Speechless. If feels like you have just gone and destroyed something I have grown to love. I have logged in close to 1000 hours, and spent enough money on this game to pay your bills. I play several classes, but the cleric is far and away my main class. I play end-game content, and especially like group dungeons. I have built a very balanced cleric from both an offensive and defensive stand point. She is also able to do very good DPS and healing. She is a hybrid, and I have grown to love everything about her.
I have tested the new cleric concept on the test server, and am very disappointed.
In my opinion, the cleric was fine as it was. DPS, healing, survivability, and mechanics...all wonderful. It didn't need to be "fixed" in my opinion. It required a great deal of focus, but was simple in design. Simple in a good way. Now it seems like it will be difficult to build a hybrid, cumbersome to play either way, and likely fall very short on DPS (unless I play a DPS build that is useless for healing). The entire thing, taken as a whole, feels like a major nerf. Please reconsider. You are about to ruin the class in my opinion.
I guess I should try and be more specific. Here are a few things that don't seem to be good ideas to me.
1. Astral Shield - nerfed. Are you serious? Have you ever even played this class?
2. Daunting Light - my main DPS spell will be rendered useless...and there does not appear to be a suitable replacement.
3. Sun Burst - knock back on non-divine spell. Are you kidding? Have you ever play this class in a group dungeon?
4. New mechanics are too cumbersome. Genius is the ability to simplify the complex. Stupidity is the ability to complicate the simple. Think about it. In your effort to fix that which is not broken, you only end up breaking it.
I dont understand why are they changed all class mechanic WHY?Cant believe that my DC will became completly something else after 1.5 year playing. Divine,empowered,normal mode WTF- Total loss of control....I will need to change the name of him also because it will be some other DC obviously.The best thing is to DELETE my DC and make new one so i can test new class mechanic and see all changes through leveling cos leveling is best learning process. Is that purpose of those changes?
Now it seems like it will be difficult to build a hybrid, cumbersome to play either way, and likely fall very short on DPS (unless I play a DPS build that is useless for healing).
I think the idea behind the new Righteous tree is not only to do DPS but also be a debuffer and buffer. It's the concept of less healing needed because of melting and weakened enemies.
With Bear Your Sins apply kind of a base debuff (foes take up to 10% more damage from all sources). Condemning Gaze gives another 15% from all sources for 15 seconds. If you are managing your encounter rotation well, it could be easy to get a high uptime for Condemning Gaze. Now add the High Prophet debuff and Divine Glow (which is now healing too) and you have a pretty nice buff/debuff loadout. If that still isn't enough use Break the Spirit on elites to lower their damage dealt, which in return means less healing needed. In addition Empowered Break the Spirit buffs your allies with increasing their damage.
Of course, this has to be tested in detail. This is just a theory in my mind
In general I like the new trees. Because I now have to choose one of them - and it's really hard choose which is the best for me. They said they wanted to avoid hybrid builds and at least in my case they managed to do that very well
Last night i was running cn in preview and managed to do crit on empowered daunting light for 127k damage. There may have been a divine glow applied as a debuff by another dc and i was using a perfect terror. a three stack empowered daunting light is going to be your most powerful attack. (ouch if that had been a vorpal).
Get into a pattern of building up your divinity to a full three pips, which currently does not take too long and can be planned for in a dungeon for when you reach a mini boss. You then open up the pattern with a divine glow, followed by three divine light, followed by empowered divine light. It does not matter if you crit or not - its going to hurt anything you target. To make it easier to aim, just walk right up to your target.
Feedback: Prophecy of doom.
I really feel the action point gain on this spell is too high. Especially when soloing. It feels like a license to print action points. I feel like i have so many action points they are leaking out and going to the player next to me. Whatever i want to kill, that is not a boss, dies to a flurry of divinely powered casting. righteous build, not a righteous build - doesn't matter, it's all food for the ap meter. Perhaps this is why hammer of fate had its damage reduced, but hammer of fate is doing less damage than flame strike.
Hammer of fate should be doing more damage than daunting light - or it should have some pretty spiffy utility to it that makes me want to unslot flame strike.
I pretty much concur with most of what you and others are saying about other things, especially about the Empowerment mechanic. My primary complaint about that is how slow it feels (getting to the point of using it: first generate divinity, then use divinity, then get to use Empowerment: too many steps). And DC already feels somewhat lethargic as compared to every other class (even GF).
I think that the main reason DC feels so sluggish,is a combination between slow casting animations and us losing healing step,which allowed us a bit more mobility around the battlefield.It's something I'll definitely miss :P
On the subject of empowerment,I understand that it's a completely new thing which is obviously not that easy to get used to.I might be predisposed to liking it,because in all games, I tend to play either the healer or the class that is the most complex,as it feels like a challenge,which I find fun; and this combines both! The extra depth is certainly tougher to master,but extra complexity usually comes with greater utility and a greater variety of options.You have more things at your disposal to work with,as a reaction to anything that happens (unless it's the type of complexity that simply makes gameplay user-unfriendly and doesn't offer anything in return,which so far does not seem to be the case in my opinion.) It just takes time and practice,till we learn how to play effectively again.When we joined the game,none of us knew what all the powers did.We had to learn.We also had to memorize what kind of bonuses the divine version offers.And finally,we had to learn to manage divinity.I remember my OB days,when I had to constantly check my divine points,trying to make sure I have enough, yet often running out regardless.Now, over a year later,I have grown used to the class.I dont have to think "What will healing word do if I cast it?" or "What does AS do in divine mode?".Managing divinity is also pretty much done subconciously now and mistakes have been greatly reduced.In short,I have grown more accustomed to the class and the playstyle.Now,we need to do that again.This is the first time such a big change comes to the game,so I understand the frustration; usually changes involved a couple of powers changing a few effects,maybe a full rework of feats too,but never before has the playstyle been affected so much,with a whole new mechanic.The question though should be "Is it worth it?" Are the changes this new mechanic adds good enough, to justify re-learning the class from scratch?
For me,the answer so far is -yes-.Dont stick to reading the updates.Dont stick to testing on dummies.Run content on Mimic instead.And more importantly,give it time so you can actually get used to the changes,to value the impact of the new mechanic.I am,by no means,saying I have learned the new playstyle.Nor am I saying others should agree.What Im saying is,by spending a lot of hours practicing,I see me being A LOT more effective than on live.
-Here's a tip,for anyone actually willing enough to invest some time learning the new cleric playstyle,yet having trouble getting used to it:
Step 1: Pick the powers you want.Focus mostly on what the normal version does.Thankfully,most powers follow the same concept as they did in the past,only gaining a few things here and there (for example,daunting light is still a aoe damage encounter,divine glow is still the aoe debuff,now with extra healing etc).
Note: Avoid bugged powers,such as AS or Divine Fortune,as these will most likely get fixed,meaning you got used to them for nothing.
Step 2: Once you have your setup,go do some content.Depending on how confident you feel,this can range anywhere between simple level 60 mobs,to daily dungeons,to actual dungeons or pvp.
Step 3: Build divinty with at-wills,keeping in mind your encounters dont provide divine points anymore.You can still fill up your divine points fast,so it wont be a problem.This part takes some getting used to,because if you rely on encounters too much and forget about at wills (which is easy to do now with the 0 cd divine versions),you'll run out fast.
Step 4: Every time you're about to use an encounter,STOP! Switch to divine mode first,cast the divine version and THEN cast the normal version.This has 2 benefits:
a)You dont need to memorize what all 3 versions of an encounter power do.You get them all every time and you can actually see the effect.This makes it easier to learn what you can potentially get from each power.
b)You dont have to trouble yourself with keeping an eye on stacks.It's always the same: You make one stack and then instantly consume it.
Step 5: As you start getting used to your new powers' effects and feel you build divinty in-between reliably well,start thinking about your actual divinity consumption.Do you really need a stronger,more effective power every time? If you have cleared a bunch of mobs and are now left fighting the last survivor,you might want to use a heal to replenish the hp you lost.But,you are in no real danger of actually dying now,are you? So,you dont actually need a stronger heal.Therefore,dont use the divine version and just use normal.On the other hand,if you accidentally pulled more adds and are almost dead,you need heals and you need them strong! It's ok if you dont yet know exactly what the divine version or the empowered version offers,you just know,you are about to die and your regular heals with just 1 empowered stack will probably not be enough.So you sacrifice the only thing you have,your stacks, to the gods of healing,luck and anything else that can help you.And see what happens.(Actually,I tried to recreate such scenarios on test server on purpose,just to get used to managing my stacks better under pressure *hint*)
Step 6: Keep practicing! You'll get more and more aware of what all powers do and how to manage your divine points effectively.
I cant guarantee this "guide" will work for everyone.What I do know however,is that I spent most of my weekend on test server doing this and I feel a lot more used to the class.In fact,switching back to live server today (I was only logging on Mimic for the weekend) made me feel really weird about the old playstyle and took me a few minutes to get used to how little divinity my at wills were granting,how weaker my heals were or how much less damage I was dealing!
Again,Im not saying I'm right and anyone who disagrees is wrong.I liked the old playstyle a lot,but I definitely see the potential in this one.Just make sure to actually give it a proper chance before turning it down so fast.It does need some fine tuning,yes,but this can only be done if we provide actual feedback,not "Omg you dont know what you are doing,gimme my old stuff back nao or I quit".
Feedback: DC heroic feats need a rework, they are not terrible but still mostly subpar when compared to other classes after mod4 rework
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited October 2014
Some thoughts about builds:
With the proposed changes, it will be easy to build a DPS/buff hybrid, or a pure healing DC. What is not so easy is to build a heal/buff hybrid or a heal/DPS hybrid.
The DC is effectively being forced into one of two roles, and we lose some of the flexibility we had earlier.
Let's consider the premise for the changes:
Clerics have been in a nebulous spot until now. They were never really full on healers, or damage preventers, or damage dealers. This left them in a spot where they had to hybridize a lot of their skills, and has led to some problematic gameplay in the past.
As others have pointed out, the hybridization and versatility is what made the clerics viable. We did not need, want or ask for a total redesign of the class. You could have improved the class significantly by reworking some powers and feats that nobody ever used, and boosting the class a bit here and there.
Instead we got a complete rework, designed to solve something that was seen as a problem, but instead it takes away what made the class fun to play. We can adapt, and although DCs will not be as versatile afterwards, the class is by no means dead.
However, please, please reconsider how the empowerment mechanism works. As it is, well...it is cumbersome and really does not improve the class as such.
What is not so easy is to build a heal/buff hybrid or a heal/DPS hybrid.
Our Buff / debuff ressources were at least partly not feat specific or even paragorn specific.
