The AS nerf wouldnt be a big problem, if they would reduce the Bastion of Health CD by half.
But since this is not going to happen, the DC (as a solo healer) is quite destroyed (as we have no good healing options).
I was expecting a nerf of AS, but not this way. It was completely clear, that if u nerf AS (not even talking about the 66% duration) u need to buff the other healing abillities.
I dont believe we will see many solo healers. Most will stick with 2xDC to compense the -40% heal of AS and the low uptime. And most of them will have Healing Word for hotting the people in case AS runs out. And Sun Burst as 3rd encounter is a must have imo to gain AP / DP.
Sure the people must be doding more now when running solo heal, but we know the reallity: Most fail (especially with random grps and lower tiers). And if people die its allways the healers fault.
Idk guys, I'm taking this a bit differently.
People actually have to DODGE now. Plus, with the ****ty returns on recovery for this CD, I'd take this as an opportunity to swap out some recovery for other stats like power or defense.
The question becomes "can your party survive 5 seconds without blue?"
EVERYONE has to play smarter now. Your party members have to use pots (which they should be doing anyway) and dodge a bit more.
YOU will have to pay attention to fights and know when the best time to put down the shield. That's going to take more concentration, and more skill. And we're a skillful bunch, yo.
So let's use the Preview to test out if parties can survive that 5 seconds. If you swap out some of that recovery for power, your heals should "hit" a bit harder to make up for it. Drop down to 3.5k recovery and then jack up your Power/Defense and see if it's really that much harder.
While i agree with you, that everyone on a team should do their part to make it work, people in my groups allready dodge, as i see it this will be a hit to me as a solo healer, i think now it will be even more popular to bring 2 clerics to tier2+ cause astral shield might not stack, but now we can time it to have it up 100% of the time, the ones taking the biggest hit from this is the casual players, who come in and want to play a dungeon in their 1 hour playtime, you make it very hard for them to find those 2 clerics, as if they arent struggeling enough allready, but why do i care cause i have groups all the time, well i have RL friends playing casualy, and if they quit the game due to cleric shortage, well ill move to the next game with them, not that i dont like this game, but we all want to be able to play with our RL friends, i think what you should be aiming for, is make the game hard but not too hard to solo heal, else everyone will want those 2 clerics. (sorry for the wall of text)
The AS nerf wouldnt be a big problem, if they would reduce the Bastion of Health CD by half.
But since this is not going to happen, the DC (as a solo healer) is quite destroyed (as we have no good healing options).
I was expecting a nerf of AS, but not this way. It was completely clear, that if u nerf AS (not even talking about the 66% duration) u need to buff the other healing abillities.
I dont believe we will see many solo healers. Most will stick with 2xDC to compense the -40% heal of AS and the low uptime. And most of them will have Healing Word for hotting the people in case AS runs out. And Sun Burst as 3rd encounter is a must have imo to gain AP / DP.
Sure the people must be doding more now when running solo heal, but we know the reallity: Most fail (especially with random grps and lower tiers). And if people die its allways the healers fault.
^^ this is exactly what will happen! making the cleric shortage even worse.
maybe if AS will get nerfed ........ the def buffs on other spells will now properly stack... like hallowed ground + linked spirit+ foresight + AS + if ever i add bastion (with Feat)
i am just wondering how will clerics pvp yes because at the current point we aint doing anything in pvp we were already weak (outside of doble shield stacking and all that) but now...
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mewbreyMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 517Bounty Hunter
edited June 2013
finished about 3 Tier 2s last night on test shard - Spider, frozen and Caverns of Karrundax... will likely do Castle never tonight.
Astral shield isn't a major loss in all honesty, and we always try to run with one of each class. You do notice it at first, but what I noticed more is actually the lower divine gain (10% rather than broken 20% per cooldown). Honestly would like if they would sort out Bastion of health however with its silly cool down (have a feeling they are waiting to do that with a healing paragon path). Also would love if invigorated healing would heal 2.5% health over 6 seconds, rather than after 6 seconds to add consistency and lower the over healing from the skill, at 3 stacks it could heal 7.5% over 18s.
