This build is very old, I'm afraid - hence the broken links. Successive patches have meant that there is approximately one way to build a cleric (Moontouched, for a great Hallowed Ground). Most PVE clerics will have that one skill. I tried Anointed Champion tonight, and Blessing of Battle seems bugged - it repeatedly reduced my damage output by 10% when the Blessing was up. I'm wondering if the "minor defensive boon" is given to the target of Blessing of Battle, rather than the group of the person who casts it. Anointed Army is decent but situational, Blessing is bugged, and the extra tankiness is okay but it's just no match for Foresight. Perhaps if you have a regular PVP team you always play with, Anointed Army will pay off. Perhaps.
I'll respec back to Divine Oracle (I'm hoping Cryptic will give me a free one since I spent a while going through to test skills and found it was bugged to hell, but I doubt that'll happen, heh) and then I'll post my current spec/build.
I should note, though, that I've basically abandoned my cleric except when my guildmates need one and I can't play my CW or my GWF. Clerics these days are a pale shadow of what they used to be. Seeing if you can get Prophecy of Doom to give you constant HG spam is probably the only fun thing left, and I'm sure Prophecy will be nerfed out of the cleric if Cryptic ever notice that it's fun.
Edit: Apparently the Drow racial makes your allies take 10% more damage after you heal them, so if you want to truly guarantee a loss in PVP, roll up a Drow Anointed Champion - 10% more damage on your friends with a Bastion of Health, then 10% less damage on the enemy as you Blessing of Battle them. Loss will be sweeter than ever before.
This build is very old, I'm afraid - hence the broken links. Successive patches have meant that there is approximately one way to build a cleric (Moontouched, for a great Hallowed Ground). Most PVE clerics will have that one skill. I tried Anointed Champion tonight, and Blessing of Battle seems bugged - it repeatedly reduced my damage output by 10% when the Blessing was up. I'm wondering if the "minor defensive boon" is given to the target of Blessing of Battle, rather than the group of the person who casts it. Anointed Army is decent but situational, Blessing is bugged, and the extra tankiness is okay but it's just no match for Foresight. Perhaps if you have a regular PVP team you always play with, Anointed Army will pay off. Perhaps.
I'll respec back to Divine Oracle (I'm hoping Cryptic will give me a free one since I spent a while going through to test skills and found it was bugged to hell, but I doubt that'll happen, heh) and then I'll post my current spec/build.
I should note, though, that I've basically abandoned my cleric except when my guildmates need one and I can't play my CW or my GWF. Clerics these days are a pale shadow of what they used to be. Seeing if you can get Prophecy of Doom to give you constant HG spam is probably the only fun thing left, and I'm sure Prophecy will be nerfed out of the cleric if Cryptic ever notice that it's fun.
Edit: Apparently the Drow racial makes your allies take 10% more damage after you heal them, so if you want to truly guarantee a loss in PVP, roll up a Drow Anointed Champion - 10% more damage on your friends with a Bastion of Health, then 10% less damage on the enemy as you Blessing of Battle them. Loss will be sweeter than ever before.
I haven't observed any buggy behavior with Blessing of Battle. The defense buff definitely works, because I've observed the difference in combat logs. Have you checked your logs to verify that your damage is decreased while the buff is on you?
Anointed Army is highly situational. I have it, but I tend not to use it much. It feels impressive when you anticipate big hits, but fast attacks and DoTs remove its protection and associated buffs instantly. If the CC immunity persisted for at least a few seconds, it'd be much, much better.
Foresight is great as DO, obviously, but you can exceed its potential as AC, just not on the entire team at the same time. BoB's buff is the equivalent of unfeated Foresight, and Exaltation's multi-buff is amazing, if only for two targets. You can make either path work great for either PvE or PvP; it's just a question of preference.
I haven't observed any buggy behavior with Blessing of Battle. The defense buff definitely works, because I've observed the difference in combat logs. Have you checked your logs to verify that your damage is decreased while the buff is on you?
Average hit of Blessing of Battle on a target dummy when initiating (i.e. before buffs apply): 1,782 (10 hits)
Average hit of Blessing of Battle on a target dummy after initiating (i.e. after BoB application): 1,640 (40 hits)
That's just under a 10% drop, I have a haunting feeling that if I ran it enough it would go to a 10% drop in my output. Similar to the way Divine Light used to be bugged (it buffed the enemy and debuffed you, instead of vice versa). I can't see anything else in my setup that would do this. I'm going to try and test out whether Hallowed Ground is affected by the PVP healing nerf today, before I respec ... it states a % is healed (up to 5% of max health) rather than giving a healing amount, so there's an outside chance it escapes the PVP heal nerf. Assuming it doesn't, I'm going to go back to my old Prophecy build and repost that ... just because, really.
The Virtuous cleric spec is now a bit of a misnomer - this build has finally caved to the inevitable and has more Faithful points than Virtuous. Reasons are below.
