As far as defining the terms, we are currently examining where the best place to define them might be, we absolutely do not want to define any of them in the tooltip, as that would inflate the size of every tooltip, and once you know what they mean, you never need to know again, so we'd rather not clutter up the space.
We're confident that the terms are learnable pretty quickly as a new player, because you won't have any preconceptions about the old style of tooltips, and some minor experimentation can get you most of the way there, but we do want to give everyone the resources they need to understand their powers.
have you thought about journal entries such as the ones you use to give suggestions on how to fight a boss? 1 section for each class for specifics and a general one for equipment and stat entries etc?
also, there seems to be a banner on the right side of the character sheet where powers are listed. Would that be a good place to have "cue card" info listed ?
A little question mark to click somewhere on the powers sheet is the most likely place (similar to your cue card suggestion) as the journal is too buried for most people to think about it. I appreciate the suggestions though!
Well, that's not how it is supposed to be. It has been stated very clearly that every DPS character is supposed to be viable in group content - and that includes the Arbiter DOS build.
My worry is, however, that it feels to me that Arbiters are inferior to other DPSers in group content, but as I said, I have only had limited chances to test the Arbiter out in groups, so I was wondering how others felt it performed.
Just to respond to this back-and-forth in general, Arbiter is meant to be just as viable a choice as taking an Assassin or a Thaumaturge or whatever other DPS you can think of. I think it's in a better spot than you may imagine in group content, but it's also probably still weaker than it should be, most likely in particular in the AoE department, so this is something I will be looking to address as I look over the feats.
Of course, any group content anyone has the opportunity to participate in, ACT logs, or even just general thoughts and feedback on how it went compared to other DPS and of what item level, etc. can be very helpful.
One of my biggest problems isn't so much that the path for DPS cleric is being marginalized, it's that if you don't want to be a healbot, it's the ONLY other option. I was pretty upset when I read @asterdahl 's response to playing Devout.... "Have you tried Arbiter?" The solution to not wanting to play heals shouldn't be "play dps". And considering the class options for DPS, if I *wanted* to play DPS, I wouldn't choose a cleric to do it.
I have been really holding myself back from giving too much feedback on the changes, since I'm really resistant to changes and I wanted to give myself time to adjust and really try the new mechanics before hating it on the basis of it "not being m15".
What I can say is that I'm still not a fan after running through the endgame dungeon a few times. One, the Lillend pet needs to be looked at. I put up exactly 0 heal spells and did more than 9 million healing with Lillend and Holy Avenger. If I'm going to be relegated to being a healbot, my job shouldn't be made irrelevant by a pet that's tossed out like candy during Simril.
I don't want to have to be reactive- staring at health bars until it's finally my time to cast a bastion. I tried being proactive, and slotting astral shield, oh boy. I'm not a fan of the tiny AoE that covers. It needs to be far larger, since I'm sacrificing mobility to be able to channel it. Cancelling it needs to be something other than casting something else or dodging, which has been mentioned but I also would like to second. On live, I am always doing something to help my team, whether it's buffing damage, building divinity (and incidental heals by tossing astral seal on every elite mob), throwing out divine DG to debuff mobs and heal a bit, or casting my daily, artifact or using my mount power. I had so much to do, and part of the satisfaction of finishing a dungeon was knowing that I had a perfect rotation. There's nothing of the sort now; I feel like I could fall asleep at the keyboard in the newest dungeon in the game and no one would really notice.
I think that the biggest QoL change the devs could make for Clerics that are used to buffing is a more proactive role. That would help make our characters still FEEL the same even if our role is different than before. Currently, I feel like the character I spent 6 years building is gone, replaced by something that is not only foreign, but boring to play.
Hi Thestia! I apologize for upsetting you with my response, I think I had the impression from your original post you weren't interested in playing a healer, which is the only reason I suggested trying out Arbiter.
In regards to Lillend and Holy Avenger, I'll be investigating both of them, there are absolutely some massive companion related bugs, and it is definitely not intended that you won't need to heal and that your companion can do all of the work. We're looking at adjusting the balance to get healing into a better spot where it's necessary to be more active. It's one of our biggest priorities in regards to healing right now.
I appreciate that you are giving yourself some time to adjust to the changes knowing your own personal aversion for change. I do hope that you'll continue to check out the changes, and that we can get healer to a place where you're happy to play as a Devout.
I had promised a long post about the feats...here it is.
As I have said before, I don’t like that feats are paired up. This was a big complaint regarding the boons - sometimes you had to choose one of two “good” feats, where you really wanted both (leading to annoyance) or pick one of two “bad” feats (where you felt like you had been wasting your time getting to that point).
Ideally I would just like a pool of 10 feats, where you could pick any 5 you wanted, but I may be too optimistic asking for that, so, assuming that we are stuck with having to choose, I wanted to offer my thoughts on pairs of feats.
Basically there should be some reason to how the feats are paired together, and ideally they should support different builds or playstyles.
For example something like:
If you want to improve your attacks versus single targets, pick feat A, but if you want better AoE attacks, pick feat B.
