral shield when everyone is at full health, or healing word when someone doesn't need it....
If you over heal you won't have those skils up for when you actually need to use them.
I really don't quite know where you're going with this.
as in casting astral shield in divinity mode when no one is needing healing is a waste of divinity. Overhealing is when you heal someone who doesn't need it and then when they do need it your skills are on cooldown because you used them at a bad time.
Basically don't heal someone who isn't hurt. Casting a divinity astral shield under someone who isn't hurt is overhealing. You don't have to be healing every second, you can't prop up a group of bad players that make friends with with red circles. Maybe try preventing some of that damage instead of trying to heal it after it occurs.
What I am saying is that prior to the patch, AS could be effortlessly maintained 100% of the time, so that's 100% maintenance of a pretty impressive amount of damage reduction and healing. In any combat situation, maintain AS. Job done.
Unless your party was all for splintering out of the blue every chance they got, you really didn't need another heal, so you could bring a FUN power. And if you were unfortunate enough to have an utterly terrible pug, you could always grab another heal and you'd probably still be able to carry them through.
Contrast with now, when AS cannot be maintained 100%, and yet is still unarguably the very very best encounter we can bring, bar none. Players have become accustomed to working with constant AS uptime, and indeed a lot of the monster attacks seem to have been designed around constant AS uptime (those blademasters again), but constant AS uptime isn't a thing anymore.
AS drops, bad things happen, people die. It can happen in seconds (and the clerics get the blame first, usually). Hence, another heal is generally a Good Thing To Bring, now.
Sure, players need to learn to stay out of the red etc etc etc, but if you have a choice between:
>letting everyone die so they learn to stay out of the red, getting a party wipe, having some <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> quit because 'nub haeler' and then losing half an hour of your very limited playtime, and
>healbotting through the stupid and actually completing the dungeon
I'm gonna go with the latter. Doubling up on heals seems like a much better idea postpatch than it did prepatch, the complete opposite of what fondlez was saying. Hence my confusion.
(and finally, as an aside: you're forgetting that sticking down a non-divine AS still puts AS on cooldown, so you're not just "preventing overhealing", you're making a judgement call that nobody in your party is going to need healing in the next 15 seconds -unless you have another heal, of course. I generally feel that casting blue AS is always, always the best thing to do unless you're actually out of divinity, because it's a magic instantly recognizable "here be safety and healz, peeps" signal. It can take a huge chunk out of my party micromanagement, coz even crazy off-piste TRs can spot the magic blue and come running back to heal up. I can then use the time to spam actual attacks and build up divinity again)
First off if I am in a public group and someone yells at me or tries to tell me how to play my class I will just leave (unless it is before the first boss and I have lead then I kick said person). If they ask nicely I might stay and take the time to explain to them to avoid the red circles.
I have completed dungeons on my dps specced cleric as the only cleric and have no one die, when this does fails it is because someone is trying to make friends with red circles. Same goes for my healing spec cleric. If someone is making friends with red circles they are on the bottom of the priority list for healing.
The presence of a cleric is not a replacement for potions. If someone is yelling at me in a group and laying all blame on me I'm not going to stay. Why should I put up with that kind of behaviour? Anyways I usually run with friends or guild members who actually know what they are doing because I know I'm not going to get yelled at for no reason (or for others mistakes).
Also about astral shield in non divine mode when no one needs healing is to not waste the divinity (so you can use it for soothing light if you need to). And yes both my clerics make great use of soothing light and use this channelled at will frequently.
^^This^^
Leveling was fun until level 45 or so. I have hated my DC since and I finally got to level 59 and am thinking about hanging it up. It takes forever to level a cleric from 45-60. I feel way under powered and my heals can not keep me up.
I do feel like I can very easily heal a dungeon but the problem is I refuse to queue for them as I level because you do not get anything worthwhile for the effort, you don't get the quest for the dungeon until you almost outlevel it and you queue and do not get in before you outlevel it. If you do get into a dungeon someone always quits after the first wipe or right before the last boss, so now I have just wasted and hour or so and the run is over.
My CW is much more fun to play, they need to fix Cleric leveling or I think a lot of people are quitting because it gets way to hard to solo level, or maybe not hard as much as boring. It takes a long long time to kill even one mid level trash mob. And $#*! assains, god forbid you have to fight more than one and they 2 shot your tank companion and you run around fighting them for a half hour. Soooo frustrating leveling a cleric in this game, it really turns me off to it. In every game I level a dps caster and a healer and never have I had so much trouble leveling a heal class.