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Clerics and module 3's solo content: the time it takes make me want to puke
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
Ok so, module 3 has been released for a couple of days now, and I've done all the daily solo quests twice, and the time it takes is crazy. And I'm not talking about a new 7k GS cleric in green gear, I'm talking about my one year-old character with BiS gear, a perfect vorpal, rank 8-9s enchantments, a full set of purple pets, etc.
The bringgings tomb took me a whole 15 minutes to do. That's insane! It's as long as the time I need to do the temple of the spider dungeon with friends. And all the solo quests on the overwold maps also take forever. Monsters take ages to kill, mostly due to the fact that there are few of them with lots of HP - so I clearly have divinity issues and that doesn't help. Even if I use damage spells only (daunting light, chains, and sun burst just not to drink potions on cooldown), i need something like 15-20 minutes to do all the solo quests.
Well, that's boring, because all this is ultimately "kill 10 rats" quests and it's nowhere near fun. So all i want is to be done with it asap. Sharandar was tedious but bearable; dread ring was better because it was shorter and daily quests become quickly optional there provided you play the dungeon content enough (which is great) but here we have no group options and the grind through the campaign is the most tedious so far.
On the other hand, when I play my CW i can almost instantly kill all the things and zerg through tedious solo content, so that's fine, and TBH since that kind of content isn't appealing at all, that's all I can bear. I'm even considering retiring my cleric due to that kind of design, trying to introduce a meaningless sense of challenge into solo content was a bad idea... When I want a challenge I queue for a dungeon, not for my daily grind.
Even with the best kind of gear in game, the pitiful damage cleric does and the "few adds" design policy makes daily quests a real chore. I'm not sure about what could be done except a straight damage increase, be it with shorter cooldowns or more base damage, or just lowering significantly the amount of HPs all solo quests npcs have. Wizards would still kill mobs in one hit but at least tedious solo content could be done in a reasonable time frame for low damage classes.
The bringgings tomb took me a whole 15 minutes to do. That's insane! It's as long as the time I need to do the temple of the spider dungeon with friends. And all the solo quests on the overwold maps also take forever. Monsters take ages to kill, mostly due to the fact that there are few of them with lots of HP - so I clearly have divinity issues and that doesn't help. Even if I use damage spells only (daunting light, chains, and sun burst just not to drink potions on cooldown), i need something like 15-20 minutes to do all the solo quests.
Well, that's boring, because all this is ultimately "kill 10 rats" quests and it's nowhere near fun. So all i want is to be done with it asap. Sharandar was tedious but bearable; dread ring was better because it was shorter and daily quests become quickly optional there provided you play the dungeon content enough (which is great) but here we have no group options and the grind through the campaign is the most tedious so far.
On the other hand, when I play my CW i can almost instantly kill all the things and zerg through tedious solo content, so that's fine, and TBH since that kind of content isn't appealing at all, that's all I can bear. I'm even considering retiring my cleric due to that kind of design, trying to introduce a meaningless sense of challenge into solo content was a bad idea... When I want a challenge I queue for a dungeon, not for my daily grind.
Even with the best kind of gear in game, the pitiful damage cleric does and the "few adds" design policy makes daily quests a real chore. I'm not sure about what could be done except a straight damage increase, be it with shorter cooldowns or more base damage, or just lowering significantly the amount of HPs all solo quests npcs have. Wizards would still kill mobs in one hit but at least tedious solo content could be done in a reasonable time frame for low damage classes.
Post edited by diogene0 on
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I did all the quests, but its not fun, not at all.
A certain kind of DC should have no problem with the campaign stuff. My dps DC could fly through solo stuff as fast as my CW (sometimes faster). My tanky/healy DC, well yea .. it's a chore. Quests that require you to escort npcs and keep them alive would be more apt for that kind of dc (and wouldn't necessarily rule out other classes either) but that would require some imagination...
As ill tailored as it is for healers though, I'm not hating the new module so far. It is still just more "grind" though, so that might change once the novelty wears off.
Anyway if you are a support cleric (and a good one) why are you soloing the IWD quests? This should not be the case if you're in a guild, or even if you're part of a chat community like the legit channel (atm lots of ppl there are looking for other ppl to do quests with). If you're a tanky/healy DC then you're very much in demand in parties.
