what's the correct 2 DC setup for TONG / end game?

utookmynick · February 2018

I've started to play my DC more now (I've been mainly dps in the past), so I was wondering what exactly is the setup. Both AC and DO to go Righteous at least enough to get Condemning Gaze and AC will put enough in Virtuous to get the BoB feat (maybe even spread it out to get specific items in all 3 trees)? Basically both DCs to go for max group buffs and enemy debuffs without specifically caring whether to get capstone of any 1 tree?

I know some of this is changing in mod 13 due to WoL and Bear Your Sins no longer stacking. What is the setup for mod 13?

rjc9000 · February 2018

DO drops Weapons of Light, possibly Condemning Gaze as well.
AC drops ByS, since DOs usually use Brand and BtS.

Everything else is the same as Module 12.5 and prior.
HG for the DO, AA for the AC, pick one of the Emp buffs, etc.

vorphied · February 2018

As rjc9000 alluded to, WoL will become redundant for DO with a two-DC party, but I'll likely end up keeping it in reserve for lack of more appealing options. The early feats in trees outside of Righteous are generally junk for DO (and for AC except the BoB feat). Gift of Haste is the only thing I would want from the other trees, and I'm not willing to spend 10 points on garbage feats just to get to it.

For AC I still cap Righteous and ignore the other trees except to the extent necessary to get the BoB feat and then Gift of Haste since I already needed to spend the points to get there. Avatar is by far the best capstone, and the majority of Righteous feats remain useful for both solo and party play.

putzboy78 · February 2018

my opinion is completly different, since abilities don't stack i think you end up with AC looking something like:

nwcalc.com/index.html#/dc?b=1oa5:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,13iv314:1z0z0u1:1000000:150uu00&h=0&p=anc&o=0

and DO looking like:

http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/dc?b=1oa5:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,12ix205:1000000:1ua4000:1z50557&h=0&p=dvo&o=0

So you end up with at east 4 loadouts

Solo DPS
2DC AC
2DC DO
1DC Party play

vorphied · February 2018

It’s always interesting to get other opinions. I can see why you might have invested in certain feats, but we seem to have differing views on what’s important.

I tend to dismiss marginal gains in mitigation and healing as niche utility and avoid them in favor of increased party and personal damage since there is rarely a thing as too much DPS, but we do quickly approach the limit of useful mitigation and healing.

putzboy78 · February 2018

the challenge is when feats aren't stacking, you want to limit the overlap. Even if some feats are not to valuable in terms of DPS. The extra survive-ability could offset the backup debuffs

crazybib · February 2018

I have the same opinion as putzboy.
DO is generally DPS oriented and so use all the debuff feats from righteous path. As they will not stack with another DC in mod13, the AC does not need to pick them anymore and so AC just needs to take weapons of light and then virtuous (for battle fervor and gift of haste). But I am not really sure what is it better between a full virtuous with capstone (like putz shown) or a mix of healing feats from virtuous and faithful.
The only issue I have with this reasoning is that I expect that the DO is full righteous and so I can, as a AC, use the new "healing" loadout without losing any party debuff but if the DO has a random build without bear your sins and condemning gaze this will lead to a loss of debuff. So only if I know the other DC, i will probably do not bother changing my build.

vorphied · February 2018

putzboy78 said:
the challenge is when feats aren't stacking, you want to limit the overlap. Even if some feats are not to valuable in terms of DPS. The extra survive-ability could offset the backup debuffs

I agree to an extent. Feats that overlap to no benefit aren't helping (which is why I'm removing ByS from my AC loadout, for example), but I'll take the risk of overlapping Condemning Gaze in order to access the Avatar feat rather than pick up an assortment of small and unnecessary healing and mitigation buffs.

Let's also consider that the value of any healing feats is largely proportional to how many healing encounters you actually expect to be slotting and what their base values are. Further, those healing encounters (outside of the bread-and-butter DG for both and Exalt for AC) are only of value to the extent that healing from encounters is actually necessary for the party.

