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Avaliene's The Overhealing DC Guide

mittensofdoommittensofdoom Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 247 Arc User
edited August 2013 in The Temple
Hello and welcome to my guide on playing a Devoted Cleric!


First of all please read the whole guide before jumping on anything you think is wrong as I may have explained my reasoning already. And if you still need to point out a flaw I would appreciate it if you are polite and reasonable in your explanation. Please feel free to point out these flaws as I am always looking for improvement. Just don't be yelling at me 'yoo must doo things dis way or else!' lol. I have played DC for 3 months through various builds and have only ever had one complaint by a guy that insisted on standing in 1-shot red circles (can't heal stupidity, catch-phrase of the day). Rest assured I (mostly) know what I am talking about.

By no means am I saying this is the way you have to do things, or the best way, or the easiest way. Im not saying its perfect either, tweaks can and will always be made. Im not even going to recommend it UNLESS you are completely confident in your skills and understanding of the class. However this is the way I do things and it works for me. It might not work for you and there are other guides out there that might suit you better.

But enough of the intro, you are here for one reason and that is to find out how I play the Devoted Cleric. I shall start with the stats. Here is a screen shot of my gear:

9422396873_9440913c6c_o.jpg

Yep, I am a Tiefling and I am an evil one at that haha. I would actually recommend human or elf though, I only chose Tiefling for potential pvp later on. So as you can see I went half Templar and half Beacon (and yes I am aware I need to get reinforced arms). To those who like full miracle healer; I get it, its nice but hey mine is cheaper and I get more raw stats, I don't need any extra heal on top of what I am already kicking out. That being said you can get any set or combination of armor to work if you try hard enough. I will say that I hate the Gauntlgrym DC gear - lifesteal, really? And I really can't wait for the Feywild gear because it should kick butt in PvP though I will have to stack more recovery, anyway I will post results of that when I can. I am also experimenting with blue gear with regen but thats for pvp and this is a guide for pve really.
And yep full Slavemaster everything, the stats are perfect for DC's.
As for gems I have Azures for defence and a combo of Azures and Radiants for offence. Mine are 7's and 8's right now. I also went for a Lesser Soulforge in armor (2 sec is all you need to save your butt) and I have a normal Vorpal in my weapon (heals crit).

Onto your companion; I will come kick your *** if you don't get a stone (1st choice) or a cat (2nd choice). Here is my stone:

9425217546_d91ca5a221_o.jpg

Yep, that sure is a lot of recovery dumped on the stone. Silvery rank 8's in the jewellery and a radiant 7 in the icon. An Eldritch runestone is a must by the way as it buffs the buffs you are getting.

Some numbers you may want to aim toward:
6000 Power (no diminishing return, stack more on if you can)
35% crit chance (a little tricky to raise higher)
Between 35%-40% recharge rate (I prefer 40% but I recognise the fact that shaving 0.1%'s off Astral Shield cd is somewhat OCD)
Between 35%-40% AP gain (same as above pretty much, also if you are struggling the Holy Fervor class feature helps)
Between 30%-35% Damage Resistance (again tricky to get higher)

Obviously I couldn't give you flat numbers in a lot of these cases (for example 4000 recovery) because these stats are affected by various ability scores and feats. Anyway, on to Powers.

Encounter Powers:
For standard group T2/CN runs:
Astral Shield (duh)
Healing Word OR Bastion of Health (Personally i use HW but i can understand those who prefer BoH)
Sunburst (lotsa AP)

If you are running an easy T1 dungeon and your team is doing well you can replace HW/BoH with Daunting Light to help your team out with dps.

At-Wills
Sacred Flame (left click)
Astral Seal (right click)

The reasoning behind these at-wills will be explained further in the feats section.

