First and foremost we have heard the feedback on empowered and we are making it a global resource.
Less choice, less flexibility, I'm not sure I like it. It feels like a loss of power. Also, no changes on casting times? It's been requested many times in this thread (maybe more than empowerment changes) and it's far more critical in group content.
Also, please no more text floater, our screen is already cluttered by floaters and text. Burning guidance, pets, 3rd and 4th boons from campaigns... What about something visible on our spell's icon? This place isn't cluttered (yet). Divinity makes spells blue you could try green for max empowerment. Or anything else. Just no text. Please.
Devoted Cleric: Faithful: Agent of the Divine: The heal from this feat is now clamped and cannot exceed the target's Maximum HP.
Ok this is bad if this heal is affected by healing depression in pvp. The queue won't pop on preview but i'm assuming it is since it's affected by our feats and righteousness.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
First and foremost we have heard the feedback on empowered and we are making it a global resource. It will now be generated by any divine power and consumed by any non-divine power. This will simplify the rotation and let you make more moment to moment decisions on what to do with your two major resources now (Empowered and Divine Power).
Ah, OK ... this is an improvement. Thank you....and with the bug fixes it is now possible to properly test the DC changes.
I am not convinced, however, that a floating text is the best notification mechanism - I would by far have preferred something in the encounter spell icon area...a glowing border, flashing icon or something like that.
Hoping for improvements...
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
edited October 2014
Add a glow to the Divine Meter for each "stack" of Empowerment. Light glow is one stack, bright glow is two stacks, burning glow is three. It's already a very visible part of the interface, something clerics have been trained to watch and should make integrate more easily into the existing resource bar.
EDIT: These changes will be hitting later this week, but are not yet active.
Devoted Cleric: Divine Fortune: This class feature now correctly increases Divine Power gain by 5% per rank (down from 50%).
Devoted Cleric: Faithful: Agent of the Divine: The heal from this feat is now clamped and cannot exceed the target's Maximum HP.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
1) Question about Agent of Divine, after the health pool reaches my Max HP, do I heal still heal 25% less or not?
2) Please buff Divine Fortune, 15% isn't going to help much, especially how we need to gain divinity quickly for empowered stacks. Suggestion: 33% per stack. Alternatively, let us gain it from using encounters.
3) Bring back the blue bubble visual effect for Exaltation. I'm begging you crush.
Is time for you all to know some of the truth about the cleric's synergy build. A well guarded secret of the holiest of holys.
Picture here not edited for reference material. This is a rushed pic not the best example.
[IMG][/img]
With proper use of Astral Seal and Astral Shield, you can proc burning guidance. Once burning guidance is in proc you use hollowed ground and divine glow hopefully hitting your ioun stone also your ioun stone will have two lesser indomitable rune stones at least. Terrifying insight will increase the damage also. If you have a warlock with the proper damage buffs and a control wizard with the power enhancement buff, another factor is a cleric participating in the synergy. You can proc burning guidance up to 10,000 or higher damage per heal this does cycle from 120 up to 10,000. High prophet armor and other damage buffs or increases helps there are a few feats which makes this much stronger. Other configurations are possible for defense and healing.
There is more than one way of going about this.
FEEDBACK:Hopefully your modification arrangements will not destroy our synergy builds.
Signed cautiously synergy builds an anonymous-
Hate to burst your bubble but Burning guidance has a floating text when it procs. You are either mistaking the bugged feat Fire of the Gods or trolling nonsense. I filmed you and your cohorts in trade of the blades and know what the rogue was doing. If you were reporting a bug you would have reported the bug instead of asking for a nerf. Maybe you struggle with English or have a mental impairment and are just making an honest mistake. If you continue to ask for nerfs in the name of "synergy", I'll let the DC advocate or one of the DEV team take a look at the film of you and your buddies in action and they can decide for themselves.
Hate to burst your bubble but Burning guidance has a floating text when it procs. You are either mistaking the bugged feat Fire of the Gods or trolling nonsense. I filmed you and your cohorts in trade of the blades and know what the rogue was doing. If you were reporting a bug you would have reported the bug instead of asking for a nerf. Maybe you struggle with English or have a mental impairment and are just making an honest mistake. If you continue to ask for nerfs in the name of "synergy", I'll let the DC advocate or one of the DEV team take a look at the film of you and your buddies in action and they can decide for themselves.
I disabled the words in options in the options. I will get a pic soon with the words. I don't use fire of the gods and I don't have that feat. The image you posted has the event siege of neverwiter from a while back if you didn't notice.
Update with picture and name:
[IMG][/img]
I would rather have a dev play a copy of my character on the preview shard with the right party.:cool:
I am glad to help Neverwinter in any way.
Good sir it does that with while they stop attacking with that proc also, Great weapon fighters and clerics can trigger it even. More than likely most things that hit monsters. If it is not fixed it ruins the game, I want it fixed I love this game, I don't want to imagine the game with it. Look at the icons next to the dummy.
Forgot to put a "things done right" kind of feedback after my initial bugs/feedback however many pages ago, sorry been kinda sick/busy.
Feedback: Things Done Right
Healing Word: Line instead of target. Yes. I have discarded this skill primarily because of how hard it is to target a specific player around a boss or in a mob when you've got your entire party running around frantic. The fact that all healing (save for Sunburst and Guardian of Faith, which aren't hard to target anyhow) now has targeting rings/lines is a step in the right direction.
Break the Spirit: Giving this debuff capabilities makes this power useful. I'm not sure yet if it's a must-have for buff/debuff tactics, but it gets a warm reception from me compared to how it was before.
Daunting Light: I like how I can charge it up to deliver a bigger payload. In conjunction with other defense/DR debuffs, this could be quite painful properly wielded (and it does take some skill to wield -- it's not easy, but path prediction helps a lot when tagging mobs; pvp, probably requires a stun or prone first to tag 'em, I'm not a big PvPer, so someone else would have to chime in.)
And that's all I got for now. I'm waiting for next patch to do further testing, since first draft broke quite a bit (feated/passive powers for Divinity gain, 100% DR from Astral Shield, etc.) and I'd like to see what the second draft holds.