Overall the threat is much better so you'll not be tanking anything if you have a GF and GWF in your party as between them and a CW everything will get clipped now and again, I was however using sooth. The dungeons are still very much doable in the same manner that they have been done before, just means when the shield is down for the period of time you'll want to be having skills read for people that forget to move or are tanking.
In fact I actually enjoyed healing the dungeons more now, than I did before.
I have a rogue and a CW, but cleric is what I want to play. No point playing this game at all, or giving it any money, if I can't play the class I love.
oh Hai Deistik!! I'm still playing a Cleric, the class I love, that can tank, dps, and heal. But occasionally I am forced to close these things called Rifts.
I haven't logged into Neverwinter in a month because of all the rampant exploiting and cheating. But anyways this latest BS might be the headshot into Cleric. I'll probably log in again when they release the Ranger.
The game needs to be playable with PUGs, not just with static well-organized and coordinated groups. This is a mass market game with a free-to-play revenue stream... it literally cannot afford any hint of elitism.
I ran one PUG on test and I was still the one doing all the tanking, only now I couldnt keep myself healed and we ended up wiping on trash.
People need to understand that Astral Shield as it currently stands is an Encounter ability that has a stronger impact on battles than most Dailies in the game, and it can currently be kept up 100% of the time with no effort or skill beyond equipping your character properly and making sure you aren't stun/prone/dazed at the moment it comes off cooldown. It absolutely needs to not have 100% uptime in order to be anything but boring, from a gameplay standpoint.
Right now AS is being used as a crutch so that we can keep walking with our broken leg (our broken aggro). Once the aggro is fixed, we shouldn't need the crutch anymore. And GWFs and GFs will finally have a job again, which is a good thing for the health of the game.
Then hopefully those GWFs and GFs can mitigate a ton of damage without AS, because they're not going to be getting significant healing from encounter powers.
Probably they're trying to force clerics to use soothing light. As they say they've beefed it up, maybe it's not <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> now, though it will still be hardish to use.
One thing I didn't see was fixing Divine Advantage to trigger on sunburst, AS, etc. If the GW IS going to be handling a load of incoming mobs then it could actually be useful if it worked.
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xhritMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I just saw in General Discussion that Astral Shield duration has been nerfed, reduced to 66%.
Ohhhhhhhhhh boy. That is bad news, folks.
Dunno what else to say, I'm kind of speechless. Cleric is my main and I can say with near certainty that I won't be playing it, or this game, unless something is done about that.
So instead of playing the game, trying it for yourself, and making your own mind up, you are going to follow the herd like a sheep and ragequit.
So instead of playing the game, trying it for yourself, and making your own mind up, you are going to follow the herd like a sheep and ragequit.
Good show.
/golfclap
I've spent enough hours on my cleric to know what 2/3 uptime on Astral Shield will do. What difference does it make if I log into the test server to confirm what everyone has already confirmed, that AS duration has been reduced to 66%?
Also, not ragequitting. This game has been borderline garbage since release, and any honest MMO gamer knows that. This just makes it even more garbage, and leaving doesn't exactly require a lot of anger on my part or on the part of all the other people the game is already bleeding.
finished about 3 Tier 2s last night on test shard - Spider, frozen and Caverns of Karrundax... will likely do Castle never tonight.
...
In fact I actually enjoyed healing the dungeons more now, than I did before.
FINALLY someone who's actually TRIED it on the Preview server. Thanks for the report. (I tried to get in a dungeon last night [level 50ish] but there were apparently very few people on at the same time I was...)
I think the only way to counter the nerf is put almighty point to Recovery. no power no defense, though I still doubt it will working as planned.