To be fair, I expect that lower ilvl DCs might get more mileage out of defensive options since they aren't dealing much damage and may feel that their parties aren't getting enough healing from just DG and miscellaneous sources, but I've personally found that the need for such falls off dramatically as your gear and build (and average ilvl of your parties) improve.

putzboy78 · February 2018

Some of it like virtuous capstone can help with Gift of Haste procs and others like Divine Intervention can help with procing Wrathful Warrior for a dps buff.

Not as strong as M12 2DC configuration but still valuable while being able to provide AA/HG/Empowered BTS/Emporwered FF/DG buffs

dupeks · February 2018

putzboy78 said:
Some of it like virtuous capstone can help with Gift of Haste procs and others like Divine Intervention can help with procing Wrathful Warrior for a dps buff.

Not as strong as M12 2DC configuration but still valuable while being able to provide AA/HG/Empowered BTS/Emporwered FF/DG buffs

Before loadouts and before I got to BiS, I _loved_ playing AC Virt. It was brutal for soloing, but in terms of keeping mid-geared parties alive and raining AP on everyone it was a sight to behold. With enough power, the HoTs serve as a pretty nice cushion against lag too.

It will be interesting to see what emerges, but I'm definitely dusting off my AC Virt loadout in anticipation

dairyzeus · February 2018

dupeks said:

putzboy78 said:
Some of it like virtuous capstone can help with Gift of Haste procs and others like Divine Intervention can help with procing Wrathful Warrior for a dps buff.

Not as strong as M12 2DC configuration but still valuable while being able to provide AA/HG/Empowered BTS/Emporwered FF/DG buffs
Before loadouts and before I got to BiS, I _loved_ playing AC Virt. It was brutal for soloing, but in terms of keeping mid-geared parties alive and raining AP on everyone it was a sight to behold. With enough power, the HoTs serve as a pretty nice cushion against lag too.

It will be interesting to see what emerges, but I'm definitely dusting off my AC Virt loadout in anticipation

As a CW when I ran with a BiS virtuous ac back in the msva days I absolutely loved the extra ap gain and it was a significant damage boost.

I imagine the AP gain is far less useful for GWF/HR where their damage doesn't really come from dailies, but CW/OP and i'm guessing TRs and SWs (not an expert on those) absolutely love it.

I'm hoping all the ACs switch to virtuous. It's one of my favorite dc builds to run with (assuming a righteous DO).

pitshade · February 2018

Gift of Haste is a 3rd Tier feat and available to a Righteous AC. The higher tiers are all related to healing.

dairyzeus · February 2018

pitshade said:
Gift of Haste is a 3rd Tier feat and available to a Righteous AC. The higher tiers are all related to healing.

Right, but the virtuous capstone helps proc it constantly. Not every dc is gonna land their divine glows 100% of the time for gift of haste.

I'm not trying to say virtuous will be the best build for a perfect group, but that I think it is a bit underrated and with the upcoming non-stacking righteous feats it gets closer to the righteous AC (again, assuming there's also a righteous DO).

pitshade · February 2018

I was unaware of that until someone contacted me privately after I'd posted. They mentioned also that it is likely a bug so YMMV.

putzboy78 · February 2018

and a AC righteous is unnecessary assuming you have a DO righteous. because to get to the righteous capstone your giving up 10 feat points that only serve as a backup to the DO Righteous debuffs.

In the context of a 2DC run in Mod13, unless you argue that the AC should run righteous and the DO should run non-righteous it seems evident that the AC would go Virt.

dairyzeus said:
Not every dc is gonna land their divine glows 100% of the time for gift of haste.

You don't target the kiting CWs and HRs with divine glow?

Unknown · February 2018

This content has been removed.

vorphied · February 2018

putzboy78 said:
and a AC righteous is unnecessary assuming you have a DO righteous. because to get to the righteous capstone your giving up 10 feat points that only serve as a backup to the DO Righteous debuffs.

