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Cryptic OFFICIAL Feedback Thread: Devoted Cleric Anointed Champion Paragon Path
lordgallen
Member, NW_CrypticDev, Cryptic Developers Posts: 91Cryptic Developers ›
Howdy!
The upcoming Shadowmantle module introduces new Paragon paths for all of the existing classes.
We expect a lot of great feedback so we're setting up these threads to keep it more specific.
We'll be stopping by these threads everyday so keep your feedback coming in!
Devoted Cleric - Anointed Champion
The Anointed Champion features a variety of buffs to increase the effectiveness of you and your allies, and features several powers that can save allies in over their heads.
Paragon paths contain 1 Atwill, 1 Encounter, 1 Daily, 3 Class Features, and 3 Feats.
The upcoming Shadowmantle module introduces new Paragon paths for all of the existing classes.
We expect a lot of great feedback so we're setting up these threads to keep it more specific.
We'll be stopping by these threads everyday so keep your feedback coming in!
Devoted Cleric - Anointed Champion
The Anointed Champion features a variety of buffs to increase the effectiveness of you and your allies, and features several powers that can save allies in over their heads.
Paragon paths contain 1 Atwill, 1 Encounter, 1 Daily, 3 Class Features, and 3 Feats.
Post edited by lordgallen on
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Comments
(Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)
Category: Gameplay, Powers, Feats
Bug: Feat: Name
Power did not seem to do anything, audio and hit reacts were also missing. (screenshot)
Feedback: Power: Name
Power was fun to use, but could be even better if it also did this other thing.
Thanks for your help and feedback!
The Anointed Champion Paragon Powers are ....
• Encounter Power – Exaltation:
o You bless target ally and yourself with ancient blessings, Healing both of you and then temporarily granting increased damage, and reduced incoming damage.
o Divinity: When first cast, both you and your target are briefly immune to damage, and have Regeneration while the buff is active
• Atwill Power – Blessing of Battle:
o As you prepare to strike your target, you bless nearby allies and yourself with a minor defensive prayer that reduces incoming damage.
• Daily Power – Anointed Army:
o Divine brilliance burns your foes and grants your allies blessings that once warded the armies of the gods. While blessed, allies take very little damage, are immune to control effects, and have greatly increased power.
o These blessings are removed early when a recipient is damaged, and when removed, they bestow a small amount of Temporary Hit Points to their holder.
• Class Feature – Anointed Action:
o After using a daily power, you temporarily deal increased damage, and reduced incoming damage.
• Class Feature – Anointed Armor:
o Anoint your armor with powerful blessings, increasing your AC.
• Class Feature – Anointed Holy Symbol:
o Using Divinity powered Encounter abilities now grants Temporary Hit Points to nearby allies.
• Feat – Battle Fervor:
o Blessing of Battle’s buff now also increases power by a percentage.
• Feat – Prestigious Exaltation:
o Increases duration of Exaltation buff by a percentage and heals are increased by a percentage while you are buffed.
• Feat – Ancient Warding:
o When the Anointed Army daily buff ends, the holder is Healed for a percentage of their max Hit Points, and gains a percentage of their total Action Points.
Blessing of Battle’s power increase buff is not reflected in my stats.
Extra ranks of the skill don't seem to have any effect or reflect on character sheet.
First you need use skill.
Bug: Power: Blessing of Battle
Icon shows that I have buff but nothing change in stats, can't see difference in battle. With feat I can see that my power is increased.
Bug: Feat: Anointed Holy Symbol
Idk whether increasing rank giving proper effect
Feedback: Power: Blessing of Battle
Animation is long
Feedback: Power: Exaltation
Heal is very low
Thanks for the heads up. The power is giving the correct buff but there was no indication of the buff being applied to the character sheet.
I have sent the issue to the devs.
Tests with full a full set gear and the Rank 3 of Anointed Armor shows that an AC increase was given and shown on the character sheet.
Do you feel that the buff amount could be improved?
