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Cleric buff/debuff/heal/Passive Heal build for endgame
protosinister
Member Posts: 11 Arc User
mmorpg.com's @ProtoSori
http://youtu.be/bYXtwhdS-w0
*Video Guide Above*
A few disclaimers to kick this thing off.
*I'm writing this on my phone, so the formatting may be a nightmare.
*This build is NOT an easy one to play. In my opinion, it is by far the most effective cleric build pre 15k gear score. I'm still experimenting with different skills to maximize Gift of Faith (explained later), so if you have any input or professional math skills, feel free to contribute. I ruv ru rong time.
So to get started, I'm going to go against the grain of how most people play this class, because I have experience in almost every mmo ever made, and have utilized the unique way Clerics were built in this game to create a ridiculously powerful build. It's not new. It's not unused. Other people have similar stuff.
LEVELING - LEVELING - LEVELING
Leveling up as a healer in most games is a pain in the fallopian tubes. Most games build their heal class as a squishy immobile one hitter quitter character. The uniqueness of Neverwinter Clerics is that, true to D&D they stuck with mail armor class rather than squish city cloth wearers. I'm going to say some things next that might make you think I'm a troll. I'm not. I mean I am, but not here.
ABILITIES - FOR - LEVELING
Leveling up, stick to Astral seal and Lance of faith as your at-will abilities. Astral seal can effectively keep you healed with the supplement of options. This is one of two ways of healing yourself. Invest in a healing companion and potions.
For encounter abilities, switch healing word with chains of blazing light as soon as you get it. Next, switch searing light with daunting light when you get that one. And finally, switch sun burst with divine glow.
As for rotation, smack the hardest mob in the group with Astral seal, wail on him/her/it with Lance until you have full divinity. Use your 3 bars of divinity on daunting light, and use your empowered state for daunting light as well. Once you get comfortable using these abilities, go into options and turn off AOE Targeting Assist. It's a pain in the rectal cavity.
PASSIVES - FOR - LEVELING
For passives, you will want to use Holy fervor and terrifying insight as soon as possible. Yes this is a Divine Oracle build, as I personally see Annointed Champion paragon path as useless from experimentation.
DAILY - ABILITIES - FOR - LEVELING
For Daily abilities, I never waver from Hollowed Ground and Flame Strike. None of the others have any usefulness in any situations above these two. When leveling, I mainly use Flame Strike for the excellent aoe clear damage, and minor Cc.
FEATS - FOR - LEVELING
Now let's talk about feats. You should respec a few times in your career as a cleric due to changes in your gear, to help maximize benefits to get as close to soft cap as possible. I will talk about these stat caps later.
While leveling up, focus primarily on dps/tankiness.
Max the first one/put rest into the next.
Toughness/healing action Weapon master/Holy resolve Repurpose soul/healing action Templar's domain
For your heroic feats, go righteous path.
Astral fury Righteous suffering Piercing light Condemning gaze Avatar of the divine Furious intervention
The last 5 points is preference.
Running full dps as a cleric is devastatingly powerful for leveling. Clerics have some of the absolute highest damage capability in the game. During the leveling process, skip all dungeons and skirmishes, focus on quests exclusively.
ITEMS - OF - NOTE
*Some items of note:
At level 26, start your Tyrany of the Dragons campaign.
At level one, if you have an extra $20 to spend, one of the most overpowered and useful things you can do is buy an Heirloom Pack from the zen store. Be sure to claim this from the reward merchant opposite the tunnel from Sgt. Knox.
Be sure to get your free bags from Blacklake and Never death. In never death, the dudes name is Chatterbell, he's in the main town to the left when you enter the area. He won't have a quest icon. Talk to his ratchet *** anyways.
LEVEL - 60 - GUIDE
OK, so you've made it to level 60. Congratulations, this is where the real fun starts. The following is a semi-comprehensive guide on what to do at this point in your existence.
