My beloved Cleric is broken

thestaggy · October 2013

Off the bat, this was my first MMO, so I am as **** as **** gets.

I tried to build a balanced Cleric, something that could dish some damage while being able to keep others healthy. Unfortunately, now that I have reached level 60 and do a large amount of dungeon delves, I've found my Cleric wanting. It just is no good when it comes to keeping a group healthy.

I want to respec my Cleric, both powers and feats, and was wondering what would be the best routes to go.

Daily Powers - I believe in a dungeon my Hammer of Fate is just a waste and should rather go for Divine Armour or Flame Strike. DA looks like something that can benefit the group while FS is something that can assist when mobs/adds get out of hand.

So: Hallowed Ground + DA or FS

Encounter - When questing or farming in Sharandar, Chains of Blazing Light is a mainstay. It easily kills a group of low-rank minions and can subdue tougher ones, dealing decent damage. However, I quickly found that in a dungeon it is useless. Astral Shield, while I don't use it when farming/questing, has quickly shown to be something valuable in a dungeon. However, I believe my build does not get the best out of it. Healing Word is always in my HUD. Sun Burst was a mainstay early on but I fell out of love with it, only to be told now that at level 60 it is a must for building action points as well as healing benefits.

So, if I respec, I know AS & SB are no-brainers, but not sure where else to go.

At-Wills - I love Brand of the Sun when questing/farming because along with Chains of Blazing Light I can wipe a mob of low-rank minions out at a comfortable distance. But now I've read that BOTS is vastly inferior to Astral Seal when it comes to healing a dungeon. My other At-Will is Sacred Flame, which I won't drop because I need at least one offensive power on hand at all times.

So, Sacred Flame + Astral Seal for a dungeon run?

Feats - Should I have targeted one path and filled it all up? I pretty much tried to balance those as well and this where I think me build went to hell.

I do enjoy PvPing as well but understand that a Cleric that can heal a dungeon and one that can excel in the kill ranks in PvP are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

TL;DR - My Cleric sucks and I would like some input or even a link where I can find a quality defensive Cleric build. Feats are an area were I am almost certain I messed up.

morsitans · October 2013

Might help to let us know what your cleric currently has, as it might not be as bad as you think. I can go from "O MY GOD I CAN'T HEAL ANYTHING" to "wait, this dungeon is pitifully easy", depending entirely on party. If you get a pug who insist on standing in fire 24/7, you need absolute BiS gear (and the patience of a saint) to pull them through: you'll feel like you're inadequate, but you're not: they're just terrible. If you've got a group that seems to be melting monsters, but you still can't seem to keep them up, then maybe you have problems, but I think this is unlikely.

In dungeons, astral shield and astral seal are your absolutely "should not leave the bar" skills. Seems like you've got that covered. Healing word is not as essential as you think. It can be incredibly handy if you have a party that likes to splinter, but generally (apart from kitefights like FH boss) you should try to get your party not to splinter. Sunburst is still amazingly handy for proccing linked spirit/invigorated healing/divine advantage etc, as well as being a (less good, but still good) AP generator. Plus emergency knockback. Foresight is amazing. Foresight feated with benefit of foresight, combined with generic DC small-amounts-of-tick-healing style heals means more or less permanent 11% damage reduction on your entire team. Foresight almost never leaves my bar.

In all honesty, you can get all the powers unlocked and have enough points to max out the ones that count and STILL have points left over, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. If I could give any advice, power-wise, it would be to prioritise maxing the ones that give substantial gains: Divine forture and holy fervour, for instance, start at 5% and go up to 10% and 15% at two and three points, whereas Daunting light starts at 100% damage and only goes up to 110 or 120% with two/three points invested.

Featwise, if you're not going to do loads of PvP (where the bottom tree really shines) and you're more keen on healbotting dungeons, then faithful (middle tree) is aces. Get one or two points in rising hope from the top tree. Get two or three points in divine advantage from the bottom tree.
Do a search for 'one build to rule them all' on these forums to get the (more or less) optimal build for heroic feats.

thestaggy · October 2013

morsitans wrote: »

*snip

Thanks for the info!

I will get my feats up here later. At work at the moment, so don't have them on hand.

