test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Okay, a simple question to people decked out in T1 gear.
zephryl1
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 220 Bounty Hunter
I've seen all these posts by people essentially saying "Healing is still fine, just takes a little more effort", but the one thing they all seem to have in common is they're massively overgeared. Like, all Best in Slot, Rank 7 Enchants, Weapon and Armor mods...
And as such, I ask a simple question; Can you heal T2 dungeons, using just T1 gear?
The things I consider "Tier 2":
Tier 2 Armor Sets
Tier 2 Weapons
Castle Never Set Weapons
The "Grand" Jewellery set (That grant 150 to stats)
Very Rare quality Shirt/Pants (Gemmed or not)
Armor/Weapon Enhancements
Any Enchantment of Rank 6 or higher
Ioun Stone of Allure
Cat
If Clerics can heal T2 Dungeons using T1 gear, then the new changes are fine. It's still possible that certain dungeons aren't balanced in-and-of themselves, but it means it's not an issue with the DC class.
Note: Please only give your experience if you were Solo Healing. The Balance Patch was also meant to open up slots in Parties for the barely-ever-used Great Weapon Fighter and Guardian Fighter, and if we still need to use 2 Devoted Cleric's, then that hasn't happened.
And as such, I ask a simple question; Can you heal T2 dungeons, using just T1 gear?
The things I consider "Tier 2":
Tier 2 Armor Sets
Tier 2 Weapons
Castle Never Set Weapons
The "Grand" Jewellery set (That grant 150 to stats)
Very Rare quality Shirt/Pants (Gemmed or not)
Armor/Weapon Enhancements
Any Enchantment of Rank 6 or higher
Ioun Stone of Allure
Cat
If Clerics can heal T2 Dungeons using T1 gear, then the new changes are fine. It's still possible that certain dungeons aren't balanced in-and-of themselves, but it means it's not an issue with the DC class.
Note: Please only give your experience if you were Solo Healing. The Balance Patch was also meant to open up slots in Parties for the barely-ever-used Great Weapon Fighter and Guardian Fighter, and if we still need to use 2 Devoted Cleric's, then that hasn't happened.
Post edited by zephryl1 on
0
Comments
It's still possible, specially if you have Soothe spec'd (basically gave him freedom to get auto attacks off) with the aggro getting fixed. AShield when fight starts, Forgemaster's Flame when it ends, Sunburst every cooldown, ASeal everything you see. Rinse and repeat. My only issue is that it basically dumbed down the class to heal bot status. Quite sad actually.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
Dragon
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
This is my gear, its not the great (not terrible). No enchant is more then rank 5, I believe I'm in mostly 4's actually. I've solo healed Spell, karrundax, Frozen heart, and Mad dragon so far since the patch.
I forgot, no ioun or cat yet.
Had no issues whatsoever, so far.
Baqqara there is no way you have a 9.9k GS with no T2. Post a screen shot of your T1 setup with a 9.9k GS or I call you a liar.~
Even with T2 gear these dungeon's are difficult, and you are regulated to healbot. You can't try anything else other than the holly trinity of 3 encounter spells now.
I honestly believe that they could give us a encounter ability that nukes for 49% of a bosses hp's with a 5 second cast and we couldn't use it till us and our entire group vastly out gears the dungeon's. It's not possible to solo heal anything and have anything other than HW(FF), AS, SB on your encounter bars.
I may have some t2 stuff but its not near 'best in slot'.. I have a green neck, blue shirt/pants rank 4/5 ****ty gems, no ioun and everything I'm wearing is cheap as ****.
All the dungeons I did were EASY, EASIER for me then before the patch... I know for a fact I could do them just as easily in pvp gear and straight t1 jewelry.
I didn't even come close to using AS on cooldown btw, I had a lot of spans of 10-20 seconds after it came off I didn't bother using it.. Also several encounters I didn't use it at all. And I only used Divine FF here and there, could easily have left that off my bar.
Granted the ppl I run with are competent players, even though the CW's and TR's struggled a bit till they started to adapt. The GF was amazing and loved his new tank build / playstyle.
I could see things being difficult in a pug.. Or spider/cn being more difficult - but as for the rest of the dungeons, they are still too easy. Some even easier now like Karrundax where the boss is a faceroll joke.