Upon reaching level 60, buy a respec token. You may already have one if you purchased the Heirloom Pack.
Upon respec usage, I will start with your powers. This build is a hybrid build that covers all bases for any situation.
ABILITIES - FOR - DUNGEONS
Everything that follows is a 3 point power, the rest you just fill in with one point to move forward.
Astral Seal Lance of Faith Sun Burst Healing Word Searing Light Flame Strike Hollowed Ground Chains of Blazing Light Divine Fortune Sacred Flame Daunting Light Holy Fervor Foresight Terrifying Insight Break the Spirit Divine Glow Astral Shield
FEATS - FOR - DUNGEONS
For feats, we are going Divine Oracle again. We are going to do some feat tricks here.
3 Toughness 3 Greater Fortune 1 Healing Action 3 Weapon Mastery 2 Domain Synergy 3 Repurpose Soul 5 Bountiful Fortune
Virtuous: 5 Lasting Wishes
Righteous: 5 Furious Intervention
Faithful: 5 Resounding Beliefs 5 Divine Intervention 5 Benefit of Foresight (skip this next tier) 5 Test of Faith 1 Agent of the Divine
So there you have it. Equal parts heal/passive heal and utility. This spec requires no specific character placement in a battle, nor does it require too much emphasis on heal upkeep.
SOLO - FOR - DUNGEONS
Now for power load outs, you will 95% of the time be running the same one, with a few alterations depending on boss fights.
For solo play (daily quests and such) I use Lance of Faith and Brand of the Sun. Cast brand on each target and go ham with Lance.
Flame Strike is your go to Daily ability.
Chains of Blazing Light, Daunting Light and Divine Glow are your main encounters. Same strategy here as leveling. Use Chains and Divine whenever they are up and use Daunting x3 while in Divinity mode, and then once more for the Empowered bonus.
For passives, use Holy Fervor and Terrifying Insight.
LOADOUTS - FOR - DUNGEONS
You will want Astral Seal and Sacred Flame for most content, sometimes switching Sacred Flame for Brand of the Sun for boss fights where you can't stop moving to cast 3x Sacred Flame.
For passives, use Holy Fervor and Foresight. The damage mitigation from Foresight is increased to 11% from your feats, and this affects all party members who you are healing which should be a constant bonus if you hit the priority targets with Astral Seal.
For encounters, use Bastion of Health, Astral Shield and Divine Glow. The vast majority of Bastion of Healths massive heal will go directly into your gift of faith. This is preferable. Astral shield gives a 30% damage mitigation for a total of 41% between Astral Shield and Foresight, further increasing if Hollowed Ground is on the floor, although that one is an unknown amount of mitigation. At preferable recovery (explained later), Astral shield will be down constantly minus 4 seconds between casts. Divine Glow is your absolute bread and Nutella. It literally does it all. On a regular cast, it reduces enemy armor, heals allies, gives a heal over time to gift of faith, and gives a further 10% damage mitigation to allies. This is your divinity spell as well. Always cast it on tanks/melee allies. Divinity will heal for as much as Bastion of Health here, also reducing enemy damage by 15% and increasing ally damage by 15%. It's ermahgerd ermerzerng. For Empowered mode, I usually cast Astral shield unless someone just used a gift of faith proc and needs a refill, then I use Bastion of Health.
For dailies, only use Hollowed Ground in dungeons.
Phew. Book status.
GEAR - FOR - DUNGEONS
Now for gearing. For Clerics, everyone thinks Miracle healer is the best heal set. It's not. Math op. Not only does High Prophet reduce enemy armor by wtf30%scrub but it increases your healing ability more than Miracle Healer. 13k+ gear score players have a good amount of life steal. Life steal is a heal based on damage. 30% more damage equates to higher passive heals (less work for you), faster fights (less work for you) and allows for some player meta combinations that I won't get into in this guide.
You will use High Prophet forever and always.
Get a Wisdom artifact belt from the auction house, this is best in slot.
