Looking for help with a direction for my Cleric to take

jandrix

Hello everyone,

I have been playing my cleric lately and like it quite a bit. I am up to level 53 right now and I specced as a DO Faithful. The build works okay but I only play my cleric when I am playing with one of my friends who is playing a protection paladin. I may be able to nearly heal a skeleton back to life but he rarely needs healing. I am thinking about changing my build to try Virtuous because I know I saw a feat that activates a shield which would actually have some use. Hopefully we will be playing these characters together into the end-game and I want to make sure that even then our characters work together to the best of their ability. My question is, is there any specific direction I should be going in with my cleric to maximize our partnership? Would I better off DO or AC and which feat tree. Or am I overthinking this (Most likely knowing me) and the build will not make that much of a difference. I recently copied my character over to the test server so I can play around with a build but I just need the help to find a direction. Thanks a lot for your time.

lilhamlet

If you're only playing with a protection paladin friend, maybe some Righteous feats might help just to improve damage output. That said, DO also has Hammer of Fate which is a decent damaging daily, and foresight which will help further buff you and your partner's survivability. The faithful path also helps improve this with benefit of Foresight. If you chose virtuous you guys could spam dailies all your hearts want.

I always talk about being Righteous, but I actually play a hybridized build so you might want to consider that if there are particular aspects you want from any given path.

Unknown

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rapo973

Valid for end-game PvE only.
With the AC virtuous I spam heals, action points and AA on the team and the OP tank.
The OP casts his blue ball forever and the team takes no damages at all. AA reduces the amount of damages take by the team and the OP lives quite well. At the end I use healing over the time to increase the APs only.

I focus mainly on the OP and on his survivability which is a must in the T2 dungeon in my opinion to speed it up. On top of it, you can add some buffs from the righteous for example.

Just to give a measure, with a (strong) team DC - Action points /OP thank/3 DPS we have completed smootly the epic Temple of the Spider in 15 mins, even faster than Cragmire. We do it with DC/OP/GF /2 DPS too and it works very well.
The good news are that this setup works even when you have moderate dps. We run eTOS with a DC/OP/GF/2.3 TR/ 2.5 GWF and we finished it in 22 mins with no problems. Here the "secret" is the combination of the DC/OP/GF features: you know that it works when you see a very long list of buffs on the toons :rolleyes:

This fails when the players think that they are immortal: they must avoid hard hits and red carpets as much as possible, otherwise the OP dies in seconds.

This team composition (DC Actions Points and OP thank) is not well known at the moment: most of the teams go Cragmire without knowing that eToS can be easiers: short dungeon, no traps, easy bosses (seals farming) and a bit of effort and experience on the last boss.

suicidalgodot

If you mainly play in that team of two, you'll find your and your friends damage lacking.

So one basic question is: Do you want to stay healer-focused, or might you want to go for buff/debuff/artillery?

Another basic question: How in-game affluent are you - i.e. would you consider respeccing again when you get into later endgame, where Dungeons will be you bread&butter daily gameplay, and all but healers get kicked by, erm, prejudiced team members...

I'm a big fan of the RiDO Feel-the-Wrath-of-my-God (Tempus in my DC's case, BTW) approach, but most parties opine to know better and hence it'll be somewhat frustrating to get yourself some epic gear later on. But it would greatly accelerate your progress throughought the campaigns.

And for healing, Virtue vs. Faith IMHO it depends more on your and your friend's playstyle and/or preferences. If you're e.g. more into using daily powers, Virt would be the way to go, If you regularly get yourself in over your heads, the Gift of Faith and the fast heals in Faithful are probably better.

For background information - if you done haven't already, I can only recommend referring to Kaelac's Guide, which however gets more and more out of date...
...but the big DC rework done in Mod 5 is included. Not included are the >Lvl 60 skills, and this week's nerf to Cleanse and Astral Seal, however.

fluppery

suicidalgodot wrote: »

I can only recommend referring to Kaelac's Guide, which however gets more and more out of date...
...but the big DC rework done in Mod 5 is included. Not included are the >Lvl 60 skills, and this week's nerf to Cleanse and Astral Seal, however.

I also recommend Kaelacs, if I may. No matter what your class, the information about stats and diminishing returns is super important to understand.

With the bulk of the guides being poorly outdated, the information still works mostly especially at lower levels. Once you hit 60, you pretty much need to respec and change your spellbar if you want to progress. 70 is even more so. If you continue to play as a 60, you won't cut it. And that's why I say the guides will make you a sucky dc, that is a sucky 60s or 70s dc. 70 is really all that matters in my opinion.

putzboy78

For any DC, i recommend leveling righteous, save up for a respec at 70 when you hit end game content. Leveling as a healer is painful (my first character was a gf, followed by my healer dc, then i lvld a cw and thought WTF because its so much easier to lvl as a damage dealer).

For end game: If your pally friend is good and you plan to always run with him/her. You may want to consider righteous. You can still use healing encounters but help on the damage side significantly (buff/debuff and/or dps). With good tanking he will offset your lower healing by controlling the mobs and allowing you to more focus damage mitigation and healing on him (if the paly is average or bad then stick with pure healing tree). If you plan to pug at 70 while farming gear, I would consider faithful (you may over heal but at least you have the flexibility for extreme heals and clutch heals should it be required).

As an fyi if you do not have an end game character yet. You have three major things going on 1) chasing boons usually not done in party or in small parties, dealing damage is very helpful 2) gearing up, all in party this is where healing will help you get in parties faster/easier than dps classes 3) farming RP, there are different ways to do this and they change often, but typically this is easier if you can deal damage.

Most importantly play in a way you enjoy, because if you don't enjoy the mechanics and the role, you will not stick around. So pick whats right for you

jandrix

Thank you all for the excellent answers. I have an idea about how I am going to spec my character, time to play around with the ideas now. I do trust my friend to be a good tank. We have grouped together with him as my tank since vanilla wow. We have a little experience. And when he is not on I am playing another character so grouping should be fine. Thank you all again. I really appreciate the quick replies.

jandrix

suicidalgodot wrote: »

I'm a big fan of the RiDO Feel-the-Wrath-of-my-God (Tempus in my DC's case, BTW) approach, but most parties opine to know better and hence it'll be somewhat frustrating to get yourself some epic gear later on. But it would greatly accelerate your progress throughought the campaigns.

I worship Kelemvor, that way if someone does die I can say it wasn't my fault and my god must have just decided it was their time to die and shorted my healing a little. I am completely faultless and at the mercy of my god's blessing. So sorry.

putzboy78

People will and do die in mod 6, do not take it personally, the spike damage is very high.