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Here We Go Again... Cleric Tanks
agrias34
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 71
So I've seen some improvements to the whole issue of clerics having wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much aggro in group content, and the sooth can now go up to 40% less threat, but it still seems very out of tune.
I'm only at level 40 currently, but I've done every single skirmish and dungeon up to this point. Each dungeon and skirmish, I'm always the one with the highest threat, all of the aggro, trying my best to spam my potions and kite 5-10+ elite mobs, while the tank spams their enforced threat skill and cleaving all of the mobs to try to get them off of me. Nothing seems to work.
I use my astral seal on the boss and some ads to get the passive healing rolling for everyone damaging the enemies, and boom, instant aggro, everything runs to me, even after the tank uses the enforced threat ability, their tab ability which marks and is supposed to build threat, and damaging most of them with cleave/other aoe's.
What I'm having to do now is just take full damaging skills, no healing at all just so that I can live and not have to buy 50+ injury kits to heal all my injuries. It isn't fun waiting 4 minutes at a campfire to remove injuries while your group waits for you, because they aren't the ones dying, us clerics are. And having to spend 10 silver to cure 1 wound, which isn't much, but nonetheless, it adds up at the lower levels.
What I also don't understand, are the rogues or wizards who are doing major damage to the mobs, 1k hits and constant damage even from their at-wills and encounters, aren't ever getting aggro over a flimsy healer who heals for like 100hp with sun burst. You mean to tell me that my 100hp heal generates more threat than a 3,000 damage crit or damage from the dps'ers? Something just isn't right.
Please take a look into this issue, as of right now I'm totally demoralized because I want to heal without being punished so heavily. I'm forced to basically play full DPS cleric so I don't die 10 times per dungeon. If I wanted to tank, I'd play a Guardian, not my cleric.
Can anyone else relate? Anyone level 60 doing the higher dungeons having the same issue or is it completely different? Like I said, I noticed some small difference in aggro from the beta weekends, but it is still out of whack.
TL;DR Cleric aggro 2 high with healing, anyone else having similar problems? Can any level 60 clerics comment please about their experiences with the level 60+ dungeons?
I'm only at level 40 currently, but I've done every single skirmish and dungeon up to this point. Each dungeon and skirmish, I'm always the one with the highest threat, all of the aggro, trying my best to spam my potions and kite 5-10+ elite mobs, while the tank spams their enforced threat skill and cleaving all of the mobs to try to get them off of me. Nothing seems to work.
I use my astral seal on the boss and some ads to get the passive healing rolling for everyone damaging the enemies, and boom, instant aggro, everything runs to me, even after the tank uses the enforced threat ability, their tab ability which marks and is supposed to build threat, and damaging most of them with cleave/other aoe's.
What I'm having to do now is just take full damaging skills, no healing at all just so that I can live and not have to buy 50+ injury kits to heal all my injuries. It isn't fun waiting 4 minutes at a campfire to remove injuries while your group waits for you, because they aren't the ones dying, us clerics are. And having to spend 10 silver to cure 1 wound, which isn't much, but nonetheless, it adds up at the lower levels.
What I also don't understand, are the rogues or wizards who are doing major damage to the mobs, 1k hits and constant damage even from their at-wills and encounters, aren't ever getting aggro over a flimsy healer who heals for like 100hp with sun burst. You mean to tell me that my 100hp heal generates more threat than a 3,000 damage crit or damage from the dps'ers? Something just isn't right.
Please take a look into this issue, as of right now I'm totally demoralized because I want to heal without being punished so heavily. I'm forced to basically play full DPS cleric so I don't die 10 times per dungeon. If I wanted to tank, I'd play a Guardian, not my cleric.
Can anyone else relate? Anyone level 60 doing the higher dungeons having the same issue or is it completely different? Like I said, I noticed some small difference in aggro from the beta weekends, but it is still out of whack.
TL;DR Cleric aggro 2 high with healing, anyone else having similar problems? Can any level 60 clerics comment please about their experiences with the level 60+ dungeons?
Post edited by agrias34 on
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I normally run with one person so called baby sitting me always helping me if adds come my way. I do notice guardians are good at times they keep boss away but issue still lies with adds/elites. Maybe guardian needs more aggro pull to fix this?
So sounds like a Tank issue to me.
it's not a tank issue if the dps doing more damage than you are not taking any damage.
run i just did level 26 dungeon whatever it's called. two cw's did 800k damage each. i did 200k healing. i took the most damage because EVERYTHING was on me constantly just from astral seal spam.
that's with 3 point soothe and 3 points in the threat reducing feat.
Thread here
He also states in his post further down the thread that ("Unfortunately with the way things are now there just doesn't seem to be any good way to keep the adds off the cleric"). So it basically goes along with this thread showing that he built his character this way a bit tankier because there are threat problems and he can't ever go without them being on him.
That's what I'm trying to have happen, but they need feedback, and this is the only way to do it. So please, leave your feedback and your experiences with this issue so we can get something going for the betterment of us clerics.
Last night (both having guardian's packs) we ran a level 16 Cloak tower. I ended up having to just do out of combat healing and hallowed ground in order to keep mobs off of me, despite his best attempts (and he was ready for the "cleric offtank" scenario). Seems like astral seal is pretty terrible for aggro still, as well as Sunburst. Strangely, HW doesn't pull aggor that badly (in my estimation). Note that I only had Soothe, no points in threat reduction.
However, my level 30 CW uses the cleric companion as a tank, because one cast and no matter what powers or crits I get from chill strike (no threat reduction with him, at all), she gets the mob love when soloing.
