I do not know how to respond to this thread... I am trying to keep and open mind, and I know that the changes need to actually be play-tested, but looking at the information provided in this thread, the changes look absolutely horrible.
First off, I am in full agreement with the majority of other posters when I say knockback on sunburst is terrible and will kill any use of the spell. While it is occasionally useful to have the knockback for things like the last boss in SP, or to clear an area to reach a fallen party member, it is far too situational to waste an encounter slot for sunburst with a constant knockback.
Personally, I stopped using sunburst about two months ago and I replaced it with Forgemaster's Flame. However, this power is also being reworked to remove the healing. This means that the spell becomes nothing more than a slow, with a little damage. But, the slow is stopped by control immunity and for damage alone this power is also not worth an encounter slot on my bar.
Instead of rehashing everything else said by others, it appears that overall you are separating heals from buffs and damage. This seems to be the case in both powers and the paragon level feat trees. The separation seems to intentionally make people have the choice of DPS or Healing with any combination of the two a failure. If you heal, your DPS will be so poor that you can not solo level 60 campaigns, and if you go DPS, your healing ability will be next to nothing. Sadly, I think this is a terrible idea. In the epic dungeon parties I have been in, heals have been "nice to have" but not necessary. Even choosing the DPS route, I do not think that with the changes will bring a DC even close to the ability of others. This fact alone makes me feel like DCs will be shunned in future parties.
As for the new empowerment effects of powers, IMO this is also a bad idea. I may change my mind when I test it, but I do not think it will be positive. I do think this will end up being a micro-management nightmare. Right now under the current system of using tab to change between divine and normal modes it is easy to use and fairly simple. But, if your fingers are ever misplaced on your keyboard or your tab key sticks on occasion, you end up in the wrong mode and your divine sunburst throws mobs away when you want normal mode, and your astral shield is accidentally put down in normal mode instead of divine mode when you are trying to heal someone. It happens, and it usually takes a rotation to realize what happened and get back on track. The idea of adding a 3rd mode to this does not bode well. Combined with the fact that all encounter spells tap a shared divinity pool, yet empowered spells will each have their own individual stacks to manage. Any keyboard/user error seems like it will throw your timing off for more than one rotation, especially if you need to regain stacks of something you fired off unintentionally.
Divinity gain on at-will use only also sounds bad. Like everyone else, I wonder how this can lead to the same amount of divinity gain that there is right now. I try to use my encounters whenever possible; at-wills are mostly filler.
The real killer now is the temptation warlock. I have one and its a nice character. My temptation warlock actually heals more than my DC. Of course my DC has better buff/debuffs than the warlock. The DC can also heal outside of combat while a warlock can only heal by doing damage. BUT... Many DC powers are losing the ability to heal; my warlock heals with every power. The new DC seems to be DPS or Heal build; the temptation warlock is DPS AND Heals. A DC with righteousness increases the parties incoming heal rate, a t-SW will increase the parties lifesteal... and a t-SW does not appear to have a self-heal depression like a DC. A DC will most likely be increasingly complex to play with the new empowered mode, my t-SW heals automatically just by being there while DPSing enemies. I already know players that prefer having a t-SW in the party over a DC, I think the proposed changes will increase those attitudes.
Sadly I think these changes will only hurt the DC overall. I think that the combination of t-SW's DPS and Heals will become more desired that a DCs buffs/heals (which seem to be less of a combination with the new changes) and the added micro-management of the new empowerment system will give existing DCs less of an incentive to actually play.
Please don't make Sunburst knock enemies back in non divine mode. It will make it unusable, and it's currently great for spreading debuffs.
This.
Please please don't. Nobody likes knock back. There are very extreme situations when it is useful which could be activated in (live) divine mode but at least it was a choice.
Please don't make Sunburst knock enemies back in non divine mode. It will make it unusable, and it's currently great for spreading debuffs.
At first I also thought this Sunburst change is bad. But after reading the changes again I think Divine Glow might be a good replacement. Most DCs including myself use Sunburst to spread buffs and debuffs and for AP gain. Healing and damage is not the reason to use it. The new Divine Glow not only damages and debuffs/buffs. It also heals so it can be used to spread Foresight too (if handling of Foresight remains the same). The AoE is smaller than with Sunburst but "drawing" small circle while casting it 3 times in a row in divine mode might be as good or even better.
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onecoolscatcatMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 575Arc User
edited October 2014
Bug: Divine Glow
Divine Glow hits for 10.8k to 13k. See attached screenshot
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onecoolscatcatMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 575Arc User
edited October 2014
Bug: Brand of the Sun
Only Brand of the Sun's initial hit grants Divinity. Every other tic doesn't.
I believe this was meant to say, "When the Annointed Action Daily buff". At first I thought it meant Annointed Armor but that doesn't give a buff.
Before today, it would take me over a minute to battle a group of trolls. Now, the Rightous Cleric whips them in seconds, on par with my other classes.
Bug: Divine Encounters Further testing needed, but buff icons indicate that the divine encounters proc both the divine as well as the empowered effect at the same time.
Bug: Astral Shield You are talking no damage while inside a none-divine non-empowered AS.
Feedback: Sun Burst I'm torn whether or not the basic version should have any knockback. For a healing build, it plain sucks. For a buffer like me who wants to use the Divine version only, it's a perfect fit.
Feedback: Buffing Cleric At the peak the DC will still be able to boost the party damage by ~100%, now with increased damage.
Ok after 15 minutes on the test servers the changes are mind-blowing. The DC is really, really powerful.
I've seen stuff working differently from what's stated in the OP. So, bug or feature?
- Regen seems to be affected by various faithful/virtous feats. My regen was slighthly stronger than it is on live. Sadly i can't provide any reliable figure but it's around 15-20% more or so at first glance. Would require more testing.
