baalhashmalMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 65Arc User
edited June 2013
I'm about to reach level 50 and can't wait to use Astral Shield (which I'll have maxed out the moment I get it -- saved points), even with the recent changes made.
So far, I've really enjoyed using the following setup for skirmishes and dungeons:
Daily:
• Divine Armor
• Hallowed Ground
Encounter:
• Sunburst
• Divine Glow
• Healing Word
At-Will:
• Astral Seal
• Sacred Flame
Class Features:
• Foresight
• Holy Fervor
For me, I get satisfaction being able to buff my team mates, de-buffing enemies, and increasing overall survivability for the group. Since then, even with not-so-great parties (the ones with players that refuse to dodge red circles), I have managed to keep myself and party members at close to max HP with this setup (for feats, Linked Spirit is amazing).
Using Sunburst and Divine Glow in the middle of a cluster of enemies and party members gives me enough divinity power and action points to continue the rotation, and when necessary using Divine Armor when the party's somehow got spike damage all around. Yet, since mitigating damage is a high priority, healing, although not powerful, is enough with just sunburst, proper astral seal placement, and sacred flame.
Healing word can be difficult to use since accurately picking out a party member who needs healing in the thicket of battle is difficult. I do wish some other means of being able to choose a target were implemented -- like a number to press that is associated with a specific party member. I think I will replace this with Astral Shield and combine it with Hallowed Ground in hopes the healing will stack...
The above is just for PVE. I don't bother much with PVP (but when I do I rearrange powers accordingly). PVP is extremely difficult since I'm at a CW's mercy. Their choke reminds me of the force choke from Star Wars, and the Sunburst "push" reminds me of... force push; I'm surprised they didn't bother making it a possible means for clerics to negate the choke.
Cleric:Marquis Elmdore - Current Main Wizard: Iamblichus Fighter: Anna the Titan Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
1 skill being powerful enough that its a must have in a healers arsenal is fine, thats pretty normal. Most games there are 1 or 2 main staple heals that everyone uses. Healers then have a few skills in easy reach with they use often, and others that are more situational that they use on occassion. This might still mean that for most fights there are 3 or 4 skills that make up most of the fight but at least they are able to call on all their abilities should they need them. They still get to have 20 odd other skills out on their skill bars that they can use as well.
Here that isn't the case and in my opinion thats what causes the problem.
You have the 1 main staple skill (AS) then you have the 2nd skill that helps facilitate the use of AS by being a nice way to top up AP plus doing a bit of healing, plus doing a bit of damage, plus being a blow things out the way skill (SB) then you have to have something to help fill in the gap in heals when AS is down (FF or BoH or HW). There is no room for anything else. AS has to be powerful and has to be constant because the rest of our skills are not individually strong enough to do the job.
That leaves very pidgeon holed clerics feeling they have no choices and no real role other than to try and supplement people's health pots and stones.
I read what Grant Allen from Cryptic said about clerics, they wanted them to not be heal bots or dedicated healers, to enable them to up the cleric damage and let us enjoy a more aggressive healer class (then they went and reduced our damage duh!). Well with all the clerics leaving the game and the others who are trying to switch their clerics to a pure dps class and not consciously heal at all I think they might have partially achieved that....but very far from successfully and not in the way they imagined.
In EQ at least clerics had stuns that could be used to stop non epic mobs from casting, and roots to keep them from chasing after you. What is compelling about the cleric in this game over any ANY other game on the market right now? Before the last patch I would tell you what was compelling was that the cleric was the most asskicking fun I had ever had playing a cleric. Afterwards it's just <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> with heals on every skill, and no utilitarian use.
Interesting that you would mention EQ clerics, after this last patch I've found myself fondly remembering grouping as an EQ cleric (not the stupid CH chain raiding mind you). Being able to yank a group out of the fire, ducking a CH to do DVA (I still think Divine Arbitration was one of the coolest healing mechanics I've seen in an MMO), root parking mobs when they broke early mez and started trying to eat an enchanter. I'm not even sure pre-patch I had as much fun. And I didn't even mention the evil chaos you could create with atone >:-). The bold part being my biggest gripe with the "fun factor". I don't feel that clerics in this game have the tools to turn things around so dramatically when things go wrong.
"We've received a lot of positive feedback about the changes to Astral Shield,"
From who exactly? Why?
