Thanks. I ll get where the AC DC with AA+BoB looses out against the DO DC with HG+TI, especially with an OP. I still wonder what happens when the AC DC can put AA+BoB+sporadically HG. Maybe i ll try that later once i have time for it.
Mobs do not have exactly 5% crit chance, I tested some mob attacks and it deviates from attack to attack (some crit ~15% of the time) but I am not going to sit around getting hit 1000's of times working out an approximation of the crit chance of every single attack. Furthermore, we do not know if that is a flat additive -5% crit chance or a 0.95 multiplier and I will not test for that either.
You don't need to test for that specifically, just look at ACT of runs, you can see the crit chance of mobs. Most actually have / had 5%.
Didnt knew that the chances are sometimes higher than 5%. It may be possible to provide some hint by using that feat in some dungeon runs to get a high number of hits. Once 1 hit would crit and it can be shown that Power on the sun is active it would be multiplicative. If in that runs it woulndt crit, we couldnt follow anything. But as long as the crit sev is just 25% i dont really see me doing such a test.
I would like clarification if you still actually use these in 12b though, since from what I could tell, most healing is almost completely negated at this point, and since every clearer is a TR or has ~200% resistance ignored, I don't see how stacking DR is that useful in PVP unless you can get up over ~120% DR, which I know is possible, but questionably difficult to keep up at 100% uptime.
Now about the low rated powers. That is actually kind of the point of the rating system. The more situational a power, the lower it rates. This means that if the only place a power is useful is PVP, and only situationally even in PVP, it could be a 3 in PVP, but it gets an even lower score overall. I don't think a numerical one dimension system rating is very good in this way, but it was I am using for now.
To clarify, a ranking of 1 means that it is so useless that it should never be slotted, or is so situational that it could probably just be forgotten. Two means that a power is situational, and probably has a hard time seeing usage. Three means that a power is average, all-round, or balanced. These powers are usually good and have very little wrong with them. Four are powers that are usually very powerful regardless of what situation you use them in. Even if these powers aren't the right power for the situation, they can probably get the job done. Powers rated with a 5 are actually overpowered. These powers have no situation where they aren't the best power to slot. You can brute force any problem in the game with these powers regardless of how what synergy they have with your surroundings.
Okay yeah I rated Sunburst a bit low. I find it very difficult to use, but it definitely is up there as one of the best CC powers the cleric has in PVP. But it is still only situationally useful, since it is terrabad in PVE, meaning it cannot be a 5, or even a 3. Additionally, it is situational and difficult to use in PVP, since you must wait for a good time and cannot use it while an opponent is immune. It has a small heal and small amount of damage, so really is only slotted for the CC.
Divine Armor probably should be higher, but is somewhat situational currently, since Hallowed Ground provides a better defensive buff (in PVE) and a better offensive buff. It's a fairly average power though if you removed Hallowed Ground from the picture, so that is why I rated it a 3. It would need to be almost always slotted and usually cast in common situations to make it into the 4 category.
The only reason I would use Guardian of Faith in PVP is for the heal. It's massive, but I can't say I am a big fan of healing clerics in PVP after 12b. If I wanted to help secure a kill I would likely use Hammer of Fate or Hallowed Ground (combined with a stunning encounter).
The above statement is similar for Bastion of Health, although, I agree it is probably the only dedicated heal worth slotting for PVP. I like it, but can only find it situationally useful in PVP, and a power that is only situationally useful inside of PVP is definitely not making it above a 2 rating.
Foresight and Anointed Armor are only rated at 2 and 3 because they are only good in PVP. I know they are good in PVP, but they aren't good in PVE, that's why they only get 2-3. The reason Anointed Armor is rated higher than Foresight is simply because Deflection chance will almost always beat out DR as a defensive stat in PVP against competent opponents (ones with decent armor pen). Either way, they are usually only good in PVP, and at least Foresight is situational depending on your opponent's investment into armor pen.
Anointed Action is only a small 13% DR increase and 13% damage increase for a 5s duration, and only for yourself. If you can spam dailies every 5 seconds to benefit from this, you probably don't have enough power or armor pen to care about personal damage, and therefore probably should just slot a more defensive class feature like Anointed Armor, Divine Fortune or Hastening Light.
Holy Fervor is a fairly decent class feature, but has nothing special about it that would make it stand out. It isn't really situational, but isn't really all that useful either. It is simply an average, all-rounder class feature, which is what the rating of 3 means.
Well then your rating system is kinda mixed up. You rate the best PvP skills as 2, and skills that are totally useless in PvP but nice in PvE are rated as 3?
Sunburst isnt situational. It should be slotted probably 90% of the time in PvP, its not slotted only for CC , it procs boons and feats and all kinds of things. If you know how to play then its obvious when to use it to push enemies away, its not "very difficult to use" at all.
"The above statement is similar for Bastion of Health, although, I agree it is probably the only dedicated heal worth slotting for PVP. I like it, but can only find it situationally useful in PVP, and a power that is only situationally useful inside of PVP is definitely not making it above a 2 rating." - yeah? Well my opinion is way different, its for both heals and AP gain, which is big. Its still OP even after healing nerf. Heals got nerfed in domination and thats why pure buff/debuff DCs are squishy and more DCs went back to healing (more tanky) builds, which makes BoH #1 encounter to use.
So goin back to weird rating:
1. PoD is rated as 3 - Ive never seen a DC use it in PvP,ever. So why not 2, since AS,BoH and SB are 2? 2. FF - its not so useful in PvP either. Maybe some pure DPS DCs use it in domination, but they usually have different skills slotted, and its rated as 4 again. 3. Exaltation - same as above, I dont think Ive seen DCs use it ever since mod 4 or 5 when it was pretty okay. Now not at all. And its rated as 4.
I wont even start on feats, where in Faithful you rated the best healing feats as 1 :P Gonna repeat myself - fact that they nerfed heals doesnt mean healing builds are useless, they are still very good if made properly and people probably appreciate heals now even more than before.