- Bastion of health has been incredibly buffed. With a faithful tree i can see it up to 20k or so. If it's intended then great but it's 15x more than what we have on live.
So we've lost pretty powerful feats, like the faithful one affecting healing lore. My power dropped from 7500 to 7k or so. There's no more linked spirit either. The righteous feat reducing incoming CA damage disappeared too. But so far I kinda like what i see on the healing side of things.
Healing word's aoe is HUGE. Good. Hopefully there's no target cap. I can't test this on the test server as there's no dragon encounter with 20 people zerging it.
Divinity can be built pretty fast. In 2-3s i have it full with whatever at-will. Ok, that might be slightly too much. That's just cast something and get a full set of divinity charges. What's the point of the PvP sets bonus then?
Astral shield: I like the mechanic. I've been in dread ring and after casting it 3 times in divine mode and then once in normal no npc could damage me. We're clearly on the overkill side here, and my DC has merely 25k HP. Let's say that it shouldn't block more than half of the incoming damage capped at 3% of the DCs max HP per empowerment stack?
Sunburst: I LOVE it. Please keep it as it is. That's the plea from someone enjoying pvp.
Daunting light: the divine mode damage is pathetic but the normal mode after 3 stacks of empowerement... Wow. Damage doubled! Great.
Now the bad stuff:
There's no visual feedback on what we're doing with divine mode spells. Astral shield leaves no mark on the ground. The blue circle should be visible on the ground for at least 0.5s. Visual feedback on spells is extremely important. It gives us feedback on what we're doing and we can see if we've done things well. In the same vein NPCs affected by the divine "divine glow" spell should get a blue version of it on their bodies. Currently normal and divine give the same visual feedback which isn't good to see how well you've done.
Casting time: Way, way too long for astral shield and divine glow. If we're supposed to spam divinity mode (and we should once divinity gains get balanced) such spells should have a really faster animation. Chains and FF seems to be balanced on that matter. So is daunting light since it has a desired effect in divine mode.
I get the current design which makes us spending a lot of time in animation locked but balanced by fat divinity gains but it doesn't feel very rewarding and it not very active so maybe tweaking both values on some key spells would be nice to make the DC gameplay as dynamic as it is on live right now.
Edit: I had divine fortune equipped when I wrote this. Even without it we're still a bit high. Divine fortune trivializes greatly the DC gameplay as it is currently. I'll leave you imagine what divine fortune + the pvp set do.
The stacks gained from casting Divine Astral Shield are not consumed when attempting to cast empowered Astral Shield. Empowered Astral Shield is not granting the temporary Hitpoints.
Astral Shield also seems to prevent any damage whatsoever from affecting whoever is standing in it.
I agree that DCs in the current state need a buff for the more current dungeons (What's the use of healing if your party dies one shot?)
Unfortunately, I have just been to preview and my impression is completely far from positive:
1. Have you tried the divine version of astral seal? What a joke, barely heals and drains all the divinity rapidly.
2. Feats don't seem to work, they keep reseting - I guess that will be fixed soon..
3. Having the regular sun burst push enemies will be very undesirable in parties (unless on a bridge).
4. I don't manage to see the logic of a dps DC (the last tree). Who would take a dps DC into a dungeon? The entire concept of the class is support (healing or debuffing).
5. Astral shield - I don't know, it is yet to be tested, I was far from impressed testing it in dread ring and Icewind dale.
It felt worse than before.
I had hoped that the transition away from healing would make the astral shield a sanctuary where you have much more damage resistance.
Instead, we get temporary hp that are drained quite rapidly.
I may be wrong here, I am not a pro dc, this is just an alt and I didn't parse or debug anything.
However, overall I can say the experience felt much worse than before.
Really afraid of these new changes, I will just wait, won't test them because I don't want to stop playing my cleric on live in case I don't like them.
One of the things that scared me most is: HG & DA while active block AP generation.
Have fun everyone
Edit: and another thing that frightened me is the PVP invasion.....once again it destroyed another class' PVE power : Sunburst....now I won't be able to use it in PVE I think.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
edited October 2014
These are just first impressions, but holy moly... my DC was no slouch at blowing stuff up before and now she's quite devastating. I didn't change anything with the powers I'd normally run for solo campaign stuff, other than giving Lance of Faith a go for a change from Sacred Flame.
Does anyone know why entire groups of weak mobs are dying (fast!) to a single cast of Brand of the Sun? I mean just one cast on a single monster in the middle of a pack. I looked over the feats I had selected and didn't see anything about dispersing AoE damage, and it wasn't Burning Guidance either.
Bug: Astral Shield Normal Astral Shield gives 100% damage immunity. Did someone add an extra 0?
Feedback: Empowered I kinda like the idea, but can we have the number of stacks show up on the Encounter icons? It will make it easier to manage the stacks. Right now I have to squint and see what stacks I have next to my char's face and then try to decipher then icons (it seems that astral shield got the bastion of health icon there)
Feedback: Sunburst The push is nice for PvP, but will be real annoying in PvE for low level DCs in dungeons.
Feedback: Weapon damage calculations I am liking that you're adding weapon damage into calculations for buffing/healing. I think this is a good directions, because previously buffing DCs were kind of stuck with the same buff effectiveness (determined only by the team) and mediocre healing. Now the healing and buffing is getting more scaleable with the Gear of the DC.
Feedback: "Gift of Faith" These stack accumulate a lot and can result in some crazy heals once the person reaches 30% HP. I have seen 143k heal. It basically ends up acting like a pre-soulforged. Is that intended?
Bug: Righteous -Divine mode damage not shown for many powers (powers like Sunburst, Forgemaster's Flame and Break the Spirit all have different damage values for the divine/normal versions).
-The heroic feat Repurpose Soul seems to proc Fire of the Gods, resulting in entire groups of mobs getting killed off by at-wills.