The silly thing is that you need the Black Ice gear to avoid the black ice damage - but by the time you get the black ice gear, you don't really need/want it any more as you will be mostly done with IWD and the gear is worthless elsewhere.
My advice to my fellow DCs is the following:
1) Focus on just getting the boons. Anything else (the new enchants, yeti companion and such) is just a nice bonus.
2) Team up with someone to do the dailies if you just barely meet the IWD requirements - if you have a 16-17K GS you can do them all by yourself pretty quickly.
3) Only bother with the new gear if you want to get into KR.
ITs literally 50% or less time to run a CW through there, so Im sure GWF will be similar as well.
I will admit that I respecced for PVP a few weeks ago, because I was tired of playing the off node holding support DO cleric. Switching to AC made DC fun for me in domination matches.. and up to mod 3, I had no issues soloing anything , but man.. it is slow now. Its all doable but its painful at the same time.
Soloed briggins cave this morning and it took like 25 mins doing it alone.. ouch.
Whats worse is eventually the mad rush is going to die down and bringing through your second character or third is going to be harder as no one will be in IWD at all, so grouping wont be a option either. Trying to get the DC through first, then will work on CW as much as possible, then waiting on GWF for last.
I'm all for challenges in group content because that makes sense, but there are straight out better solo games out there but if the solo chore as a cleric is tiring what's the point of playing what's supposed to be a game?
In the dread ring as long as you played valindra's tower and collected enough black balls to turn them into scrips you could entirely skip that solo thing, and just play the "kill 3 red wizards" weekly quest (which is an appropriate duration for solo content imo) and do the 5 mins solo dungeon when you feel so. In icewind dale you have to eat that sandwich full of sh** every day to progress. So there's no group option to skip a part of the game you really don't enjoy at all. And 15 mins for 3 daily quests + 15 minutes to kill that giant in his cave is more boredom than I can accept before doing my own stuff I enjoy.
Daunting is not a power I'd use for that quest, the 5 target limit would make casting it the equivalent of trying to cast Ice Storm instead of AS/OF if you were a wizard.
I have a hard time estimating just how much time I actually spend doing the other quests, the killing part is fast but its easy to get distracted by Black Iron deposits/Heroic Encounters. It took me about an hour and thirty minutes to do everything, including the PvP quests. I lost a lot of time trying to figure out how to activate golems and where the last few dwarven runes were while forced to run a PvP power setup and deal with players brave enough to actually enter the PvP zone. Pretty sure I spent at least 20 minutes wandering aimlessly around that zone looking for quest items.
Overall I liked the change from the dull and lifeless grind I had to keep going through back in Sharandar/The Dread Ring to battles that actually require me to think and use the strategies I normally only use when I reach the end of those Dread Ring Lair quests and I needed to deal with the 15+ monsters I aggroed along the way.
Briggins does strike me as a better lair quest equivalent than the ones from previous zones though (the ones at Sharandar/Dread Ring are more like standard daily quests set in an extended instance) so I highly recommend that less geared folks go in with a party. Just getting to the entrance without getting caught by those giant sentries/wolf packs out front is going to be hard without a fast mount.
It hasn't been terrible for me and I'm full PVP spec, AC, MH set blah blah and I don't bother swapping out my HP set or anything like that anymore.
14k GS high prophet with rank 7's + crafted Fallen Dragon symbol with frost enchantment + stone of allure companion + all Sharandar and dread ring boons
divine glow + sun burst + daunting light (divinity) + flame strike (daily) + new DC artifact which regenerates action points
You don't have to kill other players to complete this mission.
Kill 4 NPC's and summon 2 golems is all that is required.
Solo Killing NPC's in pvp is not easy.
Better switch to full dps and hope no real players attack you while fighting NPC's.
I was ambushed by real players and died once.
When I came back, I got lucky and killed an afk player. My DC's first pvp kill in IceWind Dale!
Princess Amber - DC
Shieldmaiden Amber - GF
Valkyrie Amber - GWF
Huntress Amber - HR
I tried my full DPS gear HP + DG, Chains and DL and it wasnt to my liking, I even died a few times trying full dps.. screw that.
Its so night and day with My CW.. sometimes I get in trouble doing things like soloing the totem HEs or something.. but I cant even do that with my DC, the second wave usually will do me in.
The only HE I can solo with my DC is the barbarian ones .. and I have to be set up for semi survival to do that.