Armour-wise I'm only starting to get decent stuff so yes, this could be a contributing factor to poor efforts in dungeons. But would like to get on the right path regardless;

Helm - Rare Blessed Helmet of Respite
Chest - Unenchanted Epic War Prophet's Armor (Yes, I have leant that it is a pretty poor PvE/dungeon piece)
Arms - Unenchanted Epic Sacred Hand's Gauntlets [I want to replace it with Divine Emissary's Gauntlets and split War Prophet (2x2) & Divine Emissary (2x2) for what I think is an okay T1 set-up & bonuses. +400 Power & Recovery bonuses.]
Main Hand - Epic Grand Dragon Eye Symbol with rank 5 Silvery Enchantment (Made a mistake putting low-level enchant. on)
Off Hand - Unenchanted Epic Greater Icon of Blue Fire
Boots - Unenchanted Greaves of the War Prophet (See chest)
Neck - Rare Symbol of Truth with r.5 Silvery enchant.
L.Ring - Rare Nefarious Ring of Respite with r.4 Radiant enchant. (Wasted enchant. if I think about it)
R.Ring - Rare Piercing Occult Ring with r.5 Silvery enchant.
Waist - Rare Occult Belt of Protection r.5 Silvery enchant.
Shirt - Rare Embroidered Chain Shirt
Trousers - Rare Devoted's Embroidered Pants

Power - 3,203, Defense - 1,143, Critical Strike - 825, Recovery - 3,043, Armor Penetration - 223, Regeneration - 100, Health Steal - 437, Deflection - 0, Movement - 0

Wisdom - 22, Strength & Charisma - 18, Constitution - 14, Intelligence - 13, Dexterity - 11 (I suspect I butchered this as well looking for a balanced Cleric. Re-roll, maybe?)

morsitans · October 2013

Your base stats (wis/cha etc) are fairly similar to mine, so while perhaps not ideal they shouldn't be giving you problems.

Defense = 1143 <--- this is a problem, since even with all the nice mitigation we get, getting def up to around 2k makes a huge difference.

Crit = 825 <--- second major problem: clerics benefit enormously from crits (repurpose soul feat, assuming you have it, is amazing: free AoE heals for every crit...er, for the powers it works on, anyway), so crit should be much higher. I'm guessing the arPen/regen/lifesteal stuff is just from armour bonuses so unavoidable till you upgrade, but you could easily sacrifice some recovery to get more crit.

Remember that enchants can be overwritten, they don't need to be removed (just right click>>enchant and then drag the new enchant over the old one: it destroys the old one, but it does so for free).

Do some T1s to get seals, buy purple rings from the seal vendors (focus on crit/defense at the moment, I'd say).

If you want to be really cheap and cheerful and just make yourself much more tanky in the short term, search the AH for "of youth", and buy the level 60 blues that come up. These are all +regen items and (while they're getting more expensive) they're still pretty cheap, and you can get to around 1000 regen pretty easily. This makes you phenomenally more tanky and also works wonders in PvP (so you could finish off your war prophet set).

thestaggy · October 2013

morsitans wrote: »

*snip

I had my crit at one point neck-and-neck with power, but then sacrificed it to beef up recovery in an attempt to speed up my recharge speeds to try and improve my ability to look after a group. Funnily enough, Defense was up at 1,500 when I had my enchanted rare armour, but I will try and buff that up to 2k. 2k is when the cap kicks in, yes? Half of the Life Steal comes from the War Prophet's Armour and all of the ArmPen comes from my Symbol.

Didn't know about that with regards to removing an enchantment without losing AD. Thanks.

So on the whole, for now boosting defense & crit and respeccing my feats/powers should be the route?

holsac · October 2013

thestaggy wrote: »

Didn't know about that with regards to removing an enchantment without losing AD. Thanks.
?

