What is your experience of playing a DPS/Buffer i.e. Righteous DC in mod 12b ? Most DCs are healers and experiences are mainly negative so far (I have opened another thread on that).
My main build is Righteous and focussed on DPS (DO and not on power sharing) and I feel very weak compared to other classes in this mod. My survivability is not great in spite of negation, T.Fey and Valhalla. I also feel that Oghma is a still very important - something I was looking forward to do away with the the cc changes. In terms of DPS, I feel it is medium only once I get the buffs up but it still pales in comparison to all others classes.
What have your experiences been in PvP?
Nezdin (DC)
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
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PVP falls into a couple of key components the specific ones I'll reference are Burst Damage and CC.
A Right DC can contribute to party burst damage through buffs and debuffs. So in a premade format (which I never play in) it can be helpful in tearing away damage resistance and contributing to parties burst damage potential... if you can stay alive, meaning you need to buddy up with some form of protector (healer DC used to be a plausible companion but now your really talking about tanks only). A Right DC's burst damage itself is pretty bad and really only successful with lower ilvl members since Right DC dps mostly relies on DOTs not burst damage and what would be the greatest damage dealers are pretty meh. Specifically hammers is far weaker than it should be for single target (the three hit approach also gives time for self heals to kick in) and empowered Daunting Light is impossible to target in a pvp scenario. So don't rely on a Right DC's burst damage to kill stuff, you are support and your role is to get others burst damage over the hump to out pace self heals. This makes Right DC a bad fit for pugs and the lack of survive-ability makes them a less than optimal fit for premades.
The second part for DC is CC. Simply put we have no viable CC skills for pvp. We often rely on FF for a slow and bts as an interrupt but we have nothing that scales to the perma-cc of the cc classes like hr, tr, and cw. Even GF and GWF have effective prones. On the flip side we don't have cc immunity where many classes do. TR has steal (can't cc what you can't target), GF has a shield, GWF has unstoppable. DC is a just a toy for high cc builds to pick on. The DC dodge provides some immunity (however that immunity comes at the cost of not being able to fight during the immunity and is very short lived with 4-5 uses to try and run away. This makes investment in an Elven Battle enchant almost required for a Right DC at the expense of the damage resistance and recovery gain from a negation. Elven Battle enchant investment has another issue in that it doesn't have a lot of utility in PVE, so if your hoping for a one size fits all for both content, your not going to get it.
Another challenge that makes the one size fits all (one build for PVE and PVP) not work so well for Right DC... atleast for DO is crit is so heavily nerfed in PVP. DO Right usually invest heavily in crit but that investment is largely wasted in PVP where high power builds are king. So just adding your guilds armor pen boon will not be enough to make a good experience in PVP.
In any regard, I find the Right DC an odd fit for pvp, in essence DC is a glass cannon without the cannon. We are essentially as squishy as the cc classes without having the burst damage to kill or the cc abilities to restrain our aggressors. We have more damage resistance than those classes but since most stack armor pen to defeat tanks, that damage resistance is typically overcome unless we are gifted with under geared players.
The reason I ask is that I need goals - "Get as good at playing my character as possible", "Get all achivements I can realistically get", "Get the best gear possible" and so on.
I don't really do PvP - never have, but I am now almost at the point where that's almost the only thing left for me (well, that and and grinding ToNG for Ultimate stones, and yeah...killing 13.000 cultist for the last missing "Slayer" achievements).
So, what's a realistic course?
- make pvp friends that don't mind carrying you
- learn to position yourself near a protector and focus on buff/debuff
- get thick skin, your still gonna die... a lot
better yet, use Draupnir for pvp
But Ive been running Right DC focused on debuffs AND survivability for quite some time now, and sure, I can kill low itl players no problem, but cant really deal dmg to BiS players.
Which is fine by me, I still debuff A LOT.
My main suggestion is to get Negation (trans or the new one), feytouched and stack as much HP and Deflection as you can.
I also stack as much recovery as power, for the cooldowns. You want to share some power, but imo recovery is more important.
Also get a Lion mount. And Valhalla set. Just all these defensive things
Always stand next to your GF or TR teammate (or GWF), cause they deal a lot of dmg so you should be buffing them
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i try both DO Righteous and Faithful at least 10 times each (i switch durring matches as well).
as faithfull got weaker i assumed Rightous is the path, but i was wrong.
as Righteous I die before I manage to light up my damage, the 25% buffs I give to party is not usefull compare to heals.
you can probably still play it, but you need to have specific build and not focus on killing.
and be prepared to get many kicks.
DO TI is nice with 20% constant damage. some players ask me to remove it in 1:1.
