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Faithful healing in pve/pve in module 6 as a cleric
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
I read people have trouble dealing with module 6 content. Since I've been among the first lvl 70 DC players, I had plenty of time to test various things and see what works and what doesn't. This is in no way a comprehensive guide listing all feats and build options, I'll merely explain how I play my own healbot in pve or in pvp, how I built it and the reasoning behind these choices. Be warned, there are some atypical choices. So far, it works well in T1/T2 content.
1 - a few notes on module 6 content.
The game got a major overhaul. The good thing is that healing is now an option for cleric. The downside is that it requires to be much more focused on what you're doing. It's not impossible, but you'll have to rely on your muscular memory. If it doesn't work, train, and if it still doesn't work, train more.
Mod 6 is mostly about burst damage, which means that when someone get hit, it will hit hard. It's rarely a one-shot kill if your team has a dedicated support team (tank, healer and ranger), even in T2 content, but your first task will be to learn the spells npcs use, when they use it, how much damage it can do and what you're going to have to do to save everyone from near death. You will also have to convince your team to use the right spells, if the tank doesn't use knight valor because he doesn't like hiding behind the shield during 90% of the time, find another one. If your ranger refuses to use fox shift, do the same thing. T2 content is in no way forgiving and there's little room for creativity and "lulz" builds.
On the other hand, if your team and if you, as a cleric, do what you have to do to survive the onslaught, you'll notice pretty fast that the only one-hit kills come from standing in red, and that the complaints about 200k hit damage come from people who team up with others focused on scoring as high as they can on the score board.
2- The role of the cleric in group content.
Your primary task will be maintaining a moderate level of mitigation, especially at the beginning of adds encounters, which means managing your divinity and dailies very carefully. It also means taking into account casting animations - sometimes, casting a lesser spell with a faster animation will save the run while trying to force the team to survive through the long, dreadful animation of some other spells, will mean a team wipe.
Actually, the balance is pretty simple: if the spell is also a damage buff, the casting animation is long, if it's not, it's short if not instant. Which leaves little room for originality as your go-to spells will be roughly the same for most if not all of the content.
The secondary role of the cleric isn't a minor one. While you will definitely not be the only one contributing to adding to the pool some damage mitigation (the tank and the ranger will help), you are the only one with strong healing abilities. After the initial onslaught, you're going to have to fix everyone and it often means having to distribute 200k to 1M hit points to the team in a timely manner, as long as the adds aren't done with their first strike. So you need a build up to that task.
Fortunately, since astral shield doesn't heal anymore - and it's a blessing in module 6 - your aggro will be very limited, unless you engage the npcs yourself. Not having the first strike aggro (ie being the first one to deal positive - as in dps - or negative - as in healing - damage) means that you will most of the time be able to quietly do your own stuff while dodging red and aoe at-will attacks from some npcs and bosses.
3 - Why faithful?
Because it's the lazy way! I know there are currently broken virtuous builds, and completely imbalanced feats (such as Gift of haste), but these will be nerfed eventually and you better train playing the game as it's meant to be played, don't you?
In theory, even without the broken things, virtuous is more powerful, because heals over time means a lot less overhealing (= wasting resources to heal more damage than needed), but your timing will have to be even more precise and your mitigation rotation has to be perfect. Faithful, on the other hand, is much more forgiving. 25% of your overhealing is converted in a health pool people will trigger automatically when their HPs go down a 45% threshold. It's automatic, which means that you also have more time to charge your team again if something bad happens.
Faithful also has many interesting feats making your burst healing much more impactful, such as extra divinity gains and AFK auto heals not effected by healing depression.
4 - A hit point spamming build.
So let's recapitulate important facts:
- Mitigation matters. But the whole support team will contribute to it.
- The healer is the only one having the ability to heal people.
- With mitigation up, you'll have to heal people for 50-80k hits (or from soulforge revive if mitigation was down), with only ~10-12k power and a 10% increased efficiency on most of your rank 4 spells. You'll heal for roughly 20% more than in module 5 while the size of the hit point pools tripled, if not more.
