What setup are you rolling with lerapiso, meaning gear, slotted abilities, etc....?
The high prophet set, Daunting Light/Divine Glow/Searing Light on trash.
On boss :
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/AS if your party need a 100% uptime on AS. Like in this run
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/PoD, for max debuff.
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/FF, for balanced damage/support/debuff.
Daunting Light/Break the Spirit/FF, for max damage.
0
pyron1xMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 16Arc User
The high prophet set, Daunting Light/Divine Glow/Searing Light on trash.
On boss :
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/AS if your party need a 100% uptime on AS. Like in this run
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/PoD, for max debuff.
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/FF, for balanced damage/support/debuff.
Daunting Light/Break the Spirit/FF, for max damage.
Thank you so much. I'm a new cleric but I hate being a healbot. I'm currently in my late 40's winging it out as a DPS cleric and I seem to be doing fine so far. My aim is to find another full healing cleric to run with. My questions is, why bring FF and Break the spirit? Most of my damage is coming from AoE attacks so I'm actually surprised by this set up since Break The Spirit and FF are single target attacks. Also, isn't Searing Light or Sunburst better AoE than Divine glow?
Again, thanks so much. Was getting discouraged by the almost 8 pages of negativity but am now inspired again to persevere playing cleric as DPS .:) I also have a control wizard but I find that I top the paingiver charts so much more easily as a cleric than as a wizard, and I really like the play style of a dps DC.
Thank you so much. I'm a new cleric but I hate being a healbot. I'm currently in my late 40's winging it out as a DPS cleric and I seem to be doing fine so far. My aim is to find another full healing cleric to run with. My questions is, why bring FF and Break the spirit? Most of my damage is coming from AoE attacks so I'm actually surprised by this set up since Break The Spirit and FF are single target attacks. Also, isn't Searing Light or Sunburst better AoE than Divine glow?
Again, thanks so much. Was getting discouraged by the almost 8 pages of negativity but am now inspired again to persevere playing cleric as DPS .:) I also have a control wizard but I find that I top the paingiver charts so much more easily as a cleric than as a wizard, and I really like the play style of a dps DC.
I have a dps cleric using high prophet set and I rarely use single target skills for my encounters.
I typically use sunburst (for damage and procing rising hope and cycle of change), Divine glow, and daunting light. I also have repurposeful soul maxed out (small AoE on my crits to nearby allies). Sacred flame and brand of the sun for at-wills, though I have been considering testing out lance of faith again. Hammer of fate and flamestrike as dailies.
I also make good use of soothing light to heal people and get cycle of change stacks to increase my damage. If some single target is needed I only put in one ability. I typically top or come close to top in damage charts with this spec. When putting in a single target skill it's always sunburst that gets replaced. Divine glow and daunting light are just too good to swap out.
Good single target skills are:
-Prophecies of doom
-Break the spirit
-Forgemaster's flame
Only thing I wish for this spec is if I could queue as a dps, only thing that is needed really (for some parties/dungeons). I have completed some dungeons as the only cleric and topped both damage and healing but the success of that is very inconstant. It requires the entire party to avoid red circles because I can't keep them alive if they expect me to babysit them with healing. If they dodge and use potions it tends to work fine though.
I've found that running non-epic PUG's, it's not that hard to get good damage numbers. I don't know that it means, anything, though. Like others have said, clearing out trash isn't especially useful. The trick is to throw searing light into mobs that you've lined up as well as you can. It's super fun to see a big explosion of numbers.
Sadly, now that I'm in a guild and speed running Dungeon Delves twice a day, you find out that it's completely impractical. You are frantically using every Encounter you have every cooldown, and praying that you can build up enough AP between running out of red circles. It's very demanding and not very fun, to be honest. But it's really profitable in terms of getting epic loot to sell, so I do it. lol
One of the major problems is that a lot of our abilities don't work right (try figuring out what crits proc Repurpose Soul), and are so vague that it's hard to know what they're really doing. The ones that do work right are just absolutely pitiful in terms of healing output. The combat log is useful to look at damage, but it won't show any overhealing, so it's really difficult to measure heals. Buff tooltips are equally vague. For having soooo many 1% feats, it really gives you next to no information that lets you evaluate performance.
I should add that the cleric feats more or less suck anyway. On my TR, it's a tough call to choose between certain feats, because they're all so good. On the DC, there's usually only one choice that doesn't completely suck. There are a few good feats deep in the paragon trees, but you become watered-down healbot if you pick them. And they're not amazing. They just make your job less frantic. They should be baseline.
It's not hard to keep an entire group at full health. The real problem is keeping yourself alive. The self-heal nerf is completely absurd. I chug potions every 12 seconds religiously, because this game just has swarms and swarms of adds that all aggo on you immediately because no one else has hit them to cause threat, but your constant HoT effects apply to every mob in the area. The worst adds to deal with are the small ones with relatively low health, but high damage output. We are EXTREMELY squishy (or we seem like it due to seal-healing nerf). Your groupmates won't necessarily think you're in trouble when they see an imp on you, even though you're fighting for your life, basically relying on potions not to die.
