Is it Working as intended that NONE of the Devout healing spells actually give action points if you use them? That makes using dailies as a working healer nearly impossible. Also- Is there an intent to add a divinity mechanic for healing like there is for DPS?
Relmyna - AC/DC Righteous + Haste| Nadine - CW MoF (working on it)|Buffy - GF SM Tact| Hrist - Justice Tankadin|Healadin (Wannabe Tank)| Lena -MI Sabo TR (Farmer) | Jeska - GWF SM Destroyer (Farmer) | Maggie - HR PF Trapper (Wannabe DPS)
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I'll never retrace my steps.
Big question: Now bonding give us the gift power from healing or only base power counts for healing?
I'm not sure precisely what you're asking about "gift power", but if something increases the power on your character sheet, it increases the effectiveness of your healing.
Im talking about for the stats sharing from bonding runestone...the power stats from companion counts for healing or only base power counts for healing?
Taylor DC/DO & AC Buff/Debuff - Guild Gutbusters Brigade - PVE May the Torm of Understanding guide us!
I've done some testing, it's not extensive as I want to, but I have some questions that really bug me:
1) Divinity mechanic Recharging Divinity is way too loooong. I'm confused by all different bars: Divinity makes DC use an enhanced version of a power. How to use it?
Pratical example: I was running Tuern with an OP Tank and myself was an AC I pressed tab, I pray, my threat raises esponentially to the point that mobs ignore tank, I use a Astral Shield in divinity and I'm completely stuck, can't move, can't use any other powers. I see that in the Powers I can choose to move while praying, even if movement speed is halfed, but it's not really enough.
How is threat working? In the past, healing would rise threat, now seems that some powers are doing it and some doesn't (eg. Praying - Sacred Flame, while Bastion/Healing word not)
2) DPS mechanic All this 'Pips' are rather confusing. When I deal Fire damage, Fire pips are recharging --> at 6th Fire Pip --> I obtain 1 Gold Pips, which I think stands for Radiant Power. What does it mean? That I cannot gain Radiant Pip if I don't get at 6th Fire Pip? How can I differentiate between Fire and Radiant powers if is not written in the tooltip? Someone was suggesting to group powers into categories, I second that.
3) Powers Chains is not dealing any damage. Divine Glow doesn't do any damage nor healing. Cannot target Exaltation to another member of party. I can only exalt myself.
In the end, I'm a fan of bringing healing back in the game and I'm fine being a healer instead of a power buff, even if it means I need to strip my DC and rework on it completely. That being said, playing DC is now very slow: movements, recharge, new Divinity mechanic, really insane DPS 'pip' mechanic, action point gain.
Oh alright, I leave it up to you to try redesigning the game into something better. I did like that I was master buffer that's all.
I'm sad too. Maybe offer a free class conversion with Mod 16 cause I'm not sold on healing in neverwinter. It's clunky at best having to find folks in chaotic battles. And while many may like it be good at it, some of us don't want to play that way.
DCs have gone from the strongest buffer/debuffer in the game, to having zero buffs/debuffs. Are you coming out with more paragon paths as was originally stated? I remember a statement saying 5 paragon paths per class. Buffing and debuffing is always near the top of what's desired, DC seems like it will be a completely unwanted and unnecessary class in the game now because of this.
Vorphied is correct, we are moving away from a paradigm where buffs and debuffs feature prominently. On the other hand, tanking and healing will now be absolutely necessary for challenging group content. The Devout is a dedicated healer while the Arbiter is a dedicated DPS.
That being said, Cleric does not have "zero buffs/debuffs," in fact, they do have Break the Spirit, Geas, and Hallowed Ground.
Break the spirit increases damage taken from magical and projectile attacks. So, not from radiant/fire (or are those counted as magical? ) and not from physical damage ?? Really usefull, when we know how many people play gwfs/gfs
Geas decreases damage dealt by enemy by 5%. 5% of total damage or 5% of debuffed damage? doesn't really seem all that usefull.
HG heals a bit & gives 10% dmg reduction. So, only difference from Astral Shield is that this heals 2.5x more, lasts 2 seconds more, and allows you to HAMSTER move. With the ammount of damage you take, I don't think it's good to ROOT someone while channeling.
"DPS" DC has only 3 AOE powers: Sun Burst, Daunting Light and HAMSTER Searing Light (now, could you make the enemies come at you in a straight line, so it would be usefull?! :@ ). → Btw, I think that the damage magnitude of 200(+50), 550(+20) and 400(+60) are incredibly LOW for a DPS class. For Sun Burst, I really like the feat Heavy Sun, that stops it from having knockbacks, and I really like that I don't even have to think about choosing it from feat tree, as the Tipping Scales is kinda useless. Sunbursts knockback is maybe usefull only on beginning, but later it just sucks, so you might want to think about effect of that spell. Daunting Light is ok-ish, it's a bit faster, it has wider area of effect, and with Lightspeed, I get 10% chance to cast DL instantly. Searing light yaaaay, so good, the enemies will be so respectfull of me that they'll attack me 1 by 1, while the rest are waiting in a straight line, BEST.ATTACK.EVER, and furhtermore, with Piercing Light, I'll be able to crit all of the enemies in that line if the stars arrange in correct order. FF and Geashave nice damage boost, but damn, were they nerfed as hell. BoH ok-ish, I guess, and it only costs some divinity... Divine glow I usually don't like to bash people, but who's the HAMSTER moron who got the idea to "fix" this spell? It used to be best in slot, giving us heals, buffs, debuffs and damage, and now it's HAMSTER & gives nothing... Reducess my threat in half?, HAMSTER wow! it's not like the tanks or stronger DPS classes take the threat from me anyways.. And in solo content, if I use it, they'll literally stop attacking me and go attack eachother, again HAMSTER WOW. Tipping scales doesn't seem good enough to make Divine Glow worth using. Chains of Blazing Light first thing I noticed about this is increased area of effect. And I really liked it, I highly doubted the Neverwinter teams capability of doing upgrade this big without HAMSTER up at least one class, but when I saw this, I thought myself that I might be wrong... until I realised that it doesn't deal any f'in damage, and instead, it ONLY restrains enemies in 80' radius... this might be usefull with SunBursts knockback, but (as the knockback) on the lower levels!! Also, if you want to make it partially usefull, at least let it keep working for 12s and make it work on all enemies (except bosses); in Master Spellplague it kept enemies rooted for 3 HAMSTER seconds... 3 HAMSTER SECONDS !!!! Healing word I like that it isn't in a line anymore. But you might add some animation around the caster to show how far it goes (SunBursts animation could go really good with this). Exaltion... Ok, outgoing healing increased by 20% might be usefull sometimes, but increasing my damage by 20% will be interesting, considering that this is in HEAL path... Cleansing Light this might be interesting in 2man parties is all I can say for now... Astral Shield I like that it can be cast on really far away place, but man... DC get's rooted in place while using it, for HAMSTER sake. Also I really like that under certain conditions it doesn't spend any divinity. Intercession like exalt, but only heals a lot more, has a cooldown long enough for me to prepare breakfast, and it doesn't give me more damage... Prophecy of Doom You finaly fixed it in last mode, just to break it again in this one, outstanding move. How does it even work? For next 10 seconds it takes 25% from only the ONE strongest hit, or from strongest hits from each tick in that 10 seconds? if it's the first one, It could be potentially be good in mod 22 (provided that this game doesn't die by then), and if it's the second one, it could be like SoD on TRs.. Daily Powers aren't that bad, I expected even worse, except for HG which should at least reduce damage taken by a bit more than Astral Shield. Hammer of Fate no longer prevents being rooted while casting? Anoited Army & Guardian of Life seem potentialy usefull, provided that enemies don't oneshot you (as someone has mentioned somewhere in this thread. I'll add my thoughts on Celestial Prominence in a few days when I get to 80, if I don't give up on the game by then.
From Class Features, I like Holy Fervor (you HAMSTER us with divinity, this feat un HAMSTER us by 15%. Terrifying Insight, for me, terrifying insight is this insight to a new mode. It was really useful power. REALLY USEFUL. Now it's not... On crit hit, it recovers 5 of my divinity... not 5%, but just 5! Light of the Scales could be potentially usefull (not because it's that good, but because the rest of them are HAMSTERHAMSTER). Inquisitor's Benedictition could maybe be usefull if the DC won't heal good enough (I'll get back to that later), but why the HAMSTER is it in DPS Class features? Everything else: wow, 5% increase (that should be tested, but knowing you, on stronger enemies that 5% won't even be noticed).
Feats I'm too HAMSTER frustrated by those changes, so I won't get deep into it. If you've red any of the threads about DCs (except the ones "I'm 12k *insert class here*, and everyone takes DC instead of me into *insert current endgame dungeon here*, nerf DCs they hax, they afk, *insert some more HAMSTER excuses*"), you've had to see people talking about how DC has a lot of HAMSTER heroic feats... I've got to admit it, I'm fascinated by your consisteny; maybe in some other game they'd take that feedback and fixed it - but you've figured it out, why completely change the class, instead just "fix" the things that people actually like. You've got +1 from me for bravery here. There still are useless/Icantbelievesomeonewouldactuallytakethose feats, but there are some usefull ones too. I believe that it might be better if we could choose from feats: We can still choose only 5, but 5 of any feat.
At wills I can't see Devouts last power yet, but Arbiters one seems like a good change, DC finally has an AOE at-will. It has low radius, magnitude of only 50, and a cast time of HAMSTER 1.65 seconds, but hell, at least it isn't single target.. Unlike Blessing of battle which has 1.3 sec cast time, and "merely" 200 magnitude. While Barbarian, as also an dps class, has atwill with 0s cast time (Brash strike)
Overall: DCs really got screwed this time, lol. Most of the DCs invested a lot in power and recovery. Now powershare is lost (okay, that might be good), but we still have a lot of power, which affects healing power (so I don't think we'll need all that healing increases like in some features and Exaltion). Also, while I'm there... WHY THE HAMSTERHAMSTER DID YOU NERF HAMSTER ENCHANTMENTS?!?! I just saw that rank 14 radiant gives only 480 power?!!?!? All of my Recovery got switched to accuracy, I'm pretty sure that I won't need accuracy for healing, so what the HAMSTER are you doing? We should be able to exchange our armors & accessories & artifacts & enchantments for free, as this will be insanely big hit for DCs. Furthermore, I believe ALL CLASSES should get free race reroll token (Or make a new reroll ability scores token, as you've changed some things with ability scores. Also, why did some stuff from ratings disappear? It was usefull to see how much % of each stat we have (crit chance %, res %, armor ignored %, etc.)