PS: this is why I hate "balancing" class only take PvP basis without considering the PvE side
oh man I am not pvping ever again until they remove righteousness...it's just dumb at this point to even have it in there. Balance our heals around damage, don't completely gimp our effect on ourselves while leaving damage output relatively untouched; that's just asking for balance issues...how about you add a -40% damage to clerics debuff to all classes..yea I thought so....just dumb really
I have little doubt that groups on test server will be able to clear T2 dungeons without much trouble using 1 cleric. Of course, that's completely meaningless. With full T2 and often CN gear, T2 dungeons are for the most part pathetically easy.
I started doing T2 dungeons around May 2nd on my cleric, and they weren't even close to as easy as they are now, wearing often incomplete T1 sets and some blues or even greens. We first cleared many of the T2s using 2 clerics, just like the first CN clears were done using 2 clerics, because that is how you do difficult content.
The point is, nothing in the game is difficult right now, with the exception of the last boss in Dread Vault and to a lesser extent Dracolich, so clearing it with a cleric with nerfed AS doesn't mean much. But I can say that this definitely ramps up the difficulty of the game - something I want to see through better boss mechanics, not through nerfing the clerics sole powerful ability.
The game needs to be playable with PUGs, not just with static well-organized and coordinated groups. This is a mass market game with a free-to-play revenue stream... it literally cannot afford any hint of elitism.
I ran one PUG on test and I was still the one doing all the tanking, only now I couldnt keep myself healed and we ended up wiping on trash.
+1
Its not like everybody have a good static group on. T_T finding awesome CWs and Gwfs is so hard
Ok here's what I've seen so far, and my thoughts.
Not having 100% uptime on AS is manageable, but we need something to heal keep our party up inbetween and keep regening divine power. I'm having a hard time getting any divine power regeneration once AS goes down because I have to run for my life pretty much.
The aggro fix is BS so far, I still aggro almost everything. Also, the way the change works, with it being spread out for mobs, means that on single big bad mobs I get the agro anyways and in boss fights I still pretty much agro everything righ away since mobs spawn less at the begining normally, later on it's a little more noticeable but by then there are so many mobs it doesn't matter much.
Guardian fighters should be able to tank pretty well now, especially once's who spec for it I guess. I've got a GF buddy who's full dps spec and he can still take a lot of damage. But when it comes to GWF I can't imagine them tanking, most of them seem a lot squishier than I am tbh, but maybe it's just because they're all full dps spec atm.. All in all though if GF and GWF have to spec as tanks now and us DC have less healing and ability to keep party members up how are we supposed to run dungeons in a reasonable time? Some of them are already long and slow as it is...
Also does anybody actually have some real feedback on Linked Spirit? So far it still seems like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, sure you get a lot of bonus stats, but with how hard the diminishing returns hit it's killing it. I'm not noticing it all that much really, def not enough to spend 5 points.
It's nice that soothing/punishing light scale with level now, but they still need to be buffed more to be viable. I would not waste divine power using either. Honestly, I could really care less about Punishing Light, I guess maybe it coudl be useful in PVP but soothing light seems like it should be a good skill, maybe not one you rely on all the time, but a strategic one to keep either yourself or a party member up.
It's nice that soothing/punishing light scale with level now, but they still need to be buffed more to be viable. I would not waste divine power using either. Honestly, I could really care less about Punishing Light, I guess maybe it coudl be useful in PVP but soothing light seems like it should be a good skill, maybe not one you rely on all the time, but a strategic one to keep either yourself or a party member up.
Probably more important than making them hit harder is to use less divinity so that utilizing them doesn't mean emptying your pool quickly so that you can't use divinity on encounters.
Now that Etheral Boon is fixed, I imagine that it's going to be a bit harder to keep the divinity up, and being in soothing-light mode isn't going to be helping that at all.
AS is literally so strong right now that you can run a mostly DPS-built cleric that uses AS as its sole healing ability and still do most dungeon content without much trouble, assuming that the rest of your team (particularly your CW) plays smart.
Yeah, I'd hoped my post was pretty clear when I said that it may be reasonable to change it so clerics have to spec in a particular way to be the sole healer. My concern is that there will then be only one valid spec for cleric (Faithful), since Virtuous is only competitive DPS in a group that's skilled at gathering/clustering adds (or has two CWs, heh) ... and even then it's far better at getting artificially high DPS metres on trash than it is on performing in boss fights. <insert deity> alone knows how Cryptic envision the Righteous cleric being useful.