Well balanced stats > GS
The primary difference in runs so far on this patch is that "each" class is important and has to be played well. While I said each class I feel this applies more to GF/CW/DC. Of course you want TR's and GWF's to be skilled players too and fill their roll without just scatering mobs, standing in aoe dmg etc but they seem somewhat less important still. Of course it depends on party setup.
The thing was that before as long as the DC was good and you had a half decent CW you could do most dungeons just fine, now you need better play out of everybody. Of course if your group is playing poorly and taking lots of damage it will be impossible for DC's to keep party members up when AS is down; but if the CW/GF concentrate their crowd control/tanking mroe when AS is off, in combination with DC daily (HG or DA) and FF or healing word if you prefer that, then your party should do just fine.
Agreed that this patch really hurt PUGs. It may get better once people get used to the changes and GF's get respeced for tanking etc, but currently PUGs are terrible
I am wearing all T1, I have the T2 Helm but dont wear it atm cause i do not get a bonuse. I do have the Ioun. All gems are Rank 5, have no weapon or armor enchant yet.
I healed solo the Epic Spider last night with zero short cuts(patch fixed them), believe me the party tried to find them
I personally enjoyed it. I now have to judge when to put down AS, instead of just making sure its awlays up. BTW this was a PUG never played with any of these people before. It was ruff but we completed it. The end Boss was extremely hard but we competed it, wiped 1 time on Final Boss.
So to answer your question yes its doable while wearing to T1. YES I did it and trust me I am not the best healer out there, I consider myself decent but certainly not amoung the best
Hope this helps.
My rotation was AS (again didnt just throw out, judged when to start it), Forgemaster's Flame, Sunburst every cooldown and I use Hallowed Ground and Divine Armor depending on the situation and pull, but USE your DAILIES alot
Just wondering, could you give some advice for that fight? It's pretty much the only one (Except for CN) I'm hugely worried about, because of the high hitting adds...
Also, does anyone know the exact mechanics of that fight? I've been told several different things about how she heals, and how the best way to deal with it is X_x
I had to drink like 2 potions on last boss but other than that...
Here's my gear:
http://bildr.no/view/1639171
Excellent, that's pretty standard gear to have at that stage too. Did you have a GF on your team?~
She has two phases.
-Phase 1: Just spawns adds that you have to control and dps down (spiders and blademasters if I remember correctly)
-Phase 2: Continues to spawn the same ads just more of them (the little spiders heal her) It's clear when this is going on as you will see a line of bubbles going from the spiders to hear and her HP will go up quite fast if you don't dps those ads down.
"Shirt" and "trousers"? O_O
Dude, if you're on mindflayer I can make you better replacements for those even at my crappy level 6 mailsmithing.
The rest of the kit looks nice, though.
I did if I remember correctly, only struggled a bit with archers since people were not focusing them, other than that it was pretty chill.
Temple Of The Spider made no difference what I did yesterday because we had no Control Wizard. We were wiped even before final boss. I have re-specced a few times based on posts in this forum, and it either made little or marginal difference.
From what I can see, the best way to play this game is with a group who know what they are doing and who use mics.
Going solo is torture. I think life would be much easier in a good guild who take this game serious. It would make life much easier and probably less costly. Even more-so now that the patch removed our 100% up time on AS.
About my character:
24 wis/21 cha/15 str, 4014 power, 1794 crit strike (12.7%), 3587 recovery, 1394 defense.
This is my current build :
http://nwcalc.com/dc?b=cn4:2hwcg:5m9s,1x0u304:6c000:buz5o:60000&h=0
It's pretty similar to my last build with the exception of picking up mark of mending, which I dropped benefit of foresight for.
Dailies = standard DA/HG.
At-wills = Sacred/Seal
Encounters = EITHER Burst/AS/FF, or Burst/AS/Bastion.
If fight is 1 stack, I slot bastion for more linked spirit. If fight is 2 stacks, I slot FF, use that on something near melee and AS ranged.
I run healers lore/soothe for passives.
In a fight, if I need a big heal I use DA, followed usually by AS or FF/Bastion. If things are stable, I'll use HG.
