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The Minimum Wisdom Cleric - Keeping up with Changing Times for Healers
sendrien
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 0 Arc User
It's abundantly clear that Cryptic's design of the devoted cleric in Neverwinter has completely changed the rules of the game for healers. It will certainly come as a shock to many players, who have gotten used to a certain style of healing in other MMOs. However, the mechanics that Cryptic have built for the cleric class are nothing short of revolutionary. For one thing, playing the cleric is anything but simple and relaxing. It's as much of an action class as any other.
The rules have changed. So, in order to become a successful healer in Neverwinter, players must change too.
Some Background Information
A common complaint about the devoted cleric is its perceived inferiority to healing potions. After all, a healing potion can heal for 1000, 2000 or 4000, while clerics have no ability to burst heal. Burst healing is gone, and totally out the window. Instead, we have entered the era of maintenance heals and damage prevention. The best clerics I have seen in Neverwinter so far share two common characteristics: they are always looking to keep their teammates at 100% health at every given moment and they will often use their skills to prevent damage from happening to their team rather than repairing the damage after it has occurred.
What is meant by "maintenance heals"? Since clerics cannot really burst heal, an effective player will instead stack healing and regeneration effects in order to keep the party healthy. And what's the big deal about damage prevention? When you don't have big burst heals, it is often better to break an enemy's channeled attack rather than to try to heal your teammates afterwards.
Because the new goal is the upkeep of the party's health, it is much more important to have access to one's healing powers as frequently as possible, rather than to have each cast of one's power be as potent as possible.
With that in mind, let us look at some relevant cleric powers (not an exhaustive list):
Astral Seal is by far the most consistent (and most consistently overlooked) source of healing for clerics. By simply debuffing each enemy with Astral Seal at the beginning of battle and then periodically maintaining the seal on remaining enemies, all party members gain the equivalent of lifesteal for every one of their basic attacks.
Sacred Flame gives you the ability to grant temporary hit points on every third hit to any teammates standing near your target. 100 temporary hit points each to 3 teammates every 2 seconds means 300 hp you don't need to heal every 2 seconds. This at-will can reduce your healing load significantly when used properly.
Healing Word is the most obvious healing tool for the cleric. But it is limited to 3 uses in 3 seconds, after which one must wait 15 seconds for another charge to build before it can be used again. Combined with Channel Divinity, it is a very potent heal, but still limited by the 3 encounter charges, and the 3 pips on Channel Divinity.
Sun Burst is the first AoE heal a cleric has access to. However, it does not heal for much. Combined with Channel Divinity, Sun Burst can knock back multiple enemies, and interrupt certain types of charged or channeled attacks.
Bastion of Health is a large AoE heal, and can be combined with Channel Divinity for an even larger heal effect. This power suffers from a relatively long cooldown.
Guardian of Faith can be used to heal allies standing next to your target. But the heal itself is not significant, and the better use of this skill is arguably to interrupt an enemy's channeled attack and prevent damage from occurring in the first place.
Hallowed Ground buffs both offense and (more important to your concerns) defense of your whole party within a large area. This is particularly effective in a boss room or in any fight where you expect your team to be stuck in the same area for longer than normal. Because your team will take less damage during this duration, they will consequently be easier to heal.
Divine Armor grants your allies temporary hit points, which is the equivalent of the same number of hit points worth of damage mitigated. Mitigated damage, once again, is damage you don't need to heal and therefore is very desirable.
Minimum Wisdom Cleric: The Build
Below, I would like to share a cleric build with which I have found great success. In dungeon delves and other 5-member events, this build has never failed to outheal other clerics by at least 50%. (For clarity, I mean this as empirical evidence of the effectiveness of this build, rather than to imply that it is an optimal build). I call this build the Minimum Wisdom Cleric, because its distinguishing feature is that I actively seek to minimize the cleric's primary attribute: wisdom.
Race: Tiefling
Selected Attribute Bonuses: +2 INT and +2 CHA
Starting Attributes: 13 STR, 11 CON, 10 DEX, 14 INT, 15 WIS, 17 CHA
Important Feats: Domain Synergy, Bountiful Fortune, Greater Fortune, Healing Action
Equipment Priority: Power and then Recovery (levels 1-20) / Recovery then Power (levels 20+)
What's the idea of this build?