Work your way up the campaign and get Astral Golden Dragon Symbol for dungeons, and Heart of the Golden Dragon for solo play. Self explanatory.
Utility slots need Dragon Hoard Enchantments from the auction house, get Four of them since you have four utility slots. Defense and offense slots should be mainly Radiant Enchantments until you start hitting stat caps (explained shortly).
STATS - FOR - DUNGEONS
Now for stats. As a cleric using this build, you notice I didn't take any threat reduction feats or passives. That's because your job is not only to heal/buff/debuff but to take and hold aggro so your squish dps homies can do their thing. You want aggro. Aggro is good. Aggro is life.
Power is your main squeeze. This stat has no soft or hard cap, and builds with 12k power are often seen. I prefer 10k to have room to cap a few other stats.
Critical strike should be 2000 up to 2500 while using plague fire enchantment. If you prefer Vorpal enchantment, boost this baby to the soft cap at 3500.
Recovery, due to recent changes in caps and cleric cast speed, the preferable amount is 2500. Any more than that is unnoticeable and wasted.
Defense should be around 2500 as well. This is the soft cap and should allow you to get around 40% damage resistance on your character sheet, making it insanely easy to hit the damage resistance cap with your abilities.
Regeneration is not mandatory, but I try to get it as close to 1k as possible because it's free heals and doesn't draw aggro. Cleric heals are only about 50% as effective on yourself as others.
The rest of the stats are next to useless to a cleric. Don't fux with em.
BOONS - FOR - DUNGEONS
For Boons, I find the following as the best route.
Dragons Claws Dragons Gaze Dragonscale Defense Dragons Blood Dragons Revival (due to lowered self healing)
This concludes the majority of the guide. Any frequently asked questions will be added to the guide at a later time.
My gamer tag is Avic09, Happy hunting ladies and gents.
EDIT: Improved Format for convenient referral.
http://youtu.be/bYXtwhdS-w0
*Video Guide Above*
A few disclaimers to kick this thing off.
*I'm writing this on my phone, so the formatting may be a nightmare.
*This build is NOT an easy one to play. In my opinion, it is by far the most effective cleric build pre 15k gear score. I'm still experimenting with different skills to maximize Gift of Faith (explained later), so if you have any input or professional math skills, feel free to contribute. I ruv ru rong time.
So to get started, I'm going to go against the grain of how most people play this class, because I have experience in almost every mmo ever made, and have utilized the unique way Clerics were built in this game to create a ridiculously powerful build. It's not new. It's not unused. Other people have similar stuff.
LEVELING - LEVELING - LEVELING
Leveling up as a healer in most games is a pain in the fallopian tubes. Most games build their heal class as a squishy immobile one hitter quitter character. The uniqueness of Neverwinter Clerics is that, true to D&D they stuck with mail armor class rather than squish city cloth wearers. I'm going to say some things next that might make you think I'm a troll. I'm not. I mean I am, but not here.
ABILITIES - FOR - LEVELING
Leveling up, stick to Astral seal and Lance of faith as your at-will abilities. Astral seal can effectively keep you healed with the supplement of options. This is one of two ways of healing yourself. Invest in a healing companion and potions.
For encounter abilities, switch healing word with chains of blazing light as soon as you get it. Next, switch searing light with daunting light when you get that one. And finally, switch sun burst with divine glow.
As for rotation, smack the hardest mob in the group with Astral seal, wail on him/her/it with Lance until you have full divinity. Use your 3 bars of divinity on daunting light, and use your empowered state for daunting light as well. Once you get comfortable using these abilities, go into options and turn off AOE Targeting Assist. It's a pain in the rectal cavity.
PASSIVES - FOR - LEVELING
For passives, you will want to use Holy fervor and terrifying insight as soon as possible. Yes this is a Divine Oracle build, as I personally see Annointed Champion paragon path as useless from experimentation.