Your guide is very good, dont get me wrong. But its good ONLY for PvE DCs, maybe should rename it or something cause its very misleading.
k, very valid points there. Part of the issue with my PVP ratings is the fact that I have only ever truly played DPS/Debuff spec in PVP. I have never had enough defensive gear to find any success playing a tanky healer, so healing has always looked like: get stunned and one-rotated without heals or get stunned and one-rotated with heals for me. I'm honestly still curious if a tanky build is even still possible. From what I have seen and fought against, I can easily tank everything newbies can do without ever slotting heals or anything, while against experienced players, a single hit with CC results in my death (specifically talking about things like CB>Daze>Smoke Bomb or Bull Charge>Combo).
Part of the rating system is supposed to be the level of benefit a power can give you in any situation. Although some powers may not be used in PVP, they still would give benefit if they were used in PVP. Where Astral Shield and Bastion of Health do literally nothing in a properly built PVE group in most PVE content.
Prophecy of Doom increases damage dealt to an opponent and has a fairly sizable (by DC standards) burst attached to it. PoD isn't used much in PVP because there are better options, but that doesn't mean PoD wouldn't give some type of benefit if the better options were removed. I can't say the same about Astral Shield or Bastion of Health in PVE.
FF is easily one of, if not the best damaging spells a cleric has in PVP. The only other spells that can compete with it are Daunting Light (good luck) and Break the Spirit, which does slightly less damage in divine mode (the main source of damage) and will almost instantly stack your opponents CC resist stacks (bad). Additionally, it has a +15% buff component when empowered that, although probably situational, would give a fairly sizable benefit to any fight involving your allies. One of the big reasons why FF doesn't see more use, is because BtS is simply overpowered and does everything FF does, but more and better (except for damage in divine mode).
Exaltation is a funky one. If you cast Divine Mode on someone, it grants them +30% DR for 10 seconds and they cannot be pushed or knocked out of it like they can for Astral Shield. It's obviously single target when compared to Astral Shield, but it also comes with the heal from normal mode and extra DR and Damage +% from normal mode. I'm not saying it's the best thing you can slot, but it isn't useless in PVP either. It may not be meta, but it's not bad either. If you are a duo on or clearing a node, Exaltation cast once in divine mode and once in empowered (1 pip) mode will beat Astral Shield's effectiveness in every way, including DR, healing, damage increase, positioning and duration. It can grant up to 57% DR, 27% damage bonus for ten seconds... by itself. If this is useless (1) or situational (2) to have this type of bonus on two targets (yourself and an ally) in PVP, please help me understand that.
If I were to split up the ratings (which I am highly considering doing at this point), PoD would be a 2 or 3 in PVP, FF would be 3 or 4, and Exaltation would be 3 or 4. Sunburst I would probably put at 4 in PVP, but like I said, I don't play with sunburst much, so it's a bit hard for me to rate it.
... beyond that, I simply need to do more testing (or see some great 12b PVP videos) involving the healing specs. I have found every attempt to create a healing/tanky spec on my cleric for PVP to wind up lackluster and simply holds nodes for an extra 5-15 seconds tops.
If you are curious what I do run in PVP, since I have only stated what I don't use. I normally run Righteous or Faithful DPS DO spec with something like:
DG, FF, BtS (normal rotation) Sunburst, FF, BtS (only slot it against specific classes) PoD, FF, BtS (only useful 1v1, and is usually just eclipsed in every way by divine glow) AS, FF, BtS (only useful against people with low armor pen) DG, DL, BtS (newb stomper / AoE)
EDIT - I have gone through and done just a quick pass on the numeric rating system splitting PVE and PVP for powers. I didn't finish the headers, and it likely still requires some fine-tuning, but it should give the basic idea on how I rate each power in both modes.
Something I want to also point out about the rating system that may have gone unnoticed. Powers rated at 5, are the right power for every situation, and often do not require thinking to even apply them at the correct time. Powers rated at 5 are often powers I would call "nerf candidates" because these powers are overpowered. Break the Spirit is the perfect example. Why do you slot it?
PVE Reasons: To reduce one target's damage output by 40%. Requires finding a dangerous target and pressing the button. To increase party damage by 20-30% by empowering it constantly. Requires spamming it whenever you have 2-3 charges.
Difficulty: To use adequately: almost no difficulty at all, just spam it with charges To use it optimally: easy, but requires some knowledge of enemy attack to hit the correct target and stand near the DPS at the same time
Situations this is useful: All of them. Never a situation where this isn't useful or even the best thing you can use.
PVP Reasons: To reduce one target's damage output by 40%. Requires pointing and clicking. To increase party damage by 30% by empowering it when needed. Requires knowledge of when it is needed.
Difficulty: To use adequately: none, your opponents can't even dodge or block this power. To use it optimally: difficult, since there are actually other powers that could be empowered usefully in PVP
Situations this is useful: All of them. Never a situation where this isn't useful or even the best thing you can use.
My understanding of Sunburst:
PVE Reasons: To generate AP. It has the highest Cooldown to AP ratio.
Difficulty: To use adequately: Moderately difficult, since you must hit allies and enemies at the same time to generate bonus AP. To use it optimally: Nearly Impossible, since you can only hit CC-Immune enemies with it without trolling your own team.
Situations this is useful: None
PVP Reasons: To generate AP. To knock opponents away, off nodes, or otherwise provide CC to setup a kill. To heal HP.
Difficulty: To use adequately: To provide healing and occasional knockback it is fairly straightforward, but will often miss or run into blocks or immunity. If spammed too often it will also generate enough stacks that your or your allies cannot CC your opponents anymore. To use optimally: You must only cast it when opponents aren't blocking, dodging, or are immune in any other way. This can be very challenging against some classes, and basically impossible against others.
Situations this is useful: Against specific classes it is very effective at all times. Against TR and GF it can often be wasted quite easily for almost no benefit. Mount Hotenow Domination specifically allows Sunburst to gain extra effectiveness by throwing enemies completely off 1 and 3 onto the ground below.