Wide Flare feat in Devout tree increases the radius of warding flare by 10%... the only problem is, we don't have Warding Flare power.
Aaaaand that's my first view of the new DC, if I don't decide to give up, there might be more of this...
We should be able to exchange our armors & accessories & artifacts & enchantments for free, as this will be insanely big hit for DCs.
Good news! You will be able to swap all enchantments for other enchantments of the same level and type, and all enchantments for similar Runestones, and all Runestones for other Runestones.
No news yet on being able to swap Person Gear that you're using on your pets for Pet Gear, but I have hopes, or maybe for Person Gear equipped on a pet to get grandfathered in with a "companion only" tag.
another issue I have is the fact our ability points have been reworked. I took the time to get an optimal base roll for ability scores but now my stats are all out of order because wisdom boosts my healing not dmg now. anyway we could get a free race reroll or base ability score reroll? because if not that means many of us are going to have to buy one, not because we want to but because we don't have a choice. for example I went for high wisdom which increased my dmg previously and low dex which increased deflection. now wisdom gives incoming healing bonus and dex gives crit severity so this puts my dc at a disadvantage, im not sure how much but its definitely there.
The opposite of good news! You no longer get to choose or roll your base ability scores. Instead, every class has a single set of base ability scores, and your only choices are your racial changes and your levelling points. This is by design... and yes, Wisdom is a dump stat for a Cleric. It gives no boosts that the Cleric cares about, and prevents the Cleric from choosing to have a high Intelligence which would be good for a DPS Cleric, or a high.... well actually I don't think ANY stat is really good for a Healer Cleric in the new system. I get that "Wisdom is what Clerics are supposed to have" but can't there be a boost for Wisdom that Clerics, you know, actually want or use?
My solo play build no longer works for my cleric. Dirk (my Cleric) has a solo play build I use most of the time and a group build for parties and healing. But I am having no luck making a solo play build work here. My solo build NEEDS the massive knock back that currently exists in the game for Sun Burst. It needs Geas to lock down big enemies, so I can focus on fighting lesser minions. Finally I really don't care for the new TAB function at all. It looks like Dirk is curled up in a fetal position crying, I almost felt sorry for him as he got pummeled by enemies that I thought would get fried by my radiant Punishing Light beams instead.
This was always a difficult class to play, congratulations you made it impossible. No one will choose to play cleric after mod 16, and thus, no one will be able to get a cleric into any party in the future. I know you are not about to give back what you took away, so I will just wish you the best of luck.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
My opinion is that the rework of primary ability scores (STR/DEX/etc) is completely unacceptable. Moreover, certain classes, Clerics in particular, are getting completely [HAMSTERED]
Let's look at new characters. If you start a new Cleric, you do not get to roll your stats. No, we, the players are assumed to be complete [HAMSTERED] [HAMSTERS] and cannot be trusted to make our own choices. Instead, all starting Clerics get the exact same starting choices (only modified by racial bonuses - half-elf in this case).
Now, in any sane D&D game those would be decent choices ..I mean, Wisdom is the primary stat of a Cleric, Charisma secondary, and the rest depend on build.
But no, not in Neverwinter. We automatically get most points assigned to Wisdom, but that stat is now totally irrelevant to Clerics, as it gives Control Resist and Incoming Healing.
Setting things up so that the same stats give the same bonuses for all classes is just fine for Fighters and Wizards, decent for some other classes, but Clerics are getting completely [HAMSTERED].
To make an optimal Cleric, we would want to put points in INT for magical damage, CON for AP gain and CHA for Recharge speed - maybe a bit of DEX for Crit Severity.
From a D&D Perspective this is just wrong. INT should give bonuses to Arcane magical damage, and WIS should give a bonus to Divine magical damage, but because NWO does not distinguish between the two types they decided to pick one....favoured Wizards and left Clerics out in the cold.
To say I am unhappy with this would be a serious understatement. I havbe no desire to play a character that gets severely [HAMSTERED] like this for no good reason.
There is no good reason to take away our ability to roll stats at the beginning
There is no good reason to saddle us with stats that are sub-optimal for our class
There is no good reason to break a 30+ year tradition of what stats do for the different classes - in fact I am surprised that WotC allowed Cryptic to make a fundamental decision like "WIS no longer matters for Clerics, but INT does).
In other words, this is bad. This is the single thing in Mod 16 I just cannot accept, and if this goes live, there is a pretty high chance I will go and look for some other game. I did leave the game for a year after the Mod 6 fiasco, but if I leave again it will be permanent.
I do not think I am the only one who is unhappy about seeing my favourite class being treated like this.
Hoping for improvements...
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited March 2019
Was originally excited by the blog for the arbiter dps path, but now the horror hit me upon trying it.
Trying to do dailies with this is not going to be fun at all. No damage on chains or divine glow now... so wtf is a dps path supposed to do if it can't dps mobs?
New players aren't going to give the game a chance. The daily grind will become worst and they'll just find another game.
I don't know what the devs were thinking by making at-wills useless. This is only going to make grind far more tedious than it needs to be.
The new Wisdom stat is the weakest of all ability scores regardless of class and no help to clerics in particular. Other ability scores offer things like increased damage, action points, recharge speed, or hit points, but wisdom just gives measly control resistance and incoming healing... to a class that can already heal itself. Although everybody else is going to pass on speccing for Wisdom, clerics are the only ones suffering from having it as their main stat.
Divinity now recharges like a snail. I have been playing Neverwinter since open beta and I remember the time when clerics gained divinity by using encounters. It was slow, sluggish, and overall sleep-inducing to wait 20 seconds for something to come off cooldown. Now we're headed in the same direction, despite the previous DC rework aiming to make the class more active and fun to play. DC as a dps class won't work when the top dog has twice the damage of a cleric and divinity takes a long time to come back. Just a thought.
Using Searing Light is like doing bowling at a lane the size of a football field.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
Was originally excited by the blog for the arbiter dps path, but now the horror hit me upon trying it.
Trying to do dailies with this is not going to be fun at all. No damage on chains or divine glow now... so wtf is a dps path supposed to do if it can't dps mobs?
Switch powers. Chains is only for control now. Figure out the Radiant/Burning mechanism ... things will improve.
As for new players being frustrated, I did actually create a lvl 1 Cleric on Owlbear during the alpha test and level her up - with no guild bonuses and no "hand-me-down" stuff from my main - pretty much like a "fresh" player.
Quite frankly, it wasn't too bad. I did find that the knockback from Sun Burst is massively useful at lower levels, as it buys you a few extra seconds. Guardian of Faith is a really "heavy-hitting" power when you are at a low level - but you cannot spam dailies any more...you have to time it carefully. Overall, the challenge level for a "new" Cleric is perfectly reasonable.
Hoping for improvements...
1
ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Was originally excited by the blog for the arbiter dps path, but now the horror hit me upon trying it.
Trying to do dailies with this is not going to be fun at all. No damage on chains or divine glow now... so wtf is a dps path supposed to do if it can't dps mobs?
Switch powers. Chains is only for control now. Figure out the Radiant/Burning mechanism ... things will improve.
As for new players being frustrated, I did actually create a lvl 1 Cleric on Owlbear during the alpha test and level her up - with no guild bonuses and no "hand-me-down" stuff from my main - pretty much like a "fresh" player.
Quite frankly, it wasn't too bad. I did find that the knockback from Sun Burst is massively useful at lower levels, as it buys you a few extra seconds. Guardian of Faith is a really "heavy-hitting" power when you are at a low level - but you cannot spam dailies any more...you have to time it carefully. Overall, the challenge level for a "new" Cleric is perfectly reasonable.
Game is all about packs of mobs, and the DC isn't given enough to deal with it.
(Sorry for the long post ahead.) I confess I have mixed feelings about the whole buff/debuff concept being thrown out of the window, but this way is probably better than the craziness from before. That being said, I feel like the rework needs small tunings in a lot of places to really come together. Arbiter seems a lot better than Devout overall. Here's what I think about this rework.
- Divinity
Divinity takes too long to fill up at the moment, but it also feels slow to spend. It doesn't flow very well, so I believe speeding up both its recharge and spenditure rate would make it flow better. Arbiters can get around this by spamming Sacred Flame for stacks and converting with divinity, but Devouts have nothing similar.
- At-Wills:
Sacred Flame: Fine as is. Feels good to use now that you can move a bit while using it. Great job! Scattering Light: Is this the final animation? It looks a bit incomplete, but otherwise it's fine. I suspect it could use a small magnitude buff.
Lance of Faith: I'm pretty sure Sacred Flame outdamages this because it's that much faster. Needs a magnitude or an animation speed buff to be on par.
Blessing of Battle: Its effect seems to be too situational... I'd add something more to it. Maybe critical avoidance?
I can't test the other two at-wills so I can't comment on them.
- Encounters:
Sunburst: Feels weak at the moment, it should area heal for 200 magnitude too. Daunting Light: Probably fine as is, I feel that radiant judgment should buff it more though. Bastion of Health: Maybe it's a little too good? Divine Glow: It's very good on Arbiter with the trait, feels bad to use on Devouts though. I'd rather bake the threat reduction into Channel Divinity and give it something else. Geas: Cooldown is too high.
Forgemaster's Flame: Its damage with radiant judgment buff is probably too high. Outside that, I feel it would flow better by costing 250 divinity so you can use four of them in succession (with lowered damage to compensate, of course) for that sweet Smoldering Light synergy. Chains of Blazing Light: No damage at all makes it really crappy, please give 200 magnitude to it. Also, its range seems to be bugged, it's binding everyone around 80' from you instead of where you casted it. Searing Light: Still has the same problem as always, it's hard to position mobs properly to get the most out of it. Have you guys considered giving it the Sudden Storm treatment? Break the Spirit: Split damage resistance debuffs are a bad idea in general, as it effectively punishes people that can't take advantage of it because of their class. Please reconsider this. Prophecy of Doom: Exaltation is just better overall. It should at least have the same cooldown as exaltation since you're only getting damage out of this.
