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Suggestion to Remove Righteousness
silverkelt
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,235 Arc User
This isn't really a comment on upcoming and minimal changes to righteousness, I do not believe this should be moved to any other thread.
What I am asking is much more simple, Righteousness is a mechanic that squarely puts DCs at a disadvantage in PVP, without adequate compensation through class abilities to compete. You can stack and tinker with feats/powers and gear, these should be advantages, but not class core mechanics. There is a issue with the core mechanic of the class, when you cannot use your most powerful skills in one part of the game.
I think we simply ask to be put on the same footing as other classes, with such a double debuff as both Healing Depression and Righteousness stacked together , the class simply isn't viable for the majority of the average groups.
You want to tinker and play around with the coding, but it ends up the same. We are not a pure DPS class, we cannot out strike opponents, our CLASS ability is healing, the debuffs and control methods the class was given does not compensate against the DPS/Control classes in the game.
So where does that leave the DC against similar geared opponents in the majority of the playing groups? Dead and a hindrance to the team, not a leader class, we are a liability instead.
I once was told, all they can say to you is NO, so I will ask anyways. Please remove righteousness from the DC class, barring that, please give us a time-frame for a complete revamp of this class. I am not asking for the DC to be OP, we were not before the double debuff was giving to the class, what we are now is a class that shouldn't even be in the arena.
Thank you for your time.
What I am asking is much more simple, Righteousness is a mechanic that squarely puts DCs at a disadvantage in PVP, without adequate compensation through class abilities to compete. You can stack and tinker with feats/powers and gear, these should be advantages, but not class core mechanics. There is a issue with the core mechanic of the class, when you cannot use your most powerful skills in one part of the game.
I think we simply ask to be put on the same footing as other classes, with such a double debuff as both Healing Depression and Righteousness stacked together , the class simply isn't viable for the majority of the average groups.
You want to tinker and play around with the coding, but it ends up the same. We are not a pure DPS class, we cannot out strike opponents, our CLASS ability is healing, the debuffs and control methods the class was given does not compensate against the DPS/Control classes in the game.
So where does that leave the DC against similar geared opponents in the majority of the playing groups? Dead and a hindrance to the team, not a leader class, we are a liability instead.
I once was told, all they can say to you is NO, so I will ask anyways. Please remove righteousness from the DC class, barring that, please give us a time-frame for a complete revamp of this class. I am not asking for the DC to be OP, we were not before the double debuff was giving to the class, what we are now is a class that shouldn't even be in the arena.
Thank you for your time.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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"Because early-game DCs use fewer potions" (as was originally mentioned in a dev thread) is clearly laughable.
"Because then DCs would be unkillable" is clearly laughable, since everyone else gets the full benefit of our heals and I see no obvious DC-related trend toward immortality in non-DC classes.
"Because we can't think of anything else to replace it in the class ability box" would be hilarious and depressing.
I simply don't have a clue why this mechanic should be a thing.
All my other chars, excluding my HR (bored with this class ATM) have had similar experiences as before.
- JailBreak (in development)
On top of that, new Righteousness just looks like a very thinly veiled attempt to rebrand a self-healing debuff as an ally-healing buff. What gives, Cryptic?
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
It's like you're damned if you do DPS and damned if you don't DPS and the same for going full-healer spec. It feels like the 'balance' of the class is partially nerving both opposing aspects (DPS versus Healing) to the point that both are neither very powerful, but rather more of a slushy, mediocre experience all the way around.
My first character has been sitting at level 60 as an invoking/AD-Farming mule for months. I *want* play it, but I just can;t bring myself to. The other classes (ALL the other classes) are simply more fun in Solo/Group PvE (I don;t even bother with PvP on any character, myself - but I can imagine the groans coming from the arenas.)
The pathetic thing is that my DC is my *favorite* character and even my *favorite* class, but it's just no fun to play it when compared to *every*. *other*. *class*. INCLUDING Guardian Fighter (which I like the least because of the way it plays). Which might explain why it's the least-played class in-game according to the stats just released. Only a pathetic 11% (!) of all characters created (2.27 Million) are choosing DC.