In the context of a 2DC run in Mod13, unless you argue that the AC should run righteous and the DO should run non-righteous it seems evident that the AC would go Virt.

While I seem to have the minority opinion in this discussion, I'd reiterate that many parties won't benefit from the additional mitigation and healing that's baked into the majority of Virtuous and Faithful feats. Gift of Haste is arguably the only non-niche feat in the entire Virtuous tree (which is still accessible while building Righteous as AC), while the rest are situationally useful or, in the worst case scenario, not significantly useful at all. Faithful is an even harder sell with the arguable exceptions of Benefit of Foresight for DO (if you even use Foresight) and Gift of the Gods. Prestigious Exaltation is pretty worthless since neither the additional uptime nor the healing buff are particularly needed.

Also remember that Avatar provides significant uptime on an extremely effective cooldown-reducing and DPS-increasing self-buff, which further feeds personal AP generation for daily spam in addition to other obvious benefits, and the offense-boosting options from Righteous are good on their own even if you take the bare minimum number of feats necessary to cap the tree and try to avoid overlapping with the average Righteous DO (e.g. taking Piercing Light and Condemning Gaze for the last two feats, with the latter having overlap potential but also being of use when running as a solo, double-daily AC).

Building fully into Virtuous is a viable way to play AC, but it doesn't seem optimal except for parties that require a great deal of extra help. I'd recommend that anyone on the fence actually test them both and compare.

*edited for clarification*

schietindebux · February 2018

For me , it all comes down to the question if a virtous spec will drop my ability to maximise my AP gain/frequence of casting Dailies.
I do like the idea of healing/mitigation, but I can´t find a benefit over a higher frequence of AA-spamming in a 2xDC group, since that Daily is the best my AC can do, the more the better, going hand in hand with a huge mitigationbuff and better AP gain itself.
I might try a virtous loadout, but if the result leads to a worse "Daily-output" (and that´s what it was last time I run it) it will be from minor interest in my eyes. Maybe it was a bad loadout, no clue.
Actually I run AC rightous using Healing Action same as Furoiuos Intervention and Gift of Haste, simply to maximise AP gain, the more the better.
It all depends on the group, if or if not my extrahealing and mitigation is from any use.

dairyzeus · February 2018

Okay, so let me flesh out a few thoughts here for discussion:

First off, gonna say I don't play dc. Tried it, hated it, never gonna happen. I still consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the class, but if I'm off base on anything let me know.

The endgame AC DC build these days is a "zero" dps AC DC. Max power share, high recovery, doesn't really care about armor pen or crit.

As such they don't really need avatar to pump out the buffs and the extra damage from avatar is beyond marginal.

Thus the difference is really between condemning gaze and the extra ap gain from taking shield of the divine. I'm not counting the dps from piercing light or the extra healing/mitigation from virtuous because those are all extremely minor (at best) benefits.

I 100% agree that for the absolute BiS group killing bosses in under 15 seconds, righteous is still the way to go.

However, that is by and far the minority of groups. I think most groups will have smoother and consistent runs with a virtuous AC DC. Especially if the dps benefit greatly from the extra AP gain.

And, obviously, if it's a solo dc run (which may become more common) righteous all the way.

vorphied · February 2018

dairyzeus said:

The endgame AC DC build these days is a "zero" dps AC DC. Max power share, high recovery, doesn't really care about armor pen or crit.

Be this as it may for a main AC, I don't believe in completely giving up on life when it comes to personal DPS output. Marginal increase or no, you can tell the difference between the ACs who are making some effort to maximize what output they have and those who are basically phoning it in beyond the absolute minimum required to maintain their empowered buff and a daily. Granted I'm a DO main and naturally do more damage when I moonlight as AC, but I've witnessed the difference between pure AC DCs who actively DPS and those who don't, and while no one is going to call out a damage difference of 50 or 100 million in a tong run, I'm of the school of thought that more damage is always better.

Again, even if you're inclined to discount completely the damage boost from Avatar, you can't discount the significant impact on personal AP gain from the reduced cooldown, which synergizes extremely well with the other AP-boosting feat in Righteous and Gift of Haste from Virtuous.