Aim
The original purpose of this build/post is to provide a DPS-focused build for the Devoted Cleric with the Divine Oracle paragon path (the only one available, at time of writing), that can also heal dungeons. I say "DPS focused" but although this build provides good DPS, your chances of coming top of the DPS charts are very low, unless you're grouped with a terrible rogue, a poor wizard, or a mediocre Great Weapon Fighter (perhaps in that order). Not that the DPS hybrid cleric should aim to come top: your role is to do decent damage, whilst also providing support and flexibility to a group. You can solo heal a Tier 2 dungeon with ease. That frees you up to tailor your encounter powers exactly how you want them, without being tied down to just a select few. A lot of other cleric posts and videos go through powers in a lot of detail, I'm not going to do that - check out the other cleric builds in the Master List for links.
Instead, I'm going to focus on the different roles you can play, and how you support this with powers and feats. There are a few separate notes on feats and powers (especially see Divine Glow).
But why not go Faithful?
The Faithful spec is fantastic, but some of us just don't enjoy healing in PVE that much and want to try something different. The Virtuous path lacks the powerful buff to Hallowed Ground, and some damage mitigation from the Foresight buff. But in exchange, you get a very active playstyle that lets you do large amounts of AE damage, build up to dailies very fast, and contribute to your team. Crucially, you can main-heal a lot of content (possibly all of it) but be a very solid DPS and add-manager if there's another priest in the group. You're a jack of all trades, which means you're a master of none, but you can always bring something to the party (how many mixed metaphors?).
There are currently a lot of excellent Faithful-path healer cleric builds up on the forum, with a lot of discussion and information attached. The Virtuous cleric doesn't have that, but hopefully I can provide a little education here. In game I spend more time playing with the Foundry or roleplaying than I do in PVP or PVE, but I've had a decent amount of experience in both (almost 3-manned epic Trayven Blackdagger with a TR and CW, until a running-out-of-potions problem). This build is great for grinding, soloing, and Foundry quests. In PVP it tends to die fast to groups (such is the Cleric's lot), but that's probably an artefact of the way I've geared up ... but then again, a rogue stacking Armour Penetration (or Smoke Bomb ... ) can probably slice through most clerics builds.
Creation
Link to build: http://nwcalc.com/dc?b=off:4c073:9wjg,1ijx305:6z000:b5u00:6v000&h=1. My character was rolled up as Human with 16 STR, 16 WIS, and 12 CHA. I put my discretionary +2 in STR. This is because my build relies on critical hits to build Divinity fast, and STR determines crits for clerics (for more information, see the official Wiki page on clerics. This also gives me +3 Heroic Feat points, but they're not essential (although it has to be said, they're very nice - I put them into Repurpose Soul). End scores are 24, 12, 12, 12, 18, 18. Note that there are some unspent Power Points - I'm not sure what to put them in that would be useful, so I'm saving them for later.
At my current gearscore (11,655), I'm sitting at 39.1% to crit, 19.5% faster cooldowns, 34.5% action point bonuses, and 37.1% damage resistance. Armour wise I'm using Grand Templar's Helm and Greaves, and Miracle Healer's Armour and Gauntlets. My aim was to get Astral Shield cooldown to 16s, then high Crit and Defence. I also run with an Ioun Stone of Allure with Profane Runestones. None of my enchants are above level 6. Most of my Defence stuff is on the cleric, a lot of the Recovery stuff is on the Ioun Stone (a little less bothered about Recovery in PVP, at least compared to survivability and critical chance).
STR - 16 (+2 racial bonus)
DEX - 10
CON - 10
INT - 10
WIS - 16
CHA - 12
STR and CHA raised during levelling.
Notes on Powers Rule of Five: Most area effect powers only hit 5 mobs at once. Synchronous Criticals: If you're in Divinity mode, many area effect spells seem to crit EVERY target if you crit at all (that or my Flame Strike and Daunting Light are probability-bustingly lucky). This means you can burst hard. Annoyingly this isn't always the case (I've had Divine Glow crit 4 out of 5 targets). (Note that Hammer of Fate only hits one target and hits it multiple times, so each hit may or may not be a critical regardless of whether other hits are criticals or not). I don't know if this is some weird thing going on with the RNG in combat. My Big Assumption: you see two numbers in your damage log when you attack something. I assume the first number is the damage you do, and the second number is the damage you would do if the enemy had no defence or mitigation whatsoever.