I am showing 22 AC w/out anointed and only 24 with it. I was expecting to see 2+3+3 = 8 added to may AC for a total of 30 AC.
I do have 3 ranks in that class feature and have attached screenshots of it on and off. It is a whopping 1% damage mitigation as it stands, which is worthless. Even the new Wicked Strike buff is several times better than that.
To be useful it would need to add at least 5% to total damage mitigation.
Am I crazy? Can anyone else confirm this not working?
Will take a look in the AC issue. It's increasing your AC by 10%, but should perhaps be a flat value instead to give a more meaningful benefit. (will still be a fairly low value in the end though, but better than 1%)
Something to consider when comparing it to Wicked Strike though is that Wicked Strike must be constantly hitting the target to maintain the debuff.
Just food for thought so we are comparing passive to passive defensive skills.
GWF class feature Bravery adds 8% deflection at 50% severity = ~ 4% mitigation.
It also adds a run speed bonus of 15%.
This new DC class feature is horribly unbalanced on the very poor end of the spectrum.
Unless it is in the neighborhood of 4-5% mitigation + some other added benefit no-one will ever slot this. Please compare this to "Foresight" as well..
Like the idea of this, but the animation seems unnecessarily slow. And that's saying something considering that DC already has some of the longest animations in the game.
Feedback: Power: Anointed Army
Maybe I just don't understand this one yet, but I'm not sure I grasp the benefit of a Sunburst-sized PBAoE that deals a tiny bit of damage and grants nice-sounding buffs up until a strong breeze hits the recipients and ends that part of the spell. I feel like I must be missing something here, because I know the dev team isn't making useless powers on purpose.
Feedback: Power: Exaltation
EDIT: Revising my feedback. As a heal, Exaltation may not be amazing, but the added benefits are actually quite decent and offset the low tooltip heal. My only complaint is that the "regeneration" from using the power in Divine mode is affected by Righteousness. Not surprised, but disappointed.
I love that these new Paragon Paths are coming out, and the dev team is obviously playing it a bit conservatively, but the new options need to be competitive with what's already available. Especially in the case of the DC, which is often cited as the most disadvantaged class in the game when it comes to viable skill, feat, and equipment selections as it is.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
If you mention Bravery, it only add 3,2% or even more less. You have to count DR into your value. And the calculated 20% DR is poorly real. More 40% or 50% is real so it's only 2-2,4% then. And not every class feature must be a upgrade of one existing.
Well compared to it's buffs it's kinda OK I think - I'd say lower the buff/bufftime and raise attackspeed...
edit: maybe create a stackable thing...
About Anointed Armor:
Got 22AC without, got 24AC with it.
10% of 22 are 2.2 if I'm not totally wrong, since the ACs only display full numbers, it's working like it should, does it not?
The damage reduction point happening in the background is an total other issue (to me)...
The 16 second cooldown on Exaltation seems very long, as it stands without Prestigious the buff ends well before the duration of the cooldown (30.1% recharge decrease), then adding 5/5 in Prestigious Exaltation seems to have very little or no effect on this duration either as the buff ends with 5s or so left on cooldown with and without the feat. I really like the power as an alternative to Healing Word, but as its replacing Prophecy of Doom I'm hard pressed to justify the choice with the issues that exist.
Feedback: Anointed Army
It seems to be a worse version of Astral Shield, which given it is the same level and a daily power is an issue. Still I do like the idea as an alternative to the Divine Oracle power in the same position.
Feedback: Anointed Armor
I also see a jump from 21 to 23 AC, and as others have said for a feature that is competing with Foresight I don't think it makes the grade.
Feedback: General
I really wanted to go this way, but as it stands there is no reason to make the change to this PP from Oracle. This is a situation only made worse by the Paragon feat trees that are available to the cleric. Having tried playing a Righteous build and then re-read the Faithful path with more care I don't see the dominance of Faithful Oracle DCs changing any time soon. Righteous does not give enough dps increase to follow it through and nor does Virtuous give the flexibility to make it a viable choice. The powers lost from Oracle are not replaced with powers that create an effective replacement by choosing Champion. Champion seems like a good PP for a Paladin, but it is not a good replacement for the Oracle for Clerics.