You do not need to remove a enchantment when you want to put in a new one. In fact, its a waste of AD to remove a enchantment when it's cheaper to buy that enchantment on the AH. The game mechanics allow you to equip/slot over a old enchantment on a piece of gear/weapon, destroying the old enchantment.

morsitans · October 2013

Yeah. While it might be hard to be absolutely top notch, it's not too difficult to be more than acceptable. (Most pugs are just happy to get a cleric that heals). For what it's worth, I think my feats are something like this:
http://nwcalc.com/dc?b=cn4:2hwcg:5m9s,13jf314:6c000:8nu0v:8l000&h=0

As you can see, I tend to be indecisive a lot, going 2/5 and 3/5 for a given tree rather than picking a feat and going 5/5. This is almost certainly a bad approach, but I still seem to do ok, so I'm pretty sure it's not really possible to screw yourself too badly.

If I respecced, about the only thing I'd do is lose the two in domain synergy to get 2/3 holy resolve and 1 in templar's domain (just for shiggles -it has like a 5 min internal cooldown, so is SUCH a fail feat, especially since Arpen is bugged for clerics, but hey: MOAR HUD ICONS PLX). Might consider being more decisive on deepstone/enduring. I personally really like having the 4th pip, which almost anyone "pro" generally advises against (correctly -you shouldn't need it, really: in combat you should always be using divinity at about the rate you're gaining it) but hey: 4th pip, yo! I like having a safety buffer.

Statwise: Recovery can sit around 2.5k quite happily: previously the idea was to get enough recovery for 33% recharge speed, because this would ensure 100% astral shield uptime. This is no longer possible no matter HOW much recovery you have, so recovery isn't quite so vital. It's still nice (since it contributes to AP gain too), but not worth dumping ALL your points toward.

By and large, if you use astral shield and astral seal in dungeons, your work is basically 90% done: just save your A-game for the few seconds of astral shield downtime.

craeh1 · October 2013

About your skills you should equip what you can handle, as already said, Astral Seal and Shield are kinda "must have" - Shield more than Seal.

Recovery got a softcap around 2.5k - above the cooldown reduces aren't that much, so you can focus on crit / power.
Crit can be usefull, as said, as long you skilled the related/synergetic feats. Ran a lng time with low crit - changed to higher crit a few weeks ago, feels both fine

About the defense (and maybe some deflect...) depends hardly on your party / tank.
I'm running with 1.3k defense and 0 deflect, knowing other clerics running around 1k def only, knowing some clerics running around 2k def and 1k deflect.
As I said, with a good party / tank it doesn't really matter, since you got pretty less hits. With a worse party you may aggro everything insight just by placing Astral Shield.
If I'm running with the tanks I trust, I mostly last on "Damage taken" - running with public/random teams I'm kinda often 2nd or 3rd.
Remembering a run at Cragmires epic, I was tanking Boss+most adds, by early disconnected tank....

Encounters depending on your team again, I often got sunburst with by the reasons already said - knockback if needed, triggering linked effects, AP gain,...
With CWs running Singularity, Searing Light on divine kicks kinda *** - Divine Glow also is nice by debuffing enemies armor, buffing allied damage.
On some dungeons also Healing Word is usefull or needed.

At-Wills I got Seal and BotS only, didn't skilled lance / sacred flame, cause I can handle with the DoT much better by gaining Divinityy and APs constantly - just place on most enemies around if you can handle.

Just a little hint to the end:
Copy your char to Neverwinter Preview Shard - free respec, and test around

May test some builds posted here in forums, test your own,...

diogene0 · October 2013

You need to have a very high GS to be able to keep your party alive and maybe use one dps spell during dungeon runs. I don't advise doing something like that before 12k GS or a lot of game experience.

It doesn't look like a build or gear issue (TBH anything/any set will work) so i'll give appropriate information. In many situations, you'll have to use a full heal (aka faithful) build, which means sacred flame, astral seal, sun burst, astral shield + healing word or bastion of health. Definitely not original but that's what most of the low GS clerics have to use. It's not broken, you just need a lot more gear to get more freedom of choice. After some time, more exp and some GS you'll be able to remove healing word or BoH for divine glow, daunting light, chains of blazing light or searing light (weird spell but why not?).

A typical rotation is engage a group with sun burst, then drop astral shield, use astral SEAL (the at will spell) on maybe 1/3rd of them (make sure to hit what the TR is hitting, the CW doesn't need special astral seal placement, he's an aoe dps), use your daily if there's some trouble during the astral shield downtime, and use sacred flame to make some divinity when everything is ok and as long as astral seal doesn't end. Keep healing word for the tank or the CW. Some rogues may require a divine mode healing word after standing in red (they have to sometimes). Rinse and repeat.