Feedback: Righteous -Fire of the Gods proccing off Repurpose Soul can actually be a good thing once damage numbers (of the feat itself or that of other powers) are adjusted a bit, since it provides Righteous with reliable, constant damage. The problem with Righteous atm is that it seems to specialize in spike damage and relies -heavily- on proper positioning. Compare to the SW (not damage-wise, but playstyle-wise) - SWs at least only need their targets to be in a rough line or in the general area of their main target for powers like Dreadtheft, TT and Harrowstorm to work. Righteous DCs need their targets to stand in a tight, circular area and stay there.
-Some powers have more or less become inferior/superior versions of another. Notable examples include Daunting/Searing Light, and Forgemaster's Flame/Break the Spirit. These powers should be doing very different things.
My suggestion is to make Searing Light more effective against larger groups of mobs. Maybe make the present divine version the baseline effect of the normal version, and then make the divine version have an effect that slightly "attracts" mobs to the path of the projectile.
Forgemaster's Flame and Break the Spirit are very, very similar atm. While Forgemaster's does more damage when empowered, empowered Break the Spirit gives +15% more damage to allies, debuffs the target and has a shorter cooldown. Perhaps Break the Spirit's empowered effect should just reduce the target's damage even further? Even if the extra damage reduction only applies when the target is attacking the cleric himself, at least.
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Divine fortune increases divinty gains by ~200%,instead of the intended 15%
Bug: Astral shield (already mentioned by others)
Absorbs 100% damage in normal mode. (note: on battle log,it appears as absorbed damage,not mitigated damage,so it's probably not a mitigation value mistake)
Bug: Fire of the Gods
This feat procs as an AoE effect. For example,if you crit with a single target power on an enemy that is close to 2 others,all of them will gain Fire of the Gods.Additionally,the first tick of this DoT procs multiple times,based on the number of affected targets. (It is not related to repurpose soul,as it behaves the same even without having that feat.)
Bug: Purity
In-game tooltip incorrectly states 200% heal increase.Correct is,purity heals for 300% of the HoT it is based on. (as in,you get an extra tick,equal to 300% the original value)
Bug: Healing word
Tooltip is reverted to showing a 15 sec CD,even though it is still correctly affected by cooldown reduction
Bug: Divine Healing Word
Divine healing word seems to occasionally provide no benefit,despite consuming divine pips normally. I am not sure what causes this,as I have not noticed a pattern as to when this happens.The frequency is roughly 1 in 8 casts though.
Also,possible bugs:
-Brand of the sun no longer grants divine power over time; it instead provides it on cast,like other at-wills.
-The feat unbreakable devotion seems to be absorbing higher damage than stated.However,it also has a 6 second uptime with 20 second ICD,which was not mentioned in the patch notes.Not sure if the extra absorption is to make up for the new ICD or if it's a bug.
-There seems to be no indication of how many health points Agent of the Divine has "stored up".In order to avoid long numbers on the buff icon,stacks could be added for every 1k hp saved up.So if you have,say,11873 health points stored,you would have 11 stacks; triggering it would still grant 11873 hp,but you would be able to roughly estimate that you'd be getting around 11-12k hp when it procs.
Feedback
I actually enjoy the new divine mode.One of the reasons why I main a DC,is the fact that buttonmashing wont get you far,unlike most other classes,cause you will burn divinity fast.You have to plan ahead and manage your Divine casts as effectively as possible.This makes it challenging and requires some actual thinking.The new mode adds more to that,since you have to take under consideration empowered casts too.Additionally,it allows even healing/buffing DCs to deal some damage; so far, one of the complaints most clerics had,was that most of our encounter slots are taken by non-damaging abilities,our dailies are mostly buffs and our at wills are kinda lacking,meaning our dps was low.Now,even with one damaging power,we can deal considerable dmg,by choosing to spend divinity in that power and taking advantage of the lack of CD on divine powers.
That being said,there's a few things that I would like to see changed:
-As others have mentioned,some of our heroic feats (specially domain synergy and initiate of the faith) need a rework.
-Ethereal Boon was nice for building divinity out of combat and will probably be missed by most.A suggestion could be,to add passive divinity regeneration,which would be effective only when DC is out of combat.For example,"when out of combat,you gain divine points equal to 10% of a pip every 1 second"
-More importantly,healing step is a huge loss,specially for pvp.DCs tend to be focused a lot.Due to righteousness and healing depression,our self healing is low and cannot compare to the damage we take.Even now,with the heal-focused trees,we can't survive relying on heals alone.Dodging is key,because we have no CC break.This means that,if you don't dodge a stun,the horde that is chasing you around the point will catch you,which will lead to getting stunlocked to death.Other classes have more dodges,cc break skills, or can avoid being targeted.In cases where none of the above is true,classes have innate defensive skills (High Hp and/or deflection due to benefiting from main stats etc) that allow them to survive the pain train.Clerics can't prevent cc with anything other than dodge,nor can facetank enemies.They can only survive battles thanks to buffs and heals.Neither of which you can cast while stunned.Your only hope is to have your team get the enemies off of you,which can be accomplished only by ccing them.Which brings us back to the issue of most other classes having more ways to deal with cc,meaning they can keep stunlocking you even with your team protecting you.
If healing step can't come back,another suggestion would be some sort of divine protection as a class mechanic.For example "Activated by holding down (insert selected Divine mode key): In a time of struggle,you call upon your deity for help.You instantly break free of CC and are immune to dmg for 1 second.For the following 3 seconds,all incoming damage is reduced by 33% and CC durations are cut by half.Consumes 1 divinty pip and you are unable to build additional divine points for 5 seconds after activation." This would allow us to survive if things get sticky,but would not be spammable,as we only have 3 pips and after activation,we can't build any more divine points for a while.