Right now I would describe much of the DC as a trap; powers & feats that seem to promise "good things" but are in fact ineffective.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
I 100% agree, the new paragon seems to be good at first but its rly weak comparing to the old paragon, see as an example of foresight... with feat forsight can buff for 11% DR for all party members while Anointed Armor give a bit more then 1% only to you.... the diference is HUGE.
I must also add that the new at-will seems good but the animation are to **** slow... drop dmg and incrase the animation speed.
I think that anointed armor would return damage to attackers from 5% to 15% of non mitigated damage (augmented with talents to 25%, 2% for point)
or
Feedback: Power: Anointed Armor
Damage reduction when you being hit, may be 5% of DR for each hit, last for 2 sec and can stack 2 time for point for a total of 6 points - 30 DR maxed, talents may increase the last time to max 5 sec (1 sec for each point), for a total of 7 sec. lasting buff.
What is the point to have a (bad) clone of foresight?
The same for others powers, this path would focus on damage and immunities other than healing.
Feedback: Power: Exaltation
Should last at least the same as ITC, the heal may be fine.
Feedback: Power: Anointed Army
Let the buff stay for all the time and not only for first 3 hits.
Feedback: Power: Blessing of Battle
Too slow.
Feedback: general
make damage/healing dealt on divinity mode builds divinity points, so it's more efficient having item or talents that give +% to divinity regeneration (at some point divinity generation and consumption will be the same and you can use taunting light or sooting indefinitely, to build more divinity you must use enconuter in normal mode).
Let to launch (automatically) encounter powers in normal mode when not enought divinity and you are in divinity mode, too many times switching to or from divinity is not working as intended and is affected by lag, many times you run out divinity and remain like a statue in the middle of a fight waiting for switching to normal to launch some spell.
p.s. sorry for my english.
Even if it was a flat value would be still very weak and no one wants another foresight ( weaker btw ).
How about this:
Anoint your armor with powerful blessings, allowing it to mitigate 50% of any negative effect that comes against you. Can happen once every 30/25/20 seconds. Your healings will also provide this bonus to allies as well.
So Blessing of Battle will be getting an animation speed increase.
It's still intended to be a slower power, but not to it's current degree.
As mentioned earlier, Anointed Armor will also have it's values looked at.
Keep the feedback coming!
Feedback: Brand of the Sun Vs Blessing of battle
Brand of the sun is a popular encounter power in dungeons as it allows you to place a dot on multiple enemys and build up divinity while focussing on healing.
Blessing of Battle in itself is hard to place without knowing the exact strength of the defence buff. The area of effect seems to be a little larger then sunburst and the buff lasts comparably long, allowing you to easily apply it to your teammates and do some healing inbetween as long as you are able to place attacks. For Builds and Groups where divinity is not an issue, the extra defence could thus be useful, otherwise the cleric will be too occupied with Kiting to make use of it.
It should also be noted that "Sacred Flame" already fills the "Boost teammates survivability while attacking" role and won't force you to charge into the fray yourself. (It is more reliant on continuous attacks, though)
It's situational, but brand seems slightly better to me. You can stay outside the fray in PvP and PvE and focus on something else while getting divinity, and the power boost from "Battle fervour" seems worse then debuffing the damage and crit of multiple targets using "Power of the sun"
Feedback: Prophecy of Doom vs exhaltion
Prophecy of doom s damage is largely neglectable and most clerics I spoke to find other powers more rewarding to use. I personally seem to get more AP, and especially more reliable AP gain, with sunburst and also more utility from the later. Might be personal preference, though.
