So what's wrong exactly with the cleric?

diogene0 · August 2016

I remember hearing during the mod 10 stream the community manager saying the DC needed a rework, once again. What's wrong though with the class? Does anyone has an idea about what the devs have in mind?

IMO all the class needs is dual spec, not another rework, because even if soloing dailies as a healer isn't fun, the dc doesn't have to be a competitive dps class. All we need is being allowed to play solo content as righteous. But this request is an old one that was apparently never seriously considered, alas.

putzboy78 · August 2016

There is already a thread that lists all of the broken mechanics in the class. So yeah, they need attention. Further to that the Virtous tree needs something to make it a viable option again since the AP gain nerf was put in place the motivation to take that tree is far reduced.

There's also the complaints that the class is to OP in PVP, if you look at the immortal build.

There are some who do not like the classes ability to do anything besides heal. Hopefully that is not their direction because making us pure healers would kill the class. Especially with SWs becoming capable healers again and OPs being healers and all the other skills everyone gets for self heals. Buff/Debuff is all the DCs have to hang on to atm in PVE. Unless your supporting low ilvl parties, but that's a very niche role.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

The class has several bugs including but not limited to...

Divine Glow doesn't proc weapon enchants (and hasn't since mod 4 i believe)
Prophecy of Doom does not grant AP, instantly recharge, or extend it's duration when the appropriate conditions are met
Chains of Blazing Light does not proc Owlbear cub active bonus, has an improper tooltip damage display for divinity mode, and grants AP when cast in divinity mode (not sure if that last one is WAI but it's the only skill that does this)
Daunting Light does not proc Owlbear Cub active bonus
Anointed Action does not activate when using Anointed Army, Divine Armor, or Guardian of Faith
When active, Hastening Light artifact offhand ability does not grant the extra 10% AP when stated conditions are met
When active, Light of Divinity artifact offhand ability does not grant a pip of divinity when stated conditions are met
When active, Terrifying Insight artifact offhand ability does not consistently grant the additional 5% critical severity as stated
Bear Your Sins does not proc consistently (appears to be a bug in the stacking mechanic of this feat)
Piercing Light grants +10% Armor Penetration regardless of the amount of points invested into it
Repurpose Soul does not proc with every spell

There are other bugs that have been reported down in the DC bugs list thread in this sub forum but I cannot personally confirm their validity. These are just the bugs I can and have personally confirmed in game.

On top of these bugs there are several outdated DC mechanics abilities and feats that need a rework in my opinion and one mechanic in particular that needs adjusting for the sake of PvP balance. Those items being (keep in mind that the following list, unlike the one above, is my opinion and not fact)...

Domain Synergy feat needs a rework. 5% more Recovery at end game levels is minuscule even for DCs who have focused on specifically stacking Recovery and little else. Magnitude of feat not competitive with other class feat choices at this level.
Initiate of the Faith feat needs a rework. This feat is so laughably ineffective that I personally am shocked it was left this way. At best in slot gear levels on a DC that stacks nothing but power, investing 5 points into this feat will net you a whopping 0.7% critical chance. Forget uncompetitive when compared to other feats at this level, this particular feat is just noncompetitive period.
Templar's Domain feat has a built in 5 minute cooldown making this feat unreliable and uncompetitive when compared to the other feats at it's level
Unbreakable Devotion feat places a shield on affected targets. The shield negates half of weapon damage which, at level 70, is typically around 500 damage. Enemies tend to land hits in excess of 10,000 damage which makes a shield blocking 500 damage largely irrelevant.
Prestigious Exaltation feat extends duration of Exaltation by 10%, or, 1 second. Not worth 5 points of investment and needs adjusting
Anointed holy Symbol power grants a minuscule amount of temp HP making the largely irrelevant once the player has surpassed level 60
Temp HP granted by divine mode Astral Shield suffers from the same problem as Anointed Holy Symbol.
Light of Divinity power does not heal enough HP to be competitive with the other class passive powers.
Warding Flare power is not effective enough to be a competitive option
Geas power is not effective enough to be a competitive option
Empowered Astral Shield power is far too effective in PvP. This power is appropriately balanced for PvE in my opinion but is game breakingly overpowered in PvP. Suggest reducing it's effectiveness to half of what it is now strictly for PvP.

