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Trying to play a cleric
ixandel
Member Posts: 18 Arc User
Okay so i've pretty much soloed till 30 and now i'm startign to do some skirmishs and my first one was the helm one.. **** forgot name but you fight a pit fiend at the end...
I'm wondering for group play, what are some of teh better healing spells to use and is there a cast order or anythign to get the most out of them? I just keep noticing I come in second on healing alot and not sure what more I can do.. my gear is all green stuff by the way.
I'm so used to alot of other games where you single click on a target and you use direct heals.. but so far I don't see much of that.. everything seems to be group heals so far..
Any help would be great.
thanks
I'm wondering for group play, what are some of teh better healing spells to use and is there a cast order or anythign to get the most out of them? I just keep noticing I come in second on healing alot and not sure what more I can do.. my gear is all green stuff by the way.
I'm so used to alot of other games where you single click on a target and you use direct heals.. but so far I don't see much of that.. everything seems to be group heals so far..
Any help would be great.
thanks
Post edited by ixandel on
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I'm not high enough level to have an opinion on what to do as you approach level-cap, except what I've seen the other forum Clerics talk about. I'm level 26 atm, so not far behind you. Here's what I do (talking about intense situations for my level here).
1) Maintain Hallowed Ground with as much uptime as you can.
2) Astral Seal everything, always. This, not Healing Word, is the primary means of keeping heals ticking on the group to help keep them healthy. So be sure that everything that moves has a nice yellow AS rune-glow, and if it's still living when it expires, refresh it.
3) Always be casting. If Hallowed Ground is down, and everything's got AS on them, then nuke things. There's a feat that allows your crit hits to cause AoE heals around the target, and that helps for melee-range healing. Take it.
4) You will get frequent aggro as fresh adds spawn. Be ready for it with a D-Sun Burst, then kite & nuke, and if they catch you, Chains of Blazing Light. Theoretically you should have a CW (... and all dps, really) helping to keep the adds off you. Sometimes tanks can manage adds too, but it depends on the situation & the tank's skill.
5) Healing Word for extra heals.
6) You cannot be held responsible for healing damage taken by players who stand in red zones. If they're going to take a hit to the face like that, they need to pot.
More experienced clerics will be along soon to give more information. What I've listed is mostly what I've picked up along the way reading through Unspecified's thread and (I'm going to get this wrong, and please forgive me!) Destik's thread, though their information is very much geared to level-cap play. Even though Unspecified has changed the build he was originally working on, I found the videos he linked very very very helpful for... idk, making some things clear about which powers are useful in which situations, and which powers are more useful in D-mode in other situations. I highly recommend investing the time it takes to watch as many of them as you can (some were 20+ min)
Yes it will cooldown for 8 seconds or so, but this can come in handy once you get familiar with fights
and you know if adds are about to spawn, get chains ready, then remove it later when its not as necessary.
Level 50 is when things become a game changer and you get Astral Shield, this will become your primary healing source (you always cast it with divinity up)
Here is what is going to happen in Epic dungeons for boss fights. You're going to drop astral shield at the bosses feet and run in a circle as 20-30 mobs chase you around. You're going to build DP with healing word and astrals whenever you can, and hope that your dps are killing the pesky little archers that are plinking away at you. Now you're going to do this strat for probably 90% of all boss mobs you fight.
LOL
thanks everyone for the responces. Yeah healing in this game is very different then all the MMOs i've played. I think one issue I see that i'm doing is not switching to D mode often enough.. Should we do all our heal casting in D mode? I sometimes throw out a some heals and hallowed ground in normal mode..
Again, I'm low-level, but you're not lvl 50 yet for Astral Shield either so I figure my responses have their place, so long as everyone understands I'm *only* talking about low-level group play ;D
I highly recommend doing some solo play with D-mode versions of your abilities to get a sense of which does what. Maybe Soothing Light (one of your At-Wills will turn into Soothing Light in D-mode) isn't *as* usable in solo play, but then again I'm not entirely sure how useful it is in group play either because of needing to be targeted on the player (though I've experienced the same thing others have mentioned recently - you can target an enemy that's obscuring your healing target, and your healing action will be directed *through* the enemy to the player... this is less useful if a healthy player is obscuring an injured player of course), and I'm of the opinion that your Divinity is *probably* better-used to give yourself some breathing room from adds with a D-mode Sun Burst, or burning the last health out of a clump of adds (... *preventing* the damage they'd otherwise do, instead of healing it up afterwards... ) with an instant D-mode Blazing Chains. Then once you get Astral Shield, ALWAYS use it in D-mode.