For the record I've seen even decent-geared GWFs die to the Auril HE. It's not an easy fight.
we do a lot of assist, and as being the main target many of them are below 50% HP
so some points we should get fast
in the icewind dale pvp area I still didn't find the right encounter combo. but for sure it cant be healing (unless u go with pre party)
by some reason even there DC attract argo
im a pvp cleric with a p vorpal so i don't think it's tht bad
my pve dc runs things as fast as my cw
but good news when i hit 14,700 gs i was finally able to kill a GWF solo with a 10k gs....
LOL So true, so sad.
I'm sitting there chipping away at a pack of snow mobs thinking, "If I was on my CW, this whole fight would be over in one cycle"
I have a more combat focused cleric too who would be faster I'm sure (when he makes it there).
But I'm keeping my gimp a gimp and playing through the pain.
Why?
Because Dungeons and Dragons should have a place for the support Cleric.
It's a classic role, one of the original.
Dev's please make us have a place and a function.
First things first- you need to find your balance of offense vs defense. You will not outheal incoming damage on encounters alone, so load 3 DPS powers. If you're using AS SB HW to fight giants that's just asking for pain. What you need to do is experiment with gear until you get comfortable. Once you get used to it you can increase your offense to make things faster. I died a bit at the start but now it's fairly easy.
Use health pots when you have to. Forget about saving silver, DCs are designed to chug pots too. Good thing is mod 3 content actually drops a lot of lv 60 pots. Also use your base buff pots, they really are very replenish-able and I keep having to get rid of stacks. I've done fine without them too but if you're still building stats they do help.
To do well solo, it's as much playstyle as setup. Of course, with all my advice, it's descriptive not prescriptive. You may well have tried something else that worked better for you, and by all means stick with that, but do experiment just in case.
Setup:
Encounters:
Sunburst-small heal and great AoE damage. Many players use chains and I do ok with it but I prefer SB over chains- here's why. Firstly chains is often bugged and won't trigger on terrain, secondly with ArP sunburst does more damage than chains, which doesn't use ArP, thirdly SB benefits fully from Terrifying Insight stacks while Chains only ever benefits from 1 stack, and finally the damage of chains reduce with more mobs around you while sunburst is always doing max damage. You may like the control effect of chains but most enemies charge right out of it anyway, and I prefer my enemies in my face so I can AoE better. SB is also an emergency interrupt if casters start doing something nasty.
Divine Glow- debuff and AoE damage. I usually open with SB or this. Toggle in/out of divinity depending on how much you have
Daunting Light- this is your main nuke, AoE DPS, try to save divinity for it as a finisher. By the time you cast this mobs usually have 2-3 debuff stacks and take full damage. Exception is if you're virtuous path, then you can open with DL to put an extra debuff on mobs.
At wills- Sacred Flame, Brand of the Sun. BoTS adds a huge chunk of DPS because you are casting this on multiple opoponents, and always mean you're doing some background damage while dodging etc. Also for trolls it slows their regen. ASeal otherwise if you don't have it or BoB for ACs.
Class Features- Holy fervor/Foresight is fine. If you want more DPS swap HF for Terrifying Insight (you will get more power points now so no reason why not) but I do fine without it. Virt path should use Healer's Lore if feated. ACs can experiment, AA/AHS/HF all good choices.
Daily- Flamestrike/HG. I almost exclusively use FS in questing, and use HG for large grouped content unless I am taking too much damage and need a clutch.
Rotation:
Start with brand on everything, especially ranged mobs, as the pack rush in cast DG/SB/DL, then brand whatever is left over, dodge when needed, SF in between, Flamestrike when you have a good opportunity.
Gear:
I recommend using your Miracle Healer set first when you are getting used to mobs and quests. MH really gives a lot of health buffer and turns every encounter into a DPS AND healing encounter. On ACT MH set was doing 35% or so of my overall healing while solo, very powerful. You will have an easier time managing health compared to High Prophet set and won't notice the DPS drop. Once you're used to the mobs you can switch back to HP for slightly faster kills.
If you don't have MH, High Prophet is fine, but you're a little squishier, and must utilise dodges better. I use HP currently because I have no survivability issues but with lag or if you over pull it really does require a lot of potions and smart kiting at times. Dread Legion is an alternative set. The Lifesteal is very helpful because you're going to actually do DPS. Failing that, I've also used my Grim PvP set and the extra tankiness is also welcomed and I feel no significant difference in damage output.
