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"can u heal me sometimes"
ketzer
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 0 Arc User
So im curious how other clerics are handling this stuff. Im more of a casual player and i always run t2 dungeons with random groups and joined this Spider dd Squad. And i gotta say those runs are usually really hard.
The CW facetanks 2 mobs, not moving, not dodging or anything while i channel divinity heal directly on only him. He still died of course, those CWs are pretty squishy ^^
Then he goes like "can u heal me sometimes" and i leave the squad immediately. This stuff really pisses me off. So im wondering 2 things: How do other Clerics keep the CWs alive? i run Sun Burst, Astral Shield and Forgemaster in almost any dungeon and swap out for healing word on last bosses sometimes(kiting etc)
And how do u deal with this talk yourself? Its extremly demotivating for me to play cleric in those situations, might aswell roll a tr or something :L
The CW facetanks 2 mobs, not moving, not dodging or anything while i channel divinity heal directly on only him. He still died of course, those CWs are pretty squishy ^^
Then he goes like "can u heal me sometimes" and i leave the squad immediately. This stuff really pisses me off. So im wondering 2 things: How do other Clerics keep the CWs alive? i run Sun Burst, Astral Shield and Forgemaster in almost any dungeon and swap out for healing word on last bosses sometimes(kiting etc)
And how do u deal with this talk yourself? Its extremly demotivating for me to play cleric in those situations, might aswell roll a tr or something :L
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I play my DC the most of the time, so I have some idea what I am doing. However, you'd be amazed how many DCs in this game behave like they're still playing WoW. When the tactic is agreed "rogue on boss, cw takes adds.." etc., many DCs drop the Astral Shield on the boss and don't heal the poor CW at all. I lose track of home many Pirate King fights I have had to do on pots alone because the DC clearly had no understanding of the fight, or indeed the game, and where damage occurs in NW boss fights.
Pop an Astral Seal on the boss, drop the odd healing world on the rogue if he's looking ragged. Then use your Astral Shield/Sunburst/everything else on the add killers.
I can often solo a lot of the mobs without help, as I am used to utterly terrible DCs when I am on CW, and I am specced for a long of control, but I am not sure that the cost shifting is fair. If you heal a fight properly, as described above, virtually no-one needs pots these days. Put the healing where the damage isn't, and you're increasing the risk that the CW will die constantly, even if he constantly CCs and dodges, and you cost him a fortune. Obviously, if he dies twice, you lose your add control, too- the price of not treating him properly.
Now it's possible that none of this applies to you, but it does apply to many many DCs in the game, so if even one of them reads this and lerns2hael, then it's worth it.
Meanwhile, that sounded like a rubbish CW. A couple of mobs, if they weren't huge terrifying ones, or one-shotty DV/CN mobs should be more or less facetankable anyway. If he didn't suck, he'd drop icy terrain and then spam chilling cloud on them, and they'd be going nowhere and dead pretty fast. Maybe he was one of those fail renegade single target spammers?
What you have to know is that 3 of 4 pug CWs are unskilled. They neither understand their role nor how to stay alive without help. Its not your fault so just let them die again and again. What you can do though is inspect them and laugh at their 500 defense with 0 life steal and 0 regen publicly. Its fun!
Imho, astral shield and boss mechanics (or should I say add fights?) work very bad together. As a CW fighting adds you should try to dodge permenently to avoid damage - that's the reason the CW has the ability to do so. Astral shield however is a fixed ground spell with a heal over time. When kiting melee adds, it is very situational, because it is always better to avoid damage by dodging instead of standing still within the astral shield. From it's mechanic astral shield would much more better suit to the boss itself, since the boss fight is not very dynamic.
However, I agree that astral shield often is necesarry to counter all the add. If astral shield would be a cleric aura instead a anchored spell, it would make add fights much more enjoyable as cleric.
Someone wrote in the forums that the classes behave like gear wheels. However, in many cases the gameplay design of the cleric feels cumbersome and clumsy.
I will say that to me it was easier "and 1k times more fun" when I could hold the agro of all the mobs. The GF marked all the targets beating on me, reducing their damage even more, the mark goes away when the GF gets hit....no brainer here if I hold agro no marks drop and with my defensive buffs + that I would get hit for like 50 damage, then also knocking them prone. The CW balling everything up on top of me and the GWF doing massive AoE damage on the pile of mobs in "my" control. I do have 38% damage mitigation with just armor though. With this sort of tactic we could keep up with add spawns on mostly all of the boss fights, except for Frozen Heart where the ice golems knock you prone, causing me to kite, but sense the golems stop and channel the ability it was possible to ball them all up in a neat ball strafing beside them and not even wiping at the end just AoE the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of my pile.
