For the records: CD time on Astral Shield

carletto75 · August 2013

Hi all,
I'm just curious to know how long is cd time of your Astral Shield encounter.

Write here your without buff or companion (pls)
Thanks in advance.

P.S.: mine actually is 14.9

pasain · August 2013

There is a recovery/astral shield thread around showing the diminishing returns from recovery. Someone was kind enough to test and post stats and results.

carletto75 · August 2013

It is older. I like fresh numbers

resintoke · August 2013

Referencing the great work done over @ clericguide.com

carletto75 · August 2013

Thanks resintoke, this is an interesting recap.

resintoke · August 2013

No problem. Apparently there are screenshots of clerics with over 10,000 recovery, showing their A. Shield cooldown at 13.9 seconds. Same as 6800 recovery. That seems to be the hard cap on the stat. The soft cap (point at which you no longer gain 100% of the stat you increase) is at ~3,000, shown here:

Again, pulled from clericguide.com

Check out their website, as well as some of my guides linked in my signature for more info on the subject.

Happy hunting!

fondlez · August 2013

carletto75 wrote: »

It is older. I like fresh numbers

The value of Recovery has never changed. Even if it did, people are extremely sensitive to timing changes of spells they use even without knowing due to muscle memory.

Under battle conditions most endgame Clerics would be at 14.6 to 14.9.

mittensofdoom · August 2013

I was actually stacking recovery for a while I think my record was 13.8 sec cooldown with various pots and buffs. Then I gave up stacking recovery because when it comes down to it half a second is not that much difference

xmeanseason305x · August 2013

mittensofdoom wrote: »

I was actually stacking recovery for a while I think my record was 13.8 sec cooldown with various pots and buffs. Then I gave up stacking recovery because when it comes down to it half a second is not that much difference

i totally agree with you mama....

on Meanseason i'm currently at 4100ish..to me thats enought..after 4000's the ammount of recovery needed for that extra second is meaningless..i rather stack other stuff..like power...which i did... ;-]

once feywild hits and i get back on working on mean, i'll start working out the numbers to see exactly how much enchants i will need to get to a comfy recov level. for now...it's playtime on malevolaine though ;-]

suxip01111 · August 2013

Mine is 14.6 secs at 4200 recovery.

mrvincent1959 · August 2013

Fyi, you get Action Point gain increase with Recovery as well.

whistlingdixie · August 2013

Yeah, in my opinion Recovery isn't great, because of the massive diminishing returns to recharge speed. Not only that, but Recharge Speed has its own horrible DR. At 100% Recharge Speed, your cooldown would be cut in half, not instant. So no only do you get less Recharge Speed for each point of recovery as you go up, but the value of Recharge Speed drops significantly.

The formula for cooldown is:

1 / ( 1 + Recharge Speed)

So at 30% recharge:

1 / 1.30 = .77

Or the new cooldown is 77% of the base. So 77% of 20s is 15.4.

Here's some calculated values:

Recharge Speed -> Astral Shield Cooldown

0% -> 20s
10% -> 18.2s
20% -> 16.6s
30% -> 15.4s
35% -> 14.8s
40% -> 14.3s
45% -> 13.8s
50% -> 13.3s
75% -> 11.4s
100% -> 10s
200% -> 6.7s
500% -> 3.3s

As you can see, once you get 15s or less, you're fighting a very steep uphill battle. Is one second of Astral Shield worth it? Well, you'd have to compare the healing + mitigated damage to putting points (both gear and ability scores) into some other stat, namely crit or power. Crit has a DR on the value of the gear stat, but the actual critical % is valuable in a linear fashion. It also procs several feats, and can be significantly improved upon with Vorpal. The biggest thing to think about is Repurpose Soul. While there are some bugged powers that don't proc it (DL and FS), it can turn out to be a significant amount of "free" healing with a high crit chance. Considering we don't have much in the way of emergency heals, and we focus on a steady stream of healing over time, you might be surprised how throwing around a lot of damage with repurpose soul can compare to the standard AS + SB + HW/BoH/FF setup most DC's use.

I honestly don't know why everyone acts like crit isn't a big deal. I think it's probably our best stat. The obsession with Astral Shield cooldowns only encourages gameplay to revolve around a single skill, and forces DC's into a healbot role when, in fact, we are poorly suited for it.

pwniexpress · August 2013

You had me right up until "poorly suited for it". There isn't any other class in the game with any meaningful ability to heal others.

I'd agree though that excessive focus on astral shield cooldowns is a bad idea. While I use AS, I also slot one or two good AOE encounters and an AOE daily. When the right situation presents itself, like a group of weak adds that are already injured are standing together, I'll drop an AOE or two on them and clear them out. You can "heal" a surprising amount of damage by focusing your fire on low-hp targets and killing the trash enemies before they have time to deal much damage. Do it right and you'll build a solid amount of divine power too and make the fighters' jobs easier by giving them fewer low-priority targets to worry about and chase down.

morsitans · August 2013

I didn't think anyone was seriously focussing on AS cooldowns anymore? I mean, it's clearly impossible to get 100% uptime, so at best you're quibbling over a second of extra downtime.

Focussing on recovery is still important, of course, because more recovery = more encounters and better AP gain, but given the diminishing returns set in pretty early you're generally far better off going for "enough to hit the softcap" and then stopping, unless you really have capped out everything else (and even then, it's better to go with more power, since that doesn't cap).

I also don't think anyone was considering crit to be "not a big deal": it's the second thing you usually softcap (not least because so much gear has +crit on it). Getting to 33% crit is relatively easy, and that 33% will take you a long way.

raphlwes · August 2013

Before the AS nerf I had a 20/20/20 cleric that easily had 100% up time on AS. I believe it was around a 14.7s cooldown.

I had to reroll a cleric after the AS nerf because I couldn't change the base stats roll of my existing cleric. The best I've been able to do with my new cleric is 13.6s cooldown with stone (it is always summoned so I'm not sure what it is without), and with buffs I can get down to 13.2s. This 1.5s faster cooldown is pretty huge when it comes to saving a party in dungeons.

But this new Sunburst nerf has me pretty worried, because along with a quick AS cooldown it's important to have an almost infinite Hallowed Ground for the party. Not sure how much this nerf will effect it

guess we'll find out soon.

whistlingdixie · August 2013

The thing about crit for a cleric is that there's a linear benefit for going with high Str. Same for Wis. But Cha or even Int to get a higher recharge speed is just a poor investment, IMO. The "soft cap" for crit is only limited to gear. Feats and Str don't have a cap of any kind, nor do they have diminishing returns.

I think the best option it to go to maximum Str, followed by Wis, and whatever is left can go to Cha and Int. In which case 33% crit is well below the great soft cap, and given we have a "free heals" mechanic from crits, I think 33% is a rather low target. And most of the time I see someone undervalue crit, it's because they're chasing a second shorter AS cooldown. Sure all your encounters are a little faster, I seriously doubt it's by very much. Even if you're talking about 10% shorter cooldowns (which is not the same as 10% more recharge speed), that's one extra encounter for every 10. Seems kinda meh to me. A lot more meh than 20% more crits. (40+ vs your target 33). Especially once you get Vorpal. You can think I'm silly for saying this, but Hammer of Wrath is out biggest burst heal. A good 40k crit is a 6k splash heal to everyone nearby. That's more than BoH or divine HW. If they ever fix Daunting Light and Flamestrike to proc Repurpose Soul (the upcoming patch notes hint at them), then crit is looking even better. But of course, Astral Shield heals don't ever crit. heh.

For the records: CD time on Astral Shield

Comments