I don't know what kind of role they intended the DC to have, but it's a fail. You basically end up in a situation where you are expected to heal, control, debuff, and DPS, except you can't do any of them at the same time, and honestly, you're not even that effective at any of them. The big problem with a "hybrid" role like this is that you only have 3 encounters. Divinity Mode tries to get around this some by making something like AS or FF into healing -- but then when people do a full healing build and use them that way, the developers cry that their content has been trivialized, and nerf them down.
Our two best heals (AS and FF) both require a pip of Divinity, and are both completely mitigated by a red circle. I also find that FF becomes hard and hard to use the better your CW is. I can't tell you how many times -I- have died because the CW threw the one mob that was healing everyone away from the group (which of course means healing ME, because I need twice the healing of any other group member). While AS is super easy to see, the seal from FF is hard to recognize, even though it's our biggest heal. It ought to project a blue ground circle around the mob you put it on. Until it does (which I expect will be never), FF can't really be relied upon as a primary heal -- even though it's potent enough.
All that said, at the end of the day, you are hedged into a healbot role that you are ill-suited to fill. If you spec for it, you end up not being able to do anything else in the game (like effective PvP). If there would dual-spec, you could go back and forth and it might be okay.
This class need a LOT of love. I haven't spent a dime on the game, and I won't until they fix the DC.
0
pyron1xMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 16Arc User
edited July 2013
@faeriestorm and @whistlingdixie - agree agree agree with all of what you guys have said so far. I wish I could queue as dps since I top the dps charts consistently anyways and have an actual healbot priest slot in the group. Even then, my group does well even though I'm the solo cleric as long as they use pots and avoid red things on the ground.
I think a lot of players are still stuck in the mindset from other MMO's wherein a "healer" can heal them through everything. Obviously that is not the case with this game where the healer has very weak heals and where people are actually expected to chug potions to compensate for incoming damage or lack of skill when standing in red circles.
Food for thought:
-For Devoted Clerics, damage mitigation > healing.
-Righteousness doesn't actually affect several of our heals like Divine Astral Shield and Forgemaster's Flame. It affects Soothing Light, but as long as you're targeting someone else then it's still a free heal.
-More info on cleric powers/feats in this thread by scozzers. I suggest more people post in there so we can get it stickied.
-There are people who run T2s/CN regularly with only 2 healing powers and 1 control power, though perhaps switching in/out a third heal depending on party composition. Incidentally, these people tend to focus on damage mitigation rather than actual healing.
-In case you missed the subtle inference above, a good cleric will be switching in/out his powers all the time unless you run only 1 particular dungeon with only 1 party.
-It is the responsibility of the tank to keep aggro off you (extra food for thought: good tanks have a feat that basically makes it so mobs will tend to attack him/her as long as you were not using a burst heal at the time). A decent tank is capable of doing this with minimal effort. A good tank can do this while being almost completely self-sufficient/doing very good DPS.
-If the GF is busy, then it falls on the CW/GWF to help defend you. A CW/GWF who is unable to help keep mobs off you, whether through the use deadly force/control powers/burst damage, is failing at his/her job. Why do you think we call them "control wizards" or "secondary defenders"? Even rogues are expected to help you as long as they're not the ones responsible for "distracting" the boss. You are expected to have some way of defending yourself, or at the very least you will want to stay reasonably close to the party wizard (most times) or the tank/gwf. The searing imps you are referring to is part of what makes the Lair of the Mad Dragon dungeon difficult. Having the DPSers constantly attack these imps (feel free to cross-reference this with every successful Lair of the Mad Dragon run in youtube) or keeping them controlled through other means is the simple solution, and guarantees a better Lair of the Mad Dragon run.
-In case people are unclear about this, the reason why many boss battles are difficult is because of the adds bosses summon, especially at 60%/30%. Obviously, if these adds are not being killed/controlled to the point that good clerics are dying to them then your group was setting itself up for failure in the first place. Rogues using Smoke Bomb, Wizards correctly using/timing their various control powers (Steal Time and AS, in particular), GWFs spamming Slam or even Chains of Blazing Light/Break the Spirit on your part can mean all the difference between a a quick, simple run and fail.
Once again, some of you people are just trying too hard. Learn to accept that DC's are not as powerful as healers in other games (like WoW, where something like five or so healers are expected to keep a group of 40 alive). This is because DCs are not healbots, so they will never really play well as one. Notice that all DCs need to attack to build divinity/AP, unlike "true" healbots. There are certain breakpoints we must reach, like a constant stream of dailies in under 20s or higher healing/temporary HP generation/constant mitigation, and you must be able to reliably switch your powers in/out as needed and dodge well or better, but after that it's no longer your fault if the group still wipes. Once you know your limitations the game is a lot easier. Don't expect to be able to outheal a team that was setting itself up to fail. Just don't. Learn to pass the blame on the people who actually deserve it for once, like that wizard who simply refuses to stand in your Astral Shield or who does very little control, that GWF who for some idiotic reason refuses to use Slam in add-heavy fights, that Rogue who skipped Smoke Bomb or Impossible to Catch, or that GF who couldn't even out-aggro your Sunburst. These people deserve to be known for the failures that they are.