If you want “emergency healing” pick feat A, if you want better DPS, pick feat B.
If you want better performance in solo play, pick feat A, if you want better performance in groups, pick feat B.
This also encourages people to have different DPS loadouts, say one for solo play and another for groups, or one for trash and another for bosses.
We had some good examples of this with the boons in the past, like getting either a healing or a DPS effect.
Moreover, there should not be any bad pairs of feats, where both choices are more-or-less useless.
Before I start with the feats...I have one question. We have two Encounters that do Fire damage and four that do Radiant damage. Is there a reason for that discrepancy? Why not 3/3 ?
So, about the feats:
First pair:
Piercing Light This feat feels very odd. First, it is bad to lock you into two powers, so to speak. If you don’t want to use one of them for some reason, the feat is worthless. In my case I do not like Searing Light, because of the general unwillingness of enemies to line up in a straight line. The second issue is that Lance of Faith generates orange pips, so after that you would want to cast a power that consumes those (like Sunburst or FF), not a power like Searing light that consumes yellow pips.
Lightspeed I need to choose between Lance of Faith and Scattering Light, as they are of the same type. However, Scattering Light is inferior as an At-will. Yes, it does have a small AoE effect, but the damage is insignificant. So, not using Scattering light means this feat is useless too. Also, after using Scattering light, to build up orange pips, you would want to use a power that consumed those, like Sunburst or FF.
So, first pair has two useless feats.
Now, I am ok with having to choose between feats that depend on Lance of Faith and Scattering Light, as I have to choose between those At-Wills anyhow. I would just like the effects to be more generic, like “...has a chance to make your next encounter power have a 100% crit chance.” Or “...has a chance to make your next encounter power consume X% less divinity”. At any rate, something generic that is useful, no matter which powers you want to use.
Now, as the first pair of feats basically makes you choose between the two Radiant at-wills, I think it would be appropriate to have a another pair of feats that makes you choose between the two Burning at-wills in the same way.
Second pair:
Tipping Scales This feat is pretty useful for group play, where divinity management can become a real issue (in solo play you can typically finish fights before you run out of divinity). I consider this a good feat.
Heavy Sun This feat is pretty much required to make Sun Burst usable at all in group play. Sun burst is great in solo play, in particular at the lowest level .. In fact, I would consider it critical to get through the first few levels. The knockback is only an annoyance in group play, which is where you would want Heavy Sun. So, this is a good feat too. (Although there is an issue.. The description says it adds additional burning judgement stacks, but Sun Burst adds Radiant judgement).
So, you have two good feats, both of which you would want to use in group play, but you are forced to pick one. This goes right against my suggestions on how to pair feats up to support different playstyles or situations. In other words, the feats are good, but the fact that they are paired together is illogical.
Third pair:
Mendicant’s Judgement This feat was way, way overpowered, but now it is somewhat useless. The thing is, if Arbiter is using Bastion, it is typically as an emergency heal...and in that case, extra pips are not that useful. It would be better to have some bonus that was relevant to healing.
Radiant Swordbreaker With a heal-specific feat paired against this one, it would make sense for this to be a DPS-boosting or a debuffing one. The problem is that this feat requires you to use two Radiant powers, which completely locks you down there, but because of pip management you just would not be casting BtS while Geas is active. If this feat has a point, I totally fail to see it.
My suggestion, have a feat the improves the AoE effect of some encounter power, as that is sorely lacking. This would offer an appropriate choice opposite a heal-themed one. If you could make Chains actually useful for example, that would be the optimal choice...it is pretty much pointless at the moment.
Fourth pair.
Smoldering Light (see below)
Rising Light Those feats are useful, but both kind of….meh. It doesn’t really matter so much which one you pick, so the choice is not very meaningful. A hard choice would have been like one feat that boosted AP gain versus one that boosted divinity gain.
Fifth pair:
Burning Patch If you want to use Flame Strike instead of Hammer of Fate, this feat is OK.
Critical sun I really do not like the mechanism of Celestial Prominence, which makes this feat kind-of useless to me … I’ll stick with Guardian of Faith as the Radiant daily.
Again, the last pair of feats has the issue that they only apply to specific powers, and if you don't use either, the feats are utterly pointless.
Thank you for the thorough feedback! I'll be adjusting feats, hopefully in time for next week's build, so I'll be looking over this feedback thoroughly as I work on the new feats. I agree with a large number of your points, I never had a chance to iterate on the original paper design for those feats after our closed beta, so I apologize for that.
Could you pls tell me how im i supposed to survive vs PALA's instant damage? if they have full divinity, they can one shot me FOUR times in a row. Almost instant and then stay behind a shield.
Could you pls tell me how to survive vs GF GAMAGE AND CONTROL ???? Bull charge - charges me from half of the map dealing 100k? Having a SHIELD THROW every 12 SECONDS that stund me for 4 SECONDS. Anvil does 150-200k, DAily one shots me/
You said we have to be balanced damage wise????
Well, what im i supposed to be being as DPS cleric with my defence in PVP ??? I have absolutely NOTHING to avoid any damage, nor control something so i can make damage.