Exhalation seems like a single target version of Astral Shield. The difference being the additional damage boost and non reliance on divinity for the heal. It suffers from the same targeting issues as healing word does when used on allies, making it less reliable, and astral Seal seems to do an overall better job at healing and damage neglection during dungeon runs (Lasting longer, slightly less downtime, affects entire group). I can see use for this skill in PvP, though, where it could provide more flexibility, a buff to your overall healing (with the associated feat) and be less Divinity reliant then Astral Shield. (But I'm not much of a PvPler so I might err)
Both skills seem to be outclassed by other skills during Dungeon PvE, but Exhalation wins this one thanks to looking more useful in Single player PvE and PVP.
Feedback: Hammer of Faith vs Anointed Army
I miss Hammer of Faith... used to be a great spell to finish of wounded players in PvP, but apparently someone told the Devs that it allows clerics to actually get points for killing stuff occasionally and we couldn't have this. So now it's mediocre single target DPS, outclassed by many encounter powers. But hey, you get some of the AP you used back if you manage to kill the enemy now that you have far less of a chance to actually kill the enemy.
Anointed Army feels utterly redundant when you finally are able to get it. Aside from dealing some damage (slightly more then fricking sunburst) it does nothing that Divine shield and Hallowed ground don't do already, just better. Especially Hallowed ground has both the Defence and Damage boost angle covered, but lasts much longer, over a far larger Area, can be upgraded with a very potent heal and won't be dispelled when the ally is damaged, which, quite honestly, happens about every second or so during bossfights.
There is CC immunity, but it'll be dispelled once the ally is hit and dealing DPS with that spell during Dungeon runs is like spitting into an ocean. The power might be worth taking when the buffs aren't dispelled on damage, though it is still one of many trying to fit into the same niche and you get it fairly late.
It's kinda meh vs very meh. Hammer of Faith wins, thanks to occupying a niche among the Dailys that isn't already covered by two other, better Dailys.
Feedback: Foresight vs Anointed Armour
Foresight is one of three skills with Daunting light and Astral Shield where many guides state that if you don't pick them, you fail as a cleric. This might be over Dramatic and it is quite feasable to swap it out in some situations, but as Cleric passives go, it is among the best, giving a decent defence boost to your and, if handled well, your entire party that gets even better with the right feat.
Anointed armour just can't live up to this. It won't buff your allies and the amount of defence you get out of 10% more AC seems less then foresight, unless you have a really large amount of AC to begin with.
Clear point for the Oracle and foresight
Feedback: Terrifying Insight vs Anointed Action
Clerics aren't much of DPS dealers to begin with. In Single player PvE, you will rather go towards Killing enemies quickly instead of facing the prolonged brawls to trigger Terrifying Insight, and in Dungeons you'll be healing. The Feat has a place in DPS builds, though.
Anointed Action Is very, very build specific. it only triggers on the use of a daily and only for 5 seconds, so unless your build is based around getting AP for the daily as fast as possible I can't see it doing much good. With a longer buff time it might do well to support builds that focius on Rapid AP gain, though I'm not sure if Clerics even have those. <.<
Both are very situational and build specific, but in a DPS build, Insight feels less outclassed by other passives.
Feedback: Prophetic action vs Anointed Holy Symbol
Prophetic action is unreliable. It might fend of a huge AoE attack or a rouges burst damage in PvP, but it is far more likely to trigger on one of the dozens of small cuts you constantly get in-between those.
I personally prefer reliable spells and Anointed Holy Symbol actually delivers in that regard. The amount of Temp HP is decent, they last fairly long and you are using your Encounter powers often enough to refresh them constantly. As far as passives go, it seems well balanced.
Point for the Champion, thus.
-
I wouldn't trade my Oracle for the champion as it is now, only two of 6 skills seem better and only 1 of these two isn't outclassed by other skills. The Champion path also doesn't seem to be decisively different to the Oracle path, both seem to try to cover pretty much the same areas and with some exceptions only swap out skills that don't seem to see much use to begin with.
It doesn't feel like a different path to take for my cleric, but more like walking the same path and my boots have a different colour.
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Firstly THANK YOU for providing some fixes into Armor Penetration for DC skills.