I absolutely do not think clerics will become unviable, I'm just not sure the changes to abilities that aren't Astral Shield will prevent the Faithful spec from becoming the One True Spec. Unless the buff to Focused Poise seriously increases Lance of Faith's damage, in which case maybe Virtuous will produce some meaningful single target DPS when compared to other classes. Are there any particular buffs you have in mind that lead you to think a DPS spec cleric will be more useful than another CW or TR on any T2 or CN boss fight?
finished about 3 Tier 2s last night on test shard - Spider, frozen and Caverns of Karrundax... will likely do Castle never tonight.
Astral shield isn't a major loss in all honesty, and we always try to run with one of each class. You do notice it at first, but what I noticed more is actually the lower divine gain (10% rather than broken 20% per cooldown). Honestly would like if they would sort out Bastion of health however with its silly cool down (have a feeling they are waiting to do that with a healing paragon path). Also would love if invigorated healing would heal 2.5% health over 6 seconds, rather than after 6 seconds to add consistency and lower the over healing from the skill, at 3 stacks it could heal 7.5% over 18s.
Overall the threat is much better so you'll not be tanking anything if you have a GF and GWF in your party as between them and a CW everything will get clipped now and again, I was however using sooth. The dungeons are still very much doable in the same manner that they have been done before, just means when the shield is down for the period of time you'll want to be having skills read for people that forget to move or are tanking.
In fact I actually enjoyed healing the dungeons more now, than I did before.
And what about the die hard PvP clerics, they are trash and will be one hit in pvp now once shield is off, great. It's already able to be canceled, or to push you out of it, or to stun lock you so you can't place it at times. This is stupid.
BoH has a horrendous cooldown and doesn't heal for that much anyway, and FF requires a high-health, centrally placed, monster. And a team that can both recognise and (effectively) hug that monster.
"Stand in the blue" is easy to communicate.
"Stand next to that guy, no not that guy, that one. Yes, him, NO DON'T KILL HIM FFS" is...less easy.
Plus you usually use the time between AS casts to build DP for the next AS cast. If we have to spend an extra pip each time to stick a D'd forgemasters down, it's going to get...interesting.
BoH has a horrendous cooldown and doesn't heal for that much anyway, and FF requires a high-health, centrally placed, monster. And a team that can both recognise and (effectively) hug that monster.
"Stand in the blue" is easy to communicate.
"Stand next to that guy, no not that guy, that one. Yes, him, NO DON'T KILL HIM FFS" is...less easy.
Plus you usually use the time between AS casts to build DP for the next AS cast. If we have to spend an extra pip each time to stick a D'd forgemasters down, it's going to get...interesting.
I appreciate the long time players test all the changes on the test server but I actually wonder how this will impact players who are not yet geared in sets and are just entering T1 and T2 and with a pug and not premade groups with Voice available
edit:
Nevermind someone did in another thread. Pretty much what I expected Especially since Neverwinter has an extremely casual approach and attracts casual player more so than MMO powergamers and vets imo.
Tested with a PUG and not a premade 'guild group' so running with who knows kind of players.
Group was DC, CW, GWF, GWF, TR
Result: Complete disaster
Aggro was noticeably less and yes I was running soothe, but I still ended up tanking more than half the mobs and getting beaten badly during the 5 second gap in AS coverage. Additionally the CW and the TR ended up tanking some mobs and so were taking much more damage than they would have on LIVE and getting crunched as a result.
Group wiped on trash in Pirates a few times before we even got to the first boss and broke up in anger with one of the GWFs raging "$%#% HEAL!" spamming that a few times and then rage quitting. This was more than a bit ironic as he was only taking damage after myself and the CW were already dead.
This change might work for static groups of people who are used to farming Castle Never, but I think it will be an abject disaster for the PUGs that make up the vast majority of the consumer base.