I mean Pala and GF can STAY behind their shield MOST of the time BETWEEN their attacks which one shot me. And THEY ALMOST LOOSE nothing of their HP.
I mean u have nurfed our Bastion to the GROUND. I have no SHIELD, i have NOTHING to protect myself, my Bastion costs a FORTUNE and heals for 50-70k ?????
Pffft, something has to be addressed seriously here....
Hi Alfalolz, thanks so much for continuing to test out PvP and provide feedback. We are looking at bringing in the high spikes of damage, and the relative survivability of tanks in PvP. Also, I understand that you're frustrated, but if you could refrain from capitalizing so many words, it actually makes it much harder to read through your feedback quickly!
I realized that Conflag was indeed updated to bring 2 pips per use. The only thing i'm no so sold on is that it cost 1.8sec to get 2 pips when sacred flame gets 2 pips in 1.2sec (according to tool tip) and now you might say that is only technically a .6 second difference but both lance and sacred flame both have .6 second casts so that is an extra at will plus an extra pip which is critical for an arbiter not to mention over time the extra DPS that will stack. Maybe get that animation down to 1.5 or severely improve the damage to equal 3 sacred at wills with an AoE effect so you get the damage and then u trade off speed of pip gain vs AoE effect on the damage
The way the arbiter is setting up to me especially in boss fights or stronger mobs is
use lance to fill fire - cast FF - get 1 yellow
if up "tip the scale" with DG to fill yellow - pray
use lance to fill fire - cast FF - get 1 yellow
the thing is there is no real viable radiant spell to compliment FF that is where i'm hoping the AOE comes into play
increase the radius of Daunting Light to that of Live Chains + increase the magnitude 50-100 or give us something new altogether
My Alt character is a Ranger and i always hated (from a cleric point of view) how the ranger class never really had circles for their spells like thorned roots just cast instant AoE damage to whatever was around while the cleric feels like everything is a circle or has to be aimed etc. Part of the problem of a Cleric keeping up in DPS is it cant compete with the instant cast times and damage of other classes. I cant tell you how many times i've went to cast a fully empowered daunting on a target and wait for the animation to have my friends with insta dmg moves kill it before my cast time. Like "if i had 5 AD for every time that happened i'd be riding on a legendary mount" kind of thing. Basically a live chains in divinity mode (cast time wise) is what i'm hoping for. Of course i want more lol (like lance to fill 2 pips) but i'm trying to keep balance of classes in mind. please consider the cast times!!! FF is great cuz its relatively instant with no circle to lay down and then wait for a cast animation you can have a 10,000 magnitude spell but if it takes 5 sec to cast everything will be dead and u will do 0 dps
just some more thoughts on the arbiter path.
Hello! Thanks for the feedback, and walking me through how you're currently playing the Arbiter. I agree that the Arbiter can be lacking relative to some other classes right now in certain situations, especially AoE where aiming is more of an element than some other classes, so I'll be looking at what adjustments can be made.
This problem is usually solved by scaling damage output with survivability as inverses, but in this game there seems to be a serious fear of reducing damage output for tanky types. Probably because of the extremely strange way they've decided threat should be based on damage.
On a related note while I don't dislike the judgement mechanic, the entire concept of requiring one class to build up damage potential over time while other classes do not need to do so creates an inherent imbalance, especially visible in pvp. Even if the end potential DPS is the same, the classes will never be able to be completely balanced in actual DPS output since time IS a factor. It's exactly the same problem DoT heavy classes have had for ages now and why burst damage has been King. Why take 5 minutes to kill a boss with class A when class B can do the same damage in 2 minutes?
Hi Kythelion, thanks for the feedback! In regards to threat relying on base damage being "extremely strange," I am perplexed by this reaction, it's a pretty standard approach for tanking in games, most tanks deal less damage than a DPS but generate additional threat with their attack actions, often also packing a few threat focused moves as well. Regardless though, we are aware of some issues with tanks in PvP and are looking at solutions, especially bringing in high burst, across not only tanks, but all classes in general.
In regards to balancing judgement against other classes: it's really not that different from other classes, keep in mind that other classes have cooldowns, so they can't unload the same encounter power 3-4x in a row and then wait minutes for it all to come back. Building judgement between using encounters isn't quite as difficult to balance against other classes and their unique mechanics. In reality, most of the discrepancies in damage (where there are discrepancies) are most likely the result of feats and the core powers magnitudes.
In regards to DoT classes being unbalanced at a fundamental level, they're actually not necessarily that big of a problem to balance either, in particular with your example of a 2 minute fight vs a 5 minute fight, as long as the fight lasts as long as the duration of your longest dot, then your DPS won't be that different. (A DoT should never be balanced to do damage slower than a normal attack over time, just that the damage will come over the course of time where the straightforward attack was on cooldown, and by the time the cooldown is up the two attacks should have done the same amount of damage.) At that point, depending on where the fight ends in the clip of your dots, you should be right alongside any other DPS, slightly below, or if the fight involved a lot of moving, slightly above.
