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Support/DPS Cleric Theorybuild

vomeistervomeister Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 8 Arc User
edited July 2013 in The Temple
Hello brothers and sisters walking the Divine path!

I was watching Unspecified's Cleric videos(*linked at end of post) on his opinions of powers and feats, and I had a few questions on a theoretical endgame build. I don't have any experience in endgame content, other than what I've read on the forums.

In advance, I apologize for the wall of text. I'll take time to do formatting for readability over the next week.

So here's the idea:
A Support/DPS Cleric centered on abusing Prophecy of Doom's ability to generate Action Points by applying PoD to adds that are about to die, or apply it to an add that you will quickly focus down before PoD ends. (Just found out that Prophecy of Doom currently doesn't reset, but when it does, this is the build I plan to use at endgame).
With the quick action point generation, the cleric would theoretically be able to spam either Hallowed Ground to give allies a 15% damage and resist buff, or if double-cleric'd and the other cleric is throwing down Hallowed Ground, use Flamestrikes or Hammers of Faith. The cost of this build is that you're not really a cleric, but rather more like a

There is a TL : DR at the end.

I'm going to start with feats first, so I can refer to them later as I talk about the different encounter ability setups I'd use.

Heroic Feats:
Toughness (3/3)
I took 3 points so that I could have a little more health, since this isn't a healing focused build.

Greater Fortune (3/3)
I took 3 points so that whenever I did heal, they wouldn't completely suck. I didn't take points in Healing Action, since my AP gain would be mostly granted by attacking groups or due to

Prophecy of Doom.

Weapon Mastery (3/3)
More Crits are awesome. Need I say more?

Domain Synergy (3/3)
More Recovery never hurt anyone. I might instead put this into Holy Resolve. Since if I'm stacking Recovery, 5% wouldn't do much more. What do you guys think?

Repurpose Soul (3/3)
I hope to be critting a lot, so this is my way to give back some minor healing.

Bountiful Fortune (5/5)
Boosts Divine Power gains, yes please! Especially since I want to always cast Prophecy of Doom with Divinity on for even more AP.

If you're human (like I am for my Cleric), the extra three points I put into Templar's Domain or finish out Domain Synergy if I go that route. Not sure yet.

Paragon Feats:
Virtuous:
Rising Hope (5/5)
Procs a lot according to Unspecified, and 15% more power and recovery is great.

Second Sight (5/5)
I'm not sure if this would work if Prophecy of Doom doesn't do it's final damage. Otherwise, Switch these 5 points to Power of the Sun.

Focused Poise (5/5)
I like Lance of Faith, and this feat gives it more oomph, as well as lets it generate more Divine Power. Not too shabby.

Disciple of Divine Lore (5/5)
I read somewhere that this procs pretty often. 10% more damage is great, plus Healer's lore being on improves your crappy heals.

Cycle of Change (1/1)
I hear this is bugged. Last point, I'd just put it there. Hopefully it's fixed soon.

Righteous:
Righteous Rage of Tempus (5/5)
Divine power generated off of crits, cool beans.

Ethereal Boon (5/5)
Grants me Divine power whenever an encounter comes off of cooldown. Okay!

Feat Summary:
So basically, I use my feats to boost my stats up to deal more damage, have crazy high Divine Power generation, and improve my crappy heal procs by a bit.

For the abilities:
At-wills:
Lance of Faith OR Sacred Flame
For this one, I'm not sure which way I want to go. But I want to lean towards LoF. From what I've read on the forums, Sacred Flame has a slight dps advantage due to speed of the animation, as well as granting temporary hit points and building divine power quickly. With the Poised Focus feat, my Lance of Faith's noncriticals will be dealing 5% more damage, which hopefully closes the DPS gap, and then all my feats which go towards Divine Power generation hopefully makes the difference between SF and LoF negligible. What are your guys' thoughts?

Brand of the Sun OR Astral Seal
For my DPS oriented build, I'll definitely be going for Brand of the Sun. Upon entering a fight, I tag whoever I'm going to kill with Brand of the Sun, and since DoTs trigger Terrifying Insight, it's boosting my damage already for my encounters. However, for non-boss fights, I may use Astral Seal instead to give out some more healing, since in general encounters, adds don't typically pop-up, therefore I don't have to worry about the initial aggro problem.

