should i give up on cleric as dps?

pariswinters#7118
pariswinters#7118 Member Posts: 858 Arc User
in Player Feedback (PC)
mod 16 brought some big changes.....many of them to the classes and how they perform their roles. I have always played my cleric as dps because when i 1st made her my healing was irrelavant and without dps I couldn't carry new/low groups. now her dmg is far outclassed by thaumaturge wizard. should I consider changing to wizard as my main character because of the way the developers are obviously leading this game to favor this class+path above all others for dps?

Tagged:

Comments

  • lordnagy#1603
    lordnagy#1603 Member Posts: 177 Arc User
    These are the same devs that have had a love connection with GWFs for years. Now the CW gets some love.

    Class envy..just live with it like I do...a fellow Arbiter
  • fyrstigor
    fyrstigor Member Posts: 299 Arc User
    U should give up on expecting everything to change over night. Change have always been slow in Neverwinter. Some things take several mods to get fixed.

    Maybe DPS cleric will get a buff. Maybe not. I would love to see them get some DPS buffs, same with fighters and barbarians. But im patient and none of them are at a place where they are unplayable for any content, so its not like u have to change to play.
  • ecrana#2080
    ecrana#2080 Member Posts: 1,654 Arc User
    DPS Cleric wasn't supposed to do as much dps as HR/TR/CW.

    With that said, I know a handful of DPS clerics that have wiped the floor with other DPS classes in LoMM. Skill over class anyday.

    I just dusted off my DPS Cleric after shelving it for a bit. Not because I think it should be top DPS. But to see if I'll have fun playing the class. I'm not concerned with beating out wizards and eventually the wizards will get the nerf bat like everyone always does.

    It's the cycle of life.
  • frogwalloper#6494
    frogwalloper#6494 Member Posts: 821 Arc User
    edited July 2019
    Your cleric is classy.
    It's so nice to see someone not in shiny pants, courtesan jammies, or a mini jester skirt.

    Anyway -

    I don't know what it's like in the tougher content, but people often seem a little tetchy when my Arbiter focuses on dps. They still expect heals. Part of me doesn't mind. If people are struggling, I'll switch in Bastion. But part of me resents it 'cause the moment they start getting their heals they get lazy and start playing stupid, then I'm stuck kissing boo-boos.
  • namelesshero347
    namelesshero347 Member Posts: 2,109 Arc User
    My Arbiter has been has been relegated to RLQ. My Rouge, whose been the laughing stock class for many mods and is now the rock star class, is my LoMM runner.

    I've only seen an Arbiter in pug LoMM once. And he rage-quit before the first boss because the tank out-DPS him by a lot. I've never seen an Arbiter in RAQ though.
  • sobi#1980
    sobi#1980 Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    edited July 2019
    I see people in forums and to my made discussions say that AC is in a good spot. They probably playing with low skilled players and comparing there damage with them. When you start getting serious and do Lomm runs and find that a barb tank can match your dps, you notice how horrifying your damage is with so much stress over managing divinity.

    We can be a good class if they at least first make divinity more manageable in long fights. Then they can target our damage etc if we are still far behind. Single target damage is key in higher up dungeons and clerics have massive divinity issues if they run the most dps route otherwise they just have to sacrifice dmg for better divinity management.
  • sobi#1980
    sobi#1980 Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    ecrana#2080 said:

    DPS Cleric wasn't supposed to do as much dps as HR/TR/CW.

    With that said, I know a handful of DPS clerics that have wiped the floor with other DPS classes in LoMM. Skill over class anyday.

    I just dusted off my DPS Cleric after shelving it for a bit. Not because I think it should be top DPS. But to see if I'll have fun playing the class. I'm not concerned with beating out wizards and eventually the wizards will get the nerf bat like everyone always does.

    It's the cycle of life.

    I beg to differ. DPS cleric (Arbiter Cleric) is a completely different class to its counterpart DC.. We work differently and we play almost differently. Then why should we be compared to DC. We are a good DPS class, we suffer because mistakes are unforgiving and there is an element of rng that is out of our control and can seriously mess up our dmg. If they make divinity a tiny bit easier, the good players will seep out enough damage from this class.
  • adinosii
    adinosii Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
    ecrana#2080 said:

    DPS Cleric wasn't supposed to do as much dps as HR/TR/CW.

    Actually, it was. Asterdahl made it perfectly clear that all the DPS paragons of the various classes were supposed to be equally viable.

    Now, that goal is really not reachable, as you cannot balance for all types of content at the same time:
    • Solo play (some classes have an advantage, for example because they have powers that provide CA.
    • Single target (Some classes have better single-target powers than others)
    • Trash cleaning (Some classes have better AoE powers than others).
    • PvP (Not my area of expertise, but I understand there are various issues).
    Overall, though, things are decent - yes, Arbiter may be 20% below an equally geared/skilled Thaum Wizard, but we can match Rogues and Rangers and easily outperform the other DPS classes - at least that is my experience from LoMM runs.