The Debuff abilities came from the HP set - DG - mayb Terror / Plaguefire so i see it as an improvement allready...
But still, maybe they can shuffle some feats within the trees to make hybrid builds viable.
The main issuewith these changes are the complete rework of everything the cleric was. Its the same as with all other class reworks.
Instead of building your balancing attempt on existing stuff and information, they completly rework the class, as if everything before were bad.
Look at the cw rework. They destroyed the skill of that class with auto proccing dmg.
Look at the HR rework. They tried to fix the selfhealing, which was always only caused by a broken profound set, and made the HR an even more self healing machine, nerfing the dmg of active powers further and giving him skilless proc dmg.
Look at the rework of GF, they implemented more bugs with it than fixing ones, creating broken mechanics.
The same happens now to the DC class. The only chance to revert some of those changes is to be persistent with your critique and writig Gentle personally. Be polite but loud. Be consistent but persistent.
Maybe you can prevent these drastic changes. Because drastic changes will almost always result in imbalances, especially if these changes are just theoretical madeups, and are not tested. Which is here the case.
IMO what makes it so powerfun isn't the spell itself, it's all the damage buffs from righteous. With a faithful build stuff is much more under control. 30k crit with a pvorpal is acceptable. But that's with faithful. Hopefully the righteous tree will be slightly reworked instead of making everything painful for healing trees.
About casting time and animations (a more refined thought after more testing):
IMO all non pure damage spells (ie: spells having a tactical value beyond the "take it in your face") should have their casting time lowered by a factor of 3. While it may seem a huge change without that casting 4 times the same spell makes the gameplay sluggish, and NPCs will be dead by the time the DC is done with all his tactical spells which are supposed to help the team to deal with stuff. I'm not taking into account the time we'll spend dodging stuff and the consequences it has on spells with a long casting time. The counterpart should be lowering divinity gains.
Sunburst had always been an essential skill for all my DCs, both DO and AC. It is the third in my rotation and heals in an area, damages in the same area, restores some Divinity and builds Action Points.
For Party play in Boss rooms, with my High INT, High CHA and High Recovery AC, I use Exaltation, Divine Astral Shield and Sunburst. In dungeons, with my Ioun Stone, Sunburst has something like an 8.4 to 9 second cool down, depending on procs from other things. Plenty of time to use Blessings of Battle and 3 to 9 Sacred Flames for more Divinity before staring my rotation again.
I can cast 9 SF before I need to use BoB again, and my Greater Plague Fire also makes the target more squishy for the Warriors.
Exaltation is used for single target healing, but it does not matter if the heal is not needed, as it also gives a buff to me and the target; usually a Warrior in a Boss fight, but also it goes to anyone who actually needs the heal.
Divine Astral Shield is obvious, and Sunburst I already mentioned.
The only time I use a Divine Sunburst is in Dread Vault and similar, to blow enemies over the edge and into Oblivion. ANY other use of Knockback is an absolute liability and a detriment to the entire party.
But that needs some Divinity to be built up in the old version.
With the new Sunburst, I may be able to rebuild divinity more quickly from At-Wills, use the Divine Sunburst for DoT and THEN use the Empowered version to blow the enemy even further? Having Knockback as the default for the normal version might actually be an advantage in situations like that.
But I'll really need to test it by going to Dread Vault on the Test Server.
Do you think I'll be able to get a party together over there?
With the proposed changes, it will be easy to build a DPS/buff hybrid, or a pure healing DC. What is not so easy is to build a heal/buff hybrid or a heal/DPS hybrid.
The DC is effectively being forced into one of two roles, and we lose some of the flexibility we had earlier.
Let's consider the premise for the changes:
As others have pointed out, the hybridization and versatility is what made the clerics viable. We did not need, want or ask for a total redesign of the class. You could have improved the class significantly by reworking some powers and feats that nobody ever used, and boosting the class a bit here and there.
Instead we got a complete rework, designed to solve something that was seen as a problem, but instead it takes away what made the class fun to play. We can adapt, and although DCs will not be as versatile afterwards, the class is by no means dead.
However, please, please reconsider how the empowerment mechanism works. As it is, well...it is cumbersome and really does not improve the class as such.
This is basically what all my feedback has been saying and why I dislike most of the changes.
Firstly, thanks crush for your labor, lays a good foundation.
Thank you DC advocates justsyndra and others for being diligent and helpful during this hectic time.
-- Some helpful comments on how to treat and test the changes:
Firstly, treat the changes as though you are playing a new class. Temporarily screen out prior knowledge of what you're used to doing, what your rotation is, what is on your bar etc. Throw it all out. Learn what each ability and feat do anew, think about how you can use them together, look for situations where it is helpful and it is not. Too many players are hanging on too tightly on what they expected of certain abilities and features and thus you cannot fully appreciate the merit of some of the new changes. Also, please keep your facts as facts, and opinions as opinions, and not attempt to substitute one for the other. Finally, avoid broad generalisation such as 'new changes suck' but rather be specific and measurable in whatever it was you wanted to express.
Next, spend time to understand how each power works, try it in combat, note the damage and effects. I recommend you use a parser and it does help. Try also real world combat situations with party members or NPCs to get an idea of how abilities affect others. Don't just look at the damage/healing charts in dungeon runs, you need to know where they are coming from.
Understanding about divinity/empowerment:
I'm seeing a lot of confusion about how this works so I'll provide some brief explanations from my understanding.
Divine encounters:
Divine encounters in mod 5 no longer replicate the base encounter ability, but instead procs a cantrip or utility effect. They consume 1 pip per cast, do not share/have cooldowns, can be chained casted and do not gain any AP. They do count as encounter powers for proccing other feats and effects such as Miracle Healer set or augment pets. Each divine encounter gives the caster 1 empowerment stack of the same encounter (see it under your portrait). Stacks last for 15s then expire if not consumed. Stacks are automatically consumed when that particularl encounter is cast in normal mode.
Empowered encounters:
Think of this as the 'old divine' mode. Empowered encounter procs the base encounter effect that either increase in power/effectiveness or gain additional utility as the number of charges increase. The whole point of divinity and spending them on divinity encounter is in increasing the potency and utility of your base encounter powers. Storing and timing empowered encounters well is the key towards playing your DC well.
--
DCs needed a change. Do not be afraid of change. From what I see this is a step forward, and it opens new doors and updates the playability and competitiveness of the DC class.
Feedback on divinity overhaul: I strongly agree it was needed. Old divinity mechanic was really starting to get in the way of playing well. It is too slow, and is a weakness in PvP where one does not have the luxury of spamming at wills and encounters. I like being able to charge up divinity pips faster and overall be more fluid with it. I am ok with having at wills only generate divinity, but I do agree that many times especially at the start of an encounter there is too much to do in a short time. DC APS (actions per second) is going right up and this is a good challenge, but also can be too demanding.
Feedback on empowerment mechanic: Empowerment stacks need to last longer. Instead of 15s I would prefer stacks to last for 30 or 60 secs. I'll explain why later.
Empowerment stacks need to be more obvious. I know currently there are stacks displayed under character portraits but you get double portraits for some buffing attacks (like Forgmasters and Divine Glow) and it's hard to track. The best way is to IMO add a '+' pip on the top border of the encounter icon per stack. This way it's always in the HUD and is obvious, and the + can change from blue to gold colour at the last 10 s before it runs out.
The concept is nice in theory. In combat I find it too hectic. The one thing DCs don't have is the luxury of time. Needing to cast spells in divine mode basically means extending cast animation time by 2 or 3 times longer in a rotation. Then you need to factor in time spamming at wills to recharge divinity. On top of that there is dodges, repositioning and timing encounters to hit the right party members. NW combat is already fast paced, and DCs already have to chase the DPSers most of the time. The "spam at will gain divinity spend divinity on divinity encounters gain empowerment stacks cast boosted encounter mechanic" is long to state and even longer to execute. It simply takes too much time outside of boss fights, and in those fights you are too busy dodging red and clutching the party than to actually have time to charge up.
A good cleric right now probably has the highest action per minute (APM) along with the Sword Master GWF out of all classes to be their most effective. With the proposed changes, combat will be a continual, click fest that requires intense concentration. It is challenging to execute well on a keyboard, let alone the future console port planned. I like the fact there is a higher skill ceiling, and higher potential for combos, and I understand empowerment is a choice and not mandatory but the effort doesn't necessarily justify the gains.
To alleviate the clicks a number of things need to happen:
- implement background divinity gain in addition to at will spamming. 8 seconds per pip is probably a decent trade off. I understand we can use divine fortune instead for faster divinity gain but for players with older computers or if there is lag the DC is always punished the most due to divinity mechanic.
- shorten many of the casting times. In particular, Prophecy of Doom, Blessing of Battle, Bastion of Health Forgemaster's Flame and even Hallowed Ground are very slow and prone to being interrupted, especially in PvP. No matter how good a power is on paper, if it cannot be executed consistently or reliably in combat it stays on the shelf.
Feedback on encounter powers:
Sunburst- The combination of healing and damage makes sunburst a good power to proc most of the feats. However in the current design the push is great for solos but can be annoying in dungeons. If the DC use divine mode to damage/DoT and damage and normal mode to heal (out of combat) it isn't too bad but this is users limiting the own usefuless of their encounters. Can there be a toggle for push or non push cast?
Healing word- I like the new targeting mechanic. I'm not really seeing temp HP procs in divine mode from my short testing so I'm unsure if it is working as intended.
Searing light- this spell lacks an identity and utility. It is a weak targeted spell with moderate cooldown. The cast mechanic is already challenging on moving mobs and you hardly get the chaining effect. Can we change the targetting to be the same distance but splat based somewhat like GF Terrifying Impact or HR Seismic Shot? The damage needs to be higher. In empowered version I'd rather have it ignore target DR (25% per stack) instead of having increased armor penetration.
Chains of Blazing light- there's a typo in description that says 'chains of fiery light' that should be fixed. I'm very happy the damage is not reduced depending on targets. Can we increase the target limit up to 8 so it brings more utility for DPS builds? Lack of AoE DPS is a severe disadvantage for DCs.
Daunting Light- the tooltip in game does not mention increased crit chance and severity when empowered and this doesn't seem to be implemented just yet. I suggest having the radius increase by 5' per stack and travel time abolished when empowered. It's already very difficult to have this land successfully on players and mobs due to the way aggro and player pushes works.
Prophecy of Doom- the cooldown of this power is still to long for its effect and damage. Needs to be reduced by about 33%. The casting animation is also exceedingly long and limits utility of this spell. I suggest reducing it to 1 second. Other aspects of the spell are good.