Healing Word: Feels like HAMSTER compared to Bastion. Seems to tick every 3 seconds, so its total heal would be 300 + 560 over 21 seconds, compared to Bastion's instant 800 with half the divinity cost... ehh. I know you can stack the duration, but the heal over time aspect really needs a buff. Exaltation: Buff seems potent, but also seems to be on the wrong path. I'd change this by reducing its buff to 10 or 15% and allowing it to buff a party member as well, so it better resembles its live counterpart. Cleansing Light: If its main selling point is its debuff removal then the cast should be faster. Astral Shield: I don't really have an opinion on it. Intercession: Way too weak for its cooldown, especially considering that Bastion heals for 800 in an area and its divinity cost is pitiful. Needs to have half its cooldown slashed or something added to it, like a damage reduction buff (or both).
- Dailies
Guardian of Faith: It's great now, very high damage plus stun. Hallowed Ground: It's such a nerf from the live version but I like it, it does what it's supposed to do.
Flame Strike: It's alright, I guess. Hammer of Fate: I find it hard to justify using compared with Guardian of Faith since you need at least four judgment stacks to be worth it and it's so slow to cast... Maybe speed it up a bit? Celestial Prominence: I can't test it yet, sadly.
Anointed Army: Feels good enough for what it does. Guardian of Life: It's decent, but I think you can get more value out of Hallowed Ground, and traited Guardian of Faith trumps this.
- Class Features:
Blessed Action: Too weak since dailies are much rarer now. Please buff its magnitude or make the heal an AoE. Hallowed Armour: It's fine, I guess. Pilgrim's Light: Can we get a range indicator in the description? Holy Fervour: Barely does anything with the current divinity regeneration rate...
Foresight: Seems decent enough. Terrifying Insight: 5 divinity on crit is really, really, really low. Light of the Scales: Not that useful, but at least it's usable enough. Inquisitor's Benediction: Good enough, just seems like it's on the wrong path.
Divine Action: 100 divinity is not enough to make it worthwhile. Deliverance: Should either be 15% increased healing or below 50%. The percentage's too low for such a critical HP threshold. Hallowed Guide: Not very useful, but it at least synergises with our area heals. Divine Lore: Just 1% is a complete no, please buff this.
- Feats
Piercing Light x Lightspeed: Both are very solid traits. Tipping Scales x Heavy Sun: Divine Glow gets a lot from this trait while Sunburst merely becomes usable, it's clear which of the two traits is better. Medicant's Judgment x Radiant Swordbreaker: Extending a paltry 5% damage debuff isn't very useful, while Medicant gives a good buff to an already great skill. Rising Light x Smoldering Light: Both are decent traits, you probably get more mileage out of Smoldering Light. Burning Patch x Critical Sun: On the fence about this one, I feel both are good. Critical Sun seems unreliable unless you're stacking crit, then it should edge out Burning Patch.
Sacred Bastion x Repeated Blessings: Bastion is already low cost enough that the free cast won't help it a lot, while the other trait brings an extra 240 magnitude. Healing Word isn't very good, however. Enhanced Astral Shield x Extended Exaltation: This trait choice should be swapped with the level 70 one since you don't even get to use Astral Shield until 67. Anyway, the Exaltation trait seems overall better. Primed Divinity x Swift Prayer: Swift Prayer is better, but both don't feel very useful at the moment. Reserved Divinity x Wide Flare: Daunting Light trait is good, I don't know if the other trait is even doing anything since we don't have Warding Flare anymore. Anointed Arms x Persistent Guardian: A measly 3% damage buff is not worth the penalty and Guardian of Faith is already a great daily and becomes even better with this.
Weird, my post just vanished... guess I'll just post again.
I really don't know where to start: really difficult to provide an well structured feedback. The DC is a new animal that cannot be evaluated "stand-alone". First of all: I agree with @adinosii about the ability scores. I come from a Wis/Cha build and I must migrate to a different couple of abilities. How?
Powers: tried some of them as dps going throught the new campaign, not yet as a healer. I do the quest quite easily, even if a giant 1-shooted me. the Tab key is a mysterious object: as far as I understand it only recharge divinity faster, consuming all the stacks of judgement and the red balls around the cleric.
Gear: what to say? Trash it and go for the new pieces. My current gear was quite expensive: i really hate the idea to spend again for it. The changes to the companion equipment is frustrating.
Feats: nothing to report. It's a mess.
Enchantments: everything must be changed again. I like the idea to give us a mechanims to exchange them. My U-frost weapon enchantment is useless as an example.
Finally I believe that the changes are so radical that a guide should be published to better understand a lot of things: interface, tooltips. power mechanic and so on. Bugs can be reported efficiently against a shared baseline: how can I say if the tab key is WAI if I don't know how it is expected to work?
Concerning the buff/debuff I see new cases to provide them, but I prefer to wait a bit more.
Post edited by rapo973 on
Oltreverso guild leader Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
I played around one hour testing skills against dummy with both paragon and setup to check on new skills and playstyle. I was quite suprised when i know DC is revamped to be better at DPS but as always, things go to the opposite. In my opinion, DC is heavily nerfed in terms of fluency, flexibility and combat ability.
1. Too little useful skills to use. A DPS DC with no reliable AoE skills, we got a nerfed DL with longer cast time when cast in streak and smaller aoe than chains and we lost old DG+DL+Chains 3 AoE loadout. 2. Healer spec deal dps better and easier. Use feated exaltation + spam the new slow DL is still higher dps than arbiter's DL with full stacks Yes it is easier if Arbiter did not use BoH-Tab-DL-Anything-Tab combo 3. Forced to slowly wait to fully channel divinity and AP, breaking dps tempo unlike previous build divinity, unload, empower, repeat which feels much more better. DC can no longer hit jump and run due to recovery removal and the damm slow divinity passive generation. Bye to pvp, forever DC proof. 4. Poorly designed feat and some core divinity gen feat in the other paragon. 5. Actually many already critised abt ability score and impractical encounters so i will skip it. 6. Channel divinity has an idiot cd.
Improvements: 2. Make DL recharge faster, the delay between cast is really annoying. 3. Make the feat to gain divinity on crit gain even more to maintain fluency of battle. The divinity gain should be at least tripled unless dev intended to let DC use at-wills 90% of the time (for healer) 4. More feat option please... 5. Allow ways to reduce cd for DC, please kick the dev who thinks DC should stand channeling like a dumb dummy. Mod 15 buff/debuff DC still DPS way far better than Mod 16 DPS DC, lets think why... please consider QoL improvement.
I like being buffer/support in Neverwinter but I know needed drastic changes. Dungeons were boring - in mod 15 we're immortal and we either have perfect 4 support 1 dps team killing boss in seconds or struggle for hours with mediocre team. Abundance of mitigation sources, healing (lifesteal), low cds (recovery), buffs, debuffs. That's why I find total switch to healing similiar to classic trinity interesting and very welcome change.
Many things are oversimplified now and I don't like it (for example limited feat options). But I know it's needed because it's easier with Cryptic limited resources to balance classess that way. However I cannot understand reason for changes related to ability scores. Just leave like it was - let us pick our rolls and let same ability give something else to each class. .
It looks that now DC will be able to queue as DPS. But what's our role as dps? Are we supposed to be equal match to other classess - let's say TR, CW, GWFs? Because now it feels like we're still not there yet.
Bastion of Health does not heal the AC dc. When I first started learning to play a healer, I was told that as healer, I needed to be inside the ring, too. The allies are healed, but not me. I would call this a bug.
The Holy Ground circle was much much smaller. To give the tank as much benefit as possible, I had to be standing right beside him to make sure he was inside the circle. But then, any dps outside of the circle got zero benefit.
The Astral Shield mechanic was confusing at first. Once I got used to using it, I queued for a Castle Never. I could not prevent the other members inside of the Astral Shield while I was channeling from being one-shotted by the giant balor after the beholder.
The Bastion of Health was always ready within seconds as long as I had divinity. But I ran out of divinity before we ran out of mobs. Part of my re-training will be to learn how to be economical with the divinity encounters so they are always ready.
Still not clear on the best rotation of encounters. I seriously miss my Lance and the Break the Spirit in the AC build. Thank you for the Cleansing Hands encounter that will remove poison.
By the way, the zombies at the green sphere before the second boss of Castle Never were next to impossible to kill before they reached the sphere. I was useless as an AC in there. Same was true of the rifts at the beginning of Castle Never. I could throw some heals for sure, but being separated from the group made me feel like dead weight.
Devout: Devout doesn't have enough potent passive healing sources. Range is also too limited for many spells. I get that Cleric is supposed to be the more active healer from the 3 different healer classes. Relying on heals over time and one daily for passive heals makes things unplayable in group content if the tank and healer suffer from a certain amount of latency and/or the time spend to aim and fire encounters. Losing Divine Glow as a decent encounter overall also means losing access to having a decent crutch DPS encounter, without having to change the entire power tray.
Arbiter: Arbiter is one of 3 DPS classes which relies on one set of powers and (obviously) one paragon for any situation, which means Arbiter also must be able to be among having the highest DPS potential for both AoE and single target by only switching feats and powers. The base damage without making full use of empowering elements seems too low, no other class seems to be punished as much from not using mechanics perfectly all of the time.
Either base damage or empowered elements damage or both seems too low in general depending on if Arbiter is meant to be tailored towards either having burst damage, semi-burst, consistent damage or anything between.
It looks that now DC will be able to queue as DPS. But what's our role as dps? Are we supposed to be equal match to other classess - let's say TR, CW, GWFs? Because now it feels like we're still not there yet.
It seems like classes with 2 fundamentally different roles (including GWF / Barbarian) have a bit more balancing potential then the "normal" DPS classes which of course is understandable, as developers want to make them feel and play differently.
I don't think crutch heals and a minor debuff provide meaningful utility other then situationally (unless I'm missing something) which means role is pure DPS.