Reading through the chats and forums the vast majority of feedback seems to be negative. If it was up "66%" of the time, it's because it was good, and you could leave it up while doing other stuff. That doesn't automatically make it OP. I don't normally play healers, I find them boring, but I WAS (keyword, WAS) enjoying DC til it got nerfed.
We made some changes to Astral Shield after finding that it was not balanced in line with the rest of the Cleric's abilities, or those of the other classes. At its most OP, some players could simply ignore defensive gear and just stay in the circle, which is no fun.
If a single skill on a single class is up "only" 66% of the time, that's a red flag for us that there may be some balance issues with that skill. We're currently looking into high-level dungeon scenarios where difficulty may be inappropriately scaled, leading some parties to feel like the previous version of Astral Shield was required just to make progress.
We've received a lot of positive feedback about the changes to Astral Shield, and it seems that many Clerics are enjoying all the other buffs and fixes. Astral Shield is still a really good skill, and we're monitoring to make sure that Clerics are just as useful in a group as they're intended to be.
Please continue to let us know your feedback, about Astral Shield and everything Cleric-related!
What I find funny is that we still have to keep astral shield up 100% of the time, we just cant because of the cool down. Rest assured that if you wanted to prevent clerics from keeping it up all the time, you have failed, because its absolutely necessary.
So what exactly did nerfing AS do?
I see the reasonnig behind the nerf of astral shield as valid.
I don't see the reasoning behind how badly heals scale. Well i'm still waiting for it.
At lv 21 my cleric's Sunburst healed almost the same as it healed at lv 60, with the difference that my HP pool and anyone else's was like x15 larger.
That's both incredibly stupid and unbalanced.
You either change how Power affects heals or you just tone down quite a bit (much) our HP pools and mob's damage.
I see the reasonnig behind the nerf of astral shield as valid.
I don't see the reasoning behind how badly heals scale. Well i'm still waiting for it.
At lv 21 my cleric's Sunburst healed almost the same as it healed at lv 60, with the difference that my HP pool and anyone else's was like x15 larger.
That's both incredibly stupid and unbalanced.
You either change how Power affects heals or you just tone down quite a bit (much) our HP pools and mob's damage.
That is one way to compensate. There are many different ways they can make the cleric better. Buff the heals, change the neg 40% heal on yourself, better cdr, tankier, just something or many things can factor in making it better and I hope the devs realize that they need to change the way cleric heals or buff something or many things. Looking at it now, more than 3/4 of cleric's abilities are pretty useless or very very underwhelming.
Clerics are very weak in PvP right now. Also healers get credit for nothing, so they get less glory, and they get about half as many event drops as dps.
Its up to you how you address balance issues, but just saying its ok for healers to be second class citizens is not a very good plan.
Fully agree with You. Not spending a single dollar more in the game untile the DC get some solution.
Thank you for that fix, now skilled clerics are actually recognizable and sought after. I have forsaken Astral Shield entirely and am officially running a "circleless" spec at the moment with great success. I have managed to solo heal every T2 instance the game has to offer without dropping a single astral shield, including one epic Dracolich 3man kill (just had to have that delve bonus). To any of my fellow clerics that are complaining about the nerf, I encourage to look at your abilities, specs and gear a little closer and be inspired to make some changes to rise to the challenge. Cheers.
Dear Developer (because only one of the current developers would say something like that):
Effectively, skilled clerics are actually recognizable (they are the guy/gal stunned/dazed/instantkilled) at the very start of PvP match, no way to mistake.
At PvE, in the current situation, the healing is done using mostly pots. Because no amount of healing you can do, no matter what feats and powers you choose (you can use AS or not) can cope with the damage received. Not an opinion, just check the log after the boss battles, and compare total healing done and total damage received.
What You are encouraging me is to park my cleric for a time, (dont putting even a new dollar in the game) and if the class is not properly balanced and fun to play in a few months, to quit definitively the game.
Thank you for that fix, now skilled clerics are actually recognizable and sought after. I have forsaken Astral Shield entirely and am officially running a "circleless" spec at the moment with great success. I have managed to solo heal every T2 instance the game has to offer without dropping a single astral shield, including one epic Dracolich 3man kill (just had to have that delve bonus). To any of my fellow clerics that are complaining about the nerf, I encourage to look at your abilities, specs and gear a little closer and be inspired to make some changes to rise to the challenge. Cheers.