Forgemaster's Flame- empowered effect is bugged. From reading tooltip damage when buffed, at 1 charge damage decreases by about 5%. At 2 charges damage is about the same, and at 3 charges damage buff is about 5%. However if you cycle this a few times the damage goes to absurd levels. Maybe the multiplier stacked multiplicatively somewhere. After the change FF is almost the same spell as Break the Spirit except it's weaker in almost all ways (less damage, longer cooldown, slow instead of stun). I would let the divine effect proc both the damage dot and a heal dot to allies within a radius (50'?) as per live. Also the casting time of FF is far too long. It is the single most interruptible ability in PvP (after PoD, but hardly anyone uses it in PvP as it is due to insane cooldown and cast time).
Break the Spirit- damage/cooldown/effects are good. The empowered effect seems non linear in its gain, boosting base damage by 85% on one stack, 100% on 2 stack and ~105% on 3 stacks.
Bastion of Health- I like the effects, but after testing it in a standard dungeon run the casting delay and small AoE really limits it real world application. I suggest either doing away with the cast time altogether, or have it as a 30 feet point blank AoE centered on the DC. At current state DPSers rarely benefit from this.
Divine glow- a good jack of all trades power that offers some benefit in all situations. Tooltip damage display is bugged, showing a much higher number than what it actually is doing. Since the damage is inherengly low, can we increase the target limit to 10 or uncapped so we can spread the debuff? DPS clerics in particular are limited by the utility on proccing buffs on more than 5 targets at a time and DG is probably the best power for this.
Astral Shield- as many have pointed out currently allies have full normal immunity within AS. Please check the DR formula. Cannot test the empowered effect yet due to bug.
Feedback on paragon paths
-If I don't comment on a feat I think it's ok.
Overarching comments: Righteous and Faithful trees are a big step forward in helping the DC be more independent. There is incentive to take the capstones and the T4 feats since they are distinctive, flavoursome and effective. Virtuous tree is weaker by comparison in its current implementation.
Virtuous:
Currently this tree is the weakest for personal play and party support and most vulnerable. The DoT healing theme is ok, feats that strengthen it is ok, however the fact that the capstone converts all direct heals to HoTs eliminates any serious means for the DC to help the party recover from a large mishap or near wipe. HoTs don't heal enough if you and or party members are all missing a lot of health and need HP right now. In that situation they may as well use a health stone, where then HoTs become unnecessary. The HoT mechanic is not as vital in dungeons- it is spike damage that plague the party (especially module 4) and the party frequently cycles between 90% health and 20-30% (or got 1 shotted).
In PvP situations I can see HoT being stronger overall in sustained fights, however if virtuous is to be the PvP support tree the feats need to offer immunity and/or control resistance.
The biggest problem that Virtuous tree faces is that the healing temptation warlock can pretty much do all that Virt offers and do significantly more DPS. They have free HoT as they DoT and damage, and makes the Virtuous DC redundant in the maintenance healing party role. In PvP they are also more survivable and mobile while the Virtuous DC is the kill on sight backline healer.
Suggested changes: Cleansing Fire is currently underperforming compared to say Purity. I suggest we also add the same 10/20/30/40/50% chance for the target(s) to be cleansed of negative effects and be immune to control effects for 0.8/1.6/2.4/3.2/4.0 seconds, with duration halved in PvP if necessary.
Shield of the Divine- the direct heal component of the listed encounters should still stay as a direct heal and instead apply temp HP for that amount for over 12 seconds. This way those abilities can still remain as a clutch power with some shielding effect in place. Temp HP proc means that the capstone is useful even in situations where the target may be overhealed.
Second sight (Divine Oracle paragon) Currently PoD damage is weak with a very long cooldown. My suggestion is for the feat to reduce the PoD cooldown by 1/2/3/4/5 second and grant 0.4/0.8/1.2/1.6/2 pips of divinity on the next encounter power cast to fit with the oracle theme.
Faithful:
Overall performing well and grants strong survivability to the DC and the team, offering maintenance healing, damage mitigation and clutch heals. It is still vulnerable to one shotting from 30% to zero but that's bearable. Agent of the Divine is useful only for clutching rather than the rest of the time but when it does proc it is helpful. Test of Faith strengthenes the DC's own personal survivability, which is something we always had issues with and I like how it improves with weapon damage. I am happy with how it is currently performing.
Righteous:
Righteous offer personal damage boosts in T1/2 for splashing into other paragons and personal and party damage buffs in T3 and 4. Fire of the Gods offer a strong boost to personal damage, at roughly 40% personal outgoing damage with a hybrid loadout and 20-30% with DPS loadout. While some may say that this is too OP, given the complexity of DC rotations (cooldown/AP/divinity/empowerment/HP management) and situational awareness I think this feat offers DPS DCs to have freedom however they wish to support their party.
Power of the Sun: Sitautional compared to both T1/2 feats that boosts damage. Perhaps allow it to work for BoTS and any DoT power (can also activate this with capstone)?
Avatar of the Divine: I like how the cooldown resets out of battle and it's a decent boost. I'd like it to have a cause where Power of the Sun will now apply its effect to all DoT encounters and at wills.
Opinion on where the class stands.
Damage mitigation: We don't know how effective AS will be, but between Divine Glow, Hallowed Ground, Divine Armor, Foresight, Benefit of Foresight, and a number of the new feats the protection role is still there.
Damage buff: Divine Glow/FF/BtS/Prophecy of Doom all allow party based buffing (30-60%+ possible depending on rotation). Righteous feats offer potential 25% more damage to the party. Overall the old buff bot style is still there regardless of your tree.
Healing: Major rework with abilities. BoH is massively improved but need to have a shorter casting time/larger AoE for it to be actually viable in dungeons. Faithful tree offers great protection and maintenance healing. Virt is great HoT maintenance healing but limited clutch ability. Righteous tree don't have many healing feats but if their stats are in they right place they can probably still play a healer role decently. Righeousness is still a great indirect heal for all circumstances. With the loss of Forgemaster's heal however, there is no good, large AoE reliable healing encounter for the party. BoH can fill that niche but the targeting is more miss than hit. The DC should not have to be punished for the party member's own choice of positioning.
Personal survival: For healing tree the feats make your healing much stronger and less dependent on encounter timing and thus boosts personal survivability significantly. Faithful tree in particular is quite tanky with clutch heals, although it is still susceptible to large spike damage. Righteous tree don't mave any buffs apart from encounters but Divine glow plus Astral shield plus dailys when needed should provide enough survival tools.
PvP: haven't tested significantly- the lack of control resist and immunity still puts us in a bad place. Previous divnity mechanic makes it very hard for DCs to recover from a wipe. Now mechanic is faster, but there is a lot more encounter casting, which means we are even more vulnerable to being interrupted, and we are less mobile because we need to cast/spam a lot more. Therefore while the potency of our healing has increased, our mobility has decreased and the PvP DC is unlikely to benefit significantly from the new empowerment mechanic in both one on one and one vs many situations.
Hybridisation: Because the healing/ utility and buffing aspects are assigned to encounters and not just from feats I think the potential for DCs staying versatile is still present. A faithful based healing DC is still using AS/DG/HW to provide some buffs, and the righteous tree DC can use the same encounter for protection or swap HW to SB or FF for more buff/debuffs.
Other suggested changes:
Like many have said, Heroic Feats need a rework. Also many of the encounter cooldowns and casting time need to be reduced.
This is where my thoughts are right now. As I test more or further changes are made I will make comments or even change my mind on some of this.
Module 4 Comprehensive DC guide |Module 4 MoF CW Handbook |New! Scourge Warlock Guide| NW Numbers and Mechanics guide |Crit, Power and DPS guide | Dungeon Delving guide and more
"Firstly, treat the changes as though you are playing a new class" <- And this is the fundamental issue that myself and other posters have put forward on here and in the Temple forum:
I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY A NEW CLASS - I want to play the current one with selected improvements.
This approach simply does not realize the loyalty and fondness to the current playstyle that some long term players have developed over a year and a half with the Cleric. Players have studied guides, formulated statistics, developed their play strategy over this time - all the while growing an ownership and affection of their particular character and it's play style.
When news came through that finally the Cleric was going to be looked at, the obvious hope was that the development team would look at the many posts and guides outlining the under-performing skills, armor sets, cc issues, righteousness, heroic feats...but also noting the effective and consequently popular abilities.
But now we have this unnecessary and unasked for change in the fundamental class mechanics. Where are the multitude of posts that asked for this entirely new class approach?
So instead of a controlled and systematic improvement of selected abilities, we now have a - you must play a new class if you want to continue with the Cleric.
No
To Repeat: This approach simply does not realize the loyalty and fondness to the current playstyle that some long term players have developed over a year and a half with the Cleric
My total disappointment with these changes can never be directed at class advocates - who are sometimes handed a square wheel to run with.
Hopefully it is obvious that my points are directly solely and pointedly at the Cleric class development team.
...............vote for your favourite expansion.......... "Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity". ..............not this one then.............
The new changes have made my cleric very much more powerful in PvP and PvE. Good thing because she needed it!
The one worry I have is that over time some things may be toned down as other players whine about the OP cleric, and at some point the cleric will be just another class but will be much harder to play.
This new system is difficult to master. All the different modes take a lot of concentration! However at this time this is fine because now a cleric has a chance to overcome using skill rather than just being buffhealbot/punching bag.
I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY A NEW CLASS - I want to play the current one with selected improvements.
It's very clear from the current feedback being posted here that people are unhappy with the DC basically being a new class. We can only wait and see if they take action on such things. Considering they basically threw away a year of requests for the cleric in exchange for whats on PTR now - don't get your hopes up.
As for Kaelac's post, if we are moving ahead with all these changes, his approach to how to test and evaluate is spot on, and I'm glad we have him and not with those stinky GWFs(i love you gwfs please dont intimidate me) or something.
I sent a report of everyone's feedback out yesterday. Hopefully we'll see some changes and bugfixes by the end of the week.
Feedback : Divine at-will = Punishing & Soothing Light Punishing and Soothing light @ the current state will be in a much awkward position because of how important it is to keep divinity to spam the divine encounter for Empower stacks. Looking @ how fast these 2 at-wills drain divinity, i suspect they both will go RIP.
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tanadas1977Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 11Arc User
edited October 2014
Easiest was to fix DCs is to get rid of Lifesteal .... but that will not happen.
Maybe it can be changed to only get back of the resisted part of the damage. In it current state, the poeple with the highest damage have the highest chance of surviving because of Lifesteal. It should be reverse proportional. Most dps => die faster. Low DPS -> Live longer.