DAILY - ABILITIES - FOR - LEVELING
For Daily abilities, I never waver from Hollowed Ground and Flame Strike. None of the others have any usefulness in any situations above these two. When leveling, I mainly use Flame Strike for the excellent aoe clear damage, and minor Cc.
FEATS - FOR - LEVELING
Now let's talk about feats. You should respec a few times in your career as a cleric due to changes in your gear, to help maximize benefits to get as close to soft cap as possible. I will talk about these stat caps later.
While leveling up, focus primarily on dps/tankiness.
Max the first one/put rest into the next.
Toughness/healing action Weapon master/Holy resolve Repurpose soul/healing action Templar's domain
For your heroic feats, go righteous path.
Astral fury Righteous suffering Piercing light Condemning gaze Avatar of the divine Furious intervention
The last 5 points is preference.
Running full dps as a cleric is devastatingly powerful for leveling. Clerics have some of the absolute highest damage capability in the game. During the leveling process, skip all dungeons and skirmishes, focus on quests exclusively.
ITEMS - OF - NOTE
*Some items of note:
At level 26, start your Tyrany of the Dragons campaign.
At level one, if you have an extra $20 to spend, one of the most overpowered and useful things you can do is buy an Heirloom Pack from the zen store. Be sure to claim this from the reward merchant opposite the tunnel from Sgt. Knox.
Be sure to get your free bags from Blacklake and Never death. In never death, the dudes name is Chatterbell, he's in the main town to the left when you enter the area. He won't have a quest icon. Talk to his ratchet *** anyways.
LEVEL - 60 - GUIDE
OK, so you've made it to level 60. Congratulations, this is where the real fun starts. The following is a semi-comprehensive guide on what to do at this point in your existence.
Upon reaching level 60, buy a respec token. You may already have one if you purchased the Heirloom Pack.
Upon respec usage, I will start with your powers. This build is a hybrid build that covers all bases for any situation.
ABILITIES - FOR - DUNGEONS
Everything that follows is a 3 point power, the rest you just fill in with one point to move forward.
Astral Seal Lance of Faith Sun Burst Healing Word Searing Light Flame Strike Hollowed Ground Chains of Blazing Light Divine Fortune Sacred Flame Daunting Light Holy Fervor Foresight Terrifying Insight Break the Spirit Divine Glow Astral Shield
FEATS - FOR - DUNGEONS
For feats, we are going Divine Oracle again. We are going to do some feat tricks here.
3 Toughness 3 Greater Fortune 1 Healing Action 3 Weapon Mastery 2 Domain Synergy 3 Repurpose Soul 5 Bountiful Fortune
Virtuous: 5 Lasting Wishes
Righteous: 5 Furious Intervention
Faithful: 5 Resounding Beliefs 5 Divine Intervention 5 Benefit of Foresight (skip this next tier) 5 Test of Faith 1 Agent of the Divine
So there you have it. Equal parts heal/passive heal and utility. This spec requires no specific character placement in a battle, nor does it require too much emphasis on heal upkeep.
SOLO - FOR - DUNGEONS
Now for power load outs, you will 95% of the time be running the same one, with a few alterations depending on boss fights.
For solo play (daily quests and such) I use Lance of Faith and Brand of the Sun. Cast brand on each target and go ham with Lance.
Flame Strike is your go to Daily ability.
Chains of Blazing Light, Daunting Light and Divine Glow are your main encounters. Same strategy here as leveling. Use Chains and Divine whenever they are up and use Daunting x3 while in Divinity mode, and then once more for the Empowered bonus.
For passives, use Holy Fervor and Terrifying Insight.
LOADOUTS - FOR - DUNGEONS
You will want Astral Seal and Sacred Flame for most content, sometimes switching Sacred Flame for Brand of the Sun for boss fights where you can't stop moving to cast 3x Sacred Flame.