-Im not particularly fond of the Sunburst change.In PvE,it's bad,cause it scatters mobs as many have mentioned.You are never supposed to be far enough from your group to not affect "their" mobs.Taking under consideration the short CD,that could get tiring fast.In PvP,it would be broken.If both teams have a cleric on 2,the battle on that point would end up being a ping pong match between the DCs,knocking their enemies around.The presence of CC doesn't necessarily have to go,it could be switched to a short stun instead though,which get upgraded to a knockback in empowered version.
-At first sight,I feel righteous tree might be a bit OP,even with fire of the gods fixed,as everything provides straight out damage buffs with no requirements that have to be met.Similarly,divine glow feels a bit too good,as it has good damage,decent heal,good heal over time,buffs and debuffs,all in one power,while also being on a relatively low cooldown.On the other hand healing word might need a bit of buffing.Yeah,it can hit many allies now,but it's unlikely to,because combat is dynamic and people move around a lot.Recasting it no longer extends the duration (no more extending crit chains) and the divine version is rather lackluster,even when it works.The temp Hp doesnt even stack with that of AS for example.Also,I find the divine version's "bonus" that "it doesn't consume charges" kinda pointless,since the divine version of encounters are now separated from the basic ones and have no cooldown anyway. Finally,Forgemaster's Flame could also use some more utility I think.
-While this one is true for all buff dailies,the fact that Hallowed Ground and Divine armor now prevent AP generation for us for their duration is a big hit,since this buff daily change affects DCs the most.That being said,since all classes get that for their buff dailies,it would not be balanced for us to be unaffected,just cause we depend more on these.I do feel,however,that the other,non-buff dailies could be improved,so that they be a viable choice.As it stands right now,most are not really worth using...
That's about it for my first look at this.Sorry for the huge wall of text!
Confirmed that that its not due to Repurpose Soul, but the multiple initial ticks thing does not seem to be related to number of targets affected since powers like Forgemaster's Flame can trigger it.
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Confirmed that that its not due to Repurpose Soul, but the multiple initial ticks thing does not seem to be related to number of targets affected since powers like Forgemaster's Flame can trigger it.
By number of targets affected,I was referring to number of targets affected by the debuff working as an AoE proc.Say you use FF:
-If you have one enemy and you crit on your target,it will proc normally.
-If you have multiple enemies and you crit on your target,the debuff will be applied to all nearby enemies.The more enemies affected by said debuff,the more extra initial ticks it seems to cause.
Yes, I also mean that. I've tried it with just two training dummies, Forgemaster's caused the second dummy to take 4 or so extra initial ticks from Fire of the Gods. I'm not sure what's causing it.
You there. New to the game? Feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you think getting to end-game is impossible for a casual player like yourself, or maybe you just need to be around a community that helps each other stay sane and competitive with the latest news, current trends, random chitchat and most of all LEGIT (that is, we try to keep things fair) gameplay. If you don't mind being around quirky people and the rare occasional drama (one of our prominent TR members is apparently a mafia godfather) join nw_legit_community at http://www.nwlegitcommunity.shivtr.com/forum_threads/2330542.
Why is it perfectly acceptable that we are able to fully fill the health bars of four party members, with the goal of making them immortal, while only one party member (the DC itself) struggles with his health bar? Should we not be immortal too? Why the double standard?
Amen to that. And does Righteousness and Healing Depression affect a Warlock's dps and Life Steal-based healing? If not, why not?
Seriously, I have 4 level 60 DCs, and one level 40 Warlock, and the Warlock has NEVER had to drink a healing potion in PvE. Really. I am not even joking.
I respecced my shiny new L60 (only Blues, few boons, etc.) into AC Righteous and ran her through Dread Ring. She blows stuff up nearly as effectively as my much higher GS SW and CW. I also noticed the weird AoE effect of Fire of the Gods. This no doubt had a huge impact on clear speed so when this is fixed things will probably calm down a lot.
I believe this was meant to say, "When the Annointed Action Daily buff". At first I thought it meant Annointed Armor but that doesn't give a buff.
No, it's always said that because it is correct.
Anointed Army is a Daily Power that damages enemies and buffs the party.
Anointed Action is a Class Feature that causes you to deal more damage and reduce incoming damage for a short time when you use a Daily Power, such as Anointed Army.
Ancient Warding is a Feat that causes the party to heal and gain Action Points when the buff from Anointed Army ends, and also causes the effect of the Anointed Action Class Feature to last longer (20% at five ranks).
Bug: Divine Fortune It gives WAY more than 15% bonus.. may increase nearly triple the amount.
Bug: Forgemaster's Flame description It still has the +10% Heal in the rank 2 and rank 3 description.. when in fact it doesnt do healing anymore.
Bug: Avatar of the Divine Blessing of Battle does not interact with this feat (dummy), (altho in real combat, avatar of the divine will trigger regardless of skills used)
Feedback : Exaltation While it is somewhat reasonable to remove the immunity bubble in the spammable divine version... it would be good to replace the immunity bubble to the normal (non-spammable) version now.
Question : Lasting Wishes vs Chaplain's Strength Is Lasting Wishes heal bonus applies to ALL kinds of healing ? or the regen natured ones only? They both increase heal for 10% @ 5 points, but Chaplain's Strength requires an enemy to be at least 30' while providing no visible advantage compared to Lasting Wishes. Seems a bit odd..
I've only read the changes and the comments, so this is my take. New paradigm for the Devoted Cleric... I'm game, despite having to learn a new mechanic. My DC has always been my Zen Rhythm class to play, so hopefully the new mechanics will fall into that same vein.
A few thoughts:
Sunburst - okay, for everyone complaining about the knockback, this is fantastic for the PvP player. The one thing that DCs have a serious lack of in the live game is the ability to interrupt. Interrupts are huge in PvP, and this is welcome. For PvE, there's a whole host of other powers you can use instead (divine glow as a heal now can easily replace Sunburst)
Astral Shield - looks like it needs a little more creativity to use effectively, not the same drop and forget power that we've gone to before. May just drop out of the rotation depending on the complexity to make it viable. (how many CWs and Ranged HRs run away from the circle anyway citing "my lifesteal is enough. I don't need your healing.")