Searing Light: this is an exception to the rule of five. With Divinity, Searing Light will hit 5 mobs if they are all in a line. This will cause one explosion to each mob in the line, and each explosion can hit 5 targets for half damage. So you get a maximum of 5 mobs for full damage, and 25 mobs for half damage. This is great, in the incredibly unlikely situation that you have five lined up mobs each of which is surrounded by another five mobs. In practice, I've got this to hit 23 mobs (so 25 is an assumption, but it seems logical). If you're one of those people who likes to spend all day in a Foundry quest where there are 50 mobs sat in a pit that can't get to your, then maybe put this up to three points and don't take anything in Prophecy of Doom or Healer's Lore. Divine Glow: this power has now been fixed, or so it seems. It's good, but not great. Daunting Light: this is a great power for damage, and made even better by the Nimbus of Light feat. Forgemaster's Flame: DOT lasts for 3 ticks, this is a good heal that can crit. Chains of Blazing Light: damage from this is not actually split amongst mobs. It's reduced by between 15 and 20% per mob that it hits, I'd say 20% is probably accurate. Break the Spirit: seems to reduce mob damage by 30%. DOT that lasts for 5 ticks, stun seems incredibly brief, threat reduction is unknown. Hammer of Faith: repeated multiple hits and pushback. Great at sniping low health people in PVP, because either by lag or design, the Hammer follows your targets. It also stops GWF/GF knocking you over.
Heroic Feats Healing Action: Toughness is better for a PVP build. However, I think (haven't tested) that divine Astral Shield counts for this (due to the green text). I also know that, if I want to heal, I want to be generating more Action Points, so I have 3 points in Healing Action - it may be that bumping it up to 5 points would gain me nothing (opinions vary, very hard to test). Hallowed Ground going down is where, in some boss fights, you get time to build up Divinity for the next Astral Shield, let your potion cooldowns tick over, and make sure your positioning is good. Domain Synergy: Recovery is key to this build - it's no good getting lots of Divinity if your Encounters are on cooldown. Weapon Mastery: 3% Critical is great. Holy Resolve: not dying is also great. Repurpose Soul: you will crit a lot, this provides some nice topup healing. Bountiful Fortune: if you're kiting (especially), every bit of Divinity gain helps.
Of those feats, Holy Resolve and Repurpose Soul are probably the best to drop if you're not human/want a different Heroic feat.
Alternate Heroic Feats: Templar's Domain: if you only do PVP, and you're planning to socket for Armour Penetration (there's precious little on our gear), this *may* be worth it. PVP is the environment where spiky damage is vital, and this helps. However, I'm dubious. Cleanse: most dedicated healer clerics have this. Unless debuffs have a huge spike in impact past Tier 2, I don't think it's essential so much as "nice". However, you may have a particular reason to want it.
Notes on Paragon Feats Rising Hope: Power is a stat that scales badly (I've not done the maths myself, but I'm happy to believe this). Recovery is a stat that scales well, and it's a stat this build pumps as high as possible at high levels. Therefore the chance to get 15% more of it for 2.5 minutes is excellent. I'm not sure what the proc rate is precisely, but it is noticeable. Power of the Sun: Brand of the Sun is a fantastic ability. High divinity generation, decent AP generation, ongoing damage. This makes it even better. If nothing else, you can keep it up on a boss and reduce your team's incoming damage. Sadly, testing (n=12) indicates that it doesn't lower mob damage. Nimbus of Light: Using Daunting Light against level 60 'tough' mobs, it changes their mitigation from Lance of Faith from about 8.5% to about 0.3%. I've not been able to do controlled tests in PVP, but if it translates into PVP at the same level, it would make this a must-have. Focused Poise: I dropped this feat. I couldn't get it to make any difference to damage over two respecs. This is the reason for becoming a PVP-Faithful build, as opposed to the Righteous build that I want to use. Cycle of Change: the top Righteous feat. It's terrible.
Deepstone Blessing: using Sacred Flame will give temporary hitpoints, and this makes you more useful in a dungeon and occasionally in PVP, if you ever get a third Sacred Flame off. Benefit of Foresight: the way the game is in PVP now, Foresight with this feat is an essential slot for Class power. Linked Spirit: Clerics are really bad in PVP, except for drawing attention from classes that actually contribute (CWs and TRs, usually). Linked Spirit helps you make everyone a little better and if you have a coordinated team, or - worse yet - multiple clerics - this starts to pay off more than Focused Poise ever will.
Potential Roles
These come with the caveat that sometimes you will need to pack particular spells for particular encounters.
Bread and butter - grinding/Foundry/trash as DPS:
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Brand of the Sun
Encounter - Daunting Light
Encounter - Divine Glow
Encounter - Searing Light (Astral Shield once trash is dead)
Daily - Flame Strike
Daily - Hammer of Fate
Class - Foresight
Class - Terrifying Insight
This is all about doing as much damage as possible to clear out the trash mobs, so you can switch Searing Light for Astral Shield and DPS down the big mobs. Very simple, very fast. You use Divine Glow to pull them in (large area) which will make them cluster around you, then you use Daunting Light to damage them. Then you use Searing Light to finish most trash. After that, Searing Light should become Astral Shield (definitely with Divinity) to mitigate damage and start healing yourself. Once you're left with a few tough mobs, you can Sacred Flame/Daunting Light them to death very quickly from in an Astral Shield. Flame Strike is good at killing multiples (and if it crits, everything will crit).