Without Lifesteal a real tank (someone who can hold aggro) would also be needed, because poeple would not want to get hit.
I have spent a lot of time learning the new state of things and I want to start sharing my thoughts. Some of this will be a repeat of what I have already shared.
Please ignore the pvp haters that are already in this thread calling for a damage nerf. The meta will adjust.
Feedback:
Heroic Feats: The need a proper rework to bring them in line with other classes.
At-Wills: Something needs to be done to increase the power of our At-Wills. I don't know how the devs got this far in patch development without addressing it. With the speed of of the new play style, At-Wills suffer from slow animation cast times and sub-par damage output. They all need a BIG boost in DPS. Also Punishing Light and Soothing Light both have no place in the current model. Rethink what you want these to be; my suggestions would be empowered At-Wills of some design that DO NOT DRAIN DIVINITY.
Powers: A few notes here...
Forgemaster's Flame - This power needs a design tweak. The slow is not enough to make it stand out (vs. Break the Spirit). Put the heal back on the Empowered version. So normally FF would be DoT and Slow. Divine will be the stacking debuff. Empowered consumes the stacks for the Heal.
Daunting Light - I am a big user of this spell on live. I do not feel like the damage is high enough vs. the live version. ALTHOUGH it could be, like Kaelec suggested, that the feats are not properly interacting with the spell. I was expecting something more. The time and skill that it takes to land the non-instant version needs to be rewarded. This theme appears throughout the current design. IDL is currently lacking probably from the time required to pull it off.
PoD - Casting Time is too slow. We have a limited window that divine stacks of PoD are up. The casting animation of performing Divine PoDx3 and then an empowered PoD is too much with movement and At-Will spam for divinity gain. Basically, anywhere you have written 'after a short (or brief) casting time...' you need to reduce that amount of time.
Sooth - needs to be removed and replace with a pvp passive like control resist OR EVEN BETTER stamina gain.
Prophetic Action - This is a must redesign power. Needs to change to something like, immune to one encounter/red zone/daily every 60 seconds (as others have suggested) or a cooldown reset or something/anything.
Searing Light - This spell is not there yet. Hard to use and as such we should be rewarded if we pull it off. Damage increase?
Sunburst - This is fine. I can work with it. I like to DoT. I can smartly use the knockback. Don't listen to the haters that seem to have built their character (somehow) around this single spell...). Divine Glow is now the goto instant everything that sunburst used to be. They can just switch it out.
Over all, my powers feed back is summarized as such: The casting animations have to be speed up. The time penalty for the class comes from building Divinity, then dumping all of that divinity into stacks and then casting an empowered spell and then rebuilding divinity. There should not be any slow casting animations or slow casting times built into the spells.
Paragon Feat (Righteousness) Poercing Light is totally underwhelming. 5 points to save yourself less than a single dark enchantment. Change over to design like GWFs... x% of Y,Z stat are added to your Armor Pen.
Dear Players! We all know that the descriptions of features, powers etc. are bad in the game. So why do you come up with critiques based on what you read? Test first, then tell your opinion! After testing the new stuff out I can tell exactly who did not test it. You should realize, that the devs will ignore all the posts and statements, which are based on assumptions and not on real-play experience. This way you mess up the option to talk with them.
So far from testing: Mechanics:
Divinity:
It is recovered just by using any at-will, not the damage or heal it causes. But the recovery is really much-much faster.
Empowered:
The idea here is that you can switch to divinity, use up to 3 pieps for devine versions of your encounters to get up to 3 stacks of empowerment and then switch back to normal and apply the empowered version. Suggestion: The usability is really bad, since you have to keep track somehow of the empowered icons. It would be better to have some indicators right on the power bar. Maybe a number, or some kind of blue coloring which would fill the icons in the powerbar to 1/3; 2/3; 3/3 (the icons would be blue to 1/3 and red to 2/3 for example)
Powers: 1. Sunburst
Normal mode - PERFECT!!!! Finaly we can push our enemies away without being dependant on divinity!
Players, in Devine mode it does NOT push!
Divinity - does not heal, only applies DOT. I miss the healing power here. A HOT effect would be nice here, even if lover then in normal mode. Otherwise it makes little sense to equip it in situations where the pushing effect is not the best option.
Questions here so far: can it crit? is the DOT equal to the stated damage?
Empowered - Increased Knock per stack feels lower with each stack. Probably it is multiplicative, while it should be additive, otherwise it makes little sense to have 3 stacks.
2. Astral Shield The 10% buff is rather low for almost 15 seconds recharge time. And the temporary hit points are not really worth it alone. They are few, and there is nothing of "Astral" and nothing of a "shield" in it. Still a good and very well playable power.
Empowered AS seems a little bit overpowered. It might also create HP-DC freaks.
My suggestions: Make the AS a buff/debuff. In simple and empowered mode it should reflect a portion of incoming damage, while the protection of empowered should be decreased from 3% to about 2% per stack (getting no damage from elites in Sharandar). The Devine AS should apply a temporary and stackable damage debuff (5% and 2s per stack?, 15% and 6 seconds max?). This would give higher flexibility to us.
3. Searing light - just not my case anyways....
4. Healing word - the problem of healing word was and is - the targeting. Right now I don't use it, because it is often difficult to hit my allies with it. I am just healing myself.... (well if you can call this healing) My problem always was that allies did everything to escape my healing word, including shifts and other stuff.
The new way does solve half of the problem, now I can be pretty sure, that there is some kind of probability that I will hit my allies, if they stay on one place and don't move around.... I would have to test it further.... if I will find a party on the testing server.
Feats:
1. Condemning Blaze - During battle it will be difficult to oversee how many stacks are on a special enemy, and when it will activate.
I can't test anything else right now, since all my spend points reset.... maybe it will fixed soon. I will do additional tests next week.
Taking away the design that people has come to love and got used to can not be justified either.
As I said in a previous post,I totally understand that it's inconvenient to have to re-learn a class one has been used to for a long time and that people would prefer improvements on something they prefer,rather than an overhaul.I really like the old playstyle.But the new one offers so much more flexibility,that cannot be offered by the previous one.
To make an analogy similar to yours,it's like buying a car,which you really enjoy,but a few years later,it starts having problems.You keep fixing them,but as time goes on,the car gets more and more unreliable.At first,it will just be problematic and unable to compete with other,newer cars' performance.But as the years pass,no matter how much you spend on it,it will eventually be too old.You have to buy a new one,cause it's not worth it spending so much money on it,only for you to have problems a couple of months later (and eventually you will stop finding parts for it anyway).No matter how much you upgrade it,it wont be as good as a newer car.This is what the new DC offers,new,better ground, to build up on to.
Yes,we are all used to the old cleric,but if the new DC is better,why not get used to the new one? If you really think about it,why are we all used to the DC now? In most rpg we have all played,the healer is that guy sitting on the back,casting his buffs before the battle and then spamming heals on tank,with a few aoe heals in between if the party gets injured.There's a few exceptions here and there,but that's the most usual Healer in games,isn't it? Is this what you found here though? Is that the cleric of neverwinter? No.You get in the battle and fight with the rest of your party.It's different from the typical healer we all know.But we decided to stick to it and learn the class regardless.Now,this playstyle of Neverwinter's cleric we relatively recently got used to suddenly became the all time classic?
I always loved how I was a lot more involved in combat here with my cleric than in most other games.The new version makes it even more interactive.It might be just me enjoying in depth gameplay and complexity,but one thing's for sure for me and that is:
-> Preferences are built over time.
In the end,if this new gameplay turns out too clunky,we can always revert to the old one...But seriously,we are still on the first build of Mod 5.We havent had enough time to adjust.So how do you expect to "prefer" something, if you haven't even had the chance to invest enough time in it? I've been supporting this change from the start,even though I liked the old cleric and I find it easier to play with.I've invested over 20 hours on Mimic on my cleric,doing content,to get used to it.Can I play as fluidly as on Live? Nope.I make mistakes, a lot.But I can see it having more potential,being more fun and increasing effectiveness for us,so,to me,it's worth re-adjusting and re-learning.
Is time for you all to know some of the truth about the cleric's synergy build. A well guarded secret of the holiest of holys.
Picture here not edited for reference material. This is a rushed pic not the best example.
[IMG][/img]
With proper use of Astral Seal and Astral Shield, you can proc burning guidance. Once burning guidance is in proc you use hollowed ground and divine glow hopefully hitting your ioun stone also your ioun stone will have two lesser indomitable rune stones at least. Terrifying insight will increase the damage also. If you have a warlock with the proper damage buffs and a control wizard with the power enhancement buff, another factor is a cleric participating in the synergy. You can proc burning guidance up to 10,000 or higher damage per heal this does cycle from 120 up to 10,000. High prophet armor and other damage buffs or increases helps there are a few feats which makes this much stronger. Other configurations are possible for defense and healing.
There is more than one way of going about this.
FEEDBACK:Hopefully your modification arrangements will not destroy our synergy builds.
Personaly I like the changes, love the new sunburst and the changes on divinity, a single feedback : Profecy of doom damge on divine mode seems way to low, is around the 35% of base damage if it hits a target without the PoD debuff, and 70% with the debuff, when I read the changes about this encounter I supposed it could be used as fast single heavy single target attack, but looking the damage it just seems to scratch the targets, more damage in divine mode would be good, along with a faster animation/ cooldown.
by the way an issue I had when I entered in test server was to find the character with feat point resetted, excluded the one spent for class feat like benefit of foresight, had to use the ad to reset feat (not really a problem on test server), hope it won't happen on live when the change will be on. Cheers
Greetings Adventurers!
[*]Astral Shield: Create a shimmering shield at target location that causes allies to have their defenses be 10% more effective.
[*]Divine Astral Shield: Grant Temporary Hit Points to all targets within the affected area.
[*]Empowered Astral Shield: Astral Shield now consumes stacks of Empowered Astral Shield to shield allies from a portion of incoming damage. Astral Shield blocks 100% of the Cleric's weapon damage per stack consumed.
[/LIST]
FEEDBACK: This RUINS synergy PROCS, We would rather take a smaller heal than temp hit points.
FEEDBACK: the (Divine Power is now only generated by At Wills/The FOURTH PIP being gone) these are essential to the divinity builds. If taken away it could greatly effect game play and could make it way harder to implement divinity bursts.
]Feedback: Maybe there should be a feat tree with the previous best existing feats of all trees enhanced in one.
We need our synergy builds for improved situation reaction. a Hybrid between faithful and righteousness would have been great!
the way I had seen it in feat trees.
virtuous: for temp hit points/heals and the associated buffs with heal over time for caps stone feat.