My conclusion was to give up some mitigation for far more powerful and far more frequent heals. Not much mitigation, because it's merely giving up on foresight. It may sound like a sacrilege but if you rely on your team to take their share of the burden when it comes to adding mitigation, it works.
So, without further ado, here is what I'm using currently:
full size:
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/517539buildfaithful.png
I won't go back to heroic feats, they've been discussed everywhere ad nauseum and didn't change in years. T1 feats are ok, nothing special, just routine. No T2 feat was chosen, because that's the plan, and instead we take T2 - gift of the gods, which means, that in combination with bountiful fortune and divine fortune, one at-will gives you between 80% (sacred flame, short casting animation) and 125% (astral seal, long casting animation) of a divinity cross, ie, with every at-will, you can spam either divine mode bastion of heals (instant cast) to either fix people or charge your capstone, or use some debuffs if there's no emergency, with divine glows. This is the first step to heal for the required amount of hit points in the hardest content in game.
T4 - shared burden is good stuff, it means more overhealing and if you miss someone with your bastion, they'll get a good heal anyway, or if everyone is badly damage and you don't crit (too bad but it happens), the efficiency of your bastion is increased by at least 20%, usually more. Every player hit by your bastion will means one more shared burden proc on others, which means that with the full team in your aoe, it's bouncing 4 times, ie 4x20k HPs or so. In my logs, shared burdens may be up to 40% of my total healing.
T4 - chaplain's strength is in theory underwhelming for a T4. +10% with requirements is worse than a T1 feat, but we have to take something and we can't go further in virtuous so why not this one. However, I noticed a strange behaviour with it and still investigating. It may be why some are seeing 200k+ non crit heals while others aren't.
T5 - test of faith doesn't look impressive but it's an AFK targeted heal with no overhealing, which means something you don't have to take care of, and it heals for 7-8k so it's not that bad.
T5 - United by faith. Another quite specific feat, quite underwhelming in dungeons because it's capped at 15% with 5 people, but in heroic encounters, I've had 1M+ crit bastions with it and various other buffs. Not that it's useful, but it's still funny. Once people start doing tiamat again, and if the devs release raids at some point, this will be a mandatory feat though.
Capstone - Yes, take it. It's good and does what the tooltip says, so read it carefully.
1 - a few notes on module 6 content.
The game got a major overhaul. The good thing is that healing is now an option for cleric. The downside is that it requires to be much more focused on what you're doing. It's not impossible, but you'll have to rely on your muscular memory. If it doesn't work, train, and if it still doesn't work, train more.
Mod 6 is mostly about burst damage, which means that when someone get hit, it will hit hard. It's rarely a one-shot kill if your team has a dedicated support team (tank, healer and ranger), even in T2 content, but your first task will be to learn the spells npcs use, when they use it, how much damage it can do and what you're going to have to do to save everyone from near death. You will also have to convince your team to use the right spells, if the tank doesn't use knight valor because he doesn't like hiding behind the shield during 90% of the time, find another one. If your ranger refuses to use fox shift, do the same thing. T2 content is in no way forgiving and there's little room for creativity and "lulz" builds.
On the other hand, if your team and if you, as a cleric, do what you have to do to survive the onslaught, you'll notice pretty fast that the only one-hit kills come from standing in red, and that the complaints about 200k hit damage come from people who team up with others focused on scoring as high as they can on the score board.
2- The role of the cleric in group content.
Your primary task will be maintaining a moderate level of mitigation, especially at the beginning of adds encounters, which means managing your divinity and dailies very carefully. It also means taking into account casting animations - sometimes, casting a lesser spell with a faster animation will save the run while trying to force the team to survive through the long, dreadful animation of some other spells, will mean a team wipe.
Actually, the balance is pretty simple: if the spell is also a damage buff, the casting animation is long, if it's not, it's short if not instant. Which leaves little room for originality as your go-to spells will be roughly the same for most if not all of the content.
The secondary role of the cleric isn't a minor one. While you will definitely not be the only one contributing to adding to the pool some damage mitigation (the tank and the ranger will help), you are the only one with strong healing abilities. After the initial onslaught, you're going to have to fix everyone and it often means having to distribute 200k to 1M hit points to the team in a timely manner, as long as the adds aren't done with their first strike. So you need a build up to that task.