That said, I do understand the point you are trying to make, and with exceptionally fast kill times, DoT classes can suffer because things are dead even faster than a single DoT may last. Regardless of DoTs though, I will definitely be watching carefully to make sure Cleric isn't falling behind because of their judgement mechanic. The goal is for the mechanic to be engaging and for Arbiter to deal just as much damage as other classes.
My feedback so far, from leveling my DC to level 79:
The class, running a healing spec, has been the most survivable thus far while soloing. Fairly slow at killing mobs, but to be expected from this build. I have reached the limit though for survivability with the level 79 mobs, since they did manage to beat me down. Which brings me to my next point.
The divinity "mechanic" is not good. It gets used up fairly quickly, far too quickly when soloing normal content. Then it takes way to long to recharge by using the tab key. Reminds me a LOT of old everquest 1, where you spent forever recharging in between fights. It's somewhat disappointing to see the devs repeating the sins of everquest, which was not a good game.
At least one of the at-wills needs to replenish divinity. Probably all of them, to be honest, or that one will be the goto, leaving the rest unused. It also needs to replenish fairly quickly, or the party will be in trouble in protracted boss fights.
I'm looking at some of the single target heal spells, and have no clue how you would use them in a chaotic boss fight, unless there's some macro to be provided. ( not a big fan of macroing btw ) In a game like WoW, you can click on the party member in the group list to target a heal spell - you cant do that in this game.
I join the list of people who do not approve of replacing a buff-centric playstyle with pure healing. You're going to lose a lot of players, since a healing role tends to be a lot more stressful on the player.
Thanks for the feedback, and taking the time to test the changes thoroughly on preview. In regards to single target heals, currently the only heal in this style is Intercession, and we're looking to make an improvement to this power that should make t easier to use, so please keep an eye on the patch notes.
In regards to switching from a buff-centric gameplay to healing. We are aware that some players may be frustrated enough by the changes to quit. I do hope that they (and you) will continue to watch the changes on preview, and try them out with an open mind. We're trying not to make healing too stressful for more casual content. That said, if you're really not into healing, I'd also recommend checking out the Arbiter path.
Sorry for lurking here as a dirty console player, but please keep in mind the difficulty of targeting other players for single-target heals on PS4 / xbox.
I mostly play on console myself, so it is definitely on my mind, I promise! (Also, you're not dirty! Well, I suppose you could be, but it has nothing to do with being a console player.)
@asterdahl, thank you for the change to DL for devout. I don't know if it will be a staple of my rotation, but it is now something I can swap for when heals are less needed or instead of gears for mobs without feeling like I can't use it in case I need a heal. Also, I don't mind the change to bastion in Arbiter. Still feels decent to me.</p>
I'm glad you are enjoying the changes! I agree that Bastion still feels very good for an off-heal on a DPS class, it was clearly too strong before.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
Thank you for the thorough feedback! I'll be adjusting feats, hopefully in time for next week's build, so I'll be looking over this feedback thoroughly as I work on the new feats. I agree with a large number of your points, I never had a chance to iterate on the original paper design for those feats after our closed beta, so I apologize for that.
Sounds good...looking forward to it. One thing. I have been going over the Devout, and I feel the feats there are generally in a better shape than the Arbiter feats. Not saying they are perfect, but the feats are not the main issue with the Devout (but rather the targeting of healing powers and AP/divinity generation).
In regards to balancing judgement against other classes: it's really not that different from other classes, keep in mind that other classes have cooldowns, so they can't unload the same encounter power 3-4x in a row and then wait minutes for it all to come back. Building judgement between using encounters isn't quite as difficult to balance against other classes and their unique mechanics. In reality, most of the discrepancies in damage (where there are discrepancies) are most likely the result of feats and the core powers magnitudes.
In regards to DoT classes being unbalanced at a fundamental level, they're actually not necessarily that big of a problem to balance either, in particular with your example of a 2 minute fight vs a 5 minute fight, as long as the fight lasts as long as the duration of your longest dot, then your DPS won't be that different. (A DoT should never be balanced to do damage slower than a normal attack over time, just that the damage will come over the course of time where the straightforward attack was on cooldown, and by the time the cooldown is up the two attacks should have done the same amount of damage.) At that point, depending on where the fight ends in the clip of your dots, you should be right alongside any other DPS, slightly below, or if the fight involved a lot of moving, slightly above.
That said, I do understand the point you are trying to make, and with exceptionally fast kill times, DoT classes can suffer because things are dead even faster than a single DoT may last. Regardless of DoTs though, I will definitely be watching carefully to make sure Cleric isn't falling behind because of their judgement mechanic. The goal is for the mechanic to be engaging and for Arbiter to deal just as much damage as other classes.
Hi, I get that you can cast the same encounter 3 times in a row, but then the skill will be a lot less powerful than casting it empowered, no? I like the judgement system, but the way it is now is very hard to build into a high enough amount of stacks - fast enough - to be in the same level as other DPS classes. Sure, we may not have the "official" cooldown on skills but judgement stacks and divinity is our new cooldown, in a way...