Tier One - trash (as healer)
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Brand of the Sun
Encounter - Prophecy of Doom
Encounter - Forgemaster's Flame
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Flame Strike
Daily - Hammer of Fate
Class - Foresight
Class - Terrifying Insight
Similar to the grinding loadout, but with Forgemaster's Flame for extra healing. Prophecy of Doom is in because you can throw it on trash for a lovely AP boost if you're having to kite more than you want..
Bosses (as DPS)
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Astral Seal
Encounter - Daunting Light
Encounter - Divine Glow
Encounter - Forgemaster's Flame (Searing Light if you have a Control Wizard who you can coordinate spells with, who has Arcane Singularity slotted, and if there are vast amounts of mobs)
Daily - Hallowed Ground
Daily - Flame Strike
Class - Holy Fervour
Class - Terrifying Insight
As a DPS, you can still serve your party by debuffing and healing. You will mainly need to take out trash, since cleric single target DPS is weak. Proper use of Divine Glow will help the group.
Bosses (as healer)
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Astral Seal
Encounter - Prophecy of Doom
Encounter - Forgemaster's Flame
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Hallowed Grounds
Daily - Hammer of Fate (Flame Strike if adds will cause you an issue)
Class - Holy Fervour (Divine Fortune, if adds are killing you fast)
Class - Foresight
Prophecy of Doom is in as an AP booster and because, with Divinity, it gives a reasonable debuff to defence. Hammer of Fate is in instead of Flame Strike because Flame Strike does rather poor damage to single targets (if you're going to be killing adds, then you can keep Flame Strike in). Hammer of Fate lets you stand still and take minimal damage from many boss attacks, which helps with stamina management and for building Divinity.
Bosses (as kiter)
At Will - Brand of the Sun
At Will - Astral Seal
Encounter - Chains of Blazing Light
Encounter - Sunburst
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Hallowed Grounds
Daily - Flame Strike if adds will cause you an issue
Class - Divine Fortune
Class - Foresight
Kiting is a hassle, but occasionally it is what your group wants. Luckily, the way healing aggro works is your friend. You can stick down an Astral Shield with divinity and the mobs that spawn continuously, will chase you. Chains and Sunburst are both capped at five targets, but with good timing that works out to ten mobs that won't be hitting you at any one point. In addition, Sunburst heals your team as well as knocking away mobs.
PVP
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Brand of the Sun
Encounter - Prophecy of Doom/Chains of Blazing Light/Divine Glow (to taste)
Encounter - Sunburst
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Hallowed Ground
Daily - Hammer of Fate
Class - Foresight
Class - Terrifying Insight
All about Divinity management. All of the encounters benefit from Divinity, Astral Shield is the priority here, with Sunburst being great for knocking people away from flags and off bridges. The first slot is one that really is very much based on your playstyle. If you go with an organised group using voicecoms, then Prophecy of Doom is incredible. Divine Glow hits an area, and quickly, which makes it often a little better than Daunting Light which can miss - as well as buff/debuff potential in some matches. Chains of Blazing Light is what you'll want if things are going badly, and your team sucks at teamwork.
PVP video - link . This isn't intended to demonstrate skill, it's to show that Astral Shield is an excellent thing in PVP and makes the cleric very worthwhile. The ability to solo other players (unless they're rogues who silence-lock you until you die) is very helpful as well.
krazypunk117Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 27Arc User
edited April 2014
Quick question, I haven't played in about a year and want to get back into and I remember one of my characters was a cleric and I had fun with it and I found your guide just now and you mentioned that you updated the original post but the link for your powers is different in the original post to the recent post above even though you mentioned updating the original post. Which one is the current one you recommend?
Quick question, I haven't played in about a year and want to get back into and I remember one of my characters was a cleric and I had fun with it and I found your guide just now and you mentioned that you updated the original post but the link for your powers is different in the original post to the recent post above even though you mentioned updating the original post. Which one is the current one you recommend?
The original post has the latest build in it (and working NWCALC links). The post just above is my archive.
Nice thread in the first link of your build you have points in feats I don't see where you finish to the end of either virtuous. faithful or righteous and the second link there are no numbers.
And the link is broken because it, and this thread, was made for a build that is 3 modules old, and the nwcalc site has been updated to reflect the current state of DC feats and powers.
Are you Valindra?
Cuz ****, this some serious necromancy right here.
Just on the first page of this subforum are two threads with copy-paste builds, and numerous others giving assistance to those with questions on builds, some also with copy-paste builds and links to other sites with copy-pasteable builds.
I'm not sure what sort of assistance can be provided to one who is either incapable of finding these threads, or discerning the difference between those new threads and ones that are over a year old.
Just on the first page of this subforum are two threads with copy-paste builds, and numerous others giving assistance to those with questions on builds, some also with copy-paste builds and links to other sites with copy-pasteable builds.