Also, regarding Sunburst, if you decide to put Linked Spirit back in, Divine + Sunburst would finally be viable to proc it (since before you'd have to use a Tab trick, and that bug got fixed). I wouldn't mind seeing Divine Sunburst add something akin to what Linked Spirit used to do, even if it's in a lesser form.
Righteous cleric are fine... At least, that's what they say. :cool: That was a serious WTF moment.
I've made a video, i've been trying to corner this issue for 2 hours, and i'm still not completely sure about what it is. I'll upload the video later.
At first glance it seems that the order in which you apply debuffs has a great influence on the final result. Some debuffing sequences give a far more powerful multiplier than others. I'm suspecting something nasty happens with bear your sins (feat), break the spirit and forgemaster's flame's when they interact with eachother.
Ok The numbers are so out of whack it's a bit hard to come up with one explanation with maths. I have a few theories on what's happenning by the end of my video.
Here is my first theory.
Some buffs buff other buffs when they're applied, which means we get something like
Total damage = [(buff1 x buff2)x (buff 1 x buff 2) x buff 3] x base damage.
Instead of
Total damage = buff 1 x buff X buff 3 x base damage.
This would result, when applying an empowered break the spirit after a bear your sins (divine mode break the spirit), in divine glow reapplying bear your sins and break the spirit. This would also imply that the buffing mechanics is broken on live, and even though i'd love this conclusion to be true it's not likely to be the right one.
My second theory is that bear your sins has no cap and can stack 20 or 30 times. FF and break the spirit would apply it a lot more, resulting in a much stronger debuff when I use FF and break the spirit at the same time. This could be tied to a very old bug that never got fixed in which one DoT tick is considered as one encounter use (like the deadtheft bug on SWs applying 23/24 hellfire stacks). FF and break the spirit ticks would apply a stack of bear your sins in this scenario. DoTs have been broken since launch in this game and this wouldn't be surprising. This is most likely the bug.
My third theory is that team buffs like break the spirit and individual buffs are calculated and applied separately which would mean that some buffs get applied twice (in a slightly different fashion as in theory 1). It could be the other way around. I have no evidence of that and this is the less likely option but i'll leave it on the table anyway.
Any other ideas?
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited October 2014
I don't see the new healing word working too well in pvp. That was the only good thing about the DC was staying away from danger and healing from a distance.
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
Ok The numbers are so out of whack it's a bit hard to come up with one explanation with maths. I have a few theories on what's happenning by the end of my video.
Here is my first theory.
Some buffs buff other buffs when they're applied, which means we get something like
Total damage = [(buff1 x buff2)x (buff 1 x buff 2) x buff 3] x base damage.
Instead of
Total damage = buff 1 x buff X buff 3 x base damage.
This would result, when applying an empowered break the spirit after a bear your sins (divine mode break the spirit), in divine glow reapplying bear your sins and break the spirit. This would also imply that the buffing mechanics is broken on live, and even though i'd love this conclusion to be true it's not likely to be the right one.
My second theory is that bear your sins has no cap and can stack 20 or 30 times. FF and break the spirit would apply it a lot more, resulting in a much stronger debuff when I use FF and break the spirit at the same time. This could be tied to a very old bug that never got fixed in which one DoT tick is considered as one encounter use (like the deadtheft bug on SWs applying 23/24 hellfire stacks). FF and break the spirit ticks would apply a stack of bear your sins in this scenario. DoTs have been broken since launch in this game and this wouldn't be surprising. This is most likely the bug.
My third theory is that team buffs like break the spirit and individual buffs are calculated and applied separately which would mean that some buffs get applied twice (in a slightly different fashion as in theory 1). It could be the other way around. I have no evidence of that and this is the less likely option but i'll leave it on the table anyway.
Any other ideas?
I did testing on this today as you know and I could never get the wild numbers without the known bugged feat Fire of Gods. This doesn't mean you are wrong about Bear your Sins, I just couldn't get it to bork. I could easily reproduce the ridiculous numbers with Fire of Gods slotted by using DoTs which makes it likely Bear Your Sins is getting borked by some bugged process. I'm gonna leave it alone until after the patch and we can try to isolate Bear Your Sins if the problem still continues after Fire of the Gods is fixed.
From what I saw the fire of the gods was building from the previous attacks buff because of the weapon damage factor or the buff stack through the feat. Did you test cool down and see it it was around the same or refreshed during recast?
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totenkopf77Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 32Arc User
From what I saw the fire of the gods was building from the previous attacks buff because of the weapon damage factor or the buff stack through the feat. Did you test cool down and see it it was around the same or refreshed during recast?
I was actually testing Bear Your Sins which I could not get up to the same numbers as Dio without slotting Fire of Gods. People bug reported Fire of Gods from Day one so no I haven't tested it exclusively. Something in the interaction between a "spreader" like Fire and a "buff stacker" like Bear Your Sins is allowing huge damage numbers, most notable being Daunting Light as Dio got it close to a million and I got it up to around 750k with a 150k heal on ASeal . I'm not spending anymore time until next patch to see if the "changes" to Fire of Gods makes the problem go away
Feedback: Having had a chance to play around with the changes a bit, I'd like to suggest the following:
1. Use the Divine Power pips to help indicate Empowered stacks.
2. Change the capstones to a far less harsh penalty. *Zero* direct or HoT healing because you chose a particular capstone / feat path? Pretty substantial. I'd suggest perhaps something along the lines of a 50% penalty - still steep, but it doesn't rule out a spot direct heal or HoT for the DC.
3. Generally, I like the changes to many of the spells. I worry though, that in Heroic Encounters - where damage dealt / taken / healed seems to be the scoring used, that a buff / debuff focused DC will never achieve a 'Great Success' simply because they weren't 'properly optimized'. Is the formula for HE's being looked at?
4. On that note, I also find the Empowered mechanic interesting, but it seems overly complicated simply for the sake of complicating things. I know it won't change at this late stage, but *3* versions of each spell? A bit much, really.
***Moved By Mod***Originally in and about the twitch tv posting 10/15/2014***
I am concerned because it seemed to be a dev "butt beating" where Akromatik's cleric had no kills at all and a good amount of deaths with over 18k gearscore...
Are you guys not looking at the same thing when you talk about the changes and junk... it is right there on the screen ... it is horribad playing cleric in pvp...