There are a lot of these extremely dumb ranged and melee fighters around, OP, in every MMO I played they are present in vast numbers. And they act like spoiled kids when the healer is present, it's not something exclusive to Neverwinter, that's just what people are that play these sorts of games. Let them die, you can't heal stupidity, and mage facetanking is clearly a stupid mage. So, as my cleric friend told me once, when the party starts whining about your healing, tell 'em: "Drink pots, I'm a DD
2. For Epic Spider, the endboss and speed runs are all about the CW. A pro CW will make the dungeon look trivial. A bad one will make it look like the hardest dungeon in the game. Keep that in mind.
3. More Epic Spider tips:
- ask group to clear initial adds to reduce initial healing strain by moving from door asap and going left or right. Staying at door will aggro boss.
- keep yourself at doorside of boss at all times. Pro CW's can be anywhere in your Astral Shield, but most will be on door side too.
- keep up with boss at all times, let the CW deal with adds. If they have any sense, they and everyone else will be keeping with boss too. This is the number one killer of newbies to Epic Spider.
- keep up a very high uptime for Astral Shield, especially when more than one Blademaster is about to appear. Nothing can save a CW if they get simultaneously charged by 3+ Blademaster's without Astral Shield up, even with 2K Defense!
- keep Astral Shield circle NOT at center of boss. You want as much room as possible for people who get knocked back by her melee swing (and probably charged immediately after by Blademasters) or when her hitbox increases in size dramatically at 50% for Drider mode. So, put boss at edge of healing circle.
- once Blademasters are in range, trying to create a large distance between you and them, especially if you dodge, will only result in being charged. It is the charge of Blademasters that hurt, not their melee swings. So, try ironically to keep close and not dodge around.
- you can use anything in the downtime gap of Astral Shield. I recommend Astral Seal spam (not just on boss ofc) or Forgemaster's Flame unless Blademaster's or teleporting spiders are around, then Divine Armor is best, imo. But on my other alts, I have seen many successful runs that use just about everything, including Bastion of Health, Hallowed Ground, Healing Word and even Soothing Light (though I highly do not recommend relying on Soothing Light without a build specifically for it).
- finally, keep an eye on the CW. If they are not able to (could be rooted from a Blademaster) use their Shield or black hole to knock out or pull adds that are healing the boss in the middle of your Astral Shield (which means they are about to create many deadly red aoes that explode), then use your Sunburst in Divine mode to knock back the adds. Do not worry about getting aggro because the adds will disappear from being healed. Otherwise, do NOT knock back the adds! The CW needs those knock backs for themselves in order to get as much AP as possible for the next black hole, Ice Storm knockback or Oppressive Force aoe daze.
So, as you can see Epic Spider has some subtleties that you won't find in other dungeons. It is a good test of whether your overall build is actually effective. If you cannot sustainably heal through that and your CW is doing their job, even if the dps of the group is low, then you know something is wrong.
That said, as per point 2, as long as the CW has 1,500+ Defense, is not being one-shot by multiple Blademasters and the group has high enough dps to just out damage Lolth's self-healing, the success of the run is highly dependent on the CW.
Of course, if the group is massively geared and has a huge dps, then even a CW is not needed due to adds being cleaned out by the boss from her self-healing very often, so you just need to worry about keeping yourself alive mainly in that case and buffing the group/debuffing the enemy.
Myself and the rest of the party were busy looting a chest.
PUGs are terrible.
When you say you channel divinity heal do you mean that awful Soothing Light? If so, that's not really a good use of your divinity!
And if the CW is just standing in red and allowing himself to be beaten on, that's not your concern. Keeping him alive is important, but he also has a part in that and like someone else said in this thread, this is NOT WoW and it's not the healer's job alone to keep people alive.
You can't heal stupidity.
As to the negative talk - that's been happening since healers had a place in a group in an MMO. There will always be idiots out there who think they know better, and as long as you know you're doing you're best, you should ignore them.
Umm, except that's not how it works, at all. Dodge is based on stamina, and three dodges exhaust the pool. What's more you cannot dodge projectile ranged attacks and the like. If you're playing CW on a fight, controlling all the adds and getting zero healing, you're chain potting until something catches you when pots are on cooldown- then you die. Many CW skills are also target capped. They are powerful, but not omnipotent.
It's this simple, the add killers need the Astral Shield. If they're good players, they will slip in and out to avoid red patches within it. You put a rogue on the boss in most cases, and pop a seal on the boss- and maybe the odd healing word. Bosses in this game hit like kittens, they are just an HP pool on legs. Only their big telegraphed/red patch attacks hurt, and you don't need to be a tank to avoid those- in fact it's often better if you aren't.