Again, that last bit is just my opinions, but you asked, i answered. I think the biggest thing that needs to happen though to make DCs somewhat reelevant again has nothing to do with class balance and everything to do with other classes being able to heal themselves too much. At end game there is little to no point in having a healing focused DC present and this is largely due to there being no need for one as literally every class in the game can heal themselves effectively enough to be self sufficient. I DO NOT think the righteous path needs a DPS increase. It'd be nice to be more competitive with the other DPS classes sure but it's not necessary and our "DPS" paragon path is likely the most popular choice for DCs right now. They need to make the other two trees more relevant again but sadly that won't happen by improving the tree itself, but rather the need for the healing trees.

rapo973 · August 2016

I heard that too during the streaming session.
Unfortunately everytime we hear the word "rework", immediately it means "nerf" from the DC perspective.
The virtuous tree need a rework for sure: I see that as the "mitigation path" if feat like unbreakable devotion is updated proprerly and some heals feats are reworked as mitigation feats.
The heroic feats def need a rework, because most of them are useless.
But it's not only feats. Too many DC powers are simply useless or even nonsense nowadays: geas, warding flare, prophetic action (60 sec cooldown? lol), soothe, searing light.
I suspect that also the immortal PvP has been targeted as said by putz.
Finally the DC bugs list should be addressed urgently.

diogene0 · August 2016

Well if it's only about bugs, we've seen far worse, at least most of the stuff works properly. The class isn't too strong in pvp, what's too strong is elven battle and negation, that's what allows clerics to heal themselves indefinitely.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

I'd argue that elven battle and negation are not the problem. Elven battle in particular is the only answer most classes have to counter perma-stun builds. But the fact that a fully empowered Astral shield can completely negate every single incoming damage source in the game with (in my experience) only two exceptions, is ridiculous. Those exceptions being Ice Knife and Shocking Execution (shocking needs a nerf on its own for PvP though, NO skill in the game should ignore Tenacity...)

Also @rapo973 what's wrong with Searing Light? IMO that's one of our better DPS skills IF you have an Owlbear cub. Granted if they ever get around to fixing the owlbear to work with CoBL and DL that wouldn't be the case but i feel like as it stands now SL is one of our best forms of DPS. Granted you guys are the ones with ACT. I'm just going off of "how it feels" over here.

diogene0 · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
I'd argue that elven battle and negation are not the problem. Elven battle in particular is the only answer most classes have to counter perma-stun builds. But the fact that a fully empowered Astral shield can completely negate every single incoming damage source in the game with (in my experience) only two exceptions, is ridiculous. Those exceptions being Ice Knife and Shocking Execution (shocking needs a nerf on its own for PvP though, NO skill in the game should ignore Tenacity...)

Also @rapo973 what's wrong with Searing Light? IMO that's one of our better DPS skills IF you have an Owlbear cub. Granted if they ever get around to fixing the owlbear to work with CoBL and DL that wouldn't be the case but i feel like as it stands now SL is one of our best forms of DPS. Granted you guys are the ones with ACT. I'm just going off of "how it feels" over here.

You can have shield nerfed all you want, this will not stop the infinite flow of healing. It may require some stats rebalancing, probably by scarifying some extra defense for hit points or crit, but the offender is bastion. The healing effect is extremely strong, empowered shield or not, it can heal most players, including the DC, for so much that incoming damage doesn't matter unless it's a stunlock-oneshot combo.

Which is why having stuns available in pvp is extremely important. Not to the point stunlocks are the norm, since this is not fun, but you don't really want to have the DC doing his own stuff without much interference either, and elven battle does that. The counter to stuns should be dodges, as it prevents the player from doing anything else, not some passive auto out-of-jail card that makes support classes dominant in pvp.

rapo973 · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:

Also @rapo973 what's wrong with Searing Light? IMO that's one of our better DPS skills IF you have an Owlbear cub. Granted if they ever get around to fixing the owlbear to work with CoBL and DL that wouldn't be the case but i feel like as it stands now SL is one of our best forms of DPS. Granted you guys are the ones with ACT. I'm just going off of "how it feels" over here.