My solo play build no longer works for my cleric. Dirk (my Cleric) has a solo play build I use most of the time and a group build for parties and healing. But I am having no luck making a solo play build work here. My solo build NEEDS the massive knock back that currently exists in the game for Sun Burst. It needs Geas to lock down big enemies, so I can focus on fighting lesser minions. Finally I really don't care for the new TAB function at all. It looks like Dirk is curled up in a fetal position crying, I almost felt sorry for him as he got pummeled by enemies that I thought would get fried by my radiant Punishing Light beams instead.
This was always a difficult class to play, congratulations you made it impossible. No one will choose to play cleric after mod 16, and thus, no one will be able to get a cleric into any party in the future. I know you are not about to give back what you took away, so I will just wish you the best of luck.
I...don't understand. The solo playstyle you describe sounds like trying to make things as complicated as possible. Have you tried using actual damaging encounters on live? Sunburst is amusing for low-level content and for when you're scaled down, while Geas is the opposite of useful.
For live you should be working with Divine Glow, Chains, Daunting Light for general solo. Preview is a whole different playstyle, but there's no need to punish yourself while we wait for Mod 16.
I...don't understand. The solo playstyle you describe sounds like trying to make things as complicated as possible. Have you tried using actual damaging encounters on live? Sunburst is amusing for low-level content and for when you're scaled down, while Geas is the opposite of useful.
For live you should be working with Divine Glow, Chains, Daunting Light for general solo. Preview is a whole different playstyle, but there's no need to punish yourself while we wait for Mod 16.
This is somewhat off the topic. The build I made for solo play works for me. Dirk has beat Ravenloft with this build, mostly playing solo and never hunting beyond the Direfang tutorial. He is a 11.5K Cleric with an epic Skeleton as companion. Currently let's run through an example of my tactics versus a mob. I zero in on the strongest member from a distance and hit it with Geas, which has it on a 90 second lock down. As my companion approaches to attack, I shift my attack to the minions and the companion follows. If Geas wears off or is disabled before the minions drop, I hit the boss again. I use Lance and Sacred Flame to build divinity and blast on the mob with Punishing Light. If the mob gets to close such as berserkers or twigs I use Sun Burst to push them back. I don't use Sun Burst in a party or group as I know how annoying it can be for melee fighters. I use Chains to lock them down as my companion is a melee fighter and I do try to work within its confines. My dailies are Flame Strike for AoE and Hammer of Fate is used on individuals. He does quite well with this currently.
My point above is; I don't see any solo build possible. New players, and maybe a few old ones, will either delete the cleric to play another class or bench them until the stats and abilities are improved greatly.
Not sure if this is class-specific or not, but enemies in Lost City of Omu will randomly oneshot my (geared) Arbiter cleric for a whopping 500,000-900,000 damage when all other hits deal just 2,000-3,000 to her. The oneshots aren't even telegraphed attacks, just regular "ranged attacks". This makes soloing painful when my character just drops dead fighting a pack of trash mobs.
I...don't understand. The solo playstyle you describe sounds like trying to make things as complicated as possible. Have you tried using actual damaging encounters on live? Sunburst is amusing for low-level content and for when you're scaled down, while Geas is the opposite of useful.
For live you should be working with Divine Glow, Chains, Daunting Light for general solo. Preview is a whole different playstyle, but there's no need to punish yourself while we wait for Mod 16.
This is somewhat off the topic. The build I made for solo play works for me. Dirk has beat Ravenloft with this build, mostly playing solo and never hunting beyond the Direfang tutorial. He is a 11.5K Cleric with an epic Skeleton as companion. Currently let's run through an example of my tactics versus a mob. I zero in on the strongest member from a distance and hit it with Geas, which has it on a 90 second lock down. As my companion approaches to attack, I shift my attack to the minions and the companion follows. If Geas wears off or is disabled before the minions drop, I hit the boss again. I use Lance and Sacred Flame to build divinity and blast on the mob with Punishing Light. If the mob gets to close such as berserkers or twigs I use Sun Burst to push them back. I don't use Sun Burst in a party or group as I know how annoying it can be for melee fighters. I use Chains to lock them down as my companion is a melee fighter and I do try to work within its confines. My dailies are Flame Strike for AoE and Hammer of Fate is used on individuals. He does quite well with this currently.
My point above is; I don't see any solo build possible. New players, and maybe a few old ones, will either delete the cleric to play another class or bench them until the stats and abilities are improved greatly.
Thank you for your interest in my play style.
The reason I ask is that you seem to be basing your assessment of M16 Cleric DPS on how you currently do it, which is unconventional and objectively not efficient. Understanding how you choose to play the class puts your feedback in better context (that's not a dig, by the way - I'd argue that your experience playing your 11.5k Cleric has value since not every Cleric is 18k+ and fully optimized for DPS; the playstyle you described is not a model for best DPS, but it seems to be a matter of personal preference, not because you don't understand what you're doing).
M16 solo seems simple enough as long as you aren't running in areas where the enemies have broken scaling and are thus far more difficult than they should be. I'm still working to overcome muscle memory with the old Divinity system and am not investing a great deal of time or effort into learning the new one just yet since the devs seem likely to tweak the Divinity and radiant/burning pip interaction further.
Astral Shield should be renamed to "DC killer" or something. While I might understand the idea behind the whole rework on Devout, with the new "animations" that make us look like Linu La'neral, I find Astral Shield to be the worst encounter to use. With our AP gain as Devout being so slow (no Ap gain from healing), Astral Shield would be a good tool for us to mitigate damage while waiting for Hallowed Ground and make me feel a little better and more valuable than a Healbot.
Too bad we have a high chance of getting killed while casting it... "Hold on mobs! Im casting my astral shield, go away!"
So eithermaybe give us some AP gain by healing (because thats the only thing a Devout is doing) and also change this Astral Shield mechanism. I dont see myself using it much in the future.
Sorry in advance if this got said already, a little overwhelmed with all the changes. I mean, with this new game.
The lockdown on astral shield is too rough. The mitigation and healing provided are not enough to allow me to stand there doing nothing else. Teammates got murdered. Viciously. While I frantically tried to turn it off and get bastion on them instead. Next time *I* got murdered viciously. Also heals need to generate more AP or AP in general, especially in devout. Honestly I don't even know what generates AP right now cause it's mostly just staying empty. I think I cast hg like twice since I copied to preview so far.
Is it Working as intended that NONE of the Devout healing spells actually give action points if you use them? That makes using dailies as a working healer nearly impossible. Also- Is there an intent to add a divinity mechanic for healing like there is for DPS?
That certainly shouldn't be the case, healing spells should generate AP, but I will look into it. Additionally, channeling divinity also generates AP. All powers, including channeling divinity should be generating the same AP per second. So with that in mind, if a power is nearly instant, it won't be generating a lot of AP.
We had actually considered making AP regenerate passively in combat (instead of on action use), but we didn't go forward with that change. However, there are some concerns with AP generation for healers. I haven't found it to be a big problem, but I've had a long time to get used to the changes. If you're just standing there between heals, you won't generate much AP.
Big question: Now bonding give us the gift power from healing or only base power counts for healing?
I'm not sure precisely what you're asking about "gift power", but if something increases the power on your character sheet, it increases the effectiveness of your healing.
Im talking about for the stats sharing from bonding runestone...the power stats from companion counts for healing or only base power counts for healing?
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, power from bondings should increase your healing. With the removal of power sharing, it should be a lot simpler to understand because there are no bizarre exceptions to prevent looping. Any time your power goes up, it increases your healing. Power from any source.
I've done some testing, it's not extensive as I want to, but I have some questions that really bug me:
1) Divinity mechanic Recharging Divinity is way too loooong. I'm confused by all different bars: Divinity makes DC use an enhanced version of a power. How to use it?
Pratical example: I was running Tuern with an OP Tank and myself was an AC I pressed tab, I pray, my threat raises esponentially to the point that mobs ignore tank, I use a Astral Shield in divinity and I'm completely stuck, can't move, can't use any other powers. I see that in the Powers I can choose to move while praying, even if movement speed is halfed, but it's not really enough.
How is threat working? In the past, healing would rise threat, now seems that some powers are doing it and some doesn't (eg. Praying - Sacred Flame, while Bastion/Healing word not)
2) DPS mechanic All this 'Pips' are rather confusing. When I deal Fire damage, Fire pips are recharging --> at 6th Fire Pip --> I obtain 1 Gold Pips, which I think stands for Radiant Power. What does it mean? That I cannot gain Radiant Pip if I don't get at 6th Fire Pip? How can I differentiate between Fire and Radiant powers if is not written in the tooltip? Someone was suggesting to group powers into categories, I second that.
3) Powers Chains is not dealing any damage. Divine Glow doesn't do any damage nor healing. Cannot target Exaltation to another member of party. I can only exalt myself.
In the end, I'm a fan of bringing healing back in the game and I'm fine being a healer instead of a power buff, even if it means I need to strip my DC and rework on it completely. That being said, playing DC is now very slow: movements, recharge, new Divinity mechanic, really insane DPS 'pip' mechanic, action point gain.
Divinity does not make a DC use an enhanced version of a power. It's very easy to be confused if you expect behavior of things to be as they were pre module 16, instead of as they are now described in the tooltips of powers. (So much has changed, so this sort of confusion is to be expected, thank you for your patience!)
Divinity is now only used as a resource for certain encounter powers. Those encounter powers clearly state that they cost divinity. Those powers have essentially no cooldowns, and cannot be cast if you do not have sufficient divinity.
In regards to threat, channel divinity should not be generating any threat. However, healing in group settings is currently generating a good deal of threat. In our internal playtests, I have had healers occasionally pull ago, so as tanks on playtest are getting used to things, that can definitely be an issue. I recommend bringing divine glow until tanks get a bit more used to their new powers. Divine glow will halve your threat as soon as you press it, and it also restores your divinity over time. We are also watching how things progress, and will probably make adjustments to threat from healing.
As far as astral shield—it is now a channeled spell. You can cancel and restart it at any time, however, you can't interrupt it just by moving. You can either use your dodge power, or activate any other spell, including at-wills to cancel it.
On the topic of the "pips" which is the Judgement mechanic for the Arbiter paragon path, please read the tooltip under the mechanics section of your power sheet, then try playing around with it a bit more and practicing. Normally, you'd be able to start learning this mechanic as soon as you choose arbiter around level 30, but since the changes are happening to an existing character, there's a lot to learn. In short: it's not the case that you got a gold pip for getting 6 red pips, but rather, that your powers generate and consume your judgement meter based on their element. In its simplest form, you want to go back and forth between using radiant and fire spells as the gauge fills to increase your damage.