Foresight - this passive may not be as useful anymore as it's no longer feated. Anyone experiencing issues with this?
Heroic Feats - need to be reworked. Only one that feels special is repurpose soul.
Righteousness - This one has always been a sore point, especially with PvP healing depression compounding with it. I've been told that Warlocks have a similar thing, although not as extreme (50% difference?). This may need to be tweaked, but from a design perspective, I get it.
Damage increase - seems like this puts us on more a level playing field. It's nice to know I'll have more than harsh language to attack opposing players with. :-P
Control Resistance/Immunity. As servant of the gods, I've decided that the gods really hate their clerics. The DC is the one class that has no way to break CC or gain immunity (yeah we're immune in that 1 sec dodge, but the casting time on Control Wizard CC is not long enough for you to effectively dodge it). I won't even go into the feeling of getting snared by a Green Dragonfang and knowing the sniped shot is coming. Give us something... increased resistance or cc break, built into an encounter or class feature passive.
Thanks for the efforts. I look forward to playing with it a bit.
Comments
First off, I am in full agreement with the majority of other posters when I say knockback on sunburst is terrible and will kill any use of the spell. While it is occasionally useful to have the knockback for things like the last boss in SP, or to clear an area to reach a fallen party member, it is far too situational to waste an encounter slot for sunburst with a constant knockback.
Personally, I stopped using sunburst about two months ago and I replaced it with Forgemaster's Flame. However, this power is also being reworked to remove the healing. This means that the spell becomes nothing more than a slow, with a little damage. But, the slow is stopped by control immunity and for damage alone this power is also not worth an encounter slot on my bar.
Instead of rehashing everything else said by others, it appears that overall you are separating heals from buffs and damage. This seems to be the case in both powers and the paragon level feat trees. The separation seems to intentionally make people have the choice of DPS or Healing with any combination of the two a failure. If you heal, your DPS will be so poor that you can not solo level 60 campaigns, and if you go DPS, your healing ability will be next to nothing. Sadly, I think this is a terrible idea. In the epic dungeon parties I have been in, heals have been "nice to have" but not necessary. Even choosing the DPS route, I do not think that with the changes will bring a DC even close to the ability of others. This fact alone makes me feel like DCs will be shunned in future parties.
As for the new empowerment effects of powers, IMO this is also a bad idea. I may change my mind when I test it, but I do not think it will be positive. I do think this will end up being a micro-management nightmare. Right now under the current system of using tab to change between divine and normal modes it is easy to use and fairly simple. But, if your fingers are ever misplaced on your keyboard or your tab key sticks on occasion, you end up in the wrong mode and your divine sunburst throws mobs away when you want normal mode, and your astral shield is accidentally put down in normal mode instead of divine mode when you are trying to heal someone. It happens, and it usually takes a rotation to realize what happened and get back on track. The idea of adding a 3rd mode to this does not bode well. Combined with the fact that all encounter spells tap a shared divinity pool, yet empowered spells will each have their own individual stacks to manage. Any keyboard/user error seems like it will throw your timing off for more than one rotation, especially if you need to regain stacks of something you fired off unintentionally.
Divinity gain on at-will use only also sounds bad. Like everyone else, I wonder how this can lead to the same amount of divinity gain that there is right now. I try to use my encounters whenever possible; at-wills are mostly filler.
The real killer now is the temptation warlock. I have one and its a nice character. My temptation warlock actually heals more than my DC. Of course my DC has better buff/debuffs than the warlock. The DC can also heal outside of combat while a warlock can only heal by doing damage. BUT... Many DC powers are losing the ability to heal; my warlock heals with every power. The new DC seems to be DPS or Heal build; the temptation warlock is DPS AND Heals. A DC with righteousness increases the parties incoming heal rate, a t-SW will increase the parties lifesteal... and a t-SW does not appear to have a self-heal depression like a DC. A DC will most likely be increasingly complex to play with the new empowered mode, my t-SW heals automatically just by being there while DPSing enemies. I already know players that prefer having a t-SW in the party over a DC, I think the proposed changes will increase those attitudes.
Sadly I think these changes will only hurt the DC overall. I think that the combination of t-SW's DPS and Heals will become more desired that a DCs buffs/heals (which seem to be less of a combination with the new changes) and the added micro-management of the new empowerment system will give existing DCs less of an incentive to actually play.
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This.
Please please don't. Nobody likes knock back. There are very extreme situations when it is useful which could be activated in (live) divine mode but at least it was a choice.
A shadow puppet could kill you faster than this could heal you.
1000% over 12 seconds from healing spells. 8000ish over 12 seconds? Sounds completely useless.
At first I also thought this Sunburst change is bad. But after reading the changes again I think Divine Glow might be a good replacement. Most DCs including myself use Sunburst to spread buffs and debuffs and for AP gain. Healing and damage is not the reason to use it. The new Divine Glow not only damages and debuffs/buffs. It also heals so it can be used to spread Foresight too (if handling of Foresight remains the same). The AoE is smaller than with Sunburst but "drawing" small circle while casting it 3 times in a row in divine mode might be as good or even better.
Divine Glow hits for 10.8k to 13k. See attached screenshot
Only Brand of the Sun's initial hit grants Divinity. Every other tic doesn't.
Why would it be a bug? if you use the damage tree and watch your tooltips when buffs are active that's to be expected.
Bug: Astral Shield
Rank 3 Astral Shield provides 30% damage resistance according to the tooltip. In practice it only provides 20% damage resistance.
Before today, it would take me over a minute to battle a group of trolls. Now, the Rightous Cleric whips them in seconds, on par with my other classes.