Class Features:
Healer's Lore: Increase my heals by 15% at max rank, and with the feat above, grants me 10% bonus damage now and again. Ok.
Sooth: No. Just... No.
Divine Fortune: None of my intended encounter powers will be non-damaging. Pass on this build.
Holy Fervor: Attack generate more action points. Nice, but not necessary if PoD is fixed.
Foresight: 6% damage reduction, passed to allies when they are healed by you. ****. I want this so bad, but I have to take other things.
Terrifying Insight: Boost damage as I attack a target, up to 16% at max rank. Hell yes.
Prophetic Action: Block 1 attack every 40 seconds at max rank... Not worth it.

Encounters:
Prophecy of Doom, Searing Light, [Variable]
PoD is the mainstay of this build, used on a target that you focus down and kill, to generate massive quantities of AP for you to spam your dailies. The fact it also resets (when not bugged) means you can generate Divine power from it off of Ethereal Boon. If there are no targets to focus down, Prophecy of Doom can be used also to weaken a boss, then grant a heal to those around the boss when its duration ends. Searing Light was chosen because it's an AoE, which if you aim it right, hits multiple targets, and with divinity, hits even more targets. Plus, it has a super short cooldown, allowing you to proc Etheral Boon, granting more Divine Power. These two abilities both require skill to use to their fullest potential. Thankfully, Searing Light is available from the start, giving Clerics who want to try this build plenty of practice with lining up targets. The third encounter ability is variable, with the potential choices explained below.

Option 1: Forgemaster's Flame (for single target soft-control and optional AoE Heal over Time)
FF is a DoT spell, which targets 1 enemy, and slows them for the duration. Combined with a 14 second base cooldown, it fits with the theme of short cooldown abilities to build more Divine Power to fuel Divine Prophecies of Doom. The downside is that it only hits 1 enemy. However, the nice thing about Forgemaster's Flame, is that it's divine version is also great a HoT (Heal over Time) spell when cast with Divinity, and the heal is not affected by righteousness. So it is healing you for full value. Though the heal is centered on the target, this can be beneficial if you don't want to stay in the thick of the fight, but decide that your teammates may need health. If doing this tactic, be careful of adds spawned in boss fights, as the healing with create initial aggro on you as they spawn, putting you at the top of their hit list until a teammate distracts them.

Option 2: Break the Spirit (for single target debuff and optional stun and slow)
BtS has a 10.5 second base cooldown. At max rank, and with enough recovery, you can have a target permanently debuffed by 30% damage. That's 30% less that your allies need to heal or be healed if there's a proper cleric in the party. Combined with the fact that it has such a short cooldown, BtS will be proccing Etheral Boon frequently. If you're fighting something other than a boss, the divine version of this spell also causes a .5s stun, followed by a 3second slow at max rank. Perfect for fighting those pesky elite adds during regular encounters. The drawback is
that like Forgemaster's Flame, it only hits 1 enemy.

Option 3: Daunting Light (for AoE explosion, with adjusted feats can grant defense debuff)
DL is our first AoE being considered for the third slot. It's not too large an AoE, but it has a decent base cooldown of 14 seconds and deals damage. This ability also requires familiarity to use, because its normal version has an approximately 2 second delay before detonating. If I drop Disciple of Divine Lore, and instead put the points into Nimubs of Light, this ability would also grant a 10% defense debuff for 5 seconds on enemies caught in the blast. Not a bad combo to cast Daunting Light, tag a mob with PoD, maybe cast Brand of the Sun, then let DL detonate, hit it with Searing Light, then spam Lances of Faith until the target is dead.

Option 4: Divine Glow (for AoE damage + defense debuff and optional ally damage buff) DG is like Daunting Light, except it's faster, has a larger area of effect, and debuffs the enemy defenses without need for switching out of Disciple of Divine Lore. When used with Divinity, it also grants allies in the blast a damage buff, boosting the groups damage output. Combined with the fact that it has the same cooldown, this ability on paper seems better than Daunting Light.

Option 5: Astral Shield (for AoE defense buff and optional AoE HoT)
What cleric build would not give Astral Shield a look over? And then another one to make sure? AS is a **** good ability, and if you're reading this, you probably know why. 30% damage reduction for your allies when they're in the bubble. And a regenerative effect if it's cast with Divinity. Now that the effects of two shields don't stack, you probably won't need to carry this if there's another cleric in your party who can manage 100% uptime. Though it IS a great spell, I'm not a fan of it's 17.5s base cooldown. If there is someone else using heals, I would probably focus more on debuffs and damage abilities.

Option 6: Sunburst (for Aoe damage + heal and optional Knockback)
Our very first encounter learned, and the last option I'm considering for my build. This spell has the same cool down as Searing Light, making damage rotations super easy. Combined with the fact that it will also heal in an AoE is a plus, though it may draw aggro unless there's a cleric healing more than you are (which hopefully there will be, because this is NOT a healing build). The great thing about this skill is that when cast with Divinity, it gains damage and healing potency, as well as knocking back foes in the blast. Combined with the low cooldown feeding Ethereal boon, this isn't a bad skill to have if you need more heals on your team.