For passives, use Holy Fervor and Foresight. The damage mitigation from Foresight is increased to 11% from your feats, and this affects all party members who you are healing which should be a constant bonus if you hit the priority targets with Astral Seal.
For encounters, use Bastion of Health, Astral Shield and Divine Glow. The vast majority of Bastion of Healths massive heal will go directly into your gift of faith. This is preferable. Astral shield gives a 30% damage mitigation for a total of 41% between Astral Shield and Foresight, further increasing if Hollowed Ground is on the floor, although that one is an unknown amount of mitigation. At preferable recovery (explained later), Astral shield will be down constantly minus 4 seconds between casts. Divine Glow is your absolute bread and Nutella. It literally does it all. On a regular cast, it reduces enemy armor, heals allies, gives a heal over time to gift of faith, and gives a further 10% damage mitigation to allies. This is your divinity spell as well. Always cast it on tanks/melee allies. Divinity will heal for as much as Bastion of Health here, also reducing enemy damage by 15% and increasing ally damage by 15%. It's ermahgerd ermerzerng. For Empowered mode, I usually cast Astral shield unless someone just used a gift of faith proc and needs a refill, then I use Bastion of Health.
For dailies, only use Hollowed Ground in dungeons.
Phew. Book status.
GEAR - FOR - DUNGEONS
Now for gearing. For Clerics, everyone thinks Miracle healer is the best heal set. It's not. Math op. Not only does High Prophet reduce enemy armor by wtf30%scrub but it increases your healing ability more than Miracle Healer. 13k+ gear score players have a good amount of life steal. Life steal is a heal based on damage. 30% more damage equates to higher passive heals (less work for you), faster fights (less work for you) and allows for some player meta combinations that I won't get into in this guide.
You will use High Prophet forever and always.
Get a Wisdom artifact belt from the auction house, this is best in slot.
Work your way up the campaign and get Astral Golden Dragon Symbol for dungeons, and Heart of the Golden Dragon for solo play. Self explanatory.
Utility slots need Dragon Hoard Enchantments from the auction house, get Four of them since you have four utility slots. Defense and offense slots should be mainly Radiant Enchantments until you start hitting stat caps (explained shortly).
STATS - FOR - DUNGEONS
Now for stats. As a cleric using this build, you notice I didn't take any threat reduction feats or passives. That's because your job is not only to heal/buff/debuff but to take and hold aggro so your squish dps homies can do their thing. You want aggro. Aggro is good. Aggro is life.
Power is your main squeeze. This stat has no soft or hard cap, and builds with 12k power are often seen. I prefer 10k to have room to cap a few other stats.
Critical strike should be 2000 up to 2500 while using plague fire enchantment. If you prefer Vorpal enchantment, boost this baby to the soft cap at 3500.
Recovery, due to recent changes in caps and cleric cast speed, the preferable amount is 2500. Any more than that is unnoticeable and wasted.
Defense should be around 2500 as well. This is the soft cap and should allow you to get around 40% damage resistance on your character sheet, making it insanely easy to hit the damage resistance cap with your abilities.
Regeneration is not mandatory, but I try to get it as close to 1k as possible because it's free heals and doesn't draw aggro. Cleric heals are only about 50% as effective on yourself as others.
The rest of the stats are next to useless to a cleric. Don't fux with em.
BOONS - FOR - DUNGEONS
For Boons, I find the following as the best route.
Dragons Claws Dragons Gaze Dragonscale Defense Dragons Blood Dragons Revival (due to lowered self healing)
This concludes the majority of the guide. Any frequently asked questions will be added to the guide at a later time.
My gamer tag is Avic09, Happy hunting ladies and gents.
EDIT: Improved Format for convenient referral.