Once people understand that the cleric grabs add aggro, and that the tank just isn't designed for that, Damage classes will make adds the priority and it will be a non-issue. If this continues to be a problem for you then just run with a damage dealing friend or two.
Keeping the cleric alive is more about the rogues killing bigger adds, the wizard controlling stuff, and the GWF AoEing small adds... While the GUardian handles the most dangerous mob and pulls other aggro when possible.
This game is more of a team effort where everyone has a particular job, than a simple tank taking all the aggro and DPS mowing it down.
Once people realize that they'll stop making HAMSTER posts comparing their DPS to rogues and pretending their classes are worthless. This isn't that type of game.
I could spec for agro reduction, but heals would take a decent hit.
Then again, our group was 1 GF, 2 GWF, 1 TR, and my cleric, so we had almost no CC.
Treat your class as a damage dealer first, and healer second. That's how they made the cleric. live with it. It's ok to let your tanks quaff hp pots, our role is no longer to keep them from doing so. And where are the other classes??? My CW friend stands by and does one thing, make sure all mobs attacking ME, the cleric, are controlled
Think outside the box with this cleric, cause it's no longer the tab and heal cleric of most MMO's. So don't play it as such.
Also, when you've got some annoying elite (or three) on you, it is probably better to drag them to a rogue than to a tank. The rogue is going to finish them off way faster.
I don't know, that sounds exactly like a game issue to me.
We'll even if true, people should be able to give feedback if they don't agree with it.
This works well for me. In my entire time levelling up to 32 I have maybe used 5 pots, I personally don't have any issue, but I mostly run with guild groups who are more organized than the average pug.
Makes me not feel even a tank although i always take way more damage overall then rest of group, still tank but not feel like tanking.
I will tell you why it is a direct tank issue.
Because a Guardian Fighters threat building abilities are not building enough threat, secondly, how is the tanks spec? Anyone bother to ask? Anyone bother to look if GW's have threat building feats + powers?
How do we know this? Because Man-at-Arms can hold agro fine, yet PC characters can't? Hmmm, this boils down to two possible sceanrios:
I might start a GW out over the weekend and test it out myself.
^This in a nut shell.
Too many hypoactive kids playing today who have ADD running in foaming at the mouth screaming sparta before the tank even gets to the mob then crying a river cause they cant hold agro blaming mechanics.
I COULD NOT HOLD THREAT AT ALL.
Something is wrong with this scenario, the stupid NPC was keeping agro from me and no matter what (even when using my taunt every cooldown + everything else), it was impossible to peel the boss off of him until other adds spawned and he switched targets to tank those.
This is insane, I remember this being an issue before and supposedly it was fixed, but the thing is, it is not.
And for the record, I play a tank in every game; I know how to use my abilities - I read the descriptions, I know what to do.
Cryptic is there going to be any adjustment to this? I understand not being able to aoe tank everything, but holy HAMSTER, at least let us tank one mob without bashing our head in frustration.
Your main threat comes from marking targets which increases the threat done to the target and reduces damage/increases damage taken on the marked targets. Marked targets have a big red "X" over their head. Sounds good right?
You can increase Mark by passively generating threat on Marked targets as well as generating an additional 100% threat to the target while it's marked as well. Sounds better right?
Well here's the infuriating part. Mark goes away the minute the target hits you on a non shielded attack. This means soon as your Guard breaks you lose your Mark and like 80% of your threat generating capability. You do have an AOE taunt that's on a fairly low cool down of around 15 seconds and it lasts around 3-5 seconds (Taunted targets have a big red "!" over their head). In later dungeons as bosses and piles of mobs build up (such as in basic Cragmire) that all hit pretty hard taunting the mobs basically instantly breaks your Guard. You can choose to take the hits (since they are forced to attack you) but then they are no longer marked and you won't generate any additional threat. You can Guard yourself but then your Guard meter will instantly break and you will lose mark and Guard is pretty difficult to generate (you only generate around 10% back with your basic Shield At-Will attack meaning you'd need 10 attacks to get back up). There are almost no abilities to generate Guard back reliably or in large amounts.
Tanking becomes a huge game of micro managing when to take hits, when to push offense, when to taunt and when to ignore and not try to tank things that would waste your Guard meter. While personally I find it interesting and challenging, the system is pretty crappy over all and it means that you are going to run into a lot of REALLY bad tanks who can't hold threat at all. It's pretty sad because even the NPCs (Rock Golem and the Tanker Companion) have much easier threat systems and can pull threat off me super easy while I have to be on the top of my game just to keep a boss on me. If a Cleric or some other class goes all out crazy healing and crazy DPS it's pretty much impossible to hold threat outside of the taunt periods.
I wanted to point something out for agro. Even with all of the agro reducing feats and the passive ability, I was still consistantly getting agro is most fights. The problem is that there are no quality single-target heals. Everything is AE. The game is calculating overhealing in the agro calculation. When I cast an AE heal for 2000 health, but only one person out of five needed that health, instead of 2000 health factoring into my agro, I get 10000.
The solution is to 1) reduce agro for heals crossed the board, probably around 4 times; or 2) add high quality single target heal options.
Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators,
The Boss of the Applesauce, Dwarven Cleric Extraordinaire...
Athkatla Arranaur, eat your heart out you gelatinous giant rat!
Sounds interesting if you ask me.
I find it great that they are breaking away from the tank'n'spank aspect and putting more emphasis on player accountability and decision making.
Maybe it is just me who is sick and tired of people who want to be spoon fed, but I am more interested in this class more then ever after reading this post.
Did you read the above post?