You there. New to the game? Feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you think getting to end-game is impossible for a casual player like yourself, or maybe you just need to be around a community that helps each other stay sane and competitive with the latest news, current trends, random chitchat and most of all LEGIT (that is, we try to keep things fair) gameplay. If you don't mind being around quirky people and the rare occasional drama (one of our prominent TR members is apparently a mafia godfather) join nw_legit_community at http://www.nwlegitcommunity.shivtr.com/forum_threads/2330542.
FWIW, righteousness now DOES affect astral shield (they changed it from a regen effect to a HoT). Forgemaster's may be the single remaining un-righteous heal we have.
Have you actually tried testing it? Just because it was changed to an HoT doesn't mean Righteousness now affects it. Because unless my Man-at-Arms and Wandering Wizard are now also affected by the Righteousness debuff then Astral Shield still isn't affected by Righteousness.
Then there's Astral Seal.
You there. New to the game? Feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you think getting to end-game is impossible for a casual player like yourself, or maybe you just need to be around a community that helps each other stay sane and competitive with the latest news, current trends, random chitchat and most of all LEGIT (that is, we try to keep things fair) gameplay. If you don't mind being around quirky people and the rare occasional drama (one of our prominent TR members is apparently a mafia godfather) join nw_legit_community at http://www.nwlegitcommunity.shivtr.com/forum_threads/2330542.
Huh, dunno. I noticed that it healed me a hell of a lot less after the patch than before, even accounting for reduced uptime, while it still seems to heal my party like crazy. If you've actually parsed it, I'd be happy to be wrong. I haven't extensively tested it with companions since I never got consistent heal data from them (and I recently cashed in all my AD for a stone anyway, so I've been levelling that :P)
Also, astral seal is more of a bonus than something I'd rely on for self healing, as far as I'm concerned. In a party it's a no-brainer, since a sealed monster being hit by all your team is dishing out damage-scaled heals to everyone, but solo I don't really tend to put out enough single-target damage to make it anything other than "a nice bonus, plus what other at-will are you going to use, eh?".
And by the time I've sealed everything I might want to AoE damage (assuming I can spam the seal without the lovely targeting system applying it all to the same monster) the seals've almost expired anyway.
Brand of the sun, Prophesy of Doom, Forgmasters Flame, Break the Spirit, Punishing Light, this rotation, with dps spec and dps gear will give you the highest single target burst dmg in the game for some seconds. You will be hiiting for around 12k/sec for about 3 seconds and then PoD will explode for another 12k. This is only for dps, a build around this have no utillity at all, and it takes quit long to aply. It's really nice in boss fights. I would sugest making a utillity spec instead, either buff your groups dmg, or just healing. Slow and steady works way better in this game.
I'm pretty sure we gonna see a melee lifesteal to ally paragon path whenever thet decide to realese em. So holding out for that
Once again, some of you people are just trying too hard. Learn to accept that DC's are not as powerful as healers in other games (like WoW, where something like five or so healers are expected to keep a group of 40 alive).
I hear what you're saying loud and clear. Everyone has to play their class perfectly, or WE die. I can't tell you how many boss fights where I have died fighting adds and frantically running around, chugging potions every 12 seconds, while my whole party sits at full health. Then I actually die, and they continue to kill the boss without a hitch. What is the point of that? I just ran a non-epic Dread Vault for the daily quest. I ended up just dropping the group that EXACTLY that happened in the first boss fight because no one helps me with adds. And I can't even talk to these people because half of them don't speak english. I said something in the party chat, and no one even replied.
My point is, those healers in those games have powerful heals. In exchange, they do pitiful damage. We, however, have mediocre heals and STILL do pitiful damage. Or we can spec to do mediocre damage and have almost no healing capacity whatsoever.
And worst of all, even if we go full healing spec, we are not only defenseless against adds, but we also still can't effectively heal the person taking the most damage: ourselves.
So yeah, we are not like healers in other games. We are much, much worse. We get none of the benefits and all of the drawbacks. It's possible to be hedged into a specific feat and gear spec and, if we're very skilled at the class, do moderately well. So there's no rewards for playing well, it's either play well or die. And hope everyone else plays well, or die. We have no way to pick up the slack if someone else screws up.
And Chains of Blazing Light and Break the Spirit? You surely much be joking. Those spells are a total joke. The root only like a couple seconds, and I have honestly never even noticed the stun effect from Break the Spirit. It must be 0.5 seconds like the 5pt T4 talented one on Flame Strike. (Again, what a joke.)
I'm not saying the class is entirely impossible. I'm saying it's absurdly hard with nothing to show for it.
