As you may know, I used to be a proud virtuous cleric because I love playing pure support classes, healers in particular.
I've specialized my DC around some features like power buff, AP gain and strong healing/mitigation.
After the nerf, GoH is now path indipendent: the amount of AP you gain is the same regardless you're a virtuous or something else.
Two VERY lucky events gave me the opportunity to refine a dread enchntment to pure and to get the owlbear cub from a lockbox.
The funny thing is that I've respecced AC righteous:
http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/dc?b=23ci:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,13l3305:150z000:1000000:150uz51&h=0&p=ancwithout changing anything but the dread enchantment and the owlbear cub.
The overall effect is amazing: I haven't lost anything of my previous features, I've gained a lot of dps instead.
Even if my dc cannot be compared against a pure righteous for dps, I'm quite happy because I've now a well balanced DC:
- good (but not insane) dps thank to the dread enchantment and the owlbear cub. Soloing is now easy and smooth. Paradoxically having low crit (37%), high recovery and high power makes the owlbear cub very effective and when I crit the dread enchantment turns on.
- powerful mitigation thank to my ~100% ap gain (AA).
- powerful heals anyway thank to the high power. Usually DG and AS are enough to heal.
- powerful buff thanks to the righteous build.
I will publish some screenshots later.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
Comments
Alts:
Saxy Healz Paladin (Oathkeeper) [Xbox and PC]
Saxon Ranger (Warden)
Yuri Wizard (Thaumaturge)
Member of the guild: Legacy (Xbox) and Strawberry Yakuza (PC)
Here a ~25 sec ACT with dread/owlbear casting DG and BtS only, companion off (no bonding).
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
Here my current stats: please consider that they are from the previous virtuous build.
Gear set
Offensive stats
Defensive stats
Companions
Rationale
It's based on one question only.
I've spent a lot of time building my virtuous cleric around some features. After the GoH nerf, is there a better way to take advantage of all I have? Moving to righteous was the answer.
- Dread + Owlbear cub + righteous feats: more damages, more buff. Here I'm not in the max dps arena, but the 3 things improved my dps a lot. I come from a 0 dps build, this was my main weak point: the improvement is very high.
- high ap gain + gift of haste: being virtuous or righteous is irrelevant from this point of view. Whatever I was able to do as a virtuous, I can do the same as a rigtheous with some points on GoH.
- power buff: same as the previous point.
- heals: my power is high enough that I can heal with DG only most of the times. Rarely I need more (in that case I slot astral seal)
This is a funny and maybe not optimized build: I've explained the reasons why it is as it is.
The message is the following: if you have a high IL level virtuous cleric built on power and recovery, moving to righteous will improve your life without missing anything of what you already have, even if you don't have an owlbear cub or a dread enchantment (rigtheous feats are a big boost anyway).
Here I was lucky enough to find the owlbear cub: it leverages my low crit and high power so I don't have to reinvest to improve my dps from scratch. That's why I don't slot daunting light, but I prefer break the spirit (I would prefer BtS anyway).
And when I crit, I enjoy my pure dread enchantment.
Here some more complex ACT tests (~ 1 minute) on dummies concerning the owlbear cub.
It's well known that the owlbear cub doesn't work with CL: here a test with DG - 3xDivinity CL - BtS
Here the same with SB: DG - 3x Divinity SB - BtS
If it's true that my effectiveness is low, the owlbear cub has a "NaN" on it but it can generate a good dps.
Another way to consider it, is the following:
In the DG-SB-BtS case, the infantile compensation damage could be split as a raw average:
- 1/5 coming from DG = 600 k
- 3/5 coming from Divinity SB = 1800 K (the owlbear cub procs with it - tested)
- 1/5 coming from BtS = 600 k
If you add this damage to each power, the effectiveness of the 3 powers increases a lot.
Now the min/max problem. What is the best crit chance to maximize the damage output from the owlbear cub + dread enchantment? High crit chance makes the owlbear irrelevant. Low crit chance makes the dread irrelevant...
There's also a second variable: the amount of power.