If your seal/HW is not enough, it's because the rogue isn't avoiding the red, or because the add killers aren't pulling adds away from the boss. If either is the case, after the inevitable wipe, suggest to the group that they might want to work on their situational awareness a bit. Then, try to keep an eye out yourself, if your group are afflicted by tunnel vision..
Only this evening, I did Pirate with a somewhat inexperienced (but really nice/patient) group, where they weren't good at noticing the adds around the rogue/boss. I was running back and forth, to put Astral Shield/Hallowed Ground/Sunburst down for the add killers, and to pop seals and HW on the rogue (who had never tanked the Pirate King before, so needed a bit of care). The rogue was mostly smart enough not to hit the adds around her, so when I was in range, I dropped a couple of at-wills on each, to pull them off the rogue, and then ran back to the group to replant my astral shield, bringing the mobs with me. It worked quite well.
Sometimes you just have to quietly fix things like that for the group, as people don't read chat very well in combat, and don't improvise well when they're already overloaded by an unfamiliar fight.
Now, if you have a rogue who doesn't dodge the boss attacks, or a CW who always stands still in red while mobs swarm, then that is not the healer's fault. You also can't stand in the Astral Shield for team mates- you can just put it somewhere sensible and convenient and hope. It's an MMO trope that remains true across even today's games- "can't heal through stupidity". However, you can come very close, and that's something to take a tiny bit of pride in.
Soothing light can be very powerful, it's not a waste of divinity like it used to be (it got buffed you know as did punishing light)
Yes ignore people who play stupid and expect you to keep them alive. Honestly 1 bad player can bring a group down (whereas without him you could succeed). Actually when running normal Idris on my tank when leveling the entire party ditched myslef and a CW after 2 wipes on the last boss. One ditched after the first wipe. So the CW and I ran back to the spirit who sells potions bought some potions and ran back to the final boss and killed her with just 2 players. Also we weren't over levelled we used the queue system to get into the dungeon.
Don't expect a cleric to save you if you run ahead or try and maker friends with red circles.
The buffs were 10% for SL and PL btw. Not exactly omgsogud, but I guess it's better than nothing.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
Dragon
BoH has such a bad reputation and I can't see why - I use it and love it, I'm not starved of action points or divinity, and it's perfectly viable in PvE. I have had no issues whatsoever with it. You do need to ensure that you are saving one pip at all times for AS but I usually have plenty to work with. Just my opinion
EDIT: Actually if I understand you right, you are suggesting using DIVINE SB? Don't your groups get awfully frustrated with the constant random knockbacks?
Personally I'm on the fence with bastion: If my team suddenly warranted a group burst heal it means something went horribly wrong that a 4-5k heal won't really fix (time to chug those pots), It's not worth casting it in D.Mode just for Linked Spirit, has a pretty long cooldown (even with the recent stealth change), the non-d.mode is a pain in the *** to use in PUGS. Sure a big burst AoE heal is useful in certain situations, but very rarely you'd need it. Very rarely do I find a situation where suddenly more than 3 people (and 3 is pushing it) need healing, even in PUGs.
I consider Sunburst an AP/Divinity/Linked Spirit generator. I'd cast it as a heal every now and then of course, never in D. mode though.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
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My dps cleric does have desperate renewal but so does my faithful spec one. I maxed it out on my faithful cleric (and 4/5 on my virtuous one) because that makes soothing light really powerful for when it is needed most. Honestly I wouldn't build a cleric spec without it no matter what tree I was speccing into.
My issue with it is that if I really need that clutch heal I'll just pop a D.Healing Word and pray for favorable conditions to get a 5k initial crit hit (800-1.4k ticks afterwards). Not to mention you lose the bonus once the target goes above the threshold. It's good when you need it (burning off excess divinity etc), but again, (my opinion) it isn't balls to the wall great.
PVP: How to make your life less miserable as a Devoted Clerics -- Still in it's Unfinished Glory
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You can try Healing Word + Soothing Light on your member that badly needs your first hand healing. That should help him a lot to regen faster outside Astral Shield/Hallowed Ground/Astral Seal heal procs... I assume Sun Burst is still hitting around every 8 secs.
This should remain varied depending on the density of the adds and how big the boss is, in my opinion. I already hear that same problem on my CW. I say these because it's not exactly wrong to protect the TR as well to be fair with the CWs. While we can occasionally give Healing Word to TR along with HG, and do other way around.. they are still very hard to target when they badly need that help/heal. Some big boss like that of the Karrundax and Spellplague finds me difficult to AS heal the TR doing the solo boss approach. as its very hard also not to stay inside AS. But on those that makes the party mobile like Frozen Heart, having AS with the Boss and TR seems ok since we are supposed to move and move anyway, while protecting the CW 1st hand.