You guys lost like most 2 cleric teams do... badly and usually. It was not even close and you ALL know it!
It seems that you guys are saying the word balance, but then just making up and adding some disjointed new mechanic to the cleric instead.
It did not seem like missed opportunities in that match ... I mean come on lol... Marginally boosted powers with a boon like buff stack and easier divinity is the answer..?
Make clerics heal for real and the best until another real healing class is added.
Let them battle res with cooldown for fallen unreleased teammates.
No degradation to cleric heals on self or pvp period!
Lifesteal stat should be degraded in pve to the point where pvp is now
Pvp lifesteal should be much less if not gone.
I mean the conversation going to -the person playing the cleric might have a hard time making things work in time and that is not dynamic play- or whatever -
That is silly, come on. It was right there in front of your eyes...
You have made the cleric suck catering to the other classes! Take the nerf off of cleric heals and nerf the other class self heals.
***Moved By Mod***Originally in and about the twitch tv posting 10/15/2014***
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kwsapphireMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 671Arc User
Feedback: Having had a chance to play around with the changes a bit, I'd like to suggest the following:
1. Use the Divine Power pips to help indicate Empowered stacks.
2. Change the capstones to a far less harsh penalty. *Zero* direct or HoT healing because you chose a particular capstone / feat path? Pretty substantial. I'd suggest perhaps something along the lines of a 50% penalty - still steep, but it doesn't rule out a spot direct heal or HoT for the DC.
3. Generally, I like the changes to many of the spells. I worry though, that in Heroic Encounters - where damage dealt / taken / healed seems to be the scoring used, that a buff / debuff focused DC will never achieve a 'Great Success' simply because they weren't 'properly optimized'. Is the formula for HE's being looked at?
4. On that note, I also find the Empowered mechanic interesting, but it seems overly complicated simply for the sake of complicating things. I know it won't change at this late stage, but *3* versions of each spell? A bit much, really.
First, LOVE YOUR USERPIC! Minsc & Boo = Favorite characters from the BG series by far. Of course. :P
I agree with the capstone note (#2). I'm almost tempted to avoid taking the capstones because of their harsh penalty.
As for Heroic Encounters (#3), I personally tend to change what powers I have in my bar when I'm about to join a dragon fight on my Wizard. I actually sacrifice damage for more debuff and range. (Steal Time and Sudden Storm get swapped for Ray of Enfeeblement and Icy Rays, keeping Chill Strike and Entangling Force. I also put Ray of Enfeeblement in my tab slot instead of Chill Strike. This lets me stay further from the dragon and also do more debuff.) On my Cleric, my default PvE setup has been Astral Shield, Sun Burst, and Daunting Light. I use Astral Seal and Sacred Flame for my at-wills. For dragon fights, I often swap out Daunting Light for Healing Word. And even in those cases, I've always gotten "Great Success" on my cleric and my wizard. I wasn't even sure what "Great Success" versus "Success" was, because I've never actually just gotten "Success" as far as I've noticed. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but the rewards were always what I expected, having done the dragon fights so many times. So I don't think it's based completely on damage.
Regarding Empowered (#4), I actually find the new mechanic pretty interesting. I don't mind that there are "three" versions of each power, since each version is still fairly in-line with the others. It just lets us tweak exactly what effects we want to highlight from each encounter.
My only real disappointment with the changes is removing the Heal from Divine Shield. I prefer the heal over Temp HP. I'll have to rework my default build, as well as my heal/buff build.
Also still wishing they could implement a "swap builds" button so I could quickly swap between my default PvE build, and for example, my Buff/Heal build or my Damage-based build. (Or a PvP build for those who PvP regularly.)
That's the adorable pocket pet. When you pet it, it has a random chance to apply one of several buffs. There are still a few on the auction house. But id wait a few weeks, Respens game is making a come back, and that is the one event where you can earn them.
Well I hope the solo feat build actually boosts DPS to near other classes output, my geared, booned and specced DC can't even do the 2nd tier of quests from the bards in the ToD campaign. After 20+ attempts to kill the ancient dead dudes and failing despite burning all kinds of buffs/pot etc. and trying all kinds of tricks like instance map features and simple running and kiting I simply got fed up and refuse all those quests..of course this means I can never advance in the ToD campaign, forever leving my DC even more gimped than ever....
Come on guys! make a paragon/feat path that lets a DC be a mega healer and another that lets them DPS on par with other classes, and perhaps a hybrid! Since many of the ToD are solo only, how is a DC suppost to get past the bottleneck?
So, since these changes were so sweeping I felt compelled to go out on the preview and take a look for myself. Keep in mind I don't normally mess around with test servers in any of the games I play because they are exactly that: tests. "Nothing is real until it hits the Live servers" as I always say, and then finish with "and even that is up for renegotiation at any given second." Also, I am normally VERY skeptical about any dev "balances" that come down the pipes as I am used to my characters getting nerfed with axe equipped <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> in other games. But, all of that being said, here are my impressions:
Overall I think that the changes to the cleric are positive. Maybe not as positive as I would have liked, but definitely a major step in the right direction for one of the most dev-hated classes in the game.
Some things that could be done better: The empowered mechanic is WAY too complicated and hard to keep track of on the fly. Also, I may be missing it, but I see no visible way to tell how many empowered levels you have on each ability. This needs to be fixed or this can also easily be addressed by my next suggestion: That there only be ONE level of empowered to each of the abilities and they get all or most of what now takes three levels to get. Yep. You heard right. One level, for what it takes to get three now. Why? Because the DC has been THAT abused and neglected by the devs for the history of the game, we finally deserve something that nice. That's why.
Next, the negatives to the cap feats need to go away or be SEVERELY reduced. No other class that I can think of (and yes I play them all) has to COMPLETELY give up one thing to get another. Why do DCs have to do this when no one else does? The negatives are blatantly unbalanced and need to go away or be reduced by AT LEAST half. Just to be clear, the buffs are fine, it is ONLY the negatives that need to be reduced.
Other than the two items listed above, I feel the changes to the cleric are a welcome breathe of fresh air and I applaud the devs for getting around to buffing a very neglected class....... finally.
Thank you devs for making DCs more relevant in the game now.