This is an important point to be solved for me before increasing my crit chance.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
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I'll never retrace my steps.
Some of my best friends are Imaginary.
Infact the DC tiamat run is an extreme case: usually it never happens and afaik no other runs have been done.
Power buff is needed with pugs in particular or when you want to help some low il guildies.
I use to run edemo with at least another cleric: their interaction is always as expected and well balanced compared to the the difficulty of the task.
But you're right to some extent: my current setup may be nerfed and be less dps effective. That's another reason to avoid further investments on it (both the dread and the owlbear are very expensive, so my results are not for free).
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
When I have Greater Fortune, Toughness, Weapon Mastery and Bountiful Fortune, I'm fine. I always suggest to max those 4 as a minimum, leaving to personal preferences the selection of the others.
That's why I don't rely on Repurpose Soul, but when my b.runstones and the Baphomet boon proc my crit chance goes up to ~40% which is a decent value.
Today I can heal up to 60k with DG only: this value is high enough for every PvE contents. When needed 2/3 astral seals and I'm done.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
One point in fire of the gods, BC i read it procs buffs
4/5 condemning Gaze, 5/5 bear your sins
Lol just read this post above mine...
But i am pretty sure it's hard to beat Hollowed ground+ ITF with AA
So maybe DO buffer is more effective in the Ende?
It's also very handy to use if you have to pick up the tank in front of orcus. I just cast my daily and bam- orcus doesn't do anything to me while I try to revive the tank if something unfortunate happens.
I like using it with conjunction with Annointed Action. Just makes sense to me since I'm feated into it anyway.
--
I'll never retrace my steps.
Some of my best friends are Imaginary.
have you tested it?
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
There were intense discussions about this topic where the DC/GF interaction was discussed as well.
Imo the first step to fix this should be:
- bonding runestones should have the cooldown back. They are the main reasons of this insane power.
- WoL should work taking into account the base power and not the current power.
But it should be tested. If not enough, then I would consider to stop buffing the companion. The problem is that there is no reference to fix a value that makes sense. If 100k buff is too high, is 50k ok? Why not 30k or 5K (also in view of the incoming T3 dungeon)? In the 20K buff range an augment do the same but given the cost of the bonding runestones, they should perform much better than an augment otherwise the investment is not profitable.
Whatever opionion I, you, we have, it's not enough: this is a design problem that should be solved by real designers reviewing all the interactions and bugs (see the DC bug list in the Temple forum) of the game and not limited to the DCs only.
Anyhow the solution is not easy reading the numbers I have. If you fix this behavior using a BiS clerics as a reference, the low IL cleric would be penalized a lot and, generally speaking, the value of the bonding runestones isn't worth the cost , so a trade-off must be found at the cost of having some reasonable power peaks occasionally.
But I cannot tell what "reasonable" means.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
For all end gaming players new contents has to be added to the game. Don't need to nerf the class
and for info it possible to reach almost 200k Pwr without any external buff - and running dongeons with 2 DC's with Wol, BF,BOF, AA and PET (no augment) and power flies up to 350k.
i hope for a content for that kind of build and definitely not a nerf
On the other hand we already saw in the past how such mechanics are managed. I have a little piece of hope that no nerf will happen, but I'm not very optimistic.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
Every dungeon and every skirmish should have harder level versions available with better drop rates!!
The current DC mechanic was reviewed more than one year ago taking into account the status of the game at that time.
Step by step they have introduced new features and mechanics without any impact analysis.
Are the bonding runestones broken due to the DC mechanic or is it true the opposite? The two things looks linked today, but they were not designed togheter and without considering all the consequences.
Many DCs here reported many times in the past about the behavior of the bonding runestones and it's funny how the community reacts now that the power peak is always on.
I read many comments where the DC is considered as the problem: imo the bad design process is the real problem.
I'm quite sure that many DCs here are not as suprised as the community is in these days.
And now I expect the umpteenth fix/nerf (call as you like) in emergency mode: fixing a feature will break/impoverish something else.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF