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devoted cleric - level 50 raid healing, power/crit build
joeldgn
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 76
edit: character name 'Roll'
First my build:
Stats: race Tiefling, everything in cha/str with an extra 1 in wis. (didn't write them down, but it was something like cha 22, str ~19, wis 18)
I started with mostly cha/recovery for quicker heals while leveling, but later switched to full power/crit build (power at ~1700, crit at 1600 with recovery ~900)
Feats - Paragon/Faithful mix with faithful final (4th pip)
must have feats:
- 'power of life' (astral seal more healing)
- 'linked spirit'
- healing action
- domain synergy
- repurpose soul
- bountiful fourtune
Powers:
at will:
astral seal rank 3 (must be at 3)
lance (rank 1), this is only to generate divine power
encounter:
sun burst 3
healing word 3
chains of blazing 3
daunting light 3 (must have)
bastion of health 3
astral shield (level 50 skill, this one is your key skill even at rank 1)
Daily powers:
hallowed ground 3
divine armor 3
Path powers (you can change these, the spots are small but you can drag alternates to them):
healers lore 3
soothing word 3 (I think that is the name, the anti-aggro one, you 'need' to drag this over the foresight one which is default and is so small it is hard to tell what is there next to the divinity on/off indicator)
Use:
As a NW cleric your main job is keeping astral seals on mobs, every mob. This cannot be stated more strongly. Healing in this game stacks on those seals, they are the cornerstone.
The power/crit build worked great in icespire and soul, the only issues I ran into were occasionally gaining aggro in the last part of the icespire boss fight where you get the three large golems chasing you around if the tanks don't grab aggro on them. Otherwise, nobody ever dropped below 80% on me.
With this build, the main idea is to build divinity quickly and keep laying down the divine versions of 'astral shield' which heals like flipping mad and blocks incoming damage. When possible, dropping bastion of health on the party (use the divinity version if you need a better boost). You can drop hallowed ground or divine armor as needed, these charge up fast in dungeons so apply liberally.
I would not keep healing word on my bar for a party (leveling I do), much better to have sun burst on for the divnity version which blows back mobs if your aggro gets out of hand (also heals nearby party members) or keeping chains on to slow mobs.
In dungeons my bar looked like: (lore/soothing features) 'Q'-bastion, 'E'-chains, 'R'-Astral shield with lance and seal on at will. '1' - hallowed ground, '2' -divine armor, 3/4/5 pots 4k/6k/tidespan
Was a lot of fun in dungeons, my best experience ever as a healer in a game, you have to keep on your toes and trying to keep seals on everything can be tricky when people are dragging adds off to the side.
First my build:
Stats: race Tiefling, everything in cha/str with an extra 1 in wis. (didn't write them down, but it was something like cha 22, str ~19, wis 18)
I started with mostly cha/recovery for quicker heals while leveling, but later switched to full power/crit build (power at ~1700, crit at 1600 with recovery ~900)
Feats - Paragon/Faithful mix with faithful final (4th pip)
must have feats:
- 'power of life' (astral seal more healing)
- 'linked spirit'
- healing action
- domain synergy
- repurpose soul
- bountiful fourtune
Powers:
at will:
astral seal rank 3 (must be at 3)
lance (rank 1), this is only to generate divine power
encounter:
sun burst 3
healing word 3
chains of blazing 3
daunting light 3 (must have)
bastion of health 3
astral shield (level 50 skill, this one is your key skill even at rank 1)
Daily powers:
hallowed ground 3
divine armor 3
Path powers (you can change these, the spots are small but you can drag alternates to them):
healers lore 3
soothing word 3 (I think that is the name, the anti-aggro one, you 'need' to drag this over the foresight one which is default and is so small it is hard to tell what is there next to the divinity on/off indicator)
Use:
As a NW cleric your main job is keeping astral seals on mobs, every mob. This cannot be stated more strongly. Healing in this game stacks on those seals, they are the cornerstone.
The power/crit build worked great in icespire and soul, the only issues I ran into were occasionally gaining aggro in the last part of the icespire boss fight where you get the three large golems chasing you around if the tanks don't grab aggro on them. Otherwise, nobody ever dropped below 80% on me.
