Feedback: Cleric
Greetings adventurers,
Asterdahl here! This thread is for providing bug reports and feedback on the upcoming changes to cleric in Module 16. If you haven't already please take a moment to read Noworries'
M16: Overview thread.
The most important takeaway in terms of class feedback is: we are still making changes to class powers, both functional and numerical. We wanted to get your hands on the changes sooner than usual. However, as a result, we ask that you realize what you see on preview will change, sometimes dramatically before launch. If you find your perfect build on preview, it may not be the perfect build on live. Powers you feel are very strong, may not stay as strong. We ask for your patience with these changes.
Finally, there are some known issues going into the initial preview build. Particularly in feats, a number of feats may reference powers that are not available when the feat is unlocked, or in some rare cases, reference powers which no longer exist. We have made a number of changes coming out of closed beta, and it is our short term goal to have these feats updated in the near future.
As always, thank you for taking the time to come check things out on preview, we look forward to your feedback!
Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs
For posting feedback and bugs, please follow the following format to ensure your feedback and bugs are seen clearly and processed in a timely manner, thank you!
Type: Bug/
Feedback (Please only choose one)
If you are listing a bug please have this text in
RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use
CYAN. If you are replying to another user's post, asking a question, or just engaging in general discussion, please do not color your posts, general discussion is welcome and we will read all of it, regardless of color! You can use BBCode to color your text:
<font color=cyan>This text will display in cyan.</font>
<font color=red>This text will display in red.</font>
Examples:Bug: Piercing Light said it deals damage to enemies in a line, but it only dealt damage to my primary target.Feedback: Bastion of Health doesn't feel strong enough, it's like I'm barely able to heal up my group after they take a big hit.
Comments
Chains of BL.. no longer does damage.. just holds target. I find this odd.. but I guess changes are changes.. just have to use new powers.
While I find the existence of a Feat to turn off knockback from Sunburst HILARIOUS, why not just remove it from the power entirely? It's been an anti-feature for years, to the point where DCs get kicked from parties for using it.
Removing the channelling at-wills, though? GREAT decision, I wholly support it.
Devout clerics will still have plenty of opportunity to DPS between heals during group play, when their group is not making a lot of mistakes.
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If you don't take that feat, we don't see it as a power you'd use in most group play environments, and that's okay, there are other options.
In regards to your damage coming in under the healing warlock: we're aware that Soulweaver is in a bit of a messed up spot at the moment. Their DPS is too high and their healing is too low, we'll be making a pass over them ASAP to bring them more in line.
In regards to the artifact dealing a ton of damage, we're aware that some artifacts and mount powers that are dealing unexpectedly high damage, these of course are going to completely invalidate any attempt to compare damage with someone who is using one. Those should be fixed for the next preview build.
In regards to your ability to deal damage as an arbiter. Arbiter is in a pretty good place in terms of damage dealing from our internal tests, but we've had a lot more time to play around with the changes. Keep playing around with your build and trying things out. Things have changed a lot.
The judgement mechanic you are talking about which gives you stacks of radiant or burning judgement is hardly useless. You shouldn't be using encounters or dailies without a full charge of the proper element, as they dramatically boost the damage of those spells. Additionally, you can burn extra pips with channel divinity to get your divinity back much, much faster.
In regards to you dying from a single hit, what enemies were killing you in a single hit? Some of our dungeons still need additional adjustments, it is definitely not the case that in all dungeons, clerics are being killed in a single hit, so that's a bug. With the possible exception of highly telegraphed abilities that give you ample of time to dodge, you should be able to take a few hits before dying if you have proper equipment.
Finally, in regards to incidental healing, sources of incidental healing are intentionally gone. Healing is now an active role which should require a dedicated healer in group content. This change is so that we can provide more interesting and varied challenges, and so that taking damage can be something meaningful, allowing us to provide punishment for mistakes beyond simply killing players outright (which is not always an appropriate response for making a single mistake!)