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Further testing needed, but buff icons indicate that the divine encounters proc both the divine as well as the empowered effect at the same time.
Bug: Astral Shield
You are talking no damage while inside a none-divine non-empowered AS.
Feedback: Sun Burst
I'm torn whether or not the basic version should have any knockback. For a healing build, it plain sucks. For a buffer like me who wants to use the Divine version only, it's a perfect fit.
Feedback: Buffing Cleric
At the peak the DC will still be able to boost the party damage by ~100%, now with increased damage.
I've seen stuff working differently from what's stated in the OP. So, bug or feature?
- Regen seems to be affected by various faithful/virtous feats. My regen was slighthly stronger than it is on live. Sadly i can't provide any reliable figure but it's around 15-20% more or so at first glance. Would require more testing.
- Bastion of health has been incredibly buffed. With a faithful tree i can see it up to 20k or so. If it's intended then great but it's 15x more than what we have on live.
So we've lost pretty powerful feats, like the faithful one affecting healing lore. My power dropped from 7500 to 7k or so. There's no more linked spirit either. The righteous feat reducing incoming CA damage disappeared too. But so far I kinda like what i see on the healing side of things.
Healing word's aoe is HUGE. Good. Hopefully there's no target cap. I can't test this on the test server as there's no dragon encounter with 20 people zerging it.
Divinity can be built pretty fast. In 2-3s i have it full with whatever at-will. Ok, that might be slightly too much. That's just cast something and get a full set of divinity charges. What's the point of the PvP sets bonus then?
Astral shield: I like the mechanic. I've been in dread ring and after casting it 3 times in divine mode and then once in normal no npc could damage me. We're clearly on the overkill side here, and my DC has merely 25k HP. Let's say that it shouldn't block more than half of the incoming damage capped at 3% of the DCs max HP per empowerment stack?
Sunburst: I LOVE it. Please keep it as it is. That's the plea from someone enjoying pvp.
Daunting light: the divine mode damage is pathetic but the normal mode after 3 stacks of empowerement... Wow. Damage doubled! Great.
Now the bad stuff:
There's no visual feedback on what we're doing with divine mode spells. Astral shield leaves no mark on the ground. The blue circle should be visible on the ground for at least 0.5s. Visual feedback on spells is extremely important. It gives us feedback on what we're doing and we can see if we've done things well. In the same vein NPCs affected by the divine "divine glow" spell should get a blue version of it on their bodies. Currently normal and divine give the same visual feedback which isn't good to see how well you've done.
Casting time: Way, way too long for astral shield and divine glow. If we're supposed to spam divinity mode (and we should once divinity gains get balanced) such spells should have a really faster animation. Chains and FF seems to be balanced on that matter. So is daunting light since it has a desired effect in divine mode.
I get the current design which makes us spending a lot of time in animation locked but balanced by fat divinity gains but it doesn't feel very rewarding and it not very active so maybe tweaking both values on some key spells would be nice to make the DC gameplay as dynamic as it is on live right now.
Edit: I had divine fortune equipped when I wrote this. Even without it we're still a bit high. Divine fortune trivializes greatly the DC gameplay as it is currently. I'll leave you imagine what divine fortune + the pvp set do.
Probably more to come after more testing.
The stacks gained from casting Divine Astral Shield are not consumed when attempting to cast empowered Astral Shield. Empowered Astral Shield is not granting the temporary Hitpoints.
Astral Shield also seems to prevent any damage whatsoever from affecting whoever is standing in it.
Unfortunately, I have just been to preview and my impression is completely far from positive:
1. Have you tried the divine version of astral seal? What a joke, barely heals and drains all the divinity rapidly.
2. Feats don't seem to work, they keep reseting - I guess that will be fixed soon..
3. Having the regular sun burst push enemies will be very undesirable in parties (unless on a bridge).
4. I don't manage to see the logic of a dps DC (the last tree). Who would take a dps DC into a dungeon? The entire concept of the class is support (healing or debuffing).
5. Astral shield - I don't know, it is yet to be tested, I was far from impressed testing it in dread ring and Icewind dale.
It felt worse than before.
I had hoped that the transition away from healing would make the astral shield a sanctuary where you have much more damage resistance.
Instead, we get temporary hp that are drained quite rapidly.
I may be wrong here, I am not a pro dc, this is just an alt and I didn't parse or debug anything.
However, overall I can say the experience felt much worse than before.
One of the things that scared me most is: HG & DA while active block AP generation.
Have fun everyone
Edit: and another thing that frightened me is the PVP invasion.....once again it destroyed another class' PVE power : Sunburst....now I won't be able to use it in PVE I think.
Does anyone know why entire groups of weak mobs are dying (fast!) to a single cast of Brand of the Sun? I mean just one cast on a single monster in the middle of a pack. I looked over the feats I had selected and didn't see anything about dispersing AoE damage, and it wasn't Burning Guidance either.
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Normal Astral Shield gives 100% damage immunity. Did someone add an extra 0?
Feedback: Empowered
I kinda like the idea, but can we have the number of stacks show up on the Encounter icons? It will make it easier to manage the stacks. Right now I have to squint and see what stacks I have next to my char's face and then try to decipher then icons (it seems that astral shield got the bastion of health icon there)
Feedback: Sunburst
The push is nice for PvP, but will be real annoying in PvE for low level DCs in dungeons.
Feedback: Weapon damage calculations
I am liking that you're adding weapon damage into calculations for buffing/healing. I think this is a good directions, because previously buffing DCs were kind of stuck with the same buff effectiveness (determined only by the team) and mediocre healing. Now the healing and buffing is getting more scaleable with the Gear of the DC.
Feedback: "Gift of Faith"
These stack accumulate a lot and can result in some crazy heals once the person reaches 30% HP. I have seen 143k heal. It basically ends up acting like a pre-soulforged. Is that intended?