With this build, the main idea is to build divinity quickly and keep laying down the divine versions of 'astral shield' which heals like flipping mad and blocks incoming damage. When possible, dropping bastion of health on the party (use the divinity version if you need a better boost). You can drop hallowed ground or divine armor as needed, these charge up fast in dungeons so apply liberally.
I would not keep healing word on my bar for a party (leveling I do), much better to have sun burst on for the divnity version which blows back mobs if your aggro gets out of hand (also heals nearby party members) or keeping chains on to slow mobs.
In dungeons my bar looked like: (lore/soothing features) 'Q'-bastion, 'E'-chains, 'R'-Astral shield with lance and seal on at will. '1' - hallowed ground, '2' -divine armor, 3/4/5 pots 4k/6k/tidespan
Was a lot of fun in dungeons, my best experience ever as a healer in a game, you have to keep on your toes and trying to keep seals on everything can be tricky when people are dragging adds off to the side.
Post edited by joeldgn on
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I agree I also had a great time healing with the Cleric one of the best experiences in a long time! Cant wait for the 25th!!!
Yea, I as well. Once I figured out about the path skill and that you could drag the anti-aggro one onto those tiny little boxes to make them active all my aggro issues evaporated and I felt kind of silly. Those things need to be obvious that they are changeable.
What Class Are You?
What do you mean? What tiny little boxes? I hope I haven't missed another game mechanic (didn't work out Divinity until I was in my 20s).
There is two little yellow boxes to the left of your encounter powers, between the encounters and your divinity tab icon. You slot your Class Features (passives) in there. These include Healer's Lore, Sooth, Foresight, etc... You have to pick two to slot in there. If you never changed them while leveling odds are you were running with Healer's Lore and either Sooth or Divine Fortune since those are the first three you get.
I found an older screenshot (they are smaller now) and annotated it here http://i.imgur.com/RzmLqUG.png
Basically the skills that are like yellow and are class 'path' skills I think (or maybe features). I thought they were passive skills until I started looking at the interface and realized that you can swap those out.
What Class Are You?
Divine fortune and healers lore are the two you start with with one point each.
What Class Are You?
Let me say I don't like Sooth. I didn't have many aggro issues in BWE4. If you experience aggro troubles, then slot it, but otherwise I prefer either Foresight (when improved, it decreses damage your party takes by 10%!) or that other passive that lets you build Divinity with your healing spells.
If you have Bastion of Health, Healing Word would probably not be of any use. Key word is probably, I didn't get to test it so don't trust me too much on this. In the end, the setup I would be going with is:
At-wills: Sacred Flame, Astral Seal | or | Lance, Astral Seal (for movement-heavy fights when you can't cast Sacred Flame 3 times in a row)
Encounters: Forgemaster's Flame, Bastion of Health, Astral Shield | or | Healing Word, Bastion of Health, Astral Shield (pretty much requires you to have Divine Fortune because you have no offensive encounters)
Dailies: Hallowed Ground, Divine Armor
Passives: Healer's Lore, Foresight
What are your thoughts?
By the way,
Charisma and Strength I do get, but why just ONE point in Wis? Do you reach some cap by spending a point in it? I thought it was either you go the full Wisdom route or you disregard it, I don't get the one point decision.
I was going the full divine route, so get the 4th pip, and all the skills to generate more divine power to keep running astral shield on my team.
Sacred Flame you need to be single focused and I was trying to keep seals on everything, it is great when you are just out there leveling but in a raid lance is fine.
I did not find Forgemaster's Flame interesting so didn't take it, how did it work in dungeons?
As for the the passives, Healers lore is a 10% increase in heals, and Sooth really kept the aggro down (when coupled with the feats for it). As I said I had minimal issues with heal aggro this BW.
Wisdom was my first pick, then I started getting serious about the build and researching. Also, because of old D&D rules (been a gamer for a long while) for some reason 18 is the 'magical number' for a stat in my head. Anyway, if redone I would have tossed it on str for the power increase.
What Class Are You?