Gamer tag - Avic09
Post edited by protosinister on
0
Comments
Must say that getting astral and hallowed down constantly in this build is VITAL.
good guide/build +1111111 :P
aye its the same on xbox, still only hits 6, i honestly think though with this build that 3rd slot can be filled with anything the player likes, As long as they use AS and Dglow correctly, i rarely find myself using anything but AS, spam some glows, AS is back up, hallow ready... rince/repeat. I tend to just roll with SB as a personal ''oh **** button to save my HAMSTER if needed'' xD
The only thing I'd change.. Before using your divinity, use your divine glow on the tougher mobs.. (brings their defense down.)
The "must read" guide for all DCs: http://laggygamerz.com/forum/index.php?/topic/752-kaelacs-module-5-devoted-cleric-guide/
[...]Pick either the 16 WIS 16 STR 12 CHA or the 16 WIS 15 STR 13 CHA 11 INT 11 CON 9 DEX base stat roll combination (your racial stats will bump this up).
For Half Elf, put 3 points in CHA, 1 point into STR and 4 points into WIS as you level.
For Dragonborn/Sun Elf, put 4 points into STR and 4 points into WIS as you level. Those will give you the most optimised stats for lv 60.[...]
At OP: I like your thoughts, but a few things are proven not to work too great.
To mention a few, Lance of Faith is subpar compared to other at wills in many- if not all- aspects. Domain Synergy is one of the worst feats ingame. Also Repurpose Soul does not work on PC, so it's unlikely they fixed it for xbox.
Heroes of Darkness
Retired since 02/15
My opinions are my own. Please do not judge my friends nor guild for my statements.
Rather than point out all the problems with OP's build (not to demean the time you invested), everyone looking for help should refer to Kaelac's Mod 5 guide linked above. Like grabmoore said, A LOT of the feats OP recommends are proven useless and you should avoid them if you can.
While we all appreciate the time you spent writing this guide, you should do some more research before you suggest subpar/useless feats to players who might not know any better. While it may work for you, I can guarantee that you're not performing at your maximum potential. Please read Kaelac's guide!
Gamertag: ReallyRecon
/shrug.
He's a PC player, so his guide was made for PC where Repurpose Soul was working as intended when he wrote the guide. Battlewise and Initiate of the Faith are indeed completely worthless.
I've never noticed Repurpose Soul not proccing; I'm going to test it when servers are back up.
Gamertag: ReallyRecon
I do not have any data on hand to support if it works or not. I believe repurpose works. The only way I can think to test this would be to roll up a lvl 21 without the feat, do a series of repeatable tests, then slot the feat and repeat all the tests.
There are easier options. I'm going to stare at my combat log while I do my dailies and if it's working I should be able to see Repurpose Soul healing. Servers just came back up so I'll post back in a few.
Gamertag: ReallyRecon
At-Wills
Encounters
Dailies
Feats
Damage
Healing
Single target vs. AoE spells
And also do we know what the range of the aoe is?
RP description is:
"When one of your spells has a critical effect, the target of that spell disperses a small area effect heal healing you and your allies for 5/10/15% of the spells effect"
My intuition here tells me that this only affects single target spells. Otherwise, you could pull the entire world into you, spam Divine Daunting Light on yourself hitting multiple 'targets' and end up with multiple 2k heals proccing off the multiple targets (larger if empowered). I doubt a t3 feat is supposed to be that powerful.
More likely is that your Lance would cause a single proc for a few hundred heal.
Searing Light might be interesting since it isn't AoE, but can hit multiple targets. I wonder if, when it crits, it crits on all targets or each target is evaluated individually.
Forgemasters Flame, Prophecy of Doom and Break the Spirit also have single targets, but I don't generally have them in my bar...
Still easily beats out Battlewise and Initiate of the Faith, which essentially do nothing. If it were possible to put the points in Cleanse or Bountiful Fortune they might be better off there, but it's impossible to get to that tier without RS and every other feat is worthless.
Gamertag: ReallyRecon
Now that is good to know, I was casting searing light and divine glow, thinking that I had a chance to proc secondary heals through crits.
Chuck N
Neverwinter Toons:
Archael 70 HR
Stajans 70 GF
Member of Timed Out