Some things to keep in mind to be a good DC:
- astral shield isn't a heal, it's a HoT + mitigation, you use it ASAP and on cooldown when your party is engaging a group. Damage mitigation is important.
- astral seal is your second best heal, don't underestimate it. It's the ONLY way with healing word to heal people at two different locations.
- you WILL stay alive as long as you're doing your job. Your party will act as a meat shield. Don't panic, don't scatter mobs, just let them do their jobs and pray for good CC from the CW. Having some aggro isn't an issue, you're in control of heals, you can keep yourself alive. Don't listen to people saying righteousness is an issue, it's not. Healing word should save your ***.
- If you're doing something wrong (or if your party is extremely bad and has a very low dps) people will run around like headless chickens and die. You don't want that to happens. Do overhealing. Don't be afraid there's no mana management issue here. Overhealing = best way to heal in NW.

Just remember that most players aren't awesome and will require healing to stay alive. Including what people call guildies.

My personal advice: if you do exploits & shortcuts you'll never face any challenge and remain a below average player. That's up to you. I don't use exploits, i've done all the dungeons in game more than 50 times each, and now i can heal anything, and carry a completely noobish group in any T2 if i want to. It required a lot of experimentations, patience, anger, despair, to find the best way to play my cleric, but now i'm good.

Hope it helps.

thestaggy · October 2013

Thanks for the responses guys, much appreciated. I meant to get my powers and feats up here over the weekend, will try tonight or tomorrow.

This weekend I got myself a War Prophet's helm and done two dungeon runs to get Divine Emissary's greaves and gauntlets. So now I am running War Prophet's helm and armour along with DE's greaves and gauntlets. I received a substantial boost in defense and critical stats doing this. Crit has effectively doubled, going from from 825 to 1,700 (the 2x2 DE bonus is worth +400 crit) while defense has gone from 1,143 to 1,600.

Now you guys have basically told me I am way over stacked in recovery. Even after losing recovery with the 2-piece DE armour set I am still at 2,900 recovery. If the soft cap kicks in at the 2.5k mark I can comfortably shed some. There are two rings I want that will cost me 404 recovery, but my worry though is that while they give me +300 defense & deflection along with ~1000 HP, critical strike and power become the other casualties in the region of 200 - 240 each.

But on the whole, I must say my build seems better after the armour tweak.

morsitans · October 2013

Get two of the tanky + HP/Def/etc rings and two +crit/power/recovery rings and swap your loadout depending on circumstance?

I think I'm rolling with one def/Hp (burning light?) ring and one +crit etc (slavemaster's) at the moment, but I can swap up or down depending on how bad (or good) the group is.

thestaggy · October 2013

Well, here are my powers & feats. http://nwcalc.com/dc?b=o8e:4z6kb:9x30,1ijx305:6z300:b5100:6w000&h=1

As stated earlier I think my feats are not ideal for healing. Most of my powers I don't even use actually.

PvP & DDs;
At-Wills - Sacred Flame & Astral Seal
Encounters - Astral Shield, Healing Word and Sun Burst. I also tend to swop Sun Burst out for something that can debuff in a boss fight, but I wait to see what kind of group I'm in. If I'm in a group that ignores me and thinks I can tank adds then I keep Sun Burst to try and keep them off of me.
Dailies - Hallowed Ground & Hammer of Fate

Farming;
At-Wills - Sacred Flame & Brand of the Sun
Encounters - Chains of Blazing Light, Healing Word and Daunting Light.
Dailies - Hallowed Ground & Hammer of Fate/Flame Strike

The two sets of rings thing is a good idea. The two I am looking at right now is a pair of Ancient Slaughterer's Rings of Carnage. Together they;
+ 308 defense
+ 308 deflection
+ 308 life steal
- 172 power
- 215 crit
- 335 recovery
- 110 armpen

I'm okay with all but the crit loss.

Do you advise enchanting T1 epic gear?

craeh1 · October 2013

Would give em max. R5 enchs on T1 and let em rot in there.
Enchantent only on my first char, the others I ignored til T2...

My beloved Cleric is broken

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