Faithful: quick heals proc from from abilities powers etc. with the associated buffs and the ability to use divine mode more often I.E. capstone feat.
Righteousness: buffs from damage and healing damage with an increase to damage. ( really i didn't like this tree cap stone feat so I don't know the cap stone feat).
EDIT: These changes will be hitting later this week, but are not yet active.
Afternoon all! We are making one major change and a couple of minor bug fixes and performance
changes.
First and foremost we have heard the feedback on empowered and we are making it a global resource. It will now be generated by any divine power and consumed by any non-divine power. This will simplify the rotation and let you make more moment to moment decisions on what to do with your two major resources now (Empowered and Divine Power). Additionally we are playing with ways you can be notified of having reached various levels of Empowered so that you can be well aware of when you are at full potential.
The full changelist is as follows (also in the OP).
Devoted Cleric: Empowered: This is now a global resource that is applied by any divine power and can be consumed by any non-divine power. When you reach 3 stacks you will get floater text to notify you that you are fully Empowered.
Devoted Cleric: Astral Shield: This power no longer incorrectly blocks all damage when used with no Empowered stacks.
Devoted Cleric: Brand of the Sun: This power now also grants Divine Power when the DoT component ticks.
Devoted Cleric: Divine Fortune: This class feature now correctly increases Divine Power gain by 5% per rank (down from 50%).
Devoted Cleric: Divine Glow: This power should now correctly show how much damage it will deal.
Devoted Cleric: Searing Light: This power now correctly states the radius of the Divine version (15').
Devoted Cleric: Forgemaster's Flame: No longer erroneously mentions healing in rank up text.
Devoted Cleric: Forgemaster's Flame: Base slow for this power now slows the foe for 60% (up from 40%).
Devoted Cleric: Divine Bastion of Health: This power now heals for roughly 100% more.
Devoted Cleric: Punishing and Soothing Light: These powers now drain Divine power half as fast.
Devoted Cleric: Lance of Faith: This power now deals 25% more damage.
Devoted Cleric: Divine Oracle: Prophecy of Doom: This power now lists how much damage it can deal.
Devoted Cleric: Faithful: Agent of the Divine: The heal from this feat is now clamped and cannot exceed the target's Maximum HP.
Devoted Cleric: Righteous: Fire of the Gods: This feat can no longer crit.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Afternoon all! We are making one major change and a couple of minor bug fixes and performance changes.
First and foremost we have heard the feedback on empowered and we are making it a global resource.
Epic!
My only "complaint" now is in knowing when and how many Empowerment stacks are generated - and I see you guys and gals are experimenting. This is great news!
Comments
I have tested the new cleric concept on the test server, and am very disappointed.
In my opinion, the cleric was fine as it was. DPS, healing, survivability, and mechanics...all wonderful. It didn't need to be "fixed" in my opinion. It required a great deal of focus, but was simple in design. Simple in a good way. Now it seems like it will be difficult to build a hybrid, cumbersome to play either way, and likely fall very short on DPS (unless I play a DPS build that is useless for healing). The entire thing, taken as a whole, feels like a major nerf. Please reconsider. You are about to ruin the class in my opinion.
I guess I should try and be more specific. Here are a few things that don't seem to be good ideas to me.
1. Astral Shield - nerfed. Are you serious? Have you ever even played this class?
2. Daunting Light - my main DPS spell will be rendered useless...and there does not appear to be a suitable replacement.
3. Sun Burst - knock back on non-divine spell. Are you kidding? Have you ever play this class in a group dungeon?
4. New mechanics are too cumbersome. Genius is the ability to simplify the complex. Stupidity is the ability to complicate the simple. Think about it. In your effort to fix that which is not broken, you only end up breaking it.
I think the idea behind the new Righteous tree is not only to do DPS but also be a debuffer and buffer. It's the concept of less healing needed because of melting and weakened enemies.
With Bear Your Sins apply kind of a base debuff (foes take up to 10% more damage from all sources). Condemning Gaze gives another 15% from all sources for 15 seconds. If you are managing your encounter rotation well, it could be easy to get a high uptime for Condemning Gaze. Now add the High Prophet debuff and Divine Glow (which is now healing too) and you have a pretty nice buff/debuff loadout. If that still isn't enough use Break the Spirit on elites to lower their damage dealt, which in return means less healing needed. In addition Empowered Break the Spirit buffs your allies with increasing their damage.
Of course, this has to be tested in detail. This is just a theory in my mind
In general I like the new trees. Because I now have to choose one of them - and it's really hard choose which is the best for me. They said they wanted to avoid hybrid builds and at least in my case they managed to do that very well
Get into a pattern of building up your divinity to a full three pips, which currently does not take too long and can be planned for in a dungeon for when you reach a mini boss. You then open up the pattern with a divine glow, followed by three divine light, followed by empowered divine light. It does not matter if you crit or not - its going to hurt anything you target. To make it easier to aim, just walk right up to your target.
Feedback: Prophecy of doom.
I really feel the action point gain on this spell is too high. Especially when soloing. It feels like a license to print action points. I feel like i have so many action points they are leaking out and going to the player next to me. Whatever i want to kill, that is not a boss, dies to a flurry of divinely powered casting. righteous build, not a righteous build - doesn't matter, it's all food for the ap meter. Perhaps this is why hammer of fate had its damage reduced, but hammer of fate is doing less damage than flame strike.
Hammer of fate should be doing more damage than daunting light - or it should have some pretty spiffy utility to it that makes me want to unslot flame strike.
I think that the main reason DC feels so sluggish,is a combination between slow casting animations and us losing healing step,which allowed us a bit more mobility around the battlefield.It's something I'll definitely miss :P
On the subject of empowerment,I understand that it's a completely new thing which is obviously not that easy to get used to.I might be predisposed to liking it,because in all games, I tend to play either the healer or the class that is the most complex,as it feels like a challenge,which I find fun; and this combines both! The extra depth is certainly tougher to master,but extra complexity usually comes with greater utility and a greater variety of options.You have more things at your disposal to work with,as a reaction to anything that happens (unless it's the type of complexity that simply makes gameplay user-unfriendly and doesn't offer anything in return,which so far does not seem to be the case in my opinion.) It just takes time and practice,till we learn how to play effectively again.When we joined the game,none of us knew what all the powers did.We had to learn.We also had to memorize what kind of bonuses the divine version offers.And finally,we had to learn to manage divinity.I remember my OB days,when I had to constantly check my divine points,trying to make sure I have enough, yet often running out regardless.Now, over a year later,I have grown used to the class.I dont have to think "What will healing word do if I cast it?" or "What does AS do in divine mode?".Managing divinity is also pretty much done subconciously now and mistakes have been greatly reduced.In short,I have grown more accustomed to the class and the playstyle.Now,we need to do that again.This is the first time such a big change comes to the game,so I understand the frustration; usually changes involved a couple of powers changing a few effects,maybe a full rework of feats too,but never before has the playstyle been affected so much,with a whole new mechanic.The question though should be "Is it worth it?" Are the changes this new mechanic adds good enough, to justify re-learning the class from scratch?
For me,the answer so far is -yes-.Dont stick to reading the updates.Dont stick to testing on dummies.Run content on Mimic instead.And more importantly,give it time so you can actually get used to the changes,to value the impact of the new mechanic.I am,by no means,saying I have learned the new playstyle.Nor am I saying others should agree.What Im saying is,by spending a lot of hours practicing,I see me being A LOT more effective than on live.
-Here's a tip,for anyone actually willing enough to invest some time learning the new cleric playstyle,yet having trouble getting used to it:
Step 1: Pick the powers you want.Focus mostly on what the normal version does.Thankfully,most powers follow the same concept as they did in the past,only gaining a few things here and there (for example,daunting light is still a aoe damage encounter,divine glow is still the aoe debuff,now with extra healing etc).
Note: Avoid bugged powers,such as AS or Divine Fortune,as these will most likely get fixed,meaning you got used to them for nothing.
Step 2: Once you have your setup,go do some content.Depending on how confident you feel,this can range anywhere between simple level 60 mobs,to daily dungeons,to actual dungeons or pvp.
Step 3: Build divinty with at-wills,keeping in mind your encounters dont provide divine points anymore.You can still fill up your divine points fast,so it wont be a problem.This part takes some getting used to,because if you rely on encounters too much and forget about at wills (which is easy to do now with the 0 cd divine versions),you'll run out fast.
Step 4: Every time you're about to use an encounter,STOP! Switch to divine mode first,cast the divine version and THEN cast the normal version.This has 2 benefits:
a)You dont need to memorize what all 3 versions of an encounter power do.You get them all every time and you can actually see the effect.This makes it easier to learn what you can potentially get from each power.
b)You dont have to trouble yourself with keeping an eye on stacks.It's always the same: You make one stack and then instantly consume it.
Step 5: As you start getting used to your new powers' effects and feel you build divinty in-between reliably well,start thinking about your actual divinity consumption.Do you really need a stronger,more effective power every time? If you have cleared a bunch of mobs and are now left fighting the last survivor,you might want to use a heal to replenish the hp you lost.But,you are in no real danger of actually dying now,are you? So,you dont actually need a stronger heal.Therefore,dont use the divine version and just use normal.On the other hand,if you accidentally pulled more adds and are almost dead,you need heals and you need them strong! It's ok if you dont yet know exactly what the divine version or the empowered version offers,you just know,you are about to die and your regular heals with just 1 empowered stack will probably not be enough.So you sacrifice the only thing you have,your stacks, to the gods of healing,luck and anything else that can help you.And see what happens.(Actually,I tried to recreate such scenarios on test server on purpose,just to get used to managing my stacks better under pressure *hint*)
Step 6: Keep practicing! You'll get more and more aware of what all powers do and how to manage your divine points effectively.
I cant guarantee this "guide" will work for everyone.What I do know however,is that I spent most of my weekend on test server doing this and I feel a lot more used to the class.In fact,switching back to live server today (I was only logging on Mimic for the weekend) made me feel really weird about the old playstyle and took me a few minutes to get used to how little divinity my at wills were granting,how weaker my heals were or how much less damage I was dealing!
Again,Im not saying I'm right and anyone who disagrees is wrong.I liked the old playstyle a lot,but I definitely see the potential in this one.Just make sure to actually give it a proper chance before turning it down so fast.It does need some fine tuning,yes,but this can only be done if we provide actual feedback,not "Omg you dont know what you are doing,gimme my old stuff back nao or I quit".
Thanks for reading
With the proposed changes, it will be easy to build a DPS/buff hybrid, or a pure healing DC. What is not so easy is to build a heal/buff hybrid or a heal/DPS hybrid.