What is this?? I don't even...
Any of us clerics who have played since at least launch and tested,played, and tried many different specs knows you are flat out lying.
korkenoMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 4Arc User
edited June 2013
i did not sit a read this post by post but i see alot of people claiming AS is only useful heal yadda yadda blah blah, We have no massive single target heal yadda yadda blah. Honestly since the patch i have had no problems running dungeon with effectiveness true i was pre 60 when the patch dropped. But my first dungoen was a spider and no problems what so ever. The damage ratio to healing done is meh if people are too stupid to stand in the heal trhen that is their own **** fault. And as for a nuke heal i have found Forgemasters flame to work wonders Even though its aoe it can be positioned ot get the 1 guy from not being dead. i fail to see why so many people complain. Its not that hard, and Honestly having Astral shield up all the time made **** too easy even with 1 cleric it ruins a certain challenge the game needs to remain enjoyable at least Imo. For all these cleric who are I'm giving up im done cause clerics got a nerfbat. Take a second re analyze the build you are there are still many ways to heal just fine even with low GS.
unicornmdMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 23Arc User
edited June 2013
So when do we hear from a developer saying next patch we are getting a general skill buff? Should also be interesting if all our healing skills were a little overpowered but could only make room for one heal on the encounter bar. The other two being used for whatever buffs were needed. Aka we choose a heal depending on the battle, a buff depending on the battle, and cc or damage. Maybe splitting encounter slots is a bad idea. Would be nice to pick a heal suited to the fight and rely on it doing its job.
i did not sit a read this post by post but i see alot of people claiming AS is only useful heal yadda yadda blah blah, We have no massive single target heal yadda yadda blah. Honestly since the patch i have had no problems running dungeon with effectiveness true i was pre 60 when the patch dropped. But my first dungoen was a spider and no problems what so ever. GS.
Please put here a link of a youtube showing us that, we are in need of a few laughs.
The damage ratio to healing done is meh if people are too stupid to stand in the heal trhen that is their own **** fault. And as for a nuke heal i have found Forgemasters flame to work wonders Even though its aoe it can be positioned ot get the 1 guy from not being dead. GS.
Nuke heal? As a sample, at PvP a rogue did me 17.540 damage in a SINGLE hit yesterday afternoon. Forgemaster has a cooldown of 14s (11.8s in my case), and 5 (avoidable) ticks doing a total damage from 3.513 to 4.092. If in divinity, it heals JUST THE VERY NEAR (9) allies a short share of that (carefully avoided at the description). That means you need to hit FIVE times in divinity (a whole minute), and that your target get all the ticks every time to reach the same damage, and more than double if you are trying to heal a nearby ally or yourself. That sentence is SHAMELESS.
i fail to see why so many people complain. Its not that hard, and Honestly having Astral shield up all the time made **** too easy even with 1 cleric it ruins a certain challenge the game needs to remain enjoyable at least Imo. For all these cleric who are I'm giving up im done cause clerics got a nerfbat. Take a second re analyze the build you are there are still many ways to heal just fine even with low GS.
Sufficent. Please build a Cleric, try to play and then come here to show us how easy it is.
We have took not a second but a lot of time to reanalyze our builds; in my own case even I respeced for healing, my GS is 10.240 and what you are saying is a complete and utterly BULLSH*T.
What an utterly worthless class. When I see my team with 2 DC's I know it's an auto-loss unless the other team has 2 DCs too or full of bots.
PvP, depends.
PvE, no.
You should be a bit more specific though, as I think you meant to refer to PvP clerics.
In any case, I obtained Astral Shield and I love it (as do other players who I use it on). Sure, that 5-6 seconds wait after it disappears and can be recast is a bummer, which is why I decided to go with Hallowed Ground & Moon touched.
Cleric:Marquis Elmdore - Current Main Wizard: Iamblichus Fighter: Anna the Titan Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
The whole cleric setup needs looking in too, I mean seriously what do you put your points in to after you have AS?
I have been walking round with 6 power points and no motivation to spend them as all the powers i use are on my bar. In most MMO's i can't wait to hit top level and get that awesome power that defines your class, sadly with DC you do not get any after you have AS nothing on the tree makes any sense, I put 3 points in to break the spirit to replace healing word as its useless and it really was a waste of 3 points.
The whole cleric needs a make over as its rubbish atm.