Forsight and Prophetic action also nice.
with Healing lore and 15 points into faithfull or virtuous you can heal with BoH.
or take forsight + feat + off hand.
but overall its weaker in PVP and die much faster.
AC tankiness is nice.
I find Exaltation and Anonited armor stronger then DO buffs in PVP.
and again focus on Ealtation, BoH. DG, Bts, Warding flare...
i see very strong PVE rightuous players at PVP now. some kill me fast if i m too cocky. but anyone can kill DC now.
I wouldn't say that Elven Battle is a very good choice for Righteous pvp builds at the moment (while it is was an absolute must in previous mods). As you point out, our survivability and DPS are low so my approach is try to max survivability; negation IMO is the go-to enchant for Righteous builds.There may be some other non-standard enchants that may be interesting too, but need to be teste. And I have Valhalla to add to this. Ironically, Oghma is more important than ever for us to break the ridiculous cc of CWs and TRs. Crit in pvp is also not useless now, it was fixed and does more damage. It is crit severity that is penalised now but not to the extent that it is rendered useless. So crit can be a good stat for DCs in pvp. Unfortunately it is not a "cheap" stat to add at 400:1%. Completely agree on our relative-to-other-classes cc capabilities, burst and survivability. We need an increase in personal DPS (not buffs to others) and even more importantly survivability for pvp. As I've mentioned elsewhere, an example is the CW that can do great burst and is a lot tankier with its shield than a righteous DC which is ridiculous! Doesn't even need Vahalla. Not to mention that renegade buffers can be formidable to their team too.
@adinosii
If you want to get into pvp and have the "classical" high power builds from pve that most people tend to favour then my advice is that you try a full healer loadout. It is not easy in this mod as healing has been mega-nerfed and our go-to defence Astral Shield is useless at empowered now R.I.P. . But, compared to the other tress it may add some use to the team. Use Bastion, BtS and the third you can play around with. Sunburst is popular but definitely not the optimal choice always. (Btw, you may want to check some of the discussions about it on the other thread on Healers). Just putting this in the list of items recommended for a DC to be competitive in pvp against other classes speaks tons about the state of the class right now
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Any equal-levelled player of another class asking you to remove TI when they fight you 1v1 simply is a bad player. TI DO is the one thing that is worth choosing DO over AC for, and still pales in comparison to feats that other classes have. Ridiculous.
I've tried Warding Flare but it lasts only a few seconds and its cooldown is ridiculously long so I always end up choosing another power over it. What about Prophetic Action? Haven not tried it but was considering it only in combination with the offhand bonus of cc reduction. Have you tried offhand bonus and is it noticeable?
Also, I have seen only 1 DPS DO DC these days in pvp. He seems to think that he cannot be competitive against other classes 1v1 of the same level. So although DO, not sure if it would be even better to go tankier AC than DO when righteous.
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
other 2 players that play 1:1 often ask me to remove it
TI+ gift + Prophetic action... too much for some players
Prophetic Action + off hand bonus was nice before mod12b. many players used it and me as well.
today i think Healing lore is better, even for rightuous.
prophetic action should be: If you take more than 30% of your hp in 1 hit then dammage reduction apply. Right now its useless in pvp. I think it even proc on dots.
HL: The quantity of extra HP you gonna receive depend on how powerfull your heal is.
Foresight: The quantity of extra HP you gonna mitigate depend on how powerfull the ennemy dammage is.
More ennemy mean more foresight dammage mitigation. But not more healing from HL.
Right now in 1v1 situation you need to self heal yourself more than 68% of the dammage output by the ennemy for HL to be better than foresight.
The nerf on healing in pvp made HL weaker than before.
I know, our healing have been nerfed so much that we kinda think we need to use HL now. But numbers are what they are. Healer lore HP bonus is half what it was last mod. But foresight is still as good.
Santa Claus --GF
Gargamel --CW
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Also isn't Foresight a DR buff, rather than a flat damage reduction buff? How did you come up with 68% ?
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Now been thinkin of swapping it to either Divine Fortune or Holy Fervor, I think its very situational tbh
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You run a high deflect high hp build that is why foresight seems to work for you . Putzboy78 is right about the armor pen stacking , I can tell immediately when a class is running defense and not deflect . DC's that run high defense are like free kills to me especially righteous dps specced . Damage reduction (deflect) is far better than damage resistance (defense , foresight) in pvp . A % chance to reduce damage is far better than no chance with defense because of armor pen .
Yeah true that.