I guess experience differs significantly because I have had exactly 0 issues with divinity and I successfully ran t2s with only 6% crit from my gear, and no eth boon pre-patch. I've never even been tempted to spec into eth boon. I put all my points in wis/cha. I haven't purposely put defense anywhere, even pre-patch I was fine on def/hp as kiting is a personal strength for me.
I have only ever run 2 instances with 2 DC and that was soley due to the person available in guild being a DC. I do not do exploits on bosses. Pre-patch I had successfully done everything in at least a partial (2+ people being strangers) pug, and solo healing besides epic dreadvault (have never seen a group looking for it, haven't gotten around to queueing - hear it's a long boss fight though, and castle never). Post-patch I have done everything besides epic dreadvault and I also haven't done spellplague just because I haven't gotten a group for that since the patch somehow.
Despite being in a guild, I have pugged a lot. Pugs are hit or miss. If people don't seem like they know what they are doing, the best tool at your disposal is going to be your ability to communicate what they should do to make things work. 90% of your survival and your groups survival is entirely dependent on people knowing what is going on or what you expect from them. We all like to make jokes about how fights are just adds and red circles, but there is usually something else to it, and if you know it, sharing is the best possible thing you can do to make sure you are actually successful. If you don't know that what you're doing is the exact recipe to success for a fight, being open to suggestions is the only real way to find a solution.
I'd like to close this with saying in no way am I trying to 'brag' about how good I am or how easy things are... I hate posting threads like this because I feel it may come off that way and add to frustrations people are experiencing - but I wanted to answer the OP thoroughly.
I think the mileage in this game varies so much from player to player, thats why some of us are like 'healing is fine', and some of us are super unhappy. I can't say as I'm 100% happy with this class, so in no way is this a 'fanboy' post. I wouldn't even say I'm 70% happy with the class itself.
On spider boss, we basically go right, DPS down the spiders there, boss ports to the left - first wave of BM come - knock those back, if possible CCing them so they can't charge around - circle on boss, stack, DPS through all healing done, KB/control BM each time they come back to group. Long, slow burn that way, but once you get past first wave of BM and get a good rotation going with your control wizard and div sunburst, it's fairly stable. I did also do this with no CW at all, and 2 clerics rotating div sunburst (this is the place my guildie came with me twice before).
I ran spiders 5 times since the patch. Loved it post patch because I was sick of skips, and the fact it’s about the only dungeon with decent yet challenging mechanics where the boss doesn’t relying on spawning 20+ adds all the time. Yes, the 5-6 blademasters hit really hard, but can be manageable. I solo healed for all except one. My gear is T2 gear with stone.. but I think it’s really about strategy rather than the DC gear in this fight.
Group Compositions
My groups were pugs or invites from zone chat. Group compositions were either 1 of each class (easiest), 2 TR, GWF, CW DC, and TR GWF CW 2DC. I will say that Temple of Spider is much more manageable if average gearscore is at least 9.5k and especially if >10K. Yes, skill can make a lot of difference in addition to gearscore. The final boss is basically a DPS check. If your team DPS is high enough you have a good chance of downing her. If the team cannot out DPS her heals or use knockbacks effectively to interrupt them AND stay alive it will be fairly difficult. I usually gauge team DPS by the first 2-3 Drider fights. When the whole team can down a drider within ~90s you should have no probs. If it’s significantly longer than that you probably won’t make it. Two DC is not necessary if the party is smart and can adapt. In fact having 2 DC can suppress team DPS to the point where fights take a lot longer and you may not outDPS boss heals.
CW survivability
For spider temple (and pretty much all T2s) a lot of our difficulty is with the CW learning to manage the new aggro from adds. Especially with revive sickness changes you only get one revive within a boss fight. Ensuring survival is paramount before trying to burn boss. In most of our fights the CW goes downs first, and then the team wipes. In the last instance we had a 8.4K GS CW with us and he struggled to survive, but after taking notes on positioning and timing we made it easily. In one of the instance (with 2 DC) our CW died shortly after the drider transform but we managed to 4man her after I changed to DPS spec (Hammer, daunting light, divine sunburst knocks). CW plays a very important role in this fight (and I’m sure some groups have done it without a CW, but just in general) and more importantly than anything else they have to learn to survive and then being effective.