The DC is effectively being forced into one of two roles, and we lose some of the flexibility we had earlier.
Let's consider the premise for the changes:
As others have pointed out, the hybridization and versatility is what made the clerics viable. We did not need, want or ask for a total redesign of the class. You could have improved the class significantly by reworking some powers and feats that nobody ever used, and boosting the class a bit here and there.
Instead we got a complete rework, designed to solve something that was seen as a problem, but instead it takes away what made the class fun to play. We can adapt, and although DCs will not be as versatile afterwards, the class is by no means dead.
However, please, please reconsider how the empowerment mechanism works. As it is, well...it is cumbersome and really does not improve the class as such.
Our Buff / debuff ressources were at least partly not feat specific or even paragorn specific.
The Debuff abilities came from the HP set - DG - mayb Terror / Plaguefire so i see it as an improvement allready...
But still, maybe they can shuffle some feats within the trees to make hybrid builds viable.
Instead of building your balancing attempt on existing stuff and information, they completly rework the class, as if everything before were bad.
Look at the cw rework. They destroyed the skill of that class with auto proccing dmg.
Look at the HR rework. They tried to fix the selfhealing, which was always only caused by a broken profound set, and made the HR an even more self healing machine, nerfing the dmg of active powers further and giving him skilless proc dmg.
Look at the rework of GF, they implemented more bugs with it than fixing ones, creating broken mechanics.
The same happens now to the DC class. The only chance to revert some of those changes is to be persistent with your critique and writig Gentle personally. Be polite but loud. Be consistent but persistent.
Maybe you can prevent these drastic changes. Because drastic changes will almost always result in imbalances, especially if these changes are just theoretical madeups, and are not tested. Which is here the case.
IMO what makes it so powerfun isn't the spell itself, it's all the damage buffs from righteous. With a faithful build stuff is much more under control. 30k crit with a pvorpal is acceptable. But that's with faithful. Hopefully the righteous tree will be slightly reworked instead of making everything painful for healing trees.
About casting time and animations (a more refined thought after more testing):
IMO all non pure damage spells (ie: spells having a tactical value beyond the "take it in your face") should have their casting time lowered by a factor of 3. While it may seem a huge change without that casting 4 times the same spell makes the gameplay sluggish, and NPCs will be dead by the time the DC is done with all his tactical spells which are supposed to help the team to deal with stuff. I'm not taking into account the time we'll spend dodging stuff and the consequences it has on spells with a long casting time. The counterpart should be lowering divinity gains.
Sunburst had always been an essential skill for all my DCs, both DO and AC. It is the third in my rotation and heals in an area, damages in the same area, restores some Divinity and builds Action Points.
For Party play in Boss rooms, with my High INT, High CHA and High Recovery AC, I use Exaltation, Divine Astral Shield and Sunburst. In dungeons, with my Ioun Stone, Sunburst has something like an 8.4 to 9 second cool down, depending on procs from other things. Plenty of time to use Blessings of Battle and 3 to 9 Sacred Flames for more Divinity before staring my rotation again.
I can cast 9 SF before I need to use BoB again, and my Greater Plague Fire also makes the target more squishy for the Warriors.
Exaltation is used for single target healing, but it does not matter if the heal is not needed, as it also gives a buff to me and the target; usually a Warrior in a Boss fight, but also it goes to anyone who actually needs the heal.
Divine Astral Shield is obvious, and Sunburst I already mentioned.
The only time I use a Divine Sunburst is in Dread Vault and similar, to blow enemies over the edge and into Oblivion. ANY other use of Knockback is an absolute liability and a detriment to the entire party.
But that needs some Divinity to be built up in the old version.
With the new Sunburst, I may be able to rebuild divinity more quickly from At-Wills, use the Divine Sunburst for DoT and THEN use the Empowered version to blow the enemy even further? Having Knockback as the default for the normal version might actually be an advantage in situations like that.
But I'll really need to test it by going to Dread Vault on the Test Server.
Do you think I'll be able to get a party together over there?
This is basically what all my feedback has been saying and why I dislike most of the changes.
Thank you DC advocates justsyndra and others for being diligent and helpful during this hectic time.
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Some helpful comments on how to treat and test the changes:
Firstly, treat the changes as though you are playing a new class. Temporarily screen out prior knowledge of what you're used to doing, what your rotation is, what is on your bar etc. Throw it all out. Learn what each ability and feat do anew, think about how you can use them together, look for situations where it is helpful and it is not. Too many players are hanging on too tightly on what they expected of certain abilities and features and thus you cannot fully appreciate the merit of some of the new changes. Also, please keep your facts as facts, and opinions as opinions, and not attempt to substitute one for the other. Finally, avoid broad generalisation such as 'new changes suck' but rather be specific and measurable in whatever it was you wanted to express.
Next, spend time to understand how each power works, try it in combat, note the damage and effects. I recommend you use a parser and it does help. Try also real world combat situations with party members or NPCs to get an idea of how abilities affect others. Don't just look at the damage/healing charts in dungeon runs, you need to know where they are coming from.
Understanding about divinity/empowerment:
I'm seeing a lot of confusion about how this works so I'll provide some brief explanations from my understanding.
Divine encounters:
Divine encounters in mod 5 no longer replicate the base encounter ability, but instead procs a cantrip or utility effect. They consume 1 pip per cast, do not share/have cooldowns, can be chained casted and do not gain any AP. They do count as encounter powers for proccing other feats and effects such as Miracle Healer set or augment pets. Each divine encounter gives the caster 1 empowerment stack of the same encounter (see it under your portrait). Stacks last for 15s then expire if not consumed. Stacks are automatically consumed when that particularl encounter is cast in normal mode.
Empowered encounters:
Think of this as the 'old divine' mode. Empowered encounter procs the base encounter effect that either increase in power/effectiveness or gain additional utility as the number of charges increase. The whole point of divinity and spending them on divinity encounter is in increasing the potency and utility of your base encounter powers. Storing and timing empowered encounters well is the key towards playing your DC well.
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DCs needed a change. Do not be afraid of change. From what I see this is a step forward, and it opens new doors and updates the playability and competitiveness of the DC class.
Feedback on divinity overhaul:
I strongly agree it was needed. Old divinity mechanic was really starting to get in the way of playing well. It is too slow, and is a weakness in PvP where one does not have the luxury of spamming at wills and encounters. I like being able to charge up divinity pips faster and overall be more fluid with it. I am ok with having at wills only generate divinity, but I do agree that many times especially at the start of an encounter there is too much to do in a short time. DC APS (actions per second) is going right up and this is a good challenge, but also can be too demanding.
Feedback on empowerment mechanic:
Empowerment stacks need to last longer. Instead of 15s I would prefer stacks to last for 30 or 60 secs. I'll explain why later.
Empowerment stacks need to be more obvious. I know currently there are stacks displayed under character portraits but you get double portraits for some buffing attacks (like Forgmasters and Divine Glow) and it's hard to track. The best way is to IMO add a '+' pip on the top border of the encounter icon per stack. This way it's always in the HUD and is obvious, and the + can change from blue to gold colour at the last 10 s before it runs out.
The concept is nice in theory. In combat I find it too hectic. The one thing DCs don't have is the luxury of time. Needing to cast spells in divine mode basically means extending cast animation time by 2 or 3 times longer in a rotation. Then you need to factor in time spamming at wills to recharge divinity. On top of that there is dodges, repositioning and timing encounters to hit the right party members. NW combat is already fast paced, and DCs already have to chase the DPSers most of the time. The "spam at will gain divinity spend divinity on divinity encounters gain empowerment stacks cast boosted encounter mechanic" is long to state and even longer to execute. It simply takes too much time outside of boss fights, and in those fights you are too busy dodging red and clutching the party than to actually have time to charge up.
A good cleric right now probably has the highest action per minute (APM) along with the Sword Master GWF out of all classes to be their most effective. With the proposed changes, combat will be a continual, click fest that requires intense concentration. It is challenging to execute well on a keyboard, let alone the future console port planned. I like the fact there is a higher skill ceiling, and higher potential for combos, and I understand empowerment is a choice and not mandatory but the effort doesn't necessarily justify the gains.
To alleviate the clicks a number of things need to happen:
- implement background divinity gain in addition to at will spamming. 8 seconds per pip is probably a decent trade off. I understand we can use divine fortune instead for faster divinity gain but for players with older computers or if there is lag the DC is always punished the most due to divinity mechanic.
- shorten many of the casting times. In particular, Prophecy of Doom, Blessing of Battle, Bastion of Health Forgemaster's Flame and even Hallowed Ground are very slow and prone to being interrupted, especially in PvP. No matter how good a power is on paper, if it cannot be executed consistently or reliably in combat it stays on the shelf.
Feedback on encounter powers:
Sunburst- The combination of healing and damage makes sunburst a good power to proc most of the feats. However in the current design the push is great for solos but can be annoying in dungeons. If the DC use divine mode to damage/DoT and damage and normal mode to heal (out of combat) it isn't too bad but this is users limiting the own usefuless of their encounters. Can there be a toggle for push or non push cast?
Healing word- I like the new targeting mechanic. I'm not really seeing temp HP procs in divine mode from my short testing so I'm unsure if it is working as intended.
Searing light- this spell lacks an identity and utility. It is a weak targeted spell with moderate cooldown. The cast mechanic is already challenging on moving mobs and you hardly get the chaining effect. Can we change the targetting to be the same distance but splat based somewhat like GF Terrifying Impact or HR Seismic Shot? The damage needs to be higher. In empowered version I'd rather have it ignore target DR (25% per stack) instead of having increased armor penetration.
Chains of Blazing light- there's a typo in description that says 'chains of fiery light' that should be fixed. I'm very happy the damage is not reduced depending on targets. Can we increase the target limit up to 8 so it brings more utility for DPS builds? Lack of AoE DPS is a severe disadvantage for DCs.
Daunting Light- the tooltip in game does not mention increased crit chance and severity when empowered and this doesn't seem to be implemented just yet. I suggest having the radius increase by 5' per stack and travel time abolished when empowered. It's already very difficult to have this land successfully on players and mobs due to the way aggro and player pushes works.
Prophecy of Doom- the cooldown of this power is still to long for its effect and damage. Needs to be reduced by about 33%. The casting animation is also exceedingly long and limits utility of this spell. I suggest reducing it to 1 second. Other aspects of the spell are good.