-Divine mode damage not shown for many powers (powers like Sunburst, Forgemaster's Flame and Break the Spirit all have different damage values for the divine/normal versions).
-The heroic feat Repurpose Soul seems to proc Fire of the Gods, resulting in entire groups of mobs getting killed off by at-wills.
Feedback: Righteous
-Fire of the Gods proccing off Repurpose Soul can actually be a good thing once damage numbers (of the feat itself or that of other powers) are adjusted a bit, since it provides Righteous with reliable, constant damage. The problem with Righteous atm is that it seems to specialize in spike damage and relies -heavily- on proper positioning. Compare to the SW (not damage-wise, but playstyle-wise) - SWs at least only need their targets to be in a rough line or in the general area of their main target for powers like Dreadtheft, TT and Harrowstorm to work. Righteous DCs need their targets to stand in a tight, circular area and stay there.
-Some powers have more or less become inferior/superior versions of another. Notable examples include Daunting/Searing Light, and Forgemaster's Flame/Break the Spirit. These powers should be doing very different things.
My suggestion is to make Searing Light more effective against larger groups of mobs. Maybe make the present divine version the baseline effect of the normal version, and then make the divine version have an effect that slightly "attracts" mobs to the path of the projectile.
Forgemaster's Flame and Break the Spirit are very, very similar atm. While Forgemaster's does more damage when empowered, empowered Break the Spirit gives +15% more damage to allies, debuffs the target and has a shorter cooldown. Perhaps Break the Spirit's empowered effect should just reduce the target's damage even further? Even if the extra damage reduction only applies when the target is attacking the cleric himself, at least.
Divine fortune increases divinty gains by ~200%,instead of the intended 15%
Bug: Astral shield (already mentioned by others)
Absorbs 100% damage in normal mode. (note: on battle log,it appears as absorbed damage,not mitigated damage,so it's probably not a mitigation value mistake)
Bug: Fire of the Gods
This feat procs as an AoE effect. For example,if you crit with a single target power on an enemy that is close to 2 others,all of them will gain Fire of the Gods.Additionally,the first tick of this DoT procs multiple times,based on the number of affected targets. (It is not related to repurpose soul,as it behaves the same even without having that feat.)
Bug: Purity
In-game tooltip incorrectly states 200% heal increase.Correct is,purity heals for 300% of the HoT it is based on. (as in,you get an extra tick,equal to 300% the original value)
Bug: Healing word
Tooltip is reverted to showing a 15 sec CD,even though it is still correctly affected by cooldown reduction
Bug: Divine Healing Word
Divine healing word seems to occasionally provide no benefit,despite consuming divine pips normally. I am not sure what causes this,as I have not noticed a pattern as to when this happens.The frequency is roughly 1 in 8 casts though.
Also,possible bugs:
-Brand of the sun no longer grants divine power over time; it instead provides it on cast,like other at-wills.
-The feat unbreakable devotion seems to be absorbing higher damage than stated.However,it also has a 6 second uptime with 20 second ICD,which was not mentioned in the patch notes.Not sure if the extra absorption is to make up for the new ICD or if it's a bug.
-There seems to be no indication of how many health points Agent of the Divine has "stored up".In order to avoid long numbers on the buff icon,stacks could be added for every 1k hp saved up.So if you have,say,11873 health points stored,you would have 11 stacks; triggering it would still grant 11873 hp,but you would be able to roughly estimate that you'd be getting around 11-12k hp when it procs.
Feedback
I actually enjoy the new divine mode.One of the reasons why I main a DC,is the fact that buttonmashing wont get you far,unlike most other classes,cause you will burn divinity fast.You have to plan ahead and manage your Divine casts as effectively as possible.This makes it challenging and requires some actual thinking.The new mode adds more to that,since you have to take under consideration empowered casts too.Additionally,it allows even healing/buffing DCs to deal some damage; so far, one of the complaints most clerics had,was that most of our encounter slots are taken by non-damaging abilities,our dailies are mostly buffs and our at wills are kinda lacking,meaning our dps was low.Now,even with one damaging power,we can deal considerable dmg,by choosing to spend divinity in that power and taking advantage of the lack of CD on divine powers.
That being said,there's a few things that I would like to see changed:
-As others have mentioned,some of our heroic feats (specially domain synergy and initiate of the faith) need a rework.
-Ethereal Boon was nice for building divinity out of combat and will probably be missed by most.A suggestion could be,to add passive divinity regeneration,which would be effective only when DC is out of combat.For example,"when out of combat,you gain divine points equal to 10% of a pip every 1 second"
-More importantly,healing step is a huge loss,specially for pvp.DCs tend to be focused a lot.Due to righteousness and healing depression,our self healing is low and cannot compare to the damage we take.Even now,with the heal-focused trees,we can't survive relying on heals alone.Dodging is key,because we have no CC break.This means that,if you don't dodge a stun,the horde that is chasing you around the point will catch you,which will lead to getting stunlocked to death.Other classes have more dodges,cc break skills, or can avoid being targeted.In cases where none of the above is true,classes have innate defensive skills (High Hp and/or deflection due to benefiting from main stats etc) that allow them to survive the pain train.Clerics can't prevent cc with anything other than dodge,nor can facetank enemies.They can only survive battles thanks to buffs and heals.Neither of which you can cast while stunned.Your only hope is to have your team get the enemies off of you,which can be accomplished only by ccing them.Which brings us back to the issue of most other classes having more ways to deal with cc,meaning they can keep stunlocking you even with your team protecting you.
If healing step can't come back,another suggestion would be some sort of divine protection as a class mechanic.For example "Activated by holding down (insert selected Divine mode key): In a time of struggle,you call upon your deity for help.You instantly break free of CC and are immune to dmg for 1 second.For the following 3 seconds,all incoming damage is reduced by 33% and CC durations are cut by half.Consumes 1 divinty pip and you are unable to build additional divine points for 5 seconds after activation." This would allow us to survive if things get sticky,but would not be spammable,as we only have 3 pips and after activation,we can't build any more divine points for a while.