I'm not sure what sort of assistance can be provided to one who is either incapable of finding these threads, or discerning the difference between those new threads and ones that are over a year old.
I am a bit confused, here, when I follow the link to the build, it doesn't show any build but the front page, if I copy paste the build's info, it doesn't make any sense.
There is no new picture of any kind of build except from builds of lvl 60...
Where do you find those wonderful updated threads you are talking about?
Anyone knows where there are some viables and updated builds? All the informations I find seems to be outdated.
All the DC builds I've seen are outdated. No one seems to be writing new guides and players are following these old guides and so you're getting a lot of crappy DCs that are not using the new powers.
I believe that if you spend some time and intelligence reading carefully stats, powers & feats and how they are related, you can make your own DC build without any guide.
In my experience, I see two mainstreams:
- Builds based on WIS and STR (-> example: for crits)
- Builds based on WIS and CHR (-> example: for recovery or AP gain).
In my opinion both are good and this is the first decision you've to take: some clerics prefer STR, others (like myself) CHR. This choice is very important because it will be the mark and the sign of your cleric: the choice of the paragon and the cleric path will be the natural consequence of your stats.
As an example, I chose WIS and CHAR -> DC AC -> Virtuous path because my project is full heal, fast rotations and AP gain. Again, this is my own project and it fits my game play style.
Discussions about which of the two is the best are a waste of time.There's no best in my opionion, but you have to make very clear in your mind what you want to achieve, because the beauty of the cleric is that you can do a lot of things.
You can test your build in the preview server and make all the change you want for free until you're happy with your set-up.
Most of the guides are outdated, but the you can still find some hints in there that are still valid.
I'm saying that because the game has changed and it will change again in the future: there's no build that lasts forever. With the new Mod 6, I had to reshape my build in some parts and I expect that this will happen again in the near future. It will be quite difficult to keep the builds updated.
I hope this helps.
Oltreverso guild leader Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF
Comments
I'll respec back to Divine Oracle (I'm hoping Cryptic will give me a free one since I spent a while going through to test skills and found it was bugged to hell, but I doubt that'll happen, heh) and then I'll post my current spec/build.
I should note, though, that I've basically abandoned my cleric except when my guildmates need one and I can't play my CW or my GWF. Clerics these days are a pale shadow of what they used to be. Seeing if you can get Prophecy of Doom to give you constant HG spam is probably the only fun thing left, and I'm sure Prophecy will be nerfed out of the cleric if Cryptic ever notice that it's fun.
Edit: Apparently the Drow racial makes your allies take 10% more damage after you heal them, so if you want to truly guarantee a loss in PVP, roll up a Drow Anointed Champion - 10% more damage on your friends with a Bastion of Health, then 10% less damage on the enemy as you Blessing of Battle them. Loss will be sweeter than ever before.
I haven't observed any buggy behavior with Blessing of Battle. The defense buff definitely works, because I've observed the difference in combat logs. Have you checked your logs to verify that your damage is decreased while the buff is on you?
Anointed Army is highly situational. I have it, but I tend not to use it much. It feels impressive when you anticipate big hits, but fast attacks and DoTs remove its protection and associated buffs instantly. If the CC immunity persisted for at least a few seconds, it'd be much, much better.
Foresight is great as DO, obviously, but you can exceed its potential as AC, just not on the entire team at the same time. BoB's buff is the equivalent of unfeated Foresight, and Exaltation's multi-buff is amazing, if only for two targets. You can make either path work great for either PvE or PvP; it's just a question of preference.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
Average hit of Blessing of Battle on a target dummy when initiating (i.e. before buffs apply): 1,782 (10 hits)
Average hit of Blessing of Battle on a target dummy after initiating (i.e. after BoB application): 1,640 (40 hits)
That's just under a 10% drop, I have a haunting feeling that if I ran it enough it would go to a 10% drop in my output. Similar to the way Divine Light used to be bugged (it buffed the enemy and debuffed you, instead of vice versa). I can't see anything else in my setup that would do this. I'm going to try and test out whether Hallowed Ground is affected by the PVP healing nerf today, before I respec ... it states a % is healed (up to 5% of max health) rather than giving a healing amount, so there's an outside chance it escapes the PVP heal nerf. Assuming it doesn't, I'm going to go back to my old Prophecy build and repost that ... just because, really.
N.b.
Aim
The original purpose of this build/post is to provide a DPS-focused build for the Devoted Cleric with the Divine Oracle paragon path (the only one available, at time of writing), that can also heal dungeons. I say "DPS focused" but although this build provides good DPS, your chances of coming top of the DPS charts are very low, unless you're grouped with a terrible rogue, a poor wizard, or a mediocre Great Weapon Fighter (perhaps in that order). Not that the DPS hybrid cleric should aim to come top: your role is to do decent damage, whilst also providing support and flexibility to a group. You can solo heal a Tier 2 dungeon with ease. That frees you up to tailor your encounter powers exactly how you want them, without being tied down to just a select few. A lot of other cleric posts and videos go through powers in a lot of detail, I'm not going to do that - check out the other cleric builds in the Master List for links.
