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Anointed Champion observations so far on live
vorphied
Member Posts: 1,870 Arc User
Curious to see what everyone else is experiencing as well.
- Friendlies need to learn to stay even closer to the Anointed Champion than to the Divine Oracle. Blessing of Battle's buff radius appears to be the same as or smaller than Sunburst's, centered on the caster. Anointed Holy Symbol's heal radius seems similar.
- Blessing of Battle is interesting in PvP. It often tags targets who are attempting to evade because the wind-up is so slow (not that it hits hard, but whatever), but more importantly it can be a modest anti-stealth tool. If you are casting Blessings at a TR who enters stealth, the animation will still finish and send a beam directly to where the TR currently is, stealthed or not.
- Anointed Army isn't as useful as Divine Armor in some ways, but it has its applications in PvE and in PvP. Timing is critical since the buff aura expires after only 3 hits, but the CC immunity can be amazing if used properly. The Power buff is huge (doesn't compete with Hallowed Ground's straight damage buff, though), and the damage mitigation is nice if it isn't entirely wasted on small hits. So far I'm more likely to use Anointed Army when pressing the advantage and Divine Armor when playing more defensively.
- Friendlies need to learn to stay even closer to the Anointed Champion than to the Divine Oracle. Blessing of Battle's buff radius appears to be the same as or smaller than Sunburst's, centered on the caster. Anointed Holy Symbol's heal radius seems similar.
- Blessing of Battle is interesting in PvP. It often tags targets who are attempting to evade because the wind-up is so slow (not that it hits hard, but whatever), but more importantly it can be a modest anti-stealth tool. If you are casting Blessings at a TR who enters stealth, the animation will still finish and send a beam directly to where the TR currently is, stealthed or not.
- Anointed Army isn't as useful as Divine Armor in some ways, but it has its applications in PvE and in PvP. Timing is critical since the buff aura expires after only 3 hits, but the CC immunity can be amazing if used properly. The Power buff is huge (doesn't compete with Hallowed Ground's straight damage buff, though), and the damage mitigation is nice if it isn't entirely wasted on small hits. So far I'm more likely to use Anointed Army when pressing the advantage and Divine Armor when playing more defensively.
Sacrilege - Warlock
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Post edited by vorphied on
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- Blessing of Battle
- Anointed Army
pretty much this their Unkillable and its ****ing annoying as hell when one parks it on you cap point
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
These are a new at-will and a new daily from the new Paragon Path, Anonted Champion.
At-will – Blessing of Battle:
"As you prepare to strike your target, you bless nearby allies and yourself with a minor defensive prayer that reduces incoming damage."
Daily– Anointed Army:
"Divine brilliance burns your foes and grants your allies blessings that once warded the armies of the gods. While blessed, allies take very little damage, are immune to control effects, and have greatly increased power. These blessings are removed early when a recipient is damaged, and when removed, they bestow a small amount of Temporary Hit Points to their holder."
My healer is a PVE healer. I took the new Paragon path since I tried it on preview and was impressed how well this could keep the team alive. I found that I can take the beating a little longer now in PVP with it although I am not unkillable due to the fact that I have written above (no normal non-regen build healer is unkillable in PVP). So the new Paragon adds quite good healing and def buffs, also for the team. Saved some guys in the last seconds in PVP with the new stuff and it becomes most effective if you fight in a small spot and all your people are around you to benefit from all the new buffs and temp hitpoints and immunities.
Well the entire design of the cleric is flawed. I respecced to anointed champion, played it for 2 dungeons and returned to good old sunburst, ff & as. Only class features made me happy.
- Blessing of Battle is good. Just good. But I can't just drop Sacred Flame. Why? Because both At-Wills have the same dps and buffs that nobody notices anyway (10% damage reduction is not that much, and I barely see temp hp given by Sacred Flame). But Sacred Flame has greater fire rate - 3x more divinity gained in the same time.
- Exaltation. Awesome encounter. Except that it's single target. Seriously, who needs to reduce damage on one person for 8 seconds when Astral Shield reduces it by 35% to anyone that stands in the circle. I wonder why everyone uses Astral Shield. Cryptic, if you're giving us a single target spell, make it actually do something, not heal for 5% of targets hp and give unnoticable buff.
- Anointed Army. Yeah. Apparently CC immunity means something else to Cryptic than to me. Protects generally only from stuns. You can still fly around the map during this spells. Not to mention it's duration. 8 seconds - rotfl. Oh, and it works during first 3 hits you get. Count, how many hits you can take while kiting adds during 8 seconds. 10? 20? Seriously, Hallowed Ground gives the same damage reduction and damage bonus, has much greater AoE, heals and lasts for 15 seconds at least.