Very simply, even if you max out wisdom, the healing gain on each cast of a power is relatively small. On the other hand, by maximizing recharge speed, you are reducing the recharge time of each healing power by approximately 20% at level 20 and much more in later levels if you can find the equipment. While your heals may feel weaker, simply being able to use them so much more frequently makes your overall utility to your team much higher.
Furthermore, with lower cooldowns, you can even have the luxury of using some powers like Sun Burst to interrupt an enemy channeling a strong attack and prevent your team from suffering grievous damage.
..
Hopefully this gives everyone some ideas to work with. When I hear complaints that the cleric is too weak or does not heal enough, I feel that the class hasn't been given its proper due. The cleric, to me, is one of the best class designs in Neverwinter, and hopefully you might consider some of the ideas in this post and come to appreciate the healing potential of the cleric.
Yes, it's a drastic change in what most people are used to, but once you get used to a more action-oriented style of play, it can be extremely rewarding.
The rules have changed. So, in order to become a successful healer in Neverwinter, players must change too.
Some Background Information
A common complaint about the devoted cleric is its perceived inferiority to healing potions. After all, a healing potion can heal for 1000, 2000 or 4000, while clerics have no ability to burst heal. Burst healing is gone, and totally out the window. Instead, we have entered the era of maintenance heals and damage prevention. The best clerics I have seen in Neverwinter so far share two common characteristics: they are always looking to keep their teammates at 100% health at every given moment and they will often use their skills to prevent damage from happening to their team rather than repairing the damage after it has occurred.
What is meant by "maintenance heals"? Since clerics cannot really burst heal, an effective player will instead stack healing and regeneration effects in order to keep the party healthy. And what's the big deal about damage prevention? When you don't have big burst heals, it is often better to break an enemy's channeled attack rather than to try to heal your teammates afterwards.
Because the new goal is the upkeep of the party's health, it is much more important to have access to one's healing powers as frequently as possible, rather than to have each cast of one's power be as potent as possible.
With that in mind, let us look at some relevant cleric powers (not an exhaustive list):
Astral Seal is by far the most consistent (and most consistently overlooked) source of healing for clerics. By simply debuffing each enemy with Astral Seal at the beginning of battle and then periodically maintaining the seal on remaining enemies, all party members gain the equivalent of lifesteal for every one of their basic attacks.
Sacred Flame gives you the ability to grant temporary hit points on every third hit to any teammates standing near your target. 100 temporary hit points each to 3 teammates every 2 seconds means 300 hp you don't need to heal every 2 seconds. This at-will can reduce your healing load significantly when used properly.
Healing Word is the most obvious healing tool for the cleric. But it is limited to 3 uses in 3 seconds, after which one must wait 15 seconds for another charge to build before it can be used again. Combined with Channel Divinity, it is a very potent heal, but still limited by the 3 encounter charges, and the 3 pips on Channel Divinity.
Sun Burst is the first AoE heal a cleric has access to. However, it does not heal for much. Combined with Channel Divinity, Sun Burst can knock back multiple enemies, and interrupt certain types of charged or channeled attacks.
Bastion of Health is a large AoE heal, and can be combined with Channel Divinity for an even larger heal effect. This power suffers from a relatively long cooldown.
Guardian of Faith can be used to heal allies standing next to your target. But the heal itself is not significant, and the better use of this skill is arguably to interrupt an enemy's channeled attack and prevent damage from occurring in the first place.
Hallowed Ground buffs both offense and (more important to your concerns) defense of your whole party within a large area. This is particularly effective in a boss room or in any fight where you expect your team to be stuck in the same area for longer than normal. Because your team will take less damage during this duration, they will consequently be easier to heal.
Divine Armor grants your allies temporary hit points, which is the equivalent of the same number of hit points worth of damage mitigated. Mitigated damage, once again, is damage you don't need to heal and therefore is very desirable.