Instead, I'm going to focus on the different roles you can play, and how you support this with powers and feats. There are a few separate notes on feats and powers (especially see Divine Glow).
But why not go Faithful?
The Faithful spec is fantastic, but some of us just don't enjoy healing in PVE that much and want to try something different. The Virtuous path lacks the powerful buff to Hallowed Ground, and some damage mitigation from the Foresight buff. But in exchange, you get a very active playstyle that lets you do large amounts of AE damage, build up to dailies very fast, and contribute to your team. Crucially, you can main-heal a lot of content (possibly all of it) but be a very solid DPS and add-manager if there's another priest in the group. You're a jack of all trades, which means you're a master of none, but you can always bring something to the party (how many mixed metaphors?).
There are currently a lot of excellent Faithful-path healer cleric builds up on the forum, with a lot of discussion and information attached. The Virtuous cleric doesn't have that, but hopefully I can provide a little education here. In game I spend more time playing with the Foundry or roleplaying than I do in PVP or PVE, but I've had a decent amount of experience in both (almost 3-manned epic Trayven Blackdagger with a TR and CW, until a running-out-of-potions problem). This build is great for grinding, soloing, and Foundry quests. In PVP it tends to die fast to groups (such is the Cleric's lot), but that's probably an artefact of the way I've geared up ... but then again, a rogue stacking Armour Penetration (or Smoke Bomb ... ) can probably slice through most clerics builds.
Creation
Link to build: http://nwcalc.com/dc?b=off:4c073:9wjg,1ijx305:6z000:b5u00:6v000&h=1. My character was rolled up as Human with 16 STR, 16 WIS, and 12 CHA. I put my discretionary +2 in STR. This is because my build relies on critical hits to build Divinity fast, and STR determines crits for clerics (for more information, see the official Wiki page on clerics. This also gives me +3 Heroic Feat points, but they're not essential (although it has to be said, they're very nice - I put them into Repurpose Soul). End scores are 24, 12, 12, 12, 18, 18. Note that there are some unspent Power Points - I'm not sure what to put them in that would be useful, so I'm saving them for later.
At my current gearscore (11,655), I'm sitting at 39.1% to crit, 19.5% faster cooldowns, 34.5% action point bonuses, and 37.1% damage resistance. Armour wise I'm using Grand Templar's Helm and Greaves, and Miracle Healer's Armour and Gauntlets. My aim was to get Astral Shield cooldown to 16s, then high Crit and Defence. I also run with an Ioun Stone of Allure with Profane Runestones. None of my enchants are above level 6. Most of my Defence stuff is on the cleric, a lot of the Recovery stuff is on the Ioun Stone (a little less bothered about Recovery in PVP, at least compared to survivability and critical chance).
STR - 16 (+2 racial bonus)
DEX - 10
CON - 10
INT - 10
WIS - 16
CHA - 12
STR and CHA raised during levelling.
Notes on Powers
Rule of Five: Most area effect powers only hit 5 mobs at once.
Synchronous Criticals: If you're in Divinity mode, many area effect spells seem to crit EVERY target if you crit at all (that or my Flame Strike and Daunting Light are probability-bustingly lucky). This means you can burst hard. Annoyingly this isn't always the case (I've had Divine Glow crit 4 out of 5 targets). (Note that Hammer of Fate only hits one target and hits it multiple times, so each hit may or may not be a critical regardless of whether other hits are criticals or not). I don't know if this is some weird thing going on with the RNG in combat.
My Big Assumption: you see two numbers in your damage log when you attack something. I assume the first number is the damage you do, and the second number is the damage you would do if the enemy had no defence or mitigation whatsoever.
Searing Light: this is an exception to the rule of five. With Divinity, Searing Light will hit 5 mobs if they are all in a line. This will cause one explosion to each mob in the line, and each explosion can hit 5 targets for half damage. So you get a maximum of 5 mobs for full damage, and 25 mobs for half damage. This is great, in the incredibly unlikely situation that you have five lined up mobs each of which is surrounded by another five mobs. In practice, I've got this to hit 23 mobs (so 25 is an assumption, but it seems logical). If you're one of those people who likes to spend all day in a Foundry quest where there are 50 mobs sat in a pit that can't get to your, then maybe put this up to three points and don't take anything in Prophecy of Doom or Healer's Lore.
Divine Glow: this power has now been fixed, or so it seems. It's good, but not great.
Daunting Light: this is a great power for damage, and made even better by the Nimbus of Light feat.
Forgemaster's Flame: DOT lasts for 3 ticks, this is a good heal that can crit.
Chains of Blazing Light: damage from this is not actually split amongst mobs. It's reduced by between 15 and 20% per mob that it hits, I'd say 20% is probably accurate.