Couple of questions that have occurred to me since the rework.
Terrifying Insight (and Prophetic Action) These apply to your party but is there a max range? Do they effect pets? (even though pet damage is trivial, still would be nice to know) Was reading the Archery build in HR forum and saw TI listed as a feat Archers lose out on.
Annointed Army. I have never had a great AC loadout and have mostly abandoned it since bonding change but does the mitigation stack? Before each ball worked on turn to stop 90% (100% mod 10.5) and went away. Is that still the basic mechanic? 20% MHP on a hit and ball is removed or 20% per ball? I assume the former but would like confirmation.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
Couple of questions that have occurred to me since the rework.
Terrifying Insight (and Prophetic Action) These apply to your party but is there a max range? Do they effect pets? (even though pet damage is trivial, still would be nice to know) Was reading the Archery build in HR forum and saw TI listed as a feat Archers lose out on.
Annointed Army. I have never had a great AC loadout and have mostly abandoned it since bonding change but does the mitigation stack? Before each ball worked on turn to stop 90% (100% mod 10.5) and went away. Is that still the basic mechanic? 20% MHP on a hit and ball is removed or 20% per ball? I assume the former but would like confirmation.
Terrifying Insight is party only Prophetic Action is not limited by party
Prophetic Action is also capable of stacking unlike Terrifying Insight, although I didn't test the upper limits of this stacking mechanic. I advised all in my alliance DCs during Dragonflight to slot Prophetic Action at the blue dragon, since if you have 3ish DCs in the area using Prophetic Action, most people will survive the Lightning Spike even if the aggro target dies.
Both TI and Prophetic Action have a max range, although I didn't test the exact range. Terrifying Insight range is fairly large though (at least 60-80' if not more). Terrifying Insight actually has an invisible duration and pulses onto all party members inside the given range. If you walk outside of this range they keep the buff until the hidden duration expires. It lasts a fairly long time and doesn't recheck range very often (15-30 seconds between pulses), so it can be a bit annoying testing range.
I have no idea on their effectiveness on pets. Although if you look at a pet's buff bar, you should be able to see if it is affecting them. These are the icons to look for:
Honestly I think even Archery HRs should still be benefiting from TI, but it depends on where the DO positions himself. The DO should in theory be able to hit both the party and the stupidity build HR with TI, but HG is debatable and BtS is definitely a no go.
No matter how many spheres are on you, Anointed Army will only block 20% of your HP and remove 1 orb from every "stack" of Anointed Army on you when you take damage. This means that even though the orbs appear to be stacking, you will only ever have one real Anointed Army on you at a time, and it can only stop 20% of your maximum HP per hit. Note that in everfrost zones, 1 hit counts as 2 and removes 2 orbs.
I see random people get the buff FX from my SW's Pillar. Is that just a visual glitch?
From what I can tell, it never shows up on their buff bar. I have not tested the damage yet, since I have a hard time finding people to test stuff when I want to test party interactions and target caps.
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
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clericalistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 595Arc User
edited December 2017
I just want to respond to the healing section in your review, you correctly mentioned that healing is not needed (and when it is, lifesteal solves this problem for most). However this you part you said is not entirely correct: "Healing from a cleric is particularly not useful because it is either slow to cast, or is so small that it will be ignored", both the virtuous and faithful path provide enough healing for any situation where it does not involve one shot kills, virtuous is especially strong in pve as the heal over times rapidly become burst heals.
The possible fix I recommend is to VERY HEAVILY nerf lifesteal, and also HEAVILY reduce the healing of the paladin, cleric and temptation warlock. Added to that, introduce much more damage over time effects in the harder challenges that provide incentives to build truly strong healing builds. Likewise as you mentioned the only job of the cleric is to boost dps of others, and I agree with you when it comes to fact that the damage boost it provides is too high and creates big performance differences between different parties combinations that are simply too much.
Very simply put, the cleric needs to go back it's principle role of being a healer, as long as this does not happen I don't consider the cleric to be in a valid state, nor can I accept those that argue that one should just tolerate the broken meta.
What I tried to say there is that Paladins and Templocks outheal DCs by such a large margin, that if healing in general were reduced down to a state where it was required to complete content, the cleric would be behind (by a fairly large margin) in contrast to the Paladin and even the Templock. Sure the cleric probably would still bring the most overall benefit, but their healing just cannot compete with a paladin's. A paladin in the current live game can cast 2 spells and will passively heal all nearby allies for multiple millions faster than once a second. If healing is all reduced by a large enough margin and necessitated by content, the paladin will always come out on top as a strictly superior "healer" by a margin so great that cleric heals might as well not exist.
Obviously in the game right now a cleric (even built for full recovery) will 1% -> 100% heal anyone with a single heal, and they can maintain that indefinitely at the moment due to how much power they have in contrast to the maximum HP their allies have. I am speaking theoretically here when I say "if healing were made viable" and I am implying that all healing would need drastically reduced for this to happen. If Cleric, Paladin, and Templock heals were all reduced by the same factor, cleric would definitely not come out on top. Paladins are the best healers by massive margins, so if healing were reduced enough for Paladins to be in a balanced state of healing, then clerics would be left with heals that didn't even exist.
Signature [WIP] - tyvm John
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
Very simply put, the cleric needs to go back it's principle role of being a healer, as long as this does not happen I don't consider the cleric to be in a valid state, nor can I accept those that argue that one should just tolerate the broken meta.
dcs in neverwinter have never had the principle role of healer. Even in the early days of vanilla the primary function of clerics was in damage mitigator which was superseded quickly by HG spammer. Even when we were the only heal class in the game, we weren't used as healers
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clericalistMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 595Arc User
Very simply put, the cleric needs to go back it's principle role of being a healer, as long as this does not happen I don't consider the cleric to be in a valid state, nor can I accept those that argue that one should just tolerate the broken meta.
dcs in neverwinter have never had the principle role of healer. Even in the early days of vanilla the primary function of clerics was in damage mitigator which was superseded quickly by HG spammer. Even when we were the only heal class in the game, we weren't used as healers
In the very early days, healing was very much required for the hard dungeons, by hard I mean things like Malabogs castle or Castle Never when they first came out. Both Astral Shield and Hallowed Ground that were considered best at the start and both provided healing ticks back then, even Kaelacs guides (which had High Prophet equivalent to what power sharing is today) made mention of healing, these days its completely ignored. I also need to mention that even now there are at times random queue parties that still require healing, the lower geared type parties, these kind of challenges also tend to be way more rewarding than the whale speed run parties and should be used Cryptic on how to make content more enjoyable.