Telling us about upcoming content updates, and getting those updates out the door BUG-FREE, is *AWESOME*!! Know what's even *MORE* awesome? Fixing game breaking bugs (and/or undocumented "features") that have been in EXISTING content for months/years!!! Guess which one makes me want to spend money on a game much more than the other? Hint: It's the "more awesome" one.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited October 2014
A few more points:
The focus on healing
Both the Faithful and Virtuous trees are focused on heals - Healing may be useful while leveling, but as things are now, I just do not see the need for a healing focus for many well-geared lvl 60 DCs. Sure, there are players that love being healers and will enjoy the new trees, but for the players that enjoy playing DCs as a versatile support class, it basically limits the builds to the Righteous tree, with a few selections either from Faithful or Virtuous to become a sufficiently decent healer.
However, the big issue is - are DCs really required to be healers? Today, the answer is simply "No". Temptation SWs will outheal most DCs in dungeons most of the time, and with many players stacking Life Steal to extreme heights, there simply is not much need for DC healing at this time...so why do we have two entire trees focused on healing?
The focus on DC heals only makes sense if any of the following 3 things will happen:
1) Temptation SWs will get a big nerf to make them heal less than DCs (does not seem to be on the agenda for module 5)
2) The efficiency of Life Steal will be reduced significantly (say, by 50% or so, and no..this does not seem to be on the agenda for module 5 either)
3) New content will be introduced with mobs that do massively more damage than the current ones - forcing groups to bring along a dedicated healer. OK, maybe this will happen - maybe not, but as I said, currently there is simply no need for heal-focused high-end DCs, so I find the focus on healing a bit...extreme.
I have a few other issues, which are not DC-balancing related, but they are DC-related, so I thought I'd mention them here.
Some DC weapons are broken in the sense that the weapon does not glow if a weapon enchant is added. Specifically this is the case for the Draconic main hand from module 4.
Also, there will be new armors introduced in module 5, and from what we have seen, the DC armor looks like this:
Now, this is clearly a PvE armor (no Tenacity) and the 4-piece set bonus makes this a debuffing-focused armor. That is good news - many DCs, including myself, have been asking for an upgrade to the T1 High Prophet armor, which is currently the armor of choice for debuffing/buffing purposes, although apart from the set bonus, HP just is not so good - no overload slots, for example.
The Draconic armor in Module 4 made a good upgrade for the Miracle Healer T2 set and is a pretty good armor for healing purposes, but for buffing/debuffing purposes, HP was the only real choice, which is why many (most?) high-end DCs are using that for group PvE content.
So, I was happy to see that we are getting a debuffing-focused armor in Module 5 - but then I looked at the numbers, and I am wondering if the 10% crit reduction aura is something that will convince people to upgrade from their HP set. I do not have any specific suggestions, just wanted to bring this up as something to consider.
What people don't understand from the new changes is:
1. Astral shield was our best healing encounter that they changed so it doesn't heal any more.
2. Forgemaster Flame was our second best healing encounter that they changed so it doesn't heal anymore.
3. Sunburst had nice healing/attack Aoe plus nice AP gain, now we can't use it in PVE dungeons as people will complain.
So what do we have left for healing encounters:
1. Divine glow - Healing has been added to this encounter, a lot of DC use it to debuff and adding the healing is a +.
2. Healing word - Healing word got an Aoe healing now, but it still isn't enough to cover with what we lost with AS.
3. Bastion of Health - Bastion of health now got a 100% in healing, can't really replace either AS or FF.
So what now
So they added all the extra add-on's from the feats to make these healing spells effective. But it really falls far short of what the DC was and what they are making him. Half of the healing encounters is gone, and replace with the healing encounters the DC didn't want to use in the 1st place because it was never really any good, so now they are forcing us to play with these halve.... healing encounters.
There is only one conclusion to all these changes that makes sense to me, they have to nerf the DC healing in a way to make way for an
additional healer like a Paladin/Monk or what ever class so that when they bring it out that class can also contribute to the healing aspect of classes.
In my honest opinion I'm against taking away the healing aspects of AS and FF, I don't like the changes they make to sunburst but it can be replaced with Divine glow. I have done a lot of testing on the preview server and the new empowered mechanic is really horribly IMO, but with all new changes everything isn't final yet until all the changes hit the live server.
I will keep on testing and trying out and giving feedback about bugs etc. When the new changes hit the live server and I still don't like all the changes, I think that I will retired my 20k DO PVE DC. Until then lets see what happens.
Ok The numbers are so out of whack it's a bit hard to come up with one explanation with maths. I have a few theories on what's happenning by the end of my video.
<snip>
Any other ideas?
Training dummies have no Defence, Deflection or mitigation?
So try it against a Boss, who also won't stand there and take it.
Then try it in turn against an equally geared GW, TR, GWF, HR and CW; who also won't just stand there and take it and try to block, stun, freeze and kill you.
That will give a better overall picture.
~
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miniar0isMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited October 2014
I play a mainly healer cleric... because quite frankly, that's the best fit for my playstyle... and I do this even if I get flak for it.
The first thing I notice with these changes is that my two main healing skills are being completely removed from the healing loadout... and my minor heal will have me lynched!
As I kept reading I realized only ONE of my skills (aside from the at wills) didn't make the list of "things that are getting changed" and that's one of the two dailies I carry.
It's... terrifying!
But you know.. I kept reading...
And while I can not point to a specific reason why.. the whole image I'm getting of the class seems... well... actually not that bad...
I'm gonna have to stock up on Zen and possibly reroll at least a couple times... but I am not feeling as gutted as I thought at first.
Just really, REALLY, gonna miss my blue circle of life.
hehe well ther will be an upcoming fight with tiamat, so uh... yeah
>.>
<.<
seriously though.
With the changes to astral shield and forge (fire?) (flame?) (doh) i need to spend the next few days after this patch figuring out how my dps based cleric is going to keep the party alive. I think its going to be by spamming astral shield health buffs onto the party - not sure yet.
EDIT: to be clear, what i am most concerned about are fresh level 60's in the 7 to 10k gs range. The ones getting gear for the first time. Maybe i'm worrying to much about a previous game meta, but i'm talking about fights such as temple of spiders and throne of idris where you constantly felt undergeared and needed to use positioning and tactics to survive.