Dailys
Divine Armor (awesome and syncs with feats)
Hammer of fate (single target, better for bosses, kicks butt in PvP)
Flame Strike (can be used to help clear trash mobs)

Class Features
Healer's Lore (further explanation later)
Divine Fortune (a no-brainer imo)

Special Mentions:
Searing Light (sometimes good for solo play)
Chains of Blazing Light (nice in PvP, I don't use it but others use it well)
Prophecy of Doom (good in so many ways, I swap this in once wizards are cleared on CN final boss)
Divine Glow (much the same reason as PoD above)
Lance of Faith (you can also swap this in on CN last boss for more damage or use in PvP)
Prophetic Action (again swapped in on CN last boss to save my *** on hands)

So there we have the Powers covered lets move on to Feats. This is where some people may raise an eyebrow at how I do certain things. Some things are obvious but I will cover why I did them all. I will start with a screen shot of my Feats:

9440163642_c14b6e03cf_o.png

3 Toughness (more Hp)
1 Healing Action (no point putting more)
2 Greater Fortune (extra healing)
5 Domain Synergy (more recovery)
3 Weapon Mastery (heals crit)
5 Bountiful Fortune (divine power yay)
1 Rising hope (you use encounter powers a lot so its no problem to get this proccing a lot)
5 Deepstone blessing (you are using Sacred Flame and Divine armor and these set off the 10% extra heals)
5 Linked Spirit (everyone gets 5% of your stats and you aren't using foresight so no need for benefit of foresight)
5 Invigorated Healing (more heals, yay)
5 Power of Health (you are using Sacred Fame and Astral Seal, this buffs them by 10%)
5 Mark of Mending (5% buff on healers lore plus a power increase by 5% of recovery (around 200 points) awesome)
5 Righteous Rage of Tempus (more divine power)

So as you can see we get a lot of damage mitigation and a buck load of healing. These feats came about after maybe 20 restats in which i was using various ways to do things. This is what I landed on in the end and its good for me but maybe not you. For instance people like using moontouched for the hallowed ground buff or like having ethereal boon to top up their divine power. Others like going further into the righteous path and doing more damage mitigation. I have tried these and yes they are good, and yes if you like doing it that way, good, do it. If you like the look of the way I do things, go ahead and try it :)

Thank you for reading!
Post edited by mittensofdoom on

Comments

  • eggsneggsn Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 69
    edited August 2013
    The nice thing about the DC is there really isn't one way to "heal" your teammates. Crit clerics vs Regen clerics vs Recovery clerics can all heal just fine. I remember when people thought I was nuts not using Forgemaster's flame and instead uses Healing Word... Now I see more and more clerics realizing how good it is with the right passive and feats. Same with BoH, etc. There's not one way to play the DC class and I'm glad you brought that up. Good for new DCs to realize now than think there's only one build.
  • diogene0diogene0 Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    Nice gear score, but seeing you didn't have a full MH sets makes the rest a bit invalid for me. We use the same rotations and encounters and daily though, so i can only say that your spell bar is fine. :) You have way, way too much recovery. What a waste. You can remove 2k recovery for any stat you like, even life steal, regen or armor pen if you run a linked spirit build.

    Prophecy of doom is vastly inferior to divine glow though, due to the outrageous CD and the lack of relevant divine mode.
  • troodeetroodee Member Posts: 38
    edited August 2013
    Sweet gear, mister :)

    Here's a note on Healing Action:

    If you take a peek at Scozzers' thread here, you'll see that the bonus is extremly small, but always rounded up to a full percentage. I've made a graph on this page, where you can see how adding anything else than one point is useless.
    We are not designed to outheal stupidity!
  • mittensofdoommittensofdoom Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 247 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    @diogene0
    I like high recovery, and I will need it when I try the feywild gear. Kinda nice having a 13.8 sec cd on AS when ur running with wizzie buff also. Don't forget recovery helps AP gain and why wouldn't u wanna dump a DA on people's heads as often as possible? :D

    As for the MH set, sure its nice and if you like it well great. I like my way personally because I would rather have the raw numbers than a little extra heal, because frankly I don't need it.

    And yep DG is arguably better than PoD, but when u combine them both its pretty OP :)
  • mittensofdoommittensofdoom Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 247 Arc User
    edited August 2013
    @troodee
    Thats Miss to you =P

    And thanks for the link, I will check it out and post adjustments if and when they happen :)
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