If I may suggest, there could be a feat that granted more stacks of judgement (Similar to the Sunburst feat) but then it increases the divinity cost per stack of judgement spent, so you could cast something 3-4x at regular damage OR cast the skills only 2 times in a row but both casts would be fully empowered.
I currently use BtS on the biggest target for the debuff and it makes the big guys really easy to kill, so BtS and geas are in a good state in my opinion, but we lack AoE options, so killing the small guys after are what makes the battles feel worse. I think if the area on Searing Light were greater, it would help a lot. Atm I have to keep trying to get mobs as lined up as possible but the way the AI chooses how to walk does not help at all ^^'
I'm really looking foward to see the changes in feats. Please be kind to us
Edited for cyan
Post edited by chryseos on
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silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
... Thank you for the thorough feedback! I'll be adjusting feats, hopefully in time for next week's build, so I'll be looking over this feedback thoroughly as I work on the new feats. I agree with a large number of your points, I never had a chance to iterate on the original paper design for those feats after our closed beta, so I apologize for that.
I posted this in General since I didn't want to post it in every class thread. But, since you are talking about feats:
Since we are moving away from feat trees, why not go all the way? I suggest just giving one feat point at each appropriate level and letting the player choose any of the 10 feats instead of having to choose from pairs. (You could even give back a bonus point to Humans if you are feeling generous.)
This will help with the problem of being forced to choose between 2 feats that affect powers you don't want to use. When that happens to me, I just leave that feat point unspent.
And adding new feats just means adding them to the list without having to worry about putting them in pairs and at specific levels. You can even start making generic feats available to everyone, like +2 to a specific stat.
I don't think the tiers are really necessary. With very few exceptions, the feats are highly situational so in most cases one of them isn't really any more powerful than another. For those few "better" feats, just slap on a level requirement. It shouldn't be necessary for more than 1 or 2 of them for each paragon. Probably only the ones in the last pair right now.
Sunburst effect should be changed to a blinding/disable effect, similar to Burning Light in OP (M15), that way you don't make it a detriment in higher lvl group content and still keep it as a defensive mechanism to low level clerics. It also becomes a good debuff to use in group content - on live I use a Frost enchantment because the disable it gives works as a nice defense from bigger mobs. A blinding effect makes sense in the context of the skill and the blinding effect is even better than a knock back because it can affect targets immune to movement effects. This would also remove the need to have a feat that only affects Sunburst, and that feat could be changed to give extra stacks of judgement to all AoE powers. (edit: accidentally a word there)
Hi, I get that you can cast the same encounter 3 times in a row, but then the skill will be a lot less powerful than casting it empowered, no? I like the judgement system, but the way it is now is very hard to build into a high enough amount of stacks - fast enough - to be in the same level as other DPS classes. Sure, we may not have the "official" cooldown on skills but judgement stacks and divinity is our new cooldown, in a way...
Hi Chryseos, that is precisely my point sorry for the confusion—the judgement mechanic exists to make sure you really don't want to cast your encounter three times in a row, because that's a lot of burst otherwise that puts arbiter in a weird place relative to other classes, as they'd blow a load of damage and then be sitting on their thumbs.
My point was that judgement's mechanic is not really extra punishing to the Arbiter, as it just encourages them to use their encounters at a normal pace like other classes, by giving a damage boost in doing so.
I currently use BtS on the biggest target for the debuff and it makes the big guys really easy to kill, so BtS and geas are in a good state in my opinion, but we lack AoE options, so killing the small guys after are what makes the battles feel worse. I think if the area on Searing Light were greater, it would help a lot. Atm I have to keep trying to get mobs as lined up as possible but the way the AI chooses how to walk does not help at all ^^'
I'm really looking foward to see the changes in feats. Please be kind to us
Edited for cyan
AoE is an area I am looking into making improvements to for arbiter. Thanks for the continued feedback!
... Thank you for the thorough feedback! I'll be adjusting feats, hopefully in time for next week's build, so I'll be looking over this feedback thoroughly as I work on the new feats. I agree with a large number of your points, I never had a chance to iterate on the original paper design for those feats after our closed beta, so I apologize for that.
I posted this in General since I didn't want to post it in every class thread. But, since you are talking about feats:
Since we are moving away from feat trees, why not go all the way? I suggest just giving one feat point at each appropriate level and letting the player choose any of the 10 feats instead of having to choose from pairs. (You could even give back a bonus point to Humans if you are feeling generous.)
This will help with the problem of being forced to choose between 2 feats that affect powers you don't want to use. When that happens to me, I just leave that feat point unspent.
And adding new feats just means adding them to the list without having to worry about putting them in pairs and at specific levels. You can even start making generic feats available to everyone, like +2 to a specific stat.