In such a situation, there is no divine astral shield, or feated hallowed ground or divine fireforge... flameforge ... o geez.. FF to keep the party going strong.
It's a big change. I see potential in the 2 healing tree paths. but the dps path is a conundrum.
greetings adventurers!
clerics have been in a nebulous spot until now. They were never really full on healers, or damage preventers, or damage dealers. This left them in a spot where they had to hybridize a lot of their skills, and has led to some problematic gameplay in the past. This has also led to issues with how divine mode interacts with a player’s choices. Given this we have made a prodigious overhaul to all cleric encounters, feats, and divinity itself to try and facilitate more active gameplay, better moment to moment choices, and let clerics carve out a better role for themselves (whether that be as buffers, debuffers, healers, or dps).
overview
the biggest overhaul clerics are seeing in this patch is the total rework of divinity. Divine mode powers no longer share cooldowns with their non-divine counterparts (instead having no cooldown). Divine mode powers have all been retuned or reworked to better fit this change, and divine power generation is now handled exclusively by at wills, but is substantially faster than it used to be. This brings us to the new mechanic being added, empowered. When you cast a divine spell, you gain a stack of empowered for the non-divine version. Each spell interacts differently with these stacks, and choosing what spells you want to empower to get the bonus effect will be a big part of choosing how to spend divinity.
In addition to these changes we have rebuilt the 3 feat trees to better facilitate healing and supportive gameplay while still opening a dps path. Let’s take a look at all the changes below.
powers
new mechanic : Empowered – divine encounters require 1 divine symbol worth of divine power and grant a stack of empowered for the power used. Powers may only consume stacks of empowered granted by their divine versions and you may only have 3 stacks of empowered for each power.
divine power is now only generated by at wills.
divine mode powers have no cooldown.
sun burst: Now does the divinity version as its baseline.
divine sun burst: Applies a damage over time effect to all foes in the area of effect. This effect can be stacked up to 3 times.
empowered sun burst: Sun burst now consumes stacks of empowered sun burst to increase the knock distance and the heal potency by 15% per stack.
healing word: Heals and applies a heal over time effect to yourself and all allies in a line. Max 3 stacks. 3 charges.
divine healing word: Grants yourself and all allies in a line temporary hit points every 3 seconds for 9 seconds.
empowered healing word: Healing word now consumes stacks of empowered healing word to immediately heal all allies in addition to the heal over time effect. This heal is increased based on the number of stacks consumed.
searing light: Throw a powerful beam of light through targets in front of you.
divine searing light: Fire a beam of light through targets in front of you, dealing 15% of the damage to enemies around them.
empowered searing light: Searing light now consumes stacks of empowered searing light to strike with increased armor penetration. Ignores 10% additional armor per stack.
chains of blazing light: Mark a location with a holy rune for a short duration. When a foe steps on the mark chains of fiery light immobilize them. Damage is no longer reduced for hitting additional targets. This immobilize is halved on players.
divine chains of blazing light: Instantly marks a location, immobilizing targets for 1 second and dealing a small amount of damage.
empowered chains of blazing light: When chains of blazing light strikes a foe it consumes all stacks of empowered chains of blazing light to increase the immobilize duration is by 2 seconds per stack. Damage is increased by 10% per stack.
daunting light: After a brief delay, summon a powerful column of light that burns the targeted area.
divine daunting light: Instantly strikes the targeted location at reduced damage.
empowered daunting light: Daunting light now consumes stacks of empowered daunting light to increase the critical chance and severity of daunting light by 10% per stack.
forgemaster's flame: Ignite your target with astral fire, dealing damage over time.
divine forgemaster's flame: You unleash a burst of astral fire, dealing damage and slowing the target for 6 seconds. This slow stacks up to 3 times.
empowered forgemaster's flame: Forgemaster's flame now consumes stacks of empowered forgemaster's flame to increase the damage dealt by forgemaster's flame by 10% per stack and grant astral forge to all nearby allies when cast. Astral forge increases the damage allies deal by 5% per stack for 8 seconds.
paragon: Annointed champion: Exaltation: You bless your ally and yourself, healing both of you and granting increased damage dealt and increased damage resistance.
divine exaltation: Heal yourself and your ally, granting powerful damage resistance for 2 seconds.
empowered exaltation: Exaltation now consumes stacks of empowered exaltation to increase the heal by 15% per stack. The damage buff and resistance buff are increased by 5% per stack.
paragon: Divine oracle: Prophecy of doom: Target has lowered damage resistance for 8 seconds. If the target is still alive when this effect expires they take damage. If the target dies while affected by this power you gain ap and the power is instantly recharged.
divine prophecy of doom: You deal instant damage to target foe. This damage is doubled if the target is affected by prophecy of doom.
empowered prophecy of doom: Prophecy of doom now consumes stacks of empowered prophecy of doom to increase the duration of prophecy by 2 seconds per stack and the damage resistance debuff by 5% per stack.
bastion of health: Heals allies at target location after a short delay, healing allies immediately and then applying a heal over time effect.
divine bastion of health: Instantly heals allies at target location.
empowered bastion of health: Bastion of health now consumes stacks of empowered bastion of health to heal allies for 10% of their missing hp per stack.
break the spirit: You sap your target's strength, dealing damage over time and causing them to deal 20% less damage.
divine break the spirit: You stun the target briefly, dealing damage and reducing their damage by 10%, stacking up to 3 times. The stun gets shorter each subsequent cast on the same target.
empowered break the spirit: Break the spirit now consumes stacks of empowered break the spirit to grant nearby allies bolstered spirit, which increases their damage dealt by 10% per stack consumed and lasts 8 seconds.
divine glow: Deal damage to foes at target location, reducing the damage resistance of foes who are damaged by 10% for 6 seconds. Allies at the target location are healed, granted a heal over time effect, and gain 10% increased daamge resistance for 6 seconds.
divine divine glow: Deal damage to foes at target location, reducing their damage dealt by 5% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. Allies are healed and gain 5% increased damage dealt, stacking up to 3 times.
empowered divine glow: Divine glow now consumes stacks of empowered divine glow to increase the effect radius of divine glow by 5' per stack and increase the duration of the buffs and debuffs by 2 seconds per stack.
astral shield: Create a shimmering shield at target location that causes allies to have their defenses be 10% more effective.
divine astral shield: Grant temporary hit points to all targets within the affected area.
empowered astral shield: Astral shield now consumes stacks of empowered astral shield to shield allies from a portion of incoming damage. Astral shield blocks 100% of the cleric's weapon damage per stack consumed.
this is very good because for a change at least we clerics would be useful, because i think the cleric like me right now is useless in the game and im starting to regret creating a cleric character because even in epic dungeon the people can even survive without clerics so who needs cleric? You should give clerics a chance to be known for a change! Im excited for this to be implemented!!!