IMO whole divinity mechanic has to be redone. It's great idea, but dumb design. Why do we have to regain it only by dealing damage? Actually not dealing damage, just hitting something. It's like making TRs regain stealth only by healing allies. Rotfl. Not to mention, that most support powers in nondivine mode are worthless. Have anyone ever used ff or as without divinity? On purpose? Only if you have no other choice...
So generally about ACDC on live: no difference, except team is slightly more tanky due to class features.
However fun they may be in PvP, the new path does not seem viable in PvE. There just isn't the healing to cover the team during add spawns, and channel divinity isn't enough in an epic dungeon to make up for the loss of healing from Hallowed Ground. And in a boss fight, AA is a joke. I've had it go on and off in less than 2 seconds. A Daily to protect from three Imp bites?
I created a new cleric on the 5th and am working on an Anointed Champion build for PvE. I've been theorycrafting and debating with myself a lot on what would be best, and while I am still not 100% on my current layout, I feel like it will be successful. From what it sounds like, your clerics weren't doing something correctly. Admittedly, the loss of Foresight does make a significant difference, but this could/should be made up with a change in strategy.
For example, Anointed Holy Symbol grants a decent amount of temporary hit points, which synergizes with Deepstone Blessing well. Also, the Anointed Champion has to play differently than a Divine Oracle. Many of the best feats and passives of the Anointed Champion have a semi-short range, so the AC has to be in closer proximity to the team than a DO to be as effective. This is why I am still debating with myself on whether to go Righteous or Faithful. Anyway, trying to play an AC with AC passives and feats with a DO playstyle will not work. This is why I theorize ACs must build generally tankier than a DO, since they should be in the fray a little more. Anointed Armor helps with this.
Also, why were you losing healing from Hallowed Ground? From my theories, I would still use Hallowed Ground as my #1 daily and only use Anointed Army in specific situations. In fact, I prefer Divine Armor over Anointed Army (in general) for PvE. With this in mind, a (smart) AC cleric would still be using Hallowed Ground most of the time, especially in Mad Dragon. If specced into Faithful (my current plan, but I'm still unsure) the AC cleric would have all the same feats except the paragon feat, which would buff Exaltation instead. Hallowed Ground would heal, temp hp would be great (even better for an AC, actually) and so on.
Besides, encounter rotation should be very similar to what is used now. Astral Shield, Healing Word/something else, and a situational encounter. Exaltation shouldn't always be slotted for dungeons, though I do think it would be a good one to have for the final boss of Mad Dragon. The new at-will could replace Sacred Flame and grant some solid mitigation instead of a minuscule amount of temp hp.
So, while I think it might be easier to play a DO cleric effectively in PvE, I think (I can't know for sure until I put myself to the test in epic dungeons) an AC cleric PvE build is viable. It'll just require some changes in playstyle and maybe some feat/encounter changes. This will not be hard for me, for I've never played a cleric in endgame PvE before, so I won't have any of the habits of a DO. I must definitely say that Anointed Army is not really for PvE, though, and I might not even put points in it.
The three spells I have settled on for my soloing is: exaltation, break the spirit and daunting light.
if I am with a second cleric, then I will run exaltation, FF and daunting light.
If I am the only cleric, then I will run word of healing or astral shield, and ff and exaltation.
I will use the class features anointed armour and anointed symbol. Anyone standing next to me will get a temp hp boost whenever I cast a spell in divine mode. If I am standing right I can buff at least three people with this. Since I am arguably as tanky as a gf, I can stand wherever I want (mind you my gear might help with that last bit - and no I am not running the regen deflect etc build) I focus on recovery, power and penetration.
You know that moment when so many adds suddenly appear and everyone's health starts to go down - that when you use anointed army - it gives you that time to whips out your heals and save the day. I will point out the feat that adds a healing effect to this power when it wears off.
I wanted to run with blessing of battle and lance of faith as my 2 at wills, but the extra feated damage and divine power generation did not make enough of a difference to make it worth it and I found I needed the crit on the astral seal healing to trigger my damage boost (cycle of change I believe its called). Thankfully the damage on blessing of battle is so high, even though its slow. After awhile you get used to the slower attack speed and get into a rhythm.
The temp hp boost from anointed weapon does not stack with itself, but if you time your spellcasting rather than cast as fast as you can, as you would with DO, than you can maintain a buffer shield on your teammates.