Divine Oracle was a more personal DPS oriented tree with Foresight as one of the best DC class features. BoTS, Terrifying Insight, HoF (post nerf) are all decent powers and help immensely when soloing content. Of these, Foresight, BoTS and personally HoF were the important skills here.
Anointed Champion appears to be a more defensive paragon path. There are more defensive buffs and encounters which supplement a pure healing build. From my testing, Anointed Holy Symbol and Exaltation are the key features of this paragon along with Blessings of Battle (rest are rubbish). This also seems to offer more for tanky defensive PvP builds.
I'm going to compare our skills against existing encounters/powers for an opinion because they compete for the same slots.
Feedback: Blessing of Battle and Battle Fervor
Animation is very long, which limits its use in the thick of battle. As Lordgallen described it will be shortened so will wait for reassessment before commenting.
Feedback: Exaltation and Prestigious Exaltation
Great skill in PvP. For PvE it does depend on personal loadout but for me I think it has situational uses only in specific fights or to protect main DPS CW. Divinity gain is a problem because if you miss your target and cast it only on self you don't get any divinity. Otherwse the heal and divinity effects are ok. Requires a lot of precision and timing to use right and effectively so a good challenge if you want to up your game. Cooldown is a bit long but understandable. DPS buff and divinity generation is weak compared to Divine Glow so I'll probably stick with DG in my main rotation. The divinity regen should not be affected by righteousness.
As an experiment I tried healing Malabogs Castle up to 2nd boss with the guild using Hallowed Ground (no moontouched)/ Anointed Army/ Exaltation/Sunburst/Divine Glow/ Blessing of Battle/Sacred Flame and no Astral Shield successfully. Exaltation helps a lot with that, but for most PUGs they probably won’t adapt to that. Healing was chaotic, to say the least, and GF found it significantly harder to tank. Exaltation is good, but no Astral Shield killer.
As a PvE DC who probably will only use this power situationally, the feat does not provide enough benefit or utility compared to other faithful feats to justify the points.
Feedback: Anointed Army and Ancient Warding
Nice idea in theory, but I think the group buff should not expire when one person takes damage, but individually. Probably more useful in PvP than PvE.
The benefits from the feat do not provide any sufficient incentive to take it compared to the other 3 opening righteous feats. The AP return is pathetic- perhaps a +20% AP gain boost for 10s may make it a contender without overlapping the utility of the other DC dailys.
Feedback: Anointed Armor
As pointed out by other testers, utterly useless as it’s a self buff and not competitive with existing class features. The only point of the 10% AC worth it is if it’s always active even without slotting the power, and even then I probably will skip it unless it adds up to 10 AC. DCs already have sufficient damage reduction that this does not add anything to the table.
For the feature to be competitive I feel it should offer something unique. For example, +25/50/75% resistance to CC /negative effects and reduced CC duration would make it suitable for some PVP builds and fill in a niche.
Feedback: Anointed Holy Symbol
This is honestly the ONLY thing the new paragon offers that make it enticing to me. ~8-10% Temp HP on divinity encounters is great and I like the synergy with deepstone blessing/Sacred Flame/sunburst. I know it does not stack currently if multiple encounters are used in divinity and am ok with that. Fits very well with the DC class role that wither healing or DPSing you still provide benefits to your party.
Overall opinion:
For PvP, Anointed Champion has a lot to offer. But for a PvE Dc like me Anointed holy symbol is the only good enough reason to consider the new path. Exaltation is simply too situational.
What I miss with the AC path is my DPS. BoTS actually can constitute a huge proportion of personal DPS and I miss it. Even as an well geared armorpen specced debuff DC (thank goodness for some of the fixes to Arpen calcs in DC skills btw) I found at times my DPS lacking in solo Dread Ring content, especially against casters and ranged mobs because they interrupt your cast very often. I’d imagine pure tank/defensive builds may struggle even more against bone golems and similar boss mobs.