I hear what you're saying loud and clear. Everyone has to play their class perfectly, or WE die. I can't tell you how many boss fights where I have died fighting adds and frantically running around, chugging potions every 12 seconds, while my whole party sits at full health. Then I actually die, and they continue to kill the boss without a hitch. What is the point of that? I just ran a non-epic Dread Vault for the daily quest. I ended up just dropping the group that EXACTLY that happened in the first boss fight because no one helps me with adds. And I can't even talk to these people because half of them don't speak english. I said something in the party chat, and no one even replied.
My point is, those healers in those games have powerful heals. In exchange, they do pitiful damage. We, however, have mediocre heals and STILL do pitiful damage. Or we can spec to do mediocre damage and have almost no healing capacity whatsoever.
And worst of all, even if we go full healing spec, we are not only defenseless against adds, but we also still can't effectively heal the person taking the most damage: ourselves.
So yeah, we are not like healers in other games. We are much, much worse. We get none of the benefits and all of the drawbacks. It's possible to be hedged into a specific feat and gear spec and, if we're very skilled at the class, do moderately well. So there's no rewards for playing well, it's either play well or die. And hope everyone else plays well, or die. We have no way to pick up the slack if someone else screws up.
And Chains of Blazing Light and Break the Spirit? You surely much be joking. Those spells are a total joke. The root only like a couple seconds, and I have honestly never even noticed the stun effect from Break the Spirit. It must be 0.5 seconds like the 5pt T4 talented one on Flame Strike. (Again, what a joke.)
I'm not saying the class is entirely impossible. I'm saying it's absurdly hard with nothing to show for it.
The break the spirit stun is only useful in PvP, in PvE it can still be useful but not as a stun.
As for self healing, that self heal debuff needs to go, we are often close behind the tank (or even ahead!) in the damage we take.
If you spec for damage you can come top damage pretty easily (or second sometimes). Our damage it fine, if we slot only dps skills (or dps/heal hybrid skills)
Only faithful spec clerics have damage issues in dungeons, but that would be a moot point I think if the self heal debuff was gone.
I don't know about you, but if a team is making it a point to ignore their responsibilities then I make it a point to ignore mine. And if they are surviving well enough without your help that's an indication that you might want to focus your skills towards improving personal survivability, which is one of the reasons why I pointed out that good players are always switching in/out powers depending on what is needed. And why do you seem outraged that your teammates are doing well even without your help? Considering how we are basically the only truly "necessary" class in the game, especially when it comes to the really intense fights, then you should in fact be relieved by this news.
Finally, our specialty is damage mitigation. Healing is secondary. If you're prioritizing healing over damage mitigation you're doing it wrong.
The fact that you are underestimating Chains and Break the Spirit shows just how inexperienced you are as a cleric (or at least, as a non-faithful type). Chains only lasts a few seconds, but used correctly then in those few seconds your team is not taking any damage from adds caught in the snare. That counts as a form of mitigation and is a very big thing against a group of melee adds that hit hard, like blademasters. Break the Spirit is a very powerful -%damage done debuff. Ever used it on Thoons? Or the first Dread Vault boss you so conveniently decided to mention. Suddenly their suck-in/slam attack is no longer a 1-hit kill. That's also a form of mitigation. Break the Spirit can potentially neuter just about any elite/boss with really powerful attacks, or at the very least make them more manageable.
The funny thing about how it seems cleric types were balanced is that Faithful actually gives you higher total DPS (party-wise, thanks to Hallowed Ground & Linked Spirit) and healing while other cleric types have better mitigation (attack skills generate AP faster->Divine Armor spam) and personal damage/survivability/control potential.
You there. New to the game? Feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you think getting to end-game is impossible for a casual player like yourself, or maybe you just need to be around a community that helps each other stay sane and competitive with the latest news, current trends, random chitchat and most of all LEGIT (that is, we try to keep things fair) gameplay. If you don't mind being around quirky people and the rare occasional drama (one of our prominent TR members is apparently a mafia godfather) join nw_legit_community at http://www.nwlegitcommunity.shivtr.com/forum_threads/2330542.
I don't know about you, but if a team is making it a point to ignore their responsibilities then I make it a point to ignore mine. And if they are surviving well enough without your help that's an indication that you might want to focus your skills towards improving personal survivability, which is one of the reasons why I pointed out that good players are always switching in/out powers depending on what is needed. And why do you seem outraged that your teammates are doing well even without your help? Considering how we are basically the only truly "necessary" class in the game, especially when it comes to the really intense fights, then you should in fact be relieved by this news.
Finally, our specialty is damage mitigation. Healing is secondary. If you're prioritizing healing over damage mitigation you're doing it wrong.
The fact that you are underestimating Chains and Break the Spirit shows just how inexperienced you are as a cleric (or at least, as a non-faithful type). Chains only lasts a few seconds, but used correctly then in those few seconds your team is not taking any damage from adds caught in the snare. That counts as a form of mitigation and is a very big thing against a group of melee adds that hit hard, like blademasters. Break the Spirit is a very powerful -%damage done debuff. Ever used it on Thoons? Or the first Dread Vault boss you so conveniently decided to mention. Suddenly their suck-in/slam attack is no longer a 1-hit kill. That's also a form of mitigation. Break the Spirit can potentially neuter just about any elite/boss with really powerful attacks, or at the very least make them more manageable.