Besides all that, Cryptic still sees the cleric as a healer, in the character creation screen it very clearly states this, in the random queues I still see "healer" not "buffbot" in the description, and the many healing features of the cleric are still there. The gaping divide between the de facto and de jure role of the cleric put it in a state that can be called anything but correct, sooner or later they need to reconcile the two and I really cannot believe that they will decide power sharer over healer as the cleric role.
Very simply put, the cleric needs to go back it's principle role of being a healer, as long as this does not happen I don't consider the cleric to be in a valid state, nor can I accept those that argue that one should just tolerate the broken meta.
dcs in neverwinter have never had the principle role of healer. Even in the early days of vanilla the primary function of clerics was in damage mitigator which was superseded quickly by HG spammer. Even when we were the only heal class in the game, we weren't used as healers
Wut. Have we played the same game? DCs were never healers in the early days of the game? We did nothing but heal... Spam Astral Shield and heal, thats all we did. Noone used things such as BtS or any debuffs, it was all about AS/BoH/HG and either Divine Glow or even Healing Word lol.
Karrundax was impossible to complete for ~8GS (old gs) players without heals at the beginning, same for MC, CN and other harder dungeons. I remember those Frozen Heart runs without a tank, where at last boss I had to run around the room tanking all those gollems or whatever it was and heal my team at the same time xD Was like mod 2 or 3.
Those were the best times for this game, mod 1-3, it all went terribly wrong after that.
putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
malabog didn't exist in vanila. In those days regen provided most the healing for tanks, lifesteal for dps. Full CW teams became a thing in short order and the only way you broke that rotation is if you spammed HG (increased party dps to compensate for loss of personal dps). And parties with people who didn't understand the buff/debuff mechanics would skip taking dps at all. Sure there was a stint very early where healing was a thing until people got geared but it was super short lived and quickly replaced with damage mitigation which came under HG, AS, DG, and Foresight.
and yes you can find parties that need you to heal... if you pug queue and look for unbalanced unexperienced players.
cryptic doesn't play the game, they also see cws as dps and they are clearing see debuff bots in the current meta. and they see gfs as tanks, but everyone knows they are buff/dps while we use OP to take the role of 'tank" even though they largely rely on auras for protection and not agro management/positioning.
If they force the DC into a true healer role the class is dead. That's @darthtzarr point, DC cannot keep up with OP and templock on heals and if that becomes the battle ground for party composition we must fight for we will be sitting on the shelf like SWs and TRs are now.
Wut. Have we played the same game? DCs were never healers in the early days of the game? We did nothing but heal... Spam Astral Shield and heal, thats all we did. Noone used things such as BtS or any debuffs, it was all about AS/BoH/HG and either Divine Glow or even Healing Word lol.
let's see:
AS buff HG buff DG buff Foresight procd with BOH or HW buff
sure we healed, but the main role was in buffing. You don't heal damage that was never received.
Do you remember when you could stack AS to make party immortal? Or when you could stack HG to make party immortal? Was that because of our heals?
@darthtzarr thank you for sharing this. I can't imagine how many hours you spent putting this together, so I wanted to make sure you know that I appreciate it! I shared the link to this post and your doc with my guild.
You are missing my point. ofc DG/HG isnt pure healing, but general build WAS Faithful, it was full heal builds, DCs didnt run or try DPSing back then,Righteous didnt exist. We didnt use all those buff/dps feats and BtS/PoD/TI so on and on. FF was used from time to time, BtS was just terrible cause it aggroed all mobs/boss on you. Altho if you remember Astral Shield DID heal..
And thats what I mean - healing was a thing in very early mods until people managed to gear up, full CW runs were in mod 3 already I think? Somewhere in there, so yeah after that healing wasnt THAT useful anymore but game was still getting many new players that werent geared and heals were quite popular. Now probably 80% of the playerbase is either BiS or geared enough atm so they can melt everything with buffs.
Personally I do prefer the buff DC playstyle over healing,its more fun. But I cant deny that game was more fun back then, content was way more challenging and it didnt take few weeks of new mod/dungeon for people to melt last boss within 5 seconds.
CN took so much coordination from CWs to callout their repels one after another lol, in VT people had to stand together in AS, u had to destroy the caskets. Every dungeon had certain tactics which were needed to finish the run. Then it became run from door to door thing
And now its just extremely boring, no tactics at all, just stand there and melt mobs and boss.
I used to enjoy this game so much that I would farm PvE for like 10 or more hours straight doing same dungeons only cause it took certain knowledge and skill to finish runs, drops from chests were useful at least and you had to collect the sets for bonuses or to sell them. Now I literally cannot understand people who still play this game and enjoy running new dungs 100 times in a row for nothing, dungs that take no challenge at all.. its same sh*t over and over, just brain-melting waste of time.
putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
i understand what your trying to say but the reality is we ran faithful back then because it was the BIS build without a buff/debuff option not because the heals were required. Making the class full heals will not improve the gameplay now. It will only leave dcs unemployed standing beside healidons at the soup kitchen.