Well, as far as class design goes, GF and GWF both have active (and reactive) tankiness boosts that are (supposed to be) important parts of their play. GF has the obvious Block mechanic, and the GWF has Unstoppable (which provides a major mitigation increase, CC immunity, and heightened DPS in a single press of Tab).
Honestly, I don't know what GFs you're using as a measure, but I can't imagine your claim that GFs aren't that much tankier than you (unless you keep AS on them) being legitimate -- or at least, not substantially exaggerated because of how much you hate AS. GFs are very frigging tanky if they're actually tank spec'd and using their block correctly/not-buggily (it's just they can't actually hold threat to show off this fact...). There may be some ludicrous DPS in CN or something that I don't know about yet that melts even GFs, but I haven't heard of it yet.
GWFs are are indeed relatively tanky (and able to maneuver through Bad Stuff if necessary) when Unstoppable is turned on. Without it? Yeah, they tend to go squish, but that's kinda the point. Their fundamental game mechanic is that they need to build up Determination during times when burst damage isn't in the process of melting their faces, and then be ready to turn it on when burst damage is about to start melting them. Then they chug a potion, shrug off the burst of damage and maneuver through all the bad stuff to keep whaling on whatever needs whaling on. That's rather evidently the idea; the implementation is just really poor at the moment. (And I mean REALLY poor.)
I say all of this with utmost respect for your posts in general, knoteskad. You are obviously an important voice of reason against AS on this forum (I think too many people are too content to crutch on it). I do think, however, that the ability can be tuned in such a way that it is no longer a toxic mess, without just removing it from the game. I think it has its place; its place just shouldn't be "always on all the time during all phases of all boss fights OR ELSE THE WORLD ASPLODES" (which it currently very nearly manages to be).
Sorry I was getting a little heated, the way the game works is just infuriating to me atm.
Also from what I've seen/heard GF block is a joke at 60, blocks one attack and it's done.
GWF unstoppable tankiness is very misleading, you literally have to lose HALF of your health to get a full unstoppable, it doesn't really contribute to overall tankiness all that much, it just makes healing more effective on you essentially.
My prediction is that x2 CW will be a requirement.
If the threat on cleric is actually being reduced, a CW that's hitting everything (like my CW does) get's aggro quite often, and if he doesn't have AS on him he goes splat instantly.
That means a solo CW won't be enough, anytime AS is down he'll just splat before he can knock everything off a cliff, and cleanse not removing sickness is a MAAAAAAAAAAASSSIVE change here, this means people will be full wiping a TON lol.
And CW is the only way to actually deal with the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> adds in this game, thus I predict x2 CW will become MANDATORY.
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But since this is not going to happen, the DC (as a solo healer) is quite destroyed (as we have no good healing options).
I was expecting a nerf of AS, but not this way. It was completely clear, that if u nerf AS (not even talking about the 66% duration) u need to buff the other healing abillities.
I dont believe we will see many solo healers. Most will stick with 2xDC to compense the -40% heal of AS and the low uptime. And most of them will have Healing Word for hotting the people in case AS runs out. And Sun Burst as 3rd encounter is a must have imo to gain AP / DP.
Sure the people must be doding more now when running solo heal, but we know the reallity: Most fail (especially with random grps and lower tiers). And if people die its allways the healers fault.
Already been stated that we'll be getting a free respec, so moot point.
- What Class Are You? -
I want this class in NW.
Why thanks, missed that, obviously.
While i agree with you, that everyone on a team should do their part to make it work, people in my groups allready dodge, as i see it this will be a hit to me as a solo healer, i think now it will be even more popular to bring 2 clerics to tier2+ cause astral shield might not stack, but now we can time it to have it up 100% of the time, the ones taking the biggest hit from this is the casual players, who come in and want to play a dungeon in their 1 hour playtime, you make it very hard for them to find those 2 clerics, as if they arent struggeling enough allready, but why do i care cause i have groups all the time, well i have RL friends playing casualy, and if they quit the game due to cleric shortage, well ill move to the next game with them, not that i dont like this game, but we all want to be able to play with our RL friends, i think what you should be aiming for, is make the game hard but not too hard to solo heal, else everyone will want those 2 clerics. (sorry for the wall of text)
^^ this is exactly what will happen! making the cleric shortage even worse.