The funny thing about how it seems cleric types were balanced is that Faithful actually gives you higher total DPS (party-wise, thanks to Hallowed Ground & Linked Spirit) and healing while other cleric types have better mitigation (attack skills generate AP faster->Divine Armor spam) and personal damage/survivability/control potential.
Well said.
Guild: Lemonade Stand | Server: Dragon (Original) | PvP Forever | 1og0s * TWITCH * YOUTUBE * MY GUIDES *
Agree with above. I play only DC. Depending on the groups and dungeons, I have to change my powers all the time. Break the Spirit, for example, is a very powerful attack. Chain can be useful depending on what you face. The problem is that you only have a limited amount of points to spread across all these useful powers.
Can you explain how to swap out powers while you are frantically dodging adds? It's not always clear that you'll need to focus on self-defense and DPS when you start a boss fight. The dungeon up until that point went fine.
I use BtS in PvP, and again, I have hardly noticed the stun. We rank it up and ooo boy, we get a longer stun? Nah, just 2 more seconds of slow. Yippie. Cause that makes a world of difference. . It's certainly nothing on the order of Entangling Force. The Chains could potentially be really good, except that notice even if we rank it up: the duration of the root doesn't increase, only the duration that it will sit waiting for someone to step on it. And of course it will do a bit more damage, but it can't crit. Not that it would ever proc Repurpose Soul or anything, because none our abilities that deal damage via a "Created Entity" proc it. And those are some of our biggest spells: Flame Strike and Daunting Light.
While you could potentially mitigate damage for a couple seconds by rooting something briefly, I seriously, seriously doubt the "effective heal per second" of that mitigation is better than just about any other encounter you could have out. But how far do we take this "mitigated damage" way of thinking? So if we slot pure damage, and the group kills a mob 30% faster than it would without us DPS'ing, can we count that as 30% more healing, since it was dead sooner? Of course not, that's just not how it works. Mitigating damage is just not the same as healing damage, no matter how badly you want to try and justify how our power work.
Same goes for Break the Spirit. I am sure it can be used to some effect IF you have it slotted. Which is going to be almost never, because there are essential spells you'll have out instead. So back to my first question, how do you manage to swap out powers in the middle of a big combat? I mean, it's not as if you can even drag them around from another bar. You have to open the Powers window (that blocks nearly the whole screen), and then scroll down to find the power you want.
And for the record, I don't have a single feat in Faithful. I'm a mix of Virtuous and Righteous. Though I will likely respec soon. I almost never get to use any of the good things in Virtuous. I feel like Nimbus of Light and Power of the Sun are solid abilities, but I'm never able to slot those powers. I need Sacred Flame and Astral Seal. Maybe if Brand of the Sun front-loaded more Divinity generation, it would be viable.
Y'all just keep on pattin' each other on the back, telling yourself how you're such fine and skilled players while everyone else is just doing it wrong. The "L2P" response to any criticism of a class is inevitable, I suppose. The bottom line is that we trade pretty much everything really good that other classes get for one thing: heals. And they just so happens to be the one thing we can't personally benefit from, even though we probably need them the most. No other class is penalized on their core mechanic.
Our best heals require Divinity to use. Our only non-divinity heals are pitiful, slightly less so with divinity, and they take up an encounter slot while providing no extra benefit. (Healing Word/Bastion of Health). I really think the divinity mechanic was a terrible afterthought of how to get healers in the game with only three spells. If we could even get the NPC Cleric's version of Sacred Flame, I'd be happy: an actual AoE heal on the third hit, rather than a few piddly temp hp's that expire almost immediately.
I have built a dps cleric and she does solid dps in groups. The only class that can reliable beat her in damage is the GWF. Also the party gets some bonus heals from her crits and soothing light spot heals if someone takes spike damage. Which in turn makes me do more damage XD
Can u show me ur DPS build pls?
0
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2014
Considering the last post in this thread was in July...
There have been at least two major changes to the game which could have greatly changed how a DPS Cleric should be be built from back then to this point in time. This is a perfect example why it is better to create a new thread to discuss a topic rather than posting on a thread which hasn't been posted on in over thirty days.
The discussion within this thread is simply incomparable to the game we are playing today. Thread closed for necromancy.
Comments
The high prophet set, Daunting Light/Divine Glow/Searing Light on trash.
On boss :
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/AS if your party need a 100% uptime on AS. Like in this run
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/PoD, for max debuff.
Daunting Light/Divine Glow/FF, for balanced damage/support/debuff.
Daunting Light/Break the Spirit/FF, for max damage.