It's not my goal to warn everyone away from going all-out Virtuous, but players who don't have experience playing either path should test loadouts for themselves. What I think happens for a lot of DC players is that they start out with the assumption that DC is always about piling on defensive buffs and then miss the point at which all of those defensive feats start to become redundant. If you play Virtuous, it should be because it benefits your group (or you simply enjoy it, I suppose), not because it's become a default setting.

dairyzeus · February 2018

vorphied said:
I'm of the school of thought that more damage is always better.

I agree with you, for literally every build besides AC DC. That's the only build in the game where I think building for maximum team gain outweighs the loss in personal dps.

vorphied said:

Again, even if you're inclined to discount completely the damage boost from Avatar, you can't discount the significant impact on personal AP gain from the reduced cooldown, which synergizes extremely well with the other AP-boosting feat in Righteous and Gift of Haste from Virtuous.

I fully admit this is the point where I could potentially be off base from not playing a DC.

However, I have to believe with enough recovery avatar is just excessive. I know a DC that while going faithful could pump out AA around every 5 seconds in combat. I feel like adding avatar on top of that just realistically won't do much.

If I'm wrong here the scales definitely tip further in favor of Righteous.

vorphied said:

It's not my goal to warn everyone away from going all-out Virtuous, but players who don't have experience playing either path should test loadouts for themselves. What I think happens for a lot of DC players is that they start out with the assumption that DC is always about piling on defensive buffs and then miss the point at which all of those defensive feats start to become redundant. If you play Virtuous, it should be because it benefits your group (or you simply enjoy it, I suppose), not because it's become a default setting.

And It's not my goal to say never go righteous (though I did kinda say that in my first post. Whoops). Depending on who you're buffing, what the team debuffs are at, and what content you're running I think it can be the right choice to go virtuous or righteous.

putzboy78 · February 2018

Avatar of Divine only has a 42% up time. If your relying on Avatar of Divine to meet your recovery needs its not an end game build.

vorphied · February 2018

putzboy78 said:
Avatar of Divine only has a 42% up time. If your relying on Avatar of Divine to meet your recovery needs its not an end game build.

You're making an assumption. It's not about reliance; it's about that benefit vs. the questionable benefit of excessive healing and mitigation feats. There isn't a downside to using more encounters regardless of how high your base recovery already is.

dairyzeus said:
I agree with you, for literally every build besides AC DC. That's the only build in the game where I think building for maximum team gain outweighs the loss in personal dps.

I don't think we're on the same page. I'm not talking about AC building for damage; I'm talking about how players execute. There is a noticeable difference between ACs who do only what is necessary to proc their buffs and those who maximize their encounter usage and timing/placement to further contribute to total DPS.

putzboy78 · February 2018

there is an optimal rotation for which you should be targeting ability to do. If you can only complete that rotation 42% of the time, increasing that up time should be your top priority.

odskyr · February 2018

And the optimal Rotation is .....?

putzboy78 · February 2018

for DO its perma up time on HG, empowered BTS or FF, POD, Bear Your Sins, and Condemning Gaze. You can argue about foresight since its a healing spell and some don't think that's important.

For AC your looking at perma up time of WOL, AA, empowered BTS or FF, BoB, and Exhault and some would argue Hastening Light/HOTs.

vorphied · February 2018

> @putzboy78 said:
> for DO its perma up time on HG, empowered BTS or FF, POD, Bear Your Sins, and Condemning Gaze. You can argue about foresight since its a healing spell and some don't think that's important.
>
> For AC your looking at perma up time of WOL, AA, empowered BTS or FF, BoB, and Exhault and some would argue Hastening Light/HOTs.

That’s a priority system, not a set rotation. As I said before, Avatar allowing for additional ability casts is a good thing even though it isn’t necessary in order to keep up the bare minimum of empowered buffs and dailies.

putzboy78 · February 2018

those aren't priorities, the goal is to keep them all up. If there is a gap in your HG being up, you need more recovery, if your waiting for Avatar to proc to bail you out then you need more recovery.