It would suck if they made class full heals only, noone wants that xD I think. But it would be nice if they made content challenging enough so heals CAN be useful if someone wants to use it
putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
not sure how they could, without redoing half the game. The bosses with no mobs lean toward the types of burst damage you can't heal. As you mentioned in the early game we had mobs so it was like dot damage with low impact but frequent damage that can be combated by heals. However, that damage has to be semi-predictable because heals are slow and targeted with the exception of HOT passives which then require zero skill.
i agree the healer paths are not good for PVE (virtuos can be nice for very high GS cleric) but saying cleric does not need to heals is wrong.
in PVP if you don't heal you will be kicked. a new cleric that is not using BoH in dungeons will be kiced. even "easy" dungeons like elol or etos allmost all tong double DC i did both use BoH...
SW temtations heal nice. i saw few when SW came but i havn't seen any lately OP can heal nice, but i dont think they have powers to heal someone form 0 to full in one cast.
keep in mind new player with 9k-11k gs with weak bonding and enchants will not reach 100k+ power, the only option to heal is BoH and it is expected of him
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
sure there are outliers where heals are needed but that's not par for the course. And I've ran plenty of tongs and never once used a BOH relying on OP protection, and DG cover it. The reason you don't see a lot of healer SWs or OPs is because there is no demand for them. So yeah if you want to run heals, find low gf groups trying to do run content on the fringes of their abilities.
> OP can heal nice, but i dont think they have powers to heal someone form 0 to full in one cast. >
With right skill op can heal instant full. Only with Shild. I have a OP and i can heal a 1mio heal tick... I think... That's enough for alle Chars... But in this game we dont need a heal op. Heal is worthless in endcontent. But in lower groups no man dies.
I don´t remember exactly what build was BIS in mod 5 for DC´s. I run faithfull AC most of the time. Mitigation was allways the main aspect of DC in former mods. Healing was welcome but not essential. FF and BtS was 100% allways set in groupcontent. The need of heals from this class was moer demanded before OP was implemented and before double DC meta was set in stone (since DO buff). Since DG beside selfheal can heal far enough (even running a rightous path) due to buffs etc., the need of BoH is gone imo. I allways slot DG+BtS/FF and mostly AS or exaltation or chains to debuff with my plaguefire (depends). It really depends on your group, but when that prot pally feated Prism you really do not need that much heals on top. I run templock in Tong and it is from use if you do not get a second DC or your group is weak or you miss an OP. But even running one DC you will not need that templock or devotion OP in most cases. But that depends on your prot OP and maybe the skills your teammates are using.
Post edited by schietindebux on
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putzboy78Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,950Arc User
BIS in mod 5 was DO righteous. They were dps monsters for awhile.
Thank you very much for your guide. It is very helpful.
However I think you do underestimate a bit the healing paths for DC, in particular the Virtuous path. I have not done extensive testing, but my hypothesis is that Shield of the Divine and Cleansing Fire synergize with Gift of Haste to really boost the AP gain of the party, so that everyone can use dailies much more rapidly than they could if the DC was only using Gift of Haste. That in itself is a type of buff. Furthermore, one great benefit of the Virtuous and Faithful capstones is that they allow the DC to "pre-heal" the party to a degree. A DC can anticipate when a big hit is coming (e.g., Dragon Turtle slam), cast a heal before the slam, and then see the green numbers of healing as the party falls back down to the ground. With the Faithful capstone, the DC can charge up the party's Gift of Faith even while completely out of combat, to make sure it is always topped off, so that when that big hit comes, the player is restored to full health. At least that is how it worked when I last tried out the Faithful path, which admittedly was a little while ago. So I view Virtuous as an alternative means of buffing than Righteous: Righteous provides direct damage buffs and debuffs, while Virtuous provides AP boosts that allows players to self-buff with more rapid dailies.
Otherwise, though, I appreciate the time and effort that you put into your guide.
Thank you very much for your guide. It is very helpful.
However I think you do underestimate a bit the healing paths for DC, in particular the Virtuous path. I have not done extensive testing, but my hypothesis is that Shield of the Divine and Cleansing Fire synergize with Gift of Haste to really boost the AP gain of the party, so that everyone can use dailies much more rapidly than they could if the DC was only using Gift of Haste. That in itself is a type of buff. Furthermore, one great benefit of the Virtuous and Faithful capstones is that they allow the DC to "pre-heal" the party to a degree. A DC can anticipate when a big hit is coming (e.g., Dragon Turtle slam), cast a heal before the slam, and then see the green numbers of healing as the party falls back down to the ground. With the Faithful capstone, the DC can charge up the party's Gift of Faith even while completely out of combat, to make sure it is always topped off, so that when that big hit comes, the player is restored to full health. At least that is how it worked when I last tried out the Faithful path, which admittedly was a little while ago. So I view Virtuous as an alternative means of buffing than Righteous: Righteous provides direct damage buffs and debuffs, while Virtuous provides AP boosts that allows players to self-buff with more rapid dailies.
Otherwise, though, I appreciate the time and effort that you put into your guide.
Part of the issue with DCs not being able to pull off perma-HG that you mentioned earlier is because they do not go Righteous. Even if it is temporary, you cannot underestimate 40% recharge speed. Additionally you miss out on 35% debuffs by taking a different path (25% in mod 13). AC DC already takes Gift of Haste and can keep it up on everyone important using only Divine Glow if they position properly. DO could take it Gift of Haste, but it usually isn't worth the trade-off.
If DO takes a healing path: loses 40% damage buff (25/60 uptime) loses 40% recharge speed buff for HG uptime (25/60 uptime) loses 10% debuff loses fire of the gods (5-30% personal damage buff depending on your skill as a DPS DC) conclusion: way less recharge speed making perma HG considerably more difficult way less damage making DPS hybrid not an option If you want to be useless you can do this
If AC takes a healing path: loses 40% recharge speed buff which slows down rotation (25/60 uptime) loses 25% debuffs (only lose 10% if DO loses fire of the gods to take it) conclusion: fewer AAs, fewer cooldown resets, fewer HGs If party DPS is the only concern you would need to gain at least ~5% more damage (random guess based on what you lost from debuffs) for the whole team out of your Gift of Haste daily spam. Your DO will hate you.