The shield and forge masters flame are decent spells, only thing is the sizr of the circle is not very good considering in dungeons the amount of damage and aoe spells being thrown around people are out the circle more than in it.
Forge masters flame is decent but in a crowed dungeon getting it on the target getting a beating is sometimes to hard as you can aim at one and it hits the mob behind it which no one is hitting so wasted spell and a lenghty cooldown.
Healing word is useless crummy little heal over time that helps no one as the damage is to much to make a difference, this needs reworking completely as i said its useless period, well its ok in PVE solo content but not dungeon even though i use it to try and top people up.
I think the whole power set needs looking at.
The way i see it is if I spec out the healing powers and use circle its not good enough for questing infact AS and FF in these late zones are still not enough for some of the quests in the fire area can't remember name hothe or sumit?
So you need healing word, but having all 3 healing encounters while you can survive your damage output is useless and it takes an age to quest.
I feel our damage powers need a bit more bang, AS needs to be increased in size, forge masters flame is good but needs a bigger graphic so people can see which mob is effected, and healing word well it needs retiring and a new spell or increase its usefulness.
Maybe a lvl 60 spell that's actually worth having as the last ones in the tree are useless.
Late game dungeons, even after the change, require Astral Shield. No other ability is an absolute must like Astral Shield. That's a problem but it really isn't as point blank obvious as it was before.
The level of defense and healing over time that Astral Shield gives is just far, far too strong compared to the rest of the other spells.
It's honestly better than even daily abilities!
But the thing is late game dungeons, especially due to the adds, requires that healing output. So at this point in time with the current timing I feel the issue isn't that Astral Shield is way too strong but the other spells are way too weak.
Sunburst - Great AoE effect but the heal is way too weak in the late game. It's just a filler spell which a good clutch knockback. The heal isn't helpful much at all.
Healing Word - Good healing effect but probably should have a lot more oomph with the initial cast and taper down to be useful as a clutch save spell. The number of charges should be increased and/or the recharge time reduced a bit more too. As of now it regens a lot but it's single target, heals less than AS, and regens too slowly for clutch situations.
As it is now you can cast it on an ally with low health and they'll die within a second due to the damage they are receiving from mobs or from a big hit they couldn't dodge.
Astral Seal - GREAT ABILITY which has picked up a lot of slack from the loss of Astral Shield but it's hard to target in groups due to the automatic aiming. Please make it prioritize unmarked targets AND reset the debuff on currently effected targets
Bastion of Health - Reduce Cooldown and casting time for such a minor heal at higher levels.
I could go on but generally I can summarize my experience with this: The cleric is not clutch enough.
The heals, other than astral shield, can not turn a bad fight around. Astral Shield was simply boring the way it was and even without the stacking effect it was simply bland but currently the spells which should be more rewarding and more useful aren't. The spells which should be clutch and allow a cleric to save allies don't do their job. The entire late game cleric revolves around AS and everything else is fillers for when astral shield is down now.
I really don't have a hard time keeping myself up at all even with righteousness and that's why I think every person who complains about it is misdirecting their issues due to a silly word. Clerics have more than enough sustain as it is. In fact if you buff the rest of the heals to be where they should be in late game, especially taking note of the more challenging to use heals like Healing Word, for all I care you could even increase the righteousness penalty.
The issue has, and will continue to be, that spells other than Astral Shield didn't and still do not provide enough power for the late game.
Solid Summary. I agree with it all. End game is where I'm having issues. I am forced to have Sun Burst and Astral Shield on my Encounters for Dungeons with some optional choice for the 3rd. Would love to see some better scaling at end game though.
Bastion of Health - lower the CD significantly for such a weak heal (not even a health pot) or buff it with a little HOT bonus to make it worthwhile to carry.
Sun Burst - Add a talent in the Tree to Buff if more to help with spike healing or add a 3 second defensive buff to friendly s affected by the heal.
My Bottomline: I'm ok with AS changes but as Cleric Healer, I would like some of the other abilities to be made a bit more worthwhile for me to justify carrying it on my encounter bar. Don't get me started on PvP at 60, but I think some creative changes / upgrades to some of the NON used powers would certainly add more options. Example: Forgemaster's Flame (DOT with Melee Heal if you have a Divinity charge on it). I think some of the other powers could use a creative 2nd look. especially to help with endgame. Not an easy button but a good hard creative look and some out of the box thinking.