I didn't get to a level high enough to test Forgemaster's Flame, but everyone refers to it as an excellent heal if not one of our best heals so I put it in my build.
As for seals, I tend to only keep them on elite mobs because the rest dies quickly, so I have the time to use Sacred Flame. The only problm with it, and a very annoying one, is that it only grants temp PH on the last hit, so if you need to move around a lot it's not the best pick, Lance is better (faster cast = more Divinity, more damage).
That's what I'm planning on doing as well.
I will try it out when I get back there after we are back in on the 25th
In raids just toss seals on everything, then anyone doing AOE's will get a ton of ticks and stay healthy, there is the feat to increase the healing from the seals which worked well in practice, as long as people keep beating on mobs they can practically heal themselves.
I noticed it also helps that everyone in the later raids had a devoted cleric companion as well, so we would always be rolling with five extra healbots.
What Class Are You?
Pretty much this, and the feat line that adds stun to your Flame Strike is pretty damned nice as well, plus it's in the paragon feat path that adds a ton to your Channel Divinity build-up.
I have two clerics. One for damage, one for heals. neither is really that much more ineffective on the other path compared to the other one. It comes down to numbers. With what appears nothing to really pay in game money for except healing pots and skill kits, no one cares about spending their money on healing pots, so a cleric having to keep the party healed is now a moot point. Most games, you want the cleric because it costs more money to self heal than to let the cleric heal and u end up running out of in game money very quickly. So clerics are needed for heals.
Unfortunately, certain heals generate far more agro, than simply casting a pure damage spell, so there is little incentive to actually use heal spells. However, one must keep in mind that this game is now about 3 types of play. Solo, Grouped dungeons, and PvP. Your cleric plays differently in each environment due to how the devs have it coded. So as it stands, the pure damage cleric truly is the only way to go to be successful in all three. The cleric has been built from ground up to be a damage dealer with healing as a secondary attribute to the class. This cleric is not a true healer. So the question for all clerics will be, how much do u wish to gimp your damage, to increase your healing capabilities. As stated previously, it's not a one to one ratio. Simply keeping astral seal and one other heal spell at rank 3, truly is all u need. So if I create your cleric to be damage spec'ed and keep those two spells, how much better can u truly make your pure healing cleric over mine? and still be effective on your main calling which is damage.
I would love to play a real healer too but cryptic does everything in their power to prevent that. I was only lvl 38 but so far the best heal I found was forgemasters flame. Thats the sad point, your pure heals heal less than a dmg skill.
Also I played most of the time with a gwf. While his dmg got better in higher lvls I would say my ae dmg was higher most of the time. Thats also sad.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
If that is not viable under any circumstances, well, then I might try the offensive cleric path, even though I can't stand playing as a damage dealer.
It will be perfectly viable to be a full-healer. That's why there's a Paragon feat tree dedicated to it. TBH, however, I have yet to see a fight difficult enough to warrant a full-healer. Even as the only Cleric in a party and specced for max damage (Power/Crit) my allies never dropped and rarely fell below 50% hp. I was at the most risk because I was often out of range of my Repurposed Soul procs. So a full-healer will likely be safer, as your heals will be more powerful and will affect you in their casting, but likely you will just make the fights last longer.
I will be going for full-dps spec for leveling at the very least, and might stick to it at endgame. I want to spec my Cleric out as survivable as possible, which would mean the Rightous path, for when I reach endgame PvP. The top tier chance-to-be-healed-on-hit effect is really cool.
You and me both. I love playing the main healer, that makes everything else happen (by keeping everyone else alive through catastrophe). I had a pretty solid pure healing build for 50, but I'll probably be 60 2-3 days after launch, at which point I'll figure out my most advantageous pure heal build, and rest assured I'll post what I find.
Forgemaster's + A Seal + div. powered A shield + healing word = lol heals, is all I will say for now.
Exactly, the point being is that I respec'd at 50 to try out a pure healer build to see what I could do with it and how it would help on the level 50+ raids where the parties wiped a few times. People here talking about how healers should do damage, yea.. We are probably the best AOE class out there and some of the best damage dealers as well (shhh) but on the flip side, being a pure healer on those level 52 raids was actually very much needed, anyone saying otherwise has clearly not played that content and is talking speculation.