EDIT - for reference, the cooldown is the part that makes HG hard to perma, not AP gain or generation. EDIT2 - High end groups always run a paladin, which can out-heal a cleric simply by existing. Even if they remove lifesteal I don't see healing being that important for a cleric still EDIT3 - BiS groups run a healadin. You have fun out-healing that thing
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Well then your rating system is kinda mixed up.
You rate the best PvP skills as 2, and skills that are totally useless in PvP but nice in PvE are rated as 3?
Sunburst isnt situational. It should be slotted probably 90% of the time in PvP, its not slotted only for CC , it procs boons and feats and all kinds of things. If you know how to play then its obvious when to use it to push enemies away, its not "very difficult to use" at all.
"The above statement is similar for Bastion of Health, although, I agree it is probably the only dedicated heal worth slotting for PVP. I like it, but can only find it situationally useful in PVP, and a power that is only situationally useful inside of PVP is definitely not making it above a 2 rating." - yeah? Well my opinion is way different, its for both heals and AP gain, which is big. Its still OP even after healing nerf.
Heals got nerfed in domination and thats why pure buff/debuff DCs are squishy and more DCs went back to healing (more tanky) builds, which makes BoH #1 encounter to use.
So goin back to weird rating:
1. PoD is rated as 3 - Ive never seen a DC use it in PvP,ever. So why not 2, since AS,BoH and SB are 2?
2. FF - its not so useful in PvP either. Maybe some pure DPS DCs use it in domination, but they usually have different skills slotted, and its rated as 4 again.
3. Exaltation - same as above, I dont think Ive seen DCs use it ever since mod 4 or 5 when it was pretty okay. Now not at all. And its rated as 4.
I wont even start on feats, where in Faithful you rated the best healing feats as 1 :P
Gonna repeat myself - fact that they nerfed heals doesnt mean healing builds are useless, they are still very good if made properly and people probably appreciate heals now even more than before.
Your guide is very good, dont get me wrong.
But its good ONLY for PvE DCs, maybe should rename it or something cause its very misleading.
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Part of the rating system is supposed to be the level of benefit a power can give you in any situation. Although some powers may not be used in PVP, they still would give benefit if they were used in PVP. Where Astral Shield and Bastion of Health do literally nothing in a properly built PVE group in most PVE content.
Prophecy of Doom increases damage dealt to an opponent and has a fairly sizable (by DC standards) burst attached to it. PoD isn't used much in PVP because there are better options, but that doesn't mean PoD wouldn't give some type of benefit if the better options were removed. I can't say the same about Astral Shield or Bastion of Health in PVE.
FF is easily one of, if not the best damaging spells a cleric has in PVP. The only other spells that can compete with it are Daunting Light (good luck) and Break the Spirit, which does slightly less damage in divine mode (the main source of damage) and will almost instantly stack your opponents CC resist stacks (bad). Additionally, it has a +15% buff component when empowered that, although probably situational, would give a fairly sizable benefit to any fight involving your allies. One of the big reasons why FF doesn't see more use, is because BtS is simply overpowered and does everything FF does, but more and better (except for damage in divine mode).
Exaltation is a funky one. If you cast Divine Mode on someone, it grants them +30% DR for 10 seconds and they cannot be pushed or knocked out of it like they can for Astral Shield. It's obviously single target when compared to Astral Shield, but it also comes with the heal from normal mode and extra DR and Damage +% from normal mode. I'm not saying it's the best thing you can slot, but it isn't useless in PVP either. It may not be meta, but it's not bad either. If you are a duo on or clearing a node, Exaltation cast once in divine mode and once in empowered (1 pip) mode will beat Astral Shield's effectiveness in every way, including DR, healing, damage increase, positioning and duration. It can grant up to 57% DR, 27% damage bonus for ten seconds... by itself. If this is useless (1) or situational (2) to have this type of bonus on two targets (yourself and an ally) in PVP, please help me understand that.
If I were to split up the ratings (which I am highly considering doing at this point), PoD would be a 2 or 3 in PVP, FF would be 3 or 4, and Exaltation would be 3 or 4. Sunburst I would probably put at 4 in PVP, but like I said, I don't play with sunburst much, so it's a bit hard for me to rate it.
... beyond that, I simply need to do more testing (or see some great 12b PVP videos) involving the healing specs. I have found every attempt to create a healing/tanky spec on my cleric for PVP to wind up lackluster and simply holds nodes for an extra 5-15 seconds tops.
If you are curious what I do run in PVP, since I have only stated what I don't use. I normally run Righteous or Faithful DPS DO spec with something like:
DG, FF, BtS (normal rotation)
Sunburst, FF, BtS (only slot it against specific classes)
PoD, FF, BtS (only useful 1v1, and is usually just eclipsed in every way by divine glow)
AS, FF, BtS (only useful against people with low armor pen)
DG, DL, BtS (newb stomper / AoE)
EDIT - I have gone through and done just a quick pass on the numeric rating system splitting PVE and PVP for powers. I didn't finish the headers, and it likely still requires some fine-tuning, but it should give the basic idea on how I rate each power in both modes.
EDIT - and other powers don't?
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PVE Reasons:
To reduce one target's damage output by 40%. Requires finding a dangerous target and pressing the button.
To increase party damage by 20-30% by empowering it constantly. Requires spamming it whenever you have 2-3 charges.
Difficulty:
To use adequately: almost no difficulty at all, just spam it with charges
To use it optimally: easy, but requires some knowledge of enemy attack to hit the correct target and stand near the DPS at the same time
Situations this is useful:
All of them. Never a situation where this isn't useful or even the best thing you can use.
PVP Reasons:
To reduce one target's damage output by 40%. Requires pointing and clicking.
To increase party damage by 30% by empowering it when needed. Requires knowledge of when it is needed.
Difficulty:
To use adequately: none, your opponents can't even dodge or block this power.
To use it optimally: difficult, since there are actually other powers that could be empowered usefully in PVP
Situations this is useful:
All of them. Never a situation where this isn't useful or even the best thing you can use.