Astral shield isn't a major loss in all honesty, and we always try to run with one of each class. You do notice it at first, but what I noticed more is actually the lower divine gain (10% rather than broken 20% per cooldown). Honestly would like if they would sort out Bastion of health however with its silly cool down (have a feeling they are waiting to do that with a healing paragon path). Also would love if invigorated healing would heal 2.5% health over 6 seconds, rather than after 6 seconds to add consistency and lower the over healing from the skill, at 3 stacks it could heal 7.5% over 18s.
Overall the threat is much better so you'll not be tanking anything if you have a GF and GWF in your party as between them and a CW everything will get clipped now and again, I was however using sooth. The dungeons are still very much doable in the same manner that they have been done before, just means when the shield is down for the period of time you'll want to be having skills read for people that forget to move or are tanking.
In fact I actually enjoyed healing the dungeons more now, than I did before.
oh Hai Deistik!! I'm still playing a Cleric, the class I love, that can tank, dps, and heal. But occasionally I am forced to close these things called Rifts.
I haven't logged into Neverwinter in a month because of all the rampant exploiting and cheating. But anyways this latest BS might be the headshot into Cleric. I'll probably log in again when they release the Ranger.
<Rarely Sober> - Beholder
I ran one PUG on test and I was still the one doing all the tanking, only now I couldnt keep myself healed and we ended up wiping on trash.
Then hopefully those GWFs and GFs can mitigate a ton of damage without AS, because they're not going to be getting significant healing from encounter powers.
Probably they're trying to force clerics to use soothing light. As they say they've beefed it up, maybe it's not <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> now, though it will still be hardish to use.
One thing I didn't see was fixing Divine Advantage to trigger on sunburst, AS, etc. If the GW IS going to be handling a load of incoming mobs then it could actually be useful if it worked.
So instead of playing the game, trying it for yourself, and making your own mind up, you are going to follow the herd like a sheep and ragequit.
Good show.
/golfclap
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Also, not ragequitting. This game has been borderline garbage since release, and any honest MMO gamer knows that. This just makes it even more garbage, and leaving doesn't exactly require a lot of anger on my part or on the part of all the other people the game is already bleeding.
FINALLY someone who's actually TRIED it on the Preview server. Thanks for the report. (I tried to get in a dungeon last night [level 50ish] but there were apparently very few people on at the same time I was...)
oh man I am not pvping ever again until they remove righteousness...it's just dumb at this point to even have it in there. Balance our heals around damage, don't completely gimp our effect on ourselves while leaving damage output relatively untouched; that's just asking for balance issues...how about you add a -40% damage to clerics debuff to all classes..yea I thought so....just dumb really
I have little doubt that groups on test server will be able to clear T2 dungeons without much trouble using 1 cleric. Of course, that's completely meaningless. With full T2 and often CN gear, T2 dungeons are for the most part pathetically easy.
I started doing T2 dungeons around May 2nd on my cleric, and they weren't even close to as easy as they are now, wearing often incomplete T1 sets and some blues or even greens. We first cleared many of the T2s using 2 clerics, just like the first CN clears were done using 2 clerics, because that is how you do difficult content.
The point is, nothing in the game is difficult right now, with the exception of the last boss in Dread Vault and to a lesser extent Dracolich, so clearing it with a cleric with nerfed AS doesn't mean much. But I can say that this definitely ramps up the difficulty of the game - something I want to see through better boss mechanics, not through nerfing the clerics sole powerful ability.
+1
Its not like everybody have a good static group on. T_T finding awesome CWs and Gwfs is so hard
Not having 100% uptime on AS is manageable, but we need something to heal keep our party up inbetween and keep regening divine power. I'm having a hard time getting any divine power regeneration once AS goes down because I have to run for my life pretty much.