Forgemaster's Flame- empowered effect is bugged. From reading tooltip damage when buffed, at 1 charge damage decreases by about 5%. At 2 charges damage is about the same, and at 3 charges damage buff is about 5%. However if you cycle this a few times the damage goes to absurd levels. Maybe the multiplier stacked multiplicatively somewhere. After the change FF is almost the same spell as Break the Spirit except it's weaker in almost all ways (less damage, longer cooldown, slow instead of stun). I would let the divine effect proc both the damage dot and a heal dot to allies within a radius (50'?) as per live. Also the casting time of FF is far too long. It is the single most interruptible ability in PvP (after PoD, but hardly anyone uses it in PvP as it is due to insane cooldown and cast time).
Break the Spirit- damage/cooldown/effects are good. The empowered effect seems non linear in its gain, boosting base damage by 85% on one stack, 100% on 2 stack and ~105% on 3 stacks.
Bastion of Health- I like the effects, but after testing it in a standard dungeon run the casting delay and small AoE really limits it real world application. I suggest either doing away with the cast time altogether, or have it as a 30 feet point blank AoE centered on the DC. At current state DPSers rarely benefit from this.
Divine glow- a good jack of all trades power that offers some benefit in all situations. Tooltip damage display is bugged, showing a much higher number than what it actually is doing. Since the damage is inherengly low, can we increase the target limit to 10 or uncapped so we can spread the debuff? DPS clerics in particular are limited by the utility on proccing buffs on more than 5 targets at a time and DG is probably the best power for this.
Astral Shield- as many have pointed out currently allies have full normal immunity within AS. Please check the DR formula. Cannot test the empowered effect yet due to bug.
Feedback on paragon paths
-If I don't comment on a feat I think it's ok.
Overarching comments: Righteous and Faithful trees are a big step forward in helping the DC be more independent. There is incentive to take the capstones and the T4 feats since they are distinctive, flavoursome and effective. Virtuous tree is weaker by comparison in its current implementation.
Virtuous:
Currently this tree is the weakest for personal play and party support and most vulnerable. The DoT healing theme is ok, feats that strengthen it is ok, however the fact that the capstone converts all direct heals to HoTs eliminates any serious means for the DC to help the party recover from a large mishap or near wipe. HoTs don't heal enough if you and or party members are all missing a lot of health and need HP right now. In that situation they may as well use a health stone, where then HoTs become unnecessary. The HoT mechanic is not as vital in dungeons- it is spike damage that plague the party (especially module 4) and the party frequently cycles between 90% health and 20-30% (or got 1 shotted).
In PvP situations I can see HoT being stronger overall in sustained fights, however if virtuous is to be the PvP support tree the feats need to offer immunity and/or control resistance.
The biggest problem that Virtuous tree faces is that the healing temptation warlock can pretty much do all that Virt offers and do significantly more DPS. They have free HoT as they DoT and damage, and makes the Virtuous DC redundant in the maintenance healing party role. In PvP they are also more survivable and mobile while the Virtuous DC is the kill on sight backline healer.
Suggested changes:
Cleansing Fire is currently underperforming compared to say Purity. I suggest we also add the same 10/20/30/40/50% chance for the target(s) to be cleansed of negative effects and be immune to control effects for 0.8/1.6/2.4/3.2/4.0 seconds, with duration halved in PvP if necessary.
Shield of the Divine- the direct heal component of the listed encounters should still stay as a direct heal and instead apply temp HP for that amount for over 12 seconds. This way those abilities can still remain as a clutch power with some shielding effect in place. Temp HP proc means that the capstone is useful even in situations where the target may be overhealed.
Second sight (Divine Oracle paragon) Currently PoD damage is weak with a very long cooldown. My suggestion is for the feat to reduce the PoD cooldown by 1/2/3/4/5 second and grant 0.4/0.8/1.2/1.6/2 pips of divinity on the next encounter power cast to fit with the oracle theme.
Faithful:
Overall performing well and grants strong survivability to the DC and the team, offering maintenance healing, damage mitigation and clutch heals. It is still vulnerable to one shotting from 30% to zero but that's bearable. Agent of the Divine is useful only for clutching rather than the rest of the time but when it does proc it is helpful. Test of Faith strengthenes the DC's own personal survivability, which is something we always had issues with and I like how it improves with weapon damage. I am happy with how it is currently performing.
Righteous:
Righteous offer personal damage boosts in T1/2 for splashing into other paragons and personal and party damage buffs in T3 and 4. Fire of the Gods offer a strong boost to personal damage, at roughly 40% personal outgoing damage with a hybrid loadout and 20-30% with DPS loadout. While some may say that this is too OP, given the complexity of DC rotations (cooldown/AP/divinity/empowerment/HP management) and situational awareness I think this feat offers DPS DCs to have freedom however they wish to support their party.
Power of the Sun: Sitautional compared to both T1/2 feats that boosts damage. Perhaps allow it to work for BoTS and any DoT power (can also activate this with capstone)?
Avatar of the Divine: I like how the cooldown resets out of battle and it's a decent boost. I'd like it to have a cause where Power of the Sun will now apply its effect to all DoT encounters and at wills.
Opinion on where the class stands.
Damage mitigation: We don't know how effective AS will be, but between Divine Glow, Hallowed Ground, Divine Armor, Foresight, Benefit of Foresight, and a number of the new feats the protection role is still there.
Damage buff: Divine Glow/FF/BtS/Prophecy of Doom all allow party based buffing (30-60%+ possible depending on rotation). Righteous feats offer potential 25% more damage to the party. Overall the old buff bot style is still there regardless of your tree.
Healing: Major rework with abilities. BoH is massively improved but need to have a shorter casting time/larger AoE for it to be actually viable in dungeons. Faithful tree offers great protection and maintenance healing. Virt is great HoT maintenance healing but limited clutch ability. Righteous tree don't have many healing feats but if their stats are in they right place they can probably still play a healer role decently. Righeousness is still a great indirect heal for all circumstances. With the loss of Forgemaster's heal however, there is no good, large AoE reliable healing encounter for the party. BoH can fill that niche but the targeting is more miss than hit. The DC should not have to be punished for the party member's own choice of positioning.
Personal survival: For healing tree the feats make your healing much stronger and less dependent on encounter timing and thus boosts personal survivability significantly. Faithful tree in particular is quite tanky with clutch heals, although it is still susceptible to large spike damage. Righteous tree don't mave any buffs apart from encounters but Divine glow plus Astral shield plus dailys when needed should provide enough survival tools.
PvP: haven't tested significantly- the lack of control resist and immunity still puts us in a bad place. Previous divnity mechanic makes it very hard for DCs to recover from a wipe. Now mechanic is faster, but there is a lot more encounter casting, which means we are even more vulnerable to being interrupted, and we are less mobile because we need to cast/spam a lot more. Therefore while the potency of our healing has increased, our mobility has decreased and the PvP DC is unlikely to benefit significantly from the new empowerment mechanic in both one on one and one vs many situations.
Hybridisation: Because the healing/ utility and buffing aspects are assigned to encounters and not just from feats I think the potential for DCs staying versatile is still present. A faithful based healing DC is still using AS/DG/HW to provide some buffs, and the righteous tree DC can use the same encounter for protection or swap HW to SB or FF for more buff/debuffs.
Other suggested changes:
Like many have said, Heroic Feats need a rework. Also many of the encounter cooldowns and casting time need to be reduced.
This is where my thoughts are right now. As I test more or further changes are made I will make comments or even change my mind on some of this.
Guild and guide info
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I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY A NEW CLASS - I want to play the current one with selected improvements.
This approach simply does not realize the loyalty and fondness to the current playstyle that some long term players have developed over a year and a half with the Cleric. Players have studied guides, formulated statistics, developed their play strategy over this time - all the while growing an ownership and affection of their particular character and it's play style.
When news came through that finally the Cleric was going to be looked at, the obvious hope was that the development team would look at the many posts and guides outlining the under-performing skills, armor sets, cc issues, righteousness, heroic feats...but also noting the effective and consequently popular abilities.
But now we have this unnecessary and unasked for change in the fundamental class mechanics. Where are the multitude of posts that asked for this entirely new class approach?
So instead of a controlled and systematic improvement of selected abilities, we now have a - you must play a new class if you want to continue with the Cleric.
No
To Repeat: This approach simply does not realize the loyalty and fondness to the current playstyle that some long term players have developed over a year and a half with the Cleric
My total disappointment with these changes can never be directed at class advocates - who are sometimes handed a square wheel to run with.
Hopefully it is obvious that my points are directly solely and pointedly at the Cleric class development team.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
The one worry I have is that over time some things may be toned down as other players whine about the OP cleric, and at some point the cleric will be just another class but will be much harder to play.
This new system is difficult to master. All the different modes take a lot of concentration! However at this time this is fine because now a cleric has a chance to overcome using skill rather than just being buffhealbot/punching bag.
It's very clear from the current feedback being posted here that people are unhappy with the DC basically being a new class. We can only wait and see if they take action on such things. Considering they basically threw away a year of requests for the cleric in exchange for whats on PTR now - don't get your hopes up.
As for Kaelac's post, if we are moving ahead with all these changes, his approach to how to test and evaluate is spot on, and I'm glad we have him and not with those stinky GWFs(i love you gwfs please dont intimidate me) or something.
I sent a report of everyone's feedback out yesterday. Hopefully we'll see some changes and bugfixes by the end of the week.
Punishing and Soothing light @ the current state will be in a much awkward position because of how important it is to keep divinity to spam the divine encounter for Empower stacks. Looking @ how fast these 2 at-wills drain divinity, i suspect they both will go RIP.
Maybe it can be changed to only get back of the resisted part of the damage. In it current state, the poeple with the highest damage have the highest chance of surviving because of Lifesteal. It should be reverse proportional. Most dps => die faster. Low DPS -> Live longer.
Without Lifesteal a real tank (someone who can hold aggro) would also be needed, because poeple would not want to get hit.
Please ignore the pvp haters that are already in this thread calling for a damage nerf. The meta will adjust.
Feedback:
Heroic Feats: The need a proper rework to bring them in line with other classes.
At-Wills: Something needs to be done to increase the power of our At-Wills. I don't know how the devs got this far in patch development without addressing it. With the speed of of the new play style, At-Wills suffer from slow animation cast times and sub-par damage output. They all need a BIG boost in DPS. Also Punishing Light and Soothing Light both have no place in the current model. Rethink what you want these to be; my suggestions would be empowered At-Wills of some design that DO NOT DRAIN DIVINITY.
Powers: A few notes here...
Forgemaster's Flame - This power needs a design tweak. The slow is not enough to make it stand out (vs. Break the Spirit). Put the heal back on the Empowered version. So normally FF would be DoT and Slow. Divine will be the stacking debuff. Empowered consumes the stacks for the Heal.