Minimum Wisdom Cleric: The Build
Below, I would like to share a cleric build with which I have found great success. In dungeon delves and other 5-member events, this build has never failed to outheal other clerics by at least 50%. (For clarity, I mean this as empirical evidence of the effectiveness of this build, rather than to imply that it is an optimal build). I call this build the Minimum Wisdom Cleric, because its distinguishing feature is that I actively seek to minimize the cleric's primary attribute: wisdom.
Race: Tiefling
Selected Attribute Bonuses: +2 INT and +2 CHA
Starting Attributes: 13 STR, 11 CON, 10 DEX, 14 INT, 15 WIS, 17 CHA
Important Feats: Domain Synergy, Bountiful Fortune, Greater Fortune, Healing Action
Equipment Priority: Power and then Recovery (levels 1-20) / Recovery then Power (levels 20+)
What's the idea of this build?
Very simply, even if you max out wisdom, the healing gain on each cast of a power is relatively small. On the other hand, by maximizing recharge speed, you are reducing the recharge time of each healing power by approximately 20% at level 20 and much more in later levels if you can find the equipment. While your heals may feel weaker, simply being able to use them so much more frequently makes your overall utility to your team much higher.
Furthermore, with lower cooldowns, you can even have the luxury of using some powers like Sun Burst to interrupt an enemy channeling a strong attack and prevent your team from suffering grievous damage.
..
Hopefully this gives everyone some ideas to work with. When I hear complaints that the cleric is too weak or does not heal enough, I feel that the class hasn't been given its proper due. The cleric, to me, is one of the best class designs in Neverwinter, and hopefully you might consider some of the ideas in this post and come to appreciate the healing potential of the cleric.
Yes, it's a drastic change in what most people are used to, but once you get used to a more action-oriented style of play, it can be extremely rewarding.
The world is not beautiful; therefore, it is.
Post edited by sendrien on
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I was contemplating a haste build as well. Seems there are scaling issues all over the place for divine (and maybe other classes too).
Obviously this is pretty well immune to scaling problems.
Power seems to scale poorly, unless the tooltips mean something other than +18 damage/heals lol
Crit is HAMSTER though! Trying Recovery/Critical next time around.
Choose Human for the extra feat points. Your stats should look something like 14str 18wis 14cha. You'll be trying to get as many crits and as much recovery as possible. The extra stamina from strength helps for dodging.
For heroic feats - 33pts -
Healing Action (for increased recovery) 5pts
Toughness (for survivability) 3pts
Domain Synergy (for increased recovery) 5pts
Weapon mastery (for crits) 3pts
Repurpose Soul (crit AOE heal splash) 3pts
Initiate of the Fiath (for crits) 5pts
Bountiful Fortune (for Divine Power buildup) 5pts
Cleanse (because for 1 pt this has the highest payoff at 10%) 1pt
Paragon Path
Bottom tree
Rightous Rage (for increased Divine Power) 5pt
Ethereal Boon (awesome tree, Divine Power based on skill recharge, which for this toon is very fast) 5pt
Oppressive Something (for debuff with Astral Seal) 5pt
Restoration Mastery (adds defense on Crits, which you should be getting lots of ) 5pt
Sovreign Justice (for survivability) 1pt
Top Tree
Rising Hope (adds to skill recharge) 5pt
Second Sight (adds Heal to Prophecy of Doom) 5pt
For Powers I suggest Divine Shield and Hallowed Ground for daily, Prophecy of Doom, Break the Spirit and Astral Shield for Encounter, and Fury of the Sun and Astral Seal for At-wills.
The idea is that you are constantly debuffing/dotting your opponents to mitigate damage, your daily and encounter powers recharge extremely fast (Prophecy of Doom and your feats help here) and you ALWAYS have Divine Power because you are always critting. Crits help your Dots a lot, and the Divine Empowered Astral Shield + the AOE crit heal splash will be all the healing you need. Not that you should be taking much damage with this build - because you should always be shielded and your opponents will always be debuffed.
Take a look through these skills and you should see A LOT of synergy. The overall goal is fast recharge on dailies, encounters, and divine power, constant debuffs and dots, and lots of survivability thru damage mitigation and defensive abilities rather than reactive healing.