A DPS cleric will never work in PVP. The reasoning for that is, EVERYONE FOCUSES THE CLERIC XD EVEN THE CLERICS FOCUS THE CLERIC LOL
A DPS cleric will probably die incredibly fast from a TR or cc'd to death.
Nothing anyone can do about it >.<
Sad truth, i was dps cleric on pvp, EVERYONE is trying to kill you, they run trought 3 others guys on the way and focus on you. You have to be small dye your armor black and hide in the shadows and cast your dots so no one could see you to have at least some fun :P
Thank you for that fix, now skilled clerics are actually recognizable and sought after. I have forsaken Astral Shield entirely and am officially running a "circleless" spec at the moment with great success. I have managed to solo heal every T2 instance the game has to offer without dropping a single astral shield, including one epic Dracolich 3man kill (just had to have that delve bonus). To any of my fellow clerics that are complaining about the nerf, I encourage to look at your abilities, specs and gear a little closer and be inspired to make some changes to rise to the challenge. Cheers.
If there is no video how you do this without abusing 100 bugs, this is just trolling to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> people who are already pissed by the class that from being fun to play ( especially at leveling) to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Actually after cleric i made all the other character classes and they are more fun now than cleric was earlier but thats not the issue here.
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iamthepiemanMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 9Arc User
edited June 2013
Since it seems that PW is looking for feedback on the cleric here's mine.
I stopped playing Neverwinter entirely after the balance and gameplay update. I didn't just rage quit as soon as I saw "OMG Astral Shield NERF!!!1!" I played a bunch of domination rounds. I can't exactly put my finger on it but in PvP I'm way weaker. It's not just the Astral shield nerf. It might be a combination of buffs/changes to other classes and have nothing to do with the changes to the DC.
Regardless of the cause, PvP is no fun for me, a casual moderately geared player with 11k gear score. PvE I never really liked due to the miserable targeting while healing and the lack of decent builds (Forgemaster's AS, Sunburst, Divine Armor/Hallowed Ground - is there anything drastically different that's effective?).
With the prospect of having to pay for 2 or 3 respec tokens to experiment and get my build right, I just gave up. This was before the price drop on respec.
So that's what the cleric is like for me. Boring and miserable enough to make me pick up another game.
EDIT: The only reason I'm still posting here is because I would love to come back if they made DC fun again with several viable builds and decent power/survivability in PvP. Like I said, I'm a casual player and love playing healing and support classes. I don't think I have the patience to level another character through all the same content again.
AS needs its duration increased and should also deal damage to the enemy. The cleric is so underpowered as it is, I believe this would make a suitable, balanced, level 50 encounter.
P.S, Bastion of Health is total waste of game code. Exquisitely pathetic.
I have quited my DC because of that nerf on the shield i was trying realy hard to keep going on T2 dungeons and CN.But i think this game is probably waste of time all the bad design of the skills and bad class synergy.I have play many other MMOrpg.This one has great guests and you can get some quality time with the Lore of Faerun.I will keep checking for updates but for now i will just play other games.Also if you need Feedback for Devoted Cleric Skills just try to remake the Class from the begin because on this current time most of the people dont seems to enjoy playing DC.Thats my opinion.
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azrael39Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 9Arc User
edited June 2013
You designers screwed up big time with this change. And the game is live now so you can't use the oops it was a beta test excuse. You have the numbers available to you to be able to study how much damage lvl 60 mobs can do to your players. And the Cleric healing should be equal to preventing this damage and keeping the party alive. But no, Astral Shield goes down at the five second mark. Two seconds to cast sunflare. And two seconds to cast my Daily to protect my team.
any player who fights outside of the Astral Sheild is likely to die within seconds.
The Nerf to AS was enormous. And the Cleric's other healing abilitites are terrible. I've healed in every MMO ever made and Neverwinter's healing is the worst of all of them.
Since the AS nerf I've quit playing my healer. Also the Spider dungeon is now too difficult. Blademasters that can take away any of your players life in under three seconds. It's just stupid. A terrible fail by the Dev team to balance the Cleric has made this game unplayable.
You will see I'm right when people start to leave your game fast and go back to their old games.
The Nerf to AS was enormous. And the Cleric's other healing abilitites are terrible.
I know there have been tons of posts/replies already but I read this page and feel the need to reply.