Fortunately, since astral shield doesn't heal anymore - and it's a blessing in module 6 - your aggro will be very limited, unless you engage the npcs yourself. Not having the first strike aggro (ie being the first one to deal positive - as in dps - or negative - as in healing - damage) means that you will most of the time be able to quietly do your own stuff while dodging red and aoe at-will attacks from some npcs and bosses.
3 - Why faithful?
Because it's the lazy way! I know there are currently broken virtuous builds, and completely imbalanced feats (such as Gift of haste), but these will be nerfed eventually and you better train playing the game as it's meant to be played, don't you?
In theory, even without the broken things, virtuous is more powerful, because heals over time means a lot less overhealing (= wasting resources to heal more damage than needed), but your timing will have to be even more precise and your mitigation rotation has to be perfect. Faithful, on the other hand, is much more forgiving. 25% of your overhealing is converted in a health pool people will trigger automatically when their HPs go down a 45% threshold. It's automatic, which means that you also have more time to charge your team again if something bad happens.
Faithful also has many interesting feats making your burst healing much more impactful, such as extra divinity gains and AFK auto heals not effected by healing depression.
4 - A hit point spamming build.
So let's recapitulate important facts:
- Mitigation matters. But the whole support team will contribute to it.
- The healer is the only one having the ability to heal people.
- With mitigation up, you'll have to heal people for 50-80k hits (or from soulforge revive if mitigation was down), with only ~10-12k power and a 10% increased efficiency on most of your rank 4 spells. You'll heal for roughly 20% more than in module 5 while the size of the hit point pools tripled, if not more.
My conclusion was to give up some mitigation for far more powerful and far more frequent heals. Not much mitigation, because it's merely giving up on foresight. It may sound like a sacrilege but if you rely on your team to take their share of the burden when it comes to adding mitigation, it works.
So, without further ado, here is what I'm using currently:
full size:
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/517539buildfaithful.png
I won't go back to heroic feats, they've been discussed everywhere ad nauseum and didn't change in years. T1 feats are ok, nothing special, just routine. No T2 feat was chosen, because that's the plan, and instead we take T2 - gift of the gods, which means, that in combination with bountiful fortune and divine fortune, one at-will gives you between 80% (sacred flame, short casting animation) and 125% (astral seal, long casting animation) of a divinity cross, ie, with every at-will, you can spam either divine mode bastion of heals (instant cast) to either fix people or charge your capstone, or use some debuffs if there's no emergency, with divine glows. This is the first step to heal for the required amount of hit points in the hardest content in game.
T4 - shared burden is good stuff, it means more overhealing and if you miss someone with your bastion, they'll get a good heal anyway, or if everyone is badly damage and you don't crit (too bad but it happens), the efficiency of your bastion is increased by at least 20%, usually more. Every player hit by your bastion will means one more shared burden proc on others, which means that with the full team in your aoe, it's bouncing 4 times, ie 4x20k HPs or so. In my logs, shared burdens may be up to 40% of my total healing.
T4 - chaplain's strength is in theory underwhelming for a T4. +10% with requirements is worse than a T1 feat, but we have to take something and we can't go further in virtuous so why not this one. However, I noticed a strange behaviour with it and still investigating. It may be why some are seeing 200k+ non crit heals while others aren't.
T5 - test of faith doesn't look impressive but it's an AFK targeted heal with no overhealing, which means something you don't have to take care of, and it heals for 7-8k so it's not that bad.
T5 - United by faith. Another quite specific feat, quite underwhelming in dungeons because it's capped at 15% with 5 people, but in heroic encounters, I've had 1M+ crit bastions with it and various other buffs. Not that it's useful, but it's still funny. Once people start doing tiamat again, and if the devs release raids at some point, this will be a mandatory feat though.
Capstone - Yes, take it. It's good and does what the tooltip says, so read it carefully.
Post edited by diogene0 on
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It's all about balance. Balancing the needs between extra mitigation from divine divine glow vs the kind of damage that your team is dealing with currently (as in: spam divine bastion as if your life depends on it), balancing the need to use empowerement properly and spamming extra divine mode spells because your teams needs that extra heal right now, and balancing between the damage buffs you have and the amount of red on the ground (ie potential incoming damage).