Comments
Its awesome, that's what it is. I clearly need more coffee throughout the day. Fixing that now.
Less choice, less flexibility, I'm not sure I like it. It feels like a loss of power. Also, no changes on casting times? It's been requested many times in this thread (maybe more than empowerment changes) and it's far more critical in group content.
Also, please no more text floater, our screen is already cluttered by floaters and text. Burning guidance, pets, 3rd and 4th boons from campaigns... What about something visible on our spell's icon? This place isn't cluttered (yet). Divinity makes spells blue you could try green for max empowerment. Or anything else. Just no text. Please.
Ok this is bad if this heal is affected by healing depression in pvp. The queue won't pop on preview but i'm assuming it is since it's affected by our feats and righteousness.
Ah, OK ... this is an improvement. Thank you....and with the bug fixes it is now possible to properly test the DC changes.
I am not convinced, however, that a floating text is the best notification mechanism - I would by far have preferred something in the encounter spell icon area...a glowing border, flashing icon or something like that.
[IMG][/img]
this is a scary concept but nerf is in order.
1) Question about Agent of Divine, after the health pool reaches my Max HP, do I heal still heal 25% less or not?
2) Please buff Divine Fortune, 15% isn't going to help much, especially how we need to gain divinity quickly for empowered stacks.
Suggestion: 33% per stack. Alternatively, let us gain it from using encounters.
3) Bring back the blue bubble visual effect for Exaltation. I'm begging you crush.
Mod 12.5 PvP Power/Crit/Arp Optimization
Youtube channel (PvE/PvP)
Hate to burst your bubble but Burning guidance has a floating text when it procs. You are either mistaking the bugged feat Fire of the Gods or trolling nonsense. I filmed you and your cohorts in trade of the blades and know what the rogue was doing. If you were reporting a bug you would have reported the bug instead of asking for a nerf. Maybe you struggle with English or have a mental impairment and are just making an honest mistake. If you continue to ask for nerfs in the name of "synergy", I'll let the DC advocate or one of the DEV team take a look at the film of you and your buddies in action and they can decide for themselves.
I disabled the words in options in the options. I will get a pic soon with the words. I don't use fire of the gods and I don't have that feat. The image you posted has the event siege of neverwiter from a while back if you didn't notice.
Update with picture and name:
[IMG][/img]
I would rather have a dev play a copy of my character on the preview shard with the right party.:cool:
I am glad to help Neverwinter in any way.
Feedback: Things Done Right
Healing Word: Line instead of target. Yes. I have discarded this skill primarily because of how hard it is to target a specific player around a boss or in a mob when you've got your entire party running around frantic. The fact that all healing (save for Sunburst and Guardian of Faith, which aren't hard to target anyhow) now has targeting rings/lines is a step in the right direction.
Break the Spirit: Giving this debuff capabilities makes this power useful. I'm not sure yet if it's a must-have for buff/debuff tactics, but it gets a warm reception from me compared to how it was before.
Daunting Light: I like how I can charge it up to deliver a bigger payload. In conjunction with other defense/DR debuffs, this could be quite painful properly wielded (and it does take some skill to wield -- it's not easy, but path prediction helps a lot when tagging mobs; pvp, probably requires a stun or prone first to tag 'em, I'm not a big PvPer, so someone else would have to chime in.)
And that's all I got for now. I'm waiting for next patch to do further testing, since first draft broke quite a bit (feated/passive powers for Divinity gain, 100% DR from Astral Shield, etc.) and I'd like to see what the second draft holds.
Also, regarding Sunburst, if you decide to put Linked Spirit back in, Divine + Sunburst would finally be viable to proc it (since before you'd have to use a Tab trick, and that bug got fixed). I wouldn't mind seeing Divine Sunburst add something akin to what Linked Spirit used to do, even if it's in a lesser form.
http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/374777RightDC.png
Righteous cleric are fine... At least, that's what they say. :cool: That was a serious WTF moment.
I've made a video, i've been trying to corner this issue for 2 hours, and i'm still not completely sure about what it is. I'll upload the video later.
At first glance it seems that the order in which you apply debuffs has a great influence on the final result. Some debuffing sequences give a far more powerful multiplier than others. I'm suspecting something nasty happens with bear your sins (feat), break the spirit and forgemaster's flame's when they interact with eachother.
http://youtu.be/vnht7aEjSRk
Ok The numbers are so out of whack it's a bit hard to come up with one explanation with maths. I have a few theories on what's happenning by the end of my video.
Here is my first theory.
Some buffs buff other buffs when they're applied, which means we get something like
Total damage = [(buff1 x buff2)x (buff 1 x buff 2) x buff 3] x base damage.
Instead of
Total damage = buff 1 x buff X buff 3 x base damage.
This would result, when applying an empowered break the spirit after a bear your sins (divine mode break the spirit), in divine glow reapplying bear your sins and break the spirit. This would also imply that the buffing mechanics is broken on live, and even though i'd love this conclusion to be true it's not likely to be the right one.
My second theory is that bear your sins has no cap and can stack 20 or 30 times. FF and break the spirit would apply it a lot more, resulting in a much stronger debuff when I use FF and break the spirit at the same time. This could be tied to a very old bug that never got fixed in which one DoT tick is considered as one encounter use (like the deadtheft bug on SWs applying 23/24 hellfire stacks). FF and break the spirit ticks would apply a stack of bear your sins in this scenario. DoTs have been broken since launch in this game and this wouldn't be surprising. This is most likely the bug.