To the Clerics having healing issues, I use Sunburst, Forgemasters flame, and astral shield. At wills Astral Seal-Sacred Flame, It works perfectly. Unless someone YOLO's out of my range, people rarely die. AS leaves the ground at 5 seconds on CD. Cast divine FF at 6-5 seconds.... If people are taking big damage, and it seems too much, cast Divine Armor, Sunburst in-between to build AP/divinity and before you know it AS is back up. That has worked for me solo healing all the T2 Dungeons.
Comments
So far, I've really enjoyed using the following setup for skirmishes and dungeons:
Daily:
• Divine Armor
• Hallowed Ground
Encounter:
• Sunburst
• Divine Glow
• Healing Word
At-Will:
• Astral Seal
• Sacred Flame
Class Features:
• Foresight
• Holy Fervor
For me, I get satisfaction being able to buff my team mates, de-buffing enemies, and increasing overall survivability for the group. Since then, even with not-so-great parties (the ones with players that refuse to dodge red circles), I have managed to keep myself and party members at close to max HP with this setup (for feats, Linked Spirit is amazing).
Using Sunburst and Divine Glow in the middle of a cluster of enemies and party members gives me enough divinity power and action points to continue the rotation, and when necessary using Divine Armor when the party's somehow got spike damage all around. Yet, since mitigating damage is a high priority, healing, although not powerful, is enough with just sunburst, proper astral seal placement, and sacred flame.
Healing word can be difficult to use since accurately picking out a party member who needs healing in the thicket of battle is difficult. I do wish some other means of being able to choose a target were implemented -- like a number to press that is associated with a specific party member. I think I will replace this with Astral Shield and combine it with Hallowed Ground in hopes the healing will stack...
The above is just for PVE. I don't bother much with PVP (but when I do I rearrange powers accordingly). PVP is extremely difficult since I'm at a CW's mercy. Their choke reminds me of the force choke from Star Wars, and the Sunburst "push" reminds me of... force push; I'm surprised they didn't bother making it a possible means for clerics to negate the choke.
Cleric: Marquis Elmdore - Current Main
Wizard: Iamblichus
Fighter: Anna the Titan
Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja
Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia
Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
Guild: She Looked Level 18.
Alliance: Imperium
Here that isn't the case and in my opinion thats what causes the problem.
You have the 1 main staple skill (AS) then you have the 2nd skill that helps facilitate the use of AS by being a nice way to top up AP plus doing a bit of healing, plus doing a bit of damage, plus being a blow things out the way skill (SB) then you have to have something to help fill in the gap in heals when AS is down (FF or BoH or HW). There is no room for anything else. AS has to be powerful and has to be constant because the rest of our skills are not individually strong enough to do the job.
That leaves very pidgeon holed clerics feeling they have no choices and no real role other than to try and supplement people's health pots and stones.
I read what Grant Allen from Cryptic said about clerics, they wanted them to not be heal bots or dedicated healers, to enable them to up the cleric damage and let us enjoy a more aggressive healer class (then they went and reduced our damage duh!). Well with all the clerics leaving the game and the others who are trying to switch their clerics to a pure dps class and not consciously heal at all I think they might have partially achieved that....but very far from successfully and not in the way they imagined.
A DPS cleric will probably die incredibly fast from a TR or cc'd to death.
Nothing anyone can do about it >.<
Interesting that you would mention EQ clerics, after this last patch I've found myself fondly remembering grouping as an EQ cleric (not the stupid CH chain raiding mind you). Being able to yank a group out of the fire, ducking a CH to do DVA (I still think Divine Arbitration was one of the coolest healing mechanics I've seen in an MMO), root parking mobs when they broke early mez and started trying to eat an enchanter. I'm not even sure pre-patch I had as much fun. And I didn't even mention the evil chaos you could create with atone >:-). The bold part being my biggest gripe with the "fun factor". I don't feel that clerics in this game have the tools to turn things around so dramatically when things go wrong.
From who exactly? Why?
Reading through the chats and forums the vast majority of feedback seems to be negative. If it was up "66%" of the time, it's because it was good, and you could leave it up while doing other stuff. That doesn't automatically make it OP. I don't normally play healers, I find them boring, but I WAS (keyword, WAS) enjoying DC til it got nerfed.
What I find funny is that we still have to keep astral shield up 100% of the time, we just cant because of the cool down. Rest assured that if you wanted to prevent clerics from keeping it up all the time, you have failed, because its absolutely necessary.