Enchant:
Soulforged- you will die, SF gives you a 2nd chance. Lesser is fine
Frost- cannot recommend this enough. Things were way smoother with a normal frost (lesser is fine) than with a perfect vorpal or GPF. Frost buys you time. When it procs enemies just stand there in a trance and won't attack you, buying you time to drop your encounters and reduce the frequency that they try to cc you. Vorpal damage is overrated. I still get healthy crits with my setup.
Armor penetration- get 1.4k ArP if you can possibly more. That's 14% more damage. All my chosen encounters/at wills take ArP into account except BoTS, which still does very respectable damage with debuffs. I know a lot of DCs here don't like the idea of ArP but it works. Just buy piercing berserker rings/amulet with r5 dark and put on self/stone so you don't have to reslot other enchants if you don't already stack ArP.
Health is better than defense once you hit 2k+. Black ice damage (those light blue numbers that hit you) bypass ALL your defense and mitigation, through even Astral shield and Hallowed ground. You always take full damage from black ice damage regardless of your damage resistance unless you're using the Mod 3 crafted sets. Black ice damage eaily counts for 25% of incoming damage or more. You will still be ok in normal gear but this is especially why hit points is better than defense for more buffer.
Companions:
Experiment here, if you have a Cleric/Lilliend/Fawn try them out to see if it helps you survive better. Stone's kinda overrated for solos. Personally I'm using an Angel of Protection, totally not necessary but she's fun and I don't feel like I'm missing any stats badly, still killing very fast and it's good to be able to outsource healing. I've also done lots of fighting without anything summoned and not an issue, so just pick what you need, whether it's more healing/defense or stats/HP/ArP.
Playstyle:
Play like you do in PvP. Mobs here have a lot of control abilities that are cast quickly and often in succession (Yeti/winter wolf/ Dwarven bolters/warriors). Position yourself wisely, time your dodges and get used to your stamina gain rate to know how much time you need till your next dodge. Don't waste a dodge, walk away from red where you can and dodge if you can't. Every dodge must count as you do not want to be chain controlled, that's how you die.
If you really do struggle try the righteous path and take healing step. Offers a lot more buffer with temp HP and doging. Also good if you dabble in PvP dailys. If you're playing a frost/MH/righteous setup you'll be a lot safer and tankier.
Fight in close range rather than keep kiting. Mobs will charge you regardless. When you have a combination of ranged and melee enemies, always run and fight next to the ranged so the melee come to you and you can AoE them all down. You want to maximise DPS uptime rather than running all the time.
Prioritise squishy ranged enemies over melee. Ranged enemies are a pain and can't be kited, kill them first. Stand next to them, and melee will come straight to you where you can nuke them all down. Bolters, Dreadlock wights, Bloodchanters, Shamans are all priority targets because they either buff allies, summon minions or cast very annoying spells that make you life miserable. Once the ranged is dead you just facetank the rest.
Undead- learn their animations and red. Once you kill the zombies they'll do a cold explosion which freeze you. The wights can all do a large AoE lifedrain. Always always get out of them because they hurt and also they leach their life back. Always have a dodge ready and keep moving and baiting their circles (like how you kite FH golems).
For HE with other people:
Standard setup is fine- Astral Shield, Forgemasters, Divine Glow. Buff your best DPSers, shield off center around Boss, FF once in a while for nice boost to stats via linked spirit plus nice heal. NPCs cannot be healed directly so only AoE heals like FF/AS can heal them back up. Astral seal/Sacred flame. I did manage to get gloves to drop so your healing/DPS/damage taken do count.
For best possible score, try to take some non lethal but significant damage where you can and focus on healing others, then add whatever DPS you can on mobs, they all add up.
Guild and guide info
Module 4 Comprehensive DC guide |Module 4 MoF CW Handbook |New! Scourge Warlock Guide| NW Numbers and Mechanics guide |Crit, Power and DPS guide | Dungeon Delving guide and more
I want to make a DPS Cleric - could you post your build somewhere?
Cheers!
~
That is some very interesting and useful insight - thanks for posting.
I have three ACs, with different builds, but my latest character will be a DO (level 28 so far).
What about Prophecy of Doom? Is that not as useful as Divine Glow and why?