TL : DR
As mentioned above, the point of this build is to abuse Divine Power generation from various feats and low cooldown encounter abilities, and to abuse Prophecy of Doom to generate large amounts of AP constantly, to spam Dailies. With this build, you'll be hitting harder than most clerics, as well as more often, and using dailies like Hallowed Ground to supplement your party's damage output, or FlameStrike to put out more AoE damage of your own.

Questions:
How is Hammer of Fate?
How exactly does Disciple of Divine Lore proc/work?
Is Cycle of Change bugged?
Am I missing out too much by dropping Astral shield?

Unspecified's Cleric Vids. Definitely worth a watch.
Powers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHharPTtkkw
Feats:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tq3g78ssLg
Post edited by vomeister on

Comments

  • phrausphraus Member Posts: 40
    edited July 2013
    At the current state of the implementation it would be a mistake to base your character in the tooltips.

    As You detected yet, PoD is not working correctly. And this is not a rare case, it is pretty usual for most feats and powers.

    Toughness and Weapon Mastery are working (because that they are useful)....for the rest there are two basic problems:
    • Some of them are multiplying instead adding; in a nutshell it means: you put 3, or even 5 points in a feat thinking it will increase your stat or effect X in a lets say, 3 or 5%. Then You discover that what the feat is doing exactly is multiplying your base effect * (1+0,03) or for (1+0,05); the result is almost negligible, except because the rounding is not being correctly done, and you usually get a little more, and if the feat is a proccing one, it will proc. That means feat points wasted.
    • Some others feats dont act over your basic stat, lets say over AP generation, but over Recovery; that means than if you do put 5 points in it for a 5% you would get a 5% of your recovery (supposing you have 3000, you would receive 150). That means you are trading 5 of your feat points for a level 6 enchantment.....at 3000 it would mean about a 1% in your ap generation and cooldown...I really think it is a waste

    The golden rule for me is:
    Are You able to see the effect in your in-game stats? No? then assume they are just not working.


    Samples of basic things just not working or under heavy suspicions:
    • CC bonus, CC resistance from Wisdom
    • Stamina generation from STR does something strange
    • Different resistances from stats combined (I dont know how) in an only resistance
    • Pet bonus from CHA (I have no way to check, but i have serious suspicions it is just not working)
    • etc
    • etc
    • etc


    For powers and feats we would have a real wall of text, but the forum is plenty of samples.

    My advise is, do not rely too much on the tooltips, or in guides or threads saying things like "oh boy, feat <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> is great!", but in these guides based on the real tests in-game data gathered from the combat logs instead; and even so, check yourself if possible.

    Good luck.
  • bootyjoosbootyjoos Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 54
    edited July 2013
    I think the idea is great in theory (and it's what I did while leveling until they broke PoD), but in a group situation, consider:
    Can you get the whole cast in before the mob actually dies
    Do you have to make sure your teammates attack what you mark with it?
    Would Sunburst (AP generation scales with number of enemies hit) have been better for generating AP?
    Also the timer reset from PoD is working properly for me on both live and preview, tested within 12 hours of writing this.

    For Searing Light, it has very low damage by itself so it's only worthwhile (but amazingly so) when you have a mage using Singularity on a large group of enemies. Daunting Light does a lot more damage in most situations and is capable of hitting multiple targets as well.

    You should definitely take Astral Shield. 100% uptime isn't possible with only one cleric now, and it's better to have it until you can convince parties that you're worth having along even when you're not using it.

    Hammer of Fate does a lot of damage but it's single target.
    Information about procs: http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?361072-Healing-Powers-and-Synergistic-Feats
  • vomeistervomeister Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 8 Arc User
    edited July 2013
    Thank you both for your inputs, I'll need to look into feats again.
    Re: Prophecy of Doom, I just got high enough in level to put some points into it, so I'm practicing with it solo and in dungeon groups to get a feel for the cast time. Like I said before, I know this build will be hard to pull off, due to tricky spells being used.

    Right now, I'm playing my lvl 32 cleric as an AOE burster, with the ability to supercharge specific skills as the situation dictates. Right now I'm running with Sunburst, Searing Light, and Daunting Light, and my damage output feels higher than my Control Wizard's when I was running the same content at level.

    Searing light, I see does lower damage than Duanting Light, but I like Searing Light because when I do line it up right, it works wonders.
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