6 - Some practical advice.
So there are 3 typical situations:
- everything is fine. Spam divine mode divine glow the proper way: always keep two crosses for emergencies. Make one cross, (divine) divine glow, make another cross, (divine) divine glow, do it a third time, and depending on your cooldowns, use one of your encounters. Try to keep shield up on cooldown. Having it empowered may be a great help depending on how well or bad your team is doing.
Here is why: AS rank 4 gives your team +40% damage resistance. 40% DR means that you're taking 40% less damage from any source but piercing damage. In neverwinter, DR is the first layer of defence, it's included in the damage calculation, which means a 100 damage hit on a target with 40% DR will hit for 60 dmg instead.
Empowered astral shield also shields your team for 9% of your max hit points, ie 7-9k if you've built your DC properly. The beauty of that spell, with empowerment, is that both DR and damage shielding are applied at the same time on incoming damage, ie you need to be hit for at least 200-250k or so to die in one hit (assuming 0% armor pen on npcs or other players). In practice, astral shield rank 4 fully negates npc's armor pen in pve and shields your teams enough with empowerment 3 so that anyone can take a ~100-200k hit and not die from it, depending on their base DR or on other active buffs.
- everyone is taking damage, the wizard has this typical soulforge black shining glow around him, the tank is on the brink of death... fortunately you have saved 3 crosses of divinity so spam bastion in divine mode and if it's not enough, make more divinity and spam it again in divine mode until you're back to a more manageable situation. Empowerment is cool and all but a 0.3s animation is a luxury you can't always afford. Keeping shield up is an utmost priority.
- there's a sudden spike in damage. Try using empowered bastion first, then see what happens. Depending on the situation, it may be enough since npcs should be dying already, or you may need to enter panic mode and give up on empowerment completely for a few rotations.
Now, how astral shield should be used (for beginners only): Don't let the tank run like a mad man to the group of npcs. Tanks are like babies, requiring constant care and attention. Cast astral shield while he's walking to the group of npcs, and place it well. You should not try to make a nice circle around npcs. They have to be on the edge of your shield, leaving enough room (0.5cm, more or less, on a HD screen) for the TR to use combat advantage, but no more!
A good astral shield will not be spoiled by a red area and will still be functional and usable even if a nasty npc is casting an aoe which has the same size as your shield. It will happen often so be careful with that.
If your tank dies too much while in astral shield, tell him to walk shield up to the npcs. Many will just run carelessly to the biggest npc to tank it while aggroing as much stuff as they can, which often results in them surrounded by npcs, and that's not good, since the shield only works to block what's facing them.
Hallowed ground or divine armor?
Both are good spells, but both have downsides. Hallowed ground has some extra damage buffs. That's nice, but the casting animation is horribly long. Sometimes there's no time for that, and since dungeons aren't a race, it may be safer or required to cast divine armor, especially if astral shield is down and everyone is about to get their butt kicked, since the animation is almost instant. The extra temp hitpoints can save lives too, especially after revives if you're out of divinity.
7 - Gear, companions and enchantments.
Your priorities in terms of stats are:
- Highest priority: Hit points, critical strike.
- High priority: power, recovery, stamina regen.
- Average: defense, deflect, AP gain, regen.
- Low: anything else.
Hitpoints because it helps surviving the first strike of the onslaught, which is always brutal, and crit because critical heals from bastion are important, it means you can fix your whole party with one divine bastion only instead of 2 or 3. Again, live savers. It's not always reliable but since it's a spammer build, you'll aways get some crit somewhere.
Power is granted on every piece of armor gear, so you'll get a lot of it, and recovery is abundant on pvp gear too, if that's what you're using. If not, having at least 4k recovery should be a priority.
Since we're relying on "luck" and forcing the gods to make us even more lucky by spamming heals, a vorpal is a natural choice. I have considered getting a holy avenger for the extra mitigation, but since it's worse than crits and since it has a downtime which isn't insignificant, and since we can't chose to trigger it or not, it belongs to the "garbage" section.