I've the owlbear cub and I agree with you that SL is ok with it. In a perfect world, all the encounters should trigger the owlbear when the proc condition is met: it's an unfortunate situation that the owlbear doesn't work with some encounters and that's the only reason to use SL as a fallback solution, otherwise I don't think that SL would be used.
In any case the owlbear is rare, very expensive and I don't think it should be considered as a common pet used by the majority of the DCs. So I try to put myself in the shoes of the average DC Joe who have to select the his powers regardless the path he has chosen.
From this point of view, SL is not in a good position: it's a squint power mixing mediocre dps (when compared agains other powers) and mediocre heals. I would prefer to have it with more dps only or full heals with a bit of buff/debuff capability..or something else. At the end, that's the reason why many DCs slot Divine Glow, not because it's the strongest healing/dps power, but because it does a lot of things in all modes.
Ofc I'm in the field of the personal opinions, I don't expect everyone to agree.

putzboy78 · August 2016

another point is look at the heat maps they did on the class balancing. They were specifically targeting how some classes use all the same powers. DC isn't quit as bad as that, but there are a ton of DC skills that are getting less than 5% usage. I'm happy to have a ton of power points applied so i can break out some rare skills when needed but many are totaly useless.

Geas is a good example. I'm not sure Geas work for me at all, my DOTs that are applied when casting Geas will break Geas's hold. So its useless. Meanwhile every DC uses Divine Glow, i'm confident it has to be at a 100% usage rate. It would be interesting to see if people use guardian of faith, divine armor, soothe, etc ever.

Same for the feats. does anyone take initiate of faith, domain synergy, templar's domain, battlewise, etc ever?

DC is the most flexible path class, yet it still has a lot of stuff no one ever uses.

diogene0 · August 2016

putzboy78 said:
another point is look at the heat maps they did on the class balancing. They were specifically targeting how some classes use all the same powers. DC isn't quit as bad as that, but there are a ton of DC skills that are getting less than 5% usage. I'm happy to have a ton of power points applied so i can break out some rare skills when needed but many are totaly useless.

Geas is a good example. I'm not sure Geas work for me at all, my DOTs that are applied when casting Geas will break Geas's hold. So its useless. Meanwhile every DC uses Divine Glow, i'm confident it has to be at a 100% usage rate. It would be interesting to see if people use guardian of faith, divine armor, soothe, etc ever.

Same for the feats. does anyone take initiate of faith, domain synergy, templar's domain, battlewise, etc ever?

DC is the most flexible path class, yet it still has a lot of stuff no one ever uses.

I'm not sure if geas has a use; I'm actually pretty sure no one tested it properly (as this is the norm on the DC subforum, no offense), but the tooltip does sound uninspiring. However, we don't have that many useless encounters compared to most other classes. If you have ever played a GF, then half of the encounters are 100% useless. But that's fine, really, perfect balance is simply words that just means that stuff gets nerfed and other stuff gets buffed.

About guardian of faith: It has uses, especially in heroic encounters when you're going after healing score. Since I play righteous DO, I also have it in group content as an emergency heal (when divine divine glow is too slow), even though I use it at most once a week in that context. Most of our dailies suck, so there's room for this. But to score in a greedy way in HEs when the thresholds are high, it's a good spell. When used at the right moment it can be an instant great success no matter how poorly you do otherwise.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

I take serious issue with the way they've done the class balancing so far though. The "heat map" approach of just needing down the most used skills and feats and buffing up the least used isn't the right approach IMO. Rather, I prefer the approach of looking at what players want to do in the game, and go about facilitating that while simultaneously not breaking the game (breaking the game I define as, trivializing the game's content). Some people, such as myself enjoy DPsing with their DC. Others want to heal with thiers, or do damage mitigation, and there are others who prefer the support roles of buffing or debuffing. So to me, class balancing should serve as a means of making those desires possible, but also to confine each choice so that no one choice is overwhelmingly effective when compared to the others. Now sure, there are times, such as now I'm sure, in which a heat map would indicate what the most effective uses are for a DC (currently buffing and debuffing). But my point is, as a game developer, don't just point at the heat map when trying to justify a class balance change. Understand WHY the heat map is the way it is first.

diogene0 · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
I take serious issue with the way they've done the class balancing so far though. The "heat map" approach of just needing down the most used skills and feats and buffing up the least used isn't the right approach IMO. Rather, I prefer the approach of looking at what players want to do in the game, and go about facilitating that while simultaneously not breaking the game (breaking the game I define as, trivializing the game's content). Some people, such as myself enjoy DPsing with their DC. Others want to heal with thiers, or do damage mitigation, and there are others who prefer the support roles of buffing or debuffing. So to me, class balancing should serve as a means of making those desires possible, but also to confine each choice so that no one choice is overwhelmingly effective when compared to the others. Now sure, there are times, such as now I'm sure, in which a heat map would indicate what the most effective uses are for a DC (currently buffing and debuffing). But my point is, as a game developer, don't just point at the heat map when trying to justify a class balance change. Understand WHY the heat map is the way it is first.