I don't think the tiers are really necessary. With very few exceptions, the feats are highly situational so in most cases one of them isn't really any more powerful than another. For those few "better" feats, just slap on a level requirement. It shouldn't be necessary for more than 1 or 2 of them for each paragon. Probably only the ones in the last pair right now.
edit: changed to cyan
The core design of the current feat system is that you are making an A:B choice. Some of the tiers don't exactly realize a meaningful decision right now, and that is something we are working on, but let me give you an example based on some changes coming to Barbarian Swordmaster's feats this week, just using 3 examples (out of the 5): they have one column that is focused on ST, one on AoE, and one that changes around the way their rage mechanic behaves.
If we let them pick any of those feats, they would make a build for AoE, a build for single target, and be locked into using both the powers that were enhanced for those combat situations. Also, utility style feats would be completely abandoned, and general mechanic enhancing feats could not be designed to provide opposing play styles, or mutually exclusive because they could and probably would be both taken at once.
It's not that I don't understand the sentiment, but it's actually exceptionally more difficult to balance 10 pick 5 than 5x 2 pick 1, and ultimately we'd like to provide genuinely interesting choices that allow you to differentiate yourself from someone who made the opposite choice as you. We've definitely missed the mark on some classes though, Cleric included for many of the feats, so I will be adjusting them quite a bit.
The Repeated Blessings feat does not work. I used a stopwatch and hovered over the buff tooltip to verify. No extension of the Healing Word buff is given when Bastion of Health is cast.
Extended Exaltation functions correctly, but the tooltip does not reflect the duration change. Selecting this feat should alter Exaltation's tooltip from 8s to 12s.
I feel like most of the focus has been changes on the Arbiter path and a lot of the feedback for the devout path has been an outrage over the buff removal of AC and the new "healbot" nature of the class etc
while i will wait for the next update to maybe delve in further i do have some thoughts and/or changes that could be made to the devout path that might help some, in the form of the at wills
So looking at the 4 at wills for the devout path right off the bat only 1 of them has an added bonus or buff on use and that is Blessing of Battle so to me right off the bat i'm guessing 95% of the people will be slotting that at will
i would like to see at will choice become a more balanced and difficult choice for people and to do that you could add bonuses to all 4 at wills so people will have to make a hard decision on what 2 to bring to combat so for example
Blessing of Battle - 5% outgoing healing (unchanged)
Sacred Flame - After the 3rd hit of sacred flame enemy receives -3% crit strike resistance for "x" seconds
Scattering Light - first off double or triple the magnitude of this because it basically does no damage and maybe decrease the AoE radius some to compensate or take the AoE out completely and give us an effect similar to astral shield (or just give us astral shield ) but maybe enemies receives -3% awareness for x seconds
Soothing Light - This also needs to see at least a 2x magnitude increase as it only heals one target and does no damage (or again make it astral shield like) and the bonus effect could be small increases to Divinity gain on use (ally must be healed for health)
obviously just examples and stuff can be reworked but i think a line up of 4 at wills as listed above would present the cleric with difficult decisions on what to bring to battle. do you want to go full heal with a chance at some divinity gain (for those complaining its slow) or do you go full debuff for your dps or do you play it down the middle and bring 1 debuff and 1 heal and if so then which one of each?
Having only one At will with a bonus basically forces you to run that at will. this would also give the people who are looking for some "buff/debuff" in the class a little something to feel more important in combat
another thing i would like to bring up is intercession. This seems like a last second thing thrown in to fill out the cleric encounters as it used to be called warding flare? anyway we all know how annoying and difficult it is to find that one person in the thick of battle and to have them stay still and hopefully no one cuts in the path of the cast. so i think this should be a party heal with an increased cooldown (at least 30sec) or really a daily power where the last hope cleric who is out of divinity and the party is on the brink of wipe can pop this daily and get everyone healed i just dont like seeing a lvl 80 encounter (or last encounter) be so useless or just not worth it to run as it is currently listed.
err i would like to point out that scattering light deals equal damage when you hit 3 targets and deals more damage than other at wills when you hit 4 or more. Between scattering light and daunting light i have never had any problems with large numbers of mobs. However - it is awkward to swap out your powers when you dont want scattering light slotted. If sunburst didnt have the knockback i would say use that as your 2nd area damage power (daunting light being the power we build all damage power rotations around).
Since you have taken damage off of chains, it now seems to be the unwanted child of the cleric family. I do know that a great number of high level mobs and bosses are immune to control powers - so this won't do it's intended purpose of holding things back. No one will want to use chains as a mini stun.
what about a debuff power that lowers a mobs combat advantage and crit chance (err accuracy and ...something)? it would be a great utility spell to use against bosses that have a higher than average ca an crit bonus. This feels more in line with what the dc is trying to do and keeps chains as a restraining spell.
I'm not sure what changes would be available to sunburst since the chains of blazing light change have put us in this weird zone.
Whatever is worse than being friend zoned, thats what you did to chains and risk doing to sunburst. Be that as it may, sunburst does need to change.
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
You can pick a feat that removes the knock back on Sunburst already. Not sure what else you mean by changing it.
You can pick a feat that removes the knock back on Sunburst already. Not sure what else you mean by changing it.