So what exactly did nerfing AS do?
I don't see the reasoning behind how badly heals scale. Well i'm still waiting for it.
At lv 21 my cleric's Sunburst healed almost the same as it healed at lv 60, with the difference that my HP pool and anyone else's was like x15 larger.
That's both incredibly stupid and unbalanced.
You either change how Power affects heals or you just tone down quite a bit (much) our HP pools and mob's damage.
I want this class in NW.
That is one way to compensate. There are many different ways they can make the cleric better. Buff the heals, change the neg 40% heal on yourself, better cdr, tankier, just something or many things can factor in making it better and I hope the devs realize that they need to change the way cleric heals or buff something or many things. Looking at it now, more than 3/4 of cleric's abilities are pretty useless or very very underwhelming.
Fully agree with You. Not spending a single dollar more in the game untile the DC get some solution.
Dear Developer (because only one of the current developers would say something like that):
Effectively, skilled clerics are actually recognizable (they are the guy/gal stunned/dazed/instantkilled) at the very start of PvP match, no way to mistake.
At PvE, in the current situation, the healing is done using mostly pots. Because no amount of healing you can do, no matter what feats and powers you choose (you can use AS or not) can cope with the damage received. Not an opinion, just check the log after the boss battles, and compare total healing done and total damage received.
What You are encouraging me is to park my cleric for a time, (dont putting even a new dollar in the game) and if the class is not properly balanced and fun to play in a few months, to quit definitively the game.
But nice try.
Any of us clerics who have played since at least launch and tested,played, and tried many different specs knows you are flat out lying.
Well, that sounds like a measured, sensible approach.
Plz return after some epic dungeons.
Please put here a link of a youtube showing us that, we are in need of a few laughs.
Nuke heal? As a sample, at PvP a rogue did me 17.540 damage in a SINGLE hit yesterday afternoon. Forgemaster has a cooldown of 14s (11.8s in my case), and 5 (avoidable) ticks doing a total damage from 3.513 to 4.092. If in divinity, it heals JUST THE VERY NEAR (9) allies a short share of that (carefully avoided at the description). That means you need to hit FIVE times in divinity (a whole minute), and that your target get all the ticks every time to reach the same damage, and more than double if you are trying to heal a nearby ally or yourself. That sentence is SHAMELESS.
Sufficent. Please build a Cleric, try to play and then come here to show us how easy it is.
We have took not a second but a lot of time to reanalyze our builds; in my own case even I respeced for healing, my GS is 10.240 and what you are saying is a complete and utterly BULLSH*T.
The symbol for inches cut the messages.
Get rid of Righteousness. It has no legitimate point being in this game.
Cheers!
PvP, depends.
PvE, no.
You should be a bit more specific though, as I think you meant to refer to PvP clerics.
In any case, I obtained Astral Shield and I love it (as do other players who I use it on). Sure, that 5-6 seconds wait after it disappears and can be recast is a bummer, which is why I decided to go with Hallowed Ground & Moon touched.
Cleric: Marquis Elmdore - Current Main
Wizard: Iamblichus
Fighter: Anna the Titan
Barbarian: Anann Valkyrja
Ranger: Minerva Cory'phaia
Warlock: Suri Coralyne Reid
Guild: She Looked Level 18.
Alliance: Imperium
As for the other comments....cannot tell if trolling or not.
I have been walking round with 6 power points and no motivation to spend them as all the powers i use are on my bar. In most MMO's i can't wait to hit top level and get that awesome power that defines your class, sadly with DC you do not get any after you have AS nothing on the tree makes any sense, I put 3 points in to break the spirit to replace healing word as its useless and it really was a waste of 3 points.
The whole cleric needs a make over as its rubbish atm.
The shield and forge masters flame are decent spells, only thing is the sizr of the circle is not very good considering in dungeons the amount of damage and aoe spells being thrown around people are out the circle more than in it.
Forge masters flame is decent but in a crowed dungeon getting it on the target getting a beating is sometimes to hard as you can aim at one and it hits the mob behind it which no one is hitting so wasted spell and a lenghty cooldown.
Healing word is useless crummy little heal over time that helps no one as the damage is to much to make a difference, this needs reworking completely as i said its useless period, well its ok in PVE solo content but not dungeon even though i use it to try and top people up.