-Im not particularly fond of the Sunburst change.In PvE,it's bad,cause it scatters mobs as many have mentioned.You are never supposed to be far enough from your group to not affect "their" mobs.Taking under consideration the short CD,that could get tiring fast.In PvP,it would be broken.If both teams have a cleric on 2,the battle on that point would end up being a ping pong match between the DCs,knocking their enemies around.The presence of CC doesn't necessarily have to go,it could be switched to a short stun instead though,which get upgraded to a knockback in empowered version.
-At first sight,I feel righteous tree might be a bit OP,even with fire of the gods fixed,as everything provides straight out damage buffs with no requirements that have to be met.Similarly,divine glow feels a bit too good,as it has good damage,decent heal,good heal over time,buffs and debuffs,all in one power,while also being on a relatively low cooldown.On the other hand healing word might need a bit of buffing.Yeah,it can hit many allies now,but it's unlikely to,because combat is dynamic and people move around a lot.Recasting it no longer extends the duration (no more extending crit chains) and the divine version is rather lackluster,even when it works.The temp Hp doesnt even stack with that of AS for example.Also,I find the divine version's "bonus" that "it doesn't consume charges" kinda pointless,since the divine version of encounters are now separated from the basic ones and have no cooldown anyway. Finally,Forgemaster's Flame could also use some more utility I think.
-While this one is true for all buff dailies,the fact that Hallowed Ground and Divine armor now prevent AP generation for us for their duration is a big hit,since this buff daily change affects DCs the most.That being said,since all classes get that for their buff dailies,it would not be balanced for us to be unaffected,just cause we depend more on these.I do feel,however,that the other,non-buff dailies could be improved,so that they be a viable choice.As it stands right now,most are not really worth using...
That's about it for my first look at this.Sorry for the huge wall of text!
By number of targets affected,I was referring to number of targets affected by the debuff working as an AoE proc.Say you use FF:
-If you have one enemy and you crit on your target,it will proc normally.
-If you have multiple enemies and you crit on your target,the debuff will be applied to all nearby enemies.The more enemies affected by said debuff,the more extra initial ticks it seems to cause.
My bad I guess,my wording wasn't very clear : p
Does not seem to have any effect. Using flame strike on some mobs in Dread Ring I got an average damage of:
Not feated: 1223
Feated: 1221
Also, the minimum, maximum, and median values are almost the same (and nowhere near a bonus of 10%).
Amen to that. And does Righteousness and Healing Depression affect a Warlock's dps and Life Steal-based healing? If not, why not?
Seriously, I have 4 level 60 DCs, and one level 40 Warlock, and the Warlock has NEVER had to drink a healing potion in PvE. Really. I am not even joking.
~
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No, it's always said that because it is correct.
Anointed Army is a Daily Power that damages enemies and buffs the party.
Anointed Action is a Class Feature that causes you to deal more damage and reduce incoming damage for a short time when you use a Daily Power, such as Anointed Army.
Ancient Warding is a Feat that causes the party to heal and gain Action Points when the buff from Anointed Army ends, and also causes the effect of the Anointed Action Class Feature to last longer (20% at five ranks).
It gives WAY more than 15% bonus.. may increase nearly triple the amount.
Bug: Forgemaster's Flame description
It still has the +10% Heal in the rank 2 and rank 3 description.. when in fact it doesnt do healing anymore.
Bug: Avatar of the Divine
Blessing of Battle does not interact with this feat (dummy), (altho in real combat, avatar of the divine will trigger regardless of skills used)
Feedback : Exaltation
While it is somewhat reasonable to remove the immunity bubble in the spammable divine version... it would be good to replace the immunity bubble to the normal (non-spammable) version now.
Question : Lasting Wishes vs Chaplain's Strength
Is Lasting Wishes heal bonus applies to ALL kinds of healing ? or the regen natured ones only? They both increase heal for 10% @ 5 points, but Chaplain's Strength requires an enemy to be at least 30' while providing no visible advantage compared to Lasting Wishes. Seems a bit odd..
A few thoughts:
Sunburst - okay, for everyone complaining about the knockback, this is fantastic for the PvP player. The one thing that DCs have a serious lack of in the live game is the ability to interrupt. Interrupts are huge in PvP, and this is welcome. For PvE, there's a whole host of other powers you can use instead (divine glow as a heal now can easily replace Sunburst)
Astral Shield - looks like it needs a little more creativity to use effectively, not the same drop and forget power that we've gone to before. May just drop out of the rotation depending on the complexity to make it viable. (how many CWs and Ranged HRs run away from the circle anyway citing "my lifesteal is enough. I don't need your healing.")
Foresight - this passive may not be as useful anymore as it's no longer feated. Anyone experiencing issues with this?
Heroic Feats - need to be reworked. Only one that feels special is repurpose soul.
Righteousness - This one has always been a sore point, especially with PvP healing depression compounding with it. I've been told that Warlocks have a similar thing, although not as extreme (50% difference?). This may need to be tweaked, but from a design perspective, I get it.
Damage increase - seems like this puts us on more a level playing field. It's nice to know I'll have more than harsh language to attack opposing players with. :-P
Control Resistance/Immunity. As servant of the gods, I've decided that the gods really hate their clerics. The DC is the one class that has no way to break CC or gain immunity (yeah we're immune in that 1 sec dodge, but the casting time on Control Wizard CC is not long enough for you to effectively dodge it). I won't even go into the feeling of getting snared by a Green Dragonfang and knowing the sniped shot is coming. Give us something... increased resistance or cc break, built into an encounter or class feature passive.
Thanks for the efforts. I look forward to playing with it a bit.