I personally need to remember to use a D-mode Healing Word more often, though my ultimate goal is to prevent that kind of health deficit from happening in the first place as much as possible. Nonetheless, those health deficits *do* happen, and if you've got HW slotted, a D-HW is quite probably the answer.
One more note - in my post last night, I mentioned "cast Hallowed Ground in D-mode whenever you can" but... wow, that's wrong. dailies don't have D-mode functionality. Whether you use them in normal mode or in Divinity, they have the same effect. So don't worry about switching into Divinity to toss down your HGs unless you're wanting to be in D-mode for your subsequent actions! I edited my original post to delete that misinformation, but felt I should address it here in case anyone who read it was now operating with incorrect information. Sorry about that!
(also, TIL that you can slot powers in-combat! ty, doomsday22k! I had a <jaw drop> moment when I read your post, lol)
Group abilities are definitely nice, but single target heals are also very good in this game so long as you know how to position and aim. The way the targeting works here is that you will cast at whatever was closest to your reticle when you used it.
What this means is that you can sweep your reticle over your target, very loosely even, tapping your spell on the way passed and your spell will go and heal your buddy while you can put your attention elsewhere.
Now, as a heal HW is a very good spell despite it not having a lot of popularity around here it seems, but because of the charges and low cooldown between casts, it becomes the best way to gain Divinity outside of dealing damage (which comes up more often than you'd think).
My strategy involves the passive which allows you to gain divinity using your heals called Divine Fortune.
With this, healing word now grants you a massive boost in divine power gain, which means more D-Casting of spells that you depend on having meter for (such as Astral Shield, or Forgemaster's).
This passive will also pop on things such as Astral Shield. Sometimes you just don't have the meter to D-Cast it, but that's okay now since you'll have gained divinity for casting it.
Personally, my strategy as a Cleric in general is to have as much divine power as possible, so I've gone down the Faithful tree for that delicious 4th pip.
As far as earlier levels and group play, Forgemaster's Flame is excellent provided that you cast it on something you're currently not trying to kill. If you pop a divine cast on your target, and then it immediately dies, you lost a lot of healing just now, and an entire divine pip wasted.
I find that a solid set up for either solo or group play for pretty much anywhere in the game is to have:
- Healing Word
- a group heal of some kind like Forgemaster's or Bastion depending on your tastes and teammates
- whatever you feel you need right now as your third encounter ability.
This could be anywhere from Chains, Daunting Light, Doom, whatever. It really doesn't matter, just put your favourite skill in there if you want, there's gotta be some freedom of choice somewhere!
(I personally found Daunting Light to be an obscenely useful solo tool for when you're the only one dealing the damage. In groups it's okay but your job typically isn't to dps anyways)
Typically this third slot is what I end up swapping out frequently as I need, especially at 60 where I'll always have Healing Word and Astral Shield on my bar. Swapping abilities out in the middle of combat is neat and all, but not really necessary so I wouldn't worry about having to micro that if it sounds daunting to you.
Now a very important thing to note about Clerics is that we have the only two spells in the game that can be used while moving: Punishing and Soothing Light.
If you're out of dodges, or just want to keep your dps/heals going and need to step out of a danger zone, swapping over to these abilities on the fly is a must. Simultaneously finishing off your target while sidestepping its attacks is something invaluable in any stage of this game whether it be level 10 or level 60, pvp or otherwise.
Hopefully this was helpful.
... I can't find the delete button. Someone help me >.>
I don't believe they should nerf it.
It's a necessary heal at the moment, considering there isn't a great deal of scope in other healing options.
Also regarding defence in the previous post, that's exactly how I play. I tank adds, bosses, whatever is necessary to
get the job done. It also makes you remarkably resilient in pvp, unless you are being stun locked by TR's :-)