I agree with everything you have said. I've toyed with my build, gear, encounters, at-wills in order to give me something that will allow me to be consistently viable in pvp. I've stacked regen, I've given my self more DR and deflect than a lot of heavies i'm grouped with have. We have virtualy no self healing, virtually no cc, no dps. Sure if we are put with a capable group we can still shine and have a significant influence in a match, but never before have the DCs been so dependent on others which is a direct result of the recent changes that have impacted the class.
They would have to revamp so many abilities and mechanics in order to get rid of righteousness. I see zero chance of this happening. honestly, unless they put in the time for an iterative testing/feedback loop in then I'd rather they didn't touch it seeing as they'll simply break multiple other powers/feats etc that will then take months to fix, if they ever do. Besides, righteousness isn't even the problem, if they wanted to balance things more they'd simply make us do more dmg and fix our cast animations so it's possible to fight without having every encouner power interrupted multiple times when you're trying to cast it, not to mention dailys or BoB at-will, etc. Making apen actually work with our powers would be helpful too along with sets that actually have good stat distributions and good set bonuses.
If you want to see the true power of clerics in PVP you need to do some high lvl premades, then you might see the dramatic diference between teams of comparably geared/skilled plays with/without a cleric on the team.
That probably represents less than 100 DCs, total. I'd be surprised if it was much more than 10, to be honest. It certainly represents a tiny fraction of the DC population.
It's also certainly not the reasoning behind this mechanic, since righteousness has been in place pretty much since the get-go, which is way back when there WERE no high-geared, high end premade PvP people.
And you're still not addressing the question implicit in my statement you quoted: we get 60% of our heals, yet EVERYONE ELSE gets 100%. If 100% of our heals would make us immortal, why does the 100% of our heals that everyone else gets, all the time....not make them immortal?
2 healing words just gives us an increased self duration. it can also be funny when the 1st healing word is normal and the 2nd one criticals which means we get double the duration of a non-critical healing word. more often than not, it's normally non-critical heals being increased 3+ times on myself while everyone else may get criticals.
What other healing spells did I forget about that are capable of doubling up like that when self targeted?
I was adressing what righteousness currently does. I have no idea about that potion related stuff, honestly I didn't need much for potions leveling, always had excess.
I'm currently doing mostly high end premade pvp but that's only been more recently. I've posted extensivley about how I ran as a mid geared DO with pretty decent results for the first couple weeks of this patch, and even before, although I consider anything pre patch to not provide a whole lot of practical use anymore. Maybe it's just more of a diference of what we expect/enjoy from this class
To answer your issue with the healing amounts on us/everybody else. Look you take anybody and extrapolate a single battle out long enough and everybody will die, well except one person I guess. But battles don't work like that, there's an ebb and flow, people enter and exit the battle, die, etc. The idea is to stay alive/keep your party up as long as possible and if that's long enough you kill the other guys and control the point. So no you wouldn't be completely immortal but we would be so hard to kill it would be close enough, assuming your not stunlocked. I can't keep up a squishy forever but anybody who's got their defensive stats up enough I greatly extend their effective time in combat. A good GWF or Gf i can pretty much keep alive the majority of a pvp match if I really wanted to focus on that
How do you survive a decent CW bothering to focus you btw? Its even not so much about righteousness, its about pretty much absense of any means to resist control except high wisdom (unlike TR, GWF, GF and HR) which is quite weak to say the least. Just by asking for help from teammates and hoping they could come fast enough? Doesnt looks like 'close to immortality'.
I'd actually suggest to give clerics some means to resist or break control instead of removing righteousness...
not to mention hunters willing to spam 3 of their disruptive shot daily on u to keep u near-perma-stunned by 1 person. i have even been brought down from 100% to 0 because a gwf kept proning me b4 i could run away, although they do seem to mess up that combo frequently.
clerics really could use a way to protect themselves besides the extra resist from astral shield
Stick an astral down and skoosh around in it? You're getting 40% less benefit than all your allies, and this is not free healback: if you stick an astral somewhere you're not, you get ZERO heals from it. If you make the effort to get into it, you get...60% heals from it. There is no "free healback" here.
A more sensible fix would've been "healing word/soothing light also give you 60% of the heal when cast on an ally".
There we go, job done. Now we can happily benefit fully from our shields, forgemasters and bastions (hahahaha) and the healback we get from spamming HWs (if you're a HW spammer) remains as it was under righteousness. An added advantage to this would be that hitting yourself with a HW would actually give you 100% of the benefit, so it'd work as a clutch heal.