Finally—on the topic of chains, divine glow, and exaltation. These powers have all changed dramatically. Please read their new tooltips.
Oh alright, I leave it up to you to try redesigning the game into something better. I did like that I was master buffer that's all.
I'm sad too. Maybe offer a free class conversion with Mod 16 cause I'm not sold on healing in neverwinter. It's clunky at best having to find folks in chaotic battles. And while many may like it be good at it, some of us don't want to play that way.
While I understand your sentiment, please give it a little time before deciding whether or not the new healing changes are for you. This is just the first few days of the changes being on preview. They take some getting used to, but a lot of our closed beta testers and internal players started to really dig the changes once they got used to them.
That said, you will also have the option to play as a fully fledged DPS as a Cleric, so healing is not your only option.
I've got to admit it, I'm fascinated by your consisteny; maybe in some other game they'd take that feedback and fixed it - but you've figured it out, why completely change the class, instead just "fix" the things that people actually like.
Hi Altaiir94, I can tell you're pretty frustrated that so many powers have changed, let me start by addressing your general frustration with the fact that we changed so many things instead of "fixing" the things people like. I recommend reading the thread: Class Roles and Adjustments to Tanking and Healing. In this thread I try to address some of why we decided to change so much at once.
But basically, the game was in a very bad position in terms of us being able to provide interesting or challenging content. Also, the classes were full of so many fundamentally absurd powers, both in terms of functionality, and in terms of percentages, that balancing the classes in that state was exceptionally difficult. Incrementally making small changes wasn't getting us anywhere, so we needed to make a lot of changes at once.
While we could have labored to keep as many powers as similar as possible and just adjust numbers, the result would have been that the changes would have taken us several times longer (which means we essentially wouldn't have been able to do them) but even if we had, the result would be that because the numbers had changed, the changes would feel even worse because it would be all the powers you know, exactly as they are, but all brought into line.
Instead, we decided to go back to the drawing board and re-examine all class powers to ensure that each class had everything their kit needed, and to purge problematic powers. With huge changes like this, it's going to take a lot of getting used to, but I urge you to be patience and keep an open mind. Once you've stopped expecting every power to work exactly as it did before, you may find you like the changes. This is also the preview server, so there are plenty of issues still to work out, so your experience with the new powers may be tainted by the content being more difficult than intended due to bugs on things like scaling.
Of course, you may find that even after giving these changes some time, and getting used to them, that you still don't like them. And I'm genuinely very sorry if that ends up being the case. We know that no change of this magnitude is going to be embraced by everyone, and we absolutely would not have done it if we did not believe it was in the best interests of the game overall, and that more players would like the changes than not.
Now I won't address every item of feedback you had, because hopefully the explanation above as to why so much has changed will generally serve to address a lot of it, but I'll address a few specific items.
Break the spirit increases damage taken from magical and projectile attacks. So, not from radiant/fire (or are those counted as magical? ) and not from physical damage ?? Really usefull, when we know how many people play gwfs/gfs
Basically all non-projectile, non-physical damage counts as magic. E.g. fire, radiant, arcane, ice, lightning, necrotic, etc. Break the Spirit does not affect physical damage. Various classes have access to various damage vulnerability debuffs. Arbiter is actually the only class which currently has access to one power which debuffs two categories at once.
We divided the damage vulnerability debuffs up like this because damage vulnerability overall is very powerful, and the effects no longer stack. (I.e. two arbiters with break the spirit won't stack, you can alternate, or just choose one arbiter to use the spell.) The new system does mean there are some opportunities for synergy though between classes. For instance, Wizards, Warlocks, Rangers and Whisperknife Rogues can all benefit from the Arbiter's break the spirit. That said, the buff's effect isn't so huge that your group will be in dire straits if you have a physical DPS like an Assassin Rogue or Barbarian with you.
Geas decreases damage dealt by enemy by 5%. 5% of total damage or 5% of debuffed damage? doesn't really seem all that usefull.
Damage down effects like this are multiplied together, not summed, but they do stack. In other words, two spells which reduce the target's damage by 10%, will decrease the target's damage to 81% of the normal damage, not 80%. I.e. DMG x 0.9 x 0.9, not DMG x (1 - (0.1 + 0.1)).
As far as the usefulness of Geas, considering the sorts of numbers that used to be in the game, I can understand this sentiment. The fact that those old debuff numbers were so high, however, is why enemy damage in things like dungeons and trials were so absurd, that if you weren't running loads of buffs and debuffs, you'd be vaporized by a basic attack.
Now that things are at a more reasonable level, we can balance enemy damage so that you don't explode without a buff bar the length of your screen. Additionally, effects that seem small like this can be more significant. This power is best used against single large targets, and in boss fights before tank busters and unavoidable room-wide damage, for instance.
(now, could you make the enemies come at you in a straight line, so it would be usefull?! :@ ). → Btw, I think that the damage magnitude of 200(+50), 550(+20) and 400(+60) are incredibly LOW for a DPS class.
In regards to searing light, I generally hear a lot of negative feedback about landing this power, but first of all, I'd like to say that we have increased the width if the damage area vs. live. I haven't had a lot of trouble getting a high hit rate with this power in groups, it does sometimes require you to reposition before using it, but you should be able to get a decent amount of enemies in a line with it. In fact, in some situations, such as pulls with ranged enemies, you can line up excellent shouts with this power and hit enemies you couldn't otherwise hit all at once with an attack like daunting light.
In terms of the magnitude of these powers, since M16 just went to preview, I'd wait a bit before deciding what magnitudes do and do not feel reasonable. All of those powers are AoE, so they have about 1/3rd the magnitude of a single target power. Forgemaster's Flame for instance, hits much harder, but only damages a single enemy. Most other classes will have similar magnitudes, as all class powers for all classes are generally balanced around the same math, and only adjusted slightly off the power curve for specific class mechanics or added effects.
We should be able to exchange our armors & accessories & artifacts & enchantments for free, as this will be insanely big hit for DCs.
Good news! You will be able to swap all enchantments for other enchantments of the same level and type, and all enchantments for similar Runestones, and all Runestones for other Runestones.
No news yet on being able to swap Person Gear that you're using on your pets for Pet Gear, but I have hopes, or maybe for Person Gear equipped on a pet to get grandfathered in with a "companion only" tag.
another issue I have is the fact our ability points have been reworked. I took the time to get an optimal base roll for ability scores but now my stats are all out of order because wisdom boosts my healing not dmg now. anyway we could get a free race reroll or base ability score reroll? because if not that means many of us are going to have to buy one, not because we want to but because we don't have a choice. for example I went for high wisdom which increased my dmg previously and low dex which increased deflection. now wisdom gives incoming healing bonus and dex gives crit severity so this puts my dc at a disadvantage, im not sure how much but its definitely there.
The opposite of good news! You no longer get to choose or roll your base ability scores. Instead, every class has a single set of base ability scores, and your only choices are your racial changes and your levelling points. This is by design... and yes, Wisdom is a dump stat for a Cleric. It gives no boosts that the Cleric cares about, and prevents the Cleric from choosing to have a high Intelligence which would be good for a DPS Cleric, or a high.... well actually I don't think ANY stat is really good for a Healer Cleric in the new system. I get that "Wisdom is what Clerics are supposed to have" but can't there be a boost for Wisdom that Clerics, you know, actually want or use?
I'll pass the feedback about ability scores along to the person in charge of them. I understand this can be a pretty frustrating change.
My solo play build no longer works for my cleric. Dirk (my Cleric) has a solo play build I use most of the time and a group build for parties and healing. But I am having no luck making a solo play build work here. My solo build NEEDS the massive knock back that currently exists in the game for Sun Burst. It needs Geas to lock down big enemies, so I can focus on fighting lesser minions. Finally I really don't care for the new TAB function at all. It looks like Dirk is curled up in a fetal position crying, I almost felt sorry for him as he got pummeled by enemies that I thought would get fried by my radiant Punishing Light beams instead.
This was always a difficult class to play, congratulations you made it impossible. No one will choose to play cleric after mod 16, and thus, no one will be able to get a cleric into any party in the future. I know you are not about to give back what you took away, so I will just wish you the best of luck.
Can you tell me a little more about what enemies you tried fighting? What zone were you in, and what enemies were you facing in specific? Did you make sure your boons and companions and other elements were set up before you tried fighting?
I assure you that Cleric will not be harder to play than it is on live when Module 16 launches. This is the preview server, and this module has some of the biggest changes we've ever made, so there are definitely bugs, in particular, there are a lot of zones where scaling is on the fritz or specific enemies which have not been properly tuned down since we made the global adjustments, so your feedback is truly appreciated.
Comments
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I'll never retrace my steps.
Some of my best friends are Imaginary.
Taylor DC/DO & AC Buff/Debuff - Guild Gutbusters Brigade - PVE
1) Divinity mechanic
Recharging Divinity is way too loooong.
I'm confused by all different bars:
Divinity makes DC use an enhanced version of a power. How to use it?
Pratical example:
I was running Tuern with an OP Tank and myself was an AC
I pressed tab, I pray, my threat raises esponentially to the point that mobs ignore tank, I use a Astral Shield in divinity and I'm completely stuck, can't move, can't use any other powers. I see that in the Powers I can choose to move while praying, even if movement speed is halfed, but it's not really enough.
How is threat working? In the past, healing would rise threat, now seems that some powers are doing it and some doesn't (eg. Praying - Sacred Flame, while Bastion/Healing word not)
2) DPS mechanic
All this 'Pips' are rather confusing.
When I deal Fire damage, Fire pips are recharging --> at 6th Fire Pip --> I obtain 1 Gold Pips, which I think stands for Radiant Power.
What does it mean? That I cannot gain Radiant Pip if I don't get at 6th Fire Pip? How can I differentiate between Fire and Radiant powers if is not written in the tooltip? Someone was suggesting to group powers into categories, I second that.
3) Powers
Chains is not dealing any damage.
Divine Glow doesn't do any damage nor healing.
Cannot target Exaltation to another member of party. I can only exalt myself.