Daunting Light - I am a big user of this spell on live. I do not feel like the damage is high enough vs. the live version. ALTHOUGH it could be, like Kaelec suggested, that the feats are not properly interacting with the spell. I was expecting something more. The time and skill that it takes to land the non-instant version needs to be rewarded. This theme appears throughout the current design. IDL is currently lacking probably from the time required to pull it off.
PoD - Casting Time is too slow. We have a limited window that divine stacks of PoD are up. The casting animation of performing Divine PoDx3 and then an empowered PoD is too much with movement and At-Will spam for divinity gain. Basically, anywhere you have written 'after a short (or brief) casting time...' you need to reduce that amount of time.
Sooth - needs to be removed and replace with a pvp passive like control resist OR EVEN BETTER stamina gain.
Prophetic Action - This is a must redesign power. Needs to change to something like, immune to one encounter/red zone/daily every 60 seconds (as others have suggested) or a cooldown reset or something/anything.
Searing Light - This spell is not there yet. Hard to use and as such we should be rewarded if we pull it off. Damage increase?
Sunburst - This is fine. I can work with it. I like to DoT. I can smartly use the knockback. Don't listen to the haters that seem to have built their character (somehow) around this single spell...). Divine Glow is now the goto instant everything that sunburst used to be. They can just switch it out.
Over all, my powers feed back is summarized as such: The casting animations have to be speed up. The time penalty for the class comes from building Divinity, then dumping all of that divinity into stacks and then casting an empowered spell and then rebuilding divinity. There should not be any slow casting animations or slow casting times built into the spells.
Paragon Feat (Righteousness) Poercing Light is totally underwhelming. 5 points to save yourself less than a single dark enchantment. Change over to design like GWFs... x% of Y,Z stat are added to your Armor Pen.
So far from testing:
Mechanics:
Divinity:
It is recovered just by using any at-will, not the damage or heal it causes. But the recovery is really much-much faster.
Empowered:
The idea here is that you can switch to divinity, use up to 3 pieps for devine versions of your encounters to get up to 3 stacks of empowerment and then switch back to normal and apply the empowered version.
Suggestion: The usability is really bad, since you have to keep track somehow of the empowered icons. It would be better to have some indicators right on the power bar. Maybe a number, or some kind of blue coloring which would fill the icons in the powerbar to 1/3; 2/3; 3/3 (the icons would be blue to 1/3 and red to 2/3 for example)
Powers:
1. Sunburst
Normal mode - PERFECT!!!! Finaly we can push our enemies away without being dependant on divinity!
Players, in Devine mode it does NOT push!
Divinity - does not heal, only applies DOT. I miss the healing power here. A HOT effect would be nice here, even if lover then in normal mode. Otherwise it makes little sense to equip it in situations where the pushing effect is not the best option.
Questions here so far: can it crit? is the DOT equal to the stated damage?
Empowered - Increased Knock per stack feels lower with each stack. Probably it is multiplicative, while it should be additive, otherwise it makes little sense to have 3 stacks.
2. Astral Shield
The 10% buff is rather low for almost 15 seconds recharge time. And the temporary hit points are not really worth it alone. They are few, and there is nothing of "Astral" and nothing of a "shield" in it. Still a good and very well playable power.
Empowered AS seems a little bit overpowered. It might also create HP-DC freaks.
My suggestions: Make the AS a buff/debuff. In simple and empowered mode it should reflect a portion of incoming damage, while the protection of empowered should be decreased from 3% to about 2% per stack (getting no damage from elites in Sharandar). The Devine AS should apply a temporary and stackable damage debuff (5% and 2s per stack?, 15% and 6 seconds max?). This would give higher flexibility to us.
3. Searing light - just not my case anyways....
4. Healing word - the problem of healing word was and is - the targeting. Right now I don't use it, because it is often difficult to hit my allies with it. I am just healing myself.... (well if you can call this healing) My problem always was that allies did everything to escape my healing word, including shifts and other stuff.
The new way does solve half of the problem, now I can be pretty sure, that there is some kind of probability that I will hit my allies, if they stay on one place and don't move around.... I would have to test it further.... if I will find a party on the testing server.
Feats:
1. Condemning Blaze - During battle it will be difficult to oversee how many stacks are on a special enemy, and when it will activate.
I can't test anything else right now, since all my spend points reset.... maybe it will fixed soon. I will do additional tests next week.
As I said in a previous post,I totally understand that it's inconvenient to have to re-learn a class one has been used to for a long time and that people would prefer improvements on something they prefer,rather than an overhaul.I really like the old playstyle.But the new one offers so much more flexibility,that cannot be offered by the previous one.
To make an analogy similar to yours,it's like buying a car,which you really enjoy,but a few years later,it starts having problems.You keep fixing them,but as time goes on,the car gets more and more unreliable.At first,it will just be problematic and unable to compete with other,newer cars' performance.But as the years pass,no matter how much you spend on it,it will eventually be too old.You have to buy a new one,cause it's not worth it spending so much money on it,only for you to have problems a couple of months later (and eventually you will stop finding parts for it anyway).No matter how much you upgrade it,it wont be as good as a newer car.This is what the new DC offers,new,better ground, to build up on to.
Yes,we are all used to the old cleric,but if the new DC is better,why not get used to the new one? If you really think about it,why are we all used to the DC now? In most rpg we have all played,the healer is that guy sitting on the back,casting his buffs before the battle and then spamming heals on tank,with a few aoe heals in between if the party gets injured.There's a few exceptions here and there,but that's the most usual Healer in games,isn't it? Is this what you found here though? Is that the cleric of neverwinter? No.You get in the battle and fight with the rest of your party.It's different from the typical healer we all know.But we decided to stick to it and learn the class regardless.Now,this playstyle of Neverwinter's cleric we relatively recently got used to suddenly became the all time classic?
I always loved how I was a lot more involved in combat here with my cleric than in most other games.The new version makes it even more interactive.It might be just me enjoying in depth gameplay and complexity,but one thing's for sure for me and that is:
-> Preferences are built over time.
In the end,if this new gameplay turns out too clunky,we can always revert to the old one...But seriously,we are still on the first build of Mod 5.We havent had enough time to adjust.So how do you expect to "prefer" something, if you haven't even had the chance to invest enough time in it? I've been supporting this change from the start,even though I liked the old cleric and I find it easier to play with.I've invested over 20 hours on Mimic on my cleric,doing content,to get used to it.Can I play as fluidly as on Live? Nope.I make mistakes, a lot.But I can see it having more potential,being more fun and increasing effectiveness for us,so,to me,it's worth re-adjusting and re-learning.
Just my 2 cents :P
Picture here not edited for reference material. This is a rushed pic not the best example.
[IMG][/img]
With proper use of Astral Seal and Astral Shield, you can proc burning guidance. Once burning guidance is in proc you use hollowed ground and divine glow hopefully hitting your ioun stone also your ioun stone will have two lesser indomitable rune stones at least. Terrifying insight will increase the damage also. If you have a warlock with the proper damage buffs and a control wizard with the power enhancement buff, another factor is a cleric participating in the synergy. You can proc burning guidance up to 10,000 or higher damage per heal this does cycle from 120 up to 10,000. High prophet armor and other damage buffs or increases helps there are a few feats which makes this much stronger. Other configurations are possible for defense and healing.
There is more than one way of going about this.
FEEDBACK:Hopefully your modification arrangements will not destroy our synergy builds.
Signed cautiously synergy builds an anonymous-
Profecy of doom damge on divine mode seems way to low, is around the 35% of base damage if it hits a target without the PoD debuff, and 70% with the debuff, when I read the changes about this encounter I supposed it could be used as fast single heavy single target attack, but looking the damage it just seems to scratch the targets, more damage in divine mode would be good, along with a faster animation/ cooldown.
by the way an issue I had when I entered in test server was to find the character with feat point resetted, excluded the one spent for class feat like benefit of foresight, had to use the ad to reset feat (not really a problem on test server), hope it won't happen on live when the change will be on. Cheers
FEEDBACK: This RUINS synergy PROCS, We would rather take a smaller heal than temp hit points.
We need our synergy builds for improved situation reaction. a Hybrid between faithful and righteousness would have been great!
the way I had seen it in feat trees.
virtuous: for temp hit points/heals and the associated buffs with heal over time for caps stone feat.
Faithful: quick heals proc from from abilities powers etc. with the associated buffs and the ability to use divine mode more often I.E. capstone feat.
Righteousness: buffs from damage and healing damage with an increase to damage. ( really i didn't like this tree cap stone feat so I don't know the cap stone feat).
Afternoon all! We are making one major change and a couple of minor bug fixes and performance
changes.
First and foremost we have heard the feedback on empowered and we are making it a global resource. It will now be generated by any divine power and consumed by any non-divine power. This will simplify the rotation and let you make more moment to moment decisions on what to do with your two major resources now (Empowered and Divine Power). Additionally we are playing with ways you can be notified of having reached various levels of Empowered so that you can be well aware of when you are at full potential.
The full changelist is as follows (also in the OP).
Devoted Cleric: Empowered: This is now a global resource that is applied by any divine power and can be consumed by any non-divine power. When you reach 3 stacks you will get floater text to notify you that you are fully Empowered.
Devoted Cleric: Astral Shield: This power no longer incorrectly blocks all damage when used with no Empowered stacks.
Devoted Cleric: Brand of the Sun: This power now also grants Divine Power when the DoT component ticks.
Devoted Cleric: Divine Fortune: This class feature now correctly increases Divine Power gain by 5% per rank (down from 50%).
Devoted Cleric: Divine Glow: This power should now correctly show how much damage it will deal.
Devoted Cleric: Searing Light: This power now correctly states the radius of the Divine version (15').
Devoted Cleric: Forgemaster's Flame: No longer erroneously mentions healing in rank up text.
Devoted Cleric: Forgemaster's Flame: Base slow for this power now slows the foe for 60% (up from 40%).
Devoted Cleric: Divine Bastion of Health: This power now heals for roughly 100% more.
Devoted Cleric: Punishing and Soothing Light: These powers now drain Divine power half as fast.
Devoted Cleric: Lance of Faith: This power now deals 25% more damage.
Devoted Cleric: Divine Oracle: Prophecy of Doom: This power now lists how much damage it can deal.
Devoted Cleric: Faithful: Agent of the Divine: The heal from this feat is now clamped and cannot exceed the target's Maximum HP.
Devoted Cleric: Righteous: Fire of the Gods: This feat can no longer crit.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Epic!
My only "complaint" now is in knowing when and how many Empowerment stacks are generated - and I see you guys and gals are experimenting. This is great news!