Thank you so much. I'm a new cleric but I hate being a healbot. I'm currently in my late 40's winging it out as a DPS cleric and I seem to be doing fine so far. My aim is to find another full healing cleric to run with. My questions is, why bring FF and Break the spirit? Most of my damage is coming from AoE attacks so I'm actually surprised by this set up since Break The Spirit and FF are single target attacks. Also, isn't Searing Light or Sunburst better AoE than Divine glow?
Again, thanks so much. Was getting discouraged by the almost 8 pages of negativity but am now inspired again to persevere playing cleric as DPS .:) I also have a control wizard but I find that I top the paingiver charts so much more easily as a cleric than as a wizard, and I really like the play style of a dps DC.
I have a dps cleric using high prophet set and I rarely use single target skills for my encounters.
I typically use sunburst (for damage and procing rising hope and cycle of change), Divine glow, and daunting light. I also have repurposeful soul maxed out (small AoE on my crits to nearby allies). Sacred flame and brand of the sun for at-wills, though I have been considering testing out lance of faith again. Hammer of fate and flamestrike as dailies.
I also make good use of soothing light to heal people and get cycle of change stacks to increase my damage. If some single target is needed I only put in one ability. I typically top or come close to top in damage charts with this spec. When putting in a single target skill it's always sunburst that gets replaced. Divine glow and daunting light are just too good to swap out.
Good single target skills are:
-Prophecies of doom
-Break the spirit
-Forgemaster's flame
Only thing I wish for this spec is if I could queue as a dps, only thing that is needed really (for some parties/dungeons). I have completed some dungeons as the only cleric and topped both damage and healing but the success of that is very inconstant. It requires the entire party to avoid red circles because I can't keep them alive if they expect me to babysit them with healing. If they dodge and use potions it tends to work fine though.
Sadly, now that I'm in a guild and speed running Dungeon Delves twice a day, you find out that it's completely impractical. You are frantically using every Encounter you have every cooldown, and praying that you can build up enough AP between running out of red circles. It's very demanding and not very fun, to be honest. But it's really profitable in terms of getting epic loot to sell, so I do it. lol
One of the major problems is that a lot of our abilities don't work right (try figuring out what crits proc Repurpose Soul), and are so vague that it's hard to know what they're really doing. The ones that do work right are just absolutely pitiful in terms of healing output. The combat log is useful to look at damage, but it won't show any overhealing, so it's really difficult to measure heals. Buff tooltips are equally vague. For having soooo many 1% feats, it really gives you next to no information that lets you evaluate performance.
I should add that the cleric feats more or less suck anyway. On my TR, it's a tough call to choose between certain feats, because they're all so good. On the DC, there's usually only one choice that doesn't completely suck. There are a few good feats deep in the paragon trees, but you become watered-down healbot if you pick them. And they're not amazing. They just make your job less frantic. They should be baseline.
It's not hard to keep an entire group at full health. The real problem is keeping yourself alive. The self-heal nerf is completely absurd. I chug potions every 12 seconds religiously, because this game just has swarms and swarms of adds that all aggo on you immediately because no one else has hit them to cause threat, but your constant HoT effects apply to every mob in the area. The worst adds to deal with are the small ones with relatively low health, but high damage output. We are EXTREMELY squishy (or we seem like it due to seal-healing nerf). Your groupmates won't necessarily think you're in trouble when they see an imp on you, even though you're fighting for your life, basically relying on potions not to die.
I don't know what kind of role they intended the DC to have, but it's a fail. You basically end up in a situation where you are expected to heal, control, debuff, and DPS, except you can't do any of them at the same time, and honestly, you're not even that effective at any of them. The big problem with a "hybrid" role like this is that you only have 3 encounters. Divinity Mode tries to get around this some by making something like AS or FF into healing -- but then when people do a full healing build and use them that way, the developers cry that their content has been trivialized, and nerf them down.
Our two best heals (AS and FF) both require a pip of Divinity, and are both completely mitigated by a red circle. I also find that FF becomes hard and hard to use the better your CW is. I can't tell you how many times -I- have died because the CW threw the one mob that was healing everyone away from the group (which of course means healing ME, because I need twice the healing of any other group member). While AS is super easy to see, the seal from FF is hard to recognize, even though it's our biggest heal. It ought to project a blue ground circle around the mob you put it on. Until it does (which I expect will be never), FF can't really be relied upon as a primary heal -- even though it's potent enough.
All that said, at the end of the day, you are hedged into a healbot role that you are ill-suited to fill. If you spec for it, you end up not being able to do anything else in the game (like effective PvP). If there would dual-spec, you could go back and forth and it might be okay.
This class need a LOT of love. I haven't spent a dime on the game, and I won't until they fix the DC.
I think a lot of players are still stuck in the mindset from other MMO's wherein a "healer" can heal them through everything. Obviously that is not the case with this game where the healer has very weak heals and where people are actually expected to chug potions to compensate for incoming damage or lack of skill when standing in red circles.
-For Devoted Clerics, damage mitigation > healing.
-Righteousness doesn't actually affect several of our heals like Divine Astral Shield and Forgemaster's Flame. It affects Soothing Light, but as long as you're targeting someone else then it's still a free heal.