As to the judgement mechanic. As someone who looked at it today, i'm struck with horrible flashbacks of spell weaving from many mods back. I don't really know what to say about this - i understand there are people who hate the divinity empowerment system. Perhaps we should avoid spellchaining completely since the gui is simply not helping to make anything easier here. The reason he feels the mechanic is not helping is because it is not clear what powers need to used to properly trigger the bonus damge.
for example. flamestrike is a radiant power that grants 1 radiant pip. it burns up radiance to give bonus damage. Really ? it's not fire ? I would expect flamestrike to use fire to boost it and hammer to use radiant.
i'm just coming to grips with these changes. Perhaps make radiant powers have a yellow tooltip and fire powers have a red tooltip ?
thanks a bunch.
edit : exalt into divine might - brief periods the dc fights like a warrior. good times
Its best to think of it in terms of a scale, fire spells tip the scale towards radiance, and when you finally cast a radiant spell it does extra damage and starts tipping it back towards fire.
In the closed beta the elements were reversed. The effect was the same, but fire spells granted fire stacks, and then those increased radiant damage, and visa-versa. Feedback was mostly that it was confusing that way, but both ways take a little getting used to. We may change it back as feedback continues.
Contagion - Cleric
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That being said, Cleric does not have "zero buffs/debuffs," in fact, they do have Break the Spirit, Geas, and Hallowed Ground.
And as a result of the buffs being reasonable values, you won't have the case where in normal fights you just die if you're unbuffed. Instead, buffs are a way to increase divinity management efficiency, or necessary in very difficult fights.
That being said, I'm assuming you mostly have offensive buffs and debuffs on your mind. Devout clerics do have access to the Anointed Arms feat which does give Anointed Army a damage enhancing component. Also, arbiter clerics do have break the spirit which increases the target's damage taken from magic and projectiles. Arbiter is the only class which can increase the target's damage taken by two damage types with a single power, a nod to cleric's longstanding role as the master of buffs and debuffs.
i tried to edit this down to the most basic problem i was having.
Is it possible to have the powers grouped into three areas in the power menu.
1 for fire spells
1 for radiant spells
and one for everything else? This is probably the clearest way i can think of, about making it clear which order you oshould spell chain in. If that was clear - then i would have no issues - as it is i will have to write down all this information onto paper and sort it out. I would much rather bang my head farming influence - i mean - i need influence - influence is life...
if this spellchaining could be explained more clearly in game, than i would have no issues.
I rememebr in mod 6 we tested divinity spells and empowered, each slotted power had its own counter for empowering charges and people hated casting the same spell 3 times in a row to get to the empowered version. so far the fire and radiant method seems clunky to me. There was spell weaving which, if i remember correctly was cast three heal spells to get a more dangerous damage spell, or three damage spells to get a more dangerous heal spell.
the knowledge of which spell is boosted by fire and which spell is boosted by radiant is where the broken telephone is happening.
thanks!
We may consider further options to make this even more clear, but give it a few days of messing around with it, and let us know if you're still confused. We'd rather not splinter the character power sheet between classes for something that after a few days of playing with becomes fairly intuitive. That being said, it may not become intuitive after a few days, so we appreciate your continued feedback. Leaving Hallowed Ground aside for now, as I urge you to keep playing around with it in group content, Astral Shield is another spell that takes some getting used to but is not at all impractical. It also provides a significant mitigation buff and a decent heal over time. You can also start and stop channeling it as you wish, and use it remotely.
You can get some serious divinity efficiency using hallowed ground and healing word instead of bastion of health, leaving you with more divinity to deal damage. Hallowed ground is also excellent to throw up before a tank buster or a huge party-wide damage along with hallowed ground.
In terms of temporary health and shields, we've made a deliberate reduction to these. Because we'd like to bring enemy damage down to something reasonable, so that players aren't exploding when they don't have buffs, we needed to remove things like that, as they would totally trivialize damage values that were balanced against players without those shields or temporary hit points.
That said, paladin does have a few shields built into their powers (though much smaller than pre Module 16.) Cleric is primarily focused on bigger heals and heal over times, with a straightforward, reactionary healing style, while Paladin is slightly more focused on a more mitigative and preparatory healing style.
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