You can change this build quite a bit by readjusting your gear selection and powers on-the-fly. For soloing I recommend switching your recovery gear over to lifesteal, and dropping Break the Spirit for the AOEdmg spell (glowing light or something like that?) or maybe even Sunburst or Chains just for crowd control. For bosses you might switch Break the Spirit for Forgemaster's Flame. You might also find that re-arranging a few of the Paragon Feats to add Stun to Flamestrike increases your crowd control and damage quite a bit. Some players will prefer to forego Charisma for more Strength to get their crit stat, HP and stamina higher and may alter feats accordingly.
All in all it's pretty similar to yours, it works by going for the fastest recharge time possible on all abilities and relying on crits and damage mitigation.
This is a most welcome change, for me anyways... i had no issues keeping my party alive in Cloak Tower. And to my surprise when i wasnt the only cleric in the group, i found myself at the top of the healing chart most of the time..
Bestest thread EVAR.
I tried the Triskster in beta 1... Cleric in Beta 2 and have discovered melee is NOT for me! I love my Cleric (tried the Wizard, but I love the healing of the Cleric). Thank you for this thread!
*copy/paste to Evernote*
My feelings exactly this weekend. I really loved playing a cleric. I mostly solo but for the few times I grouped for end-of-area dungeons I found that I really enjoyed keeping people's health at max while dealing damage as well. I definitely enjoyed cleric gameplay.
I learned that technique in Champions Online. At first I was concerned with hit points (Constitution) - then decided to forego that for recover power - I've been *real* happy since, so that makes total sense for Cleric in NW. As for the "maintain" rather than "repair" health: I've always known that one.
*gives a thumbs up*
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I'll have to look at some cleric vids to gauge how much action points you get back based on the heal. Try and work the minimal cool down on the Divinity stance.
Nice write up though
Considering going the same Attribute Skills and going this Heroic Feats:
2---
353-
-2-5
and Human
3--1
353-
-3-5
Human
2% Recharge Speed (from +2CHA)
2% Combat Advantage Damage Bonus (from +2CHA)
1% more Action Points at Heal
1% Crit Chance
10% Chance on Cleanse at Heal
3% Defense
vs
Tiefling
4% recharge speed (from +2INT,+2CHA)
2% Combat Advantage Damage Bonus (from +2CHA)
5% Damage if Enemy is Half Life (see as ~2,5% more Damage in PvE)
5% Power Debuff on Hit
vs
Dwarf
4% HP (from +2CON)
2% Healing, Damage, Control, Control Resist (from +2WIS)
little Chance on Avoiding Knockbacks
little Resist on DoTs
vs
Half-Elf
4% HP (from +2CON)
2% Recharge Speed, 2% Combat Advantage Damage Bonus (from +2CHA)
1% Crit Chance
1% Crit Severity (only good with high Crit Build)
1% Deflect
1% Gold Find (not really worth)
All other Races are only Cosmetic Nature. Choose what you like.
I go Human, because i think they provide more Utility then any other and 3% defense are same like 4% HP and 1 % Deflect from Half-Elf and better then the Power Debuff on Hit from Tiefling. So for me:
Human > Half-Elf > Tiefling > Dwarf > Rest (even Drow)
just my 2 cents
On the contrary, damage and healing both suffer from diminishing returns. Even if you achieve 100% critical chance, you have only increased your healing and damage by the critical multiplier.
However, as your cooldown reduction approaches 100%, your healing/minute approaches infinity. Therefore, the only stat that gets more effective at higher levels is recharge rate.
Here's a simple example to demonstrate:
Let's assume a skill that heals for 500 has a recharge time of 20 seconds.