In the end, I'm a fan of bringing healing back in the game and I'm fine being a healer instead of a power buff, even if it means I need to strip my DC and rework on it completely. That being said, playing DC is now very slow: movements, recharge, new Divinity mechanic, really insane DPS 'pip' mechanic, action point gain.
Geas decreases damage dealt by enemy by 5%. 5% of total damage or 5% of debuffed damage? doesn't really seem all that usefull.
HG heals a bit & gives 10% dmg reduction. So, only difference from Astral Shield is that this heals 2.5x more, lasts 2 seconds more, and allows you to HAMSTER move. With the ammount of damage you take, I don't think it's good to ROOT someone while channeling.
"DPS" DC has only 3 AOE powers: Sun Burst, Daunting Light and HAMSTER Searing Light (now, could you make the enemies come at you in a straight line, so it would be usefull?! :@ ). → Btw, I think that the damage magnitude of 200(+50), 550(+20) and 400(+60) are incredibly LOW for a DPS class.
For Sun Burst, I really like the feat Heavy Sun, that stops it from having knockbacks, and I really like that I don't even have to think about choosing it from feat tree, as the Tipping Scales is kinda useless. Sunbursts knockback is maybe usefull only on beginning, but later it just sucks, so you might want to think about effect of that spell.
Daunting Light is ok-ish, it's a bit faster, it has wider area of effect, and with Lightspeed, I get 10% chance to cast DL instantly.
Searing light yaaaay, so good, the enemies will be so respectfull of me that they'll attack me 1 by 1, while the rest are waiting in a straight line, BEST.ATTACK.EVER, and furhtermore, with Piercing Light, I'll be able to crit all of the enemies in that line if the stars arrange in correct order.
FF and Geashave nice damage boost, but damn, were they nerfed as hell.
BoH ok-ish, I guess, and it only costs some divinity...
Divine glow I usually don't like to bash people, but who's the HAMSTER moron who got the idea to "fix" this spell? It used to be best in slot, giving us heals, buffs, debuffs and damage, and now it's HAMSTER & gives nothing... Reducess my threat in half?, HAMSTER wow! it's not like the tanks or stronger DPS classes take the threat from me anyways.. And in solo content, if I use it, they'll literally stop attacking me and go attack eachother, again HAMSTER WOW. Tipping scales doesn't seem good enough to make Divine Glow worth using.
Chains of Blazing Light first thing I noticed about this is increased area of effect. And I really liked it, I highly doubted the Neverwinter teams capability of doing upgrade this big without HAMSTER up at least one class, but when I saw this, I thought myself that I might be wrong... until I realised that it doesn't deal any f'in damage, and instead, it ONLY restrains enemies in 80' radius... this might be usefull with SunBursts knockback, but (as the knockback) on the lower levels!! Also, if you want to make it partially usefull, at least let it keep working for 12s and make it work on all enemies (except bosses); in Master Spellplague it kept enemies rooted for 3 HAMSTER seconds... 3 HAMSTER SECONDS !!!!
Healing word I like that it isn't in a line anymore. But you might add some animation around the caster to show how far it goes (SunBursts animation could go really good with this).
Exaltion... Ok, outgoing healing increased by 20% might be usefull sometimes, but increasing my damage by 20% will be interesting, considering that this is in HEAL path...
Cleansing Light this might be interesting in 2man parties is all I can say for now...
Astral Shield I like that it can be cast on really far away place, but man... DC get's rooted in place while using it, for HAMSTER sake. Also I really like that under certain conditions it doesn't spend any divinity.
Intercession like exalt, but only heals a lot more, has a cooldown long enough for me to prepare breakfast, and it doesn't give me more damage...
Prophecy of Doom You finaly fixed it in last mode, just to break it again in this one, outstanding move. How does it even work? For next 10 seconds it takes 25% from only the ONE strongest hit, or from strongest hits from each tick in that 10 seconds? if it's the first one, It could be potentially be good in mod 22 (provided that this game doesn't die by then), and if it's the second one, it could be like SoD on TRs..
Daily Powers aren't that bad, I expected even worse, except for HG which should at least reduce damage taken by a bit more than Astral Shield. Hammer of Fate no longer prevents being rooted while casting? Anoited Army & Guardian of Life seem potentialy usefull, provided that enemies don't oneshot you (as someone has mentioned somewhere in this thread. I'll add my thoughts on Celestial Prominence in a few days when I get to 80, if I don't give up on the game by then.
From Class Features, I like Holy Fervor (you HAMSTER us with divinity, this feat un HAMSTER us by 15%.
Terrifying Insight, for me, terrifying insight is this insight to a new mode. It was really useful power. REALLY USEFUL. Now it's not... On crit hit, it recovers 5 of my divinity... not 5%, but just 5!
Light of the Scales could be potentially usefull (not because it's that good, but because the rest of them are HAMSTER HAMSTER).
Inquisitor's Benedictition could maybe be usefull if the DC won't heal good enough (I'll get back to that later), but why the HAMSTER is it in DPS Class features?
Everything else: wow, 5% increase (that should be tested, but knowing you, on stronger enemies that 5% won't even be noticed).
Feats
I'm too HAMSTER frustrated by those changes, so I won't get deep into it. If you've red any of the threads about DCs (except the ones "I'm 12k *insert class here*, and everyone takes DC instead of me into *insert current endgame dungeon here*, nerf DCs they hax, they afk, *insert some more HAMSTER excuses*"), you've had to see people talking about how DC has a lot of HAMSTER heroic feats... I've got to admit it, I'm fascinated by your consisteny; maybe in some other game they'd take that feedback and fixed it - but you've figured it out, why completely change the class, instead just "fix" the things that people actually like. You've got +1 from me for bravery here. There still are useless/Icantbelievesomeonewouldactuallytakethose feats, but there are some usefull ones too. I believe that it might be better if we could choose from feats: We can still choose only 5, but 5 of any feat.
At wills
I can't see Devouts last power yet, but Arbiters one seems like a good change, DC finally has an AOE at-will. It has low radius, magnitude of only 50, and a cast time of HAMSTER 1.65 seconds, but hell, at least it isn't single target.. Unlike Blessing of battle which has 1.3 sec cast time, and "merely" 200 magnitude. While Barbarian, as also an dps class, has atwill with 0s cast time (Brash strike)
Overall:
DCs really got screwed this time, lol. Most of the DCs invested a lot in power and recovery. Now powershare is lost (okay, that might be good), but we still have a lot of power, which affects healing power (so I don't think we'll need all that healing increases like in some features and Exaltion). Also, while I'm there... WHY THE HAMSTER HAMSTER DID YOU NERF HAMSTER ENCHANTMENTS?!?! I just saw that rank 14 radiant gives only 480 power?!!?!?
All of my Recovery got switched to accuracy, I'm pretty sure that I won't need accuracy for healing, so what the HAMSTER are you doing? We should be able to exchange our armors & accessories & artifacts & enchantments for free, as this will be insanely big hit for DCs.
Furthermore, I believe ALL CLASSES should get free race reroll token (Or make a new reroll ability scores token, as you've changed some things with ability scores.
Also, why did some stuff from ratings disappear? It was usefull to see how much % of each stat we have (crit chance %, res %, armor ignored %, etc.)
Wide Flare feat in Devout tree increases the radius of warding flare by 10%... the only problem is, we don't have Warding Flare power.
Aaaaand that's my first view of the new DC, if I don't decide to give up, there might be more of this...
No news yet on being able to swap Person Gear that you're using on your pets for Pet Gear, but I have hopes, or maybe for Person Gear equipped on a pet to get grandfathered in with a "companion only" tag. The opposite of good news! You no longer get to choose or roll your base ability scores. Instead, every class has a single set of base ability scores, and your only choices are your racial changes and your levelling points. This is by design... and yes, Wisdom is a dump stat for a Cleric. It gives no boosts that the Cleric cares about, and prevents the Cleric from choosing to have a high Intelligence which would be good for a DPS Cleric, or a high.... well actually I don't think ANY stat is really good for a Healer Cleric in the new system. I get that "Wisdom is what Clerics are supposed to have" but can't there be a boost for Wisdom that Clerics, you know, actually want or use?
This was always a difficult class to play, congratulations you made it impossible. No one will choose to play cleric after mod 16, and thus, no one will be able to get a cleric into any party in the future. I know you are not about to give back what you took away, so I will just wish you the best of luck.
Let's look at new characters. If you start a new Cleric, you do not get to roll your stats. No, we, the players are assumed to be complete [HAMSTERED] [HAMSTERS] and cannot be trusted to make our own choices. Instead, all starting Clerics get the exact same starting choices (only modified by racial bonuses - half-elf in this case).
Now, in any sane D&D game those would be decent choices ..I mean, Wisdom is the primary stat of a Cleric, Charisma secondary, and the rest depend on build.
But no, not in Neverwinter. We automatically get most points assigned to Wisdom, but that stat is now totally irrelevant to Clerics, as it gives Control Resist and Incoming Healing.
Setting things up so that the same stats give the same bonuses for all classes is just fine for Fighters and Wizards, decent for some other classes, but Clerics are getting completely [HAMSTERED].
To make an optimal Cleric, we would want to put points in INT for magical damage, CON for AP gain and CHA for Recharge speed - maybe a bit of DEX for Crit Severity.
From a D&D Perspective this is just wrong. INT should give bonuses to Arcane magical damage, and WIS should give a bonus to Divine magical damage, but because NWO does not distinguish between the two types they decided to pick one....favoured Wizards and left Clerics out in the cold.
To say I am unhappy with this would be a serious understatement. I havbe no desire to play a character that gets severely [HAMSTERED] like this for no good reason.
There is no good reason to take away our ability to roll stats at the beginning
There is no good reason to saddle us with stats that are sub-optimal for our class
There is no good reason to break a 30+ year tradition of what stats do for the different classes - in fact I am surprised that WotC allowed Cryptic to make a fundamental decision like "WIS no longer matters for Clerics, but INT does).
In other words, this is bad. This is the single thing in Mod 16 I just cannot accept, and if this goes live, there is a pretty high chance I will go and look for some other game. I did leave the game for a year after the Mod 6 fiasco, but if I leave again it will be permanent.
I do not think I am the only one who is unhappy about seeing my favourite class being treated like this.