The experience you describe is the failing of the player, not the Paragon Path. You simply had bad clerics. The path is viable in PvE, trust me.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
The team usually stays together as a group, so the range isn't a problem, until things like boss fights. The team, and the Cleric, simply can't come under the dragon with the tank. There's add to deal with, for one, and secondly the spike damage for squishies is too high. Beyond that, there is the spike damage to deal with, which is far in excess of what I was getting in all the temporary hp buffs from each of the clerics.
The reason that we weren't getting the healing from Hallowed Ground is that none of them would run it. 5 of the 7 hadn't even slotted points in it, and the other two hadn't feated it to heal regardless. In a way I don't blame them. A new path should really have given some new way to play clerics in the game. Why role a new Cleric just to do the same thing in dungeon after dungeon? Whatever new Powers they offered, it had to match what is commonly used, and that means a Daily that was a real alternative to HG... which AA is not. I mean, why do all that work and grind all that AD to run the same rotation? A new outfit?
And I did see some of them use Exaltation, even on me. I did not find it useful. It was either too early or too late, and went to waste about 85% of the time. I would say that FF is more useful to me when I'm tanking.
These were seven Clerics who have seven other primary Clerics they have been running successfully for months. They were not bad players. Nor am I some inexperienced player who wouldn't understand what she was looking at. This new Paragon Path couldn't handle the spike damage and couldn't heal heavy at range for players normally geared for the dungeons they were running (no CN weapons, no one had a weapon enchant except me, everyone's gear score below qualifying for a T2).... both of which lead to seven brutal wipes. Not the lack of skill on the part of the Clerics. I have a primary Cleric I've run since beta, so I think I'm experienced enough to know what I was seeing.
if you waste the cd, then it is a judgment call
tbh the new path should not be bashed, as you said it's not that different from the old one, it has different uses but the cleric class accommodates many builds within one path, including dps/debuff/heal/support/buff etc...
It is up to the player to build the character properly accordingly to what they are using it for... and if that build isn't working I don't think it's right to blame the path
With this path for instance, I am nearly unkillable in pvp and I can heal almost moreso than I did with my other character because exaltation and divine healing word provide crazy regeneration effects in addition to the instaheals...
The thing is, there's nothing about the new Path that suggests that it should be bad at healing. At all. If anything, it has greater healing potential with Anointed Holy Symbol providing significant temp HP buffers and further synergizing with Deepstone Blessing, not to mention Exaltation buffing your healing output (assuming you took the feat for it). The lack of Foresight's mitigation is balanced by Blessing of Battle's buff along with the aforementioned temp healing and buffing.
It was a little harsh of me to declare everyone bad clerics; instead let's say "inexperienced with the new Path." Just because your friends are having a hard time with it doesn't mean it's not viable. Besides, if Exaltation is giving them problems, there's no rule that says that they must use it in all situations.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Exaltation for example. If you also use the feat on it your other heals are even higher with the buff on you, too. So it is not only the heal you give to someone but the overall healing you give after it is cast. On top you give a damage bonus. I don't only use it to heal someone, but also throw it to the high DPS guys beating on someone when the overall health of the people are looking good and I can spare to waste this heal.
The passive that gives all around you temp hitpoints on divine casts along with the feat to increase heals on them is also very nice.
Just try this path with your party being around you (in the new dread ring skirmish for example). Here your Blessing of battle affects everyone in the team, your temp hitpoints affect everyone and your new daily also affects everyone. You will see that your team can be kept at nearly full health without the use of any astral shields easily. Now take this with astral shield in dungeons. It is working very well if the rest of the team also knows about how your new build works.
I have tested this with lowbie parties in Mad Dragon and Grey Wolf Den, after they listened to not scatter I had no problems at all to keep those undergeared players alive with the new skills during boss fights.
Well, I'm relatively new to the cleric community (I've been more active in the melee classes) so I don't know if this has already been discussed. Just asking questions to learn more.
Took me at least one hard dungeon run to get the hang of the new powers and features. Running a T1 with people geared up in T2 stuff does not count as practice.
I have played around on both the preview and normal servers. I still am not comfortable with how I have my feats set up and still looking at improving them.
The new paragon path has both good and bad things against it vs the old paragon path.
I just realized that they moved this feat to the second column of the Virtuous tree. It is no longer in the Righteous tree. So, if I still wanted to get Deepstone Blessing and Prestigious Exaltation from the Faithful tree and Restoration Mastery from the Virtuous tree, I would only be able to max two feats from the Righteous tree, assuming I still wanted to go there. With this in mind, I couldn't take both Ethereal Boon and Ancient Warding. Sad that Restoration Mastery was moved. I had a build in mind until I realized it was no longer in Righteous. Back to the drawing board.