I never understood why some DCs run defense in PvP. And Im not talkin only about DCs in PvE guilds without HP boon, even PvP players go for defense for some reason.. o.O
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Defense is a cheap and easier to get , ex. stronghold boon when they don't have hp boon . With enchantments I see your point because silvery are easily obtained for deflect so are artifacts with a couple exceptions . Deflect in pvp is the only defense that can't be bypassed (TR SoD being the exception) , plus cc can be deflected . Defense in pvp has zero value with how easily armor pen is stacked .
I just think that some people have no idea about proper stat difference between PvP and PvE, and then they wonder why they cant do well in Domination :P
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I think most people posting on the pvp forum know these differences well, and if they do not they are the first to come here to ask out of interest. The ones that try PvP, get disappointed and are uninterested as to how to improve their play and their characters usually stay far away from PvP and don't come back. Believe me... I am in a very large PvE alliance and it is incredibly tough to motivate people to join matches for fun, unless there are rewards (like SH pvp now, which is a bit easier luckily
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
And I agree @putzboy78 , it is extremely expensive to have everythin BiS for both PvP and PvE. But tbh who needs defense in PvE? You can do all PvE content with 0 defense xD
@nezdin#5514 do people run SH PvP now? Last time I remember (months ago) the queue was broken :P
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It works now, I did it a couple of times with random groups of people/alliances and it happened at least twice in our alliance. You can also organise it in private queues now meaning that you can run it with as "few" as 20 people, which makes the organisation easier too. Once a week per character you can get a blood ruby just for queuing.
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Note that in private queues you won't get the glory, banners of the fallen, etc from siege pvp
foresight is not 8% at rank 4, itr more than that. The equation goes like that:
1.02 X 1.02 X 1.02 X 1.02 = 1.08243216
if you get the 5% from feat
1.08243216 X 1.05 = 1.136553768
Now for the 68%
start with:
X = HL extra hp = healing * 0.2
Y = hp saved from foresight DR = dammage * 0.136553768
at what point X = Y:
healing * 0.2 = dammage * 0.136553768
healing/dammage = 0.136553768/0.2 = 0.68276884 therefore 68%
Santa Claus --GF
Gargamel --CW
If this is true, then foresight is not a DR buff (you purposefully made no mention of DR and enemy ArP for that reason I am guessing) but rather a flat damage-decreaser, which actually makes it a good feat to use. The wording of the feat tooltip is quite confusing.
Of course, since faithful has so many synergies with healing, like storing heals and releasing them when damage is taken on the other side of the map, it is not clear whether Foresight is better than HL for the whole team, but it definitely looks better for personal survivability.
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
Santa Claus --GF
Gargamel --CW
You also say Negation acts on a separate layer in spite of description very misleadingly saying "+3% increase to your Damage Resistance"? OK, that answers my question about it and why it just feels a bit tankier - but couldn't really explain it. After further research it seems that it does not reduce damage by 30% but rather by 0.2*0.3 = 0.06 i.e. 6%. So its utility must be heavily weighed against other enchants.
Do you know if Feytouched and Valhalla work in a similar way? E.g. Trans. Fey reduces incoming damage from targeted player by 0.2*0.18 = 3.6% rather than 18%; and Valhalla at 5 stacks reduces it by 0.2*0.15 =3%
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
"DR cap is 80% and is what I refer to as Layer 1. There is also a secondary layer of DR that accounts for the remaining 20% of DR and it is referred to as Layer 2. The secondary layer goes from 0 – 100% which includes buffs that come from all sources such as Holy Ground, Negation, and any additional DR buffs. It is very important to understand that Negation buff cannot be negated by any source or any circumstance as it is a temporary buff that does not come from stats. This is the reason why it works so well in PVP. With that said, Negation’s true DR value is actually (30/100) * 20 = 6% DR on Layer 2. This means my total DR that I get a benefit from is Layer 1 (80%) + Layer 2 (6%) which comes to a grand total of 86% DR on my character. Now my current Layer 1 DR in the game is 89%, which means that when all is said and done, I have 95% total DR. The interesting part about this is that we must assume that enemies have about -15% DR reduction whenever they hit you. Some enemies may have even more, but on average I’d say you can expect to have your DR reduced. So the way the reduction works is like this, Layer 1 (89% – 15%) = 74%. Now you add Layer 2 (6%) to that and you get your final DR of 80% after reduction."
Source: http://mmominds.com/2016/10/03/mod-12-rdeviants-gwf-destroyer-pve-build/
Aelan Icebleed (CW)
full exaltation gives allmost 50% DR, so it only works on 20% of the damage and reduce total damage by 10%?
and it canot be negated? even piercing damage?