My understanding of Sunburst:
PVE Reasons:
To generate AP. It has the highest Cooldown to AP ratio.
Difficulty:
To use adequately: Moderately difficult, since you must hit allies and enemies at the same time to generate bonus AP.
To use it optimally: Nearly Impossible, since you can only hit CC-Immune enemies with it without trolling your own team.
Situations this is useful:
None
PVP Reasons:
To generate AP.
To knock opponents away, off nodes, or otherwise provide CC to setup a kill.
To heal HP.
Difficulty:
To use adequately: To provide healing and occasional knockback it is fairly straightforward, but will often miss or run into blocks or immunity. If spammed too often it will also generate enough stacks that your or your allies cannot CC your opponents anymore.
To use optimally: You must only cast it when opponents aren't blocking, dodging, or are immune in any other way. This can be very challenging against some classes, and basically impossible against others.
Situations this is useful:
Against specific classes it is very effective at all times. Against TR and GF it can often be wasted quite easily for almost no benefit. Mount Hotenow Domination specifically allows Sunburst to gain extra effectiveness by throwing enemies completely off 1 and 3 onto the ground below.
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Terrifying Insight (and Prophetic Action) These apply to your party but is there a max range? Do they effect pets? (even though pet damage is trivial, still would be nice to know) Was reading the Archery build in HR forum and saw TI listed as a feat Archers lose out on.
Annointed Army. I have never had a great AC loadout and have mostly abandoned it since bonding change but does the mitigation stack? Before each ball worked on turn to stop 90% (100% mod 10.5) and went away. Is that still the basic mechanic? 20% MHP on a hit and ball is removed or 20% per ball? I assume the former but would like confirmation.
Prophetic Action is not limited by party
Prophetic Action is also capable of stacking unlike Terrifying Insight, although I didn't test the upper limits of this stacking mechanic. I advised all in my alliance DCs during Dragonflight to slot Prophetic Action at the blue dragon, since if you have 3ish DCs in the area using Prophetic Action, most people will survive the Lightning Spike even if the aggro target dies.
Both TI and Prophetic Action have a max range, although I didn't test the exact range. Terrifying Insight range is fairly large though (at least 60-80' if not more). Terrifying Insight actually has an invisible duration and pulses onto all party members inside the given range. If you walk outside of this range they keep the buff until the hidden duration expires. It lasts a fairly long time and doesn't recheck range very often (15-30 seconds between pulses), so it can be a bit annoying testing range.
I have no idea on their effectiveness on pets. Although if you look at a pet's buff bar, you should be able to see if it is affecting them. These are the icons to look for:
Honestly I think even Archery HRs should still be benefiting from TI, but it depends on where the DO positions himself. The DO should in theory be able to hit both the party and the stupidity build HR with TI, but HG is debatable and BtS is definitely a no go.
No matter how many spheres are on you, Anointed Army will only block 20% of your HP and remove 1 orb from every "stack" of Anointed Army on you when you take damage. This means that even though the orbs appear to be stacking, you will only ever have one real Anointed Army on you at a time, and it can only stop 20% of your maximum HP per hit. Note that in everfrost zones, 1 hit counts as 2 and removes 2 orbs.
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I knew multiple AA don't stack but had wondered about the other since the rework.
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I see random people get the buff FX from my SW's Pillar. Is that just a visual glitch?
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The possible fix I recommend is to VERY HEAVILY nerf lifesteal, and also HEAVILY reduce the healing of the paladin, cleric and temptation warlock. Added to that, introduce much more damage over time effects in the harder challenges that provide incentives to build truly strong healing builds. Likewise as you mentioned the only job of the cleric is to boost dps of others, and I agree with you when it comes to fact that the damage boost it provides is too high and creates big performance differences between different parties combinations that are simply too much.
Very simply put, the cleric needs to go back it's principle role of being a healer, as long as this does not happen I don't consider the cleric to be in a valid state, nor can I accept those that argue that one should just tolerate the broken meta.
Obviously in the game right now a cleric (even built for full recovery) will 1% -> 100% heal anyone with a single heal, and they can maintain that indefinitely at the moment due to how much power they have in contrast to the maximum HP their allies have. I am speaking theoretically here when I say "if healing were made viable" and I am implying that all healing would need drastically reduced for this to happen. If Cleric, Paladin, and Templock heals were all reduced by the same factor, cleric would definitely not come out on top. Paladins are the best healers by massive margins, so if healing were reduced enough for Paladins to be in a balanced state of healing, then clerics would be left with heals that didn't even exist.
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Besides all that, Cryptic still sees the cleric as a healer, in the character creation screen it very clearly states this, in the random queues I still see "healer" not "buffbot" in the description, and the many healing features of the cleric are still there. The gaping divide between the de facto and de jure role of the cleric put it in a state that can be called anything but correct, sooner or later they need to reconcile the two and I really cannot believe that they will decide power sharer over healer as the cleric role.
Spam Astral Shield and heal, thats all we did. Noone used things such as BtS or any debuffs, it was all about AS/BoH/HG and either Divine Glow or even Healing Word lol.
Karrundax was impossible to complete for ~8GS (old gs) players without heals at the beginning, same for MC, CN and other harder dungeons.
I remember those Frozen Heart runs without a tank, where at last boss I had to run around the room tanking all those gollems or whatever it was and heal my team at the same time xD Was like mod 2 or 3.
Those were the best times for this game, mod 1-3, it all went terribly wrong after that.
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and yes you can find parties that need you to heal... if you pug queue and look for unbalanced unexperienced players.
cryptic doesn't play the game, they also see cws as dps and they are clearing see debuff bots in the current meta. and they see gfs as tanks, but everyone knows they are buff/dps while we use OP to take the role of 'tank" even though they largely rely on auras for protection and not agro management/positioning.