Absolutely. If that's what the devs do, it's really lazy. There are some great spells in that game that don't get used because the content either doesn't requires them, is too easy, or because the meta never put them into light. Spells like warding flame would be fine if there was such a thing as tank healing in raids, but no, tanks can self heal easily and don't need any kind of support. So while on paper it's good, it doesn't see any use. Because the game is on easy mode.

putzboy78 · August 2016

diogene0 said:

I'm not sure if geas has a use; I'm actually pretty sure no one tested it properly (as this is the norm on the DC subforum, no offense), but the tooltip does sound uninspiring.

geas had a use when it first came out. We could use it to freeze bosses while we cleared adds. Or in the case of elol, we could freeze a scorpion while we focused on the other scorpion. In today's game that doesn't sound like a big deal but it was huge against the overpowered mobs of mod 6. The cw's went crazy about it and complained until it got nerfed into uselessness (because they were supposed to be the controllers, not that you see many control wizards not running debuff or dps setups). Effectively it only works on targets that do not have control resist. Which are trash mobs and don't need a single target cc. It's been tested, its been used, and many people had to respec after the nerf to free up power points for other powers.

mrtehpuppy said:
But my point is, as a game developer, don't just point at the heat map when trying to justify a class balance change. Understand WHY the heat map is the way it is first.

The game developers have already moved on to other projects. Neverwinter is staffed by programmers, which is a huge difference in approach, vision, and creativity.

plavia · August 2016

I tried geas in PVP several times, it works ok but there are other options for PVP that are better
AS is strong in PVP but other classes have strong encounters as well.
the imortal DC in not only healing and AS, it mainly comes from mount bonus + deflect and all classes use this combo (i seen TR, HR and GWF that are imortal as well)

DC have good amount of usefull encounters, more then other clases i guess.
heroic feats were not touched since start i think

for me the main difference compare to other classes is that many powers of DC are not related to GS
in a way low level healer DC can contribute the same as high level healer DC.

michela123 · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
The class has several bugs including but not limited to...

Initiate of the Faith feat needs a rework. This feat is so laughably ineffective that I personally am shocked it was left this way. At best in slot gear levels on a DC that stacks nothing but power, investing 5 points into this feat will net you a whopping 0.7% critical chance. Forget uncompetitive when compared to other feats at this level, this particular feat is just noncompetitive period.

Initiate of the Faith is actually based on your buffed Power.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

michela123 said:

Initiate of the Faith is actually based on your buffed Power.

That still isn't enough to make 1% of Power as Critical Strike worth anything. For comparisons sake. GWFs get Steely Defense which grants them 20% of their (buffed) Defense, as Power. Meanwhile us DCs are over here getting 1% of our (buffed) Power as Critical Strike.

putzboy78 · August 2016

not to mention they nerfed cleanse in early mod 6 because it was not working as intended by clearing OP buffs. Instead of fixing how cleanse procd they changed the mechanic to make it almost useless. DCs went from five points in cleanse to one as a result

rapo973 · August 2016

You can tell the same about divine DG. It was bugged: instead of fixing the bug, they made the bug the official power.

jazzfong · August 2016

Im still waiting the day they rework sacred flame, like we really need an at will that give much lower dps, slightly high divinity per sec and only give 0.1% of our max hp as temporary hit points. See OP's at will, a chunk of healing burst at third strike, then lets see ours, 0.1% temp hp at third strike, lol....

I hope sacred flame can be reworked into two paths, either go aoe like how HR electric shot does, burning the mobs while applying a debuff/dot at the cost of primary damage (debuff route) or become a true healing power like how OP does. I will not be shocked if the dev's statistic showed SF has lesser than 10% usage among DCs. Lets make LoF for dps, ASeal for healing, SF for aoe debuff, BoB for buff and Bots for divinity. We can have all of them with different usage unlike other classes, but atm SF lost to LoF and ASeal's heal are really weak. Hope we will get a rework on them.

putzboy78 · August 2016

Astral Seal was nerfed in Mod 5 as a cheap answer to the burning guidance/astral seal combo ruining heralds and tiamat. Much like the cleanse change, it wasn't fixed it was just nerfed to the ground as a temporary measure to resolve a new issue they created.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

I guess we lucked up then that they didn't nerf Astral Shield and HG to handle the ITF problem eh? lol

putzboy78 · August 2016

yeah, but it was still a crappy change. in an environment where healers and tanks are not desired, having a synergy between the two that encouraged bringing both was a nice boost for both classes.

diogene0 · August 2016

putzboy78 said:
yeah, but it was still a crappy change. in an environment where healers and tanks are not desired, having a synergy between the two that encouraged bringing both was a nice boost for both classes.