-More info on cleric powers/feats in this thread by scozzers. I suggest more people post in there so we can get it stickied.
-There are people who run T2s/CN regularly with only 2 healing powers and 1 control power, though perhaps switching in/out a third heal depending on party composition. Incidentally, these people tend to focus on damage mitigation rather than actual healing.
-In case you missed the subtle inference above, a good cleric will be switching in/out his powers all the time unless you run only 1 particular dungeon with only 1 party.
-It is the responsibility of the tank to keep aggro off you (extra food for thought: good tanks have a feat that basically makes it so mobs will tend to attack him/her as long as you were not using a burst heal at the time). A decent tank is capable of doing this with minimal effort. A good tank can do this while being almost completely self-sufficient/doing very good DPS.
-If the GF is busy, then it falls on the CW/GWF to help defend you. A CW/GWF who is unable to help keep mobs off you, whether through the use deadly force/control powers/burst damage, is failing at his/her job. Why do you think we call them "control wizards" or "secondary defenders"? Even rogues are expected to help you as long as they're not the ones responsible for "distracting" the boss. You are expected to have some way of defending yourself, or at the very least you will want to stay reasonably close to the party wizard (most times) or the tank/gwf. The searing imps you are referring to is part of what makes the Lair of the Mad Dragon dungeon difficult. Having the DPSers constantly attack these imps (feel free to cross-reference this with every successful Lair of the Mad Dragon run in youtube) or keeping them controlled through other means is the simple solution, and guarantees a better Lair of the Mad Dragon run.
-In case people are unclear about this, the reason why many boss battles are difficult is because of the adds bosses summon, especially at 60%/30%. Obviously, if these adds are not being killed/controlled to the point that good clerics are dying to them then your group was setting itself up for failure in the first place. Rogues using Smoke Bomb, Wizards correctly using/timing their various control powers (Steal Time and AS, in particular), GWFs spamming Slam or even Chains of Blazing Light/Break the Spirit on your part can mean all the difference between a a quick, simple run and fail.
Once again, some of you people are just trying too hard. Learn to accept that DC's are not as powerful as healers in other games (like WoW, where something like five or so healers are expected to keep a group of 40 alive). This is because DCs are not healbots, so they will never really play well as one. Notice that all DCs need to attack to build divinity/AP, unlike "true" healbots. There are certain breakpoints we must reach, like a constant stream of dailies in under 20s or higher healing/temporary HP generation/constant mitigation, and you must be able to reliably switch your powers in/out as needed and dodge well or better, but after that it's no longer your fault if the group still wipes. Once you know your limitations the game is a lot easier. Don't expect to be able to outheal a team that was setting itself up to fail. Just don't. Learn to pass the blame on the people who actually deserve it for once, like that wizard who simply refuses to stand in your Astral Shield or who does very little control, that GWF who for some idiotic reason refuses to use Slam in add-heavy fights, that Rogue who skipped Smoke Bomb or Impossible to Catch, or that GF who couldn't even out-aggro your Sunburst. These people deserve to be known for the failures that they are.
Then there's Astral Seal.
Also, astral seal is more of a bonus than something I'd rely on for self healing, as far as I'm concerned. In a party it's a no-brainer, since a sealed monster being hit by all your team is dishing out damage-scaled heals to everyone, but solo I don't really tend to put out enough single-target damage to make it anything other than "a nice bonus, plus what other at-will are you going to use, eh?".
And by the time I've sealed everything I might want to AoE damage (assuming I can spam the seal without the lovely targeting system applying it all to the same monster) the seals've almost expired anyway.
I'm pretty sure we gonna see a melee lifesteal to ally paragon path whenever thet decide to realese em. So holding out for that
I hear what you're saying loud and clear. Everyone has to play their class perfectly, or WE die. I can't tell you how many boss fights where I have died fighting adds and frantically running around, chugging potions every 12 seconds, while my whole party sits at full health. Then I actually die, and they continue to kill the boss without a hitch. What is the point of that? I just ran a non-epic Dread Vault for the daily quest. I ended up just dropping the group that EXACTLY that happened in the first boss fight because no one helps me with adds. And I can't even talk to these people because half of them don't speak english. I said something in the party chat, and no one even replied.
My point is, those healers in those games have powerful heals. In exchange, they do pitiful damage. We, however, have mediocre heals and STILL do pitiful damage. Or we can spec to do mediocre damage and have almost no healing capacity whatsoever.
And worst of all, even if we go full healing spec, we are not only defenseless against adds, but we also still can't effectively heal the person taking the most damage: ourselves.
So yeah, we are not like healers in other games. We are much, much worse. We get none of the benefits and all of the drawbacks. It's possible to be hedged into a specific feat and gear spec and, if we're very skilled at the class, do moderately well. So there's no rewards for playing well, it's either play well or die. And hope everyone else plays well, or die. We have no way to pick up the slack if someone else screws up.