If they force the DC into a true healer role the class is dead. That's @darthtzarr point, DC cannot keep up with OP and templock on heals and if that becomes the battle ground for party composition we must fight for we will be sitting on the shelf like SWs and TRs are now.
let's see:
AS buff
HG buff
DG buff
Foresight procd with BOH or HW buff
sure we healed, but the main role was in buffing. You don't heal damage that was never received.
Do you remember when you could stack AS to make party immortal? Or when you could stack HG to make party immortal? Was that because of our heals?
You are missing my point.
ofc DG/HG isnt pure healing, but general build WAS Faithful, it was full heal builds, DCs didnt run or try DPSing back then,Righteous didnt exist. We didnt use all those buff/dps feats and BtS/PoD/TI so on and on. FF was used from time to time, BtS was just terrible cause it aggroed all mobs/boss on you.
Altho if you remember Astral Shield DID heal..
And thats what I mean - healing was a thing in very early mods until people managed to gear up, full CW runs were in mod 3 already I think? Somewhere in there, so yeah after that healing wasnt THAT useful anymore but game was still getting many new players that werent geared and heals were quite popular.
Now probably 80% of the playerbase is either BiS or geared enough atm so they can melt everything with buffs.
Personally I do prefer the buff DC playstyle over healing,its more fun. But I cant deny that game was more fun back then, content was way more challenging and it didnt take few weeks of new mod/dungeon for people to melt last boss within 5 seconds.
CN took so much coordination from CWs to callout their repels one after another lol, in VT people had to stand together in AS, u had to destroy the caskets.
Every dungeon had certain tactics which were needed to finish the run. Then it became run from door to door thing
And now its just extremely boring, no tactics at all, just stand there and melt mobs and boss.
I used to enjoy this game so much that I would farm PvE for like 10 or more hours straight doing same dungeons only cause it took certain knowledge and skill to finish runs, drops from chests were useful at least and you had to collect the sets for bonuses or to sell them.
Now I literally cannot understand people who still play this game and enjoy running new dungs 100 times in a row for nothing, dungs that take no challenge at all.. its same sh*t over and over, just brain-melting waste of time.
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But it would be nice if they made content challenging enough so heals CAN be useful if someone wants to use it
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but saying cleric does not need to heals is wrong.
in PVP if you don't heal you will be kicked.
a new cleric that is not using BoH in dungeons will be kiced. even "easy" dungeons like elol or etos
allmost all tong double DC i did both use BoH...
SW temtations heal nice. i saw few when SW came but i havn't seen any lately
OP can heal nice, but i dont think they have powers to heal someone form 0 to full in one cast.
keep in mind new player with 9k-11k gs with weak bonding and enchants will not reach 100k+ power, the only option to heal is BoH and it is expected of him
> OP can heal nice, but i dont think they have powers to heal someone form 0 to full in one cast.
>
With right skill op can heal instant full. Only with Shild. I have a OP and i can heal a 1mio heal tick... I think... That's enough for alle Chars... But in this game we dont need a heal op. Heal is worthless in endcontent. But in lower groups no man dies.
Mitigation was allways the main aspect of DC in former mods. Healing was welcome but not essential. FF and BtS was 100% allways set in groupcontent. The need of heals from this class was moer demanded before OP was implemented and before double DC meta was set in stone (since DO buff).
Since DG beside selfheal can heal far enough (even running a rightous path) due to buffs etc., the need of BoH is gone imo. I allways slot DG+BtS/FF and mostly AS or exaltation or chains to debuff with my plaguefire (depends).
It really depends on your group, but when that prot pally feated Prism you really do not need that much heals on top.
I run templock in Tong and it is from use if you do not get a second DC or your group is weak or you miss an OP. But even running one DC you will not need that templock or devotion OP in most cases.
But that depends on your prot OP and maybe the skills your teammates are using.
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However I think you do underestimate a bit the healing paths for DC, in particular the Virtuous path. I have not done extensive testing, but my hypothesis is that Shield of the Divine and Cleansing Fire synergize with Gift of Haste to really boost the AP gain of the party, so that everyone can use dailies much more rapidly than they could if the DC was only using Gift of Haste. That in itself is a type of buff. Furthermore, one great benefit of the Virtuous and Faithful capstones is that they allow the DC to "pre-heal" the party to a degree. A DC can anticipate when a big hit is coming (e.g., Dragon Turtle slam), cast a heal before the slam, and then see the green numbers of healing as the party falls back down to the ground. With the Faithful capstone, the DC can charge up the party's Gift of Faith even while completely out of combat, to make sure it is always topped off, so that when that big hit comes, the player is restored to full health. At least that is how it worked when I last tried out the Faithful path, which admittedly was a little while ago. So I view Virtuous as an alternative means of buffing than Righteous: Righteous provides direct damage buffs and debuffs, while Virtuous provides AP boosts that allows players to self-buff with more rapid dailies.
Otherwise, though, I appreciate the time and effort that you put into your guide.
If DO takes a healing path:
loses 40% damage buff (25/60 uptime)
loses 40% recharge speed buff for HG uptime (25/60 uptime)
loses 10% debuff
loses fire of the gods (5-30% personal damage buff depending on your skill as a DPS DC)
conclusion:
way less recharge speed making perma HG considerably more difficult
way less damage making DPS hybrid not an option
If you want to be useless you can do this
If AC takes a healing path:
loses 40% recharge speed buff which slows down rotation (25/60 uptime)
loses 25% debuffs (only lose 10% if DO loses fire of the gods to take it)
conclusion:
fewer AAs, fewer cooldown resets, fewer HGs
If party DPS is the only concern you would need to gain at least ~5% more damage (random guess based on what you lost from debuffs) for the whole team out of your Gift of Haste daily spam. Your DO will hate you.
EDIT - for reference, the cooldown is the part that makes HG hard to perma, not AP gain or generation.
EDIT2 - High end groups always run a paladin, which can out-heal a cleric simply by existing. Even if they remove lifesteal I don't see healing being that important for a cleric still
EDIT3 - BiS groups run a healadin. You have fun out-healing that thing
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