I think most people mean making Sunburst not knock targets back by default and replacing the feat with something else. I like the idea in this thread of replacing the knockback with a comparable form of CC that isn't as disruptive to party play but still useful for low-level solo play.
edit: to be more clear. If you are already aware that sunburst is an irritation in party play, and you want sunburst to have some relevance as a form of cc, why or you wasting a feat choice on removing knockback on sunburst, when as a developer you already realize it shouldnt be a knockback in the firsty place? there are several in game status affects that could easily replaces it.
I really don't want this to come across as complaining, i'm just talking through the various points on this issue.
the day i can cast sunburst in a high level area with no cc immune mobs (like iwd or somie trolls) and no one yells at me in chat, is the day i stop trying to convince people that sunburst needs to be changed.
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josiahiyonMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 396Arc User
Just leave default sunburst as-is, but change the feat choices for it to be something like (a) sunburst knocks back twice as far, but does no damage or (b) sunburst does not knock back, but does 2x damage.
This is entirely missing the point that we shouldn't have to waste one of our very limited and precious feat slots to make an encounter power useable past level 30. The power itself, as a base power, should be useful in some fashion to all levels and builds as written.
Comments
Of course, any group content anyone has the opportunity to participate in, ACT logs, or even just general thoughts and feedback on how it went compared to other DPS and of what item level, etc. can be very helpful.
Hi Thestia! I apologize for upsetting you with my response, I think I had the impression from your original post you weren't interested in playing a healer, which is the only reason I suggested trying out Arbiter.
In regards to Lillend and Holy Avenger, I'll be investigating both of them, there are absolutely some massive companion related bugs, and it is definitely not intended that you won't need to heal and that your companion can do all of the work. We're looking at adjusting the balance to get healing into a better spot where it's necessary to be more active. It's one of our biggest priorities in regards to healing right now.
I appreciate that you are giving yourself some time to adjust to the changes knowing your own personal aversion for change. I do hope that you'll continue to check out the changes, and that we can get healer to a place where you're happy to play as a Devout.
Hi Alfalolz, thanks so much for continuing to test out PvP and provide feedback. We are looking at bringing in the high spikes of damage, and the relative survivability of tanks in PvP. Also, I understand that you're frustrated, but if you could refrain from capitalizing so many words, it actually makes it much harder to read through your feedback quickly!
In regards to balancing judgement against other classes: it's really not that different from other classes, keep in mind that other classes have cooldowns, so they can't unload the same encounter power 3-4x in a row and then wait minutes for it all to come back. Building judgement between using encounters isn't quite as difficult to balance against other classes and their unique mechanics. In reality, most of the discrepancies in damage (where there are discrepancies) are most likely the result of feats and the core powers magnitudes.
In regards to DoT classes being unbalanced at a fundamental level, they're actually not necessarily that big of a problem to balance either, in particular with your example of a 2 minute fight vs a 5 minute fight, as long as the fight lasts as long as the duration of your longest dot, then your DPS won't be that different. (A DoT should never be balanced to do damage slower than a normal attack over time, just that the damage will come over the course of time where the straightforward attack was on cooldown, and by the time the cooldown is up the two attacks should have done the same amount of damage.) At that point, depending on where the fight ends in the clip of your dots, you should be right alongside any other DPS, slightly below, or if the fight involved a lot of moving, slightly above.
That said, I do understand the point you are trying to make, and with exceptionally fast kill times, DoT classes can suffer because things are dead even faster than a single DoT may last. Regardless of DoTs though, I will definitely be watching carefully to make sure Cleric isn't falling behind because of their judgement mechanic. The goal is for the mechanic to be engaging and for Arbiter to deal just as much damage as other classes.
I mostly play on console myself, so it is definitely on my mind, I promise! (Also, you're not dirty! Well, I suppose you could be, but it has nothing to do with being a console player.)
If I may suggest, there could be a feat that granted more stacks of judgement (Similar to the Sunburst feat) but then it increases the divinity cost per stack of judgement spent, so you could cast something 3-4x at regular damage OR cast the skills only 2 times in a row but both casts would be fully empowered.
I currently use BtS on the biggest target for the debuff and it makes the big guys really easy to kill, so BtS and geas are in a good state in my opinion, but we lack AoE options, so killing the small guys after are what makes the battles feel worse. I think if the area on Searing Light were greater, it would help a lot. Atm I have to keep trying to get mobs as lined up as possible but the way the AI chooses how to walk does not help at all ^^'
I'm really looking foward to see the changes in feats. Please be kind to us
Edited for cyan
Since we are moving away from feat trees, why not go all the way? I suggest just giving one feat point at each appropriate level and letting the player choose any of the 10 feats instead of having to choose from pairs. (You could even give back a bonus point to Humans if you are feeling generous.)
This will help with the problem of being forced to choose between 2 feats that affect powers you don't want to use. When that happens to me, I just leave that feat point unspent.
And adding new feats just means adding them to the list without having to worry about putting them in pairs and at specific levels. You can even start making generic feats available to everyone, like +2 to a specific stat.