As it is, there is absolutely zero reason to cast it on yourself, ever. Cast a HW on an ally, they get 100%, you get 60%. Cast it on yourself because you've been focus fired? You get 60%. You literally heal two and a half times as many points if you cast it on anyone other than yourself.
If you're being focus fired, HW an ally. You'll probably still die, but you would've died anyway, and now you've also healed an ally a bit. There is no reason NOT to do this. If it came down to a choice between "100% for myself and nothing for allies, or 60% for myself and 100% for allies" there might be more tactical decision-making involved.
Of course, all of this would require them to actually think of something interesting to replace in the "righteousness" box, so I'm not holding out hope.
And again, it's pretty obvious that people DO die in combat, and these people (if they're not DCs) are getting 100% of DC heals. Us getting 100% of our own **** heals is not going to break anything (especially not PvP, where aside from very focussed premade groups, the general consensus is 'oh those poor DCs'), or taking two DCs in a party would instantly break all content (it doesn't, though for the record, it IS fun -though amusingly if you both stick down astrals it's actually surprisingly easy to spot which one is the other DCs just by skooshing through them and watching the heal ticks almost double).
I reiterate, most people think DCs are currently broken for PVP , I suppose when we are all get high enough and get into premades that protect the class, we will feel functional again, but its such a long journey to that spot, there should be a place for all types of dcs , do not cater just to the end spectrum's.
I also do not continue to understand the support for this current meta, its like some of you enjoy being nothing more then a glorified companion. Ive seen other classes in other mmos this broken and the devs eventually had to break down and rework them from the ground up. Its started to get to that point with the DC (not enough damage, very slow animation times and uncalled for debuffs)
I see no reason not to ask for the DCs to unlock their potential in the game.
As I see it, the issue is actually more with the lower and the very top ends of the spectrum.
Low-end DCs have ALWAYS struggled. With entry-level gear and possibly with suboptimal builds, they have a horrible time in PvP, even against comparable players. Righteousness status quo and Healing Depression just make it worse since they couldn't sustain their HP very well to begin with.
High-end DCs continue to dance around the majority of PUGs, if not as dramatically as any other class benefiting from a similar disparity in gear and skill. The only difference is that it no longer takes as much skill to counter a good DC, because chip damage will eventually do the job even if the attackers can't coordinate their CC and burst to save their lives. Of course, focused CC and burst will put a DC down much more quickly than before, but that's if good players even bother with the DC right away. If the DC is a Power build focusing on DPS or pure heals, that means that he's squishy and can be wrecked in no time. Otherwise it's often better for the team to ignore the DC in favor of bursting down people who are doing huge damage, knowing that Healing Depression and complete dependence on Divinity for sustain will severely hamper the DC.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Righteousness exists to make the cleric class having tactical choices to make. It also helps balancing pvp. Right now, on live, i can keep someone (CW, TR), alive against 2-3 people whooping their asses. And i'm in the upper pvp backet, which means i'm teamed up and playing mostly against 15-16k people. If i can heal myself for that much, i can now tank 2-3 people effortlessly, just spamming heals, getting crit ones and wait for the HoTs to do the job.
Of course a cleric can't tank 1 vs 5 in a premade focusing the cleric. No one can. And that's fine, because it makes pvp a challenge, instead of being a button smashing. If it makes the skill gap higher, I'm not going to complain either, I'm not a fan of easy god modes and facerolls.
Removing righteousness would also means that heals would get nerfed by a severe amount, to keep the class interesting to play. I don't see any benefit to that either.
Now if the complaint is that people have to acually work on their characters to make them competitive in pvp... Welcome in the wonderful world of MMOs.
Part of what I'm saying (and vorph is reiterating) is that there is a huge power gap between low-gear and high-gear DCs, and this gap has been made substantially wider with the latest changes. It doesn't matter how well you play your class, at entry level gearing you will be wormfood for absolutely everyone (except perhaps other entry level DCs). This is not the case for any other class, as far as I can tell. I've tried as a GF or a CW and it's been vastly more facerolly than my DC ever was, and my CW is about as PvE-specced as possible.
The old standby of "regen blues for PvP", and later "dex/con halfling trolltank" were responses to the fact that we have a self-heal nerf, no CC resist to speak of, and spend a good 70% of our time being focus-fired/CCd by everyone. Without regen blues, wearing anything else south of absolute BiS gear, you were looking at spending a hell of a lot of time waiting to respawn.