Break the Spirit: seems to reduce mob damage by 30%. DOT that lasts for 5 ticks, stun seems incredibly brief, threat reduction is unknown.
Hammer of Faith: repeated multiple hits and pushback. Great at sniping low health people in PVP, because either by lag or design, the Hammer follows your targets. It also stops GWF/GF knocking you over.
Heroic Feats
Healing Action: Toughness is better for a PVP build. However, I think (haven't tested) that divine Astral Shield counts for this (due to the green text). I also know that, if I want to heal, I want to be generating more Action Points, so I have 3 points in Healing Action - it may be that bumping it up to 5 points would gain me nothing (opinions vary, very hard to test). Hallowed Ground going down is where, in some boss fights, you get time to build up Divinity for the next Astral Shield, let your potion cooldowns tick over, and make sure your positioning is good.
Domain Synergy: Recovery is key to this build - it's no good getting lots of Divinity if your Encounters are on cooldown.
Weapon Mastery: 3% Critical is great.
Holy Resolve: not dying is also great.
Repurpose Soul: you will crit a lot, this provides some nice topup healing.
Bountiful Fortune: if you're kiting (especially), every bit of Divinity gain helps.
Of those feats, Holy Resolve and Repurpose Soul are probably the best to drop if you're not human/want a different Heroic feat.
Alternate Heroic Feats:
Templar's Domain: if you only do PVP, and you're planning to socket for Armour Penetration (there's precious little on our gear), this *may* be worth it. PVP is the environment where spiky damage is vital, and this helps. However, I'm dubious.
Cleanse: most dedicated healer clerics have this. Unless debuffs have a huge spike in impact past Tier 2, I don't think it's essential so much as "nice". However, you may have a particular reason to want it.
Notes on Paragon Feats
Rising Hope: Power is a stat that scales badly (I've not done the maths myself, but I'm happy to believe this). Recovery is a stat that scales well, and it's a stat this build pumps as high as possible at high levels. Therefore the chance to get 15% more of it for 2.5 minutes is excellent. I'm not sure what the proc rate is precisely, but it is noticeable.
Power of the Sun: Brand of the Sun is a fantastic ability. High divinity generation, decent AP generation, ongoing damage. This makes it even better. If nothing else, you can keep it up on a boss and reduce your team's incoming damage. Sadly, testing (n=12) indicates that it doesn't lower mob damage.
Nimbus of Light: Using Daunting Light against level 60 'tough' mobs, it changes their mitigation from Lance of Faith from about 8.5% to about 0.3%. I've not been able to do controlled tests in PVP, but if it translates into PVP at the same level, it would make this a must-have.
Focused Poise: I dropped this feat. I couldn't get it to make any difference to damage over two respecs. This is the reason for becoming a PVP-Faithful build, as opposed to the Righteous build that I want to use.
Cycle of Change: the top Righteous feat. It's terrible.
Deepstone Blessing: using Sacred Flame will give temporary hitpoints, and this makes you more useful in a dungeon and occasionally in PVP, if you ever get a third Sacred Flame off.
Benefit of Foresight: the way the game is in PVP now, Foresight with this feat is an essential slot for Class power.
Linked Spirit: Clerics are really bad in PVP, except for drawing attention from classes that actually contribute (CWs and TRs, usually). Linked Spirit helps you make everyone a little better and if you have a coordinated team, or - worse yet - multiple clerics - this starts to pay off more than Focused Poise ever will.
Potential Roles
These come with the caveat that sometimes you will need to pack particular spells for particular encounters.
Bread and butter - grinding/Foundry/trash as DPS:
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Brand of the Sun
Encounter - Daunting Light
Encounter - Divine Glow
Encounter - Searing Light (Astral Shield once trash is dead)
Daily - Flame Strike
Daily - Hammer of Fate
Class - Foresight
Class - Terrifying Insight
This is all about doing as much damage as possible to clear out the trash mobs, so you can switch Searing Light for Astral Shield and DPS down the big mobs. Very simple, very fast. You use Divine Glow to pull them in (large area) which will make them cluster around you, then you use Daunting Light to damage them. Then you use Searing Light to finish most trash. After that, Searing Light should become Astral Shield (definitely with Divinity) to mitigate damage and start healing yourself. Once you're left with a few tough mobs, you can Sacred Flame/Daunting Light them to death very quickly from in an Astral Shield. Flame Strike is good at killing multiples (and if it crits, everything will crit).
Tier One - trash (as healer)
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Brand of the Sun
Encounter - Prophecy of Doom
Encounter - Forgemaster's Flame
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Flame Strike
Daily - Hammer of Fate
Class - Foresight
Class - Terrifying Insight
Similar to the grinding loadout, but with Forgemaster's Flame for extra healing. Prophecy of Doom is in because you can throw it on trash for a lovely AP boost if you're having to kite more than you want..