My third theory is that team buffs like break the spirit and individual buffs are calculated and applied separately which would mean that some buffs get applied twice (in a slightly different fashion as in theory 1). It could be the other way around. I have no evidence of that and this is the less likely option but i'll leave it on the table anyway.
Any other ideas?
Will there be other visual indicators as well? I have all floaters turned off, as I find them distracting and they break my immersion. Thanks!
Rather than belabor the point, i ask that the Devs start playing clerics until they are viable.
I did testing on this today as you know and I could never get the wild numbers without the known bugged feat Fire of Gods. This doesn't mean you are wrong about Bear your Sins, I just couldn't get it to bork. I could easily reproduce the ridiculous numbers with Fire of Gods slotted by using DoTs which makes it likely Bear Your Sins is getting borked by some bugged process. I'm gonna leave it alone until after the patch and we can try to isolate Bear Your Sins if the problem still continues after Fire of the Gods is fixed.
I was actually testing Bear Your Sins which I could not get up to the same numbers as Dio without slotting Fire of Gods. People bug reported Fire of Gods from Day one so no I haven't tested it exclusively. Something in the interaction between a "spreader" like Fire and a "buff stacker" like Bear Your Sins is allowing huge damage numbers, most notable being Daunting Light as Dio got it close to a million and I got it up to around 750k with a 150k heal on ASeal
1. Use the Divine Power pips to help indicate Empowered stacks.
2. Change the capstones to a far less harsh penalty. *Zero* direct or HoT healing because you chose a particular capstone / feat path? Pretty substantial. I'd suggest perhaps something along the lines of a 50% penalty - still steep, but it doesn't rule out a spot direct heal or HoT for the DC.
3. Generally, I like the changes to many of the spells. I worry though, that in Heroic Encounters - where damage dealt / taken / healed seems to be the scoring used, that a buff / debuff focused DC will never achieve a 'Great Success' simply because they weren't 'properly optimized'. Is the formula for HE's being looked at?
4. On that note, I also find the Empowered mechanic interesting, but it seems overly complicated simply for the sake of complicating things. I know it won't change at this late stage, but *3* versions of each spell? A bit much, really.
I am concerned because it seemed to be a dev "butt beating" where Akromatik's cleric had no kills at all and a good amount of deaths with over 18k gearscore...
Are you guys not looking at the same thing when you talk about the changes and junk... it is right there on the screen ... it is horribad playing cleric in pvp...
You guys lost like most 2 cleric teams do... badly and usually. It was not even close and you ALL know it!
It seems that you guys are saying the word balance, but then just making up and adding some disjointed new mechanic to the cleric instead.
It did not seem like missed opportunities in that match ... I mean come on lol... Marginally boosted powers with a boon like buff stack and easier divinity is the answer..?
Make clerics heal for real and the best until another real healing class is added.
Let them battle res with cooldown for fallen unreleased teammates.
No degradation to cleric heals on self or pvp period!
Lifesteal stat should be degraded in pve to the point where pvp is now
Pvp lifesteal should be much less if not gone.
I mean the conversation going to -the person playing the cleric might have a hard time making things work in time and that is not dynamic play- or whatever -
That is silly, come on. It was right there in front of your eyes...
You have made the cleric suck catering to the other classes! Take the nerf off of cleric heals and nerf the other class self heals.
***Moved By Mod***Originally in and about the twitch tv posting 10/15/2014***
First, LOVE YOUR USERPIC!
I agree with the capstone note (#2). I'm almost tempted to avoid taking the capstones because of their harsh penalty.
As for Heroic Encounters (#3), I personally tend to change what powers I have in my bar when I'm about to join a dragon fight on my Wizard. I actually sacrifice damage for more debuff and range. (Steal Time and Sudden Storm get swapped for Ray of Enfeeblement and Icy Rays, keeping Chill Strike and Entangling Force. I also put Ray of Enfeeblement in my tab slot instead of Chill Strike. This lets me stay further from the dragon and also do more debuff.) On my Cleric, my default PvE setup has been Astral Shield, Sun Burst, and Daunting Light. I use Astral Seal and Sacred Flame for my at-wills. For dragon fights, I often swap out Daunting Light for Healing Word. And even in those cases, I've always gotten "Great Success" on my cleric and my wizard. I wasn't even sure what "Great Success" versus "Success" was, because I've never actually just gotten "Success" as far as I've noticed. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but the rewards were always what I expected, having done the dragon fights so many times. So I don't think it's based completely on damage.
Regarding Empowered (#4), I actually find the new mechanic pretty interesting. I don't mind that there are "three" versions of each power, since each version is still fairly in-line with the others. It just lets us tweak exactly what effects we want to highlight from each encounter.
My only real disappointment with the changes is removing the Heal from Divine Shield. I prefer the heal over Temp HP. I'll have to rework my default build, as well as my heal/buff build.
Also still wishing they could implement a "swap builds" button so I could quickly swap between my default PvE build, and for example, my Buff/Heal build or my Damage-based build. (Or a PvP build for those who PvP regularly.)
Thank you both!
Come on guys! make a paragon/feat path that lets a DC be a mega healer and another that lets them DPS on par with other classes, and perhaps a hybrid! Since many of the ToD are solo only, how is a DC suppost to get past the bottleneck?
Overall I think that the changes to the cleric are positive. Maybe not as positive as I would have liked, but definitely a major step in the right direction for one of the most dev-hated classes in the game.
Some things that could be done better: The empowered mechanic is WAY too complicated and hard to keep track of on the fly. Also, I may be missing it, but I see no visible way to tell how many empowered levels you have on each ability. This needs to be fixed or this can also easily be addressed by my next suggestion: That there only be ONE level of empowered to each of the abilities and they get all or most of what now takes three levels to get. Yep. You heard right. One level, for what it takes to get three now. Why? Because the DC has been THAT abused and neglected by the devs for the history of the game, we finally deserve something that nice.
Next, the negatives to the cap feats need to go away or be SEVERELY reduced. No other class that I can think of (and yes I play them all) has to COMPLETELY give up one thing to get another. Why do DCs have to do this when no one else does? The negatives are blatantly unbalanced and need to go away or be reduced by AT LEAST half. Just to be clear, the buffs are fine, it is ONLY the negatives that need to be reduced.