I don't think the tiers are really necessary. With very few exceptions, the feats are highly situational so in most cases one of them isn't really any more powerful than another. For those few "better" feats, just slap on a level requirement. It shouldn't be necessary for more than 1 or 2 of them for each paragon. Probably only the ones in the last pair right now.
edit: changed to cyan
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A blinding effect makes sense in the context of the skill and the blinding effect is even better than a knock back because it can affect targets immune to movement effects.
This would also remove the need to have a feat that only affects Sunburst, and that feat could be changed to give extra stacks of judgement to all AoE powers.
(edit: accidentally a word there)
But, does Astral Shield allow movement now? I was moving using it earlier and don't have the feat. :O If so, definite yay!
My point was that judgement's mechanic is not really extra punishing to the Arbiter, as it just encourages them to use their encounters at a normal pace like other classes, by giving a damage boost in doing so. AoE is an area I am looking into making improvements to for arbiter. Thanks for the continued feedback!
If we let them pick any of those feats, they would make a build for AoE, a build for single target, and be locked into using both the powers that were enhanced for those combat situations. Also, utility style feats would be completely abandoned, and general mechanic enhancing feats could not be designed to provide opposing play styles, or mutually exclusive because they could and probably would be both taken at once.
It's not that I don't understand the sentiment, but it's actually exceptionally more difficult to balance 10 pick 5 than 5x 2 pick 1, and ultimately we'd like to provide genuinely interesting choices that allow you to differentiate yourself from someone who made the opposite choice as you. We've definitely missed the mark on some classes though, Cleric included for many of the feats, so I will be adjusting them quite a bit.
I also feel that when Primed Divinity procs, there should be a buff icon indicating as such.
I feel like most of the focus has been changes on the Arbiter path and a lot of the feedback for the devout path has been an outrage over the buff removal of AC and the new "healbot" nature of the class etc
while i will wait for the next update to maybe delve in further i do have some thoughts and/or changes that could be made to the devout path that might help some, in the form of the at wills
So looking at the 4 at wills for the devout path right off the bat only 1 of them has an added bonus or buff on use and that is Blessing of Battle so to me right off the bat i'm guessing 95% of the people will be slotting that at will
i would like to see at will choice become a more balanced and difficult choice for people and to do that you could add bonuses to all 4 at wills so people will have to make a hard decision on what 2 to bring to combat so for example
Blessing of Battle - 5% outgoing healing (unchanged)
Sacred Flame - After the 3rd hit of sacred flame enemy receives -3% crit strike resistance for "x" seconds
Scattering Light - first off double or triple the magnitude of this because it basically does no damage and maybe decrease the AoE radius some to compensate or take the AoE out completely and give us an effect similar to astral shield (or just give us astral shield
Soothing Light - This also needs to see at least a 2x magnitude increase as it only heals one target and does no damage (or again make it astral shield like) and the bonus effect could be small increases to Divinity gain on use (ally must be healed for health)
obviously just examples and stuff can be reworked but i think a line up of 4 at wills as listed above would present the cleric with difficult decisions on what to bring to battle. do you want to go full heal with a chance at some divinity gain (for those complaining its slow) or do you go full debuff for your dps or do you play it down the middle and bring 1 debuff and 1 heal and if so then which one of each?
Having only one At will with a bonus basically forces you to run that at will. this would also give the people who are looking for some "buff/debuff" in the class a little something to feel more important in combat
another thing i would like to bring up is intercession. This seems like a last second thing thrown in to fill out the cleric encounters as it used to be called warding flare? anyway we all know how annoying and difficult it is to find that one person in the thick of battle and to have them stay still and hopefully no one cuts in the path of the cast. so i think this should be a party heal with an increased cooldown (at least 30sec) or really a daily power where the last hope cleric who is out of divinity and the party is on the brink of wipe can pop this daily and get everyone healed i just dont like seeing a lvl 80 encounter (or last encounter) be so useless or just not worth it to run as it is currently listed.
Since you have taken damage off of chains, it now seems to be the unwanted child of the cleric family. I do know that a great number of high level mobs and bosses are immune to control powers - so this won't do it's intended purpose of holding things back. No one will want to use chains as a mini stun.
what about a debuff power that lowers a mobs combat advantage and crit chance (err accuracy and ...something)? it would be a great utility spell to use against bosses that have a higher than average ca an crit bonus. This feels more in line with what the dc is trying to do and keeps chains as a restraining spell.
I'm not sure what changes would be available to sunburst since the chains of blazing light change have put us in this weird zone.
Whatever is worse than being friend zoned, thats what you did to chains and risk doing to sunburst.
Be that as it may, sunburst does need to change.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
edit: to be more clear. If you are already aware that sunburst is an irritation in party play, and you want sunburst to have some relevance as a form of cc, why or you wasting a feat choice on removing knockback on sunburst, when as a developer you already realize it shouldnt be a knockback in the firsty place? there are several in game status affects that could easily replaces it.
I really don't want this to come across as complaining, i'm just talking through the various points on this issue.
the day i can cast sunburst in a high level area with no cc immune mobs (like iwd or somie trolls) and no one yells at me in chat, is the day i stop trying to convince people that sunburst needs to be changed.
Iyon the Dark