The Paragon Feats I was thinking of are:
Rising Hope
Second Sight/Restoration Mastery
Nimbus of Light
Strength of the Gods
Cycle of Change
Righteous Rage
Power of the Sun
Cheers!
~
Here's why.
PoD has a very long casting animation that can be easily cancelled early or interrupted (without casting).
PoD has ostensibly the longest cooldown of all DC abilities, base cooldown is over 20s.
PoD doesn't seem to give innate divinity on cast.
AP gain from PoD is fixed and doesnt' benefit from your AP gain stat, artifacts, holy fervor etc
Casting PoD on a target that died during the animation grants you nothing.
PoD does a decent debuff (10% normall, 15% divine) across a medium duration, and does healthy amount damage to a single target at the end and goes on cooldown if target doesn't die.
Because of the above, if you want to work PoD into a rotation you need parties that can both take advantage of the debuff do deal higher damage and kill the target quickly before it goes to cooldown. You need to always cast this on a target that will die soon, but not before your casting animation has finished. That's not always so easy to with the targeting and mob knocking in this game. Furthermore, because it is a long cooldown skill you miss out on a lot of divinity gain towards your other abilities which directly impacts your effectiveness.
While I'm not a world expert on PoD in dungeons From ACT parsing PoD still gains overall less AP than I would have gotten with something like sunburst which has a lower cooldown. Furthermore, because it is a long cooldown skill you miss out on a lot of divinity gain. If you want the massive AP gain you have to spend divinity on PoD, and it's not really worth it.
At a lower GS you simply cannot afford the loss in utility of a shorter cooldown spell which can bring in more reliable AP and divinity. Most experienced DCs don't have any significant problem with building AP, and seeing PoD's AP gain is fixed the higher your GS the less important it is. (12.5% AP normal mode vs ~9% Sunburst). Yes, the potential for faster chain AP gain is there but realistically you cannot afford to dump that much divinity into PoD.
As for it's debuff PoD is great for bosses because of the longer duration, but DG has better utiliity because it can target up to 5 enemies, builds divinity/AP and can also buff party damage. A well captured DG does way more than PoD. Also given you're going virtuous, Daunting light becomes a self debuffing nuke also, so with DG there's already 2 debuffs (and heavy divinity drinkers) on your bar and you probably don't need a third.
For soloing, I would definitely steer away from PoD, and for Party situations it is fun to experiment and the party loved the massive hits and 2 round boss fights, but I wouldn't always put it as a standard rotation.
It's great vs HE encounter bosses like the Beholder and Remhoraz though building a row of debuff icons and you get a sense of just how strong multipliers can be when you have 20+ players chipping away.
I have more info on encounters/loadouts in the guide in my signature for further reading.
As for your build, virt path is great, I'd say go Disciple of Divine Lore over Strength of the Gods and Ethereal boon over Power of the Sun because I don't have any solid evidence it actually does anything (love to hear from those who do). I feel you really need a solid GS to pull virtuous path builds off well especially in groups but it's also fun to play.
Guild and guide info
Module 4 Comprehensive DC guide |Module 4 MoF CW Handbook |New! Scourge Warlock Guide| NW Numbers and Mechanics guide |Crit, Power and DPS guide | Dungeon Delving guide and more
Example today doing dailies..
GWF 14 mins with 12.5k gear score
DC 25 mins with 15.4k gear score
and
CW @ 14.5k a mind blowing 5 mins doing the dailies. Truth be told, I always wait to last to do her, as if I do my CW first Im so tempted to say screw it with the DC =P..
Now some of this is direct correlation of not only killing things faster but being able to farm nodes faster to hit the 300 mark. Literally by the time I am finishing off any mobs near a node, someone has moved in to take the black ice from my DC. But then again instances seemed really full this morning, exceptionally full. So maybe that was part of the issue. There is also lots of people who dont care if your killing mobs near a node, its open to them so they take it.
Mmm, that sounds ominous. You'd think intuitively that a Paragon Build should make use of the paragon powers and also Feat them.
So if it is not worth using PoD, it's obviously not worth having Second Sight.
But it is not worth having Power of the Sun either?
~
I wanted this one to be a high DPS and Tanky build, and so far he's OK at level 30 - >3.5 GS with Crit and ArPen >1.5 with enchants my other characters gathered along the way.
Cheers!
~