There's also the traditional plaguefire/terror cleric. Forget it. It may work in T1 and some skirmishes but it will definitely means a lot more work for your team in T2 content/kessell's and in pvp. NPCs still have a quite short life expectancy, and the debuff weapon enchantment has always been and will remain the tank's duty, and now that we have to play with them, there's no excuse to keep your plaguefire or terror, except for legacy purposes, for the future, or for financial reasons. I'm not saying carries are impossible in T2s but the amount of skill or cheating it takes is beyond my imagination.
About your armor enchantment: in pve, soulforge. There's no more room for anything else currently. A free revive, while not very often useful, can make a difference between "we barely made it but we did it" and a team wipe. Lesser to greater is enough.
About companions. Clerics always got the short end of the stick, and I will only mention some of the best options:
- pseudodragon. More stamina means more joy. You love dodging all that red stuff on the ground, the pseudodragon will give you even more of that.
- chicken (augment). It's the most expensive augment for a reason. Yes the sounds suck and you look stupid with your chicken but the retreat mode is like the pseudodragon, except you only need to walk. 40% extra speed is always good.
- rust monster. The cheapest option. A damage debuff when you get hit, it's completely passive and works extremely well. Another (free) layer of mitigation.
- silver-scaled cleric disciple. An overlooked companion. Much like its dps counterparts, it's a straight healing increase on you and on your team. It's a good choice at purple level.
8 - Artifacts.
Here are some possibilities for your primary artifacts. For your +stats artifacts, see the above section about stats and priorities.
The best option:
- The wheel of elements! Everyone can pick the buff he needs, the damage increase is significant for dps classes, and the temp HP, while currently bugged (damage goes through that extra layer sometimes), is excellent. The free heal is also a cleanse, which means no more dots, and there's a CC immunity option too.
The downside is that most people either don't know what it is, how it works, so they don't pick buffs or not the right ones, but with practice, you can place the fire buff under the feets of the dps players and pick earth/wind/water for yourself.
In solo content, you may pick two of these buffs at once. It's not excessively expensive at the moment so you may consider getting one.
Excellent options:
- Paladin class artifact. 20% extra mitigation. Didn't test it so I don't know about the heal (i'll gladly add some data).
- Vanguard's banner. A small but welcome dps buff and extra stats for your team. The area of effect is quite large so that's a good choice.
Good options:
- Cleric class artifact. Even if our dailies are still quite underwhelming, this artifact is now better for us than it used to be. More AP during boss fights means more divine armor or hallowed ground, which means less downtime on your mitigation.
- Eye of lathander. Stats are not so great for clerics but the revive is interesting, since others may kiss the ground regularly. It's definitely not your job to revive but dps players tend not to do it willingly unless it's you so you may deal with it anyway.
- Tiamat's orb of majesty. Extra DR + a stun (which will be an interrupt in T2 content but that's still good. See below to read more about interrupts). The duration seems ok. Did not test it so the range is unknown to me.
Average options:
- Lantern of revelation. While still relevant in pvp, your first duty isn't making the run as fast as possible anymore, and the stats really suck.
- Seldarine. Used to be good but now npcs hit too hard and not often enough to make it relevant. So meh, very situational now.
- The pvp skull artifact. Good if you use it when you trigger your soulforge but that's about it.
9 - Slightly different rotations for specific purposes.
Sunburst: In some T2s, the CW isn't up to the task. While control isn't your primary role, you can definitely help a bit on that front if the only weak character is the controller. Sunburst is the best way to do so. Monsters shouldn't jump all over the place with their increased control resistance, but it will still interrupt them when they're casting red aoes. Use it with care, the heal sucks and the divine version is useless.
Healing word: Good in heroic encounters to score a great success. While the divine version is - again - useless, which means it can't be taken seriously as a good replacement for bastion, sometimes, you want people to take damage to score higher in those encounters. Ditch shield, let them die a bit, and heal them afterwards.
Guardian of faith: if it wasn't a daily it would be an incredibly good spell. Unfortunately, it provides no extra DR so you can't really use it in dungeons, but once again, when you just need the heal (like in heroic encounters), it's excellent. If you have someone else in your team building DR and you don't need divine armor (like a paladin or a ranger), it might be an alternative.