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Quite a boring encounter power actually, feels even more that your are reduced to be the buff bot of the party, also when basically 1 encounter power is used for Astral Shield already, the second for Sunburst/Healing Word you would have to sacrifice Forgemaster's Flame for this one and I really can't see much use of this encounter.
• Atwill Power – Blessing of Battle:
Much, much too slow atwill power. This also does not really feel like you are striking the enemies, because it is totally boring slow. Also I rather take Sacred Flame instead (the 2nd one is Astral Seal of course) because it hits faster, I build more AP and Divinity with it over the same time and on top of that it gives temporary hitpoints. This is also a power that is worse than the popular Sacred Flame, Astral Seal and Brand of the Sun. I see no real use in it either.
• Daily Power – Anointed Army:
Nice idea to have some sort of ward that is removed (up to 3) when you are hit BUT: Divine Armor seems superior actually. They are not so much different anyway and if I would have to choose I would most likely go for Divine Armor. I would use it if I could spend unlimited points, but since my points are limited and I would have to take those points away from other abilities I rather would stick to Divine Armor.
• Class Feature – Anointed Action:
Too situative. As a healer it is key to have passive powers that are permanent. I don't need a small buff that might kick in every minute or even less - depending on how fast I could build up AP and with powers like Exaltation it takes longer anyway. Definetely nothing I would use.
• Class Feature – Anointed Armor:
In comparison to Foresight it is a joke, seriously. It is just a filler passive like stuff we already have an no one picks anyway. Why even add abilities that only someone will take when he is new to the game and will respec as soon as he has another free spec anyway?
• Class Feature – Anointed Holy Symbol:
Sound interesting, but again - when it comes to 2 passives I rather go with Foresight and Healer's Lore in Dungeons.
• Feat – Battle Fervor:
Since the abilitiy is not the best, the feat will be rather pointless. I am no fan anyway of feats that enhance a special ability that you use very situative anyway. Boosting an ability like Astral Shield which I use daily is fine, but boosting an ability which I sometimes use while soloing or when I do easy dungeons is just not worth the points.
• Feat – Prestigious Exaltation:
See above, the ability itself is not the one that I would use constantly. Thus spending even more points on it is a waste.
• Feat – Ancient Warding:
That one sound good, but since the daily will most likely not been picked because Divine Armor is not much worse, this becomes obsolete, too.
Overall I am very disappointed with this Paragon path. I wanted to change it in the beginning but now I don't feel the urge anymore. It is nothing special, has no real flavor to it. I liked the idea of having cool group buffs now but the path itself is just weak overall. I rather stick to the stuff I have. I'd like to pick one or two of those additionally to the path I already have, but switching mine and basically lose Foresight for a handful stuff that doesn't really feel better, doesn't sound like a good idea.
There is a reasonable chance that the feat may get toned down abit to be more in line with other options.
With that said, Anointed Armor is currently too weak and will also get bumped up a bit to be more comparable.
I'd like to suggest that toning down existing options that are popular with players to make new, less amazing features more palatable by comparison may not be the best way to go about encouraging diversity. At the very least, please try not to taketh without the giveth in some other form, because DCs will need a tablespoon of sugar to wash down a bitter nerf to the effectiveness of the old Paragon Path's best loved class feature.
As for Anointed Armor, it should be bumped up considerably since it affects only the DC and cannot be shared with party members.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
If you are going to adjust feats or powers that you feel were designed wrong and are overpowered, please also adjust the ones that need buffs. Initiate of the faith, healing action, domain synergy are all very poor feats.
While not likely not happening for this patch, less helpful feats will be getting love in the in the relative future.
Benefit of Foresight might be get adjusted then instead.
Regardless of how it shakes out, Anointed Armor will be getting buffed either way.
There seems to be no real visual indicator when you cast this onto an ally. When you cast for example healing word you see a glowing bubble thing flying to your ally. This way you can also easily see if you really hit the one you have targeted or if you have just targeted yourself when there is no glowing bubble at all.
With Exaltation I often don't even know if it was applied or not. There should be a similar visual effect, either like Healing word or some ray that hits the target.