    Personally I am happy with the performance of my Arbiter - if I can have the second-highest DPS on a smooth, fast LoMM run, it tells me the class is in a fine shape. I actually like how demanding the class is to play well - you cannot use just a mindless A-B-C rotation, and proper divinity management requires attention.

    I'm not saying the Arbiter is perfect - the pips give us a disadvantage when clearing trash, we cannot easily get CA in solo play, and some of our feats are spectacularly useless, but compared to some of the other classes, I don't think we have much to complain about.
    Hoping for improvements...
  • sobi#1980
    sobi#1980 Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    edited July 2019
    adinosii said:

    ecrana#2080 said:

    DPS Cleric wasn't supposed to do as much dps as HR/TR/CW.

    Actually, it was. Asterdahl made it perfectly clear that all the DPS paragons of the various classes were supposed to be equally viable.

    Now, that goal is really not reachable, as you cannot balance for all types of content at the same time:
    • Solo play (some classes have an advantage, for example because they have powers that provide CA.
    • Single target (Some classes have better single-target powers than others)
    • Trash cleaning (Some classes have better AoE powers than others).
    • PvP (Not my area of expertise, but I understand there are various issues).
    Overall, though, things are decent - yes, Arbiter may be 20% below an equally geared/skilled Thaum Wizard, but we can match Rogues and Rangers and easily outperform the other DPS classes - at least that is my experience from LoMM runs.

    Personally I am happy with the performance of my Arbiter - if I can have the second-highest DPS on a smooth, fast LoMM run, it tells me the class is in a fine shape. I actually like how demanding the class is to play well - you cannot use just a mindless A-B-C rotation, and proper divinity management requires attention.

    I'm not saying the Arbiter is perfect - the pips give us a disadvantage when clearing trash, we cannot easily get CA in solo play, and some of our feats are spectacularly useless, but compared to some of the other classes, I don't think we have much to complain about.
    We are on the same page when you say that all DPS paragons were made to be equally viable. But then you mention about how difficult managing divinity is and yet our damage is still below the top dps classes. It sounds contradictory because we are definitely not 2nd on the damage charts. Rogue/Wiz/barb/Ranger (in order) will beat you in damage and other than barb, the rest would have put less effort. Assuming we are talking about equally geared and at skill ceiling. Also, Rogue is at the top for most DPS, you are definitely missing on something if you think you can manage a rogues damage at skill ceiling.

    I know that Fighters are probably the ones that have the right to complain the most, maybe Warlocks after because they are below in healing and dps route but their dps path is not far off from us and doesn't require as much effort too. Then i would say that Arbiter cleric has every right to complain as pallies are doing fine in every route. DC is way too boring for us to play all the time and pallies still beat us at higher lvls of play and AC at higher level really needs to play at skill ceiling to be effective.

    You can test the most dps build for single target on your AC, using ACT, and tell me what damage per second you get. Now try to maximise this damage by pumping more divinity and tell me how hard it becomes and what your dps now is? It's simple, all we need is more divinity and its a damn easy change for Cryptic. Simple ways of doing this are:

    1) Reduce divinity cost on some encounters i.e. DL costs way too high and FF is a tad bit higher than acceptable.

    2) Allow us to get more divinity back when we tab. The class feature that gives you back 10% divinity everytime you tab could be changed to 25% and/or Critical insight could provide 25 divinity back instead of 10. The other useless class features could provide alternative form of damage instead of the awful Divine Equilibrium feature, as if we don't have enough to deal with, they now put another requirement of keeping our divinity close to half (ufff).

    3) They could alternative remove some feats like angle of death though PB is way too good to let go. But i have previously mentioned that reducing Angle of deaths stacks to 10-15 or so would open many build paths by itself.

    4) I would say that our at-wills should be made faster for how reliant we are on them. We are way too squishy to be building pips whilst standing still and getting beaten up. This would also help to regen div using pips.


    Lastly, another thing we lack is aoe burst damage, flame strike daily just lasts way too long and is not effective at all on trash. On bosses we have enough ST dailies. Celes Prom is also way too slow and 600 AOE is not good at all. Number 4 above could also help with this as we can release SJ with more stacks faster that way.