Trying to do dailies with this is not going to be fun at all. No damage on chains or divine glow now... so wtf is a dps path supposed to do if it can't dps mobs?
New players aren't going to give the game a chance. The daily grind will become worst and they'll just find another game.
I don't know what the devs were thinking by making at-wills useless. This is only going to make grind far more tedious than it needs to be.
The new Wisdom stat is the weakest of all ability scores regardless of class and no help to clerics in particular. Other ability scores offer things like increased damage, action points, recharge speed, or hit points, but wisdom just gives measly control resistance and incoming healing... to a class that can already heal itself. Although everybody else is going to pass on speccing for Wisdom, clerics are the only ones suffering from having it as their main stat.
Divinity now recharges like a snail. I have been playing Neverwinter since open beta and I remember the time when clerics gained divinity by using encounters. It was slow, sluggish, and overall sleep-inducing to wait 20 seconds for something to come off cooldown. Now we're headed in the same direction, despite the previous DC rework aiming to make the class more active and fun to play. DC as a dps class won't work when the top dog has twice the damage of a cleric and divinity takes a long time to come back. Just a thought.
Using Searing Light is like doing bowling at a lane the size of a football field.
As for new players being frustrated, I did actually create a lvl 1 Cleric on Owlbear during the alpha test and level her up - with no guild bonuses and no "hand-me-down" stuff from my main - pretty much like a "fresh" player.
Quite frankly, it wasn't too bad. I did find that the knockback from Sun Burst is massively useful at lower levels, as it buys you a few extra seconds. Guardian of Faith is a really "heavy-hitting" power when you are at a low level - but you cannot spam dailies any more...you have to time it carefully. Overall, the challenge level for a "new" Cleric is perfectly reasonable.
I confess I have mixed feelings about the whole buff/debuff concept being thrown out of the window, but this way is probably better than the craziness from before. That being said, I feel like the rework needs small tunings in a lot of places to really come together. Arbiter seems a lot better than Devout overall.
Here's what I think about this rework.
- Divinity
Divinity takes too long to fill up at the moment, but it also feels slow to spend. It doesn't flow very well, so I believe speeding up both its recharge and spenditure rate would make it flow better. Arbiters can get around this by spamming Sacred Flame for stacks and converting with divinity, but Devouts have nothing similar.
- At-Wills:
Sacred Flame: Fine as is. Feels good to use now that you can move a bit while using it. Great job!
Scattering Light: Is this the final animation? It looks a bit incomplete, but otherwise it's fine. I suspect it could use a small magnitude buff.
Lance of Faith: I'm pretty sure Sacred Flame outdamages this because it's that much faster. Needs a magnitude or an animation speed buff to be on par.
Blessing of Battle: Its effect seems to be too situational... I'd add something more to it. Maybe critical avoidance?
I can't test the other two at-wills so I can't comment on them.
- Encounters:
Sunburst: Feels weak at the moment, it should area heal for 200 magnitude too.
Daunting Light: Probably fine as is, I feel that radiant judgment should buff it more though.
Bastion of Health: Maybe it's a little too good?
Divine Glow: It's very good on Arbiter with the trait, feels bad to use on Devouts though. I'd rather bake the threat reduction into Channel Divinity and give it something else.
Geas: Cooldown is too high.
Forgemaster's Flame: Its damage with radiant judgment buff is probably too high. Outside that, I feel it would flow better by costing 250 divinity so you can use four of them in succession (with lowered damage to compensate, of course) for that sweet Smoldering Light synergy.
Chains of Blazing Light: No damage at all makes it really crappy, please give 200 magnitude to it. Also, its range seems to be bugged, it's binding everyone around 80' from you instead of where you casted it.
Searing Light: Still has the same problem as always, it's hard to position mobs properly to get the most out of it. Have you guys considered giving it the Sudden Storm treatment?
Break the Spirit: Split damage resistance debuffs are a bad idea in general, as it effectively punishes people that can't take advantage of it because of their class. Please reconsider this.
Prophecy of Doom: Exaltation is just better overall. It should at least have the same cooldown as exaltation since you're only getting damage out of this.
Healing Word: Feels like HAMSTER compared to Bastion. Seems to tick every 3 seconds, so its total heal would be 300 + 560 over 21 seconds, compared to Bastion's instant 800 with half the divinity cost... ehh. I know you can stack the duration, but the heal over time aspect really needs a buff.
Exaltation: Buff seems potent, but also seems to be on the wrong path. I'd change this by reducing its buff to 10 or 15% and allowing it to buff a party member as well, so it better resembles its live counterpart.
Cleansing Light: If its main selling point is its debuff removal then the cast should be faster.
Astral Shield: I don't really have an opinion on it.
Intercession: Way too weak for its cooldown, especially considering that Bastion heals for 800 in an area and its divinity cost is pitiful. Needs to have half its cooldown slashed or something added to it, like a damage reduction buff (or both).
- Dailies
Guardian of Faith: It's great now, very high damage plus stun.
Hallowed Ground: It's such a nerf from the live version but I like it, it does what it's supposed to do.
Flame Strike: It's alright, I guess.
Hammer of Fate: I find it hard to justify using compared with Guardian of Faith since you need at least four judgment stacks to be worth it and it's so slow to cast... Maybe speed it up a bit?
Celestial Prominence: I can't test it yet, sadly.
Anointed Army: Feels good enough for what it does.
Guardian of Life: It's decent, but I think you can get more value out of Hallowed Ground, and traited Guardian of Faith trumps this.
- Class Features:
Blessed Action: Too weak since dailies are much rarer now. Please buff its magnitude or make the heal an AoE.
Hallowed Armour: It's fine, I guess.
Pilgrim's Light: Can we get a range indicator in the description?
Holy Fervour: Barely does anything with the current divinity regeneration rate...
Foresight: Seems decent enough.
Terrifying Insight: 5 divinity on crit is really, really, really low.
Light of the Scales: Not that useful, but at least it's usable enough.
Inquisitor's Benediction: Good enough, just seems like it's on the wrong path.
Divine Action: 100 divinity is not enough to make it worthwhile.
Deliverance: Should either be 15% increased healing or below 50%. The percentage's too low for such a critical HP threshold.
Hallowed Guide: Not very useful, but it at least synergises with our area heals.
Divine Lore: Just 1% is a complete no, please buff this.
- Feats
Piercing Light x Lightspeed: Both are very solid traits.
Tipping Scales x Heavy Sun: Divine Glow gets a lot from this trait while Sunburst merely becomes usable, it's clear which of the two traits is better.
Medicant's Judgment x Radiant Swordbreaker: Extending a paltry 5% damage debuff isn't very useful, while Medicant gives a good buff to an already great skill.
Rising Light x Smoldering Light: Both are decent traits, you probably get more mileage out of Smoldering Light.
Burning Patch x Critical Sun: On the fence about this one, I feel both are good. Critical Sun seems unreliable unless you're stacking crit, then it should edge out Burning Patch.
Sacred Bastion x Repeated Blessings: Bastion is already low cost enough that the free cast won't help it a lot, while the other trait brings an extra 240 magnitude. Healing Word isn't very good, however.
Enhanced Astral Shield x Extended Exaltation: This trait choice should be swapped with the level 70 one since you don't even get to use Astral Shield until 67. Anyway, the Exaltation trait seems overall better.
Primed Divinity x Swift Prayer: Swift Prayer is better, but both don't feel very useful at the moment.
Reserved Divinity x Wide Flare: Daunting Light trait is good, I don't know if the other trait is even doing anything since we don't have Warding Flare anymore.
Anointed Arms x Persistent Guardian: A measly 3% damage buff is not worth the penalty and Guardian of Faith is already a great daily and becomes even better with this.
Weird, my post just vanished... guess I'll just post again.
The DC is a new animal that cannot be evaluated "stand-alone".
First of all: I agree with @adinosii about the ability scores. I come from a Wis/Cha build and I must migrate to a different couple of abilities. How?
Powers: tried some of them as dps going throught the new campaign, not yet as a healer. I do the quest quite easily, even if a giant 1-shooted me. the Tab key is a mysterious object: as far as I understand it only recharge divinity faster, consuming all the stacks of judgement and the red balls around the cleric.
Gear: what to say? Trash it and go for the new pieces. My current gear was quite expensive: i really hate the idea to spend again for it. The changes to the companion equipment is frustrating.
Feats: nothing to report. It's a mess.
Enchantments: everything must be changed again. I like the idea to give us a mechanims to exchange them. My U-frost weapon enchantment is useless as an example.
Finally I believe that the changes are so radical that a guide should be published to better understand a lot of things: interface, tooltips. power mechanic and so on.
Bugs can be reported efficiently against a shared baseline: how can I say if the tab key is WAI if I don't know how it is expected to work?
Concerning the buff/debuff I see new cases to provide them, but I prefer to wait a bit more.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
1. Too little useful skills to use. A DPS DC with no reliable AoE skills, we got a nerfed DL with longer cast time when cast in streak and smaller aoe than chains and we lost old DG+DL+Chains 3 AoE loadout.
2.
Healer spec deal dps better and easier. Use feated exaltation + spam the new slow DL is still higher dps than arbiter's DL with full stacksYes it is easier if Arbiter did not use BoH-Tab-DL-Anything-Tab combo3. Forced to slowly wait to fully channel divinity and AP, breaking dps tempo unlike previous build divinity, unload, empower, repeat which feels much more better. DC can no longer hit jump and run due to recovery removal and the damm slow divinity passive generation. Bye to pvp, forever DC proof.
4. Poorly designed feat and some core divinity gen feat in the other paragon.
5. Actually many already critised abt ability score and impractical encounters so i will skip it.
6. Channel divinity has an idiot cd.
Improvements:
2. Make DL recharge faster, the delay between cast is really annoying.
3. Make the feat to gain divinity on crit gain even more to maintain fluency of battle. The divinity gain should be at least tripled unless dev intended to let DC use at-wills 90% of the time (for healer)
4. More feat option please...
5. Allow ways to reduce cd for DC, please kick the dev who thinks DC should stand channeling like a dumb dummy. Mod 15 buff/debuff DC still DPS way far better than Mod 16 DPS DC, lets think why... please consider QoL improvement.
Diving back to test again....
