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Suggestions for Astral Shield
maukadweller
Member Posts: 71
The change in Astral Shield duration to 10 seconds has been discussed much already, but most of the feedback has focussed on PvE.
My concern is what effect the Astral Shield change will have on PvP balance.
Clerics were middle of the road if not in the lower half of PvP as it stands now especially with the scoring system rewarding DPS (kills) and mobility (tower capture) more than buffs and heals.
Without the ability to keep Astral Shield up consistently, the cleric is pretty much toast in PvP, especially since there was no appreciable increase in damage mitigation, healing or DPS to offset the shorter Astral Shield duration. The change in healing threat generation obviously has no effect in PvP.
My recommendation:
Change the cooldown from the current 17.6 seconds to 12.6 seconds to match the decrease in in Astral shield duration. Even with my proposed decrease in cooldown, Astral Shield will be weaker than in it's current form on the live servers since clerics will have to burn more divinity to keep up a consistent shield.
Another option could be to change the astral shield from a static circle on the ground to a Sunburst heal type mechanic where all allies within a set radius around the cleric when the spell is cast receives the shield for a 10 second duration. This change would allow people to move around with the astral shield without being fixed to a spot since the buff would become a personal buff and not tied to a location on the ground. The advantage of increased moblility could offset the downside of the uptime gap. But since I'm not sure of all the consequences of the trade off, I don't recommend this change but am throwing it out there for consideration.
My concern is what effect the Astral Shield change will have on PvP balance.
Clerics were middle of the road if not in the lower half of PvP as it stands now especially with the scoring system rewarding DPS (kills) and mobility (tower capture) more than buffs and heals.
Without the ability to keep Astral Shield up consistently, the cleric is pretty much toast in PvP, especially since there was no appreciable increase in damage mitigation, healing or DPS to offset the shorter Astral Shield duration. The change in healing threat generation obviously has no effect in PvP.
My recommendation:
Change the cooldown from the current 17.6 seconds to 12.6 seconds to match the decrease in in Astral shield duration. Even with my proposed decrease in cooldown, Astral Shield will be weaker than in it's current form on the live servers since clerics will have to burn more divinity to keep up a consistent shield.
Another option could be to change the astral shield from a static circle on the ground to a Sunburst heal type mechanic where all allies within a set radius around the cleric when the spell is cast receives the shield for a 10 second duration. This change would allow people to move around with the astral shield without being fixed to a spot since the buff would become a personal buff and not tied to a location on the ground. The advantage of increased moblility could offset the downside of the uptime gap. But since I'm not sure of all the consequences of the trade off, I don't recommend this change but am throwing it out there for consideration.
Post edited by maukadweller on
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Comments
17.6 seconds is without any recovery.
See wiki page. http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Astral_Shield
You're wrong. Are you at all a Cleric if you only base your knowledge on wiki? Without any recovery AS have 20+ sec cooldown.
#Edit
It's not really correct. I have 37.3% recharge speed increase and my AS have 14.5s cooldown.
I used the wiki since it is a common point of reference. There was no point in my listing my own cooldown time since people have different recovery scores due to different INT, CHA and gear.
My fault for assuming that the listed cooldown on the wiki was w/o Recovery.
So looking at my numbers, I suspect that AS without any recharge bonus at all is 20 seconds or so. Which would change my proposed 12.6 to somewhere between 14 and15 seconds.
And the point isn't that 12.6, 14, or 15 is some magic number, my proposal is to allow a reasonable shot at getting 100% or near 100% uptime without people having to put everything into CHA, INT and Recovery.
And if you have a specific suggestion, give it. Don't make some vague comment like "change something in AS or other skill to be more useful."
Whoops, I'm sorry, I got the math a little upside down. You need 33.3(3)% bonus Recharge Speed to have a 15 second cooldown.