  • adinosii
    adinosii Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
    edited July 2019
    sobi#1980 said:

    We are on the same page when you say that all DPS paragons were made to be equally viable. But then you mention about how difficult managing divinity is and yet our damage is still below the top dps classes. It sounds contradictory because we are definitely not 2nd on the damage charts. Rogue/Wiz/barb/Ranger (in order) will beat you in damage and other than barb, the rest would have put less effort. Assuming we are talking about equally geared and at skill ceiling. Also, Rogue is at the top for most DPS, you are definitely missing on something if you think you can manage a rogues damage at skill ceiling.

    Well, my data set is limited, of course - the only group content I am running these days is LoMM - typically with other 24K+ people, and different combinations of classes and never the same group of players. I don't really have a way to judge their playing skill - all I know is that I never outperform Wizards, but generally see less than a 5% difference between me and Rogues/Rangers - sometimes they outperform me - sometimes I outperform them - and I typically outperform Barbarians, Fighters and Warlocks. Who knows...may be I am just running with less skilled players - I don't know, but all I am really saying is that personally I am happy with the Arbiter.

    I am really looking forward to Mod 17, because the CA radius changes will allow me to engage in my favourite ranged playstyle full-time, without suffering from a penalty, compared to the melee classes. The same will apply to others who enjoy ranged combat, which might make the melee DPSers fall a bit behind...I expect fighters in particular to complain louder after mod 17 arrives.

    What I do notice, however, is that your Power rotation seems VERY different from what I am using, so, maybe that's the basic reason for the difference we are seeing.
    Hoping for improvements...
  • fyrstigor
    fyrstigor Member Posts: 299 Arc User
    pariswinters#7118 said:

    adinosii said:



    I am really looking forward to Mod 17, because the CA radius changes will allow me to engage in my favourite ranged playstyle full-time, without suffering from a penalty, compared to the melee classes.

    could be a game changer. I do ok with my dps, but i always play at range, I know I don't have CA like 90% of the time, but hey, i'm not getting attacked or if I do I can see it coming and dodge. I am really hoping this makes the clerics dps much more even with the other dps classes. It's 100% more damage.
    So u complain about the cleric doing to low dmg. And then u tell us u play without CA 90% of the time.

    This just goes to show that 99% of the time when a class cant do dmg its because of player error.
  • durugudesu
    durugudesu Member Posts: 555 Arc User
    > @fyrstigor said:
    > I am really looking forward to Mod 17, because the CA radius changes will allow me to engage in my favourite ranged playstyle full-time, without suffering from a penalty, compared to the melee classes.
    >
    > could be a game changer. I do ok with my dps, but i always play at range, I know I don't have CA like 90% of the time, but hey, i'm not getting attacked or if I do I can see it coming and dodge. I am really hoping this makes the clerics dps much more even with the other dps classes. It's 100% more damage.
    >
    > So u complain about the cleric doing to low dmg. And then u tell us u play without CA 90% of the time.
    >
    > This just goes to show that 99% of the time when a class cant do dmg its because of player error.

    And they expect to still outperform the damage of tanks/healers with all max enchants and everything even with their poor performance as a dps just because they are a "dps" class role?

    Thats like playing darts at point blank range, and then expecting to still do better/stay the same at lets say, against someone who has always been 1 meter away and the said player has changed from point blank to like 5 meters.

    That doesnt happen overnight, not without tons of practice and advice from other players but it requires you to be open to changes and criticism, which you made clearly with all these recent posts, that you are not and just cannot accept the fact that the problem lies not with the class, but on how you utilize it.
  • adinosii
    adinosii Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
    pariswinters#7118 said:

    could be a game changer. I do ok with my dps, but i always play at range, I know I don't have CA like 90% of the time

    THat would account for a good chunk of your lack of DPS. I mean, attacking at range is the natural thing to do as a cleric when playing solo - unless you have a cooperative non-augment summoned companion, like the blink dog, you will not have CA anyhow. However, in a group, when melee players bunched up around the opponent, you will suffer a very significant drop in DPS in comparison if you are more than 20 feet away. Now, this is supposed to get changed in Mod 17, and at that time, ranged combat will be viable - but right now it just isn't.

    As I said, I am looking forward to this, because I really like that playing style - I just don't use it at the moment because the loss in DPS would be too significant.

    Hoping for improvements...
  • nigantar
    nigantar Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 28 Arc User
    if u wanna be top dps go for cw...that easy ;)
  • sobi#1980
    sobi#1980 Member Posts: 401 Arc User
    imagine a wizard in mod 17 with 80ft of CA. They need a nerf.
  • thefabricant
    thefabricant Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
    Imagine being so upset about losing on paingiver that you make an I quit thread because of it.
    sobi#1980 said:

    imagine a wizard in mod 17 with 80ft of CA. They need a nerf.

    Good players had CA already and will continue to stand in melee range to be hit by heals. This changes nothing.
    Our Imaginary Friends are better than yours.

Categories