10 - Highlight on a few poorly documented spells and game mechanics. (to do).
Divine glow.
Heals and buffs.
Positioning your team and not killing your tank with Knight's valor active.
Waiting for your next edits.
I have played healer for two days now and am very happy to be where I again belong. I love watching all those green mass healings occur as I play from the back.
After the game is balanced correctly and new dungeons are added...and and...bugs fixed etc, this is going to be a great game again.
Thanks for taking the time to create this thread.
I've been playing a mainly DO Faithful cleric; I put a few points in the righteous tree to help kill a little faster in solo play. With mod 6, it sounds like those points need to go back into one of the healing branches for dungeons. I'm curious what this means when I'm out and about solo.
Also I especially like your section on divinity management. That is definitely something I have to work on. With the empowerment mechanic I just feel like I am wasting empowerment if I don't cast something with three pips of empowerment on me, but I guess I have to get over that.
Just a couple of questions:
1. I didn't realize that overhealing contributed to the Faithful capstone. So then I should just be continually healing the team even if they are at full health, and 25% of that unnecessary healing is placed into the Gift of Faith balance?
2. Do you know how long Gift of Faith lasts? If I just continually spam Bastion of Health throughout the whole dungeon, full health or not, will the team end up with this huge Gift of Faith balance by the end? Or does it go away after a certain amount of time?
3. What priority should be given to the Armor Penetration stat?
4. Also, how would you rate Blessing of Battle vs. Sacred Flame in terms of secondary at-wills? Is the DR buff from Blessing of Battle more worthwhile than the temp HP from Sacred Flame, or vice-versa? I know BoB has very slow animation so that is a negative but if it's worth it in terms of DR I can put up with it.
It's horrible. 35 minutes to do all the quests in the well of dragons, including a few respawns in the solo dungeons. It takes forever. Forget about soloing 5+ people heroic encounters before the timer expires too. If only we had a dual spec, but no, cryptic believes that dedicated support players should "enjoy" a sluggish game experience during their solo time.
To determine if you're needed in a party, lostmauth isn't the right place. VT is a much better way to measure how well you're doing IMO, because there are more adds, less spike damage, and several bottlenecks with hard hitting stuff. To determine if you're doing good in a good team? Let your team go ahead and wait (grab a chest, a skill node, whatever). If they wipe then you were doing well.
To answer your questions.
Yes you can charge your team even when they're at full health. Gift of faith is kept even when you exit combat and get in another instance so it's worth using that bastion which when off cooldown even if everyone is fine, or spamming divine bastion if you have extra divinity with empowered divine glow still up. I don't know how long it lasts. At least 15 minutes or until you log out.
There's an issue with gift of faith though, if people die and trigger their soulforge the gift is removed and you have to start over. This is why you might think that the capstone isn't working well sometimes. It is, but that black shining glow from SF means that the gift is gone.
Armor pen, don't bother as a healer.
Your secondary at will is astral seal. You primary one can be blessing of battle or sacred flame. The temp HP from sacred flame is totally useless and hasn't been updated for module 6, and even in mod 5, it was insignificant, but it's the at-will with the shortest animation, which means divinity pretty fast. I find blessing of battle pretty slow and quite unimpressive in terms of extra DR but if you like it it's not a bad choice.
I am wondering if should spend yet another 100k on a reset and try a hybrid non capstone build, this probably is a bit foolish but I am itching to try, anyone have any opinions on which feats would be best for this hybrid healer build ?
here it is:
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/992894Sanstitre.png
Well the tank shouldn't die in two hits, it's up to him to kite properly in some specific situations not to be backstabbed by adds during a boss fight. Your tank should at least be able to soak 3-4 hits even in a T2 dungeon with T1 gear and some rank 7-8s, unless someone took damage while knight's valor was on.
IMO GFs are better tanks than Paladins, not for their spells, but because we can't mark other players with signs or emblems. The GF has this very visible blue line under his hit points. Keeping a paladin alive is another story. The GF is also a pure melee character, which means it's easy to know where he is.
Thank you to everyone who has helped.
I'm just wondering which greater neck to use? I was going to get Lathander's but I wonder if I should get one with AP gain instead?