If there is a gap in your AA coverage, you need more Action Point Gain. If your waiting for avatar to proc to get the Action Points, you need more recovery.

If your relying on Avatar to aid you in this, you are not an end game support build. You are still in progress (or you are not building for support). The question was "End Game" and the 2DC end game format (if 2DC is still a thing next mod) will rely on coordinating feat selection to avoid overlaps and optimize the run. While the buff/debuffs have taken a hit with the nerfs and fixes coming next module, there is still an opportunity to maximize this and perhaps provide more benefit in secondary way like increased AP gain, survive-ability, and higher divinity gain. You are not going to make up the difference by having multiple DCs running Bear Your Sins and Condemning Gaze, and your dps from Avatar of the Divine will not offset the dps lost from the unstacked buffs/debuffs to your party.

Maybe you can post the nwcalc of what you envision as the correct 2DC build and we can envision what sacrifices/gains you think work to optimize this format and we can do a one for one discussion on them and there could be room for debate and compromise. But the most important thing will be coordinating between the AC and the DO at the feat level similar to how we coordinated FF and BTS at the power level in previous modules when running 2xDC.

vorphied · February 2018

> @putzboy78 said:those aren't priorities, the goal is to keep them all up.

That's the definition of a priority system. Rotation = you must execute A, follow with B, proc C, and so on. Neverwinter DC does not depend on strict action chains or procs in order to perform its essential functions.

> @putzboy78 said:If there is a gap in your HG being up, you need more recovery, if your waiting for Avatar to proc to bail you out then you need more recovery.
>
If there is a gap in your AA coverage, you need more Action Point Gain. If your waiting for avatar to proc to get the Action Points, you need more recovery.
>
If your relying on Avatar to aid you in this, you are not an end game support build. You are still in progress (or you are not building for support). The question was "End Game" and the 2DC end game format...
>

That's not at all what I was getting at. I've explained this before, even in the same post to which you just replied. Avatar is a useful bonus, not a crutch to help players temporarily meet minimum requirements that they should be meeting without it. Please stop construing my argument in a manner that suggests that I am telling DCs to rely on Avatar in this way. I have been very clear.

One thing I am curious about is why you refer to "increased AP gain" as an alternative to taking the Righteous path. Aside from Gift of Haste in Virtuous, which I've already suggested is a useful feat to incorporate, where are you finding this additional AP gain? If there's an interaction of other Faithful or Virtuous feats that is boosting AP gain that I'm not aware of, I'd like to know.

Since you ask for nwcalc, here's an example of the kind of build I'm talking about. Obviously Paragon feats are largely a matter of taste since some are very weak and others garbage.

http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/dc?b=1oa5:k6rwk5:8dep:5tb7d,1o6r31e:150z000:1000000:150uuz1&h=0&p=anc&o=0

Quick notes/comments on my reasoning for the above choices:

- Healing Action isn't that appealing when you aren't using much in the way of healing powers, but Greater Wisdom only affects healing and is unnecessary IMO. Having more HP from Toughness isn't bad, but it's also not essential.

- Domain Synergy isn't great, but the other options aside from Weapon Mastery are worse.

- Repurpose Soul will not be nearly as impactful on a pure AC build as it is for DO, but again, the alternatives are worse.

- One point in Cleanse is sufficient in my experience, and it's there almost exclusively for convenience for Ras Nsi.

- I put only 2 points in Bountiful Fortune because I still need to cast the same number of BoB to top off at 3 pips of Divinity whether I have 2 points or 4.

- Templar's Domain provides some additional damage, which is always welcome. Considering that extra points in Cleanse and Bountiful Fortune are unnecessary, might as well throw the points here.

- Furious Intervention: more AP from dealing damage, not a difficult choice.

- Ancient Warding: my only concern about this one is whether or not it still grants AP gain when the previous AA is overwritten by a new one instead of being allowed to expire.