Other than the two items listed above, I feel the changes to the cleric are a welcome breathe of fresh air and I applaud the devs for getting around to buffing a very neglected class....... finally.
Thank you devs for making DCs more relevant in the game now.
The focus on healing
Both the Faithful and Virtuous trees are focused on heals - Healing may be useful while leveling, but as things are now, I just do not see the need for a healing focus for many well-geared lvl 60 DCs. Sure, there are players that love being healers and will enjoy the new trees, but for the players that enjoy playing DCs as a versatile support class, it basically limits the builds to the Righteous tree, with a few selections either from Faithful or Virtuous to become a sufficiently decent healer.
However, the big issue is - are DCs really required to be healers? Today, the answer is simply "No". Temptation SWs will outheal most DCs in dungeons most of the time, and with many players stacking Life Steal to extreme heights, there simply is not much need for DC healing at this time...so why do we have two entire trees focused on healing?
The focus on DC heals only makes sense if any of the following 3 things will happen:
1) Temptation SWs will get a big nerf to make them heal less than DCs (does not seem to be on the agenda for module 5)
2) The efficiency of Life Steal will be reduced significantly (say, by 50% or so, and no..this does not seem to be on the agenda for module 5 either)
3) New content will be introduced with mobs that do massively more damage than the current ones - forcing groups to bring along a dedicated healer. OK, maybe this will happen - maybe not, but as I said, currently there is simply no need for heal-focused high-end DCs, so I find the focus on healing a bit...extreme.
I have a few other issues, which are not DC-balancing related, but they are DC-related, so I thought I'd mention them here.
Some DC weapons are broken in the sense that the weapon does not glow if a weapon enchant is added. Specifically this is the case for the Draconic main hand from module 4.
Also, there will be new armors introduced in module 5, and from what we have seen, the DC armor looks like this:
Now, this is clearly a PvE armor (no Tenacity) and the 4-piece set bonus makes this a debuffing-focused armor. That is good news - many DCs, including myself, have been asking for an upgrade to the T1 High Prophet armor, which is currently the armor of choice for debuffing/buffing purposes, although apart from the set bonus, HP just is not so good - no overload slots, for example.
The Draconic armor in Module 4 made a good upgrade for the Miracle Healer T2 set and is a pretty good armor for healing purposes, but for buffing/debuffing purposes, HP was the only real choice, which is why many (most?) high-end DCs are using that for group PvE content.
So, I was happy to see that we are getting a debuffing-focused armor in Module 5 - but then I looked at the numbers, and I am wondering if the 10% crit reduction aura is something that will convince people to upgrade from their HP set. I do not have any specific suggestions, just wanted to bring this up as something to consider.
1. Astral shield was our best healing encounter that they changed so it doesn't heal any more.
2. Forgemaster Flame was our second best healing encounter that they changed so it doesn't heal anymore.
3. Sunburst had nice healing/attack Aoe plus nice AP gain, now we can't use it in PVE dungeons as people will complain.
So what do we have left for healing encounters:
1. Divine glow - Healing has been added to this encounter, a lot of DC use it to debuff and adding the healing is a +.
2. Healing word - Healing word got an Aoe healing now, but it still isn't enough to cover with what we lost with AS.
3. Bastion of Health - Bastion of health now got a 100% in healing, can't really replace either AS or FF.
So what now
So they added all the extra add-on's from the feats to make these healing spells effective. But it really falls far short of what the DC was and what they are making him. Half of the healing encounters is gone, and replace with the healing encounters the DC didn't want to use in the 1st place because it was never really any good, so now they are forcing us to play with these halve.... healing encounters.
There is only one conclusion to all these changes that makes sense to me, they have to nerf the DC healing in a way to make way for an
additional healer like a Paladin/Monk or what ever class so that when they bring it out that class can also contribute to the healing aspect of classes.
In my honest opinion I'm against taking away the healing aspects of AS and FF, I don't like the changes they make to sunburst but it can be replaced with Divine glow. I have done a lot of testing on the preview server and the new empowered mechanic is really horribly IMO, but with all new changes everything isn't final yet until all the changes hit the live server.
I will keep on testing and trying out and giving feedback about bugs etc. When the new changes hit the live server and I still don't like all the changes, I think that I will retired my 20k DO PVE DC. Until then lets see what happens.
Training dummies have no Defence, Deflection or mitigation?
So try it against a Boss, who also won't stand there and take it.
Then try it in turn against an equally geared GW, TR, GWF, HR and CW; who also won't just stand there and take it and try to block, stun, freeze and kill you.
That will give a better overall picture.
~
The first thing I notice with these changes is that my two main healing skills are being completely removed from the healing loadout... and my minor heal will have me lynched!
As I kept reading I realized only ONE of my skills (aside from the at wills) didn't make the list of "things that are getting changed" and that's one of the two dailies I carry.
It's... terrifying!
But you know.. I kept reading...
And while I can not point to a specific reason why.. the whole image I'm getting of the class seems... well... actually not that bad...
I'm gonna have to stock up on Zen and possibly reroll at least a couple times... but I am not feeling as gutted as I thought at first.
Just really, REALLY, gonna miss my blue circle of life.
>.>
<.<
seriously though.
With the changes to astral shield and forge (fire?) (flame?) (doh) i need to spend the next few days after this patch figuring out how my dps based cleric is going to keep the party alive. I think its going to be by spamming astral shield health buffs onto the party - not sure yet.
EDIT: to be clear, what i am most concerned about are fresh level 60's in the 7 to 10k gs range. The ones getting gear for the first time. Maybe i'm worrying to much about a previous game meta, but i'm talking about fights such as temple of spiders and throne of idris where you constantly felt undergeared and needed to use positioning and tactics to survive.
In such a situation, there is no divine astral shield, or feated hallowed ground or divine fireforge... flameforge ... o geez.. FF to keep the party going strong.
It's a big change. I see potential in the 2 healing tree paths. but the dps path is a conundrum.
this is very good because for a change at least we clerics would be useful, because i think the cleric like me right now is useless in the game and im starting to regret creating a cleric character because even in epic dungeon the people can even survive without clerics so who needs cleric? You should give clerics a chance to be known for a change! Im excited for this to be implemented!!!