Many things are oversimplified now and I don't like it (for example limited feat options). But I know it's needed because it's easier with Cryptic limited resources to balance classess that way. However I cannot understand reason for changes related to ability scores. Just leave like it was - let us pick our rolls and let same ability give something else to each class. .
It looks that now DC will be able to queue as DPS. But what's our role as dps? Are we supposed to be equal match to other classess - let's say TR, CW, GWFs? Because now it feels like we're still not there yet.
Bastion of Health does not heal the AC dc. When I first started learning to play a healer, I was told that as healer, I needed to be inside the ring, too. The allies are healed, but not me. I would call this a bug.
The Holy Ground circle was much much smaller. To give the tank as much benefit as possible, I had to be standing right beside him to make sure he was inside the circle. But then, any dps outside of the circle got zero benefit.
The Astral Shield mechanic was confusing at first. Once I got used to using it, I queued for a Castle Never. I could not prevent the other members inside of the Astral Shield while I was channeling from being one-shotted by the giant balor after the beholder.
The Bastion of Health was always ready within seconds as long as I had divinity. But I ran out of divinity before we ran out of mobs. Part of my re-training will be to learn how to be economical with the divinity encounters so they are always ready.
Still not clear on the best rotation of encounters. I seriously miss my Lance and the Break the Spirit in the AC build. Thank you for the Cleansing Hands encounter that will remove poison.
By the way, the zombies at the green sphere before the second boss of Castle Never were next to impossible to kill before they reached the sphere. I was useless as an AC in there. Same was true of the rifts at the beginning of Castle Never. I could throw some heals for sure, but being separated from the group made me feel like dead weight.
Arbiter: Arbiter is one of 3 DPS classes which relies on one set of powers and (obviously) one paragon for any situation, which means Arbiter also must be able to be among having the highest DPS potential for both AoE and single target by only switching feats and powers. The base damage without making full use of empowering elements seems too low, no other class seems to be punished as much from not using mechanics perfectly all of the time.
Either base damage or empowered elements damage or both seems too low in general depending on if Arbiter is meant to be tailored towards either having burst damage, semi-burst, consistent damage or anything between.
It seems like classes with 2 fundamentally different roles (including GWF / Barbarian) have a bit more balancing potential then the "normal" DPS classes which of course is understandable, as developers want to make them feel and play differently.
I don't think crutch heals and a minor debuff provide meaningful utility other then situationally (unless I'm missing something) which means role is pure DPS.
For live you should be working with Divine Glow, Chains, Daunting Light for general solo. Preview is a whole different playstyle, but there's no need to punish yourself while we wait for Mod 16.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
My point above is; I don't see any solo build possible. New players, and maybe a few old ones, will either delete the cleric to play another class or bench them until the stats and abilities are improved greatly.
Thank you for your interest in my play style.
M16 solo seems simple enough as long as you aren't running in areas where the enemies have broken scaling and are thus far more difficult than they should be. I'm still working to overcome muscle memory with the old Divinity system and am not investing a great deal of time or effort into learning the new one just yet since the devs seem likely to tweak the Divinity and radiant/burning pip interaction further.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Too bad we have a high chance of getting killed while casting it... "Hold on mobs! Im casting my astral shield, go away!"
So eithermaybe give us some AP gain by healing (because thats the only thing a Devout is doing) and also change this Astral Shield mechanism. I dont see myself using it much in the future.
Sorry in advance if this got said already, a little overwhelmed with all the changes. I mean, with this new game.
We had actually considered making AP regenerate passively in combat (instead of on action use), but we didn't go forward with that change. However, there are some concerns with AP generation for healers. I haven't found it to be a big problem, but I've had a long time to get used to the changes. If you're just standing there between heals, you won't generate much AP. Thanks for clarifying. Yes, power from bondings should increase your healing. With the removal of power sharing, it should be a lot simpler to understand because there are no bizarre exceptions to prevent looping. Any time your power goes up, it increases your healing. Power from any source. Divinity does not make a DC use an enhanced version of a power. It's very easy to be confused if you expect behavior of things to be as they were pre module 16, instead of as they are now described in the tooltips of powers. (So much has changed, so this sort of confusion is to be expected, thank you for your patience!)
Divinity is now only used as a resource for certain encounter powers. Those encounter powers clearly state that they cost divinity. Those powers have essentially no cooldowns, and cannot be cast if you do not have sufficient divinity.
In regards to threat, channel divinity should not be generating any threat. However, healing in group settings is currently generating a good deal of threat. In our internal playtests, I have had healers occasionally pull ago, so as tanks on playtest are getting used to things, that can definitely be an issue. I recommend bringing divine glow until tanks get a bit more used to their new powers. Divine glow will halve your threat as soon as you press it, and it also restores your divinity over time. We are also watching how things progress, and will probably make adjustments to threat from healing.
As far as astral shield—it is now a channeled spell. You can cancel and restart it at any time, however, you can't interrupt it just by moving. You can either use your dodge power, or activate any other spell, including at-wills to cancel it.
On the topic of the "pips" which is the Judgement mechanic for the Arbiter paragon path, please read the tooltip under the mechanics section of your power sheet, then try playing around with it a bit more and practicing. Normally, you'd be able to start learning this mechanic as soon as you choose arbiter around level 30, but since the changes are happening to an existing character, there's a lot to learn. In short: it's not the case that you got a gold pip for getting 6 red pips, but rather, that your powers generate and consume your judgement meter based on their element. In its simplest form, you want to go back and forth between using radiant and fire spells as the gauge fills to increase your damage.
Finally—on the topic of chains, divine glow, and exaltation. These powers have all changed dramatically. Please read their new tooltips. While I understand your sentiment, please give it a little time before deciding whether or not the new healing changes are for you. This is just the first few days of the changes being on preview. They take some getting used to, but a lot of our closed beta testers and internal players started to really dig the changes once they got used to them.
That said, you will also have the option to play as a fully fledged DPS as a Cleric, so healing is not your only option.
But basically, the game was in a very bad position in terms of us being able to provide interesting or challenging content. Also, the classes were full of so many fundamentally absurd powers, both in terms of functionality, and in terms of percentages, that balancing the classes in that state was exceptionally difficult. Incrementally making small changes wasn't getting us anywhere, so we needed to make a lot of changes at once.
While we could have labored to keep as many powers as similar as possible and just adjust numbers, the result would have been that the changes would have taken us several times longer (which means we essentially wouldn't have been able to do them) but even if we had, the result would be that because the numbers had changed, the changes would feel even worse because it would be all the powers you know, exactly as they are, but all brought into line.
Instead, we decided to go back to the drawing board and re-examine all class powers to ensure that each class had everything their kit needed, and to purge problematic powers. With huge changes like this, it's going to take a lot of getting used to, but I urge you to be patience and keep an open mind. Once you've stopped expecting every power to work exactly as it did before, you may find you like the changes. This is also the preview server, so there are plenty of issues still to work out, so your experience with the new powers may be tainted by the content being more difficult than intended due to bugs on things like scaling.
Of course, you may find that even after giving these changes some time, and getting used to them, that you still don't like them. And I'm genuinely very sorry if that ends up being the case. We know that no change of this magnitude is going to be embraced by everyone, and we absolutely would not have done it if we did not believe it was in the best interests of the game overall, and that more players would like the changes than not.
Now I won't address every item of feedback you had, because hopefully the explanation above as to why so much has changed will generally serve to address a lot of it, but I'll address a few specific items.
Basically all non-projectile, non-physical damage counts as magic. E.g. fire, radiant, arcane, ice, lightning, necrotic, etc. Break the Spirit does not affect physical damage. Various classes have access to various damage vulnerability debuffs. Arbiter is actually the only class which currently has access to one power which debuffs two categories at once.
We divided the damage vulnerability debuffs up like this because damage vulnerability overall is very powerful, and the effects no longer stack. (I.e. two arbiters with break the spirit won't stack, you can alternate, or just choose one arbiter to use the spell.) The new system does mean there are some opportunities for synergy though between classes. For instance, Wizards, Warlocks, Rangers and Whisperknife Rogues can all benefit from the Arbiter's break the spirit. That said, the buff's effect isn't so huge that your group will be in dire straits if you have a physical DPS like an Assassin Rogue or Barbarian with you. Damage down effects like this are multiplied together, not summed, but they do stack. In other words, two spells which reduce the target's damage by 10%, will decrease the target's damage to 81% of the normal damage, not 80%. I.e. DMG x 0.9 x 0.9, not DMG x (1 - (0.1 + 0.1)).
As far as the usefulness of Geas, considering the sorts of numbers that used to be in the game, I can understand this sentiment. The fact that those old debuff numbers were so high, however, is why enemy damage in things like dungeons and trials were so absurd, that if you weren't running loads of buffs and debuffs, you'd be vaporized by a basic attack.
Now that things are at a more reasonable level, we can balance enemy damage so that you don't explode without a buff bar the length of your screen. Additionally, effects that seem small like this can be more significant. This power is best used against single large targets, and in boss fights before tank busters and unavoidable room-wide damage, for instance.
In regards to searing light, I generally hear a lot of negative feedback about landing this power, but first of all, I'd like to say that we have increased the width if the damage area vs. live. I haven't had a lot of trouble getting a high hit rate with this power in groups, it does sometimes require you to reposition before using it, but you should be able to get a decent amount of enemies in a line with it. In fact, in some situations, such as pulls with ranged enemies, you can line up excellent shouts with this power and hit enemies you couldn't otherwise hit all at once with an attack like daunting light.
In terms of the magnitude of these powers, since M16 just went to preview, I'd wait a bit before deciding what magnitudes do and do not feel reasonable. All of those powers are AoE, so they have about 1/3rd the magnitude of a single target power. Forgemaster's Flame for instance, hits much harder, but only damages a single enemy. Most other classes will have similar magnitudes, as all class powers for all classes are generally balanced around the same math, and only adjusted slightly off the power curve for specific class mechanics or added effects.
I assure you that Cleric will not be harder to play than it is on live when Module 16 launches. This is the preview server, and this module has some of the biggest changes we've ever made, so there are definitely bugs, in particular, there are a lot of zones where scaling is on the fritz or specific enemies which have not been properly tuned down since we made the global adjustments, so your feedback is truly appreciated.