- Weapons of Light...obvious reasons.

- Piercing Light: because BYS is almost certain to be applied by the DO and will no longer stack; AC will also be running low ArP, so increasing resistance ignored by a flat % is helpful. AC still needs to whack mobs to get the job done, so why not make the most of it?

- Condemning Gaze: admitted potential for overlap with DO, but aside from that very useful to have when running as the only DC.

- Avatar of the Divine: as explained in previous posts, additional damage combined with a large CD reduction that allows you to squeeze in more encounters and thus generate even more personal AP, damage, and healing is an unmitigated plus. This capstone, at least, will be useful in all parties vs. Agent of the Divine or Shield of the Divine, both of which are healing-centric capstones that minimally benefit any party whose healing needs are already being met.

- Have Faith over Lasting Wishes because 10% more healing is even less necessary than 5% mitigation IMO.

- Battle Fervor for obvious reasons.

- Gift of Haste because granting effectively 1% free AP per second to self and allies is noticeably good.

*Everything else in Virtuous adds more healing and little else aside from a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> damage shield, which is why I pass*

Faithful stuff...

- Desperate Restoration: Your target is almost always at or near full health or else dead from having screwed up a mechanic or hanging out near the tank and getting cleaved. Not very useful.

- Resounding Belief: Unnecessary healing bonus limited to direct heals, a category that doesn't even include Divine Glow's HoT. Pass.

- Prestigious Exaltation: Why? This feat isn't required to maintain 100% uptime, and the healing bonus is superfluous.

- Divine Intervention: A percentage chance when healed to receive a shield based on 150% of weapon power? Not too great.

- Final Acts: No. This feat is completely impractical.

- Gift of the Gods: This is the only feat in the entire Faithful tree that I actually like, but I don't consider it essential enough to waste a total of 15 points getting it.

- Shared Burden: Why? So I can share 20% of Exaltation's healing with allies who probably don't even need to be healed?

- Chaplain's Strength: Yay...more overhealing.

- Test of Faith: This healing works only if you're taking damage...there's a problem with that considering that you generally don't plan on taking damage frequently or for extended periods of time in group play. Off the top of my head I can see this coming into play when party-wide damage is sustained and unavoidable, but that's an extremely niche application.

- United by Faith: Not remotely necessary.

- Agent of the Divine: An interesting idea, but yet again, how much healing do you actually need? Also, this feat's benefit kicks in only if/when a healed party member drops below 45% HP, which is no guarantee that it will do anything. Chances are good either that they remain perfectly healthy for the duration or they die in one, maybe two massive hits...pass 45%, go directly to 0%.

putzboy78 · February 2018

and what would you have the DO run?

vorphied · February 2018

> @putzboy78 said:
> and what would you have the DO run?

Personally I do pure Righteous as DO, bypassing Power of the Sun and Living Fire.

I don’t take Gift of Haste in a DO build for two main reasons: AC most likely has it, and you have to spend 10 points on junk prerequisites. AC is spending those first 10 points regardless for Battle Fervor.

Someone who really wants Gift of the Gods could always drop more damage feats from Righteous and invest a bit in Faithful; it’s just not my choice because I don’t think it’s worth picking up 10 points in trash feats first (Benefit of Foresight is a matter of taste, I suppose, but I prefer Hastening Light over Foresight, so the feat does nothing for me).

On a side note, I appreciate your point that the two paths should aim to complement each other when paired together in a party. However, no matter how much I try to polish the turds that are most of the DC feats, I can't come up with a solid rationale for taking those that are either so very niche that they need their own special loadout for a very rare situation or are simply so bad that it's difficult to imagine them being of any use...ever.

Even if we accept a bit of redundancy with Condemning Gaze and admit that AC personal damage is pretty much never going to make or break the party, we're still left with a fairly clear choice in my view. Bringing extra heals just for the sake of bringing something that the Righteous DO doesn't have doesn't automatically make good sense.

what's the correct 2 DC setup for TONG / end game?

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