I chose the greater imperial dragon cloak because most of my DR is coming from my spells and dailies. For what it's worth, the greater imperial belt has +str +wis stats, which are perfect for a cleric. Much better than +wis +cha in mod 6.
Do you ever use empowered A Shield in T1-T2 or do you save it for Bastion?
Now to find new gear to replace my armor pen.
I always try to use the empowered shield, the non divine bastion is a bit too slow, and the damage reduction of a fully empowered shield should be more useful than a fully empowered bastion.
With my build I don't need to really pay attention to which empowered spell I'm using half of the time, because it's possible to cast most of them fully empowered. I'll try to focus on empowered divine glow because at empowerement 3 it's just excellent, when no one really need heals. During intense fights, whatever works. Shield has to stay up on cooldown, and even if empowered shield isn't that great, even with the new health pool (it's okay but not incredible), it's still better than delaying it. Empowered bastion might be a better choice to do that life saving heal, sometimes, or sometimes you want to keep that shield up to prevent one hit kills to happen. It's really situational. Just keep in mind that most of your heals come from divine mode spells and that divine bastion is an instant heal. Empowered bastion kind of suck for emergencies.
Burning guidance doesn't count. If you apply a dot, only the first strike gives you a chance to restore some stamina. It restores about 10% stamina when you use a spell or an at-will when the bonus is triggered.
On your recent etos vid your cleric is AC with Blessing Battle, but screenshot for guide suggests DO. Do you recommend to switch AC ?
— (The unwritten rule)
I'm currently testing a new build. Good catch!
However I haven't fully tested it to see if it's really an improvement. There are severe drawbacks, namely the horribly long casting animation of blessing of battle. I'm waiting for my next eCC legit run to see if it's up to the task.
Currently I'm using the astral seal bonus on my mainhand, but I suspect it's not working. Not a big deal but i'll have to do some testing. The OH bonus is completely irrelevant. I do have the bonus for divine fortune but it's so insignifican't it's probably not worth unlocking it. Since the bonus for healer's lore is also useless, I would simply recommend not spending any AD if you use the same class features.
I have one question about AC and DO, I can´t find an answer to until now
why do you take DO and not AC?
having AC you have battle of blessing, thats 8% mitigation for the party, if you take virtous 10 points on top its +15% from your power to the group, 3k + power about
scipping 13% DR buff from DO , ok give it a try, 13% is not too bad in these days, but its the only reason i would take DO
If you made this build with AC you get 8% DR on top +/- 15 power buff?
DO rightous -- damagedealer
AC faithfull -- healer
after respeccing to DO I just get aware of the fact building everything arround foresight takes some of flexibility, since its one of two possible class feature, and blessing of battle is an at will with very high AP gain + a great buff?
That's why i'm testing AC with blessing of battle. It's nice but it doesn't add much. There is an improvement though since i cannot slot foresight, but it's not that impressive. People are either killed in one hit and then i just have to heal them from SF revive or they don't and i have so much divinity and empowerement i can heal them back to full HP in one click.
I also miss chaplain's strength, which seems to be bugged and add 10% heal for every foe in a 30' radius (still need to find a suitable protocol to test that assumption on preview) and does wonders in T2s to charge the capstone asap, but so far i'm doing OK. I just don't like blessing of battle for its dreadfully long animation.
on top you get Annoited Army, Exaltation and Annoited armor wich fits much more in case doing PVP sometimes its +8% defelct and + 8% DR
don´t say thats peanuts
Exaltation is not that bad and could have some use in focus heal one char (even if its your tanking compagnion) cause the buff is quite good on top of AS
taking holy fervor as class feature grants you 1. fast AP gain 20% and snyergizes very well with hastening light buffing your teammates 10% Ap every daily + 4 sec -CD
all in all its a win win win win situation against DO imo
There are two tier 1 sets of armor, one with armor penetration and one with power/crit/recovery. If you want to heal, don't pick parts with armor penetration. I'll add something about boons in my OP later.
I am currently using the allure stone.
I couldn't think of another companion , since i am still in the middle of testing every one i find useful.
But if a pseudo dragon is better, i am willing to give up on my 4k of power and 2k recovery for it.