Bosses (as DPS)
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Astral Seal
Encounter - Daunting Light
Encounter - Divine Glow
Encounter - Forgemaster's Flame (Searing Light if you have a Control Wizard who you can coordinate spells with, who has Arcane Singularity slotted, and if there are vast amounts of mobs)
Daily - Hallowed Ground
Daily - Flame Strike
Class - Holy Fervour
Class - Terrifying Insight
As a DPS, you can still serve your party by debuffing and healing. You will mainly need to take out trash, since cleric single target DPS is weak. Proper use of Divine Glow will help the group.
Bosses (as healer)
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Astral Seal
Encounter - Prophecy of Doom
Encounter - Forgemaster's Flame
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Hallowed Grounds
Daily - Hammer of Fate (Flame Strike if adds will cause you an issue)
Class - Holy Fervour (Divine Fortune, if adds are killing you fast)
Class - Foresight
Prophecy of Doom is in as an AP booster and because, with Divinity, it gives a reasonable debuff to defence. Hammer of Fate is in instead of Flame Strike because Flame Strike does rather poor damage to single targets (if you're going to be killing adds, then you can keep Flame Strike in). Hammer of Fate lets you stand still and take minimal damage from many boss attacks, which helps with stamina management and for building Divinity.
Bosses (as kiter)
At Will - Brand of the Sun
At Will - Astral Seal
Encounter - Chains of Blazing Light
Encounter - Sunburst
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Hallowed Grounds
Daily - Flame Strike if adds will cause you an issue
Class - Divine Fortune
Class - Foresight
Kiting is a hassle, but occasionally it is what your group wants. Luckily, the way healing aggro works is your friend. You can stick down an Astral Shield with divinity and the mobs that spawn continuously, will chase you. Chains and Sunburst are both capped at five targets, but with good timing that works out to ten mobs that won't be hitting you at any one point. In addition, Sunburst heals your team as well as knocking away mobs.
PVP
At Will - Sacred Flame
At Will - Brand of the Sun
Encounter - Prophecy of Doom/Chains of Blazing Light/Divine Glow (to taste)
Encounter - Sunburst
Encounter - Astral Shield
Daily - Hallowed Ground
Daily - Hammer of Fate
Class - Foresight
Class - Terrifying Insight
All about Divinity management. All of the encounters benefit from Divinity, Astral Shield is the priority here, with Sunburst being great for knocking people away from flags and off bridges. The first slot is one that really is very much based on your playstyle. If you go with an organised group using voicecoms, then Prophecy of Doom is incredible. Divine Glow hits an area, and quickly, which makes it often a little better than Daunting Light which can miss - as well as buff/debuff potential in some matches. Chains of Blazing Light is what you'll want if things are going badly, and your team sucks at teamwork.
PVP video - link . This isn't intended to demonstrate skill, it's to show that Astral Shield is an excellent thing in PVP and makes the cleric very worthwhile. The ability to solo other players (unless they're rogues who silence-lock you until you die) is very helpful as well.
The original post has the latest build in it (and working NWCALC links). The post just above is my archive.
And the link is broken because it, and this thread, was made for a build that is 3 modules old, and the nwcalc site has been updated to reflect the current state of DC feats and powers.
Are you Valindra?
Cuz ****, this some serious necromancy right here.
I'm not sure what sort of assistance can be provided to one who is either incapable of finding these threads, or discerning the difference between those new threads and ones that are over a year old.
I am a bit confused, here, when I follow the link to the build, it doesn't show any build but the front page, if I copy paste the build's info, it doesn't make any sense.
There is no new picture of any kind of build except from builds of lvl 60...
Where do you find those wonderful updated threads you are talking about?
Anyone knows where there are some viables and updated builds? All the informations I find seems to be outdated.
Sylnera
In my experience, I see two mainstreams:
- Builds based on WIS and STR (-> example: for crits)
- Builds based on WIS and CHR (-> example: for recovery or AP gain).
In my opinion both are good and this is the first decision you've to take: some clerics prefer STR, others (like myself) CHR. This choice is very important because it will be the mark and the sign of your cleric: the choice of the paragon and the cleric path will be the natural consequence of your stats.
As an example, I chose WIS and CHAR -> DC AC -> Virtuous path because my project is full heal, fast rotations and AP gain. Again, this is my own project and it fits my game play style.
Discussions about which of the two is the best are a waste of time.There's no best in my opionion, but you have to make very clear in your mind what you want to achieve, because the beauty of the cleric is that you can do a lot of things.
You can test your build in the preview server and make all the change you want for free until you're happy with your set-up.
Most of the guides are outdated, but the you can still find some hints in there that are still valid.
I'm saying that because the game has changed and it will change again in the future: there's no build that lasts forever. With the new Mod 6, I had to reshape my build in some parts and I expect that this will happen again in the near future. It will be quite difficult to keep the builds updated.
I hope this helps.
Oltreverso guild leader
Maga Othelma - DC | Svalvolo - SW | Dente Avvelenato- GWF