The aggro fix is BS so far, I still aggro almost everything. Also, the way the change works, with it being spread out for mobs, means that on single big bad mobs I get the agro anyways and in boss fights I still pretty much agro everything righ away since mobs spawn less at the begining normally, later on it's a little more noticeable but by then there are so many mobs it doesn't matter much.
Guardian fighters should be able to tank pretty well now, especially once's who spec for it I guess. I've got a GF buddy who's full dps spec and he can still take a lot of damage. But when it comes to GWF I can't imagine them tanking, most of them seem a lot squishier than I am tbh, but maybe it's just because they're all full dps spec atm.. All in all though if GF and GWF have to spec as tanks now and us DC have less healing and ability to keep party members up how are we supposed to run dungeons in a reasonable time? Some of them are already long and slow as it is...
Also does anybody actually have some real feedback on Linked Spirit? So far it still seems like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, sure you get a lot of bonus stats, but with how hard the diminishing returns hit it's killing it. I'm not noticing it all that much really, def not enough to spend 5 points.
It's nice that soothing/punishing light scale with level now, but they still need to be buffed more to be viable. I would not waste divine power using either. Honestly, I could really care less about Punishing Light, I guess maybe it coudl be useful in PVP but soothing light seems like it should be a good skill, maybe not one you rely on all the time, but a strategic one to keep either yourself or a party member up.
Probably more important than making them hit harder is to use less divinity so that utilizing them doesn't mean emptying your pool quickly so that you can't use divinity on encounters.
Now that Etheral Boon is fixed, I imagine that it's going to be a bit harder to keep the divinity up, and being in soothing-light mode isn't going to be helping that at all.
Yeah, I'd hoped my post was pretty clear when I said that it may be reasonable to change it so clerics have to spec in a particular way to be the sole healer. My concern is that there will then be only one valid spec for cleric (Faithful), since Virtuous is only competitive DPS in a group that's skilled at gathering/clustering adds (or has two CWs, heh) ... and even then it's far better at getting artificially high DPS metres on trash than it is on performing in boss fights. <insert deity> alone knows how Cryptic envision the Righteous cleric being useful.
I absolutely do not think clerics will become unviable, I'm just not sure the changes to abilities that aren't Astral Shield will prevent the Faithful spec from becoming the One True Spec. Unless the buff to Focused Poise seriously increases Lance of Faith's damage, in which case maybe Virtuous will produce some meaningful single target DPS when compared to other classes. Are there any particular buffs you have in mind that lead you to think a DPS spec cleric will be more useful than another CW or TR on any T2 or CN boss fight?
BoH has a horrendous cooldown and doesn't heal for that much anyway, and FF requires a high-health, centrally placed, monster. And a team that can both recognise and (effectively) hug that monster.
"Stand in the blue" is easy to communicate.
"Stand next to that guy, no not that guy, that one. Yes, him, NO DON'T KILL HIM FFS" is...less easy.
Plus you usually use the time between AS casts to build DP for the next AS cast. If we have to spend an extra pip each time to stick a D'd forgemasters down, it's going to get...interesting.
this so much
edit:
Nevermind someone did in another thread. Pretty much what I expected
Sorry I was getting a little heated, the way the game works is just infuriating to me atm.
Also from what I've seen/heard GF block is a joke at 60, blocks one attack and it's done.
GWF unstoppable tankiness is very misleading, you literally have to lose HALF of your health to get a full unstoppable, it doesn't really contribute to overall tankiness all that much, it just makes healing more effective on you essentially.
If the threat on cleric is actually being reduced, a CW that's hitting everything (like my CW does) get's aggro quite often, and if he doesn't have AS on him he goes splat instantly.
That means a solo CW won't be enough, anytime AS is down he'll just splat before he can knock everything off a cliff, and cleanse not removing sickness is a MAAAAAAAAAAASSSIVE change here, this means people will be full wiping a TON lol.
And CW is the only way to actually deal with the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> adds in this game, thus I predict x2 CW will become MANDATORY.