We're in an enviroment in which healers are not desired. Tanks are very sought after. Healers are not desired because of lifesteal. It was nuked back in mod 6 but the devs reintroduced it soon after. Self healin GFs and paladins with infinite amounts of temp HP don't need any kind of healing by default. That really sucks. It makes the DC class completely handicapped, and players who want to play as healers are always treated as second class citizens by the devs.

enicegeo · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
The class has several bugs including but not limited to...

When active, Light of Divinity artifact offhand ability does not grant a pip of divinity when stated conditions are met

Uh, what? This works fine, on XboxOne at least. Did some later PC patch mess it up? If it messed up and doesn't work anymore but did before try selecting new offhand bonus and then switching back to it. I do remember something messed it up before, which caused it to stop working. Switching offhand bonus was the solution that fixed it. It hasn't messed up since.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

Light of Divinity artifact offhand ability didn't work on Xbox One prior to the Alliance patch. I have not tested it since.

enicegeo · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
Light of Divinity artifact offhand ability didn't work on Xbox One prior to the Alliance patch. I have not tested it since.

I think you're confusing it with Hastening Light, which never worked, power or offhand bonus. Supposedly only now does the power actually work, but the offhand part is still not working.

Light of Divinity always worked, except for the aforementioned incident. That incident only occurred shortly after whenever it was that Demonic Heroic Encounters first appeared. It didn't stop the moment that mod hit but only after entering a DHE. And I got it to work again the next day by switching the bonus to something else and back again. It has never messed up again.

mrtehpuppy · August 2016

You are correct (sort of), my apologies. I say sort of because I wasn't confusing Light of Divinity with Hastening Light. The first time I stumbled onto the Lod artifact offhand not working I had been toying around with the idea a super divinity gain build (using 5/5 bountiful fortune, 5/5 Gift of the Gods, the Lod artifact OH feat, and old PvP gear that increased divinity gain, I was hoping for a one hit BoB for full divinity) and found that at the time, it didn't work. HOWEVER, just throwing it on real quick and playing around in WoD. I can confirm that I was mistaken, it currently works.

Sorry about that

rapo973 · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
You are correct (sort of), my apologies. I say sort of because I wasn't confusing Light of Divinity with Hastening Light. The first time I stumbled onto the Lod artifact offhand not working I had been toying around with the idea a super divinity gain build (using 5/5 bountiful fortune, 5/5 Gift of the Gods, the Lod artifact OH feat, and old PvP gear that increased divinity gain, I was hoping for a one hit BoB for full divinity) and found that at the time, it didn't work. HOWEVER, just throwing it on real quick and playing around in WoD. I can confirm that I was mistaken, it currently works.

Sorry about that

I confirm: it works..and it's not so bad

enicegeo · August 2016

mrtehpuppy said:
You are correct (sort of), my apologies. I say sort of because I wasn't confusing Light of Divinity with Hastening Light. The first time I stumbled onto the Lod artifact offhand not working I had been toying around with the idea a super divinity gain build (using 5/5 bountiful fortune, 5/5 Gift of the Gods, the Lod artifact OH feat, and old PvP gear that increased divinity gain, I was hoping for a one hit BoB for full divinity) and found that at the time, it didn't work. HOWEVER, just throwing it on real quick and playing around in WoD. I can confirm that I was mistaken, it currently works.

Sorry about that

Spooky. I also tried something similar, minus the Gift of the Gods, and that's how LoD offhand bonus conked out on me. My experience was kinda the opposite though. It worked a little too well. I logged off and then discovered that the offhand bonus no longer worked the next day. After fixing it I found that the bonus no longer performed as it did during the test and now simply works as can be expected. Don't get me wrong here. The divinity build still works well, just no longer mind-boggling so.

So what's wrong exactly with the cleric?

Comments