It's not the same thing. Restoration Mastery is pretty terrible since 5% defense usually = ~1% damage mitigation if I understand correctly.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
you have a lot stronger up front damage mitigation with this path. Your heals might be a tiny bit weaker (what is 10% i mean really, 300 points ?) but our protection abilities are through the roof. I will quite happily throw down a yellow astral shield and follow it with a divine forge flame. I dont care about feated hallowed ground for extra healing. astral seal and exaltation is all i need. Temp hitpoints flying around all over the place, each one amplified by all the mitigation. You need to heal faster, swap out a spell for word of healing and then toss divine word of healing around - even more temp hit points.
your not a divine oracle, stop playing like one.
Again, it doesn't work like that.
Restoration Mastery = 5% defense buff
Blessing of Battle = 6% damage resistance buff
Defense contributes to total damage resistance, and you're looking at about 1% added DR for per 5% defense rating (based on the fact that the 45% defense reduction from 3 stacks of Greater Plaguefire = ~9% increased damage on an afflicted target).
Edit: Just to be clear, I completely agree about Anointed Champion being plenty effective, but I wouldn't want people choosing Restoration Mastery thinking that it was comparable to Benefit of Foresight, because it isn't.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Benefit of Foresight: Defense bonus from Foresight is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Restoration Mastery: When your target is critically healed, they gain a 1/2/3/4/5% Defense bonus.
They sound very similar, so I'm not sure in what way Restoration works. That is, of course, unless someone has tested it. I like to use conjecture and theory, but if the tooltip is not clear enough, I can't really depend on that without some field-testing. Benefit of Foresight is additive, so what's Restoration Mastery like? Have you tried Restoration Mastery in the field?
This isn't meant to be a rebuttal, just a clarification of a question.
To the DC who posted that "Sent" clerics are dumb.... enjoy being rolled over. While you are having to keep everyone filled up, I am reducing the party's dmg, providing plentiful buffs, and holding nodes. Each spec has its merit, I just prefer making life easier for myself and the group.
- My 2 Cents.
Character name: Band-Aid
The devs really need to clean up their tooltips to avoid ambiguity. You have a legitimate question considering that the devs occasionally do use the word "defense" to mean either the defense stat or damage reduction. In context of the Benefit of Foresight tooltip, since we know Foresight applies direct damage reduction, the meaning is clear.
However, I would like to see a test of Restoration Mastery just to make sure that the "defense" part isn't a tooltip error. If I'm feeling enterprising later, I'll see if I can get a little testing done on Preview.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
I like the new at-will too, especially in a group context, but for soloing, I'm still using Astral Flame because it generates Divine Power a lot faster. I'd prefer to spam my divine encounters faster to progress faster. And I need to stop using the word faster. So, feedback on the Anointed Champion at-will, Blessings of Battle: it's great for grouping, and I say it's a great support at-will. It does pretty decent damage, too. The only downside is that it doesn't generate as much Divine Power, but that can be compensated for with feat/passive selections.
I'm looking forward to the results of testing on Restoration Mastery. Changes to my build will depend on the effectiveness of the feat. If it ends up acting like Benefit of Foresight, I will have a rather interesting feat selection (10 points in each tree with one left over). If not, my choice is more clear cut.
So I went to Preview to test Restoration Mastery, and I can confirm that it increases the target's Defense stat by 5% when it procs, and the buff lasts for about 6 seconds. Unfortunately, 5% Defense is a negligible increase in mitigation
Also, about Blessing of Battle, it doesn't lag as far behind Sacred Flame's Divinity generation as it might seem. Each hit actually generates a decent chunk of Divinity and AP. I doubt it does as much damage over time as Sacred Flame, however. Blessing's damage is decent on paper, but I think it's still slightly low for the animation delay.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
I've tried both, and Sacred Flame seems (I can't tell for certain) to generate a little less than twice the Divinity. I could be remembering wrong about that, but Blessing's generation should be sufficient, especially when paired with Ethereal Boon. What I did not notice is AP generation. I'll have to check that out. As for damage, it's definitely lower than Sacred Flame, but it does quite a bit for the extra mitigation it provides. I've seen a lvl 60 cleric hit for 1.7k each hit, non crit. Pretty substantial, even if not as much dps as Sacred Flame or Lance.
EDIT: Actually, after glancing in the forums I notices the spirit link feat. This healing feat really is inferior to spirit link in every way. I mean .... uhg