At 0% cooldown reduction, the skill can be used every 20 seconds, or 60/20 = 3 times per minute. Healing/minute = 1500
At 10% cooldown reduction, the skill can be used every 0.9*20 = 18 seconds, or 60/18 = 3.333 times per minute. HPM = 1667
At 25% cooldown reduction, the skill can be used every 0.75*20 = 15 seconds or 60/15 = 4 times per minute. HPM = 2000
At 50% cooldown reduction, the skill can be used every 0.5*20 = 10 seconds, or 60/10 = 6 times per minute. HPM = 3000
At 75% cooldown reduction, the skill can be used every 0.25*20 = 5 seconds, or 60/5 = 12 times per minute. HPM = 6000
At 99% cooldown reduction, the skill can be used every 0.01*20 = 0.2 seconds, or 60/0.2 = 300 times per minute. HPM = 150,000
..
When combined with Power and Critical Chance as secondary stat focuses on equipment, cooldown reduction becomes extremely potent. And while no one should expect to reach 99% CDR, it proves the point that your gains increase, not diminish, the higher this stat is.
Very useful information, thank you.
Keep in mind that clerics get an area of effect heal over time spell, and with the right feat critical heals disperse additional AOE heals.
I simply wasn't willing to do the calculations for that
I will test Power and Armor Pen next beta to see if/what % they do. (guessing 1% AP = 1% dmg) but we do have a feat to increase AP.
There is most likely a sweet-spot for crit% and perhaps Power/AP is better at some point..
It felt like crits added 50%, but I have no empirical data
Can't seem to make much sense out of it:
Daunting Light-17,C[536 Entity_Dauntinglight_Zone_Divine],Astrid-17,C[532 Monster_Ogre],Daunting Light,Pn.7qb24b,Radiant,,471.523,510.859
13:03:10:00:22:21.0::mysty-17,P[100009357@5703914 mysty@l1zardo1],,*,,*,Give Power,Pn.Nwhgua,Power,,-58.3611,0
13:03:10:00:22:21.4::mysty-17,P[100009357@5703914 mysty@l1zardo1]
Healing Word,Pn.Sutp6b1,HitPoints,,-227.685,0
13:03:10:00:22:21.0::mysty-17,P[100009357@5703914 mysty@l1zardo1],
Indeed, very good post.
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Did anyone get enough recovery/crit/power to find a soft or hard cap? Most games impose such limits to maintain some balance, and I would expect to see the same here. And although the jury seems to be swaying towards recovery/crit, until we get to level cap and see the end game boss damage mitigation and crit reduction we won't really know what is best.
I completely agree. I think they have done a good job with the cleric powers. There is a good mix of attacks (single target and aoe), buff/debuffs, crowd control, and even solo play vs. group play options. So far (and it is VERY early) there doesn't seem to be any powers that are so over powered that you have to include them in a build, and some that I tried and discarded others have found good success with. All of this has me pretty excited about how the cleric is shaping up.
I'd be interested to know if this is how the math actually works in the game. Has anyone actually timed the skills to be sure?
The other common way to utilize the same sort of stat is instead of reducing the cooldown by 20%, it increases the cooldown rate by 20%. It's a subtle difference at small amounts, but the gap widens quickly as numbers increase.
For example, a 100% increased cooldown rate leads to a 50% reduction in actual cooldown. The benefit of this method is that it's impossible to reduce a cooldown to zero, making it much easier to handle stat scaling issues. It also means that instead of further points providing increased gains, relative gain remains linear throughout stat progression.
More than it demonstrates the effectiveness of recovery/charisma for cooldown reductions it demonstrates how vastly inefficient increasing your power stat is for maximum healing potential builds.
I'm not sure that's a bad thing. The strong point of clerics in this game isn't burst healing, like it is in... every other MMO with clerics. With the exception of Guild Wars 1, where cleric's real strength was in their ability to mitigate damage rather than recover it. Clerics seem to have some capacity for that here but my most effective builds have been strongly debuff oriented.
No denying that. Over 700 Power for a measly +31 damage/healing?
I think a better thing to work out would be Crit Strike vs Recovery or STR vs CHA. Though it probably wouldn't be quite so straight forward once heroic/paragon feats are added into the mix. This thread has shifted my preferred stats on gear slightly though. I'll probably end up going crit/recovery/defense instead of crit/defense/recovery.
Found this today on NW Wiki:
20% Recharge Speed is 1/1.2 ≈ 0.83333 ≈ 17.7% cooldown reduction