What Class Are You?
That means people have to learn how to play that content better. The design of the class clearly shows we are not "healers" in the old understanding of holy-trinity type healing. If you REQUIRE a true healer, than you are doing it wrong, it is that simple. The game is about maintenance and prevention.
In true action RPG you get abilities to avoid and you will see in games like Tera the healer preferred by the skilled is the one that provides buffs not the one that is a pure healer with big heals. Because true action = ability to evade, truly evade and be in control of your own health and destiny. I get bored on my priest in that game with my skilled guildies... I've been experimenting with short-manning and no-healer groups to keep things interesting because skilled people do not require a healer. And skilled people want more DPS, not a nanny.
I actually at level 50 had little issue keeping people healed in the 50+ content using just astral seal and healing word. Most would disagree with me, but I enjoy healing word and had little trouble targeting those who needed healing. With all the other spells and debuffs tossed around, there was nothing but heals going off as they attacked mobs. Even all the temp hps and smaller heals all added up. Including some crit heals hitting 18k with healing word. True, it's an over time heal, but damage isn't that hard to avoid in most cases once a huge strike is dealt. The problem was, tossing astral seal draws agro, unless u keep sooth equipped at rank 3. It's almost a mandatory slot for healing in dungeons and skirmishes. I also started tossing healing word pre-emptive as soon as the GF or Rogue took damage, and not waiting till they were down 20-40% to start attempting to heal.
I would have to disagree with aoe damage. My aoe damage came no where near that of a CW and I was never on the top of the leader board in damage dealt. I ran with a group of experienced gamers, and our CW was a damage fanatic always topping the damage board over that of even the rogue due to all the AoE damage. The rogue hands down took a single boss or mini boss out faster than anyone, but even that damage could not add up to the CW's total damage from AoE's.
Running with the same group of people, like you will typically at end game, helps u develop a play style and anticipate what will be happening.
I am not saying you are wrong, but I had to try out the build, though I should point out that I clearly noticed that people 'really' liked having a healer around that could keep them alive, though maybe they are just not 'skilled' or something.
What Class Are You?
Read skilled as meaning experience with class and content, not to mean simply skilled players.
People always prefer a healer when learning content and gaining experience, until they reach the level of skill with class, evades and encounters that they do not require much in terms of healing.
Also I would say that people who are used to other games and ignore their HP bars completely in mmos cause someone else is in charge of it will always prefer having a healer. Does not say anything about efficiency or success of a build that people want to still play with someone else taking care of them. I enjoy a game that requires more self-awareness and general team awareness from players, even the DPS. It will take time for people to clue in to paying attention to the debuffs on mobs and which would be most beneficial to hit or which are priority, etc. And some people will simply not want to adapt and will want to play like any other holy trinity game. I saw that in GW2, people who don't want to take care of themselves, will still take it in the face and depend on those more aware to keep them safe... I was a guardian, I know full well how the necros wouldn't sacrifice minions to self-heal for the almighty dps, etc. I see it even in Tera... I pug, just because they have evades, doesn't mean you will not meet those who will take every hit to the face. And I ... there is no other word for it... carried all these people that don't want to adapt to being self-sufficient. That's what you can do as a class with heals or shields, even if the game gives tools for all of us to be self-sufficient.
I hope this game does not degrade to that, I'll do what I do in DDO and not bring my cleric out to pugs who insist that I babysit their health bars instead of doing damage, mitigation and some heals. Nothing is more annoying than a skilled player that can solo content when I'm not around becoming a drooling "hjeal me" pretend barbarian sponge just cause I have Heal spell.
I think I went off topic. LOL
Naa.. I was in GW2 as well, and was a bounty hunter (oddly, the sith healing class) in SWTOR, as well as healing in multiple other games as it is a class I like, and in my gaming group of friends I have always done healing/support roles in the various games we have played. So, yea I understand and I was running pug groups all through this and a lot of people were not dodging out of the way of big hits because I was able to keep them healed which is kind of annoying because of heal aggro and that everyone knows we have had heal aggro issues..
What Class Are You?