And Chains of Blazing Light and Break the Spirit? You surely much be joking. Those spells are a total joke. The root only like a couple seconds, and I have honestly never even noticed the stun effect from Break the Spirit. It must be 0.5 seconds like the 5pt T4 talented one on Flame Strike. (Again, what a joke.)
I'm not saying the class is entirely impossible. I'm saying it's absurdly hard with nothing to show for it.
The break the spirit stun is only useful in PvP, in PvE it can still be useful but not as a stun.
As for self healing, that self heal debuff needs to go, we are often close behind the tank (or even ahead!) in the damage we take.
If you spec for damage you can come top damage pretty easily (or second sometimes). Our damage it fine, if we slot only dps skills (or dps/heal hybrid skills)
Only faithful spec clerics have damage issues in dungeons, but that would be a moot point I think if the self heal debuff was gone.
Finally, our specialty is damage mitigation. Healing is secondary. If you're prioritizing healing over damage mitigation you're doing it wrong.
The fact that you are underestimating Chains and Break the Spirit shows just how inexperienced you are as a cleric (or at least, as a non-faithful type). Chains only lasts a few seconds, but used correctly then in those few seconds your team is not taking any damage from adds caught in the snare. That counts as a form of mitigation and is a very big thing against a group of melee adds that hit hard, like blademasters. Break the Spirit is a very powerful -%damage done debuff. Ever used it on Thoons? Or the first Dread Vault boss you so conveniently decided to mention. Suddenly their suck-in/slam attack is no longer a 1-hit kill. That's also a form of mitigation. Break the Spirit can potentially neuter just about any elite/boss with really powerful attacks, or at the very least make them more manageable.
The funny thing about how it seems cleric types were balanced is that Faithful actually gives you higher total DPS (party-wise, thanks to Hallowed Ground & Linked Spirit) and healing while other cleric types have better mitigation (attack skills generate AP faster->Divine Armor spam) and personal damage/survivability/control potential.
Well said.
* TWITCH * YOUTUBE * MY GUIDES *
I use BtS in PvP, and again, I have hardly noticed the stun. We rank it up and ooo boy, we get a longer stun? Nah, just 2 more seconds of slow. Yippie. Cause that makes a world of difference. . It's certainly nothing on the order of Entangling Force. The Chains could potentially be really good, except that notice even if we rank it up: the duration of the root doesn't increase, only the duration that it will sit waiting for someone to step on it. And of course it will do a bit more damage, but it can't crit. Not that it would ever proc Repurpose Soul or anything, because none our abilities that deal damage via a "Created Entity" proc it. And those are some of our biggest spells: Flame Strike and Daunting Light.
While you could potentially mitigate damage for a couple seconds by rooting something briefly, I seriously, seriously doubt the "effective heal per second" of that mitigation is better than just about any other encounter you could have out. But how far do we take this "mitigated damage" way of thinking? So if we slot pure damage, and the group kills a mob 30% faster than it would without us DPS'ing, can we count that as 30% more healing, since it was dead sooner? Of course not, that's just not how it works. Mitigating damage is just not the same as healing damage, no matter how badly you want to try and justify how our power work.
Same goes for Break the Spirit. I am sure it can be used to some effect IF you have it slotted. Which is going to be almost never, because there are essential spells you'll have out instead. So back to my first question, how do you manage to swap out powers in the middle of a big combat? I mean, it's not as if you can even drag them around from another bar. You have to open the Powers window (that blocks nearly the whole screen), and then scroll down to find the power you want.
And for the record, I don't have a single feat in Faithful. I'm a mix of Virtuous and Righteous. Though I will likely respec soon. I almost never get to use any of the good things in Virtuous. I feel like Nimbus of Light and Power of the Sun are solid abilities, but I'm never able to slot those powers. I need Sacred Flame and Astral Seal. Maybe if Brand of the Sun front-loaded more Divinity generation, it would be viable.
Y'all just keep on pattin' each other on the back, telling yourself how you're such fine and skilled players while everyone else is just doing it wrong. The "L2P" response to any criticism of a class is inevitable, I suppose. The bottom line is that we trade pretty much everything really good that other classes get for one thing: heals. And they just so happens to be the one thing we can't personally benefit from, even though we probably need them the most. No other class is penalized on their core mechanic.
Our best heals require Divinity to use. Our only non-divinity heals are pitiful, slightly less so with divinity, and they take up an encounter slot while providing no extra benefit. (Healing Word/Bastion of Health). I really think the divinity mechanic was a terrible afterthought of how to get healers in the game with only three spells. If we could even get the NPC Cleric's version of Sacred Flame, I'd be happy: an actual AoE heal on the third hit, rather than a few piddly temp hp's that expire almost immediately.
Can u show me ur DPS build pls?
There have been at least two major changes to the game which could have greatly changed how a DPS Cleric should be be built from back then to this point in time. This is a perfect example why it is better to create a new thread to discuss a topic rather than posting on a thread which hasn't been posted on in over thirty days.
The discussion within this thread is simply incomparable to the game we are playing today.
Thread closed for necromancy.