I for one, protect my CW almost every time with or without AS. Not only that I really rely too much on CW that I need to babysit him. As long as he is doing his part, few heals should stabilize his health, the same manner as TR is and same on GF and GWF.
Server: Mindflayer
If anything, babysitting would seem more of an apposite description of what I do with a rogue of dubious skill, who is boss tanking- chucking them Healing Word charges and Astral Sealing their target. Hell, I had a particularly clumsy one yesterday who was soaking so much damage that he was barely beating the life drain of the boss, which gives you an idea of how much healing I was having to pile on him. I actually ended up running up, dropping Hallowed Ground for some healing and dps boost, and then running back to the group to plant a new shield.
No specific member of the add killing group should need specific prescriptive "protection", if they don't suck, and don't stand there like a lemon. However, circumstances often make it necessary to adapt a little, when one of your players isn't quite keeping up with the ebb and flow of combat. Playing any class and any role in the game is improved by trying to maintain situational awareness of the entire fight, not just your little corner, and understand what's happening.
It should not be necessary to say "rogue has died again, tank pick up the boss please" and then repeatedly asking him to move the boss back out of the middle of the group. It shouldn't be necessary to remind the DPS to pick up adds that are on the boss tank. It should not be necessary to remind the cleric to cast Astral Shield occasionally, and put it somewhere useful to the group. However, it does happen. The difference between a hopeless and a decent player is understanding what's going on, and playing like there is intelligent agency behind the character, rather than a blind routine-following automaton. Don't be "that guy".
"You can't heal stupidity."
That is too **** true.
I quoted this passage since I share the same sentiment.
As a DC, it is imperative that we have a solid sense of situational awareness based on the kind of multi-tasking we do (cast AS here, put seal on boss, kite adds, toss a heal at that person, build divinity/AP, etc). Situation awareness is something all players should work on to become better
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
YES other classes need to get it out of their heads that we're the typical "stand in one place and heal" healers. We just can't do that. You have to dps and you may even have to kite or tank some adds from time to time. That would have been unheard of in WoW-model games.
I think the answer is to just ignore the people who don't know what they're talking about or who don't fully understand your role, do the best you can, and have a good time doing it.
My advice- start inspecting who ur running with... specifically their defense stat. If they keep dropping it could be that they are poorly specced and disregarding their defensive stats.
Also, Spider is ALL about the push. The strat above is quite good. I did spider the other day and used Divine Forge for healing, and divine sunburst for the push when needed, along with seals on everything, and Astral Shield here and there.
Actually, Strider kiting on my Shaman in WoW was enormous fun, and I was a great deal better at it than any of the Warlocks who kept trying to do it, failing badly and wiping the raid
Ahem.
Depends, some of the people who don't fully understand what's going on aren't hopeless, or nasty. They have just never had a chance to play with anything but a few pathological PUGs while levelling. Some of these folks will actually do a great job, if given a decent explanation of what's afoot, and a chance to try it a couple of times without anyone yelling at them. It can be tiring, though, if you have to explain too much too often, when you're just trying to enjoy a relaxed dungeon.
People who are screamy and no good too, however, are a bit too much for my patience- such as it is
(Also, sometimes people surprise you; I got called a "b1tch1n' healer"* yesterday; a pleasant surprise. Most people enjoy praise, if you don't overdo it)
* For some reason, this word is censored, I hope that I haven't just caused an elderly 1950s deep south matriarch to have conniptions.
I should have been clearer - I didn't mean to "ignore" them exactly just not to take those comments to heart.
I certainly wouldn't call them low. I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at :P
Either way, healthy criticism is important from time to time, for sure. I've been called a good healer and I've had people tell me I'm awful - depends on how I'm doing in that particular dungeon but it also depends on what the other players have been accustomed to. Or how much patience they have or how much (or little) they understand their own role. Just basic awareness can be a problem for many people, not just in this game but other games too.
I do enjoy this topic. The way people react to negativity is pretty interesting. The OP stated that he left the party when there was some negativity towards him, whereas I flat out refuse to in most cases, because I want to both prove myself and I don't want to give in. Maybe it's my 8 years or so of being a healer and being berated and blamed for so long :P It's left me with a thick skin.
I would suggest you Divine forgemaster on one of melee mobs on the CW. Keep the AS for the Melee. Forgemaster is pretty much you best targeted heal if someone is not getting swarmed by minions.
Of course a DC can only do so much for its group. Part of your job is actually "leading" in the fact that you can tell people to change their behaviour to get better results.
Quitting puts you on every group member hate list. Giving tips is where you get the most results for your money. People do learn.