I think the whole power set needs looking at.
The way i see it is if I spec out the healing powers and use circle its not good enough for questing infact AS and FF in these late zones are still not enough for some of the quests in the fire area can't remember name hothe or sumit?
So you need healing word, but having all 3 healing encounters while you can survive your damage output is useless and it takes an age to quest.
I feel our damage powers need a bit more bang, AS needs to be increased in size, forge masters flame is good but needs a bigger graphic so people can see which mob is effected, and healing word well it needs retiring and a new spell or increase its usefulness.
Maybe a lvl 60 spell that's actually worth having as the last ones in the tree are useless.
Solid Summary. I agree with it all. End game is where I'm having issues. I am forced to have Sun Burst and Astral Shield on my Encounters for Dungeons with some optional choice for the 3rd. Would love to see some better scaling at end game though.
Bastion of Health - lower the CD significantly for such a weak heal (not even a health pot) or buff it with a little HOT bonus to make it worthwhile to carry.
Sun Burst - Add a talent in the Tree to Buff if more to help with spike healing or add a 3 second defensive buff to friendly s affected by the heal.
My Bottomline: I'm ok with AS changes but as Cleric Healer, I would like some of the other abilities to be made a bit more worthwhile for me to justify carrying it on my encounter bar. Don't get me started on PvP at 60, but I think some creative changes / upgrades to some of the NON used powers would certainly add more options. Example: Forgemaster's Flame (DOT with Melee Heal if you have a Divinity charge on it). I think some of the other powers could use a creative 2nd look. especially to help with endgame. Not an easy button but a good hard creative look and some out of the box thinking.
Sad truth, i was dps cleric on pvp, EVERYONE is trying to kill you, they run trought 3 others guys on the way and focus on you. You have to be small dye your armor black and hide in the shadows and cast your dots so no one could see you to have at least some fun :P
If there is no video how you do this without abusing 100 bugs, this is just trolling to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> people who are already pissed by the class that from being fun to play ( especially at leveling) to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Actually after cleric i made all the other character classes and they are more fun now than cleric was earlier but thats not the issue here.
I stopped playing Neverwinter entirely after the balance and gameplay update. I didn't just rage quit as soon as I saw "OMG Astral Shield NERF!!!1!" I played a bunch of domination rounds. I can't exactly put my finger on it but in PvP I'm way weaker. It's not just the Astral shield nerf. It might be a combination of buffs/changes to other classes and have nothing to do with the changes to the DC.
Regardless of the cause, PvP is no fun for me, a casual moderately geared player with 11k gear score. PvE I never really liked due to the miserable targeting while healing and the lack of decent builds (Forgemaster's AS, Sunburst, Divine Armor/Hallowed Ground - is there anything drastically different that's effective?).
With the prospect of having to pay for 2 or 3 respec tokens to experiment and get my build right, I just gave up. This was before the price drop on respec.
So that's what the cleric is like for me. Boring and miserable enough to make me pick up another game.
EDIT: The only reason I'm still posting here is because I would love to come back if they made DC fun again with several viable builds and decent power/survivability in PvP. Like I said, I'm a casual player and love playing healing and support classes. I don't think I have the patience to level another character through all the same content again.
P.S, Bastion of Health is total waste of game code. Exquisitely pathetic.
any player who fights outside of the Astral Sheild is likely to die within seconds.
The Nerf to AS was enormous. And the Cleric's other healing abilitites are terrible. I've healed in every MMO ever made and Neverwinter's healing is the worst of all of them.
Since the AS nerf I've quit playing my healer. Also the Spider dungeon is now too difficult. Blademasters that can take away any of your players life in under three seconds. It's just stupid. A terrible fail by the Dev team to balance the Cleric has made this game unplayable.
You will see I'm right when people start to leave your game fast and go back to their old games.
I know there have been tons of posts/replies already but I read this page and feel the need to reply.
To the Clerics having healing issues, I use Sunburst, Forgemasters flame, and astral shield. At wills Astral Seal-Sacred Flame, It works perfectly. Unless someone YOLO's out of my range, people rarely die. AS leaves the ground at 5 seconds on CD. Cast divine FF at 6-5 seconds.... If people are taking big damage, and it seems too much, cast Divine Armor, Sunburst in-between to build AP/divinity and before you know it AS is back up. That has worked for me solo healing all the T2 Dungeons.