If your party’s CW struggles with aggro teach him all the tricks the DC have learnt to manage aggro. This includes running laps just on the edge of astral shield while waiting for cooldown, staying with the party, cast only when you can dodge right after, and keep party members as meatshields between spawned blademasters and you so they charge the tankier ones instead. If you see the web AOE go down dodge as soon as you can out of it because it’ll root you for a very long time. I find cleanse is very helpful in the entirety of spider temple dungeon to remove the web slow debuffs. The party should stay somewhat clustered together so you can heal more effectively. Adds near boss are easily mowed down by GWFs and GFs or tossed away by DC or CW. It’s when they charge you from far that you should be careful.
Fight mechanics
Once the CW has managed to survive the fight is about control and getting down to a steady rhythm. In the first phase ignore the boss and kill the groups of spiders at the sides. Once they are down then TR goes on boss, DC put AS around boss and start to burn her. All should be on boss except CW who should try to knock or singularity as much as they can, but especially time it during her heals so mobs are pulled off the red healing circles. If he misses the timing and the DC has divinity to spare he should use a D-sunburst to clear stuff around boss. If boss teleports the TR runs after her, engages her then DC toss new AS on boss and everyone else moves over there as a group. GWF/tank will hit everything around and including the boss. If there are small spiders that spawn anyone free should kill those to reduce boss healing. If you can try to position the boss closer to the side of the room, do so, as some of the adds won’t engage you if they’re too far. If blademasters are still charging the CW or DC the GF and GWF should try to aggro them when they spawn. After that it’s just a controlled burn on boss. If you can steadily out DPS her heals you’ll be fine. At 50% health boss will transform to drider form and gains full health. She doesn’t teleport around in this step so it gets easier. Keep interrupting her healing and she’ll go down rather steadily. It’s always a satisfying fight to take her down.
The role of the DC (your mileage may very well vary)
With different groups your role may change slightly. I generally use AS, sunburst and a 3rd ability depending on niche. Always cast AS in divinity and save up D for it. It doesn’t need to go down immediately, but when the boss is settled in her new position. Watch when to use sunburst, as for me it served 3 different purposes during this fight and you need to know which is important. If you have linked spirit, cast sunburst in normal mode but tab right after to proc linked spirit. This is also important for divinity gain. In a party of 5 you can easily get 1.5-3+k in each stat for 10s, and that’s a massive boost to everyone’s DPS, cooldown and survivability. As boss starts to heal, if CW skills are on cooldown you may need to use D-sunburst to knock mobs out of red healing circles. Finally sunburst can be use as a heal and divinity generator between AS cooldowns. For Dailys I slot divine armor and hallowed ground. I generally use divine armor a lot at the start, especially as a clutch when someone takes spike damage or just after a revive until the team gets to a stable position where there’s not a lot of spike damage, then I switch to HG to help party DPS, especially just before or during a boss heal. With SB cast fairly often you should be able to get a daily up semi constantly if everyone’s not running around for their lives. Switch between DA and HG depending on whether party needs offense/defense.
Third ability I’ve used FF, daunting light and chains of blazing light and all have been useful. Divine FF is the standard for assisting with in between healing, but once the group is used to using potions after spikes /dodging I believe it’s not necessary for this fight. Daunting light was used when there was a second cleric or you don’t need additional healing. It’s quite common to having 20K+ crits on boss with linked spirit and TR crit buff, boosting party DPS. I slotted chains for the fight where the CW was undergeared and could not control enough/survive. Casting chains either near the boss, near yourself or near the CW slightly ahead of time serve as a good trap for when spiders and blademasters charge you. You can then move away fairly easily and due to being immobilised they’re easy pickings for GWF AOEs and the like and can immensely aid group survivability.
Good luck!
Guild and guide info
Module 4 Comprehensive DC guide |Module 4 MoF CW Handbook |New! Scourge Warlock Guide| NW Numbers and Mechanics guide |Crit, Power and DPS guide | Dungeon Delving guide and more
stack with pvp gear and random blue(rare) neck, ring, and belt . . stack in 8.7k GS
but as long as I can finish Epic Pirate king so its fine for me . . LOL
most of the time are playing with the market ahahahaha
But the heal are still crappy :P
our dmg is even worse