It was an attempt to use non-healer class mechanics to make a healer class actually able to stay alive, something that should almost never be a thing healers should need to do. Healers should be difficult to kill if they focus on keeping themselves alive. And for you in particular, diogene0: ridiculously overgeared DCs should have an easier time of things because THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF GETTING RIDICULOUSLY OVERGEARED.
It should also be possible for them to design mechanics so that low geared people are actually able to play in any meaningful sense, while high-geared people are not so OP that they are literally "apply face to keyboard, tank all the things", but right now, from what I gather, they've achieved the reverse.
And coming back to the point, righteousness was clearly not intended as a measure of marginally gimping high end PvP clerics, because these were not a thing when righteousness was conceived. Righteousness simply makes no sense.
You can't really fight a CW solo effectively as a DC. CW's are our nemesis, HR's too kinda. They just have to much control, which is our bane. If we can't move about to avoid dmg and allow our hot's to have more effect then we die. All they need to do is keep proning, disabling, stunneing, etc, us and they can widdle us down with their dmg, they can take us down pretty fast some times actually. Assuming I have to solo either a CW or HR it's let my team know I need help and then try to survive as long as possible. I use HW/AS/Exalt and basically you just spam HW throw down AS whenever possible (almost always non-divine) and use divine Exalt every time it's up (preferably try to time it just before you get controled), Artifact: Waters, PVP healing poitions, etc. This is all assuming that the CW is comparably geared to you, is a decent player and is using a normal spell rotation and not something crazy. If I don't think I'm going to get any help I'll try and make a run for it at about 30-40% HP to go get a potion. Remember that if you control the cap it's going to take them 10-15s to cap it. If I see I'm going to get zerged I'll try and just run away knowing I have 10s to group up with some allies and return before they even start earning points.
CC is our bane as DC's. I'd love to have more CC resist or ways to break out of it but that would probably be too powerful seeing as we already have high DR, decent deflect and regen and can heal and drastically buff DR. I have 23 Wis currently (that may be with campfire buff and I'm a Half-Elf) I don't notice any drastic amount of diference in control resist or the amount of time I'm controlled. I could put another 4 points into Wis, which I'd considered thinking that the added Control Resist might be kidna interesting but I've still got those 4 points in Dex currently. Gauranteed Deflect % seems better than some Control resist which I don't know how effective it is.
I never said I was "close to immortal" I've said I consider myself extremly hard to kill and that if I healed myself for 100% then I would most likely feel "close to immortal"
In regards to HR's see what I said about CW's, it's pretty similar to a CW in terms of the advantage they have over us. I'd say HR's are slightly easier just because they have more dodgeable CC powers, they seem to have more burst dmg though so you need to time stuff right. BTW I believe that shot is called constricting shot and it's just a single power but it activates those roots on you 3 times with 2s intervals or whatever, and yes it's incredibly anoying. I think it's the power I hate most in this game haha. Most GWF's run 2 prone/knockdown powers plus that overhead poweful strike thing they do with their sword. The idea is that they use either their charge or that kick thing (kneebreaker it's caleld maybe?) to prone you then they use their second takedown power on you and then land their powered up strike on you while you're proned. If you can dode their first knockdown power then it messes up their entire rotation and frees you up for another 10 seconds. Honestly GWF's are not usually an issue for me unless they're insanely geared, it's more a problem with the GF's that they chain stun you and it's no that big a deal if they miss one, they just hit you with the next one
1-Any recently lvled up 60 with low lvl gear and low lvl enchants is going to get stomped most likely if you join PVP, especially a pug. This is even more noticeable when people don't have proper builds, aren't pvp specced or are still learning their class. Chances are if you won you got carried or the other team was worse or equally as bad. This leads into to point 2.
2-To feel the true power of the DC you need a premade, or an organised group. It doesn't have to be high end or poeple with mega gear but PUG's running around willy nilly aren't conducive to getting the most out of the DC class in PVP, neither is zergfesting which is what tends to happen in pug's. Communication is key.
3- Premades don't have to be people with max gear/enchants, tactics can overcome much better gear and even people who are much more skilled at their class, assuming they're just interested in fighting and killing, which happens a lot in PVP.
4-Having the right powers, feats, etc helps a lot in terms of just keeping yourself alive. You don't have to be a min/maxer to be succesful but you do need to have an understanding of the meta and where your class, the DC, fits in. Currently they're seems to really only be one viable way to play DC in PVP. I agree that this is kinda lame and you should be able to have different set ups, but it's not really any different from the other classes where one set up drastically outperforms anything else you can use.
5-If you and you're team don't understand the tactics involved in a PVP Domination fight and how to go about winning one then it's hard to win. Zerging around all together is not how to win PVP matches and pretty much mandates that your party outgear the other one.
6-Gear imbalances can ruin a PVP match in a hurry, unfortunately the ELO system was what was making PVP ques be 30min + so they removed it and now we're back to 6k GS lvl 60's in full greens are in the same group with 16k full rank 10 players. PVP would probably be more enjoyable for all if we played comparable opponents, geared people don't want to smash noobies all day, well most of us don't; and new players would get to play against similarly geared people so they would actually have a competative experience and be able to adapt/learn to the meta.
7-I definetely don't feel like a glorofied companion. I do agree that we have the most <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> cast animations. My encounters get interrupted constantly by just about anybody, they all seem to have faster cast animations. With that said my HW/AS/Exalt setup isn't nearly as bad for this as BtS/Chains/FF was. I'm the diference maker, I go to wherever's needed helping hold/take cap points. If an ally is dying I can show up and sustain him, then put him back up to full HP, probably allowing him to kill an enemy in the process and then leave him there to keep doing his thing. I can also rotate to replace a dead teammate on a cap point until he or somebody else comes back. I can solo hold a point until my friends show up to help, or jump on an enemy cap point and be a pain in the *** to kill, keeping them from getting points in the meantime. I can counter GWF's and TR's.
8-Most of my gear isn't BIS and I don't spend a that much time respawning unless my teams getting destroyed. The gear itself isn't really all that expensive or hard to get. It's the enchants that become the money sink and upgrading artifacts. I currently use a P.Vorp, which is very nice but it doesn't do a huge amount for me in PVP, a normal Soulforger, a mix of rank 6 and 7 offensive enchants (not really important) and rank 7-8 defensive enchants. I have Waters, Raven Skull and the Tome all upgraded to purple but none of them are above lvl 65.
9-The Class is "Cleric" not a "Priest". We're not a "Healer" class, look at DnD lore if you don't believe me. That's why we do more than just spam out heals on people. Now that's more like being a glorofied companion.
10-@Mors I have no idea what that mess was about healing yourself more if you heal an ally...I couldn't follow any of that really and tbh it doesn't make much sense. If you heal and ally with HW they're healed for 100% and you're healed for 60% of that value. If you heal yourself only you simply get 60% of the value...By healing an ally you take better advantage of your power and increase you're overall healing but you don't heal yourself anymore.
2) True. Trying to play a supporting role when no one wants to be supported tends to be frustrating.
3) True.
4) True to an extent. The Pigeonholing of the DC (upcoming film by Mel Gibson) is even more restrictive than what is considered meta for other classes.
5) Yup.
6) They didn't remove Elo, but they also aren't terribly transparent about how it works just yet. We never know how the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> is turned. All we can do is hope for continual improvements.
7) Casting animations are indeed a problem. Thank god Exaltation is a nearly instant cast, because most DC skills are obviously not. GWFs used to complain about telegraphed skills as well, but then they got access to Frontline Surge and have been conspicuously silent on the topic since.
8) Ok.
9) Can't really lean too hard on D&D here. It's more of a lovely painted backdrop that will fall over like the town set in Blazing Saddles if scrutiny is applied. I do appreciate how the designers at Cryptic tried to make the DC more of an active class rather than a pure back line healer support, and it generally works thanks to the active combat system and the ability of any character to avoid or heal damage to itself. However, this is an MMORPG, and just as players expect to cast Magic Missiles and stick monsters with the pointy ends, they expect to heal. The D&D cleric may not run around battles administering butt-slaps of healing, but that's not exactly this game.
10) No clue what's going on here.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
As for the HW maths: imagine your base total heal is 1000.
Cast it on an ally: they get 1000 points, you get 600, so 1600 total points healed.
Cast it on yourself: you get 600, so 600 total points healed.
1600 divided by 600 = 2.67
In other words, you heal over two and a half times as many points of health (total) if you cast HW on anyone other than yourself. There is literally zero benefit to casting it on yourself if an ally can be possibly targeted.
I can't complain about the class requiring skill. I rather like that tbh. I honestly didn't mind it to much as a newbie DC doing pvp, but that was back in the day and a diferent meta. I did have fun at the start of this patch as a DO going sorta hybrid with BtS/Chains/FF and BotS, but I wanted to get more serious hence respec to AC. I've talked a bunch about this before. I see where your coming from with the gear wall etc. I feel that tactics/team play help make up for this but that brings us back to having a premade blah blah. I get the impression a lot of people in low lvl pvp think DC's are priests in cloth or something and they focus us, or it's just mmo training "Focus the Healer!!!!". From my perspective if the DC is somewhat squishy then you should nuke him down so he cant heal team members and provide buffs and debuffs, if not you probably need to focus somebody else. Oftentimes it does feel like your running for your life though. It's like dungeons back in the day when agro was broken. So yeah it's kind of an issue with the meta I guess and you would hope bears looking into. The problem is that it's almost like a class rework that needs to happen which is a ton of work. If you simply increase heling or something then sustain becomes to great and DC's become too hard to kill. If you simply put in an encounter or someting to help that kind of defeats the point by forcing everybody to use it, although I supose it could serve as a bridge to a bigger fix.
I didn't specifically say it but I did refer to myself as well geared. I was just saying I'm not BIS. Just about everybody I PVP with or against in the premades outgear me but I can still do pretty **** good for myself and be a deciding factor.
Ok yeah I see what you were talking about now. That's exactly what I was saying. Something in your original wording was really confusing. Made it sound like you were saying that by healing an ally you actually healed yourself more.
so yeah what we are both saying is that it's drastically better to cast HW on an ally since you always get the self heal benefit and also heal your ally. The only reason not to cast it on somebody is because you're by yourself. Although with the targeting system I do sometimes in battle lose my targe tand auto cast it on myself, the worst is when it happens every once in a while with Exalt
I'm nit picking I know, but passive divinity generation from Ethereal boon plus divinity bonus from divine fortune/Grim/Profound set makes it very worthwhile to spam HW to top yourself up anyway HP and DP wise. Divinity is awesome in PvP. But yeah, everytime I failed a cast on an ally I feel like a kitten died.
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Don't misunderstand me; a skill cap is a good thing when the reward is commensurate. However, when you need to play at a higher level than your opponent just to break even, that's more of a handicap.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Quoted by Elf, the pvp healer who successful trolled a opposite team of 2 GWF, 2 GF and 1 DC with a immortal rainbow pug party hours ago.
@12.3k gs
Edit: 3k glory more for virtuous main hand... grind grind grind....
Also, if we are just going to switch armour in a month, I might not bother at all, maybe get the belt or something.
Healing is ok, keeping yourself up is another, also I can only take out undergeared players or CWs I can manage to dodge icy knife or weaker TRs that SE only hits for the 6k instead of the 20k . Other then that Im toast..
What do you mean it can be ignored? Like it's irrelevant and does nothing or people don't care if they're in it or not?
I'm using a Profound faithful wep, don't see any better options available. 18.4% DR is pretty good, once you have about 950+ it starts to cap pretty hard.
MH>profound armor sets imo
In high end matches, many of us will have near 100% DR (stack AC, defense and DR buffs), so if the opposite have 20% DR ignore, your allies take 20% damage only, if they have 120% DR, they still take 20% damage only. (DR capped at 80%)
And in my perspective, a crit divine HW heals a target who needs urgent healing better than a div AS. You will see me doing a lot of kiting, mobile healing etc when pvping with me. AS cannot provide me survivabililty and mobility when chased by a GWF or healing someone running here and there.
I don't know really any other classes that are going to buff your DR. Also, excess DR, if you have it, is what gets shredded by apen first. So if you have 100% DR and somebody's apen eliminates 20% DR you'd still be at the capped value. AS benefits other classes too, not just you, so it's great since a lot of people don't have their DR capped so hard, I also don't know what you'd run that's better than that.
AC and defense are different stats but they essentially combine. When you look at the DR on your character sheet that takes into account both you're AC and you're defense. Other buffs aren